HUHS Board of Education Meeting - April 17, 2023

001awesome thank you foreign it is 5 50 and I'm calling the meeting to order and up next on our agenda is swearing in of the newborn member which is myself taking my turn thank you everyone up next is the roll call attendance Mrs Jack I'm just going to take a second to get back to her seat for that Tracy Hannah's here Craig Westfall here Don pridemore is absent Jim gum yeah and Ross Kirk here up next is our Pledge of Allegiance please rise for the pledge and face the flag over there Mary Becker is going to lead us in our pledge tonight I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you Mary is there a motion to adopt the agenda as

002presented so I'd like to make a motion to amend the agenda in light of Mr Pride we're not being here I'd like us to remove the closed session at the end of the meeting regarding the superintendent's evaluation I feel that we all should be here when we are working on this and I think I think a second Craig let's get a second and then let's discuss it okay so we have a motion to amend the agenda by removing the closed session that comes at the end of our meeting this evening is there a second second okay so go ahead with your discussion of that I guess my only point is um I feel at this point in the school year that we need to have all board members present when we're discussing the superintendent's evaluation

003so I would like us to move it to possibly a special meeting or the next one thank you to be determined yeah I agree I mean we all had committed to being here this evening and completing it as a board know that an alternative that I thought of is that I could offer to meet with Mr pridemore possibly tomorrow or talking tomorrow to get his input on it um I am leaving to go out of town for a week starting well actually Wednesday I'm traveling to so basically tomorrow's the last day I'm available until the 27th so that's something to keep in mind as well and this is something that we had committed to getting done as early as the beginning of April as possible okay Mr curly okay so we have a motion and

004a second to amend the agenda by removing the closed session that comes at the end of the meeting for the purpose of superintendent evaluation all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion carries you will amend the agenda with the removal of that closed session at the end I would also like to make a motion to move our discussion with possible action for policy 754 0.09 to the beginning of the new business list is there a second on that yeah second if I Mr Gum thank you um I moved I was proposing that because I believe we have some folks in the audience who may be interested in attending that discussion and so I made that may be beneficial to moving to the top of the order is there any further discussion

005hearing none all those in favor of moving this letter item I under new business um to the front of the list so before a signify by saying I I any opposed I opposed want to post um motion carries majority has a motion to move that to the beginning of the agenda for new business so we now have an agenda with amendments deleting the closed session at the end of the meeting and moving item I to the front of the list for new business is there a motion to adapt the agenda as amended motion by Mr Curley is there a second by Mr Gum all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion carries we will roll forward with the meeting as um the amended agenda up next is our recognitions we have

006some staff recognitions this evening great thanks everybody um first we have a couple of staff to recognize uh the first one you've heard a little bit about previously tonight we won the formal hearing 185 000 or 925 for the district as an award from the Washington County Health and Human Services Department these awards were based upon the highest scores out of 90 points and applications that adhere to the implementation of evidence-based programs that supported a coordinated Community crisis response so again if Dr Dean and the members of the mental health Team could stand and we would like to recognize you for your very very important work I would also like to obviously thank the Washington County as they've obviously played a very good or important role in making those funds available for people like Stacy

007and our team so again thanks to Washington County leaders and then at this time I'd like to turn it over to Maryland Christian our HR supervisor who would like to make a very special recognition of our educator of the year Nancy's first teaching job was at Willow Glen Academy a residential treatment center in Milwaukee teaching kids with severe autism and our schizophrenia she thought it will Willow Glen for four years she then accepted a special education position within a Menomonee Falls School District while there she taught in an elementary school a middle school a junior high school during the year she taught Menomonee Falls Nancy was part of many different committees mentored new teachers and supported many student teachers after 27 years Nancy decided to pursue a new Direction and accepted a position teaching special

008education at Hartford Union High School everyone at hohs was still helpful and friendly and accommodating that made this transition to the new environment less stressful once she settled in Nancy has never looked back and she has been so very thankful and blessed for all the new friendships she has made she has met so many wonderful amazing people students families and co-workers and continues to learn and grow from all she has encounter Nancy's favorite part of teaching is watching the students blossom and grow both academically and socially she loves getting to know the many different personalities that come through her class and seeing them get as a it's seeing them as a group and become like a family this will be Nancy's fifth year working at h2hs and we are very honored to have her as

009one of our educators congratulations on being selected the 2023 e2hs educator of the year so it's actually really neat that our largest crowd of the Year came out to support Nancy's uh recognition as educator of the year but in all seriousness Nancy's a really great person a great teammate the great advocate for the kids that she serves um she commits to serving students with some of our most significant disabilities and as a former special ed teacher I'm super proud of the work that you do each other congratulations Nancy um next I would like to recognize our March rotary students of the month Mary bechter is ranked sixth 17th in the senior class has taken a number of honors and advanced placement classes taking college credits here through UW oshkosh's cap program Mary has served on

010our student council NHS environmental Club the school newspaper stage crew for the fall musical but on the swim team and is one was in choir for all four years congratulations Mary Becker there are some questions waiting for you um so after high school I plan to attend Loyola University in Chicago with a major in English some advice that I'd give to incoming freshmen is just established good study habits because I know that what you've established Russian year kind of remains with you for all four years as for my favorite memory is while I've been at hohs it's probably got to be when we went to on the choir trip over spring break this year it was just an enjoyable time and I'm really glad that we could do that following all of what kovid didn't

011allow us to do that that was just an available opportunity awesome congratulations and then our second Rotary student of the month is Sierra Lawson Sierra's range sixth in the class of 2023. she also has taken a number of honors and AP courses as well as the first two years of the Project Lead the Way biomedical strand she has served on student council stage crew NHS FFA and also plays softball where she's been recognized as an all-conference performer as well as being named captain you may have also seen Sierra volunteering in the community ringing some bells for civilization army or decorating downtown for Christmas congratulations Tiara Lawson um so after high school I will be attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison and majoring in biomedical engineering um advice that I would give to freshmen is just to

012get involved in as many things as possible I know I met some of my best friends through different clubs and activities that I probably wouldn't have met otherwise and it's just great to get involved and try a bunch of do a bunch of different and new things um and then my favorite memory here at HHS would probably be this last spring break when myself and the softball team travel down to Tennessee and even though all of our games got rained out it was still really fun to bond with the team the whole week so awesome thanks Sierra and then our last recognition tonight is there is a group of individual individuals who are from some familiar faces but also have achieved some so there are 190 students from this year's graduating class that are awarded

013ten thousand dollar scholarships from the herb Cole Foundation and during my time in education I don't recall many other high schools however have had three people recognized in one year and again let me reiterate not one not two but we have three outstanding students from the same High School awarded this very prestigious recognition these students are recognized for their academic Excellence as well as their broad range of work and leadership in our community if my friends Hirsch Patel Elena push and Adam Moyer to please stand so we can recognize you on this great accomplishment nice job guys and again best of luck to all of you there is as part of our academic Excellence all out front a location for the herb call scholarships and as you can take a look at that on your

014way out tonight you will see that Hartford Union High School has never had more than two in a given year received this honor so again we have three of the 190 recognized in the state of Wisconsin here at Hartford Union High School so again congratulations and that is all the recognitions for this evening thank you Mr Walters up next is our public comment section there were four people that signed up on our list to address the board this evening is there anybody who would like to address the board that did not sign up on this list when they walked in okay seeing none so we do have four signed up we do try to limit it to a maximum of 10 minutes to begin the meeting so um Janet would you help me with the

015timer and set a timer to two minutes per speaker I was just not clarified 10 minutes total right Tracy yes ten minutes total not per speaker we'll be here for a long time so let's try two minutes per speaker great thank you and so when I'm going to read our public comments section of our agenda per public for board policy this meeting is a meeting in the Hartford Union High School District Board of Education and public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not a public community meeting the public is welcome to address the board public common for this meeting is limited to items that are posted on the agenda each person wishing to make public comments will have time to make them as determined by the presiding officer the board

016or Administration May respond to your comments at a later date you may also provide your comments with copies to each board member and the superintendent no public comment will be heard that the presiding officer deems to be critical of an individual or group either by name or reference also per board policy the presiding officer May interrupt warn or terminate a speaker's statement when the statement is too lengthy personally directed abusive obscene or irrelevant please direct any such comments to the principal or the superintendent for administrative action comments on other agenda items and non-agenda items should be submitted in writing or email with copies to each board member and the superintendent we do have four people signed up so I'm going to ask you individually to step up to the podium to address the board when

017you give to the podium please state your name and which agenda item you are speaking to so up first we have Ann ohm hi my name is Ann ohm and I am here that the discussion about with possible action prohibited materials and images thank you so I've lived in Hartford for nearly 30 years and I have three children uh two who have graduated from hohs and one who is still at HHS I am so disappointed to hear that our district is considering Banning any books and especially if it's led by people who are untrained and cherry picking books to ban based on a national Hysteria what does it mean to ban books Banning books is a form of censorship which limits critical thinking and stifles creativity the ability to read about diverse perspectives and ideas

018is crucial to personal growth and intellectual development Banning books also limits educational opportunities for our children students should have access to a wide range of materials to challenge and expand their understanding of the world finally Banning books restricts freedom of expression and our right to access information even if it's controversial or unpopular if a parent has a concern about a child's ability to handle this her genre let's leverage our technology like Skyward to limit their permission to read the books don't censor the right from my child to access the title because the internet says that reading a book from the perspective of an LGBT person might turn your child gay it won't or reading about the very real racism in our country will make your kid feel bad it should right now my daughter an

019huhs graduate is getting her master's degree in library and information science Librarians don't just sit behind a desk and shush people who make too much noise they go through extensive training to select books that have literary merit and are relevant for curriculum student interests and diversity as well as being age appropriate I trust our trained Librarians to make good book selections for our libraries people in favor of banning books do not find themselves on the right side of History I'm very disappointed that this has even been considered in our district time thank you up next we have Michelle you hello my name is Michelle Yu and I live in Hartford and my two daughters attend this school I am a degree Library professional a former HMHS librarian and I'm asking this board to stop its

020overreach and trying to remove books from huhs library and also trying to change the current selection and deselection criteria in board policy and administrative guidelines 2522 to meet the required time limit this is an Abridged version of the letter I have shared with you all my first issue is transparency transparency has been a big talking point and promise of many of you on this board I don't feel the details of this issue have been transparently conveyed to our community I couldn't find the list or the reasoning against the 40 to 200 books that are purportedly on the list that I heard about at the teaching and learning committee who made the list where is it published how can we the citizens accurately voice our opinions to you our elected representatives if we can't access the

021details we need transparency and clarity as do you before action is taken my second issue is doing what is right for all of the teenagers in our high school district this is our district our teenagers we are not talking about the needs of K-8 children in this state or any others one reason I have heard is that we are protecting our students who is the Arbiter of what they need protecting from our students need and deserve access to all kinds of subjects some of which are going to make you uncomfortable but as this is the real world unfortunately many of our students are living these lives encountering this language in these situations they need to know they are not alone every student needs to see themselves in books in this Library please leave the national

022book Banning political agenda out of our district and out of our library I urge you to stop any action that changes current Library material selection policies and guidelines and not to proceed with a arbitrary book rating system designed by some moms um any internal book reviews thank you Michelle up next is Louise shrunk good evening I am also talking about the policy 7540.09 as a parent a citizen and also a school board member I'm here to ask one question are you supporting the mission and divisions of your school your mission let me repeat it we engage in support all Learners to discover the passions achieve High academic goals and contribute to a global Society your vision part of it says we cultivate a spirit of inquiry to bring meaning and application to knowledge ban one

