Milford Board of Education Meeting - August 18, 2022

001good evening everyone uh it's thursday august 18th 6 p.m let's call this meeting to order the regular board meeting in the milford exempted village school district i need a roll call mr right mrs chestnut yes mr combs yes mrs mason yes this is nolan yes mr miranda yes thank you let's 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 okay i need a motion and a second to approve the agenda so moved second discussion caller roll this chestnut yes mr combs yes mr mason yes mrs nolan yes mr miranda yes thank you i need a motion and a second for the approval of the minutes of the

002board work session on july 18 2022 so moved second discussion call the roll mrs chestnut yes mr combs yes mrs mason yes this is nolan yes mr miranda yes thank you now i now need a motion and a second for the approval of the minute to the regular board meeting from july 21st 2022. um some move yeah second discussion call the rule this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mrs mason yes this is nolan yes mr miranda yes thank you uh we now have some presentations i'm going to turn this over to superintendent john spicer thank you president randa members of the board this evening we do have a special guest we have joe braden who is from the ohio auditor of state keith faber's office so we'll turn it over to you sir just

003make sure that microphone's on how about now there we go awesome it's great to be here tonight on behalf of otter state keith faber to present the milford school district the honors state award it's important to note that this puts the milford school district in a very select group the other states office audits nearly 6 000 entities and fewer than 20 percent of all these entities that are audited are even eligible for this award the outer state award is presented to local governments and school districts upon the completion of a financial audit that meet the following criteria of a clean audit report the entity must file financial reports with the other state's office by the statutory due date without extension via the hinkle system and in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles the auto report

004must contain no must not contain any findings for recovery any material citations or material weaknesses it must not contain any significant deficiencies or uniform guidance single audit findings or any questioned costs the entities management letter shall contain no comments related to any ethics referrals any question costs less than threshold per uniform guidance any lack of timely report submission bank reconciliation issues a failure to obtain a timely single audit in accordance with uniform guidance any findings for recovery or any public meetings or public records issues and the entity shall have no other financial or any other concerns this award represents the hard work of all the milford school district employees board of education members superintendent that all strive each day to achieve accounting excellence but brian if you'd step up here for a moment i especially

005want to recognize brian ray your treasure for his outstanding leadership and his commitment to fiscal integrity congratulations on behalf of ohio otter state keith faber i would like to present the milford school district the auditor of state award [Applause] congratulations thank you very much you thank you thank you any other comments i know we say this a lot but i just wanted to congratulate brian he is an excellent treasurer and he always goes above and beyond and this is a very well deserved award thank you and how many years in a row is this now i want to say this is like six or seven um we've we've we've received the word every year that i've been here and i know there was a couple years prior to me that the reward was also received

006so yeah i want to say six or seven years in a row that's a pretty good batting average yes well congratulations thank you i like to thank brian and his staff as well it takes a team right absolutely um i do have one staff member here kathy king um the other members of my staff that had some issues and conflicts that kind of came up last minute so but kathy was here we went through the audit together as well so yes all right we do have one other presentation this evening i did want to give a little briefing of our safety form that we did hold here in this room it was streamed via icrc as well that recording is still available first and foremost like to thank everyone that was able to come those

007that have watched it i think that one of the things that is important for our school community and community at large to know and understand is that we do not and are not required to do anything with house bill so no action means that nothing happens and things stay the same the way they are i think it's important to also note that school safety goes beyond house bill 99 it's the everyday measures that we take now the conversations that we have with our fire departments and police departments um milford and miami township but most importantly the great relationship that we have with them and the ability to um to go through our buildings recognize things that maybe we should change or could change and then we follow through with those items um chief mills from

008miami township did give us some nice praise about our school safety we did talk about those measures as well that we're continuing to take hardening of some entrances we don't want to get too specific about it but i think i can say for certainty that um we don't want to put guns on the hips of any of our teachers we don't want them in classrooms with that and so you know that's sort of how that that safety form went um we did at the very end give the opportunity for a thought exchange that's been open for a while now we do have the results of the thought exchange that's here there's a link here that you can see some of the results you can see that we had 191 participants can you go back for

009me real quick sorry you're too good uh there were 212 thoughts and there were 6 655 different ratings and so if you would go ahead and click on the top thoughts um all of the top thoughts they're just two numerous three there's probably about 20 that end up in this 4.5 range and most of them have the same message no guns we don't want guns in our our buildings our teachers have enough to do and so um i'll reiterate what i had said last month and that is we want our teachers to teach and to build community and not necessarily have a firearm on their hip and a holster etc so that's sort of the recap of the safety forum did meet today with someone from the ohio school safety group with the local county

010superintendents as well today the training that's talked about is still it's not there there's no curriculum for that so there's nothing to do at this point so that's really it but for the safety forum tonight unless there's any questions or comments from the board um comment wise i thought the forum was great it was really good to be there and to um there aren't a lot of situations where we can have dialogue with the community you know like these meetings aren't necessarily dialogue so that was really good and i think throughout the whole process through the executive session and the meetings we've had and the parts we've been um i i as a parent and board member did not realize our how strong our relationship is with the local police departments and that's really the

011heart i mean the heart of the community and the heart of keeping kids safe is having the relationship they know our schools they know our grounds they know our principles you know and they're there and they're part of it so if an incident ever were to happen it's not the first time they're going to be there they'll be familiar they'll be quick to respond i have full faith in both chief mills is is that the plural millsas yes that that you know they would be there to do whatever is needed for our school so i really really appreciate that yeah they really are a part of the school community when i was going around to some of the elementary schools here's the fire department here's the police department there passing out things to the kids

012as they come in for the first day so just a wonderful relationship you're absolutely spot on thank you for addressing this tonight you and i and a lot of us have had a lot of conversation about this and unfortunately there's been a fair amount of misinformation in the public domain and it's coming from places i don't know but i know that all of us are on the receiving end of a lot of emails from concerned parents and i think they they rightly should be concerned with some of the things that they've commented on and i'll just share with everyone and and i'll speak for all of us it's near unanimous the view on on safety for our school uh and the the um the firearm on the hip comment that not only the administration this

013entire board is in uh in violent agreement um with uh with with with with the direction that we're going and we're so thankful to have the relationship with the local law enforcement so i appreciate you addressing it uh our our community should be concerned and um hopefully everyone understands that we take it very very very serious um and um and thank you not not only are we in lockstep with one another apparent from going to that meeting uh we're in lockstep with the community as well yeah they're they're all right there with us just one final comment not necessarily about uh the safety forum but a huge shout out to both miami township and milford police and fire i mean they were everywhere in our buildings yesterday so it was wonderful to see them okay

014well that brings us to our first like first public commentary mr rabe do we have anyone i do not have any for the first one i do have one for the second okay okay thank you uh let's move on to the treasurer's report but before we do that um we are we are now going into a different way a little bit of doing our business here um it is a we're doing uh voting by consent i'll let you explain exactly what that is because i will uh i will muddy the waters not a problem um if you look at the your board agenda you'll know i'll give you an example you you'll notice on the agenda i've got items one and two which are actually actionable items instead of taking a vote on each individual

015item we'll group those together that's how it will go so you're basically cutting down on some motions votes so on and so forth so we'll just group everything together and in the event that we would want to pull one out and vote on it separately you could do that we would we would do that through robert's rules and you would guide us yeah we would adjust the agenda and pull those out okay correct just go ahead mr combs please do i mean i think what's important for everyone to know is that nothing has changed as mr combs has brought up multiple times there's constant discussion you meet committee meetings the agendas stay the same everything is there everything is fully transparent did i capture that you you did not only do we discuss it in

016the committees but just understand the consolidation of some of this is um it is there's a lot of redundancy here you see i call this the bobble head sometimes where you're like yes yes yes it's because we've already really vetted a lot of this and if we can move some of this high level summary into one vote it just makes it a little bit easier and by the way robert's rules just to dig in a little bit more our president must offer a discussion time for every one of these uh that is by law and we all have an opportunity to discuss that so i just wanted everyone to i want to double down on the fact that nothing's really changing we're just consolidating a few of these higher level themes with the votes that's

017all you're on you got it so recommend the approval of the board reports for the month ending july 31st 2022 as well as the donation from the milford basketball association and the amount of thirty thousand dollars okay we're going to ask for a motion in a second for items one and two on the treasurer's report so moved second discussion uh just a couple items to point out uh when you look at the board reports we are still working off temporary appropriations that we did back in june which we only did for three months the auditor's report that i needed to come back in order to do the full appropriations i did receive that this week so next month we will bring full appropriations to you which will meet the statutory deadline having it done by

018the end of september uh we did receive an advance on our real estate here in july we did rece final settlement in august so fine august reports will show a final settlement for both hamilton county and clermont county on the taxes also in the all of their operating revenue if you remember we had missed the deficit spending piece at the end of fiscal year 22 because of that tiff we did receive that tiff in july so that's reflected in these numbers as well the ending cash balance for july was just shy of 49 million dollars general er interest off the general fund was 70 little over 7 600 and we did have a large investment tour in the bond retirement fund interest for the month was 74 673 those dollars will go back into uh

019the construction projects so those will be used for that construction the donation from the basketball association those funds are going to be used to purchase new basketball uniforms for both the junior high and i believe the high school as well yes and uh and certainly thank you to the basketball association i think that their donations come in the form of ten thousand dollars a year if i remember correctly so this is kind of a three year you need to have something you want to buy and then they make the donation and then we take care of it the last thing that they did were the the major portion of the video boards in the gymnasium so they're good citizens they take care of us and we give them gym time some some gym in the

020district so they can practice and play okay so i have a motion in a second right correct what you call the roll mrs chestnut yes mr combs yes mrs mason yes mrs nolan yes mr miranda yes thank you the next item i have is just an informational item by state law anytime we have a credit card or procurement card system and we receive any type of rebate on that back we have to formally report that out to the board so in july we received a refund rebate cash back rewards however you want to call it in the amount of two thousand six hundred twenty eight dollars and forty six cents uh for activity that we did on the on the credit card in the last fiscal year and again it was just informational only and

021that is annual and that goes into the general fund it does go into the general fund yes okay that's all i had thank you thank you uh we're gonna move on to uh superintendent's business mr john spicer thank you president miranda members of the board we do have a middle school update just wanted to let's go ahead and click on that link it's just a site not a site actually the building rough plan if you will we're looking at three floors so the far left you can see the academic wing which would be on the west side of the campus and then you will then see in the middle the purple area that's our student dining the green section would be some admin nurses office etc school counselors the blue section there would be the

022academy and then orange is music and then of course the yellow you can see is the um the main gymnasium along with the auxiliary gym and then the second floor you can see it's mirrored first second academics first second third floors are mirrored and then the electives area you'll see right in the middle there those green [Music] um hexagons if you will um those are staircases to the second floor from the dining area it uses a flex learning space as well and so this is sort of the this is a design right now that we're looking at with shp we have had some meetings about technology hvac just just some pre-construction type meetings if you have further questions about that i'm sure we can get jeff up there to talk about those a little bit

023we did get sort of a sneak peek today of what an exterior elevation might look like that's not ready for them to share out just yet so they're going to go back and make some adjustments to it it's a beautiful building i think jeff says it all the time we're worried about the budget you know when we it's because of inflation and construction costs are are just crazy um we do have a good temperature a gauge there was conger just did a middle school i think it was very similar in size i forget the location but we'll have some ideas of what those construction costs are going to be so jeff and i and the team we're just kind of looking at ways that we can reduce costs but stick to the ohio um school

024design manual osdn correct jeff is that the right acronym thank you so we're trying to stay under budget obviously that's the best case scenario that's kind of where we are with this we do have we'll get some more information out today we did set a meeting today for september the 8th at 6 pm here in this room shp and congress will be with us again perhaps at that time they'll have some elevations exterior elevations to share but certainly a refinement of this and potentially some other areas as well we did meet with clingers to talk about the site circulation as well they'll be doing a traffic study probably in september early september we want to get kids back um buses and parent drop off we want to kind of let that work itself through for

025a couple weeks so early in september we'll have a traffic study as well try to get numbers i've expressed how important the site circulation is for us no matter what happens inside you know this building or outside this building it's going to be beautiful we're going to love it but boy we got to get that side circulation right so they know how important that is to us in this community so that's that's sort of the middle school update unless you have questions that i can answer or jeff just a quick comment for anybody who's been following this the building flipped from what we've seen the building did flip uh the um the yellow gymnasium part it did flip so the it mirrored and so it would be where i'm sitting now would be back in

026this corner but now it's going to be the gym we'll if we just kind of sat it down it would be on top of the robins in the weight room and we'll get to that too i've got a little comment or two about that so um that is correct so it's been flipped um and that's where we are i think there's some good reasons so i think the athletics lining up over there will be good and then on the flip side site circulation and busing that makes the academic space a little bit closer to the high yeah parking will be closer for folks if they park they to get into the entrance whether it's the gym or to the main entrance the administration is closer as well i think it's good the main entrance is

027just above well if you see where the purple the purple student dining area is that to the left of that 90 degree angle there would be it's white that's the main entrance you can see there's sort of a vestibule there and then you would get into the green which would be the admin area is that another entrance that's down there by the gymnasium yes there will be access there um we don't exactly know what that will look like but yes there will be access there and then there would also be access down uh excuse me to the west um the top of this page as well you can see a couple doors as well there yeah some really as you pointed out some really good reasons for flipping that design yep john who did you

028say oh okay go ahead who did you say is helping us um with traffic study and site circulation clingers k-l-e-i-n-g-e-r-s i believe is the correct spelling they've they've done our asphalt work in the past so that they're civil engineers etc okay so um one of the things on my mind is in the interim is there any suggestions that they could offer between to bridge today to when we actually have a new campus built that could make this coming school year even marginally better than it's ever been um it's probably not in the current scope of work it would just be great if we could get some additional maybe feedback from them if we haven't already it's not in the current scope of work um you know one of the concerns is anything we do today

029is money that's going to be thrown away in a year or two so that's certainly something to consider one of the things we've talked about you know we've had two series of meetings looking at kind of concepts for site circulation what it might look like i met with them again we met last week we met again this week and they're going to come out again as mr spicer said let things settle out a little bit the first week and a half two weeks are crazier than normal across the street they're going to come out and not only just do traffic counts and a traffic study but also just kind of see how our campus works they're going to fly a drone and they're going to videotape you know the 30 minutes before school starts and

030what's the flow look like where bus is going where cars going who's walking and they're going to do some of those kind of things that will really kind of firm up some of the the concepts that we've got um one of the comments i made to them you know they were like what do you like this concept and and we talked about stacking and cars and how many people come and separating parent drop off from high school students who are you know driving and parking and going in and i said it looks great but i can't tell you for sure i like this until we see what the numbers are you know do we need 500 feet of stacking do we need 1500 feet of stacking so those are some of the things that that

031we've been talking with them about um the traffic study will impact wolf pen in 131 but we're also going to be looking at actually the traffic on campus as well also keeping in mind that there's an additional 500 students and what 20 staff or whatever right yes the comment about the interim wouldn't be something that i wouldn't envision being hyper costly as much as i'm i'm just thinking about things like larger signage and cones and that may sound crazy but if they took a look at how we are currently and said hey can you bridge us in a low-cost way again if it's cones paint stripes and large signs i just wonder if we can give the public a little bit of relief in the interim that's that's really an idea more than when they

032come out here in the next couple of weeks and do those traffic studies that'll be part of that conversation good thank you it's just you had a smile on your face about it because you hear more complaints sight circulation we've been trying to get a traffic light out here forever and we were denied again um and so you know it's it's a problem we have a traffic problem and no one seems to be willing to keep asking at least five times yeah just one one comment i'm sorry what is the cost of getting a police officer like out at um by charity lucas like when people are going out that way that like first of all a special duty request is 50 an hour minimum of three hours so it's 150 a day we have

033had conversations with chief mills about that um and i agree with him and not that i like speaking for chief mills but we have had conversations that we honestly don't think that will help that much at the end of the day the the challenge is is we have three thousand people on the campus trying to get out and it and it takes time you know one point in time we had we tried to make coming out of eagle's way a right turn only from i don't know a half hour before school and a half hour after school or whatever first of all nobody paid attention to it it's not really enforceable because it's private property and even if it was enforceable if somebody comes out and turns right what they then do is turn left

034in the first neighborhood and then pull into the first driveway to turn around and cut in and turn around so that that really didn't work and it didn't help um so we've definitely talked about that um but talking with chief mills and and taking a look at it i'm not sure that that's really beneficial um i also don't think be completely transparent we've talked about is that something we want our sro to do which wouldn't cost us any additional money but again it falls back into is it really going to help that much we don't think it will and i also don't think it's the best use of our sro's time you know it's really he's in there talking to kids building relationships as they're leaving for school you know so i think his time

035is better spent in the building rather than you know the last hour of his day spent out at 131 you know doing this so it's definitely something we've talked about um you know at the end of the day i wish we could get odot to put in a light um and so far and the traffic study may show some additional things adding those additional 500 kids with the sixth graders on campus might swing things we talked about that in our meeting yesterday so that's a possibility the biggest challenge with 131 is there's a turn lane but it needs to be way longer when it's a light so and then that's talking about buying up right aways and easements and you know extending that to to extend the width of 131 so you know reading between

036the lines on the letter we got from odot last year i think that's really the biggest hurdle to putting a light in at eagle's way in 131 is extending that turn lane one other thing mr spicer mentioned budget it has been every meeting we have it's a topic of conversation and and i think our whole team is tired of me talking about it i'm a broken record as i keep reminding people of what that budget looks like but our sd design phase our schematic design phase we're going to have that meeting on the 8th those sd drawings are due from shp on september 9th so the next day is when sd is due they turn those drawings over to conger our construction manager and then shp and conger both put an estimate on that design

037independently once those estimates are done they bring them together they compare make sure they're you know comparing apples to apples how many square feet of you know masonry block did you have you know and if they're they're here they talk about it and they they level them up so that they're talking about the same amount of materials and they look at their estimates you know square foot type budgets this is still pretty high level but they come together and this is about a month-long process so i don't really have information at the september board meeting probably hopefully at the october building and grounds meeting we can discuss it and certainly i i would should have that information by the october board meeting of where we're at with that budget and we are not allowed to

038proceed into the next phase of design until those budgets are reconciled with each other and they're at budget so that's kind of the process that's coming up and and as mr spicer mentioned conger has a project that they're actually bidding out that is very similar in size it's 205 000 square feet middle school as well so they are confident they're going to have pretty good current numbers um to compare it to now where the economy goes how inflation goes between now and when we would bid it out you know 10 months from now is anybody's guess um this meeting on september 8th with conger and shp is that like our meeting we had on august 18th where like they come and talk to the public yes so we are actually we're gonna have a long

039day on the eighth um in addition to some committee meetings we're going to meet with students at the end of the day in the junior high at the end of the day we are going to meet with the staff at the junior high and then in the evening we're going to meet with the public and give them an update of where we're at with with the design um be 100 honest we're trying to figure out how to pull in our sixth grade teachers because their schedule is so different you know they don't get done teaching until some of them at three o'clock some of them at four o'clock but my junior high staff's not going to stay till 4 30 to have a meeting probably so we're looking at maybe doing a zoom meeting or

040something trying to pull them in um but but that day we're really trying to hit everybody to give them an update of where they're at and then we will start probably around in october we will start meeting with individual departments staff so we'll meet with the science department we'll meet with the nurses we'll meet with the phys ed department we'll start breaking down and the the music department will start meeting with them and going over some more details about things that go you know their desires for what they want in their individual classrooms kind of an overview of the next couple of months thanks chef thanks jeff any other questions about the middle school i i just wanted to say um at that august 18th meeting um with shp and conger they provided a lot

041of information and um we had pretty good attendance from the public they really want input from everybody just like jeff was saying like they're talking to the teachers they're talking to the students they really want this building to work for everybody and we want this building to work for everybody so if you're interested in this project i highly attend i highly advise you to attend these meetings they're really great you can ask any question you can make comments and you can really hear the progress of what's going on it's it's very interesting it's very helpful all right i'm going to move on to item number two the citizens advisory commission uh nothing new to update other than our first meeting is still august the 31st we do have a current thought exchange out there i

042believe it's active through tomorrow evening and we're gaining some input from those 30 folks to see what is important to them and the direction that that group will head so we'll have an update at the next board meeting from that group item number three the nest all right so i think it's really important for us as a school community and a board to kind of come back to the nest we as a board you voted to demolish that it was okay to demolish the robins building the current weight room and with that something needs to happen so we need to replace it we had a work session uh we had a conversation about um two two portions of that one of them being three multipurpose gym that's an area potentially the other area would be

043to replace what we demo and that would be the weight room the wrestling room locker rooms concessions and bathrooms as well that's very important so with that i think there has to be another work session with the board to have a dialogue about how we're going to pay for this um are we we paying for all of it up front some of it or none of it we're going to finance etcetera so i think there's some decisions that you all have to make i know that brian is doing some some back work on that as well as far as finance options if that's something you would decide to do so i'm going to just turn it over to you as a board to kind of decide when the next work session would have to be

044i do think that the important thing to remember is as jeff said shp and conga are getting together on the 8th and those designs have to be in by the 9th while this is not necessarily connected it's on the same site and so it is connected and we do need to make a decision by then by the eighth jeff we need a decision by the eighth or at least a great direction i mean i don't i don't know there is a drop dead date whether it's september 1st or september 8th or september 15th you know at the end of the day we need to know this as soon as possible because um you know building the nest you know in whatever version the board approves again as mr spicer said it's it's not the same

045they're two completely separate projects but they they impact each other um and whether we build the nest or we don't build the nest or where it goes what it looks like will impact the middle school the middle school impacts the nest whether it's connected utilities you know we've talked about trying to potentially use some restroom facilities within the middle school to reduce the amount of restrooms we need in the nest because of distances i don't know that that's going to work mr spicer reached out to the clermont county building department and there's not a meeting set up but we're coordinating calendars trying to set up a meeting with shp and ourselves in clermont county to talk about you know what we really need and and things along those lines so it really does impact what

046we're doing from a design perspective on the middle school even though they're separate projects so the earlier we can get a direction from the board is going to help us know which way to go and not have to re-engineer things redesign things kind of change things as we move down you know and one of the things i don't want to have happen is get that sd estimate and think we're in good shape but because something changes on the nest that might impact the cost estimate on on the middle school and and now all of a sudden we've got more cost in the middle school because of a decision that was made on the nest knowing what we're doing on that whole site makes that estimate a lot more accurate and a lot more you know

047have a lot more confidence in what that estimate looks like so will we have the opportunity to have another option to look at other than the one that was presented to us with the because i think we all well i know we all agree i think even without the junior high taking down the robin center that had expired from its usefulness i think a school of this size and stature should have actual bathrooms not portalettes so i think um that something needed to be done there i think i can't speak for previous boards why no you know maintenance or money wasn't put into upkeep but i think we all you know we all voted unanimously to tear down that robin center so something needs to be built but the reality is we don't have any

048money so we can all look at that beautiful drawing that we saw and would love to say yes to it but then we still have to pay for it so can we see a cheaper alternative i believe the the alternate was whether or not you built the multi-purpose bill so that's the only cost option is with the gyms or without the gyms so so the the there's kind of two parts to the nest that that has been presented to the board one of which as mr miranda said is is the multi-purpose area the other part of it is a combination of adding restrooms to the facility as you just mentioned i think we owe it to our community to to do and the other piece of that section is merely replacing the weight room and

049robbins building facilities that are going to be demoed due to the middle school so it's we're not making it bigger these aren't additional facilities you know other than other than the restrooms those are additional obviously the rest of it is merely a replacement of what we have as far as your cost per square foot to try to do it as cheaply as possible pretty much what we've estimated is is pretty close to being as cheap as possible now i will tell you you know the original estimate they gave me had like a i think it was a four foot block wall with a pre-engineered building on top of it i went back to them and said that needs to be eight feet because these are high school kids they're athletes they're playing sports you know

050if you're going into a pre-engineered metal building that's part of the reason you know we got the robin's building and it's beat up and the installation gets torn out you know to put up a solid wall that's not going to get torn up in the long run it might be it's going to cost a little more money to build it today but from a life cycle cost it's i think it's money well spent so we did look at a couple of those things as far as you know life cycle costs and what's going to make but this is not a taj mahal this is restrooms and replacing the weight room and robin building as as again i don't want to say as cheaply as possible because you could build it cheaper but it's going to

051it would look like junk in 10 years so we want to build something that's going to to last and serve our community for a while okay so the only option is with the multi-purpose gyms or without i i'm not going to say there's not little pieces here and there that we can do but for the most part with a significant amount of dollars i would agree with that statement okay and so the the what we'll need to decide then is what's the building what what are the pieces and then what is the financing is it all in is it all whatever you know however we kind of split up those so that's what that work session that we're talking about will be we don't have a date yeah we i mean we have a pot

052of taxpayer money called the general fund and out of that pot of taxpayer money call the general fund we are deciding to use some of that to for capital improvement projects the first one was the theater so make no mistake the theater's coming out of the general fund now we move over to our athletic facilities which include concessions restrooms and locker rooms replacing what's currently there the robin's building which we all agreed to demolish and replace the auditorium and there's another piece that was on there there there's there's a fourth and that is the bleachers so all of these things just to be clear to to everyone all of these things will be coming out of this taxpayer-funded pot of money called the general fund and what our decision is going to be which do

053we do and how do we bridge the gap whether it be through financing or otherwise how do we bridge the gap to a levy that's going on about in this community to to to add back to the general fund that we're getting ready to take away from i wanted to try to make that as simple as possible for everyone we've got these capital improvement projects that are not on the ballot they will be on the ballot to backfill the money that that we decide to pull from that and um it's it's going to be coming and that's the dilemma that this board who's trying to be as fiscally responsible as we possibly can to this community that's the decision we're trying to make is how do we fund it all because we don't have the

054money to fund it and and people would argue that when you have this pot of money to fund it well my treasurer or our treasurer just mentioned it makes him uncomfortable in our last board meeting to to move forward without something in place so we've got a really important decision on our hand we're acting in our our taxpayer community's best interest and we're going to do the absolute best we can to bridge this fiscal responsibility and a can that's been kicked down the road for decades in this district with some with some usage uh that or some some capital uh projects that have well worn out their their their their usefulness it's borderline embarrassing to see people move in to go into those uh portalets um at a school district our size i know you

055mentioned it before melissa but um i mean to me i i'm just i'm shocked that that can's been kicked so far down the road and i don't think we can kick it anymore we just we're in a vice right now um because i never ignored the taxpayers dollars ever i never will it's not our money and i think also in these decisions need to be a strategic plan of maintenance going forward so that 30 years from now the board of 2050 isn't sitting here with everything needing to be fully replaced again like i think some of these things could have been maintained over the last decades but now you know we take the can that that has been kicked and we have to deal with it because it's you know i give credit to our

056president about kicking the can kicking the can down the road and and when we talk about the pot of money that is a general fund we need to at least be aware of the fact that back in the day when we decided what our levies were going to be and what we were going to do there was there had to be maintenance money in there to do the things that were now having to pay the piper for and uh we did what we needed to do to keep things running and those were previous boards who operated under different conditions but we are where we are and borderline embarrassing doesn't even say it for me it is just totally embarrassing to have to go in the port i want to give you credit to say it's

057amazing it is it is atrocious um but we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna get there um i i think this board can make a make a good decision on this it's not an easy decision by any stretch of the imagination but we got hard to do a job and that's to take care of all the facets of the school whether it's arts academics extra you know extracurriculars athletics that's our job to take care of all of it we need to do a balancing act and we need to figure out what's the best way of doing that and getting the most that we can for what we've got and we also have to know when to stop so we've got some work to do back to a date to do this this is for the public

058this is not something that we haven't talked about i think we had on our on our calendars kind of penciled in either the 6th of september the 8th of september i think we've decided that we can't do it on the 8th of september because you've got a meeting on the 8th of september so i would i would propose that we do it on the on the sixth which is the monday before committee meetings week of committee meetings so and uh yeah any feedback from anybody else somebody anybody goes no i absolutely can't be there it's the day after labor day i think that makes sense yeah we'd absolutely have to do it before congress in here on the 8th there's just a lot going on on the 8th and let's flush out as much we

059can brian you know there's a little bit of pressure on you to present some some options here and with more options we can feel better and more confident about decision we make i mean i want to vet as much as we can of this because we're we're in a we're in a tough spot and um you know we'll do what's we'll do what's right we'll do it the best that we can but we can't without some of your help right so and i and i think when we had our last discussion um i asked would it move the needle on when we went for a when we had to go for a levy and the answer is probably not no i mean it's it's the same time regardless right correct so did we say time

060to six uh five o'clock six o'clock um i'm gonna look at mr combs because we can we can do it at five or six let's do it let's do it for six i'd rather do it yeah that's what i was gonna suggest i'm usually back to back up until about six so um we will need to have a this is a work session correct correct okay so we're going to need to have a notification from our folks here we'll take care of it so that will be september the 6th the day after labor day it's a tuesday at 6 00 p.m okay yes i can meet that any other discussions we'll have a full night there indeed okay um [Music] i'm gonna give you if you have anything else mr spicer on that i do

061not thank you okay then uh we're going to move forward to the human resources business and back to superintendent spicer thank you president miranda members of the board um under item number one i would like to highlight our milford university i've got jenny berkley up at the podium to tell us a little bit about that and we also have a nice video to go with it good evening president miranda members of the board first another shout out i want to say that we started the school year yesterday 100 filled with our certified staff and if you've watched in the news we know that very close districts around us are experiencing several vacancies still open and also of course sharing in the teacher shortage so shout out to our efforts really since march to attract and

062secure staff for all of those positions so that and we are down to full-time employees if you if you combine the part time for our classified so and those were late resignations so we're hoping to have those filled but every student was cared for by an adult yesterday when we walked in the building so that's a first shout out and the the reason the reason for that i'm gonna you know i'm gonna say it uh we are a destination district people want to come here to work when you have when you have 40 openings and you have 400 applicants and other districts can't fill one for one that should that should tell the community that good things are going on here and we found great people so on top of that that's a little icing

063on the cake and dave i hope this made it to the miranda good news report but if not i want to be the first to share so we experienced our first or held our first ever two-day milford university formerly new teacher orientation where nearly 40 new certified staff were cheered on in the milford eagle spirit way by the entire all administrative team these two days included an acclimation to our culture our climate our curriculum our resources and included a little fun with some team building activities we all benefit from knowing that we continue to lean and learn from each other it was quite inspiring for all of us whether we're in our 29th year or whether we're in our first year on day one each of our directors ran a station rotation so while while

064we were able to model good teaching and best practices we were also allowed allowing our directors to do their specialty and on day two this was also very special we had nearly over a dozen teacher leaders who were providing pd to their new colleagues so we we do one of the big pieces in our reason for people to stay and employ engagement is giving them opportunity to grow so for our young teachers to see our current teachers being teacher leaders it was a really cool experience so that was that was all new this year and then we highlighted a few pictures so here they are thanks to jen for putting this together [Music] so those don't do it justice but there was there was a really good vibe energy excitement really in the room for

065two days so we're excited and feel like we kicked them off in the right direction so that's it thank you mrs berkeley you're welcome all right uh president random members of the board asking for your approval of the agenda items two through six as presented need a motion to approve items two through six as presented so moved second discussion yes call your attention to number two the salary schedules the board asked me to take a look at our salary schedules here at the district office to align them etc so we did consult with greg hester director of human resources for the hamilton county educational service center who did come and present this at committee jenny will you come to the podium if we have any questions or if you have any comments about the process

066these are just the salary schedules for the administrators the exempt and a office and the exempt classified as well so jenny it's fair to say that we made some improvements in this schedule so for us to just say bobblehead yes i think we need to take a quick pause and just realize we found some opportunity to streamline our salary schedules at milford and by hiring greg yes greg hester by by hiring greg not hiring just consulting i'm sorry that's a free service to us with our educational service center so that's important to highlight i wouldn't looking for that invoice so by consulting with greg he was able to help us better streamline some of these some of the schedule and we're better today than we were last month as a result so no question that's

067just a comment from from sitting in that committee and talking openly about it and i got a first draft of what i was looking for and i'm kind of wading through that i was doing that this afternoon and a lot a lot of information there um i i know i'm going to have some questions somewhere down the line but we'll work through that at an appropriate committee i'm sure yeah sure it was good work and it was great collaborating and i feel like a great result so any other comments hearing none call the role mr chestnut yes mr combs yes mr mason yes this is nolan yes mr miranda yes thank you a few pages to turn there okay we move on to item g curriculum instruction superintendent john spicer thank you president miranda members

068of the board asking for your approval of item number one curriculum pay i need a motion to approve item one which is curriculum pay second discussion call roll mrs chestnut yes mr combs yes mr mason yes mrs nolan yes mr miranda yes thank you uh we are now moving on to business operations thank you president members of the board under business operations asking for your approval of items one through four need a motion to approve items one through four of business operations as presented so moved second discussion yes i do have a few comments um for you under number one the milford high school auditorium renovation um what you have there in front of you is the proposal for professional services i'll take questions in just a second on that if you have them item

069two same thing proposal for professional services for the high school reeking project and then item three we have a change in milk price we only increased price by ten cents but um jeff informed me that um overall it was an increase of 25 cents but we're only going to do 10. so we're only going to increase 10 not 25. and then item 4 is uh transportation for those students um being deemed impractical so back to no yes now you can go back back to the auditorium so this is we will still make a decision sort of following up on jerry's point earlier um about what is when what we're approving money-wise when because i saw was it this attachment that had like do it all in once or do it over 10 years planning on

070doing it all at once yes um what you're approving tonight is simply the contract for shp to do the design and we will work through that and obviously through committees we will give updates as to budget scope you know things along those lines the next approval the board would have will probably be in february or march when we actually take that design we take it out the bid and then we will bring back the low bidder and ask for approval of the actual construction contract at that point in time so so jeff would you operate as the gc in that regard for the auditorium yeah meaning meaning when we go out to bid for these projects will we be asking one bid package for someone to do all of that or for a project like

071this yes we would ask for a lump sum general contract bid this would not be a construction manager at risk like we're doing with conger to build the middle school this would be a lump sum gc bid that obviously i would manage that contract but we'd have one general contractor that would be responsible for for all trades okay great yep that's it for me are there any other questions um can we discuss um item two a little bit here absolutely um so the same thing that jeff just described for the auditorium there's also a re-king project at the high school i do have a prop for you these are mr kaufman's keys that he has for the high school and this will not not not get him in every door at the high school not

072enough keys it's probably half of what he would need yeah so um that's so that's part of the problem i mean there's some safety things as well we don't want to get in too deep about the safety pieces of that but i do want to there's a reinforcement that i saw a couple of weeks ago i went the first week of august i was up in columbus for two and a half days for the ohio school safety summit and one of the the keynote speakers was frank deangelis who was the principal of columbine high school 25 years ago a while ago obviously during you know when when that incident happened and i've heard him speak probably four or five different times at various conferences and it's pretty much the same speech he gives every time

073so i've heard it several times but one of the things that jumped out at me is he was describing that day and i shared a picture with mr spicer of his presentation and he showed a picture of the keys that he had in his hands that day and when the shooting started happening he went out into the hallway he ended up gathering up with a group of female students and the the killers were coming down the hallway and he grabbed his keys went to get into a locked door he grabbed the right key but he had a key that looked he had a set of keys that looked like what mr spicer just held up call it luck call it god's guidance call it whatever you want the first key he grabbed opened up the

074door that they needed to get into to get out of danger's way and one of the things that's one of the reasons why we think this is so important is you know to have a master keying system that works across the district and when our staff need to get students into safety they're not fumbling with 25 different keys to get into what they need to get into so i also will say that we applied for the ohio school safety grant through ofcc we were originally denied but recently after uvalde governor dewan came out and put another 100 million dollars towards that so we were awarded approximately 250 000 that will go towards this project to pay for it from the state we also have another grant in the tune of about 35 000 that will

075go towards paying for this project so we are using a significant amount of we there's still going to be some money the district needs to put in but we are going to put a significant amount of grant money towards this project to pay for this project and jeff isn't it becoming a standard especially since the grant was approved that pretty much this is going this is the direction every school is going is a is a centralized centralized master system it's it's a no-brainer from what i understand i i was when i was hired the design on the high school edition had been completed we were about 20 percent inc into construction i was told at the time that we had a re-king it was in the the scope of work for the entire project but

076due to budget constraints it was pulled out so we did not go into a master keying system but i can tell you i have one key that will get me into every door in the four pack four elementary schools i have a second key that will get me into every door and boyd and sight belt um and just it's it's a no-brainer that this really needs to be done and and we're looking at you know some other safety aspects that will come into this the main part of this is getting a true master keying system at the high school we're also going to be upgrading our access uh building access system or electronic access that will upgrade that across the district so it's not just the high school we'll be upgrading our access control system

077in every building except the junior high because we'll bring the new middle school into that that process when we build the new middle school and when we when we talk about safety i mean it really is locked doors is like the the best way and having access parkland one of the teachers couldn't get back in the room and and her and her students were fatal fatally shot so it is so important to have easy access safe access and this is not something that is a recent program we've been talking about this for two years and how we're going to do it and what it looks like and how much it was going to cost it's nice that we have some state funds to work with now that that kind of defray a fair amount of

078the difference that we were discussing between electronic and hard keys total project cost is estimated to be about 500 000 and we've got about 280 290 000 in grants that will offset those costs so better than 50 percent so safety is our number one job here folks i've heard it in four or five different ways here whether it's site circulation or keying or a bunch of other ways any other comments call the roll this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mrs mason yes mrs nolan yes mr miranda yes thank you okay this brings us to our second public participation session and you say you have i have one have one that's the first one of the summer two rebecca born did i get it yes good good evening i'm rebecca bourne from 1106 fox run

079road in milford i offered two thoughts to the board for some action the new york times recently reported a major cyber attack on illuminate education a provider of student tracking software more than one million student records were impacted including highly sensitive data such as test scores and behavioral issues pearson a major provider of assessment software for schools was also recently subject to a cyber attack i acknowledge that milford does not use either of these providers we do however collect and upload data gathered from emotional learning surveys i've voiced my concern with gathering such data and have been assured that the data does not include identifying information however seeing cyber attacks on student data happens my concern and i again request the practice of this data gathering be revisited secondly i am quoting an article by

080brenda lebasic a california teacher and former board member who recently attended the national education convention she writes and i quote the nea does not want public education to be neutral ground in developing critical thinkers with an emphasis on academic achievement its priorities were apparent because of the 110 motions discussed and voted on only four remotely addressed student academic achievement the nea seems to think there are many gender options and that's why teachers and students must always address themselves with their preferred pronouns that was demonstrated firsthand when each state delegate who spoke during the july convention was encouraged to state his or her name and preferred pronouns before addressing the assembly end quote this thinking has invaded milford high school i have here a copy of the list of the national uh merit honor society students

081who were awarded at graduation there are 14 people on this list there are all of them are referred to as they we have jason strickle they we have brenda sullivan they calling students they is unacceptable it is first grammatically incorrect and secondly scientifically incorrect there are two genders determined by biology not by how somebody feels people aren't days this practice creates confusion in children who are already striving to figure out where they fit and who they are i acknowledge that you cannot oversee every teacher and what they do with gender language but i'm asking you however to develop a protocol or a policy instructing teachers to teach correct grammar and correct science and remove this gender fluidity agenda thank you so to address her concerns i did have a similar conversation with board member nolan

082that situation was addressed immediately after that program it wasn't it was it was uncomfortable as i think i stated to mrs nolan and so to address every student as they was you know has been addressed and so that has been rectified can i make a comment i think you and i were talking about the academic convocation i think mrs boren mentioned national honor society oh so convocation okay i'd have to see it um so it's been addressed and so that would have been probably around the same time i don't know if you have the date on that okay i'll find out but it was probably around the same time but it's been addressed i was just go ahead because you're in the same stream i just had a quick question okay i just want to

083appreciate thank you for reaching out to follow up on that we have a conversation and email and i appreciate you assuring me that all students with traditional and non-traditional pronouns will be referred to as what they prefer yes they should as you stated they should we should honor what they've asked and that's what we will do that was my question what's the remedy i mean the fact that it's being addressed so i think that's the remedy is that if um we have we had um spoken with the mostly junior high high school not elementary staff regarding this and that in their surveys if they were going to do a survey this year that they would put i prefer to be called and then they could verbally ask or tell their students that if you have

084a different pronoun that you want to be called you need to let us let us know and we'll do it so and and if someone decides not to participate in the survey what's our what's our our preferred position then for that individual uh it depends on what survey you're talking about i mean if it's a teacher design survey at the beginning of the school year so that they can get to know their students and etc then i would i mean if somebody says what's your preferred pronoun and the child doesn't answer but they're not asking that anymore they're saying what do you prefer to be called what do you prefer to be called and then they would just ask the class if anyone had if you have a pronoun that you would like to be

085called police i need to know let me know so that's how that would be done for example my daughter is katherine we always call her katie last year she apparently told all the teachers she's kate and i was like okay fine whatever this year she's back to katie but i mean i think that's one of the major intents of that what do you want to be called and people who go by their middle name or but this is a different i mean this is a totally different subject about pronouns versus how you want to be called in your name that's two that's two completely different issues the survey that's being asked what what they're asking students it was the same survey last year that had that pronoun they've dropped the pronoun piece of it and

086it's saying what do you prefer to be called when you show up is your given name jerry were you i don't know i don't know what your name is if your name wasn't jerry you were probably called a different name on the first day of school and you said i preferred jerry i probably was and i probably didn't like it right and so so look our our staff is is trying to honor the kids um you know in trying to build relationships with them there's no agenda there's no we we're not connected with nea we are just not our our mea is is not connected with them um you know and trying to push forth an agenda the perception of having an agenda is really easy to sure to to to um i i guess

087assume is a dangerous word when kids are called they and they didn't ask to be called day so an agenda is very very easy to assume there and i'm so glad you addressed it one one time does not make it an agenda so in this i'm going to make the an assumption that this happened around the same time so it's been addressed it's not going to happen again and i i would caution anyone that can hear my voice that just because something happens in california or someone believes that in california or something happens in the state of new york does not mean it's happening here if you have questions about it it happened one time respectfully so i i would just caution people to think that just because you hear it or see it somewhere

088that it's happening here come forward come to us ask us we've been transparent about this we've had meetings about the emotional survey that you that you reference i think you walked well you said it you walked away you were you're pleased but you're still concerned about the data mining i get it so we've been transparent i just want to caution folks that's all i i just want to say really quickly thank you for addressing it john yeah so okay tonya wenger tanya wenger 6081 donna j drive mine is pretty simple um i have talked to some of you about it but i am a parent of multiple robotics students and i am concerned where you're going to put them once you take our modulars as of right now it's still up in the air i

089know the teachers are a little concerned also so if while you're processing what we're doing with the new junior high can you please remember the robotics kids we have 12 teams steve can you throw back up the um the the footprint of the the new middle school so when you take the modulars just know that the modulars go away and robotics knows it next may we've got to find a solution by next may for the the two years so in this design um right actually if you go to the second floor where it says electives um the the two yeah it's top just you're closer there are two dedicated spaces for robotics right there so are those classrooms those are ginormous labs yes that was my concern because we have these arenas that we cannot

090keep correct so we we we're good we made sure that robotics is where but those are dedicated spaces um to our our two folks i appreciate it yes ma'am i i know that we don't always have to respond to public participation but i just want to say that the robotics program is discussed openly in many many instances on this board and um everyone here i believe supports that that effort um miss mason brings it up probably a thousand times um when we discuss i think she's the biggest cheerleader for robotics uh um and i listen so um jeff thanks for standing up and pointing the two boxes out because we are we're going to try our our best to make sure that group's accommodated so yeah and i think didn't we discuss also that there's

091some closets or storage specifically for the robotics equipment jeff i want you to talk about that real quick to be 100 honest we're not quite there yet so when i mentioned like meeting with departments here in october and starting to talk about what those rooms look like we'll we'll meet with the robotics people and talk with all right what does that look like for you you know probably the biggest change with with robotics is you know there will be a little more coordination needed because right now with them being the modulars you know they've got key cards where they can for the most part kind of come and go as they please because it's separate from the the rest of the building with this being kind of in the middle of the building there's going

092to need to be a little more coordination about when they come and when they go and they have practice and stuff like that but we we have definitely considered them you know in the square footage and where we're going to put them and they've got a spot in the new middle school yeah mr daniels was just saying you know we've looked at those spaces and i don't know if anybody heard me i told tanya that you know those rooms are in the neighborhood of 1100 square feet i don't remember exactly from the por they're big they're big rooms how big is this room i don't know count the ceiling tiles um so a typical entire feed i don't know a typical classroom is going to be about square feet so it's bigger than a typical

093classroom um so there's room you know and we know that those arenas don't get set up and put out you know and taken down every day we know that they kind of need more of a permanent place you know there have been discussions about you know does robotics fit into the multi-purpose area of the nest if we build that and and one of the concerns about that is you know that basically they need a permanent space and that's why we looked at and said they really need a space in the middle school not in the nest not in that multi-purpose area not that they might not use it at some point in time but but their real true home is more of a permanent space and that's why we've identified some space in the middle

094school that that's where they'll be i know when i first announced that i was running for the board the very first group that contacted me and the very first group that i spoke to was the robotics group and i've been to some events i've seen it i've i've seen them in action they're they're just amazing i mean we when the message has been received i don't know if 1100 square feet is enough but it's better than the modular that we have right now so hopefully hopefully i see you smiling so i guess that's that's a good thing it's a step in the right direction we're we've we're going to take care of them as best we can within budget do we have anyone else yep amanda fox amanda fox she her 6331 lake ridge court

095loveland ohio i'm to read something from a pubmed.gov suicide among transgender youth elucidating the role of interpersonal risk factors data indicates that 82 percent of transgender individuals are have considered killing themselves or and 40 percent have attempted suicide with suicide highest among transgender youth using minority stress theory and interpersonal theory of suicide the study aims to better understand suicide risk among transgender youth the present study examines the influence and interverbal risk factors interpersonal and environmental microaggressions internalized self-stigma and adverse childhood experiences we are in the business of childhood development i don't care if there is one or 50 transgender students in this district they deserve the respect and acknowledgement of who they truly are sitting up here and talking about them as if they don't exist and using a he him she her pronoun appropriately

096for them is absolutely ridiculous there are students that are going to go home at night when they hear adults in their life not validate who they are as a human and possibly attempt suicide it is not in the best interest of this community for any of our students to lose another peer my son is a junior in high school he has had two students one passed away and one was in a very bad car accident it is not okay that these students go through it i had a friend in high school kill himself when i was a senior in high school i still think about josh devvy every day and every time our school has any sort of activity for the class of 2021 it is traumatic for all of us that josh is not

097with us and if my students have to if my students have to lose a friend because we sit here every third tues thursday of the month and talk about how transgender students using he she him her they whatever is a problem for the adults in this room then i need you to talk to somebody about it talk to a professional get advice from someone who handles children we have children we have cincinnati children's they are renowned in this country top three hospitals in the united states of america if they acknowledge transgenders we should be acknowledging them too in this room anyone else that's all i have okay thanks to everyone um moving on the next regular board meeting for the school board is september the 15th 2022 in this room at 6 00 pm do

098we have any closing comments from the board i wanted to first of all acknowledge that children's hospital does have one of the top transgender organizations we are constantly as a children's hospital a leader in the care of all students and it is gender is not binary it is not assigned at birth it is you know i am not an expert in any of these areas but our job as educators as mrs fox mentioned is to support all of our students and we need to make all of them welcome and if it's as simple as offering pronouns then our teachers can help do that and i appreciate that um separately i wanted to say what an amazing month it has been and it and it's only august 18th but i was thinking about all the things

099that have happened in the district with the shp middle school meeting the safety meeting the milford university that i came in was a cheerleader i missed the cheerleader picture but i was out there cheering at 7 30 and i apparently did not do a good enough job recruiting from there is not a single student from wittenberg so i'm going to need to go back to my alma mater and get some some teachers here the opening of charity lucas turf with the lucas family back for that was amazing the convocation and feeling the energy and john's pants if you haven't you should wear those again and then meet the teacher night and the start of school it just has been such an awesome month and i've been um the energy i feel like we're getting back

100to school we're there is no new normal i guess but just feeling the energy of what it's like to go back to school to be in person the teachers are so excited the energy is palpable um so it just is really going to be a great year so i'm excited for i mean i was going to jump on that because our our convocation was about chasing smiles not chasing flies thank you for wearing it um it was great had a great message from my former school counselor who is about 70 years old couldn't make it but she did send a letter in and someone read it it was it was great um but we're not going to chase flies flies are distractions and we're going to chase smiles every day and impact our students lives

101so that's that's our theme for this year and um we're gonna go with it i don't want to harp on the transgender thing but i do think it is really important to bring up i do think that these students are at risk and i do think it's important that they are recognized by their preferred pronouns i need some clarification on something i know that with the convocation last year um everybody was referred to as they um and so we remedied that by just clarifying that at the beginning of the year they're asked their preferred name and then they're not asked so at the if going forward if we were at the same ceremony they would either change how their um the verbiage that they would use or they would specifically recognize uh you as he

102or she or they whatever whatever you want to be so we we recognize that okay and the way that we're understanding what their preferred pronouns are is asking like a general question in class and then saying like come up to me if well so at the beginning of the school year at the junior high in high school and even in lower grades but certainly junior high and high school the survey in the past some of the surveys have had specific questions about what is your preferred pronoun okay so what do you prefer to be called so it could be something besides a pronoun as emily described her her daughter and then if there is someone who is specifically wants to have a different pronoun then they that will be recognized but they have to let

103the teacher know okay okay that makes sense thank you and um i'm in full support of that remedy i i hope that that's clear i'm in full support of a student that wants to be called a particular pronoun or a particular name i think that's what we should call them i i hope that that's really really clear um i there's not one comment that i made tonight that said that i am against a student wanting to be called a particular pronoun or a name um if you want to be called they he she your your preferred note pronoun that's what we need to respect and move forward with uh i'm in full support of that to be clear right and to be clear the reason i initiated that conversation is after the convocation of 71

104students being called bae i was found it pretty unlikely that all 72 or 71 preferred they which is why i reached out and said i thought they should be called whatever they preferred whether that's traditional or non-traditional i just found it unlikely that they all preferred they but they is a gen it's neutral group of people and it wouldn't call out so if i wanted to be he i might feel called out in a special ceremony where there's only 50 people that there is so i do think john had had already addressed it and had come up with stuff but the remedy is we'll call them what they would like to be called and then the case is over let's let's move forward let's respect what the students want to be called and move forward

105and not assume that a student wants to be called something that they don't want to be called and that's what we do and it sounds like john has implemented addressed it and we're we're on level set level footing right now fair to say sounds like it's been remedied thank you any other comments hearing none let's move on to uh the good news report some of which is a recap of what we've already talked about but i'm gonna get it all in one big slug anyway um good news report charity lucas stadium turf project is now complete we rededicated the field last friday charlie lucas field 2.0 as we're referring to it in the morning we had representatives from the bengals including who day there to uh to help us dedicate the field and then we

106did a punt pass and sprint competition for our youth football players in the afternoon we had an alumni soccer game with over 90 people that showed up for that alumni game so the alumni is really excited about that field i saw giant things of advil after that meeting i'm sorry giant bottles of advil after that yes uh for that game we had we had uh we had some people that uh i think allen groadhouse said i'm playing but see the circle here right in the center of the field i'm not moving out of this circle so uh it was great to see everybody whether they were young or old or anywhere in between out there for that um after that we did a we did another dedication with the lucas family uh for whom uh

107the field is named for charity and we had representatives from fc cincinnati there for the afternoon we did a another ribbon cutting ceremony and uh then we had two soccer games did the first two official counting soccer games on that field one boys one girls girls won eight to one the boys won eight to nothing and the weather was absolutely perfect it was 75 degree day with low humidity you could not have asked for a better day milford university we talked about that a little while ago was held on the fourth and the fifth here in the board office and elsewhere all around in different conference rooms and in different locations as well that was a great event it's good to see the enthusiasm of those young teachers as they come in for the first

108time and and that was a lot of fun to be a part of eagle stadium the lighting project is now complete we've been talking about that for a while ready for the first home game tomorrow night and i i got to tell you i can't wait for the first touchdown so we can see a light show out there uh by the way the district paid for the lights but private donations paid for the show so just want to make sure that we're clear on that that was all private donations to do that little extra for the lights uh convocation was held monday uh for all the district teachers as emily has her shirt on there the theme of the convocation was chasing smiles and we have got a bunch of people that are ready to

109go when it got to wednesday i think they were about ready to explode they were so excited to be back and have less restrictions on them whether it's masks or it's chasing after contacts things of that nature they were just ready to go and really hyped up first day of school was yesterday and the milford district is up and running now mr spicer got a lot of air time on channel 5 and channel 12. he was he was very coherent throughout even though he started at about 5 30 in the morning with the first show in five o'clock excuse me five o'clock i didn't get up for that one but i i was here for the 6 30 show and recapping our top story tonight um great news uh for the arts community as the

110board of education approved tonight a design for the much needed renovation of the high school auditorium uh 33 years since we've done anything to that facility of any of any consequence dates to remember again first football game is tomorrow night at eagle stadium powered by cullen electric we're playing edgewood game time at seven o'clock i i hope everybody comes out and packs the stands and we have a we have an excited crowd there um it'll it'll be a good game um let's see we have milford the high school marching band is holding their milford marching showcase it's a six band showcase some big bigger bands in in this group uh that is august 27th starting at 6 30 p.m over at eagle stadium admission for that is 10 bucks and we hope we have a

111nice crowd out there it's a good opportunity for our kids to have some judges come in there and actually not score them but critique them and help tell them how they can make their shows better so we're excited about that that is all i have any other comments good news okay the board is now going to go into executive session and from the executive session we will not be returning here except to adjourn the meeting and uh that may be an hour it may be an hour and a half and maybe longer it may be shorter i have no idea we i need a motion to enter into executive session for the purpose of considering the employment and compensation of a public employee so moved second discussion a roll mr chestnut yeah mr combs yes

112this is mason yes this is nolan yes mr miranda yes thank you everyone you