Cuyahoga Falls City Schools BOE Meeting 1/8/2025

001e e e good evening it's 5:31 on January 8th I'd like to call the order this regularly scheduled kyoga Falls Board of Education meeting Miss stoy will you please call the role Miss Coco I Mr here here Mr Harris here M schaer here M white here thank you Item B is motion to approve the agenda it is recommended that the Board of Education approves the agenda of the January 8th 25 Board of Education meeting so moved check any discussion M please call a r m c i Mr Gomez I Mr Harris I Mrs shaer i m i item C is informational items and opening ceremony this meeting is a meeting of the kyoga Falls Board of Education in public for the purpose of conducting the school's District's business it is not a public community meeting

002although there are opportunities for public participation if any 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 follow Follow 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 they must notify the superintendent and or board president of the topic no later than three days in advance of the meeting these individuals may share their comments during the board business portion of the agenda in both cases the individual will preface comments by an announcement of his her name and address and limit comments to 3 minutes all statements should

003be directed to the the board president no person may address or question board members individually an unabridged board agenda for this meeting can be found on your electronic device for your convenience hard copies of the board agenda may be found on the table by the signin book the next regularly scheduled meetings of the kyoga board of education is January 22nd 2025 at 5:30 p.m. in the kyoga Falls High School library 23004 Street kayoga Falls and welcome now for our pledge and our welcome Miss Sher you please stand your and join me the Pledge of Allegiance Al to United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome our vision kaga Fall City School District The Hub of our community committed to

004a culture of caring we innovate we create we personalize education for all our mission every student every day every opportunity the board's strategic plan goals are as follows school safety we aspire to have a welcoming environment that ensures that the physical and social well-being needs of every student and staff member are met academic growth we aspire to have significant significant growth through personalized education for all students we aspire to improve gradua graduation rates so that our students are prepared for employment enrollment or enlistment engagement inclusion and diversity we will ensure that every student has access to resources they they need when they need it in order to be successful technology and systems integration we aspire to create safe secure and efficient technology systems to support high quality teaching learning and District Operations thank you Mr

005ster item D is presentations our presentation tonight is PBIS and our panoramic data update like to invite Mr Elder Mrs Merkel Becca Miller and anyone else who's coming up presentation app well good evening everybody and happy New Year 2025 ready to go um so on behalf of our department student services um thank you madam President congratulations thank you vice president board members and our cabinet folks over here thank you for allowing us to give you a little bit of update about what's going on in student services um so I know over the past several years you've heard updates from uh Mrs Merkel about panorama data attendance and the health and wellness initiatives that have been going on in the district um tonight you're going to hear those same updates um but what we wanted to

006do is to ensure that we have a discussion about the district educational initiatives and our social emotional learning in initiatives and how those are uh one and the same for us the way we see them um our goal is to take what we're doing with our our students in the area of social emotional needs and connect it with the academic so that we have well rounded students so miss Merkel will talk a little bit about uh the revamping of our PBIS which is now our PBIS plus our positive behavior and support um and how that connects to the multi-stem multi-tiered system of support mtss um she will also discuss the results of our most recent Panorama survey with our students and she will discuss the success in Wellness programming um I will be talking a

007little bit more a little bit later on about discipline and what that's looked like in a comparison between the first semester of last year and the first semester of this year and you're going to hear from our attendance liaison Miss Becca Miller who will talk a little bit about our attendance initiatives as you know one of our goals is to make sure that every student gets every opportunity to come to school on time be there and feel welcome uh sometimes we need to do things when they are not coming to school and sometimes we need to do things to promote them coming to school and that's where she's coming to play so you'll hear a little bit about that from from her so for right now I'm going to hand it over to Mrs Holly

008Merkel thank you so Mr Elder kind of spoke through um our overview for today but these are the things that we'll be touching on um through our presentation this evening this next slide I have to give uh Mrs Zeman credit for she created this um over the summer and we've been kind of sprinkling list throughout the district um this fall to really make sure that our staff have a good understanding of what mtss is and what it isn't it is not a replacement for RTI um and it is not just academic interventions but it's really creating systems and supports to support that whole child which includes academics which includes Behavior as well as social emotional and attendance so we've really been trying to um coordinate and make sure that anytime I'm presenting or I'm doing

009data days or the literacy coaches are doing data days we are sprinkling in this slide so that it's um our staff are seeing it consistently okay so you may have heard um this PBIS plus and you may be thinking what in the world is PBIS plus again I have to give Mrs Zeman credit for this um as we were brainstorming this summer how do we bring the the non-academic side of the house together with the academic side of the house she came up with this idea of PBIS is already ingrained in our district it's something our sta is already familiar with let's pull in attendance andal to the PBIS and call it PBIS plus we know new initiatives are hard for folks but if we can weave it into something that we're already doing um

010hopefully we'll have some more success with that so that that is sort of what PBIS plus means in our district um and I do just before I get carried away in talking I just want to give a shout out to Mrs Housman and Mrs Zan for really helping um make make sure that does not live in a silo and we're walking along side of the academic side of the house it's been really helpful to coordinate and collaborate with sped and curriculum so again that we're all working in the same direction and our staff feel it that it's not something separate but it's just how we do business I have a question on the umbrella slide yep so we have on the left is like the different pieces that we have in the district and then

011on the right are like what that entails would each of those pieces on the left and Compass all of those five things yeah so we didn't create these these were these are just two different ways to represent mtss so the one on the right um but just the social emotional academic Behavior that's from Panorama okay um and then I'm not sure exactly sure where the other umbrella came from but it's just kind of used throughout the education world as a way to show what encompasses what mtss encompasses does that answer your question yes and no but like are they I'm trying to see like the connection between the two in my brain so like because professional development you could do professional development in any of those teamwork in any of those areas for Parental action

012would we look at parental action relating to any of those areas RTI would that relate to is that's what I'm training yes so okay y thank you yep and to some degree all of that's under the right so the on the right you're looking at you know the overarching you know categories on the left it's a little bit more specialized right yeah and broken down but all all of that I I think your your first thought about it being connected into the slide on the right or the part on the right if is correct okay thank you all right so this next slide you keep clicking for me Ryan um we're going to go in depth about all these things but this is just really A visual representation if you give me one more click

013um of the systems and structures we've tried to put into place this school year as we Implement PBIS plus so um in thinking about tier one implementation um we know PBIS has been around in the district for several years um but with covid and just new leadership in and out um we wanted to make sure there were consistent expectations and systems across all of our nine buildings so that it looked the same no matter what building you're in um and so we asked our principles to make sure that they're having those monthly PBIS meetings but adding in not just the behavior data which is our Public School Works Data but also trying to weave in that attendance and Panorama data as well at those meetings so again trying to not just um only focus on

014the behavior but really try to focus on that whole child and and looking and considering those data sets who attends those meetings um at the elementary levels it's typically part of their BLT and then at the um secondary level they have separate committees that meet they're volunteered because they're not paid positions and they meet during the school day thank you yep um for elementary we were able to take it one step further you likely have heard about the literacy dayto days um that were imp imped last year um and again Mrs Zan and Mrs Housman were so gracious to help us meet the teachers and help really um build their capacity around this topic through data days PBIS Plus data days so this fall um we were able to meet which with each uh grade

015level teaching team for an hour we're hoping to expand that a little bit more into two-hour meetings this spring and we were able to do a couple things first we were able to analyze the three data sets that fall under that PBIS plus and what was really nice about that is that we had been sharing this data out at at DTS excuse me and kind of hoping BLTs would take it back and it would trickle down to the teachers but this really was an opportunity us to have for us to have Rich conversations with teachers for them to ask questions and for us to dive into the data that really is impacting them dayto day um so that was really a great opportunity to take a a nice look at that data the second part

016the meeting was okay this is what the data is telling us what do we do with it so we were able to um show them rethink Ed or as you all are aware we're in year two of rethink Ed year one was a heavy focus on getting our counselors acclimated and them pushing in for the lessons year two we're really trying to build our teachers capacity to also be implementing that um resource in their their classrooms and so it was a nice opportunity to demo it to help them walk through the platform and see how they can tailor the resources and rethink add to what the data is telling us we also shared um a first five resource which seemed to be the favorite of the teachers and then also the Panorama Playbook as well

017which is a part of um what we purchase through Panorama what's first find first five is um it's actually a free resource that um it is sent out in your it lands in your inbox at 7 A.M every day it includes nine um activities activities connection activities that you can do under five minutes so it's a really nice way for teachers to integrate um in relationship building into their everyday classrooms so if you searched first five something that you sign up for and it comes to the email that you identify so then it's it's just brief suggestions on things that you could do and it's broken down by Elementary and secondary and so it provides the teachers or the instructors or anybody working with children I know you know some activities that they can do

018very simply to connect with kids is that something that teachers would be signing up for them individually yes this is a sample day-to-day agenda I won't I know we have a lot to cover tonight so I won't go too deeply into this but just wanted you to have the opportunity to see what these day-to-day agendas look like on the secondary level we recognized um that we had three buildings in which PBIS looked very different in each of those three buildings but they'll be coming together in a year and so we wanted to start um really working on streamlining that and aligning that PB work now so that we're in a really good place um in a year from now when we're all um in one camp so we uh partnered with uh sst8 Frank Gant

