001three two one good evening it's 5 30 p.m on Wednesday December 21st I'll call to order this regular meeting of the keigel Falls City School District Board of Education mrikoi please call the roll Mr here thank you Item B A Prevail agenda number one motion to approve the agenda it's recommended the Board of Education improve the agenda of the December 21st 2022 Board of Education meeting action by the Board of Education adoption of a consent agenda means that all items are adopted by One Singular motion unless a member of the Board of Education Treasurer superintendent requests that any such item be removed from the consent agenda and voted upon separately so moved second any discussion please call the roll s aye Mr ghost aye Mr Harris Schaefer hi thank you item C opening ceremony welcome
002our vision Kiko Falls City Schools The Hub of our community committed to a culture of caring we innovate we create we personalize education for all our mission every student every day every opportunity number two informational items this meeting is a meeting of the Chicago Falls Board of Education and public for the purpose of connecting the school district's business it is not a public community meeting although there are opportunities for public participation if individual wishes to dress forward regarding a topic crown on the meeting agenda the individual must complete registration were found inside the attendance notebook and presented to the treasurer following the introduction of the topic by the board president followed by board discussion the individual will be recognized if an individual was just board regarding a topic not found on the meeting agenda they
003must notify the superintendent and or board president of the topic no later than three business days in advance of the meeting these individuals may share their comments during the board business portion of the evening Jaja in both cases the individual preface comments by announcement of their name and address and limit comments to three minutes all statements should be directed to the board president no person may address or question board members individually in addition to public session the board will not hear complaints about school Personnel nor against any person extra with the school system and under bridge board agenda for this meeting can be found on your electronic device of the address shown on the screen for your convenience hard copies of the board of General may be found on the table by the silent book
004the annual organizational meeting of the Chicago Falls Board of Education is on Wednesday January 11 2023 at 5 15 pm here in the Cuyahoga Falls High School library and the next directly scheduled meeting of the Cuyahoga Falls Board of Education will immediately follow at 5 30 PM now for our Pledge of Allegiance Ms White yes if you'll please rise and say the Pledge with me I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you thank you AMD presentations we have one presentation tonight it's our student wellness and success presentation update with Dr Cruz and Mrs Merkel so I'll invite them to come up okay so we um we gave you a folder
005there with some handouts that will go through as we present so thank you for inviting us to present tonight um we we value this time to be able to highlight some of the things that we're doing to be able to share some Debaters with you and um and this this really important work so tonight we have three parts to our presentation talk a little bit about um something we've we've talked quite a bit about already that whole child approach and multi-tiered systems of support we'll jump into the student data taking a look at attendance data the results of our Panorama survey and then student support referrals and then using the data and then finally we'll look at some of the supports that we have in place in some of the direction that we're going so
006starting with our whole child mtss so at this point most of you hopefully hopefully all of you have seen this ode hochan framework and oftentimes it's misunderstood as something separate from academics or education getting you know soft but really when we start thinking about some of the current challenges that we have in education it really is the foundation for how we start to tackle some of these issues so first and foremost is safety right we hear a lot about school safety and the research really tells us that when we have welcome welcoming supportive schools our state uh they're safe here right that doesn't mean it's going to solve all of our problems but it is a key piece of tackling the school safety issue the second kind of issue that we hear a lot about
007is this learning loss right and when we as we learn more and more about the neuro psychology of how we retain information and are able to access higher parts of our brain we know that when kids are feeling supported welcoming welcomed in their buildings they're able to fully access their curriculum so they're able to tap into that academic rigor in a way that they can't if they're still struggling with trauma or they're not connected to their school buildings so this whole child framework really lays a nice foundation for helping address that learning loss the third piece chronic absenteeism which we're going to spend some time talking about today but again again the same idea that when kids are connected to their school to the adults in the building when they feel safe and welcomed they
008want to show up for school and then last is mental health and behavioral health challenges we know this is across the country schools are struggling to help students with mental health and behavioral health challenges and the whole there's a whole child framework again is that Foundation to figure out how do we put tiered supports in place to really support our students through some of these issues cancer question how are we in terms of this how do we Define learning losses it um that they're actually losing information that they have previously gained or is it that they're not gaining information at the grade level that they should in my mind it was sort of the loss from the pandemic from when they were hybrid or all the outcomes that negative outcomes have happened since the pandemic
009that's how I was defining it but Dr Cruz might have a different no I agree I think it's more of the second way that you were asking about thinking about that we're not making the adequate progress that we should be thank you so this is a graphic um as we've talked about this is most of this presentation or much of it was shared at our district leadership team and this was a graphic that we spent a little bit of time talking about so the umbrella of mtss this approach of using a multi-tiered system is something that we see or that we try to approach our academics our social emotional and our behavioral data and and intervention so this sort of captures that so the definition of this is mtss is defined as the practice of
010providing high quality instruction and interventions matched to student need monitoring progress frequently to make decisions about changes in instruction or goals and applying child response data to important educational decisions and when we think about that approach with academics behavior and that social emotional that all applies that we want to make data informed decisions and we want to have a tiered approach to supporting each of those areas and when we consider each of those areas equally and that's that whole child approach so this is that pyramid again not not something new but I really liked um how this showed that academic behavioral and that Wellness piece there when we think about those three tiers tier one is what everyone has access to so whether that's um for for this sake for the whole child and that
011Wellness side it would be all of those PBIS supports that are in place in this school so all those rules and guidelines and expectations or some of the access to the counselors so just really what everyone has access to is that tier one level of support and then as we move up we have targeted intervention so students who have more specific needs would have resources interventions in place for tier two and then tier three would be the most critical needs so we're gonna dive a little bit into our student data we're going to start with the Ohio attendance laws I'm sure you are all familiar with these terms but we wanted just to kind of go over them real quickly because as we start diving into the data I think it'll help kind of connect
012some of the dots so the first line on here is chronic absenteeism this is what's reported in our state report card and it is defined as 10 of total hours either excused or unexcused so that is roughly about two hours or excuse me two days a month and the research really shows that when students miss those two days a month that's when they really start to have significant significant impact on their academic outcomes the next two rows excessive absences and habitual truancy that comes out of Hospital 410 so that is how the law defines students who are struggling to come to school and outlines what we as a district have to do to intervene so for excessive absences we are required to notify the parent for habitual truancy we are required to not only notify
013them but also work with a family and student to come up with a plan to address barriers and help them kind of reintegrate back into school so for excessive and habitual truancies some of the things that we've worked on over the past couple of years is really shifting from this mindset of punitive and legal to supportive how can we reach the student and family where they're at and help them get back to school so for example we worked with Chris Shaw this year to revise the letters that are really in line with best practices what ode is putting out is suggested letters for families so those are some of the ways that we're like constantly trying to refine some of our practices to make sure that we're doing what's best for our students can I
014ask a question sure about the required to notify for for excessive absence and that's something it says unless absence is so you still have even if it's medically excused are we still required to notify if it if we have a doctor's note yeah I do not think so oh okay I'm gonna be honest with you Chris Shaw handles the time in the weeds of a lot of these things but for The Chronic absenteeism though it doesn't matter okay so this next slide is right off our report card um unfortunately we did have 30.6 of our students who were completely absent last year um this is unfortunately in line with where the seat average was which was 30 percent so certainly this is an area that we want to improve on that we're tackling but we're
015not too far off what the state average was according to Ode we should have been about 22.1 percent that was sort of the target for 2122 and next year the target lowers a little bit more and it'll be 20.2 so we were not really held accountable this year on our state report card but we will be do we know how much of that 30.6 um covid and the you know quarantining and all of that played into that 30.6 percent so we haven't it certainly did I don't have exact numbers for you but certainly yeah do we know where we're at year to date you know we're at the halfway point what's our percentage percentage we could get that for you because we are um we have we have seen the way it's been tracking we
016have seen some improvement in some areas um but do you want to speak to them I'm sorry what Miss Schaefer can you ask uh can you ask her a question again I may have an answer for you what was your question um with the people that were with excessive absences and so that's required by the state to notify families but then it says yeah excuse or unexcused the absence isn't unless the absence is medically excused I was wondering if the parents still get notified of the absenteeism but it's not yeah I'm unclear if we do that here we used to notify them one way or another whether it was excused or unexcused just to give them a heads up but sometimes we would get those calls and sometimes we felt like like I felt like
017we were being insensitive because it was maybe a child's in the hospital had some chronic illness like seriously hospitalized and we kind of you know I didn't feel we looked real good not knowing that information but we could find that out I'm not sure if we do that here but I wasn't sure if I heard your question right wouldn't there be a point at which that child might then qualify for like a home instruction though if they're chronically ill or if it if it's most likely like an other health impaired child like that has some protections yes we can do some could write that in that and right into the idea can ask another question so it's for stop for a second The Chronic absence is that people that were chronically absent excessively absent and
018then habitual truth include does that include all of them or that's just people that are chronic Mass about the people that were that were just at 10 now often those folks often fall into the excessive and habitual yeah yeah because chronically is actually the the least amount so that's ten percent about 100 or I'm sorry about 18 days okay okay yeah it's kind of confusing because chronic absenteeism is over here and then the houseboat 410 stuff is over here and just different definitions yeah and I asked that question um when we went through the report card um do they determine this based off of the state minimum amount of hours or is it based off of a District's amount of hours my understanding is food districts all kind of hours thank you but we can