023book and where does it stop you truly need to ask yourselves why you believe your Authority as a school board member is choosing for one student what they can and can't read are you a trained librarian in closing I share a section from Pan America 100. the climate of book Banning is undermining the professional direct discretion of Educators and Librarians when it comes to matters of public education and disrupting the potential for Effective relationships between parents teachers and administrators that can actually serve to advance student learning and Civic engagement thank you for your time thank you Andy deedelmeyer evening I'm also here talking about the proposed change materials I'm handy Dino Meyer I live on core Drive in Hartford my kids have all gone to school here I have one child left in school who's

024going to be graduating in spring so you wouldn't think I'd have much in the game but historically the Banning of books is perceived as unnecessarily restrictive and suppressive any action to try and control what others can read based on subjective personal feelings in action to limit freedom of choice if you really believe it necessary to limit this free Freedom of Choice can you also justify the time and money spent on the process of determining which books to deactivate when nearly everyone has a computer in their pocket with access to these same books how is spending time money money energy or resources on this proposed project going to benefit the education of our students if the goal of the district is to improve the value of the education provided to the students at huhs there are

025many other issues with greater relevance and higher return value to focus our time energy and money on thank you thank you and that is all for our public comments section this evening up next we have reports and Communications we do not have student board Representatives present this evening so we will start with our Communications about donations from Mr Walters great thank you Tracy the first donation we have is from gfwc Hartford Women's Club the amount of thousand dollars with 500 going towards the Day of Service which is May 17th for those interested and also 500 going towards our best buddies program so again thank you to the Hartford Women's Club and then also you have a donation from Dr Mark lindborg and Miss Laurie Parsons in the amount of a thousand dollars in that monetary

026donation is going to our robotics Club so again thank you to Mark Lindberg and Lori Parsons and that's all the donations we have this evening thank you Mr Walters and then next is our administrative reports and board dialogue starting with our superintendent's report okay just a quick item while we call up our Performance Services uh friends um the DECA International Career Development conference is in April those individuals leave April 21st and return on Tuesday the 25th that was a trip that we previously approved a reminder three uh four individuals are going uh three male students from Hartford High School one female student going to Orlando Florida again for clarity they also are sharing the responsibility with the chapter from Port Washington so as an example that one female student will be rooming with another girl

027from the other chapters I'm just going to update you that we are all set for that Deca trip again leaving April 21st any questions about that Mr Walters I believe I'd ask you are I know they are sharing responsibilities that there's more than one chaperone in charge of the group combined then correct correct so they share the ownership of the students and again the boardwalk Washington or helps us with the overall supervision of those students and then remind me again where is the trip going to Orlando traveling together to Orlando Port Washington yes I don't know that Mr Holmes different flights okay thank you any other questions from board members right well then that's on the agenda is our Performance Services update um a couple of board members are members of a from our finance

028and Facilities committee so they've certainly heard and seen some of this information previously um our friends from Performance Services have presented um to the full board before tonight they're going to bring back just a refresher course and some of that work that they've done but also um begin to have some conversations about the financial uh challenges that some of their findings in the audit poses to the board for some questions and conversations to be had so I'll turn it over to Lauren do you have a PowerPoint to share with you again just uh overview um we wanted to just get the board the update from the last time we met on the work that we've done uh just a reminder for those of you of my name is Lauren Warner with PSI I'm a business

029development manager and we have Craig strand of him here because our senior architect who is Milwaukee buildings and over McCoy are we good I sent it to you last week okay we'll be doing in a second all right well we can just start so um first slide we wanted to just kind of recap the approach so at the beginning of the walk the facilities with our architecture engineer to do that facility audit we also want the exterior exterior grounds had programming meetings with all the stakeholders and administration to collectively understand maybe certain challenges that they're facing or also things that we're working well um in those certain spaces so after we interviewed the stakeholders and went through the survey and building assessment we took all that information from the report and tried to Source out

030certain solutions that came out of those findings and so from that facility report and the programming study we then moved into identifying those priorities those needs and trying to assess what solution it would best suit Hartford and what cost would be associated with that so in doing those um just to recap kind of the district and building leadership meetings and team that we met with on the 16th we met with superintendent facilities director to identify those priorities and talk through the cost estimates we met with the facility committee on April 5th to also preview them and get them up to speed on the things that we had shared with the board and also start digging into those certain priorities uh we met we had an Athletics update that we needed to get back into the

031programming facility study we had some challenges due to the to the weather so we had an opportunity to meet with your athletic director and coaches to kind of fill in those those pieces which we do have um and then on the 11th we met with your your citizens advisory committee to also give them that preview of the work that had been done up to this point and we are here now reporting the findings to you um again most of this you know in today's uh purpose is really to just kind of help you understand how we prioritized and estimated the things that came out of those studies and answer any questions of that you can see we still have kind of a to be determined review and prioritization of those Solutions with the citizens advisory

032committee so that would be the next step after fun all right I'll turn it over correct yeah so um as we were working through these potential projects project um we basically put them into four buckets yeah so infrastructure learning and education exterior facilities and Athletics and the long-term master plan and then within those buckets we arranged them into a high medium and low uh kind of priority and the idea there is that you know you want to try to address your highest priorities as soon as possible with medium required than your lowest priorities to be either push down further into like a 10-year plan or maybe there's something that's just kind of malicious these prioritizations are again they're from PSI they're done in the vacuum they're not necessarily reflective of the of any direct input

033from any of the Committees that I've met so far so we're seeking that input from from the school board as well as the citizens facility um let's see next well actually let's go you'll see most of the infrastructure these are going to be your mechanical systems building envelope issues Ada concerns see again the most critical and the high next right learning and education kind of the same thing here we've got some spaces that haven't been addressed in a significant amount of time and some furniture needs for learning spaces things like that exterior facilities and Athletics we have several several issues different athletic facilities serving capacities for the district across practice field conditions and the long-term Master fund you can see that this one there's nothing in the high category that makes sense makes sense because

034long-term master plan needs things further down the list right so those things that are not the highest priorities but wish list or further and then we took the same list and put it into a sortable format and this is more of a working document is something to use with committees with the board to basically put those different projects into a full priority list right now this is the list of everything that we had allocated as high into being reviewed readjusted holistic media now we're I don't think the intent tonight is to go into any of these in depth it's really just to kind of push that touch that to the community to go over again so there are any specific questions I'm more than happy to answer them I uh one note too as we

035were going through and looking at the um a couple things things to just notice we were attempting to put that into sort of a list is we're taking either current projects um or certain means or square footage areas so those are meant to be one-for-one replacement obviously there's efficiencies that would go into those numbers as you would move into design our recommendations are always to see if there are certain things on the list that would make sense to go together into a project to try and bundle those so that again you're not doubling up on certain labor costs or equipment costs if you're touching one space you wouldn't want to go back in a year or two later and have to redo the work that was previously done so certain things like that need to

036be taken into account as well um but definitely I just wanted to give you that snapshot of if you were going to do this today um or in one two three years kind of what that estimated cost will look like so those numbers have not been out no design has been into it it's just sort of uh purely that estimate board members and board members if you haven't seen there's I'm also worth noting there are some that are on there without cost that's because they came out of a meeting with Mr Helms more recently and we're still working on those boxes I guess I have a question Jeff it's probably more for you than it is for performances Performance Services sorry but a question I have for you as board members start to look at

037this information if they have questions or concerns should they contact you or attend the citizens advisory committee what do you think is the best way for board members to handle it Ross certainly turns the community and finance community has processed some of this so maybe it's appropriate to hear some of the thoughts or questions committee perspective and then we can do you want to do that now are you want to wait for committee reports yeah we can wait for committee do you have any specific questions the process going forward now that I know I've been at a couple of meetings and I've had a chance to look at this spreadsheet before but I don't know if all the board members have had that opportunity yeah so I think it's um important obviously Mr norder is

038our director of buildings and grounds Ross in the committee of the citizens advice advisory committee as well upon approval of those members later this evening one of the things the committee wrestled with was what to put out publicly in front of the full board for them to take a look at and consider and talk about and all of that and the committee came to the conclusion that it was important that the entire board see all of the recommendations from the audit no matter where I or Ross or Glenn or Scott or any of us felt these are performance service analysis it's their assessments their prioritization it's theirs and now as a district Wherever We Stand individually will have to process through with a combination of those bodies of committees billboard District leadership next steps to

039address the other part of it is you know Glenn's open to possibly address some of this budget still at this point so there might be a couple of items you can certainly check off that are more important that are certainly within the budgeted dollars we have this year but there's these are big numbers again this is a full facility audit that certainly brings a high price tape so and we'll have to be very strategic and guide and support to Citizens advisory committee engage our community further around some of these difficult conversations thank you and I'm just a reminder all board members are welcome to attend the citizens advisory committee needs correct that is correct thank you thank you for your work you've been here often and we really appreciate it I'm in my last um

040quick update I did want to update the board that we did secure from the school perception surveys a common theme analysis that we did include in your packets we as District officials leaders have not had an opportunity to completely um wrap our minds around that have conversations it is on the agenda for our cabinet meeting tomorrow but again School perceptions does an analysis report that identifies and represents themes collected through the commons for each of the surveys originally they were going to do just a parent and a staff analysis but they ended up doing an analysis of all three parent staff and student so again in your packet you can see the total number of survey respondents the total number of respondents who shared a comment the total number of respondents who shared more than

041one comment and then certainly the major themes affiliated with each of those surveys and again we will take a look at that for the first time tomorrow in our cabinet meetings and talk about some next steps in regards to how to utilize some of that feedback that we got from that analysis any thoughts or questions on that you know I appreciate that we went through this next step to have school perceptions put these together for us because there were quite a lot of comments to to go over individually as board members so this is nice to have it wrapped up into a report with themes and um the example comments that relate to those things so glad we've got a chance to see that through I appreciate it great that is all for the superintendent

042report this evening thank you Mr Walters um up next is our leadership team update from Mr Glenn norter he's going to speak to us about the room number update as you know since Hartford Union High School was built many years ago there's been many had to put on the building there's been some facelifts done in the building which has caused some numbering to go on which created some issues with sequences and um flow so at the end of summer there was there was discussion about renovering the classrooms and a plan was put together and um it was put together pretty quickly and we decided that we needed this back off slow down a little bit and we put a committee together to take a look at renumbering the the classrooms in the building and also

043the outside entrances and we called on Performance Services to do us another service and that's to help us to put a numbering system together and I would I will tell you the committee met quite often on this they saw many plans we dissected many different ways of doing it but the committee finally came up with a plan that we thought was very workable for the school you all should have received a copy in your package of that of that new plan I will tell you that at one of our last meetings the one statement that I was waiting to hear principal lamb said and she said it now has good flow and that's what we're looking for now you can take any plan and pick it apart and say well why is it not odd

044even and things like that but we thought the way that it felt was the best format for the school and the best format to run through and get that flow we were looking for so um again I think the committee for doing a lot of hard work on that um again we like I said we met a lot I think Craig but I think we've come up with a uh room numbering system that will work well um again we'll also be renovering all the exterior doors because there were some exterior doors that did not have numbers on them which does not meet codes we have to make sure that we go through and redo all those starting in the front of the building and working our way around the building in the manner that the

045police and fire um uh dictate the way we do it so again I think we came up with a great solution um I think everybody at the end agreed with a good it was a good solution now this is going to create some some work for some people I.T is going to have to do a lot of work re-dumbering numbers and all of their data stuff um are her name is escape me the lady that puts together all of her scheduling um Taylor thank you she will have a lot of work to do and uh the building and grounds department will have a lot of work to do also because they have to go to Every panel box now and relabel what breaker serves what classroom and what area of the building so there's some

046like words can be done but we all feel confident we get us done um if you walked around the building you've noticed that um Janet has done a great job of creating a new numbering papers on on the wall in fall this is what your number will now be so I think um they've done a great job of getting this together so that when the fall term begins um we'll be ready to go within the numbering system thank you Glenn can we ask you a question if we have one sure awesome as a person who's not in this building every day when somebody says to me come and exit eight or use the door at exit 12. I'd buy numbers that's hard for me and so I guess as a as a late person who's