019has just been super helpful um and we started with just building a common understanding of tier one PBIS do we all have the same understanding and common adult and uh student expectations across the three buildings so we spent a great deal of time um working on that and then kind of modeling how do you use this data to drive what's going on in your building and through that work we also identified need to kind of develop a subcommittee that can do some of the leg work surrounding aligning the matrices the good news is we have one single Matrix for when we transitioned to the new building so that was super exciting that we were able to combine the three um and then we're also right now in fact we have a meeting tomorrow we'll be

020working on a pacing guide and updating the lessons to reflect the um updated Matrix so that's some of the work we've been doing at tier one for secondary um at at tier two and tier three we um have asked all the buildings to develop care teams uh over the past couple of years they developed sort of organically in many of our buildings um but we found them to be pretty effective and that buildings really felt like it was a good way to drive those uh supports for students in need of tier two and tier three intervention so we asked all of our buildings to create a care team that meets at least twice a a month and it's comprised of the principal School social workers School counselor school psychologist and then Red Oak um as

021needed when their clients are are students are going to be discussed and then other staff as appropriate so maybe a classroom teacher NIS um school nurse if there's medical issues going on um and so they meet like I said twice a month at least some buildings do it every week because they find it to be just a great way to coordinate care um and they look at that the data and they put interventions in place and kind of progress monitor so the buildings in full transparency the buildings are in much different places in terms of how this looks but we just asked just hold the meetings this year and we'll just re refine it and each year we know it'll get better so that's where we're at with care teams I have a question with

022them being in as you said such different places how's that going to work in January like a year from now when they're in one place yep so that's a great question I think the middle schools will likely come together and then the high school will remain their own do you think that it will they'll make enough progress in a year to be able to make that I do I think the middle schools it's really the elementaries six of them they're they're just in a wide range of where they're at in the process trust your judgment so if you feel good about I do I do and remember there's a shared counselor between the middle schools and so yeah I think we'll I think we'll be in a good place but good question all right so

023I know really what you wanted to hear about was the Panorama but we wanted to give you a background of the the systems that we're trying to put in place to address um what these what this data is telling us so um you have seen this next slide a million times but for anybody that's listening uh a reminder that the Panorama student survey is 28 or 30 questions could you yeah and it focuses on these five domains that are most closely aligned to the highl standards before we dive into the results I did want to um just highlight that there were some significant updates that Panorama made this summer the most important is they simplified the vocabulary this was something we heard feedback we heard from our teachers um that they just really felt like

024maybe the students weren't accurately um reporting because they didn't understand understand that the language wasn't developmentally appropriate and apparently Panorama heard that across the country because they' made significant updates they reworded and they also shortened the time frame so for example um previously it might say in the past 30 days how often did you feel sad well we know as adults that's hard to answer that let alone an elementary student or even a high school student so they changed that to just a week so the idea is that the results we're seeing now should be a more accurate reflection of how our students are really thinking and feeling um and so with that and they've been warning us since the summer that there would likely be a drop in our scores um so these are

025examples of nationally when they look at just all of the results how scores have dropped in these two domains so I put this out here just to to show an example of when we see a couple drops for our district we shouldn't be too alarmed because they are saying essentially that changes were so significant this is almost like a new Baseline for us and so when we compare even last spring to this fall it's not really comparing Apples to Apples so these are um the results that you're typically used to seeing and I'm going to show a new enhanced version of how panorama's um encouraging us to to report out but since you're used to seeing this I wanted to just highlight this um for some consistency this is the these are the results for

026students um reporting favorably so again that fiveo ler scale this is the percentage of students that rated themselves a four or a five the problem with this scoring is and again we heard this from our staff and apparently across the country Panorama heard it as well as it's it's hard to take action on this 39% um reporting themselves favorably forem motion regulation is that good is that bad is that development appropriate it was just really hard to kind of gauge that so what they did is they normed all of the questions and all the domains to give us that perspective so now when we look at the results um we'll go back to a motion regulation because that was the example I used on the last slide we can see um it's no longer percentage

027favorably it's percentage of students that are above that National Norm so our students in dark blue rated themselves significantly higher than the national average our students in the light um blue rated themselves in that average range and then our students in the red rated themselves below that national average so it really helps us gauge how our students compare to same age peers across the country to help us kind of gauge what are some areas we really need to Target um and really what we would want thinking about that tiered model and the mtss um we would want all of these um to equal 80 so we would want the blues together to equal 80% because that means that 80% of our students are responding to tier one so um you can see we're close in

028a couple areas but um that emotion regulation continues to be an area um that we need to Target as a district so does are there any questions about that Norm scoring because I know that is a little different than how I've reported the results in the past in terms of the um questions like at 3 to five the phrasing would be different correct but is the phrasing like similar it seems like this is kind of based off like those screeners for depression anxiety like the Gad and the phq that is that kind of accurate like they're kind of pulling like how often in the past like week have you felt so anxious or like there it's kind of similar to that and then they're building upon that and trying to track down into like how

029often have you felt like feelings of Joy or happiness and and that's kind of what is going into the positive field correct is that kind oh is that for the well-being questions yes you're absolutely right um for the skills and competency those are all questions trying to gauge if students have specific skills related to for example executive functioning coping skills so there aren't any any feelings questions in the top three domains but the bottom two domains are similar to what you're saying is it possible to look deeper into like what the questions are for emotional regulation because it seems like that continues to be a struggle here so it would be interesting to like look deeper into what those questions are y because that might tell us more about what our kiddos are struggling with

030absolutely um I will say one of the really great things about the data days is that we would just pull up the Panorama I would pull up the Panorama platform and that it was sort of like Choose Your Own Adventure for the teachers so they could really dive in and we could we went down to specific questions and we could look at boys versus girls Special Ed versus so really it that's one of the great things about day-to-day would you guys like that information for the board or you just saying for us is I just like to see the questions for emotional regulation that's what I would like to see um okay I don't want to see too much of the data because I don't want people to feel like as a board we're digging

031too deep into people's information that they're sharing or because I don't want parents to then get uncomfortable having their kids take this survey correct um but I'd like to see the questions because I think it would help me better understand the pieces parts of that yep absolutely could I uh include those in my Friday notes would that be helpful y perfect I don't want anyone to feel like we're deep diving really deep as a board and then there' be like anxiety within the community about their children taking the survey and there certainly would not be any student level data yeah at any point that we would see but I just don't want people to feel like we're diving really deep to anything absolutely is it 28 did you say was a 28 or 30 uh

03228 is the three through five and then the 30 is 6 through 12 yep all right so we'll move on um again this is the percent favorable for 6 through 12 this is what you've seen in the past um we'll focus more on that nationally normed results in the next slide and I was able to break it down 6 through eight 9 through 12 which I think is nice because there's is some differentiation between middle school and high school so you can see here we're um we're pretty close close to that 80% Target um in several categories which is great but again that emotion regulation is is a struggle and then here's our 9 through 12 Norm scoring so fairly similar then the results and then could we get those emotional regulation questions and then

033the challenging feeling question sure yeah since those 912 challenging feel like um and are you looking for just the questions or you want the results just the questions cuz I think the overall results yeah we have okay that's all unless somebody else has another thing but for me that's all I was asking for I think there's only 20 but or 28 questions total the because we could give you scores for each individual question if you'd like that I was just asking for the question another if another board member needs different information for them they could make that request I'm not trying to put stop from making a request I don't think that I don't personally feel like I need the scores for each individual question okay now if it comes that way and it's less

034work for you to PB at it that way or whatever it is then it would be okay to include it whatever's easier for you okay great thank you all right and and then um just kind of an overall summary for Panorama something I'd really like to highlight and give a shout out to our principles we had um really great participation this round we typically hang around 65 to 70% of students participating we were at 76% this year and if you pull out the high school which nationally it's hard to get our high schoolers to take this it's not just us um we were at 93% which is just amazing and I think it really um then speaks to these this is an accurate representation of um our student body and what they're sharing so we've

035talked about um that emotional regulation being an ongoing struggle and then self-management historically um has been our highest domain and it it proved that it was again this time as well um just three areas I want to just quickly highlight um back when we started to get some nice longitudinal data um and you all have heard this before feeling safe feeling identification and worry were kind of three areas that we targeted um because that feeling safe and that struggle with identifying feelings were lowest scoring questions every time we've administered it so we really tried to put some targeted supports in place or rethink Ed scope and sequence to tried to build um to address these concerns and um except for the our little ones who dropped a little bit in the feeling identification you can

036see um some nice growth here and these scores are the responding favorably so we would actually expect them to decrease based on the changes in the the survey questions but we saw some nice growth um so just wanted to kind of highlight that because those are areas we've been targeting is the feeling safe feeling safe specific to school or just all of life yep all of life it's very vague yep yep so and then the last piece I'll just highlight um I know the board in the past has asked for cohort data and so I did put that together for um cohorts 25 through what are our third graders 33 um so those are all there for you we won't spend the time to go through them I'd be happy to ask answer any questions