019confirm that make sure I'm not giving you that information yeah because it's calculated based on the hours that they should be in attendance at our school yeah so that even differs for elementary versus high school students so you will see in your packet that um individual building rates of chronic absenteeism are outlined we won't go into that tonight but we just wanted you to have that information and highlight that's something that we did work on at DLT with having the buildings kind of dive into their own data and then kind of look at what are some root causes for absenteeism they had a discussion surrounding that at DLT and then looking at some evidence tiered evidence-based interventions to kind of tackle attendance so we wanted to include those just so you could see what you
020know what kind of working on it at DLT so this next two handouts in your um in your folder so that um what we've spent quite a bit of time on it at DLT really thinking about the root causes and then um them establishing the interventions that they want to put in place we'll shift a little bit to talk about panorama student surveys as you are aware this is the second year that we've been using Panorama and our students answer the same questions that they answered last year 31 questions if they were K or excuse me three through five 34 questions 6 through 12 and they were focused on these five domains that very closely align to our Ohio SEL standards foreign Liker at scale so a four or five is considered responding favorably reporting
021they feel favorable about that topic um and so that ties into the results if we look at the second column the First Column is the domains and a little description the second column is a percentage and again that's the number of students that rated themselves favorably so if we look at challenging feelings 47 percent of our third through fifth graders respect rated themselves favorably on that topic and that put us in the 30th percentile so one of the things that we really like about panorama is normed nationally so it helps give us a perspective of where our students fall compared to other students in the country under the 47 you see a little arrow with a two that helps us understand how our students rated themselves compared to when they took it in this so
022one of the things that I have really liked this year is we now have some nice longitudinal data I felt I think almost protective of the data last year because it was a snapshot in time we all know our emotional Wellness is kind of up and down even as adults so for for our students I didn't want us to be too reactive to the data I really wanted to make sure that we had some nice longitudinal Data before we started kind of making big any big changes or shifts so now we have a our third round of information and what we found really was that there weren't huge shifts if you look at the district as a whole but individual buildings did have some gains and losses so each individual building is in your packet
023but we want it just up for the sake of time tonight just to give you an overview of District level data so I'll just quickly go through our three through five so you can see where our students kind of rated themselves we said for challenging feelings they were in the 30th percentile emotion regulation they were they fell in the 40th percentile positive feelings from the 60th percentile self-management 70th percentile and social awareness 70th percentile and just real quick on that because I ran through it real quick just a couple of things that are particular seem particularly troubling when you look at Price they drop 10 points on positive feelings feelings that's that's a big that's the biggest drop button three five and then when you get to Richardson and Lincoln the Lincoln has one that
024was no change but everything else in those two buildings was negative so that's that's pretty alarming data yeah because we're coming out of covet you know we're supposedly everything's supposed to be getting better and yet in these two buildings in particular and then that area price we're seeing major decreases so we're going to talk in just a minute Dr Cruz is going to talk about how no keep going how are you using DLT and BLTs are using analyzing that building level data to tackle some of those things you just mentioned can you remind us when these were taken the when the status taken was October and I know we don't have a lot of data to go on because spring was the first one is there I'm sorry December last year yes I'm sorry yeah
025um is there any thought into these results you know when we have our data academically we experience and we see like a summer slide almost do you feel that that plays into this at all like having the data when the kids come back after being gone at all yeah so best practices to wait six to eight weeks after return to school for that very reason you just mentioned so we were we did make sure that we waited until later on that I guess it was beginning second nine weeks I believe is when we administered it to make sure that we were actually measuring where students were at versus that summer slide that you you mentioned hi um so the results the difference between last year and this year but they're different kids taking it because
026the fifth graders from last year obviously aren't taking this portion and the new third graders were second graders so it's like a it's like 30 different kids right yes yep so and I think look and I'm in my head I'm thinking a lot of the kids the new kids were like in kindergarten when we started this pandemic so let's make changes yeah I would expect big changes but sorry okay yeah and so we can look at the I mean you can get real in the weeds of this it's an awesome platform but I don't want to steal Dr cruises we shared this with our school counselors and school social workers and they dove into the data and they could look at grade bands and cohorts for high school folks and really diving into which areas
027are certain grades struggling in and then how can they intervene through classroom lessons or small groups so all of those things you guys are mentioning are on our radar and our counselors in particular are trying to um when you talked about that that can miss Merkel alluded to that as really like tracking that cohort of students so we're so we're just like that's a summary of the three through five or the sixth result but we can look at we only have one year right now but we can follow them and be able to see how they're doing as a grade level based on that that data fifth graders would have had more of a bait like normalcy Baseline and then kids that were in the pandemic and kindergarten first grade it's been disrupted and now
028they're the new people taking that I think that's something we'll probably ask for in the future too because I think we will want to see that the cohorts as well because I think that'll it'll be in it'll help us identify is that these third graders coming in that's changing it or is it or is it actually everything's going downhill as it seems or is it this new cohort has a challenge I think that would be helpful information for us as well yeah both both sides great Point Miss Schaefer I have a general question about panorama did we track our opt-out percentages as a district I know this is like a Hot Topic and when we were at uh Capital conference you know some districts have like up upwards of 20 percent opt-outs we have eight
029eight total eight total okay that's good that's good yeah um but I think it's so important that parents know that they have the option um if that's something that's important to them as well yeah thank you elaborate on that I had every time we send out the opt out message I do have parents reach out who want to preview it and um once they preview it for the most part okay they're okay with the content sure thank you yeah of course all right we'll just quickly go through our 612 um for challenging feelings 45 of our students rated themselves favorably which put us in the 20th percentile nationally emotion regulation 43 rated themselves favorably that put us in the 40th percentile positive feeling five percent rated favorably the 50th percentile self-management 70 rated themselves favorably
030which puts us in the 40th percentile and for social awareness 59 rated themselves favorably which puts us in the 20th so again the building breakdowns are in your folder I just have to point out because I'm a bullet kit and bullet gets a bad rap but on this you know when you look at these results on paper the kids at Bullock are feeling relatively good they're doing a little bit better in terms of these areas so I just found that interesting because Bullock's dog has a bad rap in our community for whatever reason that that may be but as a printable it could be nice to see that but then nonetheless very alarming to see some of these numbers where you know um at Roberts in the high school they're in the bottom quintile and
031even still going down further that's alarm bells ring for all of us the last piece we'll show on Panorama and this is hard to see on the screen so it is um also blown up in your folder it's just a heat map looking at all the buildings on all the domains similar to last year um we think of our buildings often as very different but I think our kids are telling us they're more similar than different when you look at the results foreign any other questions about panorama before we move on we're going to talk about student support referrals you may or may not remember in the spring we talked about transitioning to a program called cast that is a platform created by SCI during the pandemic to help districts kind of track and coordinate
032care for students who are in need of more support and so it was actually not developed for us but other districts and they enjoyed using it so much that um we said hey can we use this too and they sure said absolutely so cast allows any staff member to make a referral for a student they're concerned about the referral goes to the school counselor who kind of determines the next best steps so it may be a student they feel like fits nicely into their Lunch Bunch so they might assign this referral to themselves or maybe the family needs help with linkage to Community Resources so they assign it to the social worker or maybe they need mental health treatment and they assign it to Red Oak referral so really it's just a way for everyone
033to stay in communication and to make sure that referrals don't get lost in the inbox or on the Post-it note on the desk somewhere that's not to say that those things still don't happen it's certainly not perfect but in year two I think we're finding more and more folks are using it in our in our people are liking it and using it to communicate for example like our red oak and social workers share the same space so they're never in the same building together and so this platform allows them to communicate and see where referrals are um since they don't frequently get to see each other so I won't walk you through all of the data but you can certainly see social emotional mental health were the highest reasons for referral um I did note
034at the bottom more than one reason could be selected so they're they're a little inflated someone could also have mental health and attendance issues and both be checked but during the first uh semester 491 students were referred through this program and this is K-12 K-12 yep all of our buildings are using it one I think this is in particular I know you're going to talk more about suicide prevention programs a little bit but when you look at the number 39 you know if that's alarming of course but at the same time we know that we're still missing kids because statistically that's not all of our kids that are having suicidal ideation so I hope that there are ways that we can do more and try to identify that and encourage people to speak out because
035you look you know 39 is alarming when you look at it next to the word suicide but even still it's not we're missing kids and we don't want to miss the wrong kid absolutely yep so we wanted to make sure that we talked about how we're using this data because we all can get excited about looking into the data into the weeds of it but what are we doing to actually address some of these issues that we see come out of so during last school year we used DLT BLT and our whole child team to kind of look at some of this information and it resulted in several things for this current school year the first is we hired an elementary but an additional elementary school counselor we really recognized through the data we had
036to continue to focus on tier one and our counselors are that front line for for tier one social emotional support our K-8 counseling team is also piloting some evidence-based SEL curriculum they were doing great work but everyone was using different resources and so we really they recognized the need to have like a Common Language a common resource so that they were all speaking the same language and once students move from elementary to middle school they all have the same common skills that then the school counselors can build on in middle school so we're we've tried one out in the fall semester we're going to try a couple out in the spring semester and decision later this spring for what they'd like to use and then the last two are actually programs that came out of