047not in this building every day um I was wondering if the committee had considered labeling such as you know North exits 12 or something like putting a direction on there or is it strategic to not have those directions on there you know I don't know static or not I've never really seen them done with a lettering sequence in front of the number um all the information that I've worked with placed in fire on it's just been numbered the door and you number it in a sequence and I I apologize you should know this you either go clockwise or counterclockwise help me out it's like counter counterclockwise so if you know the front of the building starts at one counterclockwise you move around the building and go that way that way and that's like I said

048that's driven by police and fire opponents how that's done so okay well it's great to have their input on that's super important to appreciate that one of the things I've seen to resolve some of that issue is when people approach campus some of the high school studies I've seen after you have signage outside that advertises actually it's 12-24 so at least when you're driving in you have an idea of where Exit 12 might be based on some of the door signage and I think that's something we can certainly look at as well I mean I know where 12 is if somebody were to say another number right now I probably would have to you know where 12 is for a couple more months though right well I'm looking at the map it's changing right yeah

049so I will be confused next year so I I think you uh Lieutenant Walters for bringing that up because we're going to do the same thing inside the building is we are going to do some signage throughout the building that points you in the right direction 100 this way 200 this way and things like that that will help so I think we can follow that definitely follow that same pattern outside thank you any questions from other board members anything further all right thank you very much up next we have our principal update from Miss Kelly lamb thank you good afternoon or good evening everybody so right now we'll talk about the Staffing changes for each department from last year to this year so what I did I broke it down by each department and the

050change in ftes e FTE stands for full-time equivalent so a teacher would have a boyfriend all that would be full-time so for age science and art we did stay the same one good thing about art is that we did add another AP course offering which is AP art history we do have two teachers and we do share an art teacher with joint one for business we did have an increase of 0.83 FTE the reason why it's not one point always because last year two teachers did take on an extra course for an overload so then by having a full-time teacher we are applying a depending on we can advertise it for 1.0 FTE but just financially it's not a full financial obligation of 1.0 so last year we did actually have to eliminate two one-term

051courses just do it a budgeting and availability and the opportunity to actually hire a business teacher so now what we have is an increase of interest in courses and now we can offer more courses through that elective for English we did have a decrease of 0.5 FTE and that was because last year and semester we added 0.5 ftes was because we had multiple courses with over 30 students so now if you sell out from last year this year is our family consumer sciences that stayed the same for a math and computer science we did increase by 0.5 fde and part of that is for the edition of Esports and BC calc we did not run last year this year we have 37 students interested in taking BC cup which is quite a increase also this

052year we did have we posted for a math opening for second semester unfortunately we could not find a math teacher so instead we did have a long-term sub so our hope for next year by having a 1.0 we will get a better app the next we do have music staying the same if I had health we did have the bundle course of biofoid Health which will run each block because we had a lot of students interested in that course which is great science will stay the same social studies would increase by 0.5 FTE and that mean driver was decreasing the large class sizes in such a small classroom so last year we did a better job of decreasing the class sizes and social studies was one area that now even opportunity for tech ed we

053do have a decrease of 0.2 FTE but that's basically driven by a flexibility of Staffing it was like numbers as our tech department is still strong so that was just working with individuals World Language so nobody's sleep no right it's just a different FTE okay thank you and it actually is not reducing the number of courses taught either it's only some of the other additional time like Oriole time or prep that is that reduction so there's not a decrease in courses so that individuals still teach three classes so just just to clarify just because now I'm I'm kind of getting lost in the details too so is anybody's job being decreased and we are not eliminating any position okay so there's somebody's full so if you have three full-time there's still three full-times okay staff

054member requested flexibility in his schedule to accommodate some possible family challenges wanted to make sure we retained he's still teaching and awarding six credits next year just like a full-time teacher but you will have less time in the building which is where the reduction is coming from this is based upon his request I will say if something does fall through with what's going on in the family we would increase it to one point so This Is Us trying to be flexible with this individual to routine staff and work with their family situation I don't want to get into it because of service and all that makes sense yeah it makes sense thank you um with World Language we are a decreasing of one course so the reason why this is a little different is this

055is due to an agreement with Hartford Joint one they requested more Spanish ftes at the middle school so we're being flexible with them and but again that stays the same as a 1.0 ft for that individual then special education we are having an increase of 1 0.0 and that is due to the amount of so here's kind of an overall summary we are having an increase of 1.13 total ftes for general education and an increase of 1.0 ft for special education as I stated earlier it's an increase when the monastery piece which is an individualized education program and another reason is next year we're going to have a higher enrollment for our freshmen which is about 30 kids more than we have in our prior courses so 367s are anticipated incoming freshman class which as

056you can see is at least 30 kids more than digital other classes foreign do we put a cap on number of students that can say open enroll to our district for special uh Special Special Ed I know Dr gain spoke on open enrollment I believe it was a January and that's dependent on our research there's a couple obligations so let's let's talk about that a little bit more though so we don't accept direct open enrollment for students who are in special education but as a Union High School District we do accept all students who have been identified as a special ed around on AP from our ke districts so when they make those decisions as teams and add the numbers of special ed students in their districts our agreement with them is we want to

057continue that K-12 experience we would not want to say no to any families who have that anticipation that their full 12 years of experience in the Hartford schools sure and I understand and that's where I was kind of getting at I'm hoping that our students get first dibs if you want to say to get in um so if we put that you know not allow Outsiders is a bad word but um people from outside the district in before we already know care of what we have coming in because that was just my question to make sure we're we're taking care of our own before we left others in okay um just to be clear though we're taking care of all of the students who attend the K-8 districts they're not all necessarily District students though

058so they could open enroll from from Germantown to Holy Hill have an IEP and we would accept them as our own as a as a student with an IEP who has been accepted by a K-8 so if they were to come directly from Germantown to Hartford High School no but since they've gone to one of our key feeders with an IEP we then take care of them regarding their experience at the K-8 theater they don't necessarily have to be a District student okay I understand yep okay any other questions and we should celebrate that projection of freshmen by the way so that looks really nice up there um I do know that the trend is less students in school um at the younger ages so we hope to certainly continue that moment rejection about less

059and less kids enrolling at the really early Elementary ages across the across the country frankly but specifically in our area I do have a question about the World Language decrease of one course this is due to agreement with heifer joint one so what does that mean for our students here who are in World Language are we having bigger classes are there bigger numbers of students in their classes or how does that impact huhs when we first had a look to see how it impacts hohs so that's our first priority is what we see and we had the opportunity to be flexible in this situation with the numbers and continue the courses so the numbers weren't concerning to you but what we have here no okay otherwise we would have had a different discussion okay so

060if we didn't we have had to let that person go not necessarily I think there is an opportunity but when you look at the the balance and working with our community schools it was feasible with still with the class sizes because there was only one class so that kind of creates a little bit more flexibility and that teacher does also have ell with her too so it's kind of a hybrid of a position okay the challenge of Staffing with those types of conversations is you want to try to make as many people a whole as possible in a way that is necessary and appropriate you do not want to advertise an 83 percent position in any area especially in the many areas that have been out I'm super high heat areas so that's kind of

061Choice here was we don't want to listen full-time the choices continue to help support joint one or we would have found another opportunity that maybe once have existed if we were tighter with them maintenance department we did look at a possible maybe one teacher having an overload to kind of negate that as well but it just didn't seem worthwhile so we did look at many different options okay thank you any other questions from board members thank you miss Lamb up next is our board committee updates uh let's start with Finance facilities and operations all right so as you've heard from Performance Services we have a large undertaking one going forward you've heard from them you've heard from Mr Walters but what we what we have going on Lee Tracy and Craig were at the last

062meeting it's kind of an eye-oper for what we we saw in the price tag costing these days for it to face it keep on their school and it's no surprise that the prices have gone up since our last since last year since I've failed referendum and my thoughts are if we don't get a plan a plan of action soon with his prices continuing to go up district is going to have a sec unfortunately some programs both academic and co-curricular because we are one unwilling to pay for them so my suggestion was we wanted to bring bring this list to the board to have to have everyone look at it especially the people that weren't there and help us prioritize what we have here to kind of feel it out go from there that was performed

063services part of that committee and there's other things touched on the numbering and sorts but you know the big one was um the upkeep of the building the surprises just keep going up it's astronomical how much things are costing you know and so earlier we're gonna have to do something or it's going to cost us even more we have to fix it and you're at the mercy of any contractor that's going to gouge gouge it because you need it and they have it and they're not going to budge so unfortunately we need to look at something to get something going soon so thank you Mr Curley any questions for Mr Carley all right um have a personnel and organizational management committee yes the uh so some things we talked about was the field trip policy

064um looking for maybe some clarification or making sure that we're able to continue some of the trips that we've we've had in the past and making sure we're putting together effective trips as well to also discussed the selecting student teachers administrative interns the Staffing update that pretty much is what Kelly had presented here and then also looking And discussing job descriptions so really the only thing that came to the to the board per se was Kelly's update of the staff thank you Mr Westfall any questions for Mr Westfall all right up next community and legislative engagement committee that committee did not meet and then our curriculum teaching and learning committee did meet on April 12th um our agenda included the library plan Journey Mr Mike McIntyre helped present that and he is working on further

065details that I believe we'll see them like will we see them next month thank you and then we also talked about our library media specialist current Staffing and future needs policy 754 0.09 it was up for discussion at our committee meeting and that is also later in our agenda this evening and then we also talked a little bit further about our selection and deselection practices for our reading materials so as you can tell our agenda was based primarily around our reading materials policy 754 0.09 was a part of it on per advisement from legal Mr Walters Mr McIntyre and myself um were on a phone call with our attorney February is it February March it was in March during one of our ah okay and so when when we spoke with our attorney um asking

066questions about which policies do we have in place that we need to consider when taking a look at our our reading materials she did refer to um our policies two five two one two five two two and seven five four zero point zero nine and again during a recent discussion um our attorney did direct me back to that 7540.09 and so that is why you see that on her agenda this evening to be clear the reason why that is on on the agenda and part of our committee was because we were primarily talking about books that have sexual sexually explicit language and sexually explicit violent language in them and so are that policy does refer to prohibited materials which does refer to to different um materials and items of that sort that relate to that

067so that's why that is a part of that discussion I did email the board members this afternoon as well as there are copies at your table spot so that you can see these are I think there's six different ones here I just basically found the ones that were one sheet long for efficiency so these are excerpts with some of the language that I'm referring to when we talk about sexually explicit first six of the books that are in our collection and so that's just there as an example so that you cannot get an idea of what we've been talking about when referring to um which types of materials we may want to take a look at a review in our collection are there any questions about that yes I'd like to point out that created

068our community for committees this policy that you're referring to was part of the finance facilities and operations so why was that not part of activity but part of yours so when we um looked into it further that policy excuse me could be applied to our our reading materials which is up for discussion by the curriculum instruction committee and so it was an under advisement from our attorney that then is the policy that we take a look at I also didn't um see that on there are other committee was actually in the position to to take a look at that policy related to our reading materials at that time so wait a minute [Music] okay so you were also at the finance facilities and operations even though you're as a guest wouldn't it have been appropriate

069at that time to mention that you're going over this I mean I didn't know you were discussing this until I saw the agenda for your meeting last week I mean and you and I spoke specifically about the parameters of each meeting in which policy falls under each committee a month ago and you and I thought we were in agreement on that based on what you had given us on February 7th of of dividing the workload of the policies and then which specific series would be covered by each you completely disregarded that the members of that community can I talk now the the way we divided up the policies was in efforts to have board members actively engaged in going over policies as they apply to work that we're doing they were guidelines for efficiency's taken