037but uh I did just put a little asteris at the bottom as a reminder that um if you see some drip dips in the fall of 20 24 just remember that those questions did change change and so it is not that Apples to Apples comparison to the spring questions and then what are our continued um efforts especially in that like emotional regulation space like to continue to like help our students with that yeah so we continue to um use our reink at our school counselors pushing in for those um monthly lessons especially at the elementary level our school counselors have um taken a look at those student level results and started to pull for small groups to address some of the the concerns that we're seeing and then circling back to those data days this

038has been a really nice opportunity to talk to teachers about strategies and ways they can build these um skills in their classrooms so it's again not Silo just to our counselors or School social workers but us pulling in the classroom teachers and intervention special to help um build those skills within the classroom as well so it seems like they're going down in positive feelings too I noticed that too so I was kind of curious what those questions were they're all kind of dropping in that a lot it seems every year Well except for the last one there it's staying a little steady but yeah there's a lot Elementary is not 11th 10th yeah N9 eight seven six is really low in that positive feeling so can you remind us when they took this survey yep

039it the first um the window was right after the first nine weeks so mid- October yep I just want to remind folks that when we see those dips for fall those that wording was changed so um it yes it's it's terrible to see that our kids maybe aren't feeling as happy as they once were but it may not be that it's they're feeling less happy it's just that it's a more they're more accurately reporting it does that make sense I think so I'm just curious is that the same questions as the challenging feelings or could we have those questions I'll give you all the domains and questions that fall underneath I think you did a long time ago but it's all right and they changed right this year they they changed so yeah that that's

040just a concern for me I don't when do they take the spring one so we moved up the spring Administration this year to um the beginning of February we did that for a couple reasons one of which is to try to make sure that we can again take action that we're not just giving the survey and then it's testing season and that takes over so we do it at the beginning of February then we're going to have our data days right after that um and then our teachers will have and counselors will have access to the results hope that rises Sor it's like the do drums period though mean I'm already thinking that's that beginning of February before their Valentine's Day parties there's now a lot of keeps a record of that individual student the

041the teacher who sent the referral and it allows us to be able to manipulate a lot of data the data that I wanted to point to your attention today is the information about the number of office referrals from the first semester of last year to the first semester of this year and you know good news we've seen a 36.7% drop in office referrals in that period of Time same period of time over the year um so the next slide would be slide 45 and that actually breaks down the conduct report by incident so the types of uh incidents that were reported to have been something that a student may have violated right um and so I wanted you to kind of see what those you know top four are are um the top two have

042pretty much stayed the same but you still see a significant difference in the number of instances of individuals who have been referred to the office for disruption of school and fighting um the thing with uh the other two disrespectful def defiant Behavior degrading Acts or Disobedience some of that may be also wrapped up in the action in the first two uh what I noticed is um the the disruption of school decrease um it it it really is on the reporter you know what's what's a disruption of school just the same as the disrespectful and defined Behavior so what may be disrespectful to me may may not be disrespectful to you and so I think there's something for us to learn just by looking at this data um um and this is something that when they're

043doing the day-to-day and principles having discussions with their care teams that they're actually able to review as well um next slide please do you think having the cell phone policy help this year with discipline here you can you wanna no I'm just kid hold on that's gonna that's coming a little bit it's coming real soon trust me so um typically speaking in schools it's we're going to call your mother you know have a seat in the corner uh lunch detention recess detention after school detention these are the top five consequences that have been issued over the last couple years thing that I really wanted to kind of point out is the difference in the number of instances that we have had children out of school or receiving a consequence for anything uh and so you

044see ISS is in school suspension down 31.8% from last year out of school suspension the OSS is down almost 40% uh the recommendations for expulsion which you know doesn't necessarily mean the superintendent makes the determination that the student is going to be expelled that's down 63% where students that have been expelled in that same period of time down 76% the one anomaly is the ER which is our emergency removal um typically uh emergency removal is used when students are a danger to themselves or others so there are instances where you know it might just be beneficial for that student to go home often times this is you know part day uh and it requires that the building Administration uh meet and review with that student the next day so the next school day so if

045this happens on a Friday it would be Monday but so the next day that that that child and their parent are in school the one thing that was interesting in my interviewing with the building Administration is oftentimes kids who were sent home on emergency removal it more resulted in some type of seal intervention than it did any further discipline and so even though we seen an increase in emergency removals we are also seeing you know when we talk a little bit about that Panorama data some of the things that you have already questioned we suspect that there's some correlation there so you know students who just need some attention maybe they need a reset a break or what have you the emergency removal has been used they come back and then you know we are

046putting into place some type of supportive plan for that for that student next slide please so this gets down to uh this way your question so I just thought to myself well why you know why why are we seeing I I presented this to our building administrators uh during one of our ed services meeting that you know the decrease in in some of our discipline and having individual conversations they were kind of surprised you know when you're in the middle of it and you're you know doing your principal work and it looks like you're you know doing a lot of discipline or you looks like you're having students who are disregulated often it may feel that way they were a lot of them were surprised and shocked at the actual numbers and their actual numbers

047that I shared with them some of them were pleasantly surprised some of them were like Oh I thought it was I I thought it was more so I asked them well why why why in your building are we seeing a decrease in from the first semester of last year to the first semester of this year and so what I've tried to do in the quotes that you can read through later is highlight from them and I told them I'm going to quote you so you know make sure you understand this is for the board you know and so um what you're going to see is some of the things that each one of these building principles uh administrators said as to why um and so to answer your question M white uh Mr Smith really

048does believe that the cell pH cell phone policy has had a significant impact in their discipline issues he actually went a little bit further than what you have what you see there in terms of that cell phone policy because he talked about the significance of students being able to uh negatively connect while using those cell phones as in the past and that was through some of his investigation from other instances so with the students not having that ready connectedness it also decreased their fights as well so um so again uh Mr oswal he gave a whole a couple of them called me back after they thought of a few more things uh Mr Oswell was one of those where like as we talked he like he kept thinking more and more but um the other

049thing that you're going to see as you read through these is a lot of what you just heard Mrs Merkel talking about is identified in the statements from the principles the care teams talking about the data making this real for not just our students but our staff setting the expectations there are some some buildings that have taken the opportunity to take a couple weeks prior to even starting any instructions to start setting those expectations and go through that with their students so um I I think it's just important that you know we recognize this the the other piece that is pretty significant is the building principles really feel like developing those connections is really important um in a lot of my conversations the first five is something that I heard a lot from the building

050principles the teachers really grabbed a hold of it because it doesn't take so much time but it also provides them with an opportunity to connect with the students so again you know Mr hu can go through those because the board can read through those at their Leisure but but again you know all the opportunities at uh teaming and meeting and discussing uh behavior and whatnot is the chief reason why a lot of our building principles saw a decrease um so I I am not our Treasurer who has all you know these great and wonderful things but you saw the first quote you know uh this I actually got this I went to a training uh at uh the beginning of last year and one of the things that uh an all day training one of

051the one of the sessions was about developing connections uh with students um our goal inal is to develop tools not just for our students but for our staff building the capacity of those individuals to be able to you know either self-regulate or help an individual self-regulate um moving forward you you'll be hearing me talk about trying to take SEO out of offices and move it into the classrooms where students are to keep them there our staff are really starting to especially our counselors and our our social workers are starting to embrace that and trying to work on our tier one approach which is all of our students so if we can focus on that 80 % you know we can grow some of that including some of those numbers that we're seeing that are that's

052a little bit lower so we we need more than one tool so that's the whole point of this so pass it on to this next there's just a few pictures of our stay in the game uh this year so far here's a quick review on our different kinds of absenteeism so our chronic is what's counted on the state report card that's when a kid misses more than 10% of school for any reason so that's excused medically excused unexcused or suspension and then our excessive and habitual is our Ohio attendance laws so that's House Bill 410 and habitual TR is what's going to trigger an attendance intervention plan being needed here's a quick trend of our um chronic absenteeism for the last six years um 24 to 25 is um up until December of 24 once

053we finish out the year I'll update it uh so we are going in a very good direction uh our chronic absenteeism number is fluid though it can change throughout the year as kids withdraw or kids improve in attendance it can um get a little lower hopefully and then our chronic excuse me absente ISM data does come from our attendants dashboard this is a quick snapshot of what it looks like uh the dashboard was created by Mindy gki at the ESC of Northeast Ohio Mindy Updates this dashboard with data that we provide her every two weeks so a lot of the staff um use it during their care teams it's nice to use because you can really analyze the data on the right hand side you can see that you can make different selections so you

054can go by school grade race gender students with disabilities and then um if you do dig deeper you can go by individual student um it also allows us to see who's improving and then who's worsening in attendance here's a little other snapshot of our chronic absenteeism so ironically both numbers as of December of 23 and 24 are exactly the same I did do the math a few times just to make sure I wasn't wrong in that um but even though our chronic absenteeism did go up um by 6 percentage points our enrollment did drop so that is why it would de it increased even though we have the same exact number here's a little snapshot of our house bill 410 last year we pulled House Bill 410 four times in the whole school year this

055year we're pulling it monthly and it seems to really be helping staff find it a lot easier to navigate um secretaries who have to send all the letters home find it a lot easier and less time consuming so you can see our habitual dropped from 355 to 229 which is pretty impressive um so we're really happy with pulling it U more frequently our numbers do include students that met these thresholds based on being on vacation or students that have withdrawn but I did want to include them just cuz they did hit the threshold while they were attending here um and it's about 60 of those out of the 229 that have withdrawn or um met it just from being on vacation and do have no other attendance concerns so far so our tier one interventions