037the data analysis last year ruling our experiences or rocks and sources of strength I'm not going to dive into those right now because we're going to talk about them when you're talking about the things that they're piloting is that the social emotional curriculum that you're talking about character thank you yeah Second Step made the connection for me appreciate it spring of last year just having a happiness slurs and narrowing down which ones we wanted to look at and pilot and then the actual piloting is happening this year and then this year we're continuing with the DLT BLTs and whole child team to look at the data and then we've also made sure that our school counseling and school Social Work team are part of it they're in the trench is doing the work so it's
038important that they're given time to look at the data and have a voice in how we respond so we're really this year looking at a tiered use of the data Dr Cruz is going to talk about DLT and BLT in a moment this first bullet point about how we use the data to identify building level action we're going to continue to try to increase staff exposure to Panorama there's just a lot of resources that come along with the platform from student check-ins to um Panorama Playbook so we're hoping to kind of continue to expose our staff to that I mentioned earlier kind of feeling protective of student level data in Panorama but now that we have that longitudinal data where we're really using it to help Drive student level interventions so our counselors are using
039it to help identify students that might benefit from a group our social workers again are using it when they're trying to help problem solve certain cases and situations and buildings and then long term we're looking to help our teachers use this data in their classroom and then the next piece is just kind of monitoring the effectiveness we do this a lot with academics right we use progress monitoring all the time for academics but we don't really live with prior we didn't really have a way to track if our social emotional interventions were effective so we're hoping that this panorama help us kind of Monitor and make sure what we're doing is working and then finally through this data analysis and the support of the board and Dr selico we're looking to add another school social
040worker this year so we really appreciate your responsiveness and willingness to to help out with that when did the BLTs utilize the data and start doing that building level action steps so great segue thank you so we as we set up our dlts a little bit differently this year where we invited um all of the BLT members to come to the DLT table to both tables they're in here um and so our at our last meeting we gave them their their Panorama data that you have access to and we um they logged into the platform so they Dove a little bit deeper and at The BLT at the DLT meeting the building level team sat together and and analyzed this data so they dug into it they looked at they had some of the the
041reactions those notices those wonders and then they had to make their action steps of what they wanted to do back at the building with the data so that's um that's how we restructured that DLT a little bit Miss White was a part of one of our one of our building groups so she got to dive into the data a little bit and help them you know they looked at some of the interventions that are in there they looked at some of the Playbook pieces in Panorama um and they talked about how they want to take it back to the staff and what what those next steps are to to bring the data to everybody and bring those interventions to everybody so the bullets that you that you see here this ongoing District support so these
042were the pieces that we um this came right from the feedback from the building level teams at our last DLT meeting so this is what they want us to can we asked a question about what can we continue to do or what can we do to help with this work and these are those responses continue to support the work we do keep on this topic to allow us time to see the culture change continue to allow and make time to analyze the data and determine interventions continue in the future to do just what you did today Empower us to help our staff in all of these areas sharing the slides was helpful giving us this time to communicate is also nice sharing the slides and documents with us so we can share a consistent message
043with our staff members so that's that was what happened and it was I thought pretty powerful for them to have that time and and their Reflections supported that to be able to have that time to take the data and then consider what they can do with it we know that it's important for us to have the data and for us to have District level supports in place but we need our teachers and the the folks at the building to really be on board with supporting the whole child work so they dug into the Panorama data they dug into the absenteeism data just like what we talked through here some of the questions around the difference between chronic absenteeism and those you know the excessive absences we talked about what that meant and that gave them
044some conversations that they could have when a child has missed a certain number of days you know I know it's hard but missing more than two days a month is really what that you know what the state says is going to impact the academic so we're all trying to have that consistent language that it's not just you know us holding on to the data and we want that to be disseminated and shared with everybody because they're the ones who are going to do something with it at the building with the kids okay so we told you that they were making action steps so we wanted to give you the examples even though Miss White could could also share some from from her building but these were very specific action steps that um that they wrote
045so on the left side here there are three examples that they wrote about what they want to do about the attendance piece so taking it back to that staff meeting that root cause document that we gave you a copy of that was really powerful for us to have some conversations around it was so simple but really starting to think about why kids why don't kids come to school obviously you know more the middle school high school it starts to become more more about the the child than the family situation so it was interesting to for them to start connecting with that root cause instead of just like I don't know why they don't come they're not here I can't teach them well let's like try to dig into it a little bit more so looking
046at that attendance those examples they appreciated that document and then that attendance interventions thinking about it in the same way that we think about academic interventions we can think about interventions to to help with attendance another building wanted to create an absence intervention team share those root Clauses and then another building talked about um citing their top three attendance concerns in their class and having individual conversations so really getting down to that student level so we appreciated the different approach that they had and then for the Panorama data the three examples that we wanted to share with you looking at the data and upcoming staff meeting and then they're going to filter that down to their teacher-based teams doing a dive into the data a little bit more looking at suggestions for staff how that
047can flow into their class meetings individual sessions with students and counselor groups and again looking at their next staff meeting explore the results log on and access the data in the Playbook and then share that whole child possibilities document and ode's full child framework so we wanted to give you these examples because each building has some ownership over this and that's important we don't you know we don't need everyone to be exactly the same at each building because we want them to have that ownership but what is the same is the expectation the expectation that we're improving our attendance and the expectation that we're considering the social emotional learning of our students and how they Implement that if they're building and having that that ownership of it is is really what's going to drive that
048work even further and even though they diversify they have a Common Language I think Holly you know and I think that's great because if you don't you don't know what you're talking about and so that's really important too thank you would you be able to compile these so that we can see them we certainly don't want a review of them or provide feedback but I think that the information you provide us about absenteeism and challenging feelings is very alarming so I think we want to see what the action is being done at the building level so that we can sleep a little better at night knowing all these things that are being done you know so you want all all nine yeah just as an informational piece I certainly don't want people think that we're
049gonna be going through them and you know calling up Bullock and saying well what about certainly not going to do it yeah some similarities yeah really these these were pulled um there's three that were articulated well the threat is you know the commonality of having that um taking it back to the staff and diving into that I think you'll see that but yeah we'll share all all and then what's the accountability piece for our BLTs from a district level you know um you know we're requiring them obviously to create these building action steps um how are we going to hold them accountable to their data if their data doesn't improve what supports is the district going to step in with to say okay you gave it a good shot didn't work here's what else you
050know how do we bump them up to a tier two if they need it I think what um a couple questions in there one um we're coming back to we're revisiting this at an upcoming DLT so they're going to come back and share out so there's that that accountability there of just you said you were doing this and now we've told all of you and we want to hear how it went we want to hear that you actually did what you what you outlined in doing and then the data I think will tell a story and we know that that will allow us to see some of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the action steps but having that Collective conversation at the district leadership team when we can look and you know maybe one building's
051absenteeism rates dramatically improved we can talk about what they did and that becomes that learned experience together and another building that maybe didn't have have as much growth or progress we can we can learn and share that and going back to those those interventions that we had you know did you do something that was on you know some of those example sheets maybe we need to revisit what was what was being done well and I think what's important too is and I know you're going to talk about this in a second but you know when you look at that whole child framework before you get to Community Partnerships there's that big maroon piece and family and we we don't do enough with family in our district and I think that there's something to be said
052for um our staff does a really good job of trying to make school a safe space for their students and I could start listing teachers that I think do a great job I won't but I could because we have so many staff members that really go the extra mile to make staff a place where students feel valued and welcomed and encouraged and all of those wonderful things um and I think we have a lot of work to do in helping our staff as a whole understand more of what life is like in our community because most a lot of our educational staff does not live in this community and this community has changed a lot the needs of this community has changed a lot and it's not um negative to say this but I think
053there's a Chasm and the understanding of what our community is and what life is like when those kids leave school and I can say this you know separate from board work I I do some non-profit work and we work with families impacted by addiction and there's a lot of poverty in that community and I can tell you without naming names obviously a lot of those families impacted by addiction the household that have a lot of poverty and a lot of challenges are families that are here in the school district and families don't usually shout that from the rooftops but that's impacting those kids every day so I think I think there's a lot that a lot of work that we need to do in tying that family piece in because I think our staff is
054eager to understand more because like I said they want their students to feel valued and welcome and if they can understand these pieces parts of them they can do even better so it's it's nothing against our staff it's only good things about them but I do think there is a lack of understanding of our community that that we can do more work and it's very doable work I believe so I I just think that's a piece of this pie that might be missing this is my favorite part of the presentation because I just love working with kids so okay um if your folder there is a document called full child possibilities this was started by our whole child team and you may remember last year we had um started the whole child work with Dr
