001yes yeah it's true board of education meeting uh to order um please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right um lori uh roll holland here matthew phipps here stacy seldner here matthew spalding here harry trask tony bostellico here and kathy lois thank you all right um at this time we're going to be doing public input uh individuals are allowed a five minute max each uh up to 30 minutes total otherwise um we got we'll go through and uh try and get to as many are we'll go through these and we'll go through them all so um up to five minute max each just
002ask that uh um the first person here we got uh is rebecca lolinski hello i'm rebecca i'm from newton i'm reading for somebody else tonight who asked me to read for them um good evening managed public school board first and foremost thank you for all your service i understand to be in a position such as a school board member is not one that is taken lightly nor is the work that you do so thank you for your service i'm also very grateful member of the ally group who has taken his great group to the member of the allied group has taken his or her or their time to assist me in reading my concerns that i have to the board you may be wondering why i'm not in front of you i'm not before you
003myself rather than having another community member express my concerns to the board the simple answer is because i am one of several hundred school staff who is employed in our school district please know my concern that i have today is not coming from the lens of an educator of the manitoba public school district and i emphasize i'm not because rather an active citizen living in service and greater good of their community outside of my work in our district i'm concerned about our board members level of professionalism etiquette and representation of our school board our manitowoc public school district and our state as board members you may argue the first amendment your freedom to speech but you know your freedom of speech has consequences what exactly am i referring to as a concerned citizen i'm referring
004to these comments may i have a mantra public staff school board staff member distribute these to the board members thank you sure if any of you were a staff member of the manitoba public school district and you behaved in the manner on social media platforms such as this you may be having a meeting in your principal's office with human resources and mea if you are serviced by the union about your poor actions in the community which is reflective of our school district you may think this is a fluke but i can assure you we have had staff discipline for their actions on social media platforms so what you've been handed out and is in front of you are copies of posts by board members on social media in recent weeks regarding the manitoba public school
005district controversial issues things that you've been discussing for policy changes comments that board members have made on social media let this sink in you are a school board member you are not only a representative of the school board you represent our manitowoc public school district you represent me as staff speaking for the person who wrote this you represent our manitowoc community you represent your business you represent your employer you represent you your spouse or your civic significant other and if any of these representations does not resonate with you then let me say this you represent your children at home again you represent your children when you behave this way you're allowing your children to behave this way parents acting like immature adults is a fine example of behaviors that we see each and every day
006in our buildings in school let that sink in as a citizen of our community i ask that from this day forward as board members you all take some time to consider your actions possibly a policy that needs to be put in place is school board etiquette and representation because as a re as i reviewed in these policies there didn't seem to be any documentation representing such a matter rebrand yourself to be a community of professionals who you had agreed and signed up to be and not what is shared with you all this evening on this paper be neutral thank you uh the next individual for public input is ann johnson johnson good evening um so i like many others have been attending school board meetings pretty regularly for about the last two and a half
007years um previous to the last election uh there were so many people that commented about the previous board not responding to emails not giving any feedback um somebody's been going so far as to imply that they would like schoolwork to respond during a school board meeting so on that note i would like to thank kathy stacy and kerry for replying to the email that i sent back in july um they are not new school board members who ran on that community engagement piece but they responded to my email further i would like to talk about the um policy preview for controversial issues with a lot of at-risk kids in this district they are at risk simply because some of them are at risk simply because they're lgbtq um and they now have a school board
008with the majority of members not supporting them but further than that let's talk about the teachers right teachers getting excited for the next school year and also afraid i've literally talked to teachers that i know personally and they have all said the same thing that they are afraid they are afraid they cannot protect their kids they're students they're talking about students they haven't even met yet how can they make them feel safe in their classroom without the fear of losing their job maybe even being sued i feel like somebody said that at some point so i implore you when you are talking about revising this policy that you take into consideration the safety and the mental health of our students and our staff you wouldn't want to lose any more staff looks like they're flying
009out the door these are good teachers these are teachers that have been here they're seasoned they care about kids they have not met yet they're fighting for those kids thank you uh the next individual for public input is sophia meisner um hello school board and community members my name is sophia meisner and my pronouns are she her um i'm here we're presenting a group from the npfc school district who are concerned about the treatment of gender non-conforming students in the mpsd school district after listening to the special board meeting that you held on june 2nd it seems that board members have some confusion surrounding gender pronouns um at the meeting it was asked where do pronouns fit into a child's long-term academic success well it absolutely does it as a minority group gender non-conforming people
010are more susceptible to anxiety depression and other stress-related mental illness according to the article um social epidemiology of depression and anxiety by gender identity from the journal of adolescent health gender non-conforming teens are nearly twice as likely to suffer from depression as gender-conforming teens and this strongly affects the students academic success as well as their physical and mental health um you mentioned as a solution that perhaps in the schools we shouldn't talk about pronouns at all but you see the problem with this is it places the burden upon the gender non-performing student to repress their gender identity which leads to stress again which undermines their academic success um we a group of students from the mpsc school district would like the opportunity to speak with you to help um alleviate some of the confusion some
011of the confusion sorry some of the confusion around gender pronouns so that you're able to effectively make policies that will benefit all of the mpsc students thank you all right the next individual for uh public input is jennifer gleichner today as you all know mpsc is facing a budget shortfall of at least six to eight million dollars soon the board will be tasked with making the decision of whether to approve a referendum to go to the public for a vote i'm here tonight to recommend that the npsc board of education when the time comes make the best decision for our community and approve at a minimum an operating expenses referendum but ideally a recurring referendum to help support the financial future of the mpsc state funding formulas for public schools have been locked since the
012early 1990s in order to maintain and improve the quality of public education in the mpsc a referendum is not only ideal it is necessary failure to secure a referendum referendum funding will likely be staff cuts increase in class sizes and decreases in programming and services budgetary limitations like these displace workers hinder the quality and availability of instruction and opportunities for our students and delay or prevent maintenance for our aging district buildings when a community is well educated it thrives students are prepared for post-secondary education and the workforce businesses have more potential prospects and communities where there's a quality education system families will want to raise their children in a community that has a strong educational system as we age we can rest assured that in a community where education is valued our caregivers will be