056that we're doing for um attendance we developed a core attendance team of three principles myself um and we do attend an attendance leaders PLC at the ESC of Northeast Ohio I distribute weekly data to the schools on attendance some of them is a little different from others it depends on what works best for them and how they can best analyze and use it in each of their buildings we're doing a lot of positive messaging campaigns we have different bulletin boards in the school different um campaigns each school is doing on their own um social media posting and then this year I started um doing secretary professional devel velopment they're the ones that enter our attendance so really um our accuracy um depends on them and being able to enter it so I've been able to

057be a lot more available to them with questions and I think they found it um PD very helpful so that will continue and then um our most exciting part of attendance is obviously our stay in the game campaign uh so here's a few snapshots uh so far we've been doing monthly attendance Awards kids are chosen if they've missed less than 10% of school so they're not chronically absent they get award a t-shirt in our elementary we've had um donations from Texas Roadhouse for a free meal for a kid which has been really nice um we've been doing different attendance activities you can see a picture of a student signing an attendance pledge in the beginning of the year we've had Spirit weeks and we've been very lucky and that we've been able to give away

05841 tickets to to students and families this year um over five games and then in August we were able to send 10 staff to a game and our very exciting um highlight is we were able to have a second half kickoff kid on December 29th at the Browns vs Dolphins game this is Ethan Hargrove he attends bck he was chosen um due to his impeccable attendance great grades and he is a great example of Black Tiger Pride he was able B to high five a lot of the players including miles Garrett and Joel bonio um and he said it was a blessing for him to go with his family as he's never been to a brown game but always wanted to go to one um and I asked him why school's important and he said

059school's important to him so he can learn have fun he wants to go to college for football which that was a great experience receive a good education and most importantly be a good and kind person so it was very well been a wonderful experience for him our tier 2 interventions we're doing a lot of Outreach to families whether that's me teachers social workers school counselors principles um we have check-ins with our school counselors and social workers we're working really hard um to link um our families to any resources they need that might be the obstacle as to why they're not attending whether that's Transportation food our wonderful black tiger Family Center whatever we can do to help them we will connect them with and then our tier three interventions uh in your handouts I did

060give you guys a copy of our attendance intervention plans we also I do a lot of home visits for families which I think have been pretty helpful some kids come again the next day so it's a really good relationship building with our families and I think it really shows them that we're willing to go the extra mile to figure out why they're not attending and that we're there to support them in whatever they're needs are we also have our kyoga Falls Police diversion Services referral and then from there the next step would be our Summit County juvenile court treny filings and then our what's next we're continuing to grow our stay in the game campaign on the right you can see this is our new 2025 attendance pledge that we'll be doing this week and

061next week in the schools um the kids names will get put into a raffle in each school and we'll be giving out some attendance incentives from stay in the game February because we have such good things to say about February we'll be doing a postcard campaign for schools to write um encouraging letters home for kids that are missing or kids that are doing really well to continue to bring them in I'm starting attendance Le on office hours in our elementary schools tomorrow this grew out of feedback from our data days so we're doing um six over the next two weeks I'm there for an hour and a half and they've set aside an area for me to be so staff can come and ask questions either General attendance questions or case specific and then I've

062given them all my contact information in case they can't make it during that time we're hoping from there to take that into the secondary schools and then hopefully make it an ongoing office hours um in the schools and then continue to develop attendance resources so also included is your little um a handout I made on attendance me messaging sometimes reaching out about attendance can be scary or awkward so I just made a handout that can help um staff navigate what to say what to avoid to say to really also focus on our whole child because sometimes the academics isn't always what's going to bring our students in but to focus on all that school has to offer and that is where we're at thank you do you have any questions yeah I have one question

063on slide 35 the treny filings in December 23 there were only five but December 24 there 11 can I chime in there if I could sure I just wonder no I I wanted to point something out um regarding that I was just waiting to I had two comments I wanted to add um that was one of them Miss White um one of the things I've talked to Mr Elder about when I did ask about the filings because every when I'm in the schools and just talking with either teachers or principls every so often cases will come up of children that have not been in school or whatever and it my my antennas go up and I come back and I do a little digging and what I found is that to my satisfaction frankly I

064didn't feel like we were filing enough um and I I'm not trying to make this punitive for families but I wanted to be a little bit more aggressive so I've sort of passed that message to Mr Elder but what we find in not so much just filing again as a punitive means but there's typically more behind you find out more when you dig a little bit of why children are missing school there's more to it than just a child not coming to school and so our real um not only just a message that we're trying to send but a way to help is you know how how can we help these families what is going on that we can kind of intervene with so but I have asked to kind of take a little bit

065a more aggressive approach of the really um noticeable um egregious type of number of um absences because I'm frankly concerned about those children and might I might I add to that so we've we've been meeting with uh Sumit County Juvenile Corp we you know uh Miss Miller has had a relationship where that she where she came from so we've had some discussion with them they did a a professional development around treny for the for the county but one of the things that they actually started to reiterate also was making those filings a little earlier um House Bill 410 sets some parameters that you're have to go through a period of time before you then go through the filing of treny or making a call to csb Summit County has shrunk that down so that we

066don't have to wait until 61 days after the start of an absence intervention plan to start to start that process so that will also allow us to increase the number of filings because we don't have to wait so long and the reason being is that what would end up happening is you would get the individual that go through the absence intervention plan maybe have some success and then the team decides to do that filing that happens in the spring by the time everything gets to court we're back in school again and so trying to make those filings happen a little bit earlier you know allows for the court to be able to provide some of the support that they would also do and the court isn't looking at it punitively either because they'll they'll be

067making referrals to their family center as well so you know there's a lot you know that you know that particular action will trigger if you know so some of the stuff that this court will do if we can do that ahead of time we'd rather see that done within the resources that we have at the school before getting them to the court system I'd also like to say um we do try to do a lot I came from juvenile court my job was on the other side we also know the more times a child touches the justice system the more likely they are to recidivate so the more likely they are to come back to that justice system so I do really try to do everything in my power to keep them from going there

068when we do refer it is for diversion so it it's not going in front of a magistrate so it's really the same thing as cfpd diversion just at the court level of our County um so that can be very scary for kids but it is kind of in a way to diversions and then if they fail then that's when they go in front of a magistrate or if they kind of improve and sometimes even if they don't show up they still get closed successfully so I really the reason why I wanted this job is that I didn't feel like at the court level we were making enough difference and that we could have um I just didn't feel as attached and I came to realize that we can solve it in the schools and that's

069why I wanted to come to this job and be here because I could kind of see where we were missing opportunities um so I mean I am filing and I am still filing because sometimes it does have to happen if it is on a kid younger than 12 then it's just filed on the parent so it's a failure to send if it's a kid above that it's a treny on them and a parent failure to send um and court has now created their own truy docket so that is a little new um as of September which I am hopeful of once your case goes official in front of your magistrate you will be assigned a separate case worker um and it's a magistrate that's assigned to that docket so it's a very it's a little

070more intensive which I think could be helpful if our cases hopefully never get there but if they do um they do have a lot more support So way that it's it's getting more help maybe than what we could maybe find out where the courts can dig a Little Deeper to see yeah we just try to use our social workers or me doing our home visits to dig deeper so we can prevent that from even happening so there one magistrate assigned to that that's correct yeah that's new this year magistr is is it Alexander Wells I can find out I can't remember off the top of my head because it might be a new magistrate yeah she's new yeah she's from CU it was Rankin but now I'm not sure and then um the other question

071I had about that is like are we seeing positive outcomes when we do refer them there like are they are successfully completing the diversion program um I will say my case that I sent official last year um my student had attended had not attended in five years and he did come this semester we are kind of trailing off a little bit but that is also to be expected of someone that hasn't attended in five years so there's been a lot of progress with that family with me working very closely with the court um I think diversion isn't always beneficial sometimes it is families sometimes find that like outside person that's not us as the school district to be helpful um and they do link up to different um resources Court offers the parenting project which

072the diversion pushes really hard which is a great program and you get a gift card as a parent for completing it so I think there are a little different aspects um and I think it's really just a case by casee basis on if it's successful or not when they're in diversion are they monitoring their attendance like they're asking you to submit yeah so the case manager should be doing either home visits um School visits or Community visits whatever is best for the family and what they want um and then they ask um the point of contact so some of them I'm listed as some of it I've put the principal or the school social worker they'll send them updates as far as like Behavior attendance um and sometimes assignments depending on where the student was

073when they were referred grade wise and then what does the version entail for the student so the student comes in um and it's a if it's just the parent then it would be a session with them if it's both then they both attend um it normally lasts 3 to six months depending on the student um it is JFS funded so I don't believe it goes over a year unless it's really necessary but they just try to get them to a point that shows Improvement so they normally try to meet with them once a month um they'll stay in contact contact um with the family with the youth at the school I think is their best option so they can see um both sides of everything um but also the family can come back into the