055Larson from Wright State University that work has continued this year we're going to talk a little bit about that in a few minutes but our whole child team put together this whole child possibilities just to kind of outline all the different things look like because we're like just this one please I can share but you pull it up again Mr Harris says draft on that yeah you know what if we don't have it there's that copier in here so we can make copies it's a single sheet um probably got one we made it look at that yeah as well that's what you do okay make it work s so this is a fluid documentation across it so it's not something anything that's set in stone but just to help give you a sense of the
056different things that we have going on in the district to support the whole child so the First Column is really all those spokes on the wheel um that comprise that whole child framework we're going to highlight just a few tonight because obviously we can't go over everything on that list but we'll start with um our comprehensive School counseling program many of you may remember our school counselors worked on this for a couple years and finally kind of put together a final product spring of 2020 and I just wanted to kind of report out and share that this is a living document I know there was concern that it would just sit on a shelf somewhere and it wouldn't really be applicable to their daily work but we continue to meet quarterly to update it and
057it really drives their tier one tier two interventions for our students the second piece are district social workers as I alluded to earlier there are busier than ever we're only in year two of our social work department but they continue to get lots of referrals for mental health and Trauma they're doing a lot of Crisis Support in the buildings and certainly the the nuts and bolts of Social Work the linkage to Community Resources and families Etc and then lastly Red Oak Behavioral Health again just in year two of having them embedded in our buildings they are busier than ever we keep asking for more people but we currently have four therapists and nine of our buildings and since July they have seen 214 of our students so quite a large number just in a short
058amount of time so the thing that I wanted to kind of highlight on here it kind of ties into where we started was that whole child work is not separate it is embedded in our buildings and what we do every day and we've worked really hard to not have it be something that just comes out of central office but really be interconnected and tiered right that mtss and making sure that we're meeting kids who need different levels of support any questions about any of these full child supports we're just going to highlight two new programs I alluded to them earlier in the presentation but the first is ruling our experiences experiences called rocks it is an evidence-based 20-week curriculum for young ladies we use some of our AG safety grant money to get our secondary
059school counselors and school social worker trained to be facilitators and so the groups are up and running at the middle schools we're hoping that they'll be up and running at the high school during spring semester but so far we've had extremely positive feedback from our students and parents who are participating in the programming so this is actually a picture from Bullock of the young ladies participating there's also a parent newsletter that I included in there just so you could see some of the things that are going home to our parents related to that and it's an ohio-based program it is a little thing from them which is great I think uh and then the second I just wanted to highlight sources of strength this is you guys know me at all I so believe in
060youthful and prevention this is a youth flood prevention program that Miss Bogdan just jumped on the opportunity to be able to implement at the high school so we partner with Greenleaf and it is funded through the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation they believe so strongly in this program and its Effectiveness that they are funding fully funding it to be deployed in in schools throughout the state so we sent about 12 adults Dr Cruz and I participated in adult training and then we had about 45 students participate this fall and get trained to be part of this organization so they it is like I said youth-led they develop what they call campaigns to educate and engage their peers it is a suicide prevention program but they don't they very rarely talk about suicide it's all about building
061resiliency and strength you may see those Wheels here and all the spokes of the wheel are like different areas of strength so did you get a thank you card no I have exceed okay from when I was on Call of the different like campaigns that they do like the thankfulness Journal I just think this is really cool I think we should talk about it more and you have time okay it's worth more than a half so the reason I asked this picture up here is first Campaign which was right before break and they had a table set up and the kids filled out thank you cards and they wrote it to someone in their life that brings them strangle so it was an opportunity for peers to engage with each other and then they were
062also able to start educating students about the program and um and whatnot so it was a huge success we were glad to see that everyone I just want to make the connection too that this is for our 9 through 12. so we when we talked about the SEL curriculum that was for um that we're piloting this year that's the K to eight and this is that complement um and Mrs Merkel can talk at length about the um why this youth-led piece is so critical for our high school kids that's where the evidence is shown that they're not um as responsive to an adult telling them about character and self-esteem and um it's their peer group and I think you know those of us that have um you know middle school or high schoolers can certainly
063understand that the it's the peer group that knows that knows what they're what they're talking about so having these trained um high school students and being a part of that training it was so powerful I still have um I still see some of the students that were in some of the groups some of the teachers that were part of that and it was an incredible experience to to have these kids become these sources of strength and what they're doing with it it's it's awesome it's really I'm sorry if you mentioned this how many students participated or I want to say about 40 40 in the training it's uh do we do we like have a number of like how many students stop by a table to fill out a card or how many cards we
064could probably I know how many we purchased so yeah Grant so it wasn't coming out of the general fund um well remember success and wellness funds are out of the general fund though yeah I think that's a good social media post to Mr yeah here tonight but I think that's a great thing too to talk about things that we're doing because I think it is very important to talk about this work to communicate this work to our community and then you know throwing a big number you know this many thank you cards were written I think that yeah that's a compelling story like it's important for our community to know about this work and what we're doing to make sure that our our students are safe and valued and protected yeah just one other point
065I want to make sources that came to mind as we were talking one of the real goals of the program is to shift the stigma around help seeking behaviors and so the kids were really the students excuse me we're really trained in helping um normalize seeking help when they're struggling we all struggle and so that's part of their goal as they go out in our youth leaders is to help normalize and shift that narrative about so that I thought of that as you were asking about the suicide and how do we reach those kids we hope this is a piece of that puzzle so when we're at Capital conference I stopped by and talked to the sources of strength people too they were telling me about like the different campaigns so they did the thank
066you card they also do like the thankfulness campaign to think about that I had extras of these I made my nephews do it with me and they they got really excited my one nephew like refused to throw it away like they had he had it in his room for weeks and he's in first grade because he was like so excited because he was like those are the three things I love the most and so just to think of how impactful this can be for people and you know and they do the thankfulness Journal um and then what I really liked about it well and secondly it is K they do have K-12 resources as well and they have good stuff on um emotional regulation which I do see that our elementary school kids are struggling
067with they have some really cool stuff on that because they looked it up but I think the fact that it's Upstream do you want to talk about that because I think that's really valuable the Upstream did you plant that class I'm really excited I think this is really impactful work that we should really spend a little bit of time on so I'm not going to try to say the quote because I tried to say it with um Dr silicone it didn't go quite well so Ms Virgo if you could say that if you could explain the Upstream cast well it's really this idea of um I'm not going to tell the whole story this is falling into the river and so they finally had to instead of just going down to the bottom of the
068river and pulling them out they had to move upstream and figure out why they were falling before place and so we have we learned that at our whole child training last year and we we just continually come back to that and the importance of having those reactive supports because we need them but balancing that with really the need to move upstream and how can we help prevent some of these problems so that we're not we don't have so many kids in tier three if you look at our Panorama scores it's a tier one issue to support those kids we can't have them all in tier three social emotional support so we really need to to move Upstream and start with some of that prevention work and it just teaches people to practice gratitude which is
069a foundational emotional regulation therapy skill um which is it's really important for kids to know at all ages and all levels you know there's no secret to that it's that we know and it's research that you know being grateful and whatever that is that you're grateful for promotes positive feelings within ourselves so I think it's a wonderful thing and they gave me a couple of these that I'm going to give to you for your student give me a couple extra wristbands and they actually gave me a source of strength t-shirt that you can give to one of your student leaders so you can take those to your student leaders after a break all right anything else about sources or I promise we're almost done um we wanted to highlight I think this was a comment
070was made earlier tonight but there's no way as a district we can tackle all of these spokes in the Wheel by ourselves we really have to bring in our communities and families if we're serious about supporting the whole child so it's impossible to list all of our partners I we just selected the ones that we were working with most frequently um so this is just a few of them but you can see they're helping with things not only mental health and social emotional learning but they're helping with things like food and um the library we've just developed a great partnership with the library I mean just so many different components of this whole child work can be supported with Community Partners anything further you want to say about that I think that's great um the
071triple P yeah something yep I did want to highlight because Dr silico's learning a social worker in me I just always have to give resources I think I drive her crazy but I want you all to have the resources as well we're offering triple P positive parenting program this spring so there's a little flyer in your folder just to give some of the details it's a five session parenting course is going to be at Preston it's two hours and we're going to provide child care and snacks for the kids to make sure that isn't a barrier to or to families coming but Greenleaf or excuse me Child Guidance excuse me is the one that's going to come in and get service so when you talk about the spokes on the wheel on our partners would
072there be a way down the line of taking our partners and tying them to the spoke and the wheel that they respond to because I think that would be a good visualization of how we are trying to meet the needs of the whole child absolutely does that make does that make sense Christine Stewart's not here so I'll volunteer her once again because her graphic design work is very good as well he missed the board meeting you miss a lot after you take the pictures you can [Laughter] see um she's pretty good but yeah but I think that would be like a great way to like visualize how we're trying to meet these needs too as well and for people that maybe don't understand that or and I think even like when we do like new
