Milford Board of Education Meeting - May 19, 2022

001like to call the may regular board meeting for the milford account school district to order so uh why don't we call the roll mr red this is mason yes mrs nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda here let's stand for the pledge of allegiance [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united it states one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right let's move forward to the approval of the agenda i need a motion to approve please second um i would like to make a motion to amend the agenda agenda um we need to wait until after we've approved okay okay um any other discussion call the rule mrs mason yes mrs nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes okay i

002would like to make a motion to amend the agenda to remove item g3d2 and add it as an agenda item as g11a1 and then also to make a motion to postpone definitely to one of the next meetings voting on agenda g11a1 you have to allow me to catch up here so you try that one one more time for me okay i'd like to remove g3 d2 okay and add it as g11a1 as g11a1 mr rabe got it okay i need a second second discussion um i mean if you want to just discuss it i just feel that it is um premature to vote on this right now with um with other circumstances currently going on so i would like to post move it and postpone voting on it okay typically we do not vote on

003individual in remove one individual and vote on them separately we vote on them as a block okay and if you're typically in disagreement you vote no on the bloc i'll just say what's typical and what is allowed are two completely separate issues we have voted on a singular person and sometimes two and three many many times in this room um so the request to postpone it as an individual is not out of order it's actually in order and i think it it needs to move forward as a vote that's how i feel about it any other discussion so a yes vote removes this to a separate item later in the agenda removes and postpones correct in postponements how did it go into 11. then i'm from a little confusion this known made a motion to

004move it to agenda item g11a1 and then postpone item g11a1 correct correct okay i'm trying to keep up here i apologize no problem we are voting to um one person put it in another place and then postpone that new place correct two motions or is that one we can do it under one do it under one okay um seeing no other discussion call the roll mrs mason no mrs nolan yes mr chestnut no mr combs yes mr miranda no [Applause] president miranda i would like to make another motion i would like to add an agenda item to d1 i motioned to uphold the recommendation of the committee that reviewed the novel in the time of butterflies based on policy klb and was accepted by the superintendent that the novel continued to be part of 10th

005grade ela curriculum i second that motion discussion do we want to have the whole book discussion now like the whole d discussion we're talking about the agenda items um whether the agenda is changed okay i mean i would still like to discuss the book yeah when it comes to agenda item when it gets to d we will do that correct yeah right now you're just adding it to the agenda and we're at it and we're adding a vote to that agenda correct you're not voting on the on the item yet okay the item's already on the agenda correct there's no motion on the as to which way on the agenda there's just a discussion on the agenda it was only an informational item we're making it a voting item correct okay makes sense to me

006um any discussion on that call the roll this is mason yes mrs nolan um sure i'll vote on it mrs chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you okay uh moving on to the approval of the minutes for the regular board meeting from april 21st 2022 i need a motion to approve a motion to approve second discussion dollar roll mr mason yes mrs nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank uh you not going to move forward to presentations and uh mr coughlin take away sure thank you president miranda superintendent spicer board of education it is again my privilege and pleasure to share with you some of our student artists from throughout the district uh this month we round out our school showcase for the academic year with

007some of our monstars from meadowview so if our student artist from meadowview would please come forward and for those of you who are unaware monstars is a term of endearment at meadowview they are the mall barrier or meadowview monstars so we would like to recognize first in kindergarten timmy hickey and the artwork is going to start down on the right there so timmy has the fruit ball congratulations apples sorry they were apples and then from first grade we have maya wagstrom maya has the dancing giraffe from second grade we have max roberts congratulations great work cedar chapman is a third grader with this beautiful floral vase congratulations colton dashley is in fourth grade with this window portrait here congratulations caleb easley has the geometric print over my right shoulder and simmer saif has this delicious

008looking pizza stitching congratulations and a special thank you to principal ellison and allie green our art teacher at meadowview [Applause] it's picture time thank you thank you and as they are making their way uh for their pictures um i'd like to share with you a few highlights to round out the academic year uh from uh fine arts and extracurricular activities the milford high school esports program which has been a state champion has won national and international tournaments and is quickly making a name for themselves in only their third or fourth year of existence has been selected as one of only two schools in ohio two schools in its entirety they just both happen to be from ohio uh to be featured in an upcoming documentary on the rise of esports in ohio and in the

009country so we had a film crew on campus earlier this week so we are looking forward to that finished product probably in august right around the start of the school year and uh we're hoping we can do a screening of it in our auditorium so very exciting for our esports program as i mentioned last month a few weeks ago we held the district art fair we had over 1500 pieces of artwork from kindergarten through 12th grade it was phenomenal if you had a chance to be there and we estimate about 2 000 people came out so after a two-year hiatus due to covet it was wonderful to have the art fair back and as i'm sure will be talked about possibly multiple times tonight i believe the count is at 537 milford high school seniors

010will be graduating from the cintas center on saturday we don't typically get this kind of applause for the fine arts piece this is this i could go on all night just as important to note for the the general public this year cintas center has required ticketing for all of their events so tickets are required though the event will be live streamed at cintascenter.com livestream and finally we have some very excited exciting guests with us this evening i'd like to invite our vex robotics program up with their coaches they're going to talk about they are going to share with you details of their uh of their state tournament accomplishments as well as uh their recognition and participation uh as being selected in world championships so a pretty incredible experience president miranda superintendent spicer members of the

011board thank you for the great honor tonight to represent and share with you our students and some of their success i'm matt arnett president of milford engineering robotics boosters we've been a club for seven years now and we have 62 students this year i should have this memorized but our mission is to equip our children with skills knowledge and experience excuse me so that they are best prepared for success in a world of increasing change in competition everything we do that's what's what we look to do or look and make sure we're heading down the right path so i'd like to get into team recognitions 62 students is how many we had this year and tonight we have less than half of them with us so students when i get to your team slide if

012you would like to walk to the front those are coming up next but just some highlights of the teams overall somebody got cut off at the top but we had 24 awards overall three of them at state number four in the state of ohio was our highest ranking team the highest in the united states was 36th for one of our teams and overall in the world this is for regular season time we had one team to rank number 54. this we have 12 teams overall five of them are here tonight 11 of our teams qualified for the state championship two of them made it to the semifinals and came very very close to make it to the final game and some of them are here with us tonight we also tonight have the honor of

013having five world competing qualifying teams with us here team two three b bonsai eight eight two three c captain crunch eight eight two three f pharaoh of the rings eight two three g galaxy nate nine eight nine nine two d and eighth grade team d squared team 8823b if you can make your way to the front to be recognized so the whole team is graham joshua david maria and sarah who are both here tonight well done team you can stay there just scoot down a little more time for embarrassment teammate a23c please come forward britain trevor nathan colin troy cameron well done team team 8823g please come forward elizabeth ria nolan and ethan [Applause] eighth grade team sorry i added your slide they may not have the latest i literally did just before the meeting

014so i they might have downloaded the presentation but we have team 8823f sierra clara praitic andy and christopher well done team and finally 8th grade team 98992d also competed at the world championship come forward landon paul jude eli patrick well done team so this is less than half of our our students we might have maybe a third here some of them couldn't make it tonight but i'm very impressed with what they've accomplished this year educationally as well as you could see the success of competing at the world championship in dallas texas so a quick recap of how they did at worlds you could see some of the success that the team said and uh how each the way world rent went for uh high school at least they had eight hundred and fifteen teams and

015they were divided into divisions of eighty eighty five teams per division so within their divisions eight eight two three b ranked number four c ranked sixth f ranked 35th and our eighth grade team was 41st and for most of them if not all of them this is probably your first time competing at worlds definitely in person because the covet changed things and a little bit of special recognition for team g they were number one in their division [Applause] [Music] they were number one seed in the overall tournament after all the division winners came together um and there if when you ranked all the teams all the 800 plus teams together they with their stats they're number two overall in the world so they did very well of course none of this occurs without our wonderful

016teachers who put in tons of time effort blood sweat tears giving up their weekends nights this guy standing next to me mr hank leeper and mr haney who couldn't be here tonight these guys are amazing they just give so much beyond what really anybody should uh or expected to give but you could see the the great results that uh they pour their love into the students and in the teaching so to give them some recognition for our great oaks teachers mr haney who couldn't be here tonight mr ulrich couldn't be here mr gears i don't think is here mr leeper is here and mr shepherd [Applause] well done students i'm very proud of what you've accomplished um how many seniors raise your hand four thank you students thank you board [Applause] um before we move

017on i just wanted to congratulate all the robotics students it's really amazing that we have this program it is truly the future of what's happening in the world and we're preparing these kids to really succeed in the future and they always do amazingly in their competitions so i just really wanted to give them a shout out [Applause] okay thank you very much um we're going to move on to our first public commentary it is three minutes per speaker mr rabe is sorting through them and um he has a nice little countdown clock there if this is your first meeting since we implemented that so have three minutes so you can look up and know where you are uh at three minutes uh we are finished and we're going to move on to the next speaker

018so um do we have anybody for the first speaking uh christine corn crone i had come here to thank the formal committee and mr spicer's decision he didn't have butterflies in the english honors curriculum the vote was five to one which to me signaled that that's the majority of the community but we all realize that might not be the case i'm actually pretty shocked that only three formal complaints in a high school of nearly 2000 has brought us here i understand everyone wants the best for their children based on their family values i don't appreciate an entire district being bragged for your individual family beliefs okay you have had a choice to pick another book and it has been that way for a long time um yet here we still are and what an insult

019to the educators who have spent their careers learning about curriculum and literacy and what is meaningful for the students academic pursuits i don't think this curriculum is and the reading material is chosen there is purpose and reason behind us literature has broad universal themes and are preparing our students for further education beyond our milford level we are here talking about an honors book there's purpose and reason for these books and our educators are always willing to work with parents they are so good at working with us i've talked to my students my children's teachers constantly we work together the teachers are not the enemy and i apologize teachers that you are being called names i'm so sorry it is so uncalled [Applause] those words would not be thrown around as casually as they are right

020now i for one fully support public schools their educators and what a public education stands for i hope you educators know the majority of this community does support you and we are behind you we appreciate you and these situations are already driving education these cultural situations are already driving educators away and they are not going to retain teachers i want milford to stay exceptional we all do we love this school let's keep it this way don't scare the teachers off they're here to help our students i want to reread a line from mr spicer's district email from the formal committee vote that was five to one these materials align with the milford vision to inspire and prepare our students to reach their fullest potential in a diverse and dynamic world and our portrait of an