013competent and compassionate the benefits of a properly funded public education system are numerous and invaluable the state of our public education system will shape our future as a community i encourage board members to please think critically and objectively about this matter and to make the decision that will best support our entire community in the long run thank you uh the next individual that i have for public input is claire stuffenhagen hi been here before claire steppenhagen i'm a retired teacher from the matador public schools i have some concerns about the decisions that the board has made recently first now that you have unfettered access to all schools you have a responsibility to sign in and get a badge this is essential for safety reasons as a staff member if i saw an unfamiliar person around
014my school i would either call the police or put the schools on lockdown with power comes responsibility be responsible mr phipps is always talking about transparency your five laws should be public record any citizen should be able to see where when and how many times you visit a school secondly your choice of firms for strategic planning has no educational experience cost more than the others and there could be a conflict of interest this sport has talked about and lastly excuse me the board you talked about key fobs pronouns controversial issues um teacher opinions and a change to almost all the policies except for the discipline committee where are your concerns about student achievement and fostering an environment where all students can learn horace mann considered the father of public education wrote these principles the education
015will best be provided in schools that embrace children from a variety of backgrounds that education must be non-sectarian that this education must be taught using tenants of a free society and that education should be provided by well-trained and professional teachers i hope that your personal biases and agendas will not interfere with your upholding these the institution of public education thank you the next individual that i have for public input is gene wire i think things are going in the right direction um a little bit of background i've heard some things about we're going to run out of money we've got problems et cetera et cetera okay and uh i also heard some good things which were the number one thing is to make sure that we get good education okay so so i'm all over
016that i think that's terrific i went to a one-room i went to a two-group school most of my time okay grades one through eight three days of kindergarten and i have to tell you that uh and i and i swear that this is true um i learned everything that i needed to know by time i was out of 8th grade for my career and i actually did pretty damn good okay i mean i had a great career the bottom line is this okay uh yeah it's about it's about money okay and i can i can hear that and i can feel that i really can't in the same regard that grade school that i went to i asked somebody recently how much does it cost to educate a student eight thousand seven hundred dollars you
017know what it is in the mpsd eighteen thousand plus okay so it's an extra ten thousand dollars so money is a money's a little bit of a concern let's face it okay um there's a there's a big disparity there there's a there's a lot of the community that that has to look at this and and say yeah you know i mean this makes sense referendum or no it doesn't make any sense because i'm looking at these other schools and and the education that they're actually getting the grades that they get for a lot less money okay now that said one of the real important things is to make sure that the budget presentation what you'll be doing next month i think actually okay october uh has kind of a real easy approach to okay how
018many dollars is the budget how many residents do we have in the area the way i calculate it if you just look at it right now round numbers we've got probably a 90 million dollar budget something like that and i figure we've got probably 20 uh 45 000 people in the in the area so about two thousand dollars per man woman and child is what it costs to educate a student here so we don't have any kids right what is two thousand two thousand two thousand four thousand dollars for our household it's okay as long as we got good education okay and that's really the bottom line but having that presentation as easy as possible for people to understand is vitally important now there's election coming up in november there's a possibility maybe a little
019more possibility that the person that gets in is going to say uh the education dollars are going to follow the students wherever the students go and it could be a situation where more students actually move out of npsd and they go to uh roncalli or they go to first german or some place like that so one of the things that is necessary if we can make this happen and make it very public is to make sure that people understand we have x amount of dollars coming in per student and when a student leaves specifically for and make an example say it's roncalli high school and call it i'll make it up uh first german okay or pick two parochial schools those are the things that people are going to ask about they're going to say
020okay what's going to go on here okay i've been told that it's about there's about 25 percent of the dollars that come in are left in the district and 75 percent go with the student we really need to get that nailed down so the public firmly understands that okay this this whole budget thing should be difficult i know historically it's it's it's been done in a certain way and that's terrific okay and i'm sure the board understands perfectly everything uh as a as a just a regular guy uh that thought he knew quite a bit out of eighth grade i'm a little lost on it okay so so that would be good so that's that's my pitch okay one good education two tell the people in the area what this is going to cost and
021where the downers are going to go and give us that example okay thank you very much and by the way i think it's going in the right direction thank you the next person that i have uh for public input is marilyn weier i really don't have a long comment to make other than i have been kind of following um your meetings and your subcommittee meetings um online as well as looking over the minutes i want to tell you you guys have tackled a huge job and you're doing well great i just have to honestly say the many hours that you already have put in just within the last two months um you are charging forward please keep it up and don't get discouraged you are doing a great job thank you the next individual that
022we have for public input and the last as i do not have any others is dana getz that's right uh there is one more after that so my name is dana gutz at the bed 1346 westwood lane in manitoba we have watched your actions and decisions since the election in april and for some of you an additional year before that we have continued to watch you make decisions based on your own personal viewpoints with lack of consideration for the majority of parents in the district lack of consideration for the majority of voters in the district and most certainly lack of consideration for our educators as a member of ally i can assure you i speak for many it is time that you start listening and using research and reasoning to make your decisions your decisions
023have consequences and i fear the decisions that you are continuing to make are not in the best interests of our district or educators and will have negative consequences downstream number one unfettered access to our schools have you considered asking the educators about how they feel about this have you considered taking into consideration their ideas and feelings what is the real meaning behind this action do you have that level of distrust for our educators that you can't bring a doorbell and enter the building through the front door like every other community member number two do you actually have any proof that crt is being taught in our schools or that our educators are sexually grooming our children both of these accusations are hurtful and offensive to our mpsd staff and the individuals that we as parents