073staff orientation that would be a great thing to give to them because we want to make sure any staff member that's coming in every year understands the resources that we have for families we don't I think that that's really an important thing that we need to include in that and there'd be a great way of them knowing right what those resources are and having them on hand yep I'll find one more thing though we'll find one one more thing to give to Christine before the end of the music [Laughter] all right this is the last slide with content so just looking ahead to 2023 we wanted to share three things that we've been working on the first is the black tigers beyond the classroom you've heard me mention our whole child team a couple times
074this is something that kind of born out of that team we as we looked at our data and just had conversations we felt our kids were just not as engaged as they used to be in extracurricular co-curricular so we wanted to try to tackle that so what we've been doing is putting together kind of an inventory of activities available K-12 and then also putting together some information for our students and parents about the benefits of participating in activities so we have a website that we developed we're hoping to launch that in January and then just a couple other ideas that were thrown around about how to reach families and kind again not twofold of here's what we have available and this is why it's so important and it will help her job to participate in
075activities so if if you see this logo around town that's us we are counselors and social workers and psychologists so we're not graphic designers it was the best we could do but those are the areas that we're kind of targeting for activities Hollywood would it be possible maybe to get some of that of how many kids are getting into those activities extracurricular and so on I think KJS when we could maybe have the data for that just to see to get creative about that because it's especially K-5 a lot of what we're putting together as a community-based resources yes um but yeah we'll have to work with KJ and see if we can exactly I've noticed the um out there and I think over by the auditorium there's like a list of activities that you
076oh you're interested in this you should try this yeah but that would be something good to put on the page yes you can click on it it will take you to the program yeah so we're actually so parents could see like right you know my Kid Likes music click oh here's all of the music things we have that's exactly what we're doing okay that's perfect we thought those were so visually appealing that where we asked the person that made that made that yeah it was very clean and very easy to read yep I'm trying to okay put those five Waters together and you could make say all of you know being engaged makes you calm c-a-a-l-i where where are you getting the letters clubs Arts Athletics oh in the the converse level thing what's that
077I went through a lot of variations of those five Waters and I know that Dr Cruz is tickled by that thank you it's just so hot it's an Ohio draw on that side coma all right the next um thing we're really excited about is Eye Care mentor Mentor or anyone that was at business Alliance you heard them talk about their program they've been in around eight years in different districts but they are a school-based mentoring program where they match one of our students with a community volunteer one hour a week or a class period a week they've had really positive outcomes SCI manages their data analysis and they've had some really really positive outcomes so we're excited to bring them on board hopefully but fall goes well we hope to have that up and running
078in our middle schools second semester and is that that's paid through the ADM board correct and last I just wanted to mention saves Act is still on our radar we have a subcommittee of our safety and wellness committee that's really working to make sure that we have our threat assessment teams our suicidal prevention programming and social social inclusion programming up and running so a lot of work going on behind the scenes to make sure that we're in compliance and not only in compliance but making sure we're doing the right things for kids I have a question for you in a dream world where you know time is no question money is no question what's something that your department isn't doing that you wish it could be doing and a dirt it's not like I'm gonna
079hold you to it because it's I just wonder if there's like something that you wish how are you defining my department your department success sure I would have a cancer counsel for everybody it's I think incredibly hard to split buildings they do a phenomenal job but there's something to be said about the consistency of having those trusted adults in the building every single day and I think counselors and social workers bring different talents so that's why I say both money were no option I wore sure was it um you know I know I'm on the cheap side um I have I lost my other question um do we you know I know that we're getting uh this Eye Care through the ADM board do we connect a lot through the ADM board through for resources
080resources um because of one of the presentations that we attend Miss Schaefer and I were able to attend um the the Holly Merkel of a different District talked about how you know where they're from that's one of the big funding sources for them I it's perhaps different here yeah so they've found a lot of things behind the scenes so um we talked about sources of strength as an upstream prevention they also fund um signs of suicide thank you um which is Downstream prevention but it's still funded by ADM for that Suicide Prevention piece of things so they fund that they fund I didn't get into it because it's in the weeds but they're funding something called expert which allows our red oak therapist to come in and start seeing students before the if they just
081need like a short-term five session intervention um or we're waiting for parents Insurance to go through so they're able to provide those Services free to the family and ADM picks up the funding for that so there's just behind the scenes things that are going on that they're paying for that people just aren't even aware of in fact there are care six districts care Award winner not for our district but they're the community Award winner this year because of all the things they fund behind the scenes of course I just wanted to say that I appreciate all the writing like for the journaling I think that's a wonderful idea to have kids write about their feelings and how maybe they can overcome or you know work on challenges and just journaling you know like that I
082think that's wonderful thank you for that of course and I just want to thank the number two because you all and your previous board were ahead of the game you had this position ready to go before the pandemic and just really appreciate you recognizing the importance of prioritizing student wellness a lot of these a lot of districts are having creating these positions now but you you all saw this before the pandemic and it really allowed us to put some of these things in place so that we can support our students so so thank you oh I remember so the I keep calling I can't remember the guy's name who's great what I call Marysville Holly Merkel because he does what you do for Marysville but he talked about layering different things like they have like
083three different things on suicide you know is that part of like the long-term plan like we get things off the you know going off the ground and going well and then we bring other things additional Sports additional Sports is that part of like long range planning yeah are you talking about like tiered supports or yeah yes yeah okay because I would see like sources of strength would be like a tier one support you know absolutely and then there would be from there yep okay and then the other question is in terms of like meeting the needs of our families have we ever considered doing like a survey to our family is about what are their needs that go on Matt you know because I think we have a lot of people that come out um
084and do a lot of really wonderful things that we want to encourage them to keep doing but have we ever asked our families like what are the needs at home like do the is it food that you're struggling with is it clothing that you're sure like what is it what are the needs and how can we help coordinate those needs on a more Global basis as opposed to just um you know the the emergent needs that sometimes we're dealing with but kind of getting a more Global sense of community needs of a whole for our families and maybe using that data down the road yeah I think that's a good thank you thank you no miss Coco I was just going to say along with what he was saying I think uh you know we
085have the blaring in our face needs of a lot of our students that we see that are economically challenged I think especially coming out of the pandemic there's another group of families that um don't necessarily fit that category but need assistance and um they're the ones that I think tend to get lost sometimes and are sometimes maybe the ones that aren't necessarily going to seek out help either because maybe it's not that they've they're not used to being in that situation or maybe they don't qualify for certain things so I think that's a big piece of the puzzle especially here in Cuyahoga Falls in hurricane especially right now because you have to make very little to qualify for anything we had some of those conversations that tolerate with what you're saying that we don't want
086to just Target families that have a an education of economically disadvantaged that we want to promote these supports for All Families regardless of their certain their situation and I think you know we've had some some conversations with some of our local churches and Community groups that have that same approach of we just want to help you don't have to tell us why you need help but just we just want to help and so um I think that's been it's been a little bit of a dialogue but it's it's helpful to hear that again to just keep it at the Forefront of what we're doing to um to understand their needs but then also meet meet their needs not just if they ask like being more proactive than that well just like on student fees for
087instance it's been policy for quite a long time now um it's been our policy quite a long time that the treasurer has the authority to make these determinations that we don't just pick some random number and say if a family makes this much too bad you have to pay it it's you know Ms stoicoy in her office can really talk with families and then they get to make that determination and I think that's really important as well that because things happen you know emergencies happen people have a bad year you know stuff happens and I think um having that in place and she shared some stories with us over time about how impactful that's been for people you know and I think sometimes you know a family that you would never think needs something just
088had a really bad year and all of a sudden needs something but there's a lot of pride in this community um in particular where people just won't ask for help sometimes so yeah that's true do you have a suggestion about how we would get that information from families that you were talking about just what their needs are is that is I think maybe we could do a survey yeah I mean we have additional conversation I don't know maybe Dr salko could ask if anybody if she knows she has kind of a network of superintendents she could ask if any of them had done it and go from there foreign but I think it would be interesting to see what they need because it's one of those things sometimes when you you feel like you're meeting
089people's needs but if you've never really asked people what you need you're like well you hit the nail on the head honestly like they've heard me say this before too why don't we just ask folks what they need what's important to them what do teachers need you know so I think I think a survey is actually just is the answer just done in a in a tech but I think that's the way to do it figuring out how to administer that might be a different you know to eliminate the barriers you know in terms of language especially yeah making sure it's translated for example um and maybe more than one means not just electronic Panorama does have parent and family surveys so I'm not exactly sure what the content looks like but I think we
090can tailor them so that would be something we can look at and then all that data would be in one yeah at least it would be interesting to see I think it's worth looking at thank you so much thank you thank you you know we appreciate so deep for the work that you do yes thank you yes we do okay on the item e treasure CFOs business consent of gender mystery coin foreign discussion the donations in minutes um so a couple donors chewed or one donor shoes um always appreciated all that stuff adds up and and definitely helps us all the time so much appreciated foreign the Board of Education approve the November 2022 investment schedule and monthly spending report so moved second discussion Mr storybook yes just real quick we look at interests first