070to get the work done so in this instance that policy applied to work that this committee was doing I I mean it looks like you're choosing what you want to do this is under advisement from archery and and that's I I just shared that with you and Mr Walters and Mr McIntyre were also involved in that phone call I did attend the finance facilities and operations committee meeting I'm not in charge of that agenda I did attend it and it was not on the agenda so I didn't feel it was my place to mention it at that committee meeting just as we adhere to an agenda here we hear two agendas at our committee meets as well noted any other questions or comments from other board members can I just try to offer some clarity

071on that um in regards to the conversation with whom I believe that certainly identified an opportunity to address the interest in the topic by going to 75 or zero culture yeah yes um and that was an Avenue diversity possibly movement because one of the questions I've asked in this whole conversation is you know we have 25 21 and 25 22 that certainly do identify the instructional materials and also the library materials and to me the are focused on the materials and the policies that guide some of that whereas the policy in the 7000 certainly speaks more about people so while there certainly could have been an opportunity to collaborate better and Trust teams of people working on this maybe it's an opportunity to think about whether our committee structure is effective or not and maybe

072uh an opportunity to work as a full board more in a workshop model might be to our advantage correct and I do um I do also want to point out that our attorney did bring up that policy in more than one conversation so I think initially she was saying let's take a look at all three of these um in more recent meetings with her um we we had already worked on 25 21 and 25 22 in some way shape or form and she had advised us to go back and take a look at 754 0.09 for efficiency's sake and also because now or not um also because she brought up that some districts may have two different policies that talk about how to apply prohibited materials to in two different ways across the school district

073we just have the one policy and so we need to take a look at the language there in terms of how we want to apply it and we can get into that more when we talk about new business um our school board report sorry is that all for committees our school board report is next the board president's report I just have a couple more things to to talk about um next month's meeting in May is our board reorganization meeting and so we will again be designated the roles which of the board for president vice president clerk Treasurer and then Our member at large or the person who does sub into our positions as needed also a part of that meeting we do designate our committees or a structure that the board is going to follow

074going forward this was our first year to re-establish and use the Committees I do believe that we came up with a good system our four different committees just like Craig referred to we tried to divide up the policies and responsibilities amongst the Committees so that we could be more engaged as board members do some some further discussion and work with our staff and then bring that knowledge to our board meetings it's it's worked to a point but in all honesty we know that we don't have the um we don't have the ability to have all five members actively engaged in those different committees we do know that Ross did share that his work schedule is going to get even more involved coming up ahead and so Ross is is not going to be able to

075be involved in committee means as as he had initially hoped you look puzzled I thought you shared that with me about a month ago that was me that said that yeah oh that was you sorry okay it was Craig so basically right now we've got Ross myself and Craig um the the main ones attending these committee meetings with Craig's work schedule getting more involved and is going to be on the backs of two folks which doesn't really quite seem like a very strong committee structure so please keep in mind what we want to do going forward as a board it is very valuable to be involved in getting information sharing information having um discussions and a more granular level then we can do a board business meetings because as you know they've gotten very long

076when we try to ask a lot of those questions in the past I can say that prior which I think about how many years ago two superintendents ago it started it continued with our last superintendent a little bit and also at the beginning when Mr Walters came on board um we had either committees or a workshop model so the workshop model was one additional meeting per month in addition to the board meeting the workshop model was more of a structure of what we experienced in our committee meetings where staff members can come to the table with board members and administration and we can work through some some issues some problems talk about possible solutions the board members can gain more information there was also an area for Committee Member community members to attend we've talked

077about that as well Mr Walters that's very valuable we've been able to have stakeholders participating in some of our committee meetings as we've invited or as they've been able to and our our district is also engaged in a lot of important work at the council level which will continue because that is headed up by our staff in our Administration so I guess my ask for you is between now and our May meeting think about what structure you see best going forward as an Engaged and educated board who can get some more information outside of our board business meetings I do believe the workshop model is one that we should consider going forward and it would likely entail one additional meeting per month we would then not have the board committees any longer um so something

078to consider if you have any questions please feel free to bring them to the meeting in May or discuss it with one other board member anything from board members okay I do also want to share that I attended the citizens advisory committee meeting um that was really awesome to see so many folks come around the table looking to participate and and help us with really digging down into what our district needs and um putting more perspectives together we did have quite an array of different representation from across our district and maybe some gaps there that we're looking to hopefully have fill in the in the near future but it was awesome to see so many people come together for that meeting I also wanted to mention I forgot to ask Miss Lynn when she was

079at the podium I know that we had Wendy Smith and Jason Wicks here at a meeting of I believe that was two meetings ago um presenting a little bit about a social issue that our students deal with and so it did bring up some questions that I had about school assemblies basically I know that when I attended high school here and I know a lot of students have experienced School assemblies um basically the school gathers students into the field house for a greater sense of community school spirit recognitions and celebrations which is something that miss Lamb did start our school on again this year for live speaking events they could be targeting a social emotional effort to address our staff of social emotional issues such as bullying teen suicide internet crimes and so that was

080a question that I've been asking Mr Walters recently as well as Miss gain and miss Lamb in terms of what our plan is going forward to to get our students together again maybe on a more regular basis or with a plan in place to have them experience that school assembly feel I know that we had do we just have one or two assemblies so far this year Mr Walters two okay so two assemblies so far both celebrations okay thank you and I do know that Miss Lam and Miss Gaine are working through some plans to embark on getting students together to address some some social issues that they face correct yeah I I think this is another good example where we have to respect all perspectives opinions thoughts in regards to what's appropriate what's not

081appropriate one works for one District might not work for another one works or one family might not work for another so as as we have some conversation about that if this District would mandate an assembly on top of the acts we'd have peoples who sign themselves out their kids would not stay in school um and just absolutely um look for an opportunity not to attend whereas you also have the other people who'll be like sign me up my kid needs this he's going and don't wait should he graduate from high school until we get through X number of comments right I do believe what we do in regards to focusing our graduation requirements on Life College and Career um is a great foundation for some of these conversations it's not just about coursework it's not

082just about classes it's not just about credits but I do believe that our district leadership takes seriously um servicing all kids regarding all challenges of being a high school student in today's and I think you know I certainly have great confidence in our high school leadership and those people making decisions about the appropriateness of these opportunities available to our students as they deem necessary so the future will we be hearing as a board from from yourself or Administration with the plan is for if there is a plan I should say a plan for an assembly or a plan for a way in which to serve kids I guess I'd be looking for both seven weeks of school left okay can I add some too yes go ahead I had a conversation with Kelly about this

083on Friday and she explained um her and Stacy and Wendy have gotten together and have talked about having a plan for to take action um she basically told me they want to do this right and they want to do it effectively um and they don't want to rush anything so with only a short amount of time left there might not be one this year um which kind of considering I've gone to these meetings with Wendy and have listened to him I feel it's important I think most parents should feel it's important because of the nature of what's going on on society and um it shouldn't be I can't speak for all parents but you know if you're not if you're not going to have these conversations with your kids at least let the experts have

084the conversation with your kid with their kids it's a reality and it's and it doesn't hit anybody until it actually happens in your home or you know somebody that you know this happens to so I've been a big supporter of this trying to get this out there and I know they have been working with me along along with Wendy and Jason to get this done and done kind of correctly and done it Tastefully so it does kind of hit home for students especially students because the cell phones and video games is dangerous I mean and I've learned a lot from those meetings that I've gone to and again I just want it done right and I don't want to rush anything though either so that's my two cents on it thank you Mr Curley so

085just to clarify we referring to um some something to address internet crimes against children correct thank you any other thoughts or questions from board members I don't think we should Rush give seven weeks of school left I mean how do you find and clarify the criteria for the assembly and I don't think we should try and do an assembly with just one specific topic I think we should make sure to learn we can cover up multiple things because we're not going to do an assembly every month right so I think it would be premature to jump the gun this year thank you Mr Westfall one more thing to add you know I'm talking with talking with parents and and some of the staff here I think it's important that you also have it where parents

086can hear this um and hear it from so you're being transparent I mean there's that buzzword again transparency but to be to let parents know what you know give them the option I know how many will show up I can tell you there's going to be about a handful which is sad because that's how it is for all you know meetings everything you know it's it it doesn't affect anybody until it happens to your family your kids or someone you know so I still think you should make it so parents can come and listen to it you know and not have to take off take off a date and that was one of the ideas too instead you know to get this point across is to have it at night or in the evening so

087parents don't have to take off of work so they can come and listen to this I would hope people would come and listen to this because like I said it just when you hear what goes on out there it's it can happen to anybody it can happen to 4.0 student varsity football player wrestler whatever and it can happen in anybody so it's it is that important and it's becoming a um big deal I mean it's it's you don't want to compare it to anything but it's like a drug addict and um so again that's that's where I'm at and hopefully that's it for you know thank you well that's all I have this evening for the port president update so we will roll forward into our agenda there is no old business so we will

088jump into the new business our amended agenda did did move the discussion with possible action for policy 7540.09 prohibited materials and images to the start of our new business I'm just scrolling to it in our packets so the reason this was included this evening did stem from our our attempt at discussing it in committee and we just thought we hit the point where we needed the whole word to discuss this and weigh in on it I will let you know that when I spoke with our attorney about this fee advised that we take a look at the second portion of this document where it says the foregoins shall not apply to Item B says textbooks or other writ materials designed for legitimate School authorized educational purposes such as human growth and development curricula for similar

089educational curricula her recommendation was that we consider striking that point um she feels that we just have this one policy regarding prohibited materials and images and to say that it applies in some ways in our district but not to our written materials could put the district into a a tough position in the public perspective if you take a look at the other points in the policy the one right below that talks about how things could be authorized by administration at the high school and so there is that point that would stay in there so that was just one of the suggestions I mean Jeff and I have talked about this policy Mike and I've talked about we talked about it at committee we've gotten advice from our attorney as well as Neola and in general

090it's not it's not worded great throughout the policy nor do we have other policies that help to apply this to what we have at the high school here so basically this discussion tonight is again an idea from our board in terms of some Direction Where We want to go with us because again specifically looking at um some of our reading materials it had more to do with the sexually explicit or violent language okay yes so you said you said you've spoken to the attorney multiple times right has any of that been written some of it has yes and some of it has been in an email yes so some of it so I guess my question why didn't you include that that the initial packet didn't even have the policy granted you can look it

091up but the policy there's no information here we normally review a policy we have red line or at least a discussion point in it this just listed the policy with a possible action well how do I contemplate an action when I don't know what we want to do because I read this and other than yeah that one little that point you said correct and so when I submitted it to Jeff and Janet I did bring up that my proposal was to strike that point B so that is not in this packet um and and that's that was not by by my design so and then I guess the other thing is is this like a Neola policy or is this a heart for district policy this was a Hartford District policy okay and depending on

092our based upon a conversation I had with our Neola rep this afternoon and then also he spoke to our previous rep we're one of one basically who has this power they are not aware of any other districts that they serve that have the policy at all and they cover the content of this policy again to the x 5 22 25 21 policies as well as their AUP policy in regards to inappropriate materials and images and things like that when I challenged him to there has to be more than that in regards to those three policies he said there is no other policies that Neola sponsors that covers anything in so is this a redundant policy then I mean are we are we Reinventing the Wheel by having our own District policy which then creates it's

093quite frankly a liability somebody in 2010 which nobody knows it or in 2017 when it was revised nobody the district chose to have this policy other districts have identified are other meal and policies that addresses the SE both from an instructional materials prohibited materials images so correct we could we could decide to go a completely different way and and have a different policy or add in some more applications into 25 22. okay I guess if we wanted to apply to library library discussion of this meeting I don't think we should take action by God here about five minutes before I finished work and I have no less than 20 emails of people talking about this and I don't think it's fair to our constituents to not have thoroughly reviewed that and then also what what