024trust in educating our kids number three did you think to ask educators or staff of the mpsc what they thought about a strategic plan or invite them to participate in the selection process do you think that educators will trust an individual to execute a document that belongs to them that is built on academic achievement when the person that you chose to write the strategic plan has no formal experience in education and you could have chosen an organization that the institute that educators and district staff have trust and agree with and align with as public educators number four have you thought about asking teachers or staff members about how changing of a school policy in regards to controversial discussion will affect their classrooms have you taken into consideration what that means to their level of education
025and expertise in their craft have you taken the time to understand how the academic backgrounds and educational coursework that they have used or completed to earn their degrees and especially in the field of ethics how they're prepared to handle these discussions with children number five today you announce a five thousand dollar hire bonus but what have you done to retain the staff that you have have you done a fair market analysis to see where our educators hit in salaries around the state and are you looking at retention bonuses for our staff i think the time has come for you to put your partisan viewpoints aside and figure out how you can collaborate and compromise with the staff that you have left for the for the record summer school is almost done and i have not
026heard of one of you taking the time to visit the school and look at all the hard work and dedication that our teachers put by choice into our students there's a lot of magic going on and what have any of you done to see that or witness that it is time you start supporting our educators it is time you start trusting our educators and it is time you start listening to what our educators need to lead these kids that you love so much it is time for you to put your partisan agenda aside and do your job and support public education if you are unable to fulfill your role as an elected official perhaps it's time for you to resign and let those who have a passion for our public schools take over thank you
027um imagine said that you'd receive the communication that was requested to be read this one is from christine demay at 2000 johnson driving for wisconsin uh first i would like to thank all the board members and the time they give to move our district forward i thank each and every one of you your service has not gone unnoticed in my eyes i do have some concerns that i would like to share with you the board and the public i do not agree with the transsexual discussion for children in schools libraries or anywhere else except at home where the parents make the choices if you want to check out some interesting facts there are several books out by chris or by charlotte is sir the servant t i-s-e-r-b-y-t-s she's the one who wrote the dumbing down
028of america and a few other very noteworthy notebooks these children are too young to make these kinds of choices they bring up hormone blockers to put in their dna dna on hold so the children the child can make up their mind does anyone really know what these puberty blockers do no they don't there have been enough studies done which doesn't surprise me as how many parents would actually do that to their children there is no such thing as gender dysphoria i researched it it is another ploy by the medical community to cover their backsides for giving in to things that they know are wrong children should go through puberty going through puberty gives them a chance to mature and realize who they are and what they want better yet they should have to wait until
029they are adults because then it is legally their choice when you have a child at a young age that wants this procedure and goes through surgeries what happens when they change their mind because they realize more and have more and have matured they should go through surgery and try to correct the damage already done by purity blockers and surgery i've said it before and i'll say it again god does not make mistakes however we being sinful human beings do because society is trying to ram this down families throats and is trying to destroy the family structure you will actually assist them or try to fight back if you truly love and want to protect your children you will not cave if when they should ask for this because bottom line all that children have to
030go through for this is bottom line child abuse if you want your child your children to know about this teach them at home just like so many don't want the bible or prayer in the schools we want our children protected from this kind of sexual thing until we as parents think it is think it should be approached if at all they're absolutely nothing wrong with a boy playing with barbie doll or a girl playing with gi joe that does not mean they want a sex change that means they are going through the natural process of being creative or curious as a child should be parents jumping at the chance to use that as an excuse need to wake up they're doing it they aren't doing their child children any favors my second concern trying to
031teach this program was created by the organization causing us to know us the most brief right now you and bill gates foundation master card and several other global entities have interest in this they want control and will use any deceptive method to brainwash teachers and children gentlemen that came here encouraging it will of course make it sound great is getting something out of it not all children can be or should be taught alike education is not one size fits all situation anything that you want to be truly successful is worth working at and in the true sense of putting effort into it not taking the lazy means man's way out last but not least we need to get the board of education out of the system state and government they both have way too much
032pull and say the states lock lock steps with the government and if school doesn't follow the guidelines the board gets involved there should be no need for either one it should be and could be much easier teach foundational education without the board of education we need more technical ally trained people out there at present because with the housing shortage many more electricians plumbers and so on are needed there is no need to go thousands of dollars into debt in a liberal college that will only further turn most young adults into liberals progressives again thank you for your service and giving me a chance to hear my concerns god bless all of you christine to major southern johnson thank you yeah can you i'll then supply that uh letter to laurie for liquor absolutely thank you
033very much all right with that i'll close public inputs uh bringing us to consent agenda uh everybody had a chance to review minutes that were supplied uh was there anything that needed to be pulled from the consent agenda all right was it just a special board meeting minutes and the financial budget committee made seven cinemas that is correct okay all right uh can i make a motion to approve the consent agenda all right do we have a second okay yeah very second all right all those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye aye any opposed all right uh the motion carries uh moving on to the report of the superintendent uh the payment of vouchers uh angela uh would you care to present yesterday the payment vouchers posted in workbook uh presented
034for approval today uh the total amount of the ep uh for approval for this month is uh 3.9 million dollars uh payroll is about 853 000 this month which is lower than uh usually is because we're in summer payroll season when we don't have our regular teacher payrolls but uh business office has been working to prepare for uh moving the teachers to buy the payroll so those will be beginning soon are there any questions on the matter all right hey i had a quick question yes so yeah i was uh reviewing the report thanks for putting that together and i i saw the employee trust funds for 989 000 um can you clarify what that is is that the retirement fund or what exactly is that right that's the wrs payment that we make to
035the state for the employee employer contributions and that is just a normal benefit that we fund and employee contribution that we have to spend on a regular basis and it's higher during the summer months and we have accrued payrolls from the previous year okay so so that's not part of the retirement fund that's just like a regular payroll tax type thing is that right well we're we're required to send those contributions into wrs that holds the holds the funds and administers you know the retirement pension you know when employees qualify for that gotcha what's is that fairly representative of a typical month or is that does that vary throughout the year that's that's a larger payment i believe it's paid on a one month leg so that included uh two months of teacher payrolls uh