021eagle is the road map [Applause] amanda fox 6331 lake ridge court it is sad to me that we started off the school year with a fight about five individuals needing to listen to experts and now here we are with the board members questioning the experts i'm the daughter of a retired public teacher that a public school teacher that dedicated 35 years of her life to the education of students i myself went to public school my four children go to public school one of which is graduating in two short days i'm going to try to get through this but like senioritis for mom one of them one of which is graduating in two short school days milford schools has taken my five-year-old son who was struggling on an autism diagnosis eventually was made and got him

022to graduation many of his teachers are in this room tonight and i thank you he will be starting his secondary education at nku in the fall in computer science and cyber security thank you milford schools [Applause] i want to share a story with you a brand new teacher on our very first day of school has 25 5th graders she spends 9 months teaching these students math reading science social studies she also teaches these kids how to work together be good friends how to cope when life isn't always sunshines and rainbows now this teacher adores each one of her students and forms lasting bonds with them fast forward 35 years and this teacher has now had thousands of students come through her class she is set to retire and one man comes to visit her on

023her last day of school he had a rose for each one of her current students to give her his three daughters had a rose so did his wife those three daughters had the same teacher their dad did and so did his wife sorry hold on you see this teacher was more than a teacher this woman helped this little boy through some really dark times in his childhood he told his teacher i was here for your last day and i wouldn't be anywhere else on your last day you see teachers are some of the most loving people you will ever meet they would not set out to harm our children it goes against everything they stand for that teacher was my mom and that student was chris her very first fifth grader we all know what's

024going on in this community with the book of um in the times of butterflies the comments in this community that are supported and actually repeated by school board members is horrific and disgusting these men and women are not here to harm our children they're here to teach them and they truly do think of them as their own they want nothing but the best for our students and i think each and every single one of you and i am going to be a voice for you and i will always back you and please know the community does not agree with the comments from the two board members that was publicly published in cincinnati.com today [Applause] loda and i apologize ellenstein good evening my name is lloyda echevestre and i live at 5762 east tall oaks drive

025i'm here to talk um for my daughter she is a milford high school graduate and i am she's not able to talk in public so i'm talking for her i'm here today to show support to milford teachers and students i trust our teachers and believe they're choosing material that will give all of our students different perspectives as they grow every year i have read and supported the teachings of the book in the times of butterflies as a latina a former milford high school student i wish my teachers would have used this book i don't recall having ever read a book that had characters that i could relate to if you decide to remove this book imagine what that will say to our growing minority students population the look of our community is changing we are

026diverse now we are not one race anymore let us show our neighbors that we are welcoming them too lastly remember that last week milford made national headlines in newspapers and on online blogs is this the negative attention we want milford to be known for so in conclusion i urge the board to trust the teachers as they are educated and professionals and they have the best interest of our children in mind also remember that the majority of students have read this book they have enjoyed reading it and they saw nothing wrong with it [Applause] aidan souter uh my name is uh aiden sowder uh i live at 1124 klondike road uh i am a senior about to graduate uh in two days and just to uh keep it very brief i just like to strongly in

027in the strongest terms i possibly can condemn the attempts to remove this book from our curriculum um this book has been in our curriculum for years and there were no complaints about it until very recently and i should remind people that there have been only three total complaints against the book the type of rhetoric that has swirled around this discussion is reprehensible it's disgusting and it has caused many many issues for board members here for teachers for parents and for everyone in our community i don't think there is any reason that teachers should be called be called these types of names regardless of what is happening in these schools this book is not sexual content this book is not disgusting this book is not pure evil and nor is it pure evil to teach it

028to our students i read this book in sophomore year i saw no problem with it none of my friends saw any problem with it and yet here we are because of three complaints this is not what milford stands for at all the community does not stand for this the belief that our community does stand for this is absurd to me i cannot fathom why anyone would believe this again three complaints this is not something that our entire community agrees on if our entire community agreed on it we would see hundreds of complaints hundreds of messages over the course of years from parents who were disgusted by this content but it's not disgusting content so i ask please please do not remove this book from the curriculum you do we don't need the negative attention we've

029already been in the cincinnati enquirer we've already been in the daily beast we've already been in the daily mail what is going to happen when we do if we do ban the book please don't ban the book [Applause] jenny zent 5497 enterprise from the author's note at the end of the book quote i would go as far as to say that by reading books entering other realities and then taking those adventures back into our own lives we are freedom fighters one of the first things that happens in a dictatorship is that books are confiscated people are not permitted to congregate and share ideas and stories there is one official story one reason to gather together and that is for indoctrination i know because i lived that reality in a dictatorship you know it because you

030have lived that reality in the novel i have written or in other novels you have read about similar situations a reading thinking empathetic citizenry is a lot less likely to be controlled or hoodwinked the function of freedom is to free someone else and i can't think of a better way to pass on that freedom than to make that someone else a reader and put a good book in his or her hands julia alvarez november 25th 2010 i was on the committee to review the book and the time of the butterflies the fact that i was invited to review the book is evidence that mr daniels intentionally included parents who have been critical in the past you may recall an email i sent criticizing the eighth grade books rather than file a citizen's request for reconsideration

031i had a discussion with mr daniels i asked a lot of questions and his answers gave me insight into why one of the books was chosen while i may not agree this is the best choice for eighth grade i fully acknowledge it is not appropriate for me to make decisions for other parents board policy already allows parents to request alternate books therefore there is no need for me to be the literacy police for the district in the time of the butterflies is high quality literature it is not pornographic it is well written alvarez has the ability to weave facts with fiction and a well educated person can appreciate this text for its complex and mature language my life is richer for having read this book and i want my daughter to have the opportunity to

032read this book in school i can empathize with any parent who wants to protect their child and i understand it is difficult to accept that my child will be old enough to read this material in two years but the fact is this book is appropriate for tenth grade your vote tonight is not about this book it is about supporting parent choice i urge you to support parental rights and vote to keep in the time of the butterflies in the curriculum thank you [Applause] tonya wenger 6081 donna j drive loveland um on a lighter note i want to tell you how appreciative i am that you acknowledge the robotics kids today like amanda i also have a senior and it's been a rough week but i have to give a lot of thanks to the teachers

033that run our program because sierra wasn't interested and they asked her because they were looking for more girls and in the long run my daughter has been in the robotics for five years i also have a freshman this year and probably an eighth grader for next year it is a huge part of what our family does it is kept my kids interested in school and i just want to tell the board to know that like we are so grateful for it so thank you for acknowledging them patricia colapierro it's colabi it's from doctor cola pietro1247 rose street drive thank you so much um for tonight i really wanted this to be positive guys i wanted mostly to say thank you to the teachers i don't know who pam williams is if she's here um or

034if you guys know her if you will see her i really want to say thank you to pam williams and i have something written i emailed all of you last month last month yeah last month my daughter louisa colapiece who graduated milford in 2018 emailed you too i hope you read her emails i hope you read my emails last month was about how i think bookman is a terrible idea and censorship is a terrible idea i am a latin american immigrant from brazil we came here in 2009 i have four milford students we live in a very diverse street where there are four immigrant families with 14 kids and like someone else said we avoid maybe changing but the high school is still ten percent uh minorities and only three percent latin american so here

035there you go i just you know brought the shirt because um but i want to tell you though and again if you want to read my emails with my daughter's emails i know that someone from her class is here this is what i wanted to know when we first heard about this book i read it a long time ago so i went to a bookstore and of course you know 22 year old mom's going to a bookstore she met me in my toy i was like what mulford is writing a book what are you talking about when i told her her response was visceral tears came to her eyes she started crying at a bookstore and she said mom i cannot believe that that book changed me and then she went on to sit down

036with my colleague who was at the bookstore and tell me how much pam williams was not an easy teacher her class apparently gave pam williams a very hard time to the point that she gave them an extra assignment and the assignment was across to bear i hope and pray that all of you read the book it is a wonderful book and aside from the excerpts that were taken from the book absolutely out of context there was a lot of religion context into that six years later to get a 22 year old to still mention how she used that essay to many many many times that she had to do um different essays or have to write about herself including her current email to you guys because that's how that school and that teacher and that

037book impacted her tells you what i think you need to hear about how the school took this so in my email you see what i think that the message will be given to the kids and the teachers when you try to silence and censor your message will be minorities are less than you don't have a room here you're not safe here and i am concerned especially when i hear about well let's make a citizens council to see what the curriculum is going to look like citizens are not experts none of you are experts this milford is changing what beaufort looks like needs to reflect what the kids are asking for the teachers are experts keep them safe in school make those discussions say for all do not exclude minorities we are here they are only

03810 percent don't make them less then [Applause] annette zimmerman 1193 state route 131 so guess i'm going to be the odd man out here i want to say that i'm the person who filed the formal complaint i may as well say that it's been listed in the inquirer today and one of the reasons i did that was it's not because i don't support free choice for adults but i think for minors it's our role as adults to to be observant about what they're reading um just because kids may hear things or see things in school doesn't mean you know that we can stop that it's gonna happen but what what they're being taught in a classroom or what they're seeing at home can be controlled um i you know banning is a wide it can

039it is variable do i want the book banned i want the book banned for this age group i'm not saying ban the book for adults that are that are in a position to read them um i i'm going to read a passage of this book and i want all of you to think about it and i i don't understand how this like you can't say that this is acceptable for a child to read well you know i'm not going to say a young adult because they're fit my daughter's 15 but um there was a struggle but no one could tell it came in the dark in the evil hours when the hands wake with a life of their own they rambled over my growing body they touched the plumping of my chest the mound of

040my belly and on down i'm going to skip a little bit further when those young men whose surnames had been appropriated for years by my moon and girlfriends came to the store and drummed their big hands on the counter i wanted to take each finger in my mouth and fill their calluses with my tongue my shoulders my elbows my knees ache to be touched that's just one of the excerpts that you know i found issue with as a parent you know i i monitor what my child has access to at home we look at ratings for tvs for movies so on and so forth my daughter has spent almost four months in the library this year because i chose an alternate book and that was that was what she had to do she had to

041go to the library because books were discussed in class and each each time a different book came up i was following along this one came up and i spent over two days reading it and making notes for myself so that i had something to go by because i wanted to read the book and i'll tell you i'm not hateful i don't get on facebook and post it i went right to the school board in fact i'll tell you one of the people that have been the most helpful this year to me is dr arnold back there and i'd like to commend you for that because no one else has done anything and i refuse to let her set set in the library again [Applause] that's all i have thank you everyone we're going to move