074court and meet there as well so they just try to monitor they reach out to the school get records also talk to that school social worker if the family needs hooked up with therapy or counseling they'll do that so they do work really hard to hook them up also with whatever resources are necessary and work bring everyone to the table so everyone's on the same page I have a meeting tomorrow with one of our probation officers we're doing an attendance intervention plan but it's helpful so then everybody knows what's happening and the whole each group is um on the same page with that student so what are we I guess why don't they come to school what is the it's a great question bottom line it sounds kind of stupid but I I guess that's

075what I I don't know what is it what are the main things why they don't come is it transportation is it poverty I mean I I would like to say transportation's a big issue but I'd also like to say that I think even if we transported every student I don't believe they'd all still come okay so I do think some would come but I still think there would be an attendance issue I think um our families that are impoverished they're living in chaos so um an education is not what's most important in that day-to-day mentality of trying to get through and staying at home some of my kids you know want to protect their parents from whatever they find to be threatening um I think for some of our Refugee families it's really hard to

076understand our education system Sangita has been amazing on our home visits and I think we've had some really incredible breakthroughs with some of our families which some of them even made me cry but um I think there's so many reasons and I also think though having our kids and just like with our PBIS plus having those positive relationships in the school is big like if you look at Miss Ivy and our guidance I know for a fact she's the reason kids come every day you can just watch her interact with students and you know that she's that person that brings them to school even though she's not a teacher and I think we have them spread out but if we could have one for every student yeah that would be great I mean despite that

077is a that's a great question and you know Miss and I have talked about that you know since she started last year and quite honestly you whatever reason that you can think of is why somebody may not come to school and so our our goal as opposed to trying to completely identify every individual reason why students won't come to school is to try to develop school to the point where that's where they want to come come and that was I think yeah what I and I like Miss iy I I wish we could have you know those kind of people that smile at the door welcome come on in it's different it's going to be different for element welcome and you know we are working on little things that's that answers thank you yeah yeah

078Elementary reasons are vastly different than middle school middle school is different than yeah you I would understand that high school so you know trying to pinpoint that like we thought at one point in time that we were going to do like a root cause analysis for every individual but we felt like you know doing that we' be doing a lot of repetitive things and maybe not getting the yield that we need um so it's more along the lines of you know taking from uh retail right I I shared this with the principles you know when you go to Walmart or Kmart or the supermarket you know the things that are stuff you didn't come to buy are low for the kids to to to pick and and and so then and they're at the checkout

079right so at that point it's either mom I want I want this so meaning if kids want something they can influence their parents we know that we know when they want to be here they you know they feel good about school you know they work well with their parents to make sure they get I will say for this freshman year for our clap in um when we were talking about different things to boost attendance because it is our transitioners that have a hard time um I thought you know you're being clapped in by all these random people cuz you don't know any of them so we did have eighth grade teachers come and clap in um and we had a really good feedback from that and kids were so excited to see the eighth grade

080teachers first because those are the only faces they know so I think it's little things like that if we can keep implementing and just putting them in there and making them feel comfortable that I guess that's you know we just care so much to get them here and you know it's it just worry it's a worry I agree don't know I feel the worry with the fact that you were you've got 50 attendance intervention plans going but there's actually been less excessive and habitual is that just a testament the fact that with the relationships that we bu with our families to be able to get those plans in place I think so and I think that we're um since we're so you get an excessive letter first ideally sometimes it could happen at the same

081time I think because we're sending them out a lot faster this year we also changed the policy um for 10 days parents can call off throughout the whole year past that it's unexcused so people are hitting excessive a lot faster this year so I do think because that's going out quicker parents are reaching out more and I think with stay in the game it's helping them see that the school is trying we are trying to help with ATT tenants and reach out and figure out what to do so I do think the relationship building is really getting there and hopefully once these letters get sent the idea is that we never have to do a plan so I do think it is is helping schools are some of the schools are also doing their own

082things bik is sending out a letter so I do think um we're just paying a lot more attention and trying to be more consistent which I think is really helpful and parents I don't want to say we're laying down the law but I think also when they see that we're filing that does help them to say oh like there is a consequence because most of my parents do tell their kids we don't want to get filed on so I do think for the parents it Bears a lot of weight not all always the kids but the parents with the campaign the um the um postcard in February you said I missed who you said is going to be sending those so St in the game send us 750 postcard so they'll be distributed to the

083schools based on um enrollment um but it'll be teachers or principes I think Whoever has the best relationship with what whichever kid we want we don't have enough for everyone but it's going to be more targeted for our kids that are kind of on that cusp of missing but also still come and then I think some encouraging ones um to send out for them if I can help with that I'll be happy to to write some I'm not sure they'll be able to read my writing I'll take my time but I can't I know you're all laughing over here because to read it but I can do my best I'll be happy to help that thank you thank you I'm sure they'd love to get one from the superintendent maybe that'll get them in that'll

084get their we just have one short um piece left in our presentation and this just will help uh fill the requirement for high rised code for us to share out our plans for success and wellness programming y there we go and I had to slide in a few pictures of the family center you go to the next slide um so this is the paragraph that we submitted to Dew last spring uh we kept it pretty consistent as to what we've submitted in the past years really feeling like we wanted to stay on the same path and focusing on supporting the whole child through um the academic and social emotional supports that we have outlined in this presentation so if we could go on to the next slide this just outlines how we plan on spending

085the money so we as we've done in the past um plan to pay for our counselors and oural staff through the success and wellness money as well as the disadvantaged pupil impact Aid money um you likely are familiar but that money can only be used for certain um expenditures and mental health um happens to be one of those things so um that is sort of our plan for how we will spend um these monies from a programming standpoint here are some of the um programs we hope to to continue these are all were all in last year's presentation as well um but you can see on the le- hand side the different options and then how we plan on funding them and this last slide just outlines some of the state mandates that fall under

086success and wellness um and again we have not made any changes to how we're fulfilling those requirements and then the final requirement um for this report out is just listing our Community Partners um again Red Oak Behavioral Health huge partner Green Leaf comes in and does our saves act programming or Suicide Prevention programming um ongoing partnership with Educational Service Center Summit Educational Service Center and then we've added Northeast Ohio um Educational Service Center this year as they've helped with our um mtss and PB plus day to days so clearly we have many more Partners in that but specific to the success of this money these are the ones that we highlight and I will put this on our website to make sure we're in compliance with that requirement thank you I have one more question

087do our students take the youth risk behavior survey no okay because there was like a whole big thing that public health put out about that and I was like I don't know if I should take that or not yeah we had a conversation with Dr cico not last year the year before and just one of the main concerns with survey fatigue well and we don't really they don't disaggregate for anyone but akan so it really doesn't serve us any purpose but I was like well they're coming to Mo that so I'll save my question yes thank you they weren't happy with us that we opted out but we felt but it doesn't really do anything for doesn't benefit our district right and the results you get so late that it's Sur just not even then

088what do you do what do you do after that so um so really you know again thank you for allowing us to take so much time here um you know we as we started putting this presentation together we realized there was a lot of information and a lot of slides um but given the opportunity actually this is my first time getting a present in front of you all since the last time I was uh recovering from my surgery so I we wanted to take the opportunity to to kind of highlight uh that intersection between seal and academics and the importance of the things that we're doing and this is only just a fraction of what we do at student services you know so um I'm happy that you got an opportunity to hear from uh

089you know Mrs Merkel and Miss Miller because you know they both are doing amazing work and the other members of the student services doing the same so we thank you for the opportunity to you know allow allow us to take care of the other side of the of the student you know in in a way that helps us create well-rounded individuals so thank you again any any other is here today it's just a yes very very important part videographer so yes no so that's why that's why I mentioned student services there's so many other things that student services do you know when people ask what's the student services director I'm like pretty much everything from enrollment to withdrawal is pretty much it you know so um and you know since Mrs Hal and her husband

090is here you know congratulations on year one um but uh we're we're coming into the time for enrollment kindergarten and such so this is going to be a very busy time for her so she's she's already getting ready prepared for that any other questions thank you because to me it's very important work that you're doing very appreciate Oh no you're fine no I was just gonna say thank you you know to everyone all the work and the data is showing proof of the work and everything that you do is paying off and you know I I have heard personal stories from parents of students who have had issues even for the past couple years with attendance and things like that who have been thankful that theyve had someone Reach Out and their students getting what

091they need and aren't chronically absent this year so um you know it's all connected and we know that we know that that whole needs the support for them to be successful so thank you I would say I get complaints from parents that we um enough with the attendance stuff already I know that you want my kids to school and I said well if everyone brought their kids to school we wouldn't have to do so much and then I talk about our chronic absenteeism numbers like oh well I guess you have a point but so the message is getting out yeah Qui quick story to that point I I as you know I work with all the buildings on their uh one needs assessment and their one plans one of the buildings last year was looking

092at attendance as an area that they wanted to focus on this year until they got their data and realized you know what we have like 96% of our kids coming to school so maybe we could focus on attendance in another way and I I thought that was just refreshing to hear the fact that they were seeing growth that they were anticipating and tenance being something that they needed to focus on what we talked about is that now you can focus on a tenants in a different way you don't necessarily have to leave that as a a goal but you can focus on it in a different way and that's good to hear that you know it grew that much in from this time last year to until the time that you know it was time

093for us to submit our one plans that they decided we don't need we don't that's not an issue for us anymore sounds great but now that um M Miller is doing secretary professional development maybe she can link up with Miss dooy and get like maybe 10 minutes at your annual secretaries meeting that you host that might be a good connection well she and uh Mrs H are doing PD for for our secretaries so yeah that'd be a good link up to do you know that the um the schools individually have been celebrating successes and as far as um office referrals and behavior and stuff and the newsletters that they're sending out to parents which I think is very important because we have had kind of gotten a bad wrap in the past and some of

094those issues and so it's it's nice to see that that's going out to our our families feel good about sending their kids to school thank you thank [Applause] you item e is treasur cfo's business consent agenda misso thank you I'd like theard of educ all items LED in theas consent agenda okay um just a couple things um um we have the minutes from last time um the alternative tax budget I did want to let you know that I um I noticed that like midday today earlier this morning that like a page was cut off of the alter like it was done but it when I created the PDF it was part of like the printable area so I re redid it um it's it's just um part of the information on the um statement of

095fund activity so schedule three so it's just kind of all of those other ones what we what we do it had the first page but then it didn't have that second page where um it lists some of our other funds just so you're aware um good thing I looked at it today um this is something that's required each year it's due by January 20th to the uh CIT County budget commission and this is how they create our certificate of estimated resources for next fiscal year um and we should get we get those in like in February usually so um the only other one is the authorization of the local tax advance which we also do each year um this is just a resolution um approving uh Summit County to start advancing us some of our

096real estate funds instead of waiting to get them all in one lump sum they do ccal advancements on a uh you know every couple week basis to us so we get that money a little sooner than than waiting till like March or April um and last but not least uh the donations um there are a number of them um so a lot of them to the resource center and a lot of them to uh you know for things over the holidays that we were able to um help out with so very much appreciated any questions ory please call the Mr Gomez hi Mr Harris hi Mr shaper I this white Miss Coco I item is treasur cfo's business M thank you um i' just like to congratulate you miss coko and thank you Mr Gomez

097um for your time as president um the other thing that I wanted to mention is that Dr celo and I met right before uh Break um with Dew in regards to our written plan um I believe Mr Gomez you received that um notification as well of when they sent it um so now and have a few meetings like every other week set up with them to go over it you're welcome thank um and so we will be looking to approve that plan at the second meeting in February um so um we decided um because we're gonna he's going to review things you know in steps as we meet um and so then we should be able to get it to you guys kind of in totality um by that first meeting in February and give

098you some time just to uh Chris W Used toas and then he just because the ESC went to P lak yep so um but I know I've noted so um we should be good I'm I'm already working on it like you said we pretty much had it obviously it's a little more involved B he was very complimentary of christe too he he felt that he was not worried he just felt that confident that she would get that yeah it's a little cumbersome but we'll get it all done I thinke our first one next week kind of stages of it so just so you're that's that's the timeline plan and then it'll be submitted like the day after the meeting will be the official approval to them um going for it but we will have to

099technically in a sense pass like a new forecast and the written plan and all the associated aspects of it so Mr K I know you wanted to have a financial conversation early on this year would that be a good time to do that and yeah I was thinking that I we had discussed with Mr of doing the financial discussion at the meeting in January would we have that information by then or should we try to push that to the first meeting in February I'd say probably the first meeting in February um because we'll have I think met with him twice by then maybe even three times I'm not sure um and so that should that should be more solidified um and at that one um because it'll pretty much look like a potential new forecast

100um may we maybe I can not as in depth but briefly present that show the changes and how they affected the forecast which would be part of what we wanted with our financial discussion yes kind of all that information so okay thank you item G is superintendent CEO's business consent agenda thank you m i' like to recommend that the Board of Education improve all items listed in the superintendent's consent agenda moved second um doesn't look like I've been doing much work these last this last month one item there slacking um just like to mention um under some Personnel item just Personnel uh long-term substitutes um we are going to be hiring a pair of professional who um tylander who's been with us in many capacities and very loyal to the district so he's going to

101move over from a substitute to a par professional uh the wrestling Coach position to be filled um if you some of you or you may all recall roxen uh Stanger was my um Administrative Assistant um prior to coming here and then she filled in for Sandy herb when I first arrived and um to fill part of our absences right now with Mary Rosen and Sandy um Ro has agreed to come in once a week and then do some work from home uh for Mrs hman and Mr Elder she's extremely competent and will accomplish a lot um but she has a a mother that she cares for so she also she can't give us more than that but she's um willing to help us so I we have the rate there listed for her um to

102come in and assist uh to get us through this this time um we have some leaves of absences and uh we have two retirements that you see there Judy McGary um at the high school she's a high school Monitor and our very own uh jod hman who as you know um will be retiring but also through my recommendation that we consider rehiring her later on in this year and that is it thank you any questions or comments I just want to say um congratulations to Mr Linder and I think it's great that he a ble to get a position at prices while working on so that works out really well for him so congratulations to have would you please call Mr Harris hi Mrs shaer hi M white hi Miss Coco hi Mr Hi iten

103H superintendent CEO's business Dr thank you Miss Coco um to prove that I have been working I'm going to share a little few things that we have coming up not that you would doubt that um first I want to Echo uh Mrs sto's comments congratulations to miss Koko and uh heartfelt thank you to Mr Gomez and all that you've done your guidance and um working closely with you has been very helpful in my transition into the district and um I think Mrs um coko said it with your attention to detail my goodness I can go on and on but I won't but um amazing and um we do have a little something for you but it's going it's I wanted to ensure that this that you were not going to be president again so you

104will receive it at the I wasn't going to the I wasn't going to accept Mr Jones picked it out for you with yes so if you love it you can thank him um uh what was that no he won't give those up um diet poke for life from McDonald's um I wanted to I'll I'll just uh mention quickly the black tiger family um there a a slide up there with some pictures that were up there very quickly so you may not even have captured it but we met there on site um this week and just uh debriefed uh what we've done thus far the prog progress we've made and what it looks like moving forward and our sustainability plan right now we haven't had to dip into our financial donations which is great the generosity

105that you see is just amazing and so we are just helping so many families and I'm just really appreciative of the partners who attend our meetings we meet quarterly um and they have been just so gracious and thoughtful and mindful and just all those things that we're just very um happy so I just want to again thank everyone for their work both ex internally and externally for all the help that we're providing for are there any items that are needed there now we have a wish list a running wish list on our website and it's again um cleaning supplies hygiene those are the big ones and again it's on the L it's on on I know but it's hard to find it you're going to update it okay where do you find it because it's

106like a different website and it's that's true okay yeah it's easy for stuff to get lost which is unfortunate but there's so much to put out so we should check it tomorrow after you update it or maybe Friday now you know what you're going to be doing you should check it Friday after you update it you said it out loud so but it's always I can tell you it's always what we've learned as detergent um I can't access it from this computer Mr oh you're right you can't I just clicked on black tiger Family Center it says you can't look at it so see I told you it was hard to get to yeah um so yeah I just wanted to mention that um our Kent State um the six District uh I went to

107Kent State yesterday saw Miss Zan there on a date with her husband who also is a director um and got a chance to visit all our students one student um we Mrs Zan and I were talking and Lydia came over with much excitement and asked me to come over and see her display and I got a nice long um explanation of just saw her passion and excitement for her program and uh she's at Stow she's our student but attends at stow and uh she was very excited to share but it was a great turnout when I was um in the first 45 minutes um there were 200 people that came so I don't know what happened after I left but it was it was well attended so good work to the contact uh we have

108a naming rights uh meeting I'm sorry um event um coming up on Thursday the 23rd now we had to move the time which might not uh work well for any of you or some of you but at four o'clock and I'll put a report in as to reasoning and all of that in um your updates this week but essentially it's about daylight and what we want to do in that so um I just saw Miss Stuart sent today um the flip book so please take a look at that she's done a great job with that it looks very professional and probably save us a lot of money in doing it ourselves so um we're excited about that and then um I'll be attending the boosters night as the RAC this Saturday we also have business

109advisory coming up next week and then I have my sip and share the coffee chat uh if you recall I did it in the morning and now we'll do one in the evening um next the 14th whatever that is I think that's Tuesday so I will be doing that 6:30 in the library here right so that will be um kind of the first it'll be the same topics that I covered the first time but just another opportunity for those who couldn't make it in the morning to attend and I think that's it for now thank you thank you very much moving on to board business one is policy adoption it is recommended the Board of Education adopts the following policies section D fiscal management daab General Revenue fund cash balance section e Support Services eacd

110drug testing for district Personnel required to hold a commercial driver's license eacd R drug testing for district Personnel required to hold a commercial driver's license section g Personnel gcp-2 reduction in professional staff Workforce section I introduction IG AE health education and the de policy oh we sorry oh and um diversity equity and inclusion is under aea Section A thank you so moov I already did but I know I'm sorry she was still reading I didn't know Mr was busy coaching I know it's okay I'll second any discussion m please roll M schaer hi Miss White i m Coco I Mr Gomez hi Mr Harris hi two is program of studies the second route approval it is recommended that the Board of Education approves the program of studies for the kyoga Falls High School for the

1112025 2026 school year so second comments and discussion I know that we had um taken Latin out of the program of studies right now um we are looking into the options for the couple students that has affected one of those options may be partnering with woodrige um they are having kind of the same issue with their students in Latin and the reduction inment as well and then we have other options as well for the students that are affected with that so for the um gifted if well not the but the uh the honors diploma they have to have three years or two and two years of a language all right so for the kids that were freshmen that didn't get into a foreign language because they weren't placed in either their first or second choice

112so they managed to get into Latin one this year what so they can't so they wouldn't be able to do that they wouldn't have a chance even to go for that honor diploma then because they'd only have one year in Latin but then two and another one if they get in so um I guess is there a way that we can say okay those kids that at least have Latin one and two years of another language could get the honors diploma is there a way that we could well there are other Pathways I can let Mrs and talk about it so if unless they're relying solely on foreign language but do you want to talk a little bit to they can miss one right of the things for honors they can miss one of them

113but they're if they're sophomores now they see that's because they couldn't get into the foreign language of their choice um last year so now they're in Latin one as a sophomore that's the problem that I see and I don't want to hurt any child so I just it do I mean it does I I understand why we're doing this but then again how do they get to Woodridge if they are in like marching and what did they do how do they get there we were talking about doing it Zoom zooming them in okay um so whether it's at Woodbridge or on site here there's always the potential for a scheduling conflict but I I did speak with the superintendent in Woodbridge and she is willing to to take on our students well now we may

114have to make an agreement we may have a small fee to pay or price to you know and I'm more than willing to do that uh but we can we're going to explore ways of zooming and of course she probably has some contractual things that she's got to work out so I don't want to like get too far down the road um be respectful of what she'll have to do but that's one option we do have like I said the CCP um at Kent I think it's a Kent not St I think it's Kent um but we also talked about if transportation is a barrier perhaps we can send the van for students um so I think we have some viable options that could help our students okay that's that's that's what I'm I guess

115I'm you know just there's probably not many but just a few maybe that would have to do something and I don't want to hurt any student right and that's why we've we've worked hard and the Woodridge one was a last minute like addition to our plan and we're like oh I guess we almost missed our neighbor the obvious but yeah we do think we can accommodate again as long as scheduling works but there's always that risk as you know I know there is yeah and then then the other thing for the um this is just a question I always I thought we you know gave bus rides to the kids to the six District we don't though we don't provide transportation they have to get there on their own no we do we do okay

116cuz somebody some parent asked me you know don't they have to drive them I said no I don't think so some children choose to well yeah but but we do so I because I did the student might have told their parent that it will be right but anyway if they to get back for a class right for band They want to get back for band and they drive back early for class so sometimes they do drive separately that was just some concerns thank you yeah sh hand thank you any more questions or comments well I think I'll go ahead oh I think UL there's also the option to that if there's enough I mean Woodridge is looking at the same situation we're looking at so they are looking at a situation they have a full-time

117Latin teacher that perhaps they don't have um the course load for which is unfortunately the situation that we are in as well so there is the possibility that we could share a staff member if the possibility is that um Zoom is not an option or something like that okay we could share a staff member split the cost split the fees in um other places around the state it's much more common than it is here in Northeast Ohio to do things like that especially for things like languages and more specialized skills it's not as common here because um districts are usually larger and but in other places around the state this is a pretty common thing that people do so that's an option as well that could be explored and I appreciate that but we what

118I didn't get into with her yet she says she has the schedule because this was like a last minute like it was a quick call like hey you think we can do this but um I don't they had she has the schedule done so I'm curious what I don't know is if it is a full schedule or if there are is time so that's the other part of this conversation like hey could that person maybe over here and teach a period I don't know one or two per so there's a lot of there's a lot of pieces parts to that well I know we used to have like um an AM and a PM teacher at the high school do you remember that all okay it was probably before you were here because it was

119when I was a beginning teacher so it's been a long long time but um Miss Smith used to come in for half a day and then we had another English teacher that did the other half now that would be off you can't do that at elementary but we used to have that in our contract job share you're talking about a job share it is kind of yeah so I didn't know if that would I don't know but yes it's similar what you're getting at we just have to and haven't talked to Miss bogon about it yet because this was just Tau off the process but now you know our plan that you can explore Miss bogon with maybe the HR yeah I think there's a lot of okay possibilities that could make it happen but

120so if we are um still working on a Latin option so would we still want to approve this program of studies minus the Latin and with hopes of adding a Latin option in here right I think the way we did French last year we can make an amendment to it next meeting by next meeting missman ask you and to have a plan let's explore that a little bit more to see if what's viable for us and then and I appreciate the yeah the links to try to accommodate the students that are pursuing Latin as a language um me too because it it is it's a fundamental language I mean English is Germanic but so many things you know whether it's plants or medicine or law it all goes back to Latin and it's such a

121wonderful language to learn it's a shame I mean I you know and then we'll only have American Sign Language and um Spanish that's it and that's where others are headed to Woodridge if theirs isn't you know again I I don't want to speak for them because I don't know but they would if they did eliminate ltin it would be as it's Spanish yeah it's just kind of sad oh yeah I'm excited that we have those languages but I know I am too I like the fact that we have the American Sign Language but that's great Dynamic teacher with oh thank you thank you thank you would you please Miss White hi Miss Coco hi Mr Gomez hi Mr Harris hi Mrs hi item future agenda items and we just spoke about moving um the financial

122discussion from next meeting to the first meeting in February and then I believe in February also we have um gifted presentation right C when were we going to do that one what was that going to be well we felt we should well we I don't know if we were going to involve if it was Christa was going to do the presentation I think or um I haven't asked MJ to do it but we thought we could do it in house but just to give you an update on the programs and it's such a big part of our district that several you know few hundred of our students attend that we thought it' be a short presentation on the programming and the good news at the same time as gifted like kind of together I'd have

123to look at what else we have see well because we just put Finance on right okay do we and we don't have anything on the meeting besides top Tigers so the 22nd we have um actually yes strategic plan that will be brief though I don't have I mean I can like present and give you guys homework kind of to look at um and that that's all all we have there on the 22nd and then um we have on the 12th then so far he has CTE and gifted but now we have Finance but if we have Finance yeah we probably should shift one um we can move uh what well board's preference would well which which one of those presentations do you think would be the most time probably gifted right yeah I know Mrs

124White has been requesting that it's okay I mean that's fine I think we do that one I think we do gifted on that that month and then we'll we'll move C okay my one of my personal goals is for us to try to manage our presentations in a way that we're not needing to eat dinner at night like no my St R hour and I do too Mr but I so we we'll work on that as a board and with okay Dr Soo on trying to find a nice balance it's hard because we have so much going on in this district and as a board we want to know which is good that we want to know you need to find a way to effectively everything and and not H cans down the road because

125then we have long too so okay I have two um one is and I spoke to miss coko about this in June we have a work session meeting and I thought that that would be a good time for the board to get a more indepth presentation about the move to the new building um because we'll have ended our last full year in our current 612 setting and we'll be going into the summer before our transition year and so if we could have at that work session kind of walk through what that year is going to look like what that transition's going to look like and then I know I think as board members we all have a lot of questions percolating but maybe we'll hold on to them until bit and that'll help you all

126as well um but then we can kind of ask our questions that we have about that and then help throughout the summer time as out and about a lot in the community because there's so many community events in our community help share um that news because when we're out in about about a lot in the summertime people ask us a lot of questions and that's definitely something people will be asking us a lot about um like question so I thought that would be really helpful and I know we'll have a pretty good plan in place because we've all been working really hard I want to at least let you get through this year but I thought that would be really helpful for us as the board to have that information and a little bit in

127in between time hopefully before after you finished kind of working on the plan and before you have to start implementing it so hopefully that helps as well yes and then the other one I think this would be more of a discussion topic but on Communications I think our Communications are going really well in our district for the record I want to be very clear about that um but they've been I Know M Stuart and Mr hunch have been talking about upgrading our website so I think as a board it would be good to have some conversation about what we hear in terms of feedback about that as a convers discussion topic um so we can give them some feedback because I think we hear from families and things about that and then also um parent

128Square I think our parent Square use as a district is really good um Miss Stewart shared those statistics with us about usage of our families and um I think what we're finding is that not all of our families are utilizing the app as best we can so I think as a board we hear feedback from people so to have like a positive discussion I think we're doing a really good job as a district but how can we get our families to better utilize it and what is the feedback that we're hearing about that does that make sense sure okay y because I feel like what we're doing as a district is really good like I think we have a really we're doing really good with Communications that's my my perception but um some sometimes our

129families aren't aren't adapting seemingly like with the app as much as Pop as I would hope that they could so what can we do to encourage that what are we seeing what trends so it would be a discussion of what we're hearing in the community passing that information is that yeah because if if we don't have it at a board meeting we can't really have conversation as a board you know can put that on our next meeting as a discussion okay and if you could give us that those stats again that you gave us maybe in this week or next week's note because I I was really surprised by that because I was like we're doing such a good job utilizing this what's going on here so thankk thank you for that Miss Stewart my

130Friday notes or do you want it in a separate I Comm me your Friday not um we also as a board need to do our mid reviews for treasur superintendent um I don't know if we U if I have Mr Jones send in the packets everything those standards would you feel comfortable doing just one executive session to for us to discuss and theie and then I send those out and then we can schedu their reviews after that at the next meeting one executive session for us to go over our to go over ours for both okay yes and then we can do um Mr you be good with the first meeting in February then to do yours and Dr the second yes 12 meting February 2 and I'll make sure those get put in the