091a really good month in interest so um throughout this fiscal year so far we received over a hundred thousand dollars in interest to each of the totality um that includes our construction accounts and everything but to the general fund alone this year um we have received about 285 thousand dollars in interest which is probably the highest it's been since I've been here um for a whole year let alone just for the first five months of the fiscal year so that's trending in the right direction it also helps our construction accounts as well so we're looking to continue I am meeting uh setting up a meeting with Huntington to kind of go over some different options to look at getting some more interest in that account and what we can do there to kind of get
092back to where we were before the next one um general fund monthly cash flow um pretty typical this is a lower month for Revenue we've received everything from the county for Real Estate it's pretty much prior expenditures are right in line they're actually a little under the last couple years previously so we still ended with a little over 23 million which is better than two years ago so that's that's in a good spot we're going forward and then the only other thing I wanted to bring to your attention is if we look at the all fun month monthly cash flow so this includes everything except the construction accounts and you can see Revenue looks the same and then you look and and November for expenditures is kind of all over the map um and I
093just wanted to point out that that is we make our principal and interest payment for on the bonds in November um and so if you recall the first few years we had it tiered for a larger principal payment because we had not only a balance in our bond retirement fund because we had collected for a few years before we actually um went through with the sale of the bonds we also had some accrued interests if you recall you've seen those statements from red tree that we got when we did sell the bonds and so we used that money to pay down the principal and kind of attack it early and then kind of level out the payments as we go forward so this was one of those another one of those big payments which is
094why it seems like you know we've spent 10 million but more than half of that was just that that principal and interest payment towards towards the bond so nothing to be alarmed at there that's really all I have I have a question about food service um so we got information about Chef Bill about um you know they'll struggle on understanding with our families about how meals aren't free this year and it seems that there's a lot of struggle around that um what is your department helping with that are we making personal phone calls to try to help families understand that so for last week we met recently within within the last week and then I've even talked to Chef Bell a couple times since then he him and hope his secretary have been reaching out
095to some of our maybe families that are higher in the negative than others personally by phone call or email to ask them to kind of figure out what the situation is if there's an issue if they need to fill out free and reduced if they just don't know how to get on pay schools sometimes it's as simple as that so he's been doing um doing that we obviously whenever we send our like fee letters uh by email and we do that once every couple weeks just here you go we also include the lunch balance on there so people know uh how much they have or if it's in the negative and they need to make a payment um so that that's coming out fairly frequently um once every two weeks if not every week as
096a reminder to those families that they still have some outstanding things to be paid and obviously we catch some of those with Athletics and looking to participate and get them where they need to be once we come back in the new year you know we'll be looking at those seniors who will need to be paid up and kind of addressing them both with the lunch balance and the other outstanding fees going forward and I have one question about Athletics so I know that in our emergency Lobby plan and that past we had money for athletics are you holding that separately or are we gonna transfer that over um yeah because what he really wants with that was to get on a cycle to replace uniforms okay that was what was going to come by the
097emergency Lobby and so um instead of going through all the you know transferring we'll just have it you know we'll just have those purchase orders come out um of the general fund out of that emergency Levy so it shows in there and we can actually see all of it okay and what and what we've done in detail in the emergency Levy instead of just a transfer thank you anyone else yeah please call the world Mr all right Miss Schaefer hi Ms White aye let's get ready all right I'm so excited your comments most toy coin I do not really have to celebrate and hope nobody is affected by the weather that's supposedly coming in and that everybody everybody stay safe has a happy New Year and uh enjoy some some time off hopefully so Mr
098I don't think I said I during that whole thing I don't know if Mr Gomez said I for me or if you didn't see anything he did but I was just I'm adding my eyes thank you um I am G superintendent CEO's business consent agenda Dr solico thank you I recommend that the board approve all incent agenda tell him it's just one any comments oh um yes thank you well the first I heard was Mike um why Rick he's such a good friend of mine because he's really just a little bit taller than me but that's not really why it's we just taught together and he's going on his eighth or the deferment I think overseas been called up again and we wish him well and bless him he the eight times they've called this
099man and it's just something and I just hope and pray he will be safe and come back home to his family so just a wonderful teacher and friend absolutely thank you and then we have two retirements that will be approving tonight Patricia Mancini Sabo price and Richard Parrish at Roberts we thank them both for their many years of service to our district hi Jason hi Miss Coco hi I did it right that time uh I am eight superintendent CEOs business Dr Selco any comments one what essentially what I've been doing the last couple of weeks just a couple highlights we as our soups troops went around we we completed our two service learning projects one of which was the babysitting and I appreciate Mr Gomez and uh Miss Shaffer came and actually participated in some
100of our events and I think had more maybe more fun than some of the students did but we had about 25 students show up and uh several of our soups troops as well as National Honor Society students common so I think parents are really appreciative of the of the the activity and took advantage of it which was nice we babysat provided babysitting for three hours while parents got sick some of them said date nights they were happy to just do that and so that went well we also delivered all of our collected on one day and then delivered last week to good neighbors and Journey Church with Pastor Jay the staff provided a number of perishable foods non-perishable foods and we did for those yeah that would be good but we stopped the bus and
101took that and so the students I appreciate their efforts and I know they were busy and it was cramming for midterm time and so I had one student help me on on the on the last day but appreciative of their efforts uh also once I know some of you also participated in read alouds at Robertson Bullock so I enjoyed that and had fun with with doing that as well as being a guest speaker at one of the high school classes for Miss palomasino and as a result and I know I won't steal this again from you miss Coco at our business advisory though we did reach out to folks I put a put something out there to them asking about volunteering to speak in her class in several business owners took advantage of that so
102she's very excited she thanked me she thanked for the board's involvement as well and so she's excited to have people come in and speak to the students we also have had a number of concerts going on around town and around here so that's been nice to see a member I know it's a very busy time so I appreciate our students particularly our our musicians and singers that have been going out and into the community and and providing enjoyment to our to our folks so I appreciate that and then just lastly I would say um with about the presentation that we saw this evening and Mr Gomez I appreciate your passion and I know how important it is to all of you the topic we heard this evening as well as is it is to me
103and just again asking the board you know as we we reorganize a little bit one of our priorities and one of our commitments mine has always been to addressing uh the social emotional needs of our students because if we don't address that first wait I don't think a whole lot happens after that so um you know we can have the most dynamic lessons we could provide the most excitement to our students but if they're not there mentally physically then we were missing the boat so we'll do some things we have some ideas that I'll be presenting to you on ways that we can address some of the things that we heard this evening and lastly I would Echo what uh Miss doikoi said I mean not that I'm not excited to be here this evening
104would have preferred to been with my family in Phoenix but uh since I'm here I'm so glad I was to see all and to see all of you before the holidays so for the record we didn't make you be here [Laughter] so um and happy holidays uh whatever our family's on which they celebrate so um and I wish them all well and some good time off so thank you thank you okay um item I board business number one president pro tempore the board is required to elect someone to presite as president pro temporary and the organizational meeting on January 11 2023 I'll open the floor denominations for president protempori I will name it nominate Mr Gomez are there any other nominations you can so I can't make a question about the motion you would make
105is a closed nominations and direct the treasure to cast you not in unanimous ballot I make a motion to close nominations and direct the board to make a unanim of the treasurer to make a unanimous casting the animals cast a unit unanimous that's the Roberts Roosevelt yes it is second you need a second five second oh yeah any discussion please call the roll Miss Shaffer hi Look at me now that's what you guys are done hi Mr Gomez hi thank you I am two policy approval adoption and rescission because there's one recession it's recommended the Board of Education approve adopt and resend the following policies which were viewed at the December 7th 2022 Board of Education Mr Harris second it I don't know sorry any comments okay please call the roll Ms White aye Ms
106Coco hi Mr Gomez aye Mr Harris aye Ms Shaker thank you number three Eye Care agreements recommend the Board of Education approves the agreement between Eye Care and the Falls City School District second any discussion as well as um Ms Merkel mentioned that we had the gentleman come and speak at the business advisory Council I too met with the gentleman uh this stemmed from a just a need for our students to have some mentors and influential adults more of them in their lives and just so happened that I mentioned mentoring and sure enough Holly had a suggestion and then we took it from there Holly arranged for a meeting with us and so I'm very pleased with with the program I they were able to produce some outcomes that I was happy to see and
107it will be funded as you had mentioned Mr Gomez through Adams 80 while we called it Adams in Cuyahoga County the board and so it'll be free to us and I I and I envisioned that happening I asked the sustainability question I don't want to put people in our students lives that won't be there long so we do believe that the funding will continue so I'm real appreciative of this opportunity thank you I have a couple questions that can be followed up on after the holidays um just in like how this will work once we approve it tonight um how are we going to solicit the mentors and then um are they going to have to pay for their background checks because it says that it's done through the same way that we do them
108we make our staff pay for their background checks yeah we won't we don't have to do it we actually got some already signed up okay well like how because like barberton's like posting it there's I've seen theirs on shared on social media that like they're posting asking for me they have a recruitment team there's a gentleman there well I guess I don't know maybe a team of one or two but um that they so they will look for uh mentors for us as well and how do we prioritize which kids get picked for mentors if we don't have enough mentors for kids and they have some suggestions walk us through their recommendations are and then when are they going to I know that it's during the school day when are we going to do that
109because I think this is a great program but on the same time I don't like our academic scores are also somewhat challenging too so I want to make sure that we're not um making kids miss too much of their core academic time it's like this challenging balancing act because we have our kids have truly have so many needs lunch visas spread the Middle School Middle School Okay so okay and the only thing that I don't like about Eye Care is that they kick out kids with attendance issues because I think those kids need mentors too possibly even more um but it is what it is and I think it's a great program but I think that I think that's prioritizing the adults feeling of their hour being wasted if a kid's not there over what
110a kid truly needs but so be it and I'll still vote for him but I do take issue with that and I'll tell the people yeah it could be the thing that motivates the kid to come though on the same ad so okay good yeah I appreciate it good that that makes me happy thank you anyone else thank you please call the world hi Mr Gilman all right next item four discussion item meeting dates I have Mr Jones very helpful he did this I'll pass these down hopefully you printed out new one okay in my direction um so these are our proposed meeting dates so um we vote on them at the organizational meeting this would be a good time to bring up if we have issues if we want to change things discussion on
111that and then um we would want to make a selection on the July dates as well that is one decision we do need to make tonight I don't know if anyone has anything planned any vacations planned in July that we could accommodate one way or another if we if we chose one or the other construction planning have to stay on a Thursday I do think so because that's a commitment we made to the people when they were appointed to the committee the promise we need tonight um I don't have a preference and switching it you know I had like one more swim meet that on this in January by switching the dates but it's not an important one for my daughter not that they're not all important she's not listening but if she works um
112my one suggestion would be with switching this is to make sure that we're communicating it um out to the buildings um because a lot of times they are you know they try to work around when our board meetings are so that we can go to events so just to make sure that they are aware that we're switching these um and even see a lot of them have things planned out all the way through the end of the year so maybe just be sensitive to that and reach out and make sure that that's not going to be an issue anywhere but yeah I planned on notifying them in fact I've already been planting some seeds as people have been coming up with some dates I'm like well you might want to put that on hold because
113I think we're maybe switching our board meetings no preference in July no preference we're going to do the 12th on the 13th sure perfect I'm gonna do or I'll pick if nobody else wants it okay well and I thought having them back to back would be helpful because it's like yeah we kind of take the month off in essence so that way yeah they're back to back and then the rest of the month is still freed uh okay sounds good and then we'll vote on that January 11th um student member of the board that's discussion item it's number five underboard business um so that was one of the reasons why I stopped by that um soups troop event to kind of talk to some of them they did have some interest in that Dr salko
114did advise you know one of the challenges is these are the kids that are involved in everything um but the idea would be that we would only ask them to come to one meeting and give like a little bit of a report that's what other districts do um because asking having one person be your student member of the board and come to every meeting or um one meeting a month it's a lot to ask of a student but you know she has a core group of about five kids so if we had them come once one kid comes in at a meeting in January February March April May that would still give us five opportunities to hear from a student get some feedback in perspective I like that yep you want to give it a
115try maybe second meetings of the month is that when we do the top Tigers too yes yeah so that might be would they just be attending the meeting or they be participating or doing a presentation what they do and most of the services though they would like sit with us and they they would give us a report like under the presentation section like give us their feedback and then I would say that the same General ideas of like public participation is that we wouldn't want them to like if they have complaints you know up we want to hear if there are things that we can do better but we don't want them to name any people in that or other students so their peers might be things you're the person this month this is what
116I would like for you to bring that's what happens in other districts I've watched some of what Akron does and um because they have different buildings obviously in Akron so they'll share out from the different buildings but what can we do better for our students and just give making sure that they realize that we do care what they have to say and we'll see we can yeah it's a learning experience for all of us we haven't done it before but something we've talked about for a long time are we giving them any guidance on like different subjects to get feedback on or just open it up to anything we can or I just um like I'm thinking as a teenager I think it would be overwhelming if somebody said just come to a board member
117and give me feedback from the district like you know maybe break it down into yeah I don't know and they also the more I was thinking about it um we had a connection to like our government class so like the government teacher would prep the students because this is really a Civic lesson right so um we can look into and then maybe I'll even ask Dr Cruz if you could look into something with and because I'm not sure who our government teachers are but if we could make some kind of connection that maybe they can suggest a student um and you know prep the child but I will say like soups troops for example even when I asked them to air out you know whatever it is let me hear the good bad whatever and
118they're they're all so professional as even young adults I mean they really are they refrain from you know they really are just factual and give me good information we'll see what we can do next time yep and they're going to be appointed idea [Music] was to work with the soup stroops kids yeah if they're interested now some of them might not be interested they might not want to I mean we're certainly not going to force them that wasn't part of when they signed up to be it but I thought that would be a good first um place to go because they're already engaged kind of at the district level by meeting with Dr selico they have a little bit more of an understanding than maybe just the average student of some of the district pieces
119yeah I'm going to meet with them the first week we return I think in January so I could see if I can get someone for that maybe um student council too yeah that's another good one yeah it's another good Avenue yep on it so I think what we said is it's a row we want to keep going down and then we're going to keep our address you know addressing the forks as we head up is that I think okay here we go uh number six future agenda items um in January we'll have our executive session to go over our appointment evaluation with the superintendent and then she wants to meet with us as well she shared that information with us there is a Supreme Court ruling about executive sessions specifically related to school boards so
120that now you can list anything that you might talk about and then you don't even have to talk about all the things that you might talk about you just list all the things you might talk about when you go on so it's made our processes easier going forward so we'll use that for the first time in that January we'll list all those things that we think we might talk about and we can just go and once it's going to be exciting thus walking back and forth thanks so that's that and I know she um Dr salko has that presentation coming on the action steps for the Strategic plan so if you had like three executive sessions session different items you could list all three items in one executive session and have to back forth because
121the Supreme Court came out with a new ruling on it so it makes it easier yeah and then I want to pause this out there as a potential future agenda item for the first quarter of next year to see if there's interest from others or if it's just something I need to talk to mystery about on my own um in terms of like understanding you know we we went out and we sold these bonds and then we make payments on the bonds and then we have the budget and then we get the interest is there an interest is there no different type of energy is there interest from a board as a whole on trying to like get a better sense of understanding on all those financial pieces as we get to the point of
122like setting getting a final budget at the end of March you know I'm gonna say yes or is that just the question that I have because I I don't want to put I don't want to be an agenda top if it's just something that I'm wrestling with because then I'll just meet with her but if it's something we're all trying to understand more I can always try to yeah because the fact is I'm I don't understand it so I probably didn't even explain it wow I think you get the general sense of vibe like it's kind of all these different pieces and I think it would be helpful to kind of as we get we're gonna get to the point of like this is how much money this is gonna cost and then have those
123conversations it'd be helpful to kind of understand the numbers more and you know when we make a payment what does that mean because we're we're making payments on the bond but then we're paying TDA and it gets confusing for me it's it right now very Bond itself is separate from all the other stuff they're too they do not connect they do not do anything they are in different funds one is just over here to pay back the bonds and that's where our the money from the taxpayers goes into that fund and then goes out to pay those payments so that's basically like the bond issue that we passed all the other stuff is the money from the sale of those bonds and and all that you have the bond payments will go on for that
12435 years or 36 years whatever it is that we passed it for at the time and that fund is literally just a receiving money from taxpayers from the real estate settlements and then paying principal and interest twice a year [Laughter] no I am glad I asked because I don't understand it but I didn't know if it was just a me thing I think maybe we could yeah because I think it would be helpful because we are getting we know that that's like especially as we hit that GMP we're going to get questions I think it'd be helpful to make sure we really understand that because we want to sound informed when we're talking to our community about it so I know I know I I know okay yeah that's a good idea okay thank you
125item seven committee reports before we get into them just remind everyone that um we'll assign new uh or the same committees at our organizational meeting so if you want to change them if you want to change what committees you're on if you want to stay on the same Community either way just give it a little bit of thought and with that we'll go into them 612 core team I know you met is there anything additional no there wasn't then what we already received in our packet thank you Alliance for school and Community growth Miss Coco yes we met on December 13th there were 30 foreign attendance a couple new faces again it's growing and there's just a lot of energy and excitement in that group which is great to see Eye Care presented on the
126mentorship program and their goal is 25 mentors to start with in the middle school and then Branch out from there at I was very impressed with everything they do and all the training that they do with the mentors and following they're not just vetting someone through a background check and sitting them down with the students they're going through all the different steps that need to happen before and during the process with the student to be able to build a long-term relationship and I believe they have an 80 retention rate with their mentors so um they're looking for long-term commitments from these mentors for the students so we had that presentation and there was a lot of interest I know that some have already reached out about becoming mentors and then we continued the work in
127our three groups of what we can do now what we can do in the future and the group that is building a database for businesses and student Partnerships for job opportunities and things like that and Mr Hutch is part of that group and is helping get that started off the ground another main area of focuses right now is revamping and um kind of giving a fresh look to the career night at the high school so that's a big Focus as well with the community support and the businesses thank you found foundational Alumni Association we met last week a scholarship portal is now open on our website so if you know any seniors um not just people going into four-year programs we have options for people going into two-year programs as well we have I believe
12851 scholarships that we are looking to give out this year so encourage people to look into that we had a mixer with some new board members we're considering we're going to invite them back to our board meeting in January and then see if they'd like to join there's more that we can do if we have more people and then one of the new board members Linda Skidmore she talked about she attended our reception this past May because one of her friends was one of the distinguished alumni and her brother passed away almost seven years ago and he left her quite a nice chunk of money to do something with and she had been waiting seven years to figure out what she wanted to do with it and she said she left that night and said
129I know what I'm going to do with that money and she started a scholarship in her brother's late brother's name to support students that are going into vocational programs because her brother late brother was a carpenter and so she waited seven years to find the right thing to do and just by coming to that found she just felt so moved by that and she wanted to do that and it's one of our goals as a foundation is to support more students that are going into the vocational program so just this wonderful marriage of these two things coming together and very moving story from her so just awesome stuff I'd love to be a carpenter legislative liaison Mr Harris oh yeah I'll be brief um the 134th General Assembly rap last Thursday I think at like
1306 30 in the morning yeah um yeah bless him bless them um just real quick uh that I I was talking about two bills house bill from 151 uh which was the transgender uh kids playing sports um the ban on that uh and then uh Senate Bill 178 which was in the house they ended up combining those two putting Senate Bill 178 which was again uh the overhaul of the state's Education offices they put those two together it failed uh but uh president Huffman Senate President said uh you know it could return in the 135th General Assembly a couple other bills um that didn't receive action were uh bills related to critical race Theory uh the Third Rate greeting uh reading guarantee and then modifying require requirements for veterans to be teachers um so um
131it looks like the 135th uh assembly is a schedule to begin in the house on January 3rd but there is no calendar yet set for the Senate so it was it was quite a bit did I miss anything it's just it's been a lot it actually wasn't that bad holding I would get right right like it was in terms of lame duck sessions I was like feeling pretty yeah yeah they expected worse yeah right oh yeah oh yeah they fixed some of the school funding the dpia and the transportation pieces I know those are things that osba was advocating for so those were good ones as well um and then they did emblemat um the requirement to teach about uh child sexual abuse education so that'll be a new requirement that we have to meet
132um but they are encouraging you to use Community Resources but then they passed a weird writer that said that um you can't use a community resource that promotes abortion so but I have a plan um I'm gonna reach out I think it's a great so my personal opinion is I think that's a great way for lgbtq support groups like equality Ohio and Kaleidoscope you sent her to step up because um sexual abuse in the lgbtq community is actually a real serious issue and I think that would be a great way for them to get into more of our Public Schools right because every public school in the state is going to be looking for someone that's offering that education so if they get on the front lines of Meeting those needs we're going to get
133them in these schools and I happen to know people that work in those organizations so I'll be talking to them over the next couple of weeks about my little ideas because you can turn lemons into lemonade some ways yeah but yeah I thought overall it was a pretty good session the State Board of Education as well did pass the Title IX resolution but they did take out some of the worst language in the first three pairs right now I forgot to mention no you're good um and they're going to be sending all of us and our superintendent a letter of with a copy of the resolution which I think the the waste of taxpayer money and mailing those letters out is really the most offensive part yeah like you don't need a copy of your
134letter I'm aware of Reddit right um favorite and DLT meets next in February comments I'm up first um our art Club National Art Honor Society won one of three awards for their parking meter uh Kermit Zilla um who won one of the awards yesterday mayor Walters awarded them with it so congratulations to them it was at many of the same places you will all mention as well the Preston uh winner family night they had a phenomenal turnout and it was just really wonderful to see um the kids who are friends with each other talking to each other and then the parents getting to meet one another and that's Miss Principal Brown said that was really her goal of that on that and just to see that happening was really so wonderful and we know the
135impact of that making those connections so it was really really a great event and she had so much of so many of her staff members volunteered to be there and there's so much for the families to do she had all the classrooms open lights on it was just really a welcoming environment it was a great model I think for other buildings on what events can look like and how you can be really welcoming to our families um Lincoln's dance was great my nephews had a great time I had to stop by because I promised them I would um Dewitt's holiday event was phenomenal I got to see Mr G before he retired today I also had a chance to stop by the Historical Society um for their open house and see the Big labor and
136sign that we allowed them to take they're getting ready to mount it on the wall so that'll be a piece of history that people can visit and lastly the baby seeing the soup strips did was truly one of my favorite events that I've gotten to attend as a school board member because there's always just like you are the D you go these dances in these events and they're phenomenal but they're all doing things and at this I just got to talk to our students and you don't get to we don't get to do that that often and that was such a valuable experience and we were playing they were playing freeze tag and the one girl didn't want to play so I sat on the bench and she just started talking to me and telling
137me about school and it was just really wonderful so I will definitely come back if you do it again it was one of my favorite things up next is Mr Harris uh well I first just thank you to my colleagues for making it to as many events I wasn't able to make too many of the winter events the last couple of weeks it's just been busy with work so thank you all for uh getting out there and doing that um really all I want to say is I hope everyone has a very safe healthy holiday season I want to thank the student staff and all of our administrators for all the amazing work they did this last semester and let's let's go into 2023 strong There's A Schaefer this was a very busy time if
138you have ever had kids in music so many concerts so maybe in concerts Choir concerts I was able to attend Vespers which I haven't been to Vespers for like 15 years probably it was really nice um it was beautiful they and they sing they sang a song where they came into the aisles and I went to when they had the choir concert at the high school here they also did the same thing but I was sitting in a different spot or so I heard different voices singing so it was like very it was beautiful to hear the entirety of the choir scene together but then to be able to pick out certain voices because they're right next to you it was it was very moving it was a very nice very nice concert um and
139then I got to go to bolix band concert and one of my favorite things that those concerts the sixth grade band because they just like pick up the instruments for the first time in like in August and they're in the concert in December which is not very many weeks about learning to play an instrument and they it was they did a really nice job it was it was really fun I enjoyed it um the Preston was I attended with Mr Gomez and so many people there as evidenced by I had to park on a side street like a block and a half away yeah but it was very well attended and like you said Mr Gomez seeing the children meet up with their friends and then they had a couple like selfie stations that set
140up where they were taking like selfies with their little group of friends it was such a it was a good time good time thank you Miss White well I also went to Preston and I was impressed with how they played the drums it was so great I would never have thought I just the imagination some of our teachers have they donated big I don't know what to call them tubs from uh Lowe's or Menards or Home Depot or wherever and she put little squares of matte rubber mat on top of them and then the kids just pound it it was so I just imaginative Innovative I just I was just like floored and then I don't know but I everywhere I go I don't have many parents talk to me I have the kids they
141come up and talk to me all the time it doesn't matter where they do I don't know why I do because I'm sure I know it always is and then I was able to talk to Robert it's hard to talk about I go to Robert's band concert but the other thing I did was read aloud at Roberts and that was so much fun oh my gosh I got to read to a sixth grade class and again they I kind of moved things so I could sit with them in front of them and I read and they you know and I just talked to them and they were so cute and this one little boy came up can I have a hug of course I'm a hugger you all know that and I yeah it was
142just it was I didn't even know the kid but you know okay sure it was just a hoot it was a lot of fun and I hope they have us come back to do that again I love that and then I did attend the Bullock and Roberts um uh bands just Monday night I think it was really kind of not put out very well um because yeah a lot of people didn't know about it um but it was with the Akron symphonic winds Bolick and Roberts the eighth grade bands with the Akron stephonic wins and I just want to give them a huge shout out because they came in and helped the kids play and boy it was it something and then they played like the nutcrack and you know just just wonderful it was
143really something to go to so I'm glad I did get to go to that as well and the kids were great that's all thank you our holiday gift from his white was no articles I was waiting for it no I didn't I thought about it but you know I was going to bring like this story a Christmas memory but that would change was the board meeting before Christmas and Dr Holland read it over the loudspeaker I could probably do that next December oh stop okay Miss Coco hi yes um I didn't get to attend a lot of the winter events um due to health issues in the past couple weeks but I did make it to be a guest reader over at bowling during their literacy event and I had a group of seventh graders
144and they were so well behaved and attentive and quite a few of them I knew because pre-covered they were at Richardson and I was the library person over there so it was fun to get to see all of them and um you know I didn't think that I'm like oh these seventh graders are going to think it's not cool to sit and listen to stories and it was the exact opposite they loved it they loved coming in and sitting and just listening to Stories being read and then I was really impressed by the selection of free books that they were able there was really something for everyone there that would spark their interests and they were so very excited to get those books um and then I was able to just yesterday attend the um
145as a parent Richardson did holidays around the world celebration and each classroom kindergarten through fifth grade was assigned a different country and they had spent time researching and getting facts and writing facts there was the literacy component in there and so each class had their doors decorated with a different country and their holidays and what they celebrate and then the grades went around to each class and learned about that country and what their different traditions and celebrations were and it was really cool they got a passport that they stamped everywhere they went around the way and um so it was a very very nice event and I learned a lot of facts about a lot of places I didn't know so it was very educational and it was a great event that they had and
146just end with we're halfway through the school year but we are a full year as this board and so I just want to say thank you um I can't believe it's been a year it seems like it's been forever but it seems like just yesterday so um just thank you to all of you and the hard work that everyone puts in and just being here for the right reasons and I hope everyone has a good holiday I'm gonna add off that I thought about going last for all these president's prerogative and speak again but I think we should all be very proud of what we as a board have accomplished in one year of working together we got a phenomenal superintendent that's making great changes for the impact of our students we've refocused our strategic
147plan we've set for uh board priorities and support board superintendent Treasurer priorities and goals we've had two two-day Retreats we've done some really important and work valuable work and we've only just set the stage for what's yet to come so we have a lot to be proud of and trust me it gets so much easier after the first year because everything is at new and we don't have to search for superintendent next year it's so much easier after the first year [Laughter] uh I am Jay number one executive session for Senator Ohio rise code 121.22 G1 is hereby moving the board to turn to Executive session for the purpose of considering the employment employee second please call the roll all right hi hi at 7 37 pm before everyone leaves