042ahead to item d board of education business and the first topic and the only topic on this agenda is uh dave can you turn your mic on or closer yeah be closer to it okay i will i will try to get on top of it um so we are ready for uh to to discuss this book review i have a motion uh that i think i need to read here just to make sure that everybody's on the same page because it is different than the agenda in front of us um and this was made by emily there's a motion to uphold the recommendation of the committee that reviewed the novel in the time of the butterflies based on policy klb and was accepted by the superintendent that the novel continue to be part of the

04310th grade ela curriculum uh before we start discussion um i guess as a little bit of a recap i think i think most people know that that are in the that are in this room perhaps and uh but maybe not so much for the people that are watching online or on tv criticism of book or other materials used in the milford exempted village school district may be expected from time to time it's going to happen board does not permit any individual or group to exercise censorship over an instructional material on library collections but it recognizes that all all time at times reevaluations of certain material is going to be desirable and that's what we went through the district administrators received three citizens requests for reconsideration of this novel that's used in the 10th grade curriculum

044in accordance with the board of education policy klb which is available online if you'd like to look it up the superintendent convened a review board in the time of the butterflies uh was was part of the board curriculum adopted in 2014 and 2015 in 2015 that school year and since that time milford teachers have been working uh from the documents that they were given at that at that point and are utilizing the district adopted material the citizens requests were in regard to in the time for in the time of the butterflies the committee was convened the first two weeks of this month of may and after the committee's review the superintendent reviewed the original request and the committee's reevaluation and rendered a decision in this matter determining to keep the book as part of the

045english curriculum this situation was deemed unsatisfactory by one of the complainants and has been appealed to the board and that's how we got to where we are tonight parents and guardians always have the right to choose alternate texts as outlined in the policy it's right there in black and white if a parent requests that his or her child not read a given book the teacher and or the school administrator will resolve that issue by arranging for an alternate material meeting session essentially all the same instructional purposes of that of the original book district recognizes the need and the right of the students to have free access to many different types of books and materials it also recognizes the right of the professional staff to select books and other materials supportive of the district educational philosophy

046and goals it's an ongoing process to balance all these considerations and now i'm going to open discussion i would like to start um i would like to know from each board member if you've read the book in its entirety so i have read it in his entirety mrs nolan have you read it and has read it mrs mason have you read it in its side yes i have read it in its entirety mr miranda have you read it in its entirety not only did i read it but i also checked out the movie and read the movie as well i watched the movie on a vhs tape sorry let me speak for him mr combs have you read the book in its entirety actually this week i would like to jump in um i think

047that a lot of this has been said by um our public but i just wanted to reiterate this book was chosen by a committee of professionals our teachers have dedicated their careers to teaching the language arts they know much more about the language arts than probably anyone else in this room they also work every day with our community's children and they understand the nuances of discussing sensitive subject matter in an age-appropriate way they are experts in their field they do not take their job lightly and i have only seen professionalism from all of our students or from i'm sorry for from all of our teachers it is completely unacceptable to accuse them of being predators perverts or pedophiles all things that i have seen online and suggest that they lose their jobs because of quotes

048taken out of context of a book that has been on the curriculum since 2014. they are doing their jobs to prepare our students for the future this book is not an obscure novel and it is not about sex it has sex in it it is not about sex it has won many awards including the national medal of arts the american library association calls it a notable book it aligns with our portrait of an eagle as mr spicer said in his comment online it provides a diverse set of voices that we don't usually hear from which is very important in our community it also sheds light on an important event in history that many people do not know of teaches our students to be critical thinkers and consider context in the whole novel and not just

049a part of it it has been used several times in the free essay portion of the ap lit exam i think this is an extremely important point by reading this book our students who go on to ap lit have not who have knowledge of this book they have a leg up on the ap exam our teachers are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing by preparing our students for this ap exam we have heard from many people through email to the board and several of those people were students and teachers who have said that this is a student favorite it is a much loved book and it has changed people's lives for the better it is also part of a section called around the world which talks about diversity and has a diverse

050amount of authors from different parts of the world this is sometimes the only time that these students get to hear from these voices this is extremely important in creating empathetic lifelong learners which is our goal i would like to also say that i believe very strongly in our policies there has always been a policy in place for a parent to choose an alternate text that aligns with their values this is very important a parent has a right to do this however according to our policy while the board recognizes the right of parents to influence the education of their children it does not allow the wishes of an individual parent to infringe upon the rights of other students in the class mr daniels led a professional and fair citizens committee he kept the board apprised of

051what was going on the entire time and how he considered the committee and how it would be fair the citizens committee was required to read the entire book marking passages that they wanted to speak about they were required to come with an open mind to discuss this book critically i thank everyone who served on that citizens committee it is a vital part of this and it takes a lot of time i think everyone who served came with an open mind and discussed this book i believe the citizens complaints were handled with dignity and integrity in this committee as it should be and i will be voting to uphold their decision [Applause] i've got some things some thoughts as well first i honestly think it's embarrassing that so many felt that this was a headline news

052story milford parents concerned about reading material which is literally a common theme that's going on nationwide should not cause the community and news outlets to react like the sky is falling parents being concerned about their what their kids are reading or exposed to is simply called parenting some may agree with it some may not everyone has a different point of view and that's okay i guarantee most parents don't know what their kids are reading in school and i also guarantee with a hundred percent certainty that there are many many people in this community that are concerned with the reading materials not just this book and not just this grade i've talked to many parents and i've been emailed and messaged by numerous parents that have won either had concerned about various book content at different

053levels in different and different books [Music] or and and or have they have discussed with their teachers or mr daniels over the last couple years not just recently regarding reading materials the difference is the policy klb forms were first to be submitted now three of them have been submitted so those are the first considered official complaints the district can honestly say those were the first complaint yet everybody here knows those were not the first complaints or concerns or discussions regarding reading content so why haven't parents submitted the official form before maybe they didn't know it existed it's buried in hundreds and hundreds of pages of policies or maybe they didn't want to be subjected to community fallout or more importantly didn't want their kids to be retaliated against in the community in the classroom or

054on sports teams all things that i've heard from community members that have mentioned have happened a community member emailed me to remind me of a facebook post i made back in august regarding my concern about reading materials at that point i was running for this position and i had talked to many families that had concerns about book content with classroom books and the summer reading list at that time this community member accentuated the very point that this is not a new issue i stated then back in august that if i was elected i would advocate for a parent or community committee to review book materials i started advocating for that when i was sworn in in january and what many here in the community may or may not realize is that it's an often talked

055about concern of mine at board meetings curriculum meetings and in discussions the truth is no one person or parent has time to read every book or learning instrument that their child has and it's even harder if you have several kids it's hard to decide or choose what you may or may not be okay with unless you can first read the books yourself and no one has time to read every book that's why my thoughts on having a committee that could divide up the book books and reading materials that could see what's in them not to make decisions if they should be kept or removed not to pass judgment on them but literally just to objectively indicate what each book or material might contain not whether you agree with it or not i think we can

056all agree that what one person finds offensive another person will not what's a hot topic for some isn't for someone else we will never please everyone however there's a few categories that most people would agree are the lightning rods as paul daniels calls them i would say those categories are sexual content language and religion i've received so many emails from community members as all of us have reminding us that milford means all and reminding us about diversity and inclusion and yes all means even those that are conservative those with values and diversity that may have values different than your own what i found ironic is that with hundreds of comments circulating on local facebook pages many and many comments um stated things like these complaining parents can't force their beliefs on the rest of us

057yes that's exactly the thing that you're okay doing conversely i think it may be lost on everyone that's commenting like that that the very people they are suggesting inclusion are excluding some milford currently lists on their curriculum on their website which i think is great i would really like to see along with the book list a brief description and a potential object objectional content i'm completely in favor of transparency on all fronts and then a parent and a student can look at the list possible objectional content and make a more informed decision they can look deeper into the books if they would like i also know that other schools and districts utilize a form that parents could sign off on books with possible objectional materials so that's something else to consider but to sit here

058and say that these books if you don't like it you can leave the classroom or you can leave the school and go to a private school or just don't say anything out of fear of the retribution that we've witnessed take place in this community the past few weeks i think is the ultimate hypocrisy of milford meaning all or any claim of diversity the other thing i want to kind of go through is while i was taking notes as some of the people commented tonight is somebody mentioned they could relate to characters i completely agree with that i was taking notes on my phone as i was reading and let me find it um i'll probably say your name wrong petraeus this was one of the scenes so patria is um pregnant she had just lost

059her baby um she was 17 and this passage talks about how she lost her baby and then she lost her faith i was that person i can completely relate to her i lost a child i lost my faith but what she's saying in this book was that she was satisfying her her husband's grief through sex and what i disagree which i don't think is appropriate for 15 to 16 year olds is talking about riding him hard and fast like that could have been completely left out of the book and still had the the same message of grieving and in faith so i think while the sexual content in this is not overwhelming it comes down to me what's appropriate for a 15 or 16 year old i read this book through the lens of myself

060which is a 50 year old woman through experience maturity and life experience that comes along with it i don't know that it's possible that i or any other adult can go back and read it through the lens of a 15 or 16 year old i can sit here and talk to all of you about menstruation sex whatever and not be embarrassed about it but i don't know the same is true for a 15 year old 16 year old girl or a 16 year old boy talking about ejaculation and erections are they comfortable with that i don't know what i have more issue with than the actual content of this book is putting the kids in a position of reading that aloud in the classroom with their peers i don't think that that is i don't

061think that that's appropriate um i read comments from the community such as kids are doing worse than this maybe some are i'd argue that most 15 and 16 year olds aren't other comments that they see worse on movies or video games my question to that is what came first the chicken or the egg did the normalization in society come first and then classrooms followed or did uh classroom normalization come first and then it spread into society i don't have the answer to that but it is a question i have these kids have access to so much at their fingertips it doesn't mean it's okay and the maturity level of most does not match the level of maturity of content that they can access i feel that school doesn't need to add to it there's a

062huge mental health crisis amongst youth maybe we need to step back and look at all the factors contribute to contributing to it and wonder if these kids are being subjected to a world of mature content that they aren't quite ready for that's my synopsis [Applause] do you have anything go so i just want to applaud everyone's passion tonight and leading up to this although i disagree with uh with most of the the positions um i'm i'm very proud to live in a country where we can express ourselves whether i agree with you or not um i'm just i'm just happy to be born into this country and be able to to express ourselves so thank you for that this this democratic republic that we live in um and the theme associated with the book that