131board packets for everyone second meeting would the yes no I mean the first meeting is for us correct correct the first meeting and then the second meeting in February would Beary right okay y I just want to make sure everyone enjoyed that monthong break cuz we got a lot of work to do I know okay all righty go to committee reports 6 through 12 construction 14 Miss White we meet tomorrow um Athletics activity did not meet board policy when do you meet again we will need a set a meeting because we did get a December PDQ and then um there are now two two three different there's three state deadlines relating to policy now um that we'll have to look at um there's one in February one in April one in June relating to laws

132that were passed um so we'll have to have more conversation around that as well business Alliance meets next week District committee Miss Financial advisory I believe the foundation in alumni does that meet next we Foundation meets next um Tuesday evening at 6: PM in the CPC and um they asked that I attend with the new person to introduce them and I told them that I would and I have to send them your email and the board meeting dates how that they're approved for top tiger okay so you're sending them those dat thank you legate legislative MRIs uh the general assembly's back um uh new leadership has been uh chosen um I will have a little bit more of an update I'm looking uh into reintroducing myself to our our new state representative uh here in

133um Kyle The Falls um because we did have such a really good relationship with um Casey Weinstein represented Weinstein so I want to make sure that we are uh keeping that good communication with Columbus so and who is that Mr that is representative Bill RoR yeah I well and I only say that because there's a couple I now that they've changed I saw some of the names come through but I also wanted to extend of our reps and our Senators as well just so we can reach out because we will be inviting them to our advocacy meetings so they asked us all to make personal connections would you mind sending me all the people yeah absolutely Senator Christina rogner and it's rogner still in if there's others that I'm missing our senator for Silver Lake

134is Casey Weinstein and our representative for Silver Lake is Derek Hall yeah D yeah if I can get yeah have whatever that would be great we can still use them because they yeah I'll send it over to you are you sending out contact information for these as well or just just uh sending contact just you just want contact information right just to the dock is that what you mean for me yeah I don't know if you're talking me I was gonna say would would you mind I know that a lot that we like to Advocate as well sometimes on different issues would you mind sending that out yeah absolutely of course yeah yeah for sure and that's I I'm glad you mentioned that I know that you know we and I'll talk a little bit

135more about that in my comments you know we're going to see a little bit more of uh some uh things as school board members we might not be agreeing with coming out of this this General Assembly so um it's going to take a lot of advocating from our part for for our folks back here at home so thank you student achievement no we meet next month and that brings us to number five comments Mr gz thank you before we meet next um The Lego event is coming up on I believe it's January 18th um in downtown Kao Falls um hosted by our art program it was really impressive last year so encourage you to attend if I got the date wrong which I might have but there's a poster right outside here so check fact

136check me on the way out um correct okay January 18th yes so it was really wonderful last year I didn't invite you to check that out as well and then over break and I know others will mention this as well but we lost uh a retiree that meant a lot to our district jod Tucker and I just want to honor Mrs Tucker um she started working the district in 1998 and I had the honor of being one of her first students at Preston elementary school and she's one of those people that made a huge impact on me I can remember lots of things about um her classroom and one of the things things that is really a gift of getting to serve on the school board in the district that you're from is that um

137you get to reconnect with people that were your own teachers you get to honor them when they retire and then um in this case they got to sadly attend one of their funerals as well but to um have those experiences and to get to honor um people that made an impact on me and um and then get to honor them at meetings as well it's it's a real privilege of getting to be able to serve so thank you to Mrs Tucker for everything she did for everyone in our district she's her impact um was very large thank you Mr Mr Harris uh yeah uh welcome back and happy New Year I hope everyone had a very restful holiday break um congratulations Miss Coco looking forward to your leadership um and I know you'll knock out

138of the park like you do everything else uh and thank you to Mr Gomez for your leadership these last years we came into uh this role with a lot of on our plate uh and we in the district are in a better place because of your leadership and guiding us through everything so thank you um and I want to take a moment I I do this every time we have a snowstorm just to thank our maintenance and grounds folks for uh keeping uh everything clear Joe if you could have pass along my my my my uh uh thanks to them um walkways uh you know parking lot everything we really appreciate that uh and then lastly um I have an article it's 20 pages long all right I'm kidding I'm kidding um as you guys

139uh as everyone may have heard um we uh lost uh the 39th president of the United States Jimmy Carter uh just recently at 100 years old I just wanted to take a moment to highlight uh some of his uh everything he's done for Education um both uh as uh I'll share some stuff I'm sure some stuff you didn't know Jimmy Carter campaign for president on a promise of establishing a Federal Department of Education and after some hedging on his part in multiple internal and external political battles finally delivered on the pledge late in his one term in office the creation of the cabinet level agency elevated the federal government's role in education for decades to come I don't know what history will show but my guess is the best move for quality of life in

140America in the future might be very well the establishment of this new Department of Education because it will open up for the first time some very substantial benefits for our country Carter said October 17th 197 9 the achievements uh the achievement was arguably the high point on education in a long public career in which Carter served as a local school board member a Georgia state legislator legislator interested in school reform and a governor who delivered an overhaul of his State's education system Carter nominated Shirley hoffstead a federal appeals court judge in California to be his first Secretary of Education on May 7th 1980 the US Department of Education came into existence speaking on the south L of the white house that day before CR of cabinet secretaries members of Congress educational leaders including Nea officials

141parents and others Carter said because of you the voice of Education the concerns of education and the needs of Education will now be more clearly heard and more clearly represented at the highest level of our public of our government I want to add so I I wanted to take a moment not only to honor the memory of President Carter but I also want to recognize lasting contribution his lasting contributions to public education across the country his legacy serves as a reminder that education is a fundamental pillar of our democracy one that must be nurtured protected and strengthened if these poit if these politically in these politically divided times we cannot allow public school students teachers and staff become victims of culture wars and partisan attacks we simply cannot the recent news about threats the Federal

142Department of Education in Ohio's Public Schools is troubling to me and I'm sure it's troubling to everyone here and I fear the coming years will be a challenging for public education but I am hopeful my work here the work of my colleagues and administration revolve around our students and our families they are our focus and they always will be every decision we make here is in their best interest and it will continue to stay that way as long as I'm here as long as we're here despite the inevit inevitable anti-public education policies will be up against so I'm looking forward to another year of serving and I'm done talking Thank you very Mr Mrs schaer um I don't have much um congratulations Miss Coco um look forward looking forward to your leadership this year um

143also congratulations our new vice president Mr Gomez um thank you for your years of service as well I know it was interesting having three brand new board members um mentoring um branding board members um I think that um we're in a good position so um I know that you'll do great miss Coco and and that all I have to say thank you so much thank you very well because I'm so much older than everybody else I actually got to vote for Jimmy Carter so and he made it in unlike some of the other ones that I voted for that didn't but oh well it's the way it goes you win you win you lose you lose um I also just wanted to mention Miss jod Tucker because she was a friend of mine we worked

144together um with the CFA the Kaa Falls Education Association I was secretary or vice president one or the other and she was a building rep um and we just got along so well and our sympathy to her family students um she was a wonderful lady and a good friend and I just hope she's somewhere where she can hear music forever and ever so she's leaving it yes there you go so um that's really congratulations Miss coko and thank you Mr Gomez and that's all I have thank you um I don't have a lot to add I do one other event um the All City band is is on the 15th from 7 to 8:30 next Wednesday um I didn't I won't mention the ones everyone else has we may have missed a few but that

145is happening before our next meeting as well and um just again thank you all for your confidence and your kind words and um I think we are well voiced for this year for all the exciting things that are happening that we know are happening the 6 or 12 campus will be in um and we are also anticipating things that we may not necessarily want to do but that's what we signed up for and to serve and we will do it so thank you all and then just again I would remit be remiss if I didn't mention Mrs Tucker um the amount of students who were at calling hours and then I attended the funeral also with Mr Gomez they were students that were grown up that became you know they were there because of the

146impact that she had on their lives some went into education or music or or just lives that she had touched and um it was just a reminder of how many students lives our teachers are touching every day year in and year out and sometimes we think oh so and so had that teacher in fifth grade they moved on but they class after class after class after class out of students and they remember they remember those students that show up every day and make a difference and um so Jody Tucker will be missed um not just by students but by every single person that she came in contact with because she was the person that made everyone else feel that they were important always yes that item J executive session pursuant to Ohio Revis code section

14712122 in Ohio Revise Code section 12122 it is hereby move that the board Jour I'm sorry first I need to have a motion I motion for us to go into executive no you you read the whole thing and the motions in it thank okay I highlighted too much on my page start over pursuant to Ohio Revised Code section 12122 G1 and Ohio Revised Code section 12122 G6 it is hereby moved that the board ad Jour to Executive session to consider the employment of a Public Employee or official and to consider details relative to the security arrangements and emergency response protocols for a public body or a public office disclosure of the matters discussed could reasonably be expected to jeopardize the security of the public body or public second M stoy could you please call the

148M too I Mr Gomez hi Mr Harris hi Mr schaer hi M white hi entering into executive session at 7:4 um there will be no action after the meeting