036along with the regular standard monthly payroll so i can't remember offhand what a normal monthly contribution is i could look that up and get back to you though but it is uh you know we the employee pays 6.5 percent of their uh income is their portion and then we match that that's the just the required percentage uh and how it's normally paid out sure yeah i'll be curious to know what that looks like on an annual basis uh if you don't know that off the top of your head whenever you get a chance all right i can send follow-up email to the board thank you yeah yes you're welcome so are there any further questions regarding the payload of rogers all right with that i'll seek a motion for approval motion by stacy do we
037have a second how second met fifth seconds all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed hi all right whatever nate yeah okay um motion carries uh the next uh item on the agenda is the personnel report um joyce would you care to uh present yeah so there's really there's two documents the i guess the original personnel report and an addendum that was uploaded i think the original one was uploaded they were both uploaded on monday of course we followed the protocol that we established a few months ago that the personnel report is reviewed by the board president you know for us to then upload one book so it's pretty straightforward but there's any questions i will certainly answer your questions yeah i i feel so we have an extraordinary amount of
038resignations from this time of year have you um looked into what is normal for us like in years past for this time of year versus now i mean it looks and i'm questioning too why we have a number of the reservations are listed from june 9th when we've had meetings since then so i'm kind of wondering why so i guess two-parter so um when we get a teacher resignation like this time of the summer so for example on on monday this yesterday we got two teacher reservations that are better on the agenda um and then what we do though is we use the june 19th date because that was their last day in the fourth or the month even though we got the reservation of this lesson for the week before for a teacher you
039know that that they submit their resignation but we used to united under personnel report because that's really the last way they would have worked for us okay um your other question um i would honestly you know have to do a little more research on your question i mean it's certainly uh have gotten reservations in prior summers at this time but i mean we all know that our future turnover has been quite a bit greater this year than it does so bunch of them here you know now the left i have the book and how many unfilled positions do we have at this time yeah so for teachers um i want to say when i yesterday i believe we can well district 1 12 vacant teachers teacher positions is that counting these shorts these and that
040does not include those the parentism so far right okay that's just rearranging of staff you know we had three teachers transferred from from trying to other places were any of those on this list okay um choice i actually do have a question uh as far as the um exit interviews we're still conducting those correct um and for the exit interviews um how often are we gonna be probably seeing a report as far as um the reasons and rationales for exits yeah that was a great question i mean i have access to that data we've given those as well and very well then have access so you know i can go into school perceptions right now and look at the results i think when i made a presentation i think we had 37 responses so i
041think we're now up to 45 and 46 you know so at any time you know and maybe that's that thing the personnel stacy stacy did you have uh something to add yeah just to clarify we aren't doing um exit interviews it's a survey that goes out to all uh those that have left the district and the other thing i wanted to ask grace was is the resignation is this something that is happening all over the state or is this unique to manitowoc it's happening all over unfortunately you know again i can't speak for what three or uh but i can honestly say that this is not a thank you oh and one other thing the thing i want to say is that joyce did present the data to us it's a rolling uh so they're
042gonna when you resign you get the survey right away uh so you know that data is coming in all the time i believe traditionally we the personnel report gets that information and then i believe it's october where um hr has been presented something about kind of the year but know that you can go back and listen to that meeting or i know tony has gotten information uh joyce has sent the powerpoint presentation so anyone that wants the details of that we do have it joyce this isn't directed towards you by no means so if you have insight please help me because i'm just a simple question i've been kind of watching the reservations for special ed teachers and paraprofessionals and i want to know what we're doing to proactively try to retain those teachers or
043those paraprofessionals because the turnover rate is so high um can we is there anything that we're doing proactively to try to hold on to those those close teachers or those fair professionals in the special ed category at the moment i have to go back and look at some data but i actually believe our turnover in special education teachers is actually maybe a little less or certainly no more and i have to go back and look but as far as special education features which typically has been uh that we have seen some turnover it's a harder to feel position special ed teachers it hasn't been a real issue this year i just saw at lincoln we were still look there was a vacancy at lincoln and but generally speaking they've been doing pretty well really well
044with special education so good you know again i've said this i i it's a great question and i i think that um again that's something that the board the community staff you know i think we have to continue to look at creative strategic ways to attract and then retain mean the challenges with hiring there is a teacher shortage so when we are able to hire good teachers good parents good custodians who knows we have to continue to create a strategist and attracting in the maintaining and speculating that that might be included in the strategic planning process lots of things throughout the years but it's just becoming even more critical because again i don't think the shortage of teachers and then the overall labor market isn't any better any type of surgery did anybody have anything
045else uh to the personnel report yeah i would just like to say thank you joyce to you and your team i know it's been a challenging environment for you guys here um and i know that uh you know the the number has gotten better since uh i was just looking through my notes since like last june 30th or whatever that you had updated us or you updated me in an email so i just wanted to thank you guys uh so keep up the good work okay um the next item oh we need a motion and a second to approve the personnel report i'll make the question are we doing the course uh let's take them separate yeah so motion to accept the original report i'll second the personnel report all right all those in favor
046signify by saying aye aye aye aye any opposed all right moving on the addendum requires a motion and a second emotion motion to improve the gender might spawning second kathy willis all those in favor signify by saying aye hi all those are forced all right the uh next uh item on the agenda is uh the seclusion and restraint report uh uh joanne did you want to make a presentation to that sure i'll speak uh to that certainly take any questions um i want to start by saying that um we always wish that we had zero seclusions and zero restraints and are always working toward um avoiding seclusion and restraints at all costs i want to be sure that you know that we have staff members trained in every building in non-violent crisis prevention techniques so
047that we can avoid having any systems and restraints at all i hope you noticed from the information i shared in your board packet uh what the definitions of seclusion and restraints are and also that staff are prohibited from using a seclusion or a restraint um unless there is someone within clear present and imminent risk to the physical safety of students or others and is the least restrictive intervention feasible for those of you who may not have seen the packet because there are others listening seclusion means the involuntary confinement of a student apart from other students in a room or area from which the student is physically prevented from leaving and physical restraint means restriction that immobilizes or reduces the ability of a student to freely move their torso arms legs or head so in situations
048where there are students who are a danger to themselves or others there are occasions where a student is secluded and or restrained during an incident board members were provided with some information about the total number of incidents of seclusion also some and also restraint also some information about what number of students were students with ieps in special education versus students who are non-iep students and then there was a chart provided to you with with that information i want you to know that when these incidents occur they are taken very seriously oftentimes uh when they're available there is a emergency team or a principal involved in the situation who is assisting um that there is a form that is completed and parents are contacted immediately um and then also provided a copy of the form uh
049so that we're working hand in hand with them to try to avoid having other seclusions and restraints in the future although again i wish i was recording that our number is zero um i was pleased when we came to um the end here that uh at the end of the year that for a more typical year than our years during the pandemic we are down in our number of supers and restraints in the district and our grand total of incidents is 126. um keep in mind with those 126 incidents it could be that there was a student who required just as an example a brief restraint perhaps they were going to hit someone just as an example and because then the student got out of control and was unable to be held needed then to
050be secluded um in a place of course where they could be seen and are supervised and are in a safe circumstance that would count as two that is a restraint and also a seclusion and it could happen within moments of each other um i would be happy to answer any questions that the board may have on this topic i guess i have some first of all if i remember correctly and correct me if i'm wrong if um like for example one of our school schools has multiple it could be from the same street event right many occurrences could become the same so this isn't 126 different it's with each occurrence right there um when you look through the bullet points on the very first page um it does tell you that for example there were
05167 incidents of seclusion throughout last school year and there were 23 students involved in those 67 incidents now that data does not tell you if one of those 23 students were responsible for 20 of those or if it was more evenly spread but yes you are right there could be situations where someone is responsible for multiple incidents and just just for the record too it's our numbers are down but they're significantly down yeah so um in 2018-19 we have 293 in 2019-20 we had 186 and that was a year we had was virtually partially virtual so to be down to 126 like you said it would be great to be zero but we are significantly down is there a different way we're handling students that that's a change or are we just seeing just overall
052just better numbers when we're working with human beings it's always a little difficult to answer a question like that yeah i'm sorry because it's okay i'm glad you're asking because i'd like to have an opportunity to explain um i i think that every person working with children in our school district would like to at all costs avoid these situations and so um that means that our mindset is in the right place so that we can avoid those those situations secondly i know that um training has been provided and just as an example during new teacher mentor week um we will we will have all special education and people services members who are new to our district go through a full day training um in non-violent crisis intervention so we are we are constantly doing that
053training i know that some of the processes in the last years to have discussions directly after the incident have helped us have good discussions around how are we going to be sure this doesn't happen again and one of the key questions we should always be asking is why did this happen um what is in our education terms is what is the function of that behavior and all behavior is communication and so what what was happening that they were trying to communicate at that moment and how can we get ahead of that so those discussions have been helpful we can do all of those things and still have a circumstance where someone has multiple supreme restraint incidents um because yeah just as an example i i think that you know that over 100 students with ieps
054just as an example transferred into our school district last year and so that ever-changing population of students makes it hard for me to say it's absolutely the efforts that we are putting together versus it is that we have different students or something like that it makes it difficult to know that and be sure that i understand you know why that happened but i can guarantee you that we are working very hard to be sure that we are as low in the numbers possible with that said everyone here also wants a school environment to be safe so if a student is a danger to themselves or others we have an obligation to intervene and so you you know you wouldn't want the number to be zero at the risk of anyone being injured and so there's
055a balance in that uh piece as well so i know i sort of answered what you were asking kathy if i can tell by looking at you that you understand why i'm saying you can't really decide that it's absolutely with one part three of them yeah thank you carrie did you have something yeah joey i i i confess that i was never very good at math and and i i i notice that some of these things don't add up for example lincoln had one seclusion and one restraint and that equals four how does that if you noticed anything else could you let me know what they are and if i do need to make an addendum to this or to to change it or update the board the next meeting i sure would oh yeah
056maybe i was so you know so dumb at it okay i um uh there's several of them on there so we have had um several people touch this document and and i certainly would would uh be happy to go back and check those okay so i think you know if my calculations are even closer right we have it even lower than one concept well would you like to say i was coming out of a sense would you want to add this up for me i apologize if there's some errors or something here i think everybody on the board group knows that i have known the last five weeks without a secretary and my new person started two days ago so there are about two different secretaries of myself look at this and i apologize if
057we have i've got an error on there and i will absolutely go back and look at it that you're doing your yeah job people in the buildings are doing the best job and i like how you articulated that the human side of it if there's one child that is misbehaving you can throw a report make it look bad and i'm not in the process i'm not in the business of looking at reports to make them look good in the business and trying to help our children and you articulated that very correctly and clearly and i understand completely that the report isn't going to always tell everything that we need to see because sometimes there's things that we have to adjust for and you made a great example of a hundred ieps coming into the history
058that's just one example of any so thank you for the report and i have uh thank you me too so um i had a couple questions too um just wanted to let everybody touch on that before i asked mine um so three questions um one was i know that there's laws that are surrounding um the um ability to seclude and restrain and i'm wondering if uh as part of the training that we are having if there is uh if the laws that serve excuse me the laws that surround seclusion and restraint is included in that i'm sure it is but it's just one of those things that's just kind of as i was thinking about it i'm like well let's ask the question i appreciate that that's the answer i usually get a really long
059answer so the answer is the answer is yes we we absolutely uh educate our staff members around uh the laws that have to do with sufficient restraint including that very important point about students need to be in imminent someone needs to be an imminent physical danger and it needs to be the least restrictive intervention that's what it comes up with yes and then the other one um you know i see some on the some of these on here where it goes you know the zeros for seclusion and then there's numbers for restraint is there a uh do we have a um like a criteria for escalation or anything like that that would maybe fall into into this element is there are is there uh policy or i guess got possibly part of the process for
060how it's escalated not positive i'm familiar with your instrument let me see if i do it i'll uh let me say it back to you um i think you're asking wow it's interesting that there's different numbers in those two areas and how do they pick and how do they have some am i understanding your question yeah how does it decide and within the training for non-violent crisis intervention uh people are trained to think about that circumstance and use whatever is the least restrictive intervention needed at that time and there are a lot of factors to take into because what you know i've been an educator for i don't know 28 years or something like that and everything from someone swinging a fist to someone to someone having a shard of glass in their hand and
061swinging is a big difference and same is that an adult who is there to defend themselves as a child is it someone who are there lots of people around or a few people so all of those things are taken into consideration in that moment the intervening adult has to make a decision about whether there is a possibility for for example a restraint can we simply kind of hold someone's arm back in that situation or is more going on in that whole scenario that would make us need to do something else uh sometimes um you might be really far away for example uh from a space that would be a safe seclusion and so you might be in a situation where you don't have a safe seclusion area for you to get to right away and
062you don't have the option um i've been at the school course with students over the years as a principal and you don't have that option so you have to take all of that and you know we're out on the trails and something occurred and so you know you have to just take all of those things in mind and and make a decision based on the training that you've received uh and you would want that to be the least restrictive measure possible did i get to the heart of what you're hoping yeah um and then the last one that i had was is uh for um you touched on the fact of doing a debrief and that was we'd seen positive results in making sure we understood and captured the situation do we have the situations
063where the student is involved in the debrief is that part of the required process as well we would we would love to have students involved in that debrief but a decision has to be made about whether that's past circumstance there are times that a student is still escalated and some conversation is taking place and there are other and there are times that students are unable to understand that level of conversation so we take all those things under consideration but we always want students to be involved in what's happening with them um i like the phrase nothing about me without me um that concept of nothing about me without me means include me and yet there are some circumstances that it would make things worse if they needed to be present for that conversation so the
064so our educators work in cooperation with the family to determine how that works and we also are looking at what factors are taking place thank you very much um i have no other questions does anybody else have any other questions to the matter all right um so yeah there's uh no action required it was uh simply for uh information um but then we would move on to the uh district activity report uh from uh superintendent jim james thank you very much uh just uh report out uh yesterday um as we're getting ready for a new school year we have uh all our principals and the ministers gathered together for a luncheon you know two in the ready state uh uh have a little camaraderie be there in terms of how we're planning how the summer's
065going and how we're getting ready for the school year it was really great uh being with the entire group what was really nice is that i've gone around and met individually with all of them i just have one that i you know didn't have the opportunity yet but we'll do that so that was really good uh today i was able to um uh stop in and exchange a little bit with our new mentoring group uh who are getting geared up for training and uh in a ready state for uh mentoring our new teachers and i just like to acknowledge um joyce and uh jason uh and pam you know all play significant roles in there and it was it's it was just such a great feeling you know to be part of that and seeing
066that synergy and that professionalism collegiality and really in terms of this ready state that they work hard to get into to embrace our new teachers and to get them ready as we're all aware uh today is uh fall primary election day and we are one of the sites uh for uh district five and so we've got part of that building let's kind of close off today uh so that that polling will take place in uh conference room one here next week we've got new educator week and so we're referencing that so that's a whole week um i'll participate and he's gonna kick off on monday but uh again this is really exciting we have many new teachers coming back it was nice getting geared up with mentoring but uh i'm looking forward to that next
067week um a lot of paperwork that needs to be processed you know so that's going up and then the week after that it's all staff coming down and hearing nothing so i sent some communications out i'll afford you a copy you know in terms of as we're doing here though but uh it's it's um i'm really excited to be part of this thing that was really nice i'd also like if we haven't you know you said my warm welcome to mary blanc director and uh joyce and mary have been working really nice in terms of you know this handling off of the baton and i'm anticipating that uh joyce's help and mary's readiness that we're going to have a seamless transition and it's going to continue to as we always have our work to improve
068i'll come here all right uh the next item that we have on the agenda for today is uh the unfinished business which would be the strategic plan update um so brett uh would you care to give us an update good evening plan you know all of this of course all depends on just getting it all coordinated but i think we can we can get that done so that i'll stop i'll pause and ask if there are any questions i can answer i do have a question right um why would you ask the names of in the surveys from like our staff if like what would be that purpose if you're not going to be sharing them if you're not sharing the names of people right so the staff one we don't necessarily have to capture
069from the staff i think from the leadership and the board it's important because i may want to do a one-on-one discussion or if i have a clarification if somebody gives me a an item and i can't quite decipher exactly what they're intending to say i can reach out to them directly i wouldn't have to go through anybody else um i i understand some people may be hesitant to give a name you know they won't want to put it down um but i will manage this through like either a google's form or a survey monkey so that really it's dumping into my account only nobody else is going to see names attached to that but right given that you're a member of our community too though i think there'll be a lot of people who would
070be uncomfortable with that and i think as far as staff goes whether it be against unless it's like kind of upper management i really think that that needs to be completely anonymous unless of course someone chooses to share it with you i don't see a purpose in getting those people's names i think you'll have a much more open discussion or honest answers if you go for that anonymity and i i do that on my personal feeling and just taking surveys and pass from our staff and i have no issue making that an optional field if that's the desire that's a way in but that's how i feel yeah you just open it up to make it like you said uh much more honest and open discussion people will feel more freely it it and it'd
071be optional too i mean yeah uh some people who have no problem giving the name and other people may not but the point the purpose of it is to get the actual what their what their feelings are yeah that's the whole purpose right and that way two people feel safe and comfortable getting the information and that's how we'll gain the best information and i am i'm absolutely fine with that and i just put that out there we can make that feel optional you have that ability in the survey to make a required option we can make it an optional problem you're saying at the staff and teacher level make it an optional field are you comfortable with leadership and and the board making it uh asking for their names i wouldn't ask their names i
072would make it completely optional at everyone directors and anybody uh employees versus you know i think that should be an optional thing there be a i guess could it be possibly well if it's optional then it's optional i'm just saying because i know that there's certain parts that you're trying to have the opportunity to follow up on so right but there may not be even even say our our principal leadership or you know our directors may want to tell you things or have that being spoken but may not want to follow up either so i guess to make it completely optional optional does make sense terry um gee i think this is this is all good and and and my only reservation is that it's gathering an awful lot of opinion before before we have
073a kind of a background for people i mean we we we really should have some hard information on what what what the manor rock public school district is which characterizes it right now such as you know declining declining scores maybe i don't know for sure but increasing disciplinary problems uh i mean that's certainly anecdotally that's what i get um something about the financial situation of of of this school's district because you know you have to have a kind of a base of facts i mean you know i studied plato in school so um you know opinions are really good and what people the opinions apply to what people think we should do about what needs to be done so i think that we do have to have kind of a base of accurate objective information
074about where the school district is now because this is a plan this is a plan for action and i don't i don't want to i just don't want to spin wheels uh you know on diversions and and and stuff that you know really isn't it either isn't a problem that's not being identified or isn't a problem which is being amplified and i think there's an awful lot of that that's going on so you're talking a a an info sheet with that precedes the survey is that what you're yep i think that everybody that gets a survey should should have have some absolutely basic objective facts before they start saying oh gee we should you know we should be scared it comes back to uh uh you know before when brett was talking about a swot
075analysis you know it's typically surrounding data you know in terms of so that there are critical elements that we're aware of that represent our district different yeah like i'm sure that you know even the teachers may not know that much about the accurate information the funding the funding situation i mean i know there's members that came on the board that thought why why do we need to do referendums uh so um i just think you know some things are not just up for opinion i mean as i said i think boy opinions are good they may really be instructive uh in terms of what we do about what we need to do but we need to we need to you know we need to like kind of have an anchor an accurate map before we
076start we start before we start moving agree with you i think we could do that is what you just said with those three pillars you know of discipline of achievement and then we kind of focus we focus our surveys to that restraint to really focus on the objective things that we can try to improve on so yeah so i think you said it though you said three financial situation yep behavior um my question was going to be what are our pillars i mean what how many pillars i hope about this school district are we going to go for 10 are we going to go for five or three well i think maybe four because i would add you know a teacher teacher morale and expectations um we you know we go around kind of indirectly
077by saying well gee why are so many people designing it so he says well it's not that many people and i think there's a suspicion that teachers are pissed off and dissatisfied and you know feel under under appreciated and underpaid i'd like to know if that's you know i'd like to know some accurate sociology before before i start saying oh we should do this so i will i'll answer part of that by saying you're right some of this is opinion but typically what i have experienced is as i ask a group like this you'll be surprised how common the themes become and the pillars of us and the pillars almost build themselves so what you talk about here it starts to come out in the survey and as i take those results and i start
078to group them you know that i i'll almost get i've already started jim and i've talked about i i put together a list of a page and a half of my thoughts on what the pillars may come out to be yeah and and where based on i went back and read like three years of the board minutes and i started to look at what i saw in those themes now i don't want to present those because i want the survey to organically provide those right sure i'm not i'm not too worried about what yeah i think phipps is right on that but i think it's not about it's not a bad idea or some sort of interesting yeah we had heard earlier from an individual had said something about including students um i get it
079that this is a uh um the board of education the leadership principles teachers and staff has it ever been thought of or i mean was it considered to possibly include maybe to see even just a small survey see where the student population sits on how they interpret their education and the direction that they maybe would want to see um just an idea just throw out there i know that uh you know we sometimes as adults and guilty this is myself and in parenting you know we look at uh these are the directions just go do it right yeah um but uh you know you don't want to omit the voice of the uh the individual that's being taught you want to give give them some ownership um has that been considered possibly we can write
080any survey we would like and we can survey any population we would like the question will become you know how far an age level do you go down and ask those questions you hope in the community you'll get graduates right you'll get the graduates providing feedback on their experience in that education and then at what point do you you know what age group do you go down to and make those questions i would also like to highlight you know that annually we do school receptions surveying we were serving parents staff and students yeah i will make the information available to them you know in terms of obviously you know it's going back to what are we cleaning already from some of the sources of information that we have does anybody have anything else uh to
081uh to ask or a voice on all right thank you for your time i would suggest maybe that you take action to it you know i i think what's happened is we've been presented as scope uh you know that you know maybe we already approved this the scope in the timeline okay um stacy before we uh um look for motion for that did you have something to add i wanted to make a motion to adopt the timeline and the scope all right we have a second then a second can we repeat what that is stacy can you repeat your motion please all right uh just the adoption of the timeline correct the scope's open all right um so we have a motion a second all those in favor signify by saying i all right any
082opposed all right so we'll be moving forward with this uh scope and timeline all right thank you appreciate it thank you appreciate it uh the next uh item i'll be bringing up here uh items brought forward from the august 3rd 2022 finance and budget committee meetings the first one would be the budget adjustments um angela did you want to uh speak to that sure you can answer any questions uh included in board book was the memorandum that was shared with the finance and budget committee overall for preliminary numbers uh based on our total revenues and expenditures for fund 10 and all funds we did not exceed those amounts however with our actual revenues and expenditures we did end up exceeding our revenues slightly around a hundred thousand dollars so one of the main reasons for
083this occurring is the fact that we haven't made sort of an unexpected transfer from to just uh reclassify and correctly classify money that was set aside for a prepayment of debt uh which took place in january so um you know that is the reason uh one of the main reasons we're doing the budget adjustments just a standard practice in general like big picture uh it's standard for school districts uh annually to adjust their budget multiple times through the year just because we have certain requirements um with gpi with how it's reported and they want to report it as closely and the board to be kept uh you know just up to date on the budget expenditures you know at least you know at some point throughout the year so so that is the reason for
084the update um and so then i did provide like a brief overview within them um just so where we're landing for the year and they're unaudited um figures just because we're finalizing to the audience at the end of the summer and everything so i guess we like to have the uh approval of the budget adjustments for the 2021-22 did anybody have any questions before i just want to say that i i took the time to read through this and sent it out and i'm just thoroughly impressed with angie's ability to play with all these large numbers come within so close and then to be able to to maneuver things around to get it to fit it's awesome so i would motion that we approve all right do we have a second object all right i
085went through it too uh any further discussion to the motion all right we have uh quotient in seconds all those in favor signify by saying aye any opposed all right uh the next item to be brought forward from the august third finance and budget committee meeting was the purchase of computers uh and along with the purchase of the manual also attached to boardwalk just provided an overall overview of our esser funding and urban claiming today so this included both private and public um as for sr1 expenditures uh they were two of the earlier pandemic relief funds the private schools had equitable shares so um so the memo includes just an overview of those 1.1 million dollars in just uh rollover staffing expenditures from the previous year with us are funding spent and claimed as with
086all federal funding we're required to spend the money according to the requirements fill out forms applications submit things to the states and then we get to monitor so this just works to help us pulls out our financial year and just wanted to share an update with the public so um but then the official request is we had a large expenditure come up with student needs our teacher laptops are just totally aged and they're just they're very difficult to maintain and keep running and and just make the teacher successful at this point and uh so i talked to uh director ebola here and he had just suggested that we um or just helped us some little quotes and uh so we're just looking for approval for 400 teacher laptops in the amount of hundred and 36
087four dollars i apologize there's a problem sign there instead of a dollar sign but they're really dollars um so and and and jesus i invite you to speak to them as well please if you'd like to add anything i think i know yeah i could answer questions that are um you had somebody you weren't i didn't see anything stacy or tony did you guys hit your button i don't know what they did oh i'll do it i think the laptops is a great idea um obviously we have seven years on a laptop we all know that that's that's pretty old um so i think that moving forward purchasing new laptops for our heatwave is a great asset however i would like to try to think of a way that would help um we could create
088an option like it would be called like own your own option where maybe a teacher could purchase a laptop maybe you know like two years into the into the new laptop and then they could take it home it would be theirs if they decided to move on in a different field or if they were going to continue to have that and then obviously it would be a way to prevent us from having to buy 400 laptops at once um obviously that's a big big order because of our aging laptops it was just an idea i listened to it in committee i just i thought of this option um obviously between then and now and uh you know i didn't uh throw uw stout i bought my own laptop it worked out well and you kind
089of i took care of mine a little bit more because i knew it was going to be mine so but that was me being a kid so anyways but i'm just trying to say that it might be a way that we could help and we could work out the numbers you know but it would be very advantageous to just purchase your own laptop but i think that would be an option that we could look forward to doing that but i'm completely okay with and would like to make a motion to purchase these laptops with yester funds at this point i just would like to leave that as an option for listening so we do have a motion so we'll open up for a discussion is there any discussion to that uh the only thing i'd
090like to add is that i know from me became various teachers in these last you know a couple years but especially these last few months a lot of teachers are having issues with their laptops so it's actually an exciting proposal i think to get them new ones so they can function better i was thrilled to see it as well too but i do have a couple questions for you andy it my end of the impression we have a certain deadline for this extra fund stuff that we have to choose yeah so we're going to get these yeah so this will take care of the last little bit of us or one funding that we have and we have to have that claimed and spent by september 30th this year and then like next year so
091two expires and then the following year so three expires so we just have some timelines and we'll meet them without a problem uh you know we also have uh ways that we can you know like if for some reason we still come in because they could be uh you know on that order maybe they are coming right i'm not sure that we can you know shift other things around to make sure that we maximize a second um all those in favor signify by saying aye any opposed all right motion carries for the purchase of the new laptops and then the uh the last item um that we have is the remarks from the board president uh stacy seldner uh who's with us virtually um would you um yep i just have a few things um
092just wanted to thank all uh the public that came and uh gave public input um uh one of the things that was talked about during public input was the strategic plan and involving the community and also teachers and staff and and principals so i hope that answers that question about that this scope and timeline that we have adopted will reach out to those partners that were discussed during that time and then the only other thing i wanted to say was in response to teachers not feeling that they can keep students safe please encourage those teachers to reach out to either a board member or principal or if it is a principal maybe someone in the district we want to make sure that you know a lot of times there can be a communication barrier about
093what we're trying to do and no student should feel unsafe no educator or if that's the message that we've sent um then we need to um [Music] anyway so i just wanted to say that i mean again our our technology isn't isn't perfect by no means do we not want to stream our meetings but the reason for the last one was this website that we use um was not able to transmit the information and the for your uh the company was stream yard jason yep all right um the next item on the agenda would be the future meeting dates um so the uh the next uh board of education meeting are we seeking a stacey are we seeking a a second meeting for this month or are we how are we proceeding there i would
094leave that up to um our superintendent uh if there's agenda items that need to be on a special meeting we can certainly schedule that so you know with the strategic planning process is that second meeting sometimes you know for updates on the scripture declining process you know i do recognize you know that the board has had some questions before in terms of a special versus another regular um i think we're going to have a lot of work you know ahead of us here with this remaining planning process we're going to send things forward also the curriculum committee will probably have some things that perform so that will august 23rd um is there a time um i think last meeting uh we had uh stated that we would like to uh have some continuity in our
095meetings uh so is there any objection to maintaining the six p.m status quo time all right anyway when did you start that i mean i apologize that we have some continuity to the time because we're kind of going here bouncing all over so we're trying to uh to meet that request and uh it was discussed that we uh stick with a 6 p.m meeting it kind of melted with everybody i just wanted to appreciate that yes for now so 6 p.m um on august 22nd 23rd thank you for the clarification and then do we have uh just uh um buildings and grounds is there anything uh no there isn't but i i want to talk to chris because there is an issue yeah i want to know how we respond to it right i think
096there may be a buildings in the grounds committee named before before the next important there's another number of things you need to figure out and see how that will yeah which are they're going to check right after this yeah sure okay so buildings grounds uh will be to be determined at this point right okay um the next one uh curriculum curriculum will be meeting august um 16th what time do we determine yeah okay thank you at five o'clock and then um ad hoc is meeting this august 11 and then it's from 1 to 2 30. we may or may not have another meeting august 18th we'll determine that on saying about the needs for that all right um personnel i'm going to be reaching out to the personnel committee to set up a meeting also
097the executive committee to set up a meeting as well all right so executive and personnel is tv determined and then finance um we do have uh some some budget stuff that we're going to be definitely looking at so is there times that uh have yes august 17th next wednesday on and so that uh are there is there uh anything else for the good of the order if not i would seek a motion to adjourn i'll make motion twitter all right promotion did you have a second yep all right uh all those in favor signify by saying hi all right any opposed and we are adjourned you guys