094is it the action from this policy as well as I'd like to see the our attorneys comments recommendations of this policy it's not that I don't believe you but to quote Jim who quoted President Reagan trust would verify and I and I I was thinking about it for this year speaking what she told me with this policy you know relating to striking that item B that was a phone conversation I don't have that in email I do have some emails from Shayna that talk um early in this process when we were trying to figure out which policies to look at and she was advising us to look at these three different policies she did email I believe it was Jeff myself and Mike with some recommendations one of which also spoke to possibly adopting a

095a rating system for books and she went into detail on three different possible rating systems so that's something else that we could take a look into and that's something that could be um incorporated into an existing policy and practice that we already have and I will look for that email to Steve do you remember Jeff if she advised anything further that I was part of so I didn't think of this meeting that we're going to do the change if we're evaluating books beforehand or from creating a rating system I mean quite frankly who who gets to create the rating system because I think that's a slippery slope that I don't think we want to go down and I know for a fact that the library here in town that I'm the vice president of the

096board has never received a challenged book and I would question whether this library has received one item I believe we have and it relating to the the different rating systems the one that Shayna advises to consider more strongly are the three is one that is most widely being used and adopted throughout the country so that's where that one came from but that again you're right that's that's not in this packet I need to have this discussion first to see where this board wanted to go and so I really appreciate you sharing your input thank you how do we control what kids read and watch on their phone because that's whatever we identify to a certain extent we're making vitamin and now we're the curious teenagers now gonna go look at the things that you're taking

097an issue so you've done the exact opposite of what you want to know okay I respect that that's your opinion um basically I was just taking a look at what we can control what we do have in-house in our district any other comments or questions from board members that kind of help direct us and where we're going next Mr Gum some educational points for myself I am superintendent um do we have a system in place right now for some of this material that's clearly more adult oriented that the kids have to get some type of parental permission I'm gonna check it out or no there is not a permission aspect but there certainly is an awareness aspect their awareness like like also like in our 14 year old go in and just check these out

098they could parents have access to the system that they'd be able to identify so they'd have to just on their own be checking to see what they could we've talked about in some of those conversations about an alert um about whether parents would be alerted upon books being checked out from the library we've talked about a lot of options and just to be clear if we were a couple of people that commented here none of these materials are anything that has to do with racism or diversity or lgbtq or anything like that that's had a very very explicit heterosexual activity and which you know Oliver payments I'm just trying to get information for myself here so these are these aren't currently books in the library and yeah okay I'll try another to make any comment

099on myself I'm on what part of the processes we have in place yeah I thought where you were going gym and speaking a little bit is I do believe uh in the processes that we have in place in regards to selection of materials deselection of materials and reconsideration and our contracted library media Specialists as well as our prior Waterbury media specialist to me have operated very similarly in regards to those processes and some of the materials I think and I don't know if it's what Tracy presented tonight or not but some of the materials that were kind of part of these conversations in recent weeks have already been a limited based upon that natural that that deselection process can you tell them a little bit more about what that deselection process no we're calling my

100friend Mr McIntyre because that might help clarify too just so you know they weren't deselected because they were brought up in a committee so one of our policies I'm sorry one of our policies does identify criteria for deselection correct and some of the time at one of the committee meetings a couple months ago spoke about that criteria and whether the criteria could be altered or adjusted uh to maybe be a bit tighter I guess for latter better words but all it might speak selected in the first was so a licensed library media specialist goes through a great deal of training and choosing works for a library our policy specifically talks about looking at the collection as a whole looking at where we may have gaps where we may need to have deselect materials because they're

101outdated or we were updated resource associated with that um our contracted LMS has given us a lengthy list of Library journals Library review sources that are used to make a determination and she said that typically a librarian uses a minimum of two positive reviews to make a decision on such things other positive reviews clarity about why this particular policy came up is because when we met at a committee level we talked we talked maybe add some specific language to the deselection process and that's where Shane our attorney did say that this policy might provide us some guidance on what we couldn't incorporate however when we talked further about that we also got some guidance from DPI about how that particular policy does not typically connect to instructional materials so the 75409 is the one that

102generally prohibited materials that's exclusive to our district for whatever reason typically is assigned to people as opposed the situation with a specific material so I get it we're talking about two separate things here tonight we're talking about policy development policy implement I hear what you're saying regarding the policy development and what committee it should be part of that up here I do just want to say for the sake of the folks that that spoke as this one board member I am also equally very cautious when it comes to discussion of things like Banning books and so on I come at it from that perspective that I've shared with the sentence in the past that that initially doesn't bring up a very good feeling some of the things that spoke about you know you know it's

103called topics and learning and different perspectives and all of that at the same time to make match under moments for Westfall appearance reaching out to me saying you know some of this material is unbelievably explicit I'm I want to be involved if I if my child is going to be reading some of some of these things so um to again and again to be clear we're not we're not talking about at least what's in front of me we're not talking about difficult social topics like racism or alternative Lifestyles or choices or anything like that we're talking about very very graphic very graphic heterosexual activity with very graphic depictions of it and I can I can understand why some parents may say you know I'd like to sit down with my 14 year olds that are

104going to be reading that kind of material so it's I just want you to know at least from my perspective it is a very difficult Balancing Act in terms of trying to decide what is is truly educational material versus you know making sure that the parents have some involvement so this is just so again these books just ended up on some list that someone in our library said yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna pick a bunch of them and triple mine in or well so I mean I think this whole journey has been a Tracy you've admitted to that too um it comes down to trusting the expertise of the library associations and different journals and Publications and young adult literature often is going to push the envelope a little bit and there's going to be

105some you read this yes I did so with with that knowing that there are going to be some questionable materials we also would want to go to the process that determines how in the procedures that how we would remove something and something that I did discover throughout this journey is it's really important to recognize the difference between deselection or weeding which is a natural process that's ongoing and always taking place within a library and the how that's different than what reconsideration would be and I think understanding that is is something that I've certainly grown in throughout looking at at each of these policies with greater depth and to be clear Jim when I started asking questions of Mr McIntyre and actually Mr Walters I mean does this journey started with me asking Mr Walters you

106know some questions like how can I find out more about what we have at our school for reading materials because we were seeing it all over the news um and he did advise me to you know why don't you talk to Mr McIntyre and bring it into your committee meeting so that's how this all started a few months ago um and it also started with you know what my first question of like was what are we doing proactively internally to make sure that we're aware and that we are including parents in the conversation so they can be included and have conversations with their children if they encountering some pretty mature materials so I've I've continued as Mr McIntyre questions about what's what's good what's included and the syllabus for a class um what kind of

107access do parents have to not just two titles but to find out more about books I can tell you personally the amount of time and hours it takes to try to find information on books it's it's pretty evolved and it's not easy and we're also not in a great position um given that we don't have a licensed library media specialist on our staff who has been able to attend any of the meetings so I know that Mr Walters and Mr McIntyre have had a chance to talk with our contracted live review specialist Holly Cobb who is here one day a week during the school year um I I have not had access to talk to our contracted library media specialist to this point and she has not attended any of our committee meetings okay it

108it shows on here the when the people are deciding whether or not the this appropriate Book for a school library or um that particular rating system I don't think is part of these other external sources that are making those determinations um I I can't speak directly to how those other how those books are chosen at that level I do know that when we think about our collection and think about how we would want to approach these types of topics that go back to it's it's not just a matter of changing the language in a policy it's about looking at how we can enact our policy and follow through with procedures that are already in place so also in getting advice on this if you look at our policies it does get into some details um

109even and Mike has referred to when we were in discussion about when we're reviewing a book that's been challenged we are put to the task of reviewing a book in its entirety correct that was one of our detailers that we use but then when we ask the question we'll have have books been read in their entirety before they're put on the Shelf and that's that's not happening it's not realistic for example our most realist our most recent library book materials order was a little bit under a thousand books so I think we we can work through some of the details in terms of um what we want to see in what other realistic and reasonable details for book selection and deselection what do we hope to see in place for for parent awareness of minor

110children um or or you know like like Jeff said should there be some kind of alert system um speaking to a library media specialist who um was in a career at a local district for many many years um she had an area in the library where students had to bring written permission from their parents to check out those particular books um so these are just things that we're learning as we're exploring this further and so we basically need to start thinking about these as a board in terms of what what we feel best represents our community and what our community move on for our Public School District yeah I I agree with you I just want to make sure that we're that were clear with the people that you know when we use language that's

111too General it leads to misperceptions that maybe we're not as a board or at least for me as one board member that that were not open like to to some of the more socially sensitive issues out there I mean and we're talking about graphic ancestral rape I mean that I would want to know if my 14 year old was reading about that but we can have discussions about whether or not the book should be in school or whatnot and I'm assuming we're going to continue to have those discussions but I want to make sure that we're clear with the people so they don't think that we're on some crusade to get rid of um you know the books that do that are have to deal with difficult topics like like racism or or things like

112that that I do that I do think there's a place for learning uh about uh and but some of these things are is going to really stretch the mind in terms of how that's educationally beneficial certainly minus any parental involvement um it might be a matter but I would think that as a as an educational setting we would want to make sure that the parents are aware of the kids are reading about graphic conceptual rape and I think part of that conversation um is the purpose of the fields of a wide variety of things is it about providing choice versus say the requirement of a reading within a class okay so the only issue that has been addressed since I've been here is is one item from a class that we moved from a required

113reading to a choice reading um and when you think about that in a library setting could kids go into the library read and have access to things and never check it out sure so then the question becomes what should we provide access to okay so an alert system about checkouts doesn't solve that issue so then where does our time and energy get spent in regards to a circulation of 13 000 ish materials I've sat here and wondered for the last few minutes whether I should say that um I believe our library media center Michelle be nice um has too many books based upon my review of the amount of checkouts that they've had okay somebody May disagree with me but to me a book that's been checked out three times in 10 years could be

114addressed through a deselection process not necessarily A Change through a policy of banning a book and I think that's a that's an opportunity that exists to review some criteria in regards to deselectional materials and we have I mean we have a large number within our circulation I think the numbers are 40 if I remember from our library media specialist forty percent of our circulation is checked out x amount and it's not a high amount right so we have access to a lot of materials and we're having conversations and policy about a smaller number of materials within that thirteen thousand ish circulation and I think ultimately a team of people in this ever-changing world needs to address the purpose of a library media center in today's world right and many times if you ask a library

115media specialist what's their biggest passion Sports right and so they're going to continue to order a thousand bucks they're going to continue to support large circulations most likely and that's where I think an opportunity exists about this district is interested in establishing criteria that says we don't want access to books that accident acts right like hasn't been checked on X number of years um and other factors that could lead to some elimination of some materials yeah and just to be clear I for sure would never recommend that any of these books you know not be in a public library that you know I mean for the Hartford library it's a I would never support that for the channel to the channel you know these are kids here and that's a sentiment that was brought up

116by someone on staff as well so know that that was brought up like you there is a difference between a school library and public what kind of a captive audience this is library to for multiple reasons at their school so it is it is different I agree ments all right being on this committee as well um this was this was a tough tough matter to talk torn on it numbers it started was on this committee um is is some of the stuff graphic absolutely graphic but who who am I to say and be the censorship police of what what is in there I mean I must probably guessed 99 percent of the students at the high school have one of these there's not there's much more graphic stuff on on this tablets and things again

117it is I think the stuff the excerpts that I was handed um there's a wide variety a wide range of of Ages at this at the high school too I'm 13 14 ish all the way up to 18 19 which are adults um we have we have the policies and procedure challenge a book if someone doesn't like it and I just I don't want to be the person that says get rid of that book it's not my it's not my spot as a board we should make the policies and go for I'm not going to be the the book police so I gotta trust the staff that had orders the books trust the staff that reviews the material and that's I mean that's pretty much my stance on on this it was a good stuff

118this was a tough decision that that I wasn't even thinking about I've talked to a number of people about this and like I said I don't want to be the censorship police especially when there's there are 18 year old kids in the school should parents be aware of that I mean that's not a bad idea I mean if it Flags their Skyward account that's a possibility you know I wouldn't have a problem with that but to ban to ban books or to pull books just because a certain individual doesn't like it or a group of people don't like it from what I've learned on my on the time on this board this is a an area a school district of choice and I've gotten behind that and that that's where I kind of stand on

119this now and I said I thought a lot about it and that's that's my opinion on this song so a question in here for you Ross just so I can kind of clarify where you're coming from and you say you don't want to be the one to make the decision you don't want to be the censorship police um would you feel better if we had a a rating system adopted so that we had some kind of basis so how do we determine when kids need permission or when they don't or when an alert goes out or when it doesn't um should this board take a look at the the grading systems is that something you would like to see done and it's something you could explore um I would like to look more at what

120other other districts would have um you know I yeah like I said it's a tough topic because I I've had this tough conversation with my two kids and it's not easy and I don't I don't I don't think pulling a book is going to sell you know solve all the problems it's too readily available online and anywhere anywhere else that they can get the material and like you said if someone's gonna challenge something that we have the policies and procedures in place to challenge a book and that's what the board does is make policy and and procedures so to say the full to pull 200 books is it's not for me to to say so and like I said that's my stance on it and and I agree with a lot of a lot of

121what everyone has said here so and so then it sounds like um you'd be interested in learning more about the challenge process I I what like I said it if someone's got a problem with a book through the proper procedures Mr Gum just to be clear on the school of wi-fi system you have control s so if they're using their own data that's not possible for us but if they're certainly connected to the that's not worth the school wi-fi system correct so the kids can't access you apart that's certainly the attempt of the network security correct and there are also books that are available electronically um but talking to Mr McIntyre about that today I learned more that um we can also govern that so for example if a book hard copy was deselected we

122can then also have it so it's no longer available on our electronic book system for students to access so to Ross's point if they're going to access it anyway they're going to have to find a way to do that outside of our library system and outside of our school walls yeah that's why I asked that question we're in control of what goes on in the building what happens outside of the building and we're all well aware of influences that exist outside of it but we have a responsibility to take a look at what we are responsible for and that's why I wanted to draw that clarification we already put controls on the school li-fi system and what they can access so yeah but having said that I reiterate that when it comes to I agree

123with Ross that I start talking about actually Banning things um is going to have to make a threshold but I am concerned that kids as young as 14 can access this material and then the parents would have we're providing it to them parents I'm going to college in town so we we changed the policy last last month to increase the age of accessibility to 18. so any student under 18 a parent can go into Skyward I think I believe they have the request access to their Library record is that correct that is correct they have to request they access but once you request it you have yes so so that being said could that be something when a parent registers a student in the beginning of the year a question that I've been asked that

124then everybody's covered I I think the functionality of Skyward would allow for something like that to opt down and then I guess the other thing the the books in question um do we know how many times those have been checked out um I don't have that list directly in front of me I know that that was discussed at the end of the last committee meeting led to exam it appeared in natural test itself so then it was recommended that the library have that for accessibility to students that particular text has been checked out three times in 10 years so I guess just high level is there a lot of activity books that you've looked at there isn't so so they could have been correct I think the process is just ongoing it's it's not a

125it's not we're going to read books on Thursday it's part of the as we purchase new books we remove other books as we change what the shelves look like and how we're rearranging it's all it's all rolled into that so I don't know why the particular books that we have excerpts of right here have not been weeded yet I also know that they haven't created A disruption to create a complaint or something never have they have not so none of the books in the question of the whatever we have in front of us is not none of those books have been challenged no not not since I've been here we haven't had a challenge to a library book and again whether it's disappointing to hear the percentage of checkouts the circulation is not high in

126a high school library when you have that many materials in the high school library it's a very low percentage of the number of reports that are being checked out so to me it goes back to again we have to continue to work on the philosophy of a library media center the purpose of a library media center and what are our thoughts because if we stuck to a criteria that said any book that's not been checked out more than four times in 10 years you might see hundreds and hundreds of books go away and sometimes schools are like hey did you hear the libraries getting rid of all these books I can't believe they're using the district resources that way you're going to deal with the other side of that argument about what a poor investment

127and why don't we don't like kids who read and all of those that's the reality of being a high school library okay not a high circulation rate of which books are going in and out that's fine right that's that's okay and to be clear you know in this journey also I believe Mike is probably going to share more again next month was his Library plan but there is a certain fund for schools to spend on Library materials and that comes to a total of around a hundred thousand dollars but the school year and so for example right now we've spent all about about twenty thousand dollars of that um there are certain requirements for how that money has to be spent and so if if we possibly correct me if I'm wrong but one discussion

128we had was that if we had a library media specialist on staff working with students and teachers directly we may have some more opportunities in ways that we could spend that funding versus having the contracted person here once a week right now primarily working with materials alone we are kind of stuck in the way that we have to spend that money we don't have so for example we have a Makerspace in our library if we had somebody on staff who is certified working with students and teachers we may have some more fluidity in how those funds could be used versus purchasing thousands of books that are not being checked out all that much and I I would add to it that when we looked at Contracting the service at the beginning of the school year

129or in in the summer our Focus was on maintaining the collection and continuing some of the work that had already been taking place about a week in the library overall and we contracted this person intentionally for the purpose of the collection maintenance if we did not as part of her deliverables did not include her working directly with staff or training staff on something associated with say a database or something along those lines so it has a different purpose and a different functionality for our currently Staffing our LMS Dylan funnel just that is hopefully next month you might see some job descriptions for your members of our District's leadership team and one of the strengths and passions of Val Burhans our technology director is around some of that maker space type thing and in conversations that

130Val and I have had that's something that she's certainly interested in doing is providing some purpose and Leadership to that 3D printers and all those other things that we could do now again we did not intentionally move forward with contracted service that was not our goal okay that's where we ended up and I had a conversation with Tracy today and let her know that I followed up with season 6 because I would say what we're getting in regards to being able to engage in conversations and some of these other pieces maybe aren't necessarily what was intended and with the agreement or possible with the agreement because this individual serves districts that have nobody okay in a K-12 setting this person is their librarian so depending upon um who you asked or what you may be

131willing to do I think it's a conversation around common School funds I think the deliverables of contracted service those all can be certainly clarified if that's a direction we continue to draw as a district because I think we're just accepting right now at this point uh what's being told to us and again focusing on the basic you know service of a library Mike is there anything you want to add I think it's important that we recognize that this is controversial and having a the ability to discuss it in a in a level-headed manner is just I think something that we should continue to applaud because it is difficult and it was something that we cannot come to a solution together [Music] in school districts really I think we do have a lot of good minds

132thinking about the best way to approach this so I guess thank you very much for that so I guess going forward we need to kind of decide as a board where we want to go with this I know um something suggested to me was possibly taking a look at a a group or a summer project looking at our library um just kind of throwing ideas out there in terms of what we're going to do we actually we have quite a bit to tackle and very likely the committee structure is going to be going away a month from now and so I guess as a board what do we feel is important for us to voice in terms of um direction or how we want to be involved or what we hope to see the district

133to do is there anything you want to voice tonight or would you like to read I just I'm just still not totally cleared it's fine I just would find it hard to believe that there's not some type of system already in place that would flag a librarian to say you know you should before you order this book just take a look at it and see what see what's um and that can be liberal and these liberal like broad sets you know not political sense so um I'm not saying that it needs to be stringent but I'm still not really getting like like are we just indiscriminately ordering books without any idea deals in it I'm in thing with some system in place that would because I yeah like Ross said I don't want to be

134in that business of sitting down and looking at every single block and it's not the appropriate use of of why we're here but I so again I'm just not understanding is there already A system that alerts the people that are in charge of ordering the materials for the library as to whether or not you should take a second look at it to try to determine whether or not it meets your educational needs I think a certified librarian can answer this question much better however I would say that when looking at different materials to bring in there's many many different resources that are used and they're they are reviewed and something that's also part of our collection is within within our catalog every title that's there also has where it has been reviewed previously so when

135you click on a book and the you look at the resources I believe the tab is called additional information it lists where those things were reviewed so it helps us understand how these things were selected and for what purpose that that's a component of it you know how did this gets elected to your point where were these reviewed previously and what was the determination made that this was needed here right and I think when when speaking of our currently contracted LMS she looks at specifically at her selection criteria over to make those decisions it's all connected to our current policy and what our current policy says about selection well correct me if I'm wrong the policy we're looking at that wording on errors was adopted in 2010 right that's not it's not the selection process

136for Library materials but it's a positive High School all right this is the prohibited materials policy we actually have um a library policy 2522 which refers specifically to library media centers so perhaps that's something that we want to revisit next month when we're talking about the library plan that is something where we have an opportunity to go into further details to your point um Jim also where if you're asking what kind of alerts or what kind of systems are in place um then maybe that is part of the board discussion we want to take a look at what kind of rating systems could be used or what kind of alerts um as a board we would hope be in place and we could possibly support that through policy okay again I'm still not understanding this

137this is an active policy though currently right correct yes okay so this is an active policy in the school currently yes okay well isn't this material in violation on that what policy are you referring to the one where the line on holding in there what's the number the 7540.09 okay this is this is active policy scope well okay so that's what I'm saying this is an active Hartford policy right so how did this material then and I'm not saying I'm not saying I support your guys all right I'm just trying to write a detailed conversation there's way too much generalization going on this is an active policy this material is in violation of that how do we end up here so if you look at that point B where it says the foregoing shall not

138apply to that's how we ended up here so that applied to textbooks or writ materials designed for legitimate School authorized educational purposes such as human growth and development curricula or similar educational curriculum okay so again someone then decided that this was appropriate educational material that I'm just saying this particular policy that particular policy does not apply to instructional materials and that's where DPI got involved as well with explaining how 70 flat or seven five nine four zero I can't remember that one you're holding um but it doesn't apply to instructional materials it's more so associated with a you know a a student or a faculty member that might have very good material with them it's not connected to instructional materials essentially is what what I've been under made to understand am I the only one

139that sounds like a whole bunch of bureaucracy to me I guess I guess so then go ahead are you educational purposes and instructional because fee of that same area says such other artistic or educational purposes as may be authorized by the administration are we mixing words of instructional versus educational because in my simple mind they're the same right and so I think you know Mike got one perspective from a professional at DPI I got a perspective from our attorney that is a little different um you're right this policy leaves a lot to be interpreted especially if there's redundancy right I think to your point this Board needs to be better educated into your of a workshop that kind of digs into some of the details of how we got here because if we don't change

140anything or we don't do anything we're going to end up in the same place in five or six years with a whole bunch of books because we're not enforcing the policies that we already have I mean I don't I don't want to make it a bunch of extra policies it should be clear and and I caution everyone that there's a Counterpoint to most points and and sometimes that can work against you and we just need to be cognitive of that because there's books that might dance around that or touch the line that really aren't that's not their purpose so we got to be careful of that because then that gets into the whole Fahrenheit 451 we're gonna change the books we're going to burn the books we're going to get into all of that we

141need to be very careful of that I I'm not dismissing these books are maybe not appropriate but how did we get there I think the Board needs to understand that and then how are we not going to get back to that yeah I wasn't being facetious when I said like I don't know there may very well be some educational reason why these these books were selected and there may be some type of instructional material behind it that Spurs some type of legitimate discussion I I want to be clear that that's why I think Ross would feel the same way that I don't like the position that the board is in here because it it does make it look like we're like we're on books that that deal with controversial topics you know that we want

142to keep our children from or something like that I couldn't be further I believe that an education setting is a place where you should discussing some of those type of some of those type of things but I'm I'm just not getting a really good confidence fonts back when we're talking about well how did we end up with these things and to Craig's point maybe this is an opportunity for us to dive a little bit further into the rating system or our holidays we go about getting these materials to determine whether or not there really is a true educational need behind it regardless of how controversial it is it might it might be quite controversial but if there's a a good educational reason for it then we should hear it if there's not and it's just

143yeah geez this looks this looks terrible I don't really know how we got it um you know that doesn't sit very much does that make sense it does so it sounds to me like as a board we probably need to dig deeper into policy 2522. get into some more of the finite details there and to Craig's point a workshop model probably would be best because we would have an opportunity as as it board to engage and interact with our professional staff to dig in it's still an open meeting for the public I'm just kind of thinking out loud if we look at policy 2522 I have this this line underline the board shell provides sufficient materials and staff for library media center in each School in the district and so we are we are ultimately

144responsible for this as a board and so we do need to make sure that we understand it are in the note do believe that the details and policy and practice reflect what our community what's wants for our school district um it sounds to me like this policy 7540.09 has verbiage in it that makes it pretty open to interpretation and it's going to be hard for us to pinpoint this down tonight um to get it to a point where it's actually a good reasonable applicable policy I mean we could go to shayna's recommendation and strike Item B but there are still a lot of questions throughout the policy correct Mr Curley one other thing I want to add too I'd like to get Dr Pride Moore's song see what his thoughts are and this is kind

145of an important talking point who is unable to be here tonight so that's another thing I'd like to get his opinion on this as well thank you note taken so it sounds like the direction moving forward is the board would like to take a deeper dive look in policy 2522 our library plan and our our practices for selection do selection is that accurate yes and reconsideration okay so Mr Walters brought up reconsiderations of selection deselection reconsideration and by reconsideration do you mean if a challenge comes to the district or reconsideration even if internally we decide to reconsider the book yes I guess what does that mean both it's an opportunity to have the conversation okay thank you if we have a workshop I'd we really need to have the library media specialist there absolutely maybe

146some of the Librarians that run libraries in our district I am yes or or neighboring districts I think if we have a unique situation with being just a high school so I guess I'm I'm really curious to hear from like like you brought up we have ranges from minors to adults within our walls so we're kind of in this really tricky place because you know once a student has 18 is 18 they can decide that they don't even want their parents involved in knowing they're great and to the point I mean we can even I know the Monarch systems director and I'm sure she'd be more than willing to engage in a conversation with us as well then she covers 32 libraries in Clark County okay Union High Schools yeah I'm just saying but let's

147get some people that have had some experience sure no matter what that is in terms of a timeline or urgency from from your perspective Mr Walters your perspective Mr McIntyre this conversation could lead to um a discussion about what Staffing looks like for library media center in the school year ahead so how are you feeling about a timeline or urgency to make sure that the board is having this discussion and helping to keep the district moving at the pace you need in order to ensure that we've got what we need in place for next school year well I think we would also need to consider if we're looking at changing policies associated with library media special or library media centers knowing perspective of an LMS whether it's their current contracted or our future LMS or

148our past LMS having their perspective on how they how they operate and how these policies are intended to function makes that question difficult so I would have difficulty changing a policy without the above nlms specifically so when when we discussed at the committee level about a library plan moving forward we talked about looking at the Future Ready framework for libraries and pairing down to a specific um a visual of for you but there's essentially eight gears in the future ready framework for schools and for libraries and for all technology and so on there's eight different specifics that go into it we were looking at possibly using two or three details to move the plan forward um so that we continue to be in compliance with our expectations for publishing a library to plan when it

149comes to changing policy or getting feedback on policies about selection and deselection I would have difficulty making that decision without the expertise of an LMS in the room and will we know further after tomorrow how accessible our contracted LMS may be conversations happening tomorrow it should certainly should be a follow-up that I can have with receipt sometime thereafter I I think my concern though however is if we have questions about the materials in the library currently it's either because of our lack of understanding of the process for selection our disagreement with what's in the library but a previous library media specialist went through a process and selected them okay now we have a contracted library media specialist who served a number of districts think alike library media Specialists have a certain strength that allows them

150to go through processes and red selection deselection and the processes of a library if we think we're going to get something different I don't think we are okay we have systems and processes like a bunch of other districts that follow the same process selection deselection and this is what they do they don't read cover but they don't read books cover to cover they use multiple sources to give them recommendations and support they have criteria for deselection okay never been one there's only one room at least one person in the library who served in that position and if we're not trusting that expertise at this point why do we think changing a position moving forward is to change our trust we have things in writing that explain the process of selection and deselection and we're kind

151of ignoring that if I was in that position I don't think I'd sign up to be the library's media specialist in this District because we're not trusting that expertise okay and I think we have to really review and reflect where we believe our strengths are okay we can question materials we could wonder about process we obviously have to do a better job of helping all of you understand or engage our library media specialist who's contracted to help us all better understand the process of how things got here how do things go away in a way that is transparent and not about banning books but following the system to support our kids in our district Jim are you going to say something yeah I would say I agree with that you talk about the lack of

152trust and the lack of trust on the and I don't know if I really like that that's going a little bit far um if you want to describe it that way the hesitancy only because this because of the lack of clarity and wouldn't I wouldn't have hesitancy if the answer coming back to me was real clear like this is why this book is here it's here because of this reason but that's not what I'm getting I'm getting well I really don't know went through a process so I'm wearing it just ended up here well I think I would add that that the policy itself says that the district administrator appoints a amount of points but designates that to an LMS the library media specialist has the discretion to use their expertise to make decisions on

153what is and is not in the library I don't have the answer for every one of the books in the library I like standing in this moment I don't have that I do have some understanding of how a librarian would go through different resources to make that determination but in terms of why is this title out of Thirteen thousand in our library I wouldn't be able to answer that and I understand why that would be frustrating it's quite frankly frustrating for me as well however we also know that something that our current contracted LMS and analogy use that was it's like a living organ and it's always going to be our current collection has an average age to me that doesn't sound that a little bit dated comparatively she also emphasized the libraries aren't intended

154to be an archives okay but you don't want to keep every book that you've ever purchased instead that you want to keep it current and keep it something that you're continually to continuing to use and and have circulation numbers that show that we have a need and and also respond to the needs and desires of of what it is that we need educationally and for choice and I think those elements come into the expertise that our our policy says falls on the LMS himself or herself just and also just recovery settings makes me feel better saying it yeah I I wish we didn't even have to discuss if I'm not on some Crusade for for this thing but it's it's like being a parent you know I mean when something comes to your attention that

155you're responsible for well now you got to talk about it you know and it was brought up before we were like there's our responsibility to address it um so that's the only reason I'm not some mission to take up this topic and like you quite frankly I wish we really didn't have to but now it's been brought to our attention and we have a responsibility I don't like not understanding if I'm responsible for something or at least partially as a member of the sport I want I want to understand it better I don't just turn my head to it and I think what you're referring to is censorship is a really serious issue and it's also difficult to recognize that there's a difference between censorship and discretion and when you don't have details about how

156these materials came to be you're lacking that discretion to make a clear statement about what it is that you want to include or not and I they're with you in terms of I want to be able to make educated guesses an educated explanations as to the why and so on it doesn't really matter that the materials exist it matters that we look at how we follow procedure and policy I appreciate you saying that Mike is that that's exactly how I feel agreed and I think that that you know trusting the expertise it's been months trying to get answers and so so here we are it's hard when we haven't had access to that expertise and or those or this distinct explanations um another suggestion that came to me that just um I thought I'd throw

157it here too is that something else that we could do to address this as a board is to form an ad hoc committee so we could that's something we can think about that would consist of a a committee designated for a specific task short term and that could be related to our library so that's something to think about yes I would just say kind of like Ross was saying before I mean I I don't know about you guys but I probably got more emails on this thing that I've gotten on just about anything since I've been on the board in two years I'm basking maybe but I was just just getting out of the board when that thing was kicking off but obviously folks are field strongly about this on both sides as you said

158Mr Walters and then on the other side so in terms of an ad hoc committee I don't really personally anyways it's just like that because then a few of us are going to thoughts and there's like there's there's enough interest in this that I think good point I agree the an issue that's important that needs to have everybody needs to understand what's going on thank you Mr Westfall good points Ross is nodding I'll agree yeah yeah so when I said okay had enough committees and this and that I mean we have so many we have committee for Commandments there's just too many committees and just to add another one we didn't I think it's something we all need to discuss right so that's that's my opinion okay so it sounds like moving forward we will

159be forming impossible Workshop or work session to dig into the library Mr Gum and a regularly scheduled board meeting and take off some of this other stuff that maybe could be better sent to an interest in email and have very worthy discussion such as this and open Forum where the citizens can come just sure to any other board members want to voice whether they prefer a workshop or a board business meeting I guess so you know a board business meeting is in effect largely centered around policy we are talking about policy it would just be a lot of time spent on a narrow range of policy it may require two board business meetings in a month if we're going to do that depending we're at the time of the year where we're looking at wrapping

160up one school you're getting ready for the next school year plan Staffing so there's there's always a lot to do we only have three weeks until board meeting which is the main meeting to the determination we made after we hear about the library plan in regards to what next steps in regards to a workshop or a full board full board meeting conversation I think so I think it's probably unrealistic to get a board Workshop done between now and that may meeting anyway sound good so after the May meeting after we hear further from Mr McIntyre for the library plan then we will form a plan for holding a board Workshop or a board meeting that's a board business meeting maybe like when you preside on that Library plan it keeps almost in mind and get

161some high points anything further okay thank you thank you it was a great discussion appreciate your input let's move forward in the agenda up next is proposal 23-2950 its approval to replace the audio components in the field house is there a motion on this proposal most of my Mr curly is there a second second by Mr Gum uh discussion or presentation if there's like Val is Val is out of state that a professional development opportunity one of the things we did do on this is eliminate the video a request at this time um as a team of us could not come to an agreement on the purpose of the video the location of the video the cost of the video again for those people before myself the video access was important for graduation so we

162could show some baby pictures and different things it was used for actually that's the only example I have um so it's a high price based on the quote that's in the documents even though we didn't bring the video forward the costs are in there we may bring that back um at the meeting in May but at this point in time for those of you who have gone to an assembly in the field house or a sporting event I think it's it's very apparent that the audio system needs to be replaced um urgently and that's why the proposal is only for the audio this evening so a question I have Mr Walters is I haven't been to one of our our gatherings in the field house in quite some time but I know that in the

163past if it were an assembly if it were the our student celebration there was usually a PowerPoint presentation that went along with it that also listed the students so they could read the names of you know the top 10 top 10 is that being done in our celebrations a screen that's lifted by a lift with a projector on a cart kind of thing so again in conversation with Kelly we thought like three or four times this year we would have or could have used a screen that's mounted and a projector that's mounted from the ceiling question is whether three or four times at this point late in school year warrants and investment of that video and then again when Scott and I looked at what the committee talked about or the group of people talked

164about we were surprised that the recommendation was to put the screen all the way in the back wall of the field house behind the gymnastics equipment and the projector would be near the basketball hoop shooting on that stream we struggled with that location based upon the crowd being and the bleachers the students being the bleachers whatever whatever 's because Val's out we've now not had it to come back together and talk through some of that but again we thought the audio piece was super important to bring tonight yes yeah well if it's I don't know I've attended a few athletic events or whatever that have been held in a cafeteria in that audio on theirs there's no no not at all so it's anything like that like that definitely need to be replaced Ross I

165have been to many events in the field house and it frankly actually is embarrassing the way it cracks the way the way it just sounds I've had people confront me and say what's wrong with it and I said no it's old and so I would this seems actually reasonable I would have expected a lot more yeah I don't Scott is I didn't remember seeing him my package the big Bose tube getting replaced through it is that staying is that in good shape it's not working so so this price includes the sub and everything okay any other questions or comments sure Mr Westfall besides the sporting events assemblies and graduation will be in there last year because it's the weekend of the high school track State field event so we have to commit to graduate graduate

166being the Sunday of the first week of June based on our school year calendar can you have assemblies you can't have all the school assemblies in a small gym I'm sorry okay that to me as that was one of the conversations we had about the projector because the screen being mounted underneath the stage overhang is the perfect location and we spent a lot of money fixing the audio yeah I was what five years ago yeah yeah but you that's for the plays and band concerts and everything like that to correct though that plays just okay concerts fire concerts and events like that basically yeah I said when you sit in that the field house and someone is trying to even talk it's cracking if the dance teams are performing their music sounds just garbled and

167it's time that this is one of those things where we've waited you've got the Max on it and it's time to replace it anything further here and then we have a motion in a second for proposal 23-2950 approval to replace the audio components in the field house this is a roll call Boat we'll start with myself I I motion carries proposal 23-2950 has been approved proposal 23-2951 is approval of the purchase of new staff devices is there a motion on this proposal motion by Mr Westfall is there a second second by Mr Gum uh discussion about this proposal which includes 20 devices for staff replacement and maybe 12 000 out here is there a general rotation of a device yeah that's what she's hoping to establish and so she identified the first group excuse me

168first group with a older devices which includes our student services admin assistants Health office folks like that that would make up those 20 devices so obviously that would be the first rotation that she'd identify the next group of with the older devices correct this can be a budget books to be that's correct okay cool cool any further questions or comments very none we have a motion and a second for proposal 23-2951 approval of purchase of new staff devices let's put it to a vote this is also a roll call vote this time we'll start with Craig Westfall hi hi hi motion carries that proposal has been approved proposal 23-2952 is approval of LED light installation in the field house is there a motion on this proposal most of my Mr Curley is there a second

169by Mr government uh discussion or questions about this proposal Mr curly no four offset some of the cost increase appreciate that thank you any other questions or comments okay now let's put it to vote we have a motion in a second a proposal 23-2952 approval of LED light installation in the field house this is another vocal vote this time we'll start with Mr Gum hi motion carries proposal 23-2952 has been approved proposal 23-2953 is approval of the members of the citizens advisory committee is there a motion on this proposal most by Mr Curley is there a second Ed by Mr government I'm Mr Walters would you like to add something yeah so actually I'd like to update the proposal 11th um we were really excited that a large number of the people interested had young

170children in our district but the other opportunity that existed was that we didn't have anyone interested who had no children in the district so one of the things that I did was I reached out to the Hartford rotary and sent it to the entire group and added Tim Algiers and Ron Schlitz as two members of the community members who do not have children in our district anymore who I think would perspective from population of our district so that would move the number of approvals to 12 members it is it correct I don't see honor represented here is that correct the honor District that's holy hell that is correct because the one who we had from the F member I think oh yeah Mike Horst was in attendance as a staff member and he had represented

171I think that's why I also put the document that we want to make sure it's a diverse group covers our 225 square miles uh representation from a wide range of uh population areas so just like I was excited to have Tim and Ron volunteer I think also I'll go back and look at some recommendations from the superintendent of Honor again one of those is a staff member Tom Schaefer but I took a look and see if he has anybody to consider to add to make sure we have representation on the western edges of our district correct because yeah it said 10 because I did not change the number when I added Tim and Ryan okay but it is right correct and also when I when I look at this just so the board members are

172wearing a half spoken with Mr Walters about this I think it's important that we include some some members from our retirement age population and probably even more so in some of our outlying areas such as out and out the Richfield area so that's something that um I hope to see coming forward this citizens advisory committee is still in the development approving the details kind of stage so this is just the one next step that Mr Walters is bringing in terms of these appointments and we will be seeing more in the future Mr Curley what Tracy just you know yeah that's correct correct we didn't want to hold it up yet we have some people who are ready so um that's something that will continue to work on so if you happen to know anybody who

173might be interested and you feel that they would be a good way to represent an even more diverse population of our citizenship in our district um please let Mr Walters know any further comments or questions hearing none we have a motion in a second for proposal 23-2953 approval the members of the citizens advisory committee all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed A Day motion carries proposal 23-2953 has been approved proposal 23-2954 is approval of the updated High School leadership job descriptions is there a motion on this proposal so we'll published by Mr Gum is there a second Ed by Mr Curley discussion Tracy United on Brandon 14 of them or whatever might be a bit much um so I broke it down to a smaller group to represent our high school

174leadership so myself and Kelly uh in a collaborative process worked with uh Scott Jim Jeremy Desiree and Kelly for her own position um to make sure that we're aligning amongst those four positions regarding their job description and you can certainly see where some of the additions and adjustments were made in regards to each of the positions any questions or comments from board members so I believe that the goal then is next month we're going to see the rest of them correct that's correct if when we're looking at the staff as a whole we see some overlap that we may have questions about are you open to us still asking questions about these particular job descriptions if we see some need for that sure and then there'll also be some others based on that policy change

175that was made regarding certified staff you know so we spent quite a bit of time talking about library media there's obviously a job description um for some other um Maybe a non-classroom teacher positions that you should see here in the next month or two that will not sure you lay your eyes on for ever thank you any other comments or questions from board members okay we have a motion and a second for proposal 23-2954 approval the updated High School leadership doctors job descriptions all those in favor signify by saying I I any opposing a motion carries a proposal has been approved proposal 23-2955 is approval of updated policy 3120.06 selecting teachers and administrative interns is there a motion on this proposal sort of motion by Mr Walters seconded by I'm sorry Mr Westfall oh my

176gosh sorry it's been a long night motion by Mr Westfall who would like to second that proposal Mr Gum thank you well there are reason for the change here is a contact at this point so to change about was the flexibility instead of bringing it back all the time um if we were to say high school principal then if Kelly Kelly it's somebody else then we're going back to the change of policy so we wanted to make sure it was flexible enough so we remained it kept it remaining as District administrator what you're doing allows us the flexibility but at this point it's Kelly as a designated thank you for that clarification any questions or comments from board members hearing now let's take it to a vote we have a motion in a second for

177proposal 23-2955 approval of updated policy 312 0.06 selecting teachers and administrative interns all those in favor signify by saying aye aye and you pose say day motion carries proposal 23-2955 has been approved proposal 23-2956 is approval of employee dental insurance increase is there a motion on this proposal motion by Mr Curley is there a second Ed by Mr Gum discussion or questions Maryland anything in particular you want to make sure you add not just that our broker was able to get a 24 month rate versus a yearly rate so they were able to give it to Forest thank you any questions hearing none we have a motion and a second for proposal 23-2956 approval employee dental insurance increase this is a cost the district so we'll do a roll call vote starting with Mr Curley

178hi motion carries proposal 23-2956 has been approved thank you Mary Lynn um up next is proposal 23-2957 approval of the 2023-2024 Food Service agreements is there a motion on this proposal vote by Mr curly is there a second by Mr Gum discussion or questions regarding this proposal Monica anything you'd like to flag for us or ADD I just need to add um that we at this time it's just with the two currently service to additional districts and we will be bringing that back as we work out the logistics for transportation for delivery great thank you any questions or comments I guess I'd like to clarify that comment just in case you guys do hear anything over the next couple of weeks currently Aaron and honor uh use their own transportation to come and pick up

179the food meals from our campus currently we you employ a truck to deliver the meals and food to Holy Hill School District and same games within Holy Hill School District um that's where the conversation isn't trying to figure out someone part of it in regards to does the district invest in the cost of a truck or a vehicle in order to provide that service to Holy Hill or are we not any maybe not interested in providing a service and Holy Hill will have to do something similar to Otter and Aaron oh probably coming up their meals and providing that that delivery themselves like that's some of the conversations that monsters that is the only use of the vehicle which we've determined is um is 15 years old so it's reached its retirement age and our

180current employee who does that delivery is also retirement Okay so it's a great time to have that conversation that makes sense so there's a charge for that delivery service and the proposal would be a increase of that delivery charge allowing us to purchase a new vehicle to do that the question is is how do we support Holy Hill but yet do what's right for our district as well thank you any other questions or comments hearing none let's put it to a vote we have a motion and a second for proposal 23-2957 approval of the 2023-2024 Food Service agreements uh this is a roll call vote we'll start with myself I promotion carries that proposal has been approved up next is our approval of unanimous consent agenda is there a motion is there a second motion

181by Mr Gum seconded by Mr Curley any discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any pose motion carries that unitos consent agenda has been approved I do want to point out and thank Julie for being here alongside it's Jacqueline this evening uh Julie is the one who will be taking Janet's place when Janet retires for our district so it's great to see you both sitting there together thank you actually I was hoping that both of them could run all board meetings moving forward that sounds fabulous [Laughter] thank you so much um there's announcement of meetings and events at the end of your packet please make sure of the utmost importance is that you have responded to Janet about your ability to participate in graduation on June 10th I have one

182event that was just brought to my attention yesterday okay so this Saturday on April 22nd the aviation Club is having an open house for incoming freshmen next year and pretty much anybody that would like to go and see the progress of the rv-12 airplane that the group is building that's out at the airport this Saturday from 10 to 3. it'll probably be the hangar that's open um but the the group that has been working very hard on it and it looks above and beyond an airplane now so Tom if you have some free time on Saturday or any student interested they're more than welcome to uh to go that is exciting I know Jeremy can you add that to the announcement the announcements and also it might be nice that some of these things were

183highlighted right on the landing page of our website they may be I'm not quite sure but I know um talking to some people in the community within the past few days they were super impressed to learn that we have an aviation club and that we are embarking on an aviation class next year I think it's it's something pretty cool that people could be made more aware of and celebrate with us I'd also like you to watch for an email from me regarding staff appreciationally which will be the first um actually an early week in May that we're working on planning activities for each day and one certainly appreciate your participation in any or some of those thank you Mr Walters and at your seat it looks like we were um we received some invitations to

184the annual FFA banquet as well yes Mr Curley is this the board room hang on one thing um upcoming board voice opportunities are listed here as well we've got the June board bulletin um so basically the board bulletin is something that we can put on our area of the website uh the June Ovations newsletter we just um did our pieces in the current issue that will be going on shortly as well as a Weekly Newsletter so there is a Weekly Newsletter that goes out from our school office as long as we get some information to Kayla by Tuesday afternoon um then we can also include some board voice in that Weekly Newsletter so as a board member if you ever think of something hey I really wish we could get this out there please contact

185me or Kayla and we can make sure that we do get that that voice hurt all right Mr Curley board reflection I just have one and it's kind of a sad one and I just wanted to send my thoughts and prayers to Mrs Andrea Rose's family and all the Central Middle School family after her passing last week at Central Middle School um it's talked to a lot of people that said she was a very nice person and I don't know her personally but that's that's heartbreaking when someone passed away anytime but um step in other students so my thoughts and prayers well to her family and your families now we're using so that's all here thank you very much she was a great person she was severely missed at Central thank you Craig thank you

186for um voicing that reflection of the huhs board and District we are our thoughts and prayers are with the heart for joint one district and her family for sure um in terms of board Reflections moving forward we have decided that it may be more effective and efficient if you have some feedback about the board please make sure you get that to the board president and then that is something that we can go over on a quarterly basis as a board so no not necessary to fill out their form and get it to Janet but just kind of like our district feedback button that we have on the website utilize your position as a board member and give feedback to your board presidents when announced necessary or need it and then we will use that going

187forward thank you is there a motion to adjourn is there a second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any posts we are