063i did read in its entirety is uh it is an interesting one that i think all of us can get behind it it's it it's a it's a story of four sisters um really that it has experienced the the in their country experience the the grasp of a tyrant and again everyone in this room can can relate to that in some way or another we've all been oppressed in some ways we've all been denied certain freedoms in certain parts of our lives whether we're five years old or or 80 years old we can relate and um the book is not about sex the book has uh a varying degree of of sexual um situations that it describes um i actually enjoyed the book except for those uh scenes um i was disappointed that miss alvarez

064included those because i i candidly thought they added nothing to the book in in critique when i look at the character development i thought it was pretty weak i thought it was pretty disjointed how they moved from story to story changing persons it doesn't mean that the overarching theme of the book was lost on me i actually think as a mature adult it resonated well with me i've been a fighter all my life um and this this story uh this story really spoke to me in a lot of ways i did appreciate the the the diversity of thought and the fact that it would it was a it was a historical fiction that a lot of folks can look into and and read about um trujilo and the character was a brutal tyrant i'm talking

065about tortures jailings and killings i won't spoil it for those that may want to read the book um but i will say my objection to this book is very similar to what you just heard from from my colleague i think that the the maturity level of the students it it i i i actually think the content is is too mature for this for this group i don't object to this book being read by mature adults our country has uh has defined maturity in two different age groups my wife would argue i'm still not there but it's 18 and 21. um not 14 15 or 16. so my objection to this being taken out of the rotation which i i will tell you i do object to it being in the rotation and i'll be voting

066uh i'll be voting shortly on that is simply that the book is not built because of these five or six unnecessary scenes it's not built for immature minds that's why i'm voting the way i do again this public in front of me and those that weren't able to attend i applaud the passion thank you very much for sharing all of your your feedback uh we all parent in certain ways um melissa had mentioned something recent uh just a few minutes ago about um about the hypocrisy that that is associated with um asking others to to to respect your particular wishes i'm sharing with you today i may not respect all of it but i respect the fact that you live in this country and able to voice it and i just ask the same for

067those that feel differently than you do that's what i'm asking for we can agree to disagree civility has gone out the window in this country and it's a shame because i know of several of you in this audience right now and today you won't even speak to me and we used to speak at games regularly and you don't anymore because you know where i stand and i would love to be able to have open honest dialogue with you about our differences but in today's society unfortunately we've been taught that you hate people that think differently and i think that's a shame i want to mention something really quickly about complaints our administration has mentioned twice now in our last board meeting about a bullying complaint that a a citizen had brought up that we've only

068received five or six formal bullying complaints in the last several years that is probably incredibly true i hope that this community and those that are watching if your child is bullied in any way shape or form you better file a formal complaint and stop this nonsense of counting only formal complaints i'll pivot from that with the bullying topic to the the book topic if you object to a book file a formal complaint do not send an email do not call the teacher file a formal complaint we are not going to hide behind formal complaints being counted any longer in this in in this community there's some challenges this school district is a great school district we have pockets where it's not so great and we need to voice those those instances i'm very proud of

069of very very many parts of this school district you know what there's some parts that i'm not so proud about and i'm going to continue to fight to make it as bad as as good as we possibly can be our teachers have a hard job they are dealt a parenting hand that is very difficult the quality of parenting in this country this is an opinion has degraded significantly over the years and guess who has to pay the price for that guess who has to pay the price for that our teachers ask any of them if they've had to pay the price for that they have teachers have a hard job they do formal complaints please file them you've heard my take on the book and that's all i have so [Applause] i'd like to remind

070folks that we're here today we're talking about actually about a process this klb policy that we all know by heart by now but we're talking about whether that process was followed and whether we want to uphold the process and within that process there was trusted experts and community and teachers and it's all i mean we could book review and have english class here all day long but we're talking about was the process followed and how are those steps being followed from here if you want me to read objectionable things i actually brought a book here i can read some stuff out of too but that's not the point please do that's not the point the point is we have a process we have experts in the community thank you very much to mr daniels i

071was very impressed by the people that he brought together even those who chose not to participate in the in the discussion itself and i also want to say a big thank you to mrs zent for telling us how that process has worked over the years she's been taking advantage of the opportunity to talk to mr daniels and find what's right for her family and to work within that bounds and while i don't want everyone in the community to do that because we only have one paul daniels and he only has so many hours in a day that is that is their right and that is the process so we are talking about we have a process we have trusted experts and do we agree with the outcome that they had okay and i guess my

072last word is our largest minority in this district is hispanic this book absolutely speaks to the hispanic population it also speaks to the female population which is probably the largest single population in the in the school as well um i guess where where i'm coming from is if there's if there is any any failing at all here it's that we need to be when we follow policy k-lb we need to make sure that we're being as inclusive and as even as we possibly can and i i don't have an answer i've the one thing that i said was what if you have two books what if people pick what they what book they get to read and discuss and you break it down that way it's probably a bad idea mr spicer is probably happy

073with me saying that but let's have a good idea on how we do this how we don't how we don't ostracize kids how we have we have everybody milford means all how we do that i think we can i think we can go forward and over the summer maybe come up with a better way of of doing that or at least certainly get the discussion started um i spoke at the beginning i kind of wrapped it up here i have nothing further does anybody else have any other discussion i do yes i'm not entirely opposed to the book being in milford curriculum i'm more opposed to it being the main book of the class and it being read aloud i think that lends itself to some real awkwardness and while a lot of kids say

074they don't have a problem with the book the reality is kids are still under the jurisdiction of their parents until they're 18. so a lot of kids are you know it's more like the parents thing so i'm not opposed to it being a choice maybe instead of that being the main book and then if if you don't like it you choose an alternate maybe it being the alternate and then if if if you want to choose to read it then then that's perfectly fine what i am opposed to and i think we really need to find the answer to is um kids being sent out of the classroom if they object to the main reading material because that completely ostracizes and segregates in a community that's supposed to be very much inclusive so i don't

075know how we can go about finding the answer to that the solution the remedy um i just want to clarify the entire book is not read aloud there's not enough hours in the day to do that that the objectional parts are not ready [Applause] i believe mr daniels actually spoke to the board about this and he let us know that the only part that had been read aloud in the class was the part maria teresa she's the youngest daughter she had some diary entries and in those diary entries she talks about things like going shopping buying shoes things like that these were not objectionable parts if a child is asked to read and refuses there's no retribution against that child they just move on to the next part none of the objectionable parts of the

076novel are read out loud [Applause] the the teacher that is leading that class um was asked a couple of different questions and we found out that some of the answers were untrue that is a fact some of those answers were untrue that the the specific answers were comments put on a written comments put on a page a graded page that was was was deemed that i did not do that and in fact it happened so are you talking about the content of the book and the process we're going through are you talking about a specific student and a teacher which i don't think is appropriate the whole reason the whole reason we're here hold on the whole reason why the whole reason we're here is because of a complaint from a couple uh actually from

077three community members that we've talked openly about the the issue at hand was is not only the content but also we've talked openly about how it was handled afterwards from a from that that's not that's we are we are voting on i know what we're voting on i'm giving up we cannot discuss personnel in a public meeting we're talking we're talking directly [Applause] we are we are we are talking we are talking directly about how this was handled after the fact those are the those i'm on i come to all of my inappropriate and off topic that is a separate topic we have we have a motion here to uphold what the committee said we were going down a specific student-teacher relationship we we discussed how this was handled and i commented on how it

078was handled okay then you're done commenting i'm not done commenting okay continue okay great i would also like to point out one more thing um it is my understanding with our policy that if a parent requests the child to read a different book the child is allowed to stay in the classroom it is only a last resort that they are sent to the library and that is after much discussion with people who are deciding what is to be done this is a team effort there are many people making this decision together including the parent and as i understand it everybody who objects to this book or another book and chooses another book is treated with respect and part of this team to decide how their child best gets the curriculum they are not sent to

079the library to read by themselves unless that is decided by that parent [Applause] and just just to be clear back to the back to discussing individuals that are in our employ the purpose of executive sessions to do that it's not to be done here in front of a crowd [Applause] any other discussion mr rabe you didn't we are voting on a recommendation to uphold the superintendent's decision and uh retain in the time of the butterflies as part of our curriculum so i'm eye motion so we need a motion in a second a second okay any other discussion i don't believe we do um a yes vote keeps it a no vote removes it correct is that correct correct a no vote means there's no motion so a yes vote is to uphold the recommendation and

080a no vote means we don't know what's happening and you then you'd have another vote after that yep hold on for a second okay at this point we are voting to keep the book in the rotation or not we're voting to keep the motion to keep the book in the rotation period right if that motion fails on a vote then another motion could be made to remove it but if we vote to keep it then we are complete here is that correct mr rabe yeah so right now you have a motion on the floor and i'll read mrs chestnut's motion what you're voting on is to uphold the recommendation of the committee that reviewed the novel in the time of the butterflies based on policy klb and was accepted by the superintendent that the novel

081continued to be part of the 10th grade ela curriculum so that's that that's that's so so to paraphrase and be clear we're getting ready to vote either yes to keep the book in the rotation or no not or or you have to make or there is no motion we're voting on the motion to keep it in the rotation this this correctly parliamentarian if i say anything wrong all we are doing is voting to keep it in the rotation correct so once we have that vote it either passes or it fails if it passes it's done if it fails there could be another motion to remove it so if i want to vote yes i want to keep the book but not as the main book but as an alternative within the collection how do i

082vote on this one like i'm not uh this exact statement is what we are voting right this exact statement okay mr spicer do you want a copy of it yeah this motion just keeps it in in the ela curriculum for 10th grade okay okay mr rabe call the roll mrs mason yes this is nolan i will vote yes but i would like to see it in um with the details worked out of reading aloud and it possibly being one of two choices in the book and and uh of one of two it's either a yes or it's a no but we certainly would take that back to committee just so everybody here is clear what we'll be talking about this further after the fact if if this motion passes okay i will vote yes to

083keep it with the caveats that we just said we do understand your position though okay this is chestnut yes mr combs no mr miranda yes [Applause] okay okay folks thank you now we move on to the next part of our meeting which is the treasurer's report and this will take a little bit of a little bit of time mr rabe so he's been resting up over there can you like get real close like real quiet i can only get into that close that close thank you can you turn me up mr rabe uh do you want to switch time for the treasurer's report thank you mr president uh first item is a recommendation to approval of the board reports for the month ending april 30th 2022. we need a motion to approve moved second discussion

084uh just a couple items to point out we are 80 little over 83 percent of the year completed general funds almost 78 percent couple items to point out also on the restricted and unrestricted aid we had the issue where the the we're still waiting on some of the state formula we did have that figure out so we had to make some corrections as far as coding is concerned which actually flipped some money that was in the unrestricted down to the restricted aid in the month we also did receive the rollback in homestead from the state last year we didn't receive that until may so there's a little bit of a timing issue and that's that's a little over two million dollars on that uh we did receive uh almost 22 thousand dollars in interest on

085the month 233 000 on the year and on the bond retirement money a little over seventeen hundred dollars on the month and ten thousand eight oh five for the year any other discussion call the roll this is mason yes mrs nolan yes mrs chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you next item is the approval of the annual appropriations resolution uh we need a motion to approve the annual appropriations resolution so moved second discussion uh just a couple items to point out that what we were adjusting uh the bond retirement fund this is to cover the fees uh that i i missed including in last month's uh we are increasing the food service uh with the increased cost of food as long and as well as taking on norwood um they've collected additional

086money now we just need to appropriate the increase the appropriations to cover those costs the endowment fund which is a scholarship for a senior student activities and athletics for senior prom as well as transportation for athletics the auxiliary service we're adjusting to match uh what they did receive from the state on the year and then early childhood special education this was just a change in federal funding so we are adjusting those i i forgot to comment on the board reports something but i wanted to bring up the audit that we received uh i'm just gonna talk about it later but go right ahead i don't know you can you can talk i just wanna make sure that we that we talk about the audience okay continue sorry thank you okay we have a motion and

087a second correct correct call the roll mrs mason yes mrs nolan yes mrs chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you uh the next item is the disposal fixed asset these are a number of banned instruments from the high school okay we need a motion to approve disposal of fixed assets as listed so moved second discussion anybody wants a tuba or a clarinet or a suits the phone i think this is the funds may be accounted for so the phones are gone okay uh clarinet or they're doing those or throwing them away um i believe it's the sousaphones wes claremont wants to purchase those uh obviously the other items you know um i think we've reached out to buddy rogers they have no interest in them josh might be able to give you

088a little bit more than things are probably 20 years old yes the the instruments listed are very old um all of them have not been used in several years they're really cost prohibitive for us to restore at this point uh for just a small amount more we could buy a brand new instrument so we will make attempts to sell them if we cannot sell them we'll donate them okay we have a motion in a second call the roll is mason yes this is nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you thank you the next item every year we do have to approve the present to you the five year forecast we typically do this once in november and then we have to do this once again in the spring

089so before we i ask for a formal approval we'll walk through the presentation of the five-year forecast um go ahead there we go so as i mentioned the five-year forecast is something we're required to do by state law once in november and then once again uh in the early spring in either april or may the five year forecast is a uh recommendation as a best prac best past practice from gfoa so looking at the forecast the forecast only includes the general fund it gives three years of historical data uh three five years of forecasted data along with several assumptions that go along with the forecast so looking at the forecast uh as of right now we are estimated for the current fiscal year but go back one for the corn fresco year we're estimated receipts

090of about 76.5 million dollars as you can see from the from the pie graph 58 percent of that comes from local property taxes and rollback uh the rollback in the homestead is what we receive from the state 32 percent comes from the state foundation formula as well as 10 percent comes from other local income sources so looking at the pr the local property tax bar graph kind of shows you the history of or the history and the projections a couple items to point out in 2020 claremite went through a reappraisal year in that year when we look at our fiscal year because our fiscal year crosses tax years the first payment we received this fiscal year is actually based upon 2020 property values the second payment which we received here in february is based upon

0912021 property values overall real estate taxes increased and thirty two thousand dollars uh nine ninety three thousand came from residential and agriculture 56 came from commercial and industrial and 482 almost 483 came from utilities so that's your your duke gas lines your pipelines your telephone poles from cincinnati bell and so forth the state foundation this is the big switch not only this fiscal year but from the forecast that we that was put together back in november one of the things that the state did with their latest biennial budget which they approved in june is they adopted a new state funding formula the projections that we were getting off of that state foundation formula we were we were estimated to receive about three hundred thousand dollars in additional revenue once the once the formula was fully

092phased in when we talk about that the proposal was to phase in this over a six-year period so that 300 000 it wasn't going to show up in year one it probably won't show up until year four or five for us the other piece of that with the proposal the six-year phase-in with the biennial budget at the state level only being approved at a two-year cycle there's no guarantee that the state will continue that phase in after this after next year so when we looked at the forecast we kind of anticipated what we were going to get this year or next year and kind of flatline it because there is no guarantee we're going to get that the other thing with the state foundation because it came so late in the year the ohio department

093of ed didn't wasn't ready programming wise to run full calculations of how it was going to play out and we kind of talked about this the original proposal was we wouldn't see it in october and then it wasn't we weren't going to see it until december and then in january that report was finally released so we could actually see the numbers and how it was calculated and if you remember back in in january we saw a significant catch up in funding from the state to catch us up back into six months so when we did the the forecast back in november we weren't really sure what everything was going to look like so that's one of the big thing big things you'll notice between november's forecast compared to this one one of the things that

094is in the forecast there is a guarantee that you we could not receive any money less than what we received last year through a calculation as of right now through the formula we are we are on 239 000 on that guarantee um so if they didn't have the guarantee t we'd actually be let we'd be short uh that amount so that's when we took a look at the phase in if you take a but look at the total 300 000 increase over the six years the 239 in the phase-in if they fully phase it in over the six years i wouldn't expect us to see any type of state funding increase at least until year four or five one of the things the state did in the forecast is they made several additional items what

095they refer to as restricted aid is in funding that we can only spend on certain items last year that that dollar amount was about 54 000 this year that's 1.7 million dollars of money that's restricted on how we can spend it some of the items the largest item in that category is about 830 000 it has to be spent on student wellness some of the other items included gifted services english lim english learner services uh in those items so when you look at the forecast there's a big switch even from last year to this year when you look at the restricted uh i restricted funds one of the other quick questions about restricted funds um those are all funds that we will be able to spend because there are items in our budget unlike the

096cable like i know one of the s or things was cable and they said you get this much but we just couldn't spend it because we didn't correct no the money that we get we fully expect and have it allocated that we'll be able to spend it yes thank you sorry sure um one of the other items they did with the forecast is regarding tuition payments when we look at open enrollment both students that are coming into the district as well as students going out of the district in years past the foundation formula the money that we received through open enrollment as you can see it was a little over a million dollars that was reflected in other local income on the five-year forecast now that money is included in the state foundation line is

097unrestricted aid the other three pieces when you look at the open enrollment of students going out the community school payments and the peterson scholarship as far as the community school and the peterson scholarship the state decided to take that burden off of school districts and they're funding that completely from a state of different different funding formula but when you look at our five-year forecast last year we had those figures in the purchase services side as an expense on the forecast this year those items are no longer included because they're they're handled differently and does that save us because didn't we have to pick up some of the money when it went through us we did so when you look at yeah when you looked at the forecast we were averaging about 3 400 a little

098over 3 400 per student but when they look at say for example a community school kid they were pulling out a little bit more than six thousand dollars so it does yeah so that's pretty significant it is saving for us correct incorrect isn't it true brian um just to share with the group that now the state funding formula has made it easier for us to account for only those enrolled in our district correct correct one of the big changes that they did make is in years past what was it on the foundation formula and how you were funded was based upon the students that resided in your district so when you look at the open enrollment going out the community school kids were going out we were getting some funding for them but then that's

099why they were taking it away the way the formula is written now is we get funded based upon the kids that are actually showing up and we're educating so that's a big change of how everything is being calculated so when you look at it even when you try to compare some of the numbers from last year to this year you're truly not comparing apples to apples because of these changes that the state made i think i just wanted to point that out the accounting was was was retro they we had to we had to reimburse back to on the on the balance sheet and here we're only actual actually counting attendees correct which is so much more simple and it's going to be very challenging for us to compare both and i just want to

100point it out because it's important change absolutely okay next slide um the next item is the all other revenues when we look at it i just wanted to give you some of the changes compared to this year last year when you look at it obviously we're seeing an increase in all day kindergarten tuition this year obviously last year uh with the coveted uh and the eagle online some parents decided to hold their kids back uh and start kindergarten a little late so obviously this year we're starting to see that that uptick in all-day kindergarten tuition obviously i talked about the open enrollment interest interest rates uh are obviously driving the interest that we're earning on any type of investments it's very hard to get any type of decent interest rate right now as everyone's well

101aware and then also in the all other revenue we did have the um the charity lucas field the the 470 that was donated by the athletic boosters we also received twenty thousand dollars from fc cincinnati uh we also do have the cincinnati bengals grant um it's not included in here reason being is that grant is a reimbursement grant so we have to spend the money and then ask them to reimburse us which we probably won't start seeing that money until next fiscal year in july so it is included in the forecast it's just not included until next year's numbers so next item we take a look at is we were looking at the expenditures uh we talked about the revenues expenditures we are projected currently to spend 76.6 million dollars the big blue piece that

102you can see there the vast majority of what we spend our funds on are salaries and benefits for staff the next biggest piece is going to be purchase services when you look at the purchase services the vast majority of that is going to be the transportation uh with peterman and then obviously the other smaller categories uh one percent of total spend and three percent of total spend this is just a bar graph to kind of give you an idea put in a different perspective of how we're where things are projected to go uh in relation there we go um so when we take a look at purchase services let's go back and take a look at salaries and benefits real quick right now we do have the contract with the teachers in the classified you

103can leave it on the slide classified and with the teachers and the classified staff we do have agreements for the next two years so those salary increases are built in there as well as any type of increases that we'll see in benefits health insurance dental insurance and so on and so forth when we take a look at purchase services comparing last year to this year as i mentioned one of the things is the open enrollment the community schools and the peterson aren't included in this year's numbers compared to last year also i wanted to point out a number a couple capital projects one of the things of things that we do over the summer because our fiscal year ends in july some things split fiscal years so when we look at the elementary roofs that

104we did last summer the final payment on those roofs didn't occur until this fiscal year so that's why that's why that's in there obviously we have the charity lucas field will have will most likely have a split half of that money will be paid out this year half will be paid out in the fiscal year as well as well as the the lights at eagle stadium will most likely see half that payment occur this year the other half next year so that's built into the forecast one of the other items that we're seeing an uptick in and we projected to continue would be the cost of natural gas as well as the electricity we're looking at um recently we've had conversations about natural gas uh because we do purchase that uh in advance and when

105we're looking at probably the the cost per unit is practically doubled okay and brian isn't aren't both of those utilities purchased through a shared consortium yes um get natural gas is an electricity is okay so the last the other item is supplies and capital outlay obviously as everyone knows we're seeing the hits of the inflation cost on the items of school supplies textbooks furnitures the big one that we're seeing the biggest effect right now is in transportation fuel the cost to run the buses i can tell you in the months of march in the months of april there's roughly been about a fifty thousand dollar increase in each of those months uh as it relates to fuel obviously fuel is continuing to rise luckily we're at a point where we'll be in the summer we

106won't run it be running the buses as much hopefully it comes comes down by the time we get back to school but we did project a significant increase in transportation fuel next year just simply because of where things are at right now in the market so looking at things over overall uh this year uh this year we we're showing a deficit spending about a hundred and four thousand obviously we got a couple months to still go we can we we hope to uh we hope that changes but we obvious obviously have a deficit spending shown in 23 through 26 but you can also see on the bottom line the cash balance we do have a cash balance that that does protect us due to that deficit spending that we have over the next couple years

107projected deficit and then the last slide just a graph to illustrate that as you can see in the top of the graph the blue line represents the revenues the red represents the expenditures so you'll you see a point in there 21 22 where they where the expenditures cross the revenues and then the bottom green line gives it as a representation of where the cash balance is projected to go uh throughout the five-year forecast obviously it's something we continue to look at continue to monitor on a monthly basis and continue to discuss if we were to look back i don't know how many years we'd see that green that's an expected curve that that green has it's correct like the the levy cycle you have the front half of it where we're getting an increase in

108cash balance the back half and then we do another one so it almost would look like a whole bunch of humps or hills if we were to look at that over time yeah it would one of the things that we've went looking at in past history one of the big things is the changes that have been made in the in the foundation formula over the past couple years um i can tell you over the past i believe five biennial budgets the state has changed the forecast the formula four different times so in some of those earlier years when we're looking at 15 and 16 we saw significant increases from the changes in the state foundation formula we're just at a point where the state deems us a what they consider a high wealth district therefore

109we don't receive those large increases in funding anymore um so yeah what what's been able to keep us off the ballot over the past couple years um is a lot of that is as the increase in revenues due to the changes in the state foundation formula and and just just so everyone starts to understand a little bit more about how our schools are funded i learned this through brian uh about two or three months ago that we're essentially funded in three different buckets and you saw that 58 real estate taxes that's paid twice a year so when you think about how you if if you're employed by by someone and not an entrepreneur you are paid typically on the 15th and 30th of every month well the schools are paid our biggest chunk twice a

110year from real estate taxes the state funding formula that he's mentioning we're paid in this in a similar way twice a month so 24 installments every year of 32 percent of our revenues come from the state twice a month twice a year for real estate taxes and then the other 10 percent is the various local grant monies as well correct that's included in that 10 yeah when we look at the 10 the vast majority data is going to be the tif payments that we've received from miami township in union township so that's how that's how schools are funded in those three buckets and as as our expenses continue and we pass levies the levy has a huge deposit into our bank account and we spend that over time and eventually school districts go back out

111to the community to pass another levy and that's how the majority of school districts are are funded and we are we're trying to look really hard at how do we control our expenses so that we don't have to pass levees as often at milford but there brian has committed to sharing with the community what exactly is behind a a future levy how is it going to be constructed and and how it's going to benefit our community and i appreciate that sure because there's going to be some some a lot of transparency when that levy is finally presented to the community and just know that we're looking hard at trying to keep our expenses as low as possible to keep that levy as manageable as possible we're currently running a deficit and any budget that i've

112been a part of you don't spend more than you make and we just need to we just need to find a way to just be as smart as we possibly can with every dollar here uh thank you for educating the public as as we approach uh an inevitable uh vote you got it yeah i want to clarify something real quick you said the majority of schools are funded with tax money all schools are funded by tax money and in public schools i said the majority of schools um have to go out to the public because they're funded and then they start to run a negative deficit but it's not a hundred percent of schools it's not 100 of schools it is not 100 of schools that is not true yes that's correct it's not 100

113so there are schools in the state of ohio that that uh that avoid levees and have been able to run balanced budgets yes in wealthy and similar wealthy as we're considered i i i don't know exactly the apples to apples i'm just stating a fact that there are some that do and in fact i've offered to brian some introductions to other treasures to just learn some of the things that they're doing and if it's not apples to apples there's probably some nuggets of insight you can learn from some of the treasures in those other schools to find out if we can be a little bit better on our on our balance sheet i think we should all we we all strive to to be better stewards of the public's money and that's what we're going

114to do okay it's not ours thank you um so the next item on the agenda is the motion to approve the five-year forecast and assumptions as presented okay we need a motion to approve the five-year forecast as we have just viewed so move second discussion call roll mr mason yes mrs nolan yes mr chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you uh next item of business is the superintendent's business can i can make one informational item earlier this week the ohio auditor of state did release the district's financial audit which you can find on the auditor's website there's also a link on our district website that fiscally audit for the last fiscal year we did receive a clean opinion with that audit with no findings or no citations so i wanted to follow

115up that i don't know if we were invited in the past to the presentations but that was super helpful to hear from the auditor's office when i was able to sit in when she delivered the findings and that opportunity for all of us um to sit in and kind of see that because that's really important to know from the state level how are they viewing um i want to congratulate you on a good job because we consistently have very very clean audits and the things that they find are minor and very fixable and you're quick to address them thank you um obviously all the credit doesn't there's a number of people that are part of this they looked at food service this year so the staff over in the food service my staff special ed

116staff uh there's a lot of people that are involved in just making sure that everyone's following the rules appropriately and everything's being accounted for appropriately so um obviously there's a lot of people involved so i want to thank them as well there are a lot of people involved but there's only one treasurer and that treasury has to keep track of it and you're way too modest for your own good thank you okay let's move on um superintendent's business mr john spicer thank you president miranda members of the board uh under item uh one f um asking for your approval of the following policies this is the second reading okay we need a motion to approve the policies that are listed on our agenda tonight so moved second discussion call the roll mrs mason yes mrs

117nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you under item two i do have a middle school update as you can see under one and two we are going to have a community engagement on june the 7th that is a change that was originally on june 2nd so june 7th is a change june 2nd is frontier days so i'm not sure how we missed that not to mention we are in the parade so um i'm not sure how we missed it but we moved it so no no worries um so we are again gonna grab another community engagement on june the 7th we'll have it right here and hope that you can come shp our architect will be here and we've already started to engage the junior high staff and

118the sixth grade staff as well um you have a question just a comment can can uh can you make sure you flood all of your communication to the public with that some of you yes facebook live messages and others right absolutely the inquirers here they're going to publish free ads for us today perfect thank you i appreciate that matt shp and congress construction as well we are asking for you maybe at the end of the meeting to discuss a possible work session for the july 18th or july 20th date to discuss the future of the robbins building and the weight room out back we've had some discussions probably for the last six months or so and certainly some prior to our new board member so um we can do that at the end or do

119we do that do it now or do it at the very end okay we'll do it at the end thank you so if you would indulge me just a little bit this is our proposed schedule of timeline we are looking at programming which is a nice big spreadsheet that makes sure that we have we get everything in this building that we need that's something that shp has worked with us thank you paul um to make sure that we have that we're in the schematic design as you can see this this goes all the way through the end of august of 25 so we're hoping move in in august of 25. these are rough dates you should not expect to see any kind of earth movement across the street for this project probably for another year

120so there'll be that design development um construction documents etc that will happen this is just a large large 30 000 level foot view so that's it for that next slide steve thank you so we did take a tour a whole day tour of three different schools with shp some other folks as well jeff johnson and the first place that we went to was harrison this is a middle school it is three stories may not be able quite to tell that but it is a three-story building six seven eight it's a beautiful facility it is green it is harrison green and it was purposely designed that way i think that we fell in love with this building it was really nice i think you could um you could just drop it across the street make it

121a little bit bigger and people would be very happy but that's not what's going to happen so next slide please that is not what's going to happen but what i did want to show you is one area that in each of the three buildings that we looked at that was of significance and it was it caught everyone's attention and um this would be this common stairs area i'm here at harrison and that very up at the top where all those windows are that is uh ironically that's a library that's their media center um and it's it's a beautiful place it's open and of course down below this is their lunch room as well and this was just a space that um we we all kind of fell in love with so i'm not giving you

122a whole lot i just want to give you a few things from this building we'll go to the next slide the next place that we saw was fairfield freshman buildings this is a freshman only building a little bit different design same architect shp next slide again they had a a learning area with the stairs that's connected to um their lunchroom and then you can see they they have a really small media center right there and it um in the evenings it's like a drop down gate like you would see in a mall if you will so that um i don't know why they would do that and it wasn't stealing books but um i'm sorry for the irony but um but that's the case i mean that's what they talk about the one at harrison

123is not i mean there's they just leave the books out no i mean people aren't stealing books so they're just checking them out and then to the left what you can't see is the connection to the gymnasium and this commons area um is very useful some of you may have been there for athletic events etc here at fairfield they they did not use that space um the stairs as as much it's concrete it felt very industrial but certainly something that caught our eye it was it was one thing that was was in this particular um in these three particular buildings that still caught our eye with something that that we we did like uh next slide could that could that be used as an educational space yeah it's absolutely an extended learning area educational space

124i think in the next two next one to three years you're gonna hear the ela not english language arts but you're gonna hear extended learning areas you're gonna hear that a lot and this one this particular building was really designed mostly around these extended learning areas with classroom spaces where teachers didn't necessarily have it wasn't their classroom they were more on a cart and then they kind of figured out where they were going to go each day um this this was um you know according to them being went in woods they were either going to get hit a grand slam or it was they were going to strike out and they believe with their project-based learning model that they've hit a grand slam and it's really nice next slide please and again this is their

125area that was sort of a common space a lot of common areas extended learning areas the other unique thing about winton woods is that they did not have a central lunchroom so it's distributive dining is what they call it um so just again i just wanted to share just a few things some things that where we've been and what we've been what we've been doing and even though we're in late may we are going to engage the community with shp as much as possible we're going to engage our staff um you know as jeff always likes to say this is the time you ask for every single thing you want in that building that doesn't mean you're going to get it but we want you to ask for everything so that we can we can

126grasp those ideas and concepts and get them into potentially the design i think that's it yep thank you this is a little bit different than the current junior high that we have right slightly slightly just a little bit just a little bit just uh just amazing to see those things and uh and dream about what we're gonna have here somewhere down the road yeah it's very exciting um i think the other thing again to to think about and um as we you know that construction begins over there it's gonna be crazy it's crazy now but it's gonna be crazier and i think you also have to understand the the footprint availability over there is there's just not a lot of space we're going to have to go up i mean that's that's the reality so

127there it's likely to be three stories um academic for sure and john really quickly about a timeline we all know construction timelines they they flex and you had mentioned a year from now is when we is the earliest we could probably expect to see ground breaking about how long is the project going to take and again no one's committing to anything but just to share with the group what that may be i think the i mean jeff's more the expert but i think you know you're going to see movement in about a year and then it's going to take through august of 25. okay so about a 24-month construction period yes okay did i just steal a little thunder from you no i know jeff just he likes to get up and talk he's stretching

128his legs i don't know about all that but there's a pretty good chance that we'll be doing some some early utility work like in the early spring um march-ish um that's kind of up in the air i mean we're in the very early stages of design but there is a possibility that we'll you'll see some dirt moving as early as maybe march next year um and as mr spicer mentioned you know the construction you know the building should be complete probably in late spring of 2025 you know and then we've got to demo the existing junior high try to rework the the eagles way and parking and and things along those lines obviously we need to move stuff out of the current junior high into the new middle school that'll take place that summer so

129actual construction will probably complete in in late spring of 25 and then that summer will be the abatement and demo of the existing junior high as well as moving into that new middle school so that fall we'll have brand new classes yes sir yes now there will still probably be some work going on that fall like site prep and you know planting grass and you know maybe still a little bit of parking i mean we'll see that's it's it's real early um you know but but we will be moved into that building in august of 2025. i can promise you that thank you any other questions on the middle school all right very good we'll move on to item three the calendar approval so i'm asking for your final approval of the 2223 2324 and

1302425 calendars um as noted last month we did add some days in some work days in january february also in october um we could not fit the uh work day in january of coming up which for those of you who are not familiar our high school staff likes to have a balanced semester calendar and so we're going to try to get them a work day at the end of that semester is very helpful for them but we'll make that happen the spring break next year does coincide we're going to move that one week if you recall that will coincide with good friday and i think it meets some of the needs that mrs nolan asked for like a three-day weekend etc i think but maybe one month in one of those but it does meet

131those needs as well asking for your approval okay we need a motion to approve the calendar for 2022 23 23 24 and 24 25 as presented so moved second discussion call the roll mrs mason yes mrs nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you all right under item number four i am asking for your approval uh of the mou with the milford education association is a contract extension with them through that's it asking for your approval okay i need a motion to approve the mea contract extension for two more years some moved second discussion uh i wanted to say thanks to john and the mea for um extending this i think it is a great deal it helps us with our five-year forecast it helps us know what our

132budget is going to be and looking back over the past 16 years the average has been a 2 and that's what the teachers were willing to give us and in this time of inflation i don't see that it would ever go down and you know inflation is not getting cheaper for any of the jobs so i appreciate you working and for the teachers who are here thank you for for um committing to milford i i've made it i've made it clear to the board that that i oppose the extension um a couple of the reasons why is not because i don't value our teaching community um i think it's premature we're under contract for two more years and again the whole the group has heard all of these comments uh we're under contract for two

133more years i i was in favor of waiting at least another year um it was met with a little bit of opposition from some of my colleagues um but uh uh i i just think that as as as as we struggle as a as a community with some of the the forecasted um economic woes that that this country may be facing over the next 18 to 24 months i i just felt it was a little premature uh to extend the agreement right now um and it it uh i can i can envision and mr spicer brought this up in discussion i can envision being very much for extending the contract but just waiting another year and that was where i stood and that's where i'll stand today that i just think it's a bit premature

134yeah as emily as emily stated uh earlier mrs chestnut that uh this does give us a clearer view of where we're going to be financially a five-year forecast is really going to be a five-year forecast that we're going to know where we're at and that's going to be helpful down the road as we as we get into a levy in two or three years we're going to know we're going to know when we have to pull the trigger not try to guess so we've uh we've talked about that uh in executive session a few times so i think that pretty much covers what i had to say any other discussion called rule mrs mason yes mrs nolan no mr chestnut yes mr combs no mr miranda yes thank you under item 5 just wanted to

135reiterate the citizens advisory commission that was pushed out over on friday of last week we've had over 70 people at this time express interest we'll let that sit out there for a little while longer probably push it out again i think we've got something scheduled for next week krista maybe to push out again we're going to push it out again but we've got 70 people that have shown some interest already so if you're still interested in being a part of this group you know please fill out the google form there's not room for 70 people so i just want to be upfront about that yes i am going to pick who is on the committee but i'm going to try to balance that piece out who's on and who is not and just know that

136as you can i'm not going to read it for you they're going to make suggestions to me and or the board about certain things you know one thing could be for instance bussing i mean do we want to change start times if we want to go to two-tiered system something they can look at we've exhausted as a district i think we've exhaust exhausted start times and kids sleep patterns and i think we know enough about that already but that's probably not going to be one of those items that we'll discuss but um there will be someone to chair that that will not be me i will help facilitate that group and just looking forward to engaging the community i have a question about that of the applicants that you have so far are all the

137schools represented or do you not know that yet i do not know that already i'm sorry i scanned i didn't look to see what schools district or which of the schools they represented or if there i do know there are business folks so i do know that there are some business folks but i do not know i'm sorry is this good go ahead is this going to be like a two-way street where you're going to have things you're going to bring to that committee but also they're going to have things that they want to discuss and bring to you they just want to make sure that that's working both ways it can be both ways yes do you have a goal of what you are forcing and how many people will be on that committee

138and are you thinking of a percentage of parents versus community members business yeah i i think we're definitely looking to have a couple people at least a couple people per building you know if you do that already you're you're already up to you know 16 potentially um and so um we'll we'll get as many as we can you get much more than 20 22 23 you're it's a little bit hard to manage a group like that so we'll get as many people on there as we think we can manage and make it work well just a quick applause for any type of community involvement with things so important it's a best practice it's been in place for several years at districts around the the state and including this one i mean i i was able

139to serve on the cat meeting with the uh when we were we were discussing a number of the the last time we tried to pass a bond for the the middle school and this is another extension of something like that so thank you for uh for for engaging the community that way and and thank you for being as thoughtful as you can by having everyone represented no matter who we pick it's going to be you've heard this come out of my mouth and so as mr daniels it's going to be scrutinized whoever you pick sure but uh um just just keeping the community's best interests at heart and get as is as good a cross-section representation as possible is going to be good so thank you the other thing i think is important for folks

140to know is that it's a two-year commitment and so we'll have to also look once we get the the group formed to decide if a certain percentage of that group is only going to serve for one year and then bring some new folks on and then the other percentage will serve for two so that we're not always rotating 20 plus people through through the group is this something you're contin you foresee just in continuation yes yeah this is not a one-time shot for three or four months and then we're done this is that we're going to meet monthly we're going to commit through august through probably june maybe not june we'll see about june and july and and folks and their vacations and things of that nature so yeah it's a this is continual this

141is not just a one and done or one school year and done this is a continual group so eventually you would get on some sort of rotation of staggering where if it's a two-year you have some two years one year so like the school board you know every every few years so and it's fair to say that a core requirement is you must live in the district correct indeed indeed you know um you said it i'm gonna i'm gonna tag on to you here the milford school district is at their best when they engage people and if you don't believe that you weren't paying any attention at the last levy or the last bond they told us you know the community is not afraid to tell us what they think they want or what they

142want and we just have to we just have to be willing to listen to them and try to work within those parameters to make it happen and and we are literally at our best when we did that when we do that and that's you know that you know came out of the cat team and uh we even though we had to table it for a little while we had money available we did it and it passed and it was it wasn't easy but it was done horses out there somewhere it wasn't easy but yeah that it's a great start i want to see see where it goes all right thank you that's it for you until now um human resources business mr jones sponsor all right thank you president miranda um we do have a

143short video that we'd like to show you we did recognize our retirees this year we did have a breakfast for them here in this very room and we'd like to play this short video for you to honor our retirees the numbers keep getting bigger do so [Music] so [Applause] just one time steve we're very honored to to have worked with those folks and we certainly wish them the best as they go into retirement uh on to uh item number two administrative personal approvals asking for your approval of items a through e need a motion to approve the administration's administrative personnel approvals item a through d e sorry that's what i said e so moved second discussion caller ms mason yes mrs nolan yes mr chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you under

144item three certified personnel approvals asking for your approval of items a through k we need a motion to approve certified personnel approvals so moved second discussion lot of people on that list call the role mr wood this is mason yes mrs noland okay we're voting all at once for a through okay okay well i'm gonna have to vote no because we couldn't separate things out so have to vote no on the whole chauvet unfortunately so no mr chelsea yes mr combs no mr miranda yes thank you under item number four asking for your approval of the job description for the central registration that is item number four uh approval of job description need a motion second discussion call roll mr mason yes this is nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda

145yes thank you under our number five exempt personnel approvals asking for your approval of items a through e you need a motion for uh exempt personnel approval so moved second discussion all the rule mr mason yes mrs nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you uh under item six classified personnel approvals asking for your approval of items a through o we need a motion to approve uh classified personnel second discussion just a quick reminder yeah i would get ready to do that you guys know what i'm going to say yes sir i'm a broken record uh every month with these things we've got various committee meetings that i invite everyone in the audience and everyone watching this to every week and it's not every week every month and they're

146the week prior to the board meeting and when you see us quickly saying yes or no all of these items have been discussed in committee and when you see a laundry list of approvals here we have we have every opportunity in the committee meetings to ask questions the administrator is very open to answer those questions so when you see us saying yes to 50 or so line items just know that they it's not a haphazard yes we have discussed these and been able to ask questions and if i've left anything out mr spicer please uh please remind the group that's it three and three and a half pages worth of stuff yeah show up to committee meetings if you uh if you're if you're interested in getting more involved that's my uh that's my request

147that's a good idea um any other discussion call the roll mr mason yes mrs nolan yes mrs chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you under item seven asking for your approval of the supplemental personnel items a and b need a motion to approve supplemental personnel as listed so moved second discussion call the roll this is mason yes this is nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you item eight asking for your approval of unpaid leave item a need a motion to approve uh unpaid leaves of ambulance absence for the employees listed here so moved second discussion call roll mr mason yes mrs nolan yes mr chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you under number nine the salary updates asking for your approval for

148the salary increase pool need a motion to approve the salary update pool so moved second discussion go ahead no go ahead i've got a question i have a question on this so this says uh salary shall be determined by the superintendent shall not not exceed 148 is that discretionary each one of those positions could go up to 148 000 or that's the total amount of money you have to split up amongst them it's a pool of money and there is a specific um way that that is done um and that is that has been determined past practice so two percent um would be given to anyone based on what the mea or mcea would be getting that particular year so if that particular year they were getting one percent then they would be guaranteed one

149percent and that's it if it were more they would get more the other part to that is the milford board in previous years has instituted merit pay we we not me not we being the this group they do not get step increases like teachers or some of the classified staff do and so therefore there's merit pay that is in there based upon their evaluation they could get up to an additional two percent for a max of four so that's how that that's how that works and that's how that pool of money was determined as a max of four for all parties and and anyone who would not get that additional two percent would get one and a half or one or whatever that is uh the amount that is excuse me is not spent there

150is then returned back to correct we will return it to to brian [Laughter] the top drawer yeah i i had i had similar questions before i had to get on me over there and ask brian about this agenda item so it is a poll uh two percent of it is essentially mirrors the uh the teachers agreement with the union and the other two is is merit based pay which most are very familiar with and uh it's a it's it's because without having step function increases for this group we've got to find a way um to uh to reward you know top performers and that's that's how we do it so uh yeah i think it's also important to uh point out that these merit raises are for all admin minus john correct yeah it does

151not include brian and i does not include us yeah the people on that list the exempt staff which is most of the people that work in this building the admin and the mental health they don't belong to either of the two unions therefore they're they're the three groups that sits outside okay any other discussion call the roll sorry mrs mason yes mr nolan yes mr chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you uh under item 10 article 29 uh of the teachers contract i'm asking for your approval of the mou with the milford education association and that is the document that we received we've discussed it and we received it this evening here it's correct on the table here yep we have the the final version received this evening yes um need a

152motion to approve the mou with the mea so moved second discussion would you like to elaborate on this at all not particularly i think this mou there was a change in march from strs about retirees and this will specifically help a particular retire a person able to retire and i would rather not discuss their specific circumstances but it will allow them to retire with that change it we're we're just simply doing the right thing here this was absolutely this was a compressed decision over two days and uh it's appropriate not to get into to too much detail but let's just say that um i'll be a very vocal yes that's doing the right doing the right thing is very very well said uh any other discussion call roll mrs mason yes mrs nolan yes mrs

153chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you uh now we're going to move on to curriculum and instruction superintendent john spicer thank you president miranda members of the board under cni tonight number one approval to purchase the norton anthology asking for your approval with a note that we did leave this out front for our community to preview and we had zero people sign out or sign in to see and preview this anthology so dave said that he did take a look at it but he didn't sign it i didn't sign in i didn't sign him he did not he's been reviewed by our friends i went to mr daniels and and i did i did review it we'd like to have unlimited time correct um but this is uh this is a book

154that's going to be used over many years yes 10 years this this is a a great addition for us as well as economical okay and i got into discussion before i asked for a motion because i have a motion to to approve the norton anthology so moved second any other discussion call a roll this is mason yes this is nolan yes mrs chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you under item three uh this is more of an informational item amplify ela english language arts so after a year-long process i did i'm sorry thank you i apologize going back to number two curriculum pay asking for your approval of curriculum pay under items a b and c okay dean of motion to prove curriculum pay so moved second discussion call the roll this

155is mason yes mrs nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you and back to number three amplify ela looks like paul's ready to go we'd like to talk about that where's steve um so following our new tradition of uh previewing curriculum for 30 days i was able to use some in-house staff our mtss coaches a special thank you we have we previewed three products uh study sync through mcgraw-hill which was a blended solution in person or um and online we looked at a hundred percent online which was common lit 360 and then we also looked at amplify ela so while steve finds it i'll um continue to talk a little bit about so this website went out to all of our fifth sixth and seventh grade families this week

156because they would be the first to see this so um each of them will be able to see it's a blended solution they'll be able to go up to sixth grade they will see the um all of the units if you want to drop that down it should open it up steve they will be able to see that the book that will come in this collection will be the summer of mariposas and then they will have the six overarching units which will be dollar narratives all the way down to the summer of mariposas and then if you scroll a little further steve each family can see the novel in a description so that will be the anchor text they will decide whether they're going to continue to use esperanza or bud not buddy our sixth

157grade staff loves bud not buddy so this will allow them to continue to use that time-honored book that we've been using for many years if you head over to seventh grade um a little bonu contention is that the the novel that comes is actually a raisin in the sun that's one that we've been actually reading junior year so that will drop all the way down to seventh grade um appropriate it's a great uh play um it's a great movie and these are the um the six overall units that will come and then we'll flip into eighth grade which happens to be my favorite only because the seemingly um the seemingly crossover between what is taught in eighth grade american history again we start working on perspectives and narratives we do not read space shakespeare's romeo

158and joe romeo and juliet we read excerpts which is actually great because in ninth grade they will read romeo and juliet so it's really good you lay that foundation for kids they also read macbeth now so that will stay and then dropping down they will have two novels they will have the narrative of frederick douglass and then they will have a graphic novel um which is um it's mary shelley's uh frankenstein grim grimly's mary shelley's frankenstein um so again our families can see this over in the pdf downloads you can download every single text that's included you can't see the text but you can see where the excerpts come from and then that top one steve also shows you every novel that we get digitally we're going to get about 700 digital novels for students

159so we've been listening to this um notion of student choice we continue to build on the requests of the board to find paths um and this is what we'd like to do so we will have this up on this website i'm going to actually send it out again this coming monday i'm going to do k5 just so our primary families can see it and families can contact me with my name or phone number is on the website if they have suggestions or concerns one of the nice things is we'll be able to keep our lit circles in eighth grade at the end of the year it's a hundred days so what it does is it gives teachers 80 days to flex with you can cover all hundred standards reading and writing in 100 days and

160still have your anchor text that they've like outsiders is the one in seventh grade that's how we start the year and it's a big deal and um they could continue that um i was to say thank you mr daniels as a fifth grade parent a current fifth grade parent i got the email i will admit that i haven't clicked on too much of the download except the little overview but um this makes it very accessible as a parent to be able to click through and kind of get a lot of that information on what my kids are reading so mr daniels thank you for listening and integrating choice for our our parents i know that i know there's been a lot of talk about choice over the past few months and um i do believe

161you're listening uh so thank you for that and i've asked this the last time in the last board meeting with with something similar regarding norton is this something that you support and um absolutely believe is the right direction for our district i'm absolutely thankful that the teachers chose this one because it has the 100-day plan i think it's great for the district financially the investment for the district is about 120 000 over a five-year period the consumables are very reasonable for our families so i think financially it's good it's a quality product my colleague is going to my colleague is going to use the primary version the ckla is a pilot they're huge into the science of reading they're on the cutting edge they're a little more expensive but it is the right thing at

162the right time and the reason i say that is our sixth seventh and eighth grade teachers have literally created everything every day and as the classroom has changed in terms of ability they can spend less time creating and more time looking at what student needs and kind of pull in some of the resources so i think for them the sixth grade teachers were thrilled seventh eighth grade we're thrilled because they have choice i think it's i i am thrilled with our professionals and i'm thankful that um the vetting because jerry we do the vetting on the front end if they bring us something and i'll vet it with the vendor with the constant standards with everything to make sure it matches what we need to do in a year this this hits all those check

163marks thank you paul all right we're going to move on to item number four we have our fee schedules for next year asking for your approval of the three fee schedules as listed you need a motion to prove the fee schedules as listed second discussion call the roll this is mason yes this is nolan yes mr chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you and finally under item five we're asking for your approval of the osba policy review that is a premium service where they will review our documents it's a 12 month term and the cost is eleven thousand dollars you need a motion to prove the osba policy review so moved second discussion all the role i know dave we're all trying to get through um i would just like to comment

164quickly that it's been a while for been a very long time since um we've had a policy review like this where we've gone through and making sure that everything matches what it should and so as paul runs our policy committee with jen schaefer so they will meet with individual departments as those policies affect those departments and so it has been quite some time since that's been done um i i would say more than five to seven years is the last time it was done for sure so one of the bonuses of going with osba is that's who that we used last time and they have some history and they have some pieces that we didn't get to last time that we can kind of wrap up and continue yes we're currently using the osba policies

165now yes sir yeah it was just a comment i was going to ask you to elaborate a little bit more we're overdue to review our policy manual and the investment to do this is a wise one just to make sure that we're following all of the what the state recommends of us uh we don't want to be out of line in any way so we discuss this openly at at our policy uh and personnel meeting and um i'll be a resounding yes here yeah we started we actually started talking about this last year uh mr daniels was going through about a thousand every meeting so it is overdue and and we need to move forward with it now call the roll this is mason yes this is nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs

166yes mr miranda yes thank you now we move on to business operations mr john spicer thank you president miranda members of the board uh asking for your approval number one uh for a roof repair contract at the high school with truecraft okay i need a motion to approve uh the roof repair contract for the high school so moved second discussion um am i right in um saying that this roof repair will be done in two parts uh well this one section that is being approved if you click on that steve if you would you can see it and i'll let jeff kind of finish up as well so that section of the high school will need to be repaired section a so it's kind of hard to tell but the the darker area of of

167the high school is the old junior high school that roof is i don't know how old it is but it's old the area in red is deteriorating pretty bad we looked at potentially doing a complete re-roof of that entire it's about 46 000 square feet but i can't get it here so what we're looking at doing this is this repair is about a five to ten year solution and then we're going to be working towards and this work will be done this summer but we couldn't get contract approval and everything in order to get the materials to get everything done this summer so we're going to be looking at doing asking the board for approval after some due diligence and things to look at the balance of that 46 000 square feet in the summer

168of 23. so that's kind of the two parts jeff has the has the roof failed prematurely or is it in line oh it's it's it's probably lasted longer than it should have my guess is and i don't know this for sure i believe that section of the roof was probably put on in 1989 which would make it 33 years old so and just just as a question um when we had the bond in 2019 that included lots of things this was part of that was it not correct that is correct so if we ever run a bond for refurbishing of the high school this would be mostly subtracted partially subtracted totally subtracted um it depends on when that would happen so my intention again you know moving into next year this is again about a

169five to ten this is not a complete new roof we're not tearing it down to deck and putting a brand new roof in um this is we're scraping off the gravel it's a long process with a felt back dpdm and but it it's not a 30 year warranty roof that we're doing right now this is that's one of the reasons we're only doing this small section instead of doing that entire amount what i'm proposing and will be again coming back to the board through building the grounds and and whatnot eventually would be to do a complete new roof on the rest of that which would be a 30-year solution and then potentially five to ten years from now we might need to come in and address this section but we are we are addressing this

170um through the general fund as opposed to going back to the taxpayer and asking for more funds to do this yes just want to be clear on that thank you jeff i get lost in the middle we do have a motion for this right call the roll this is mason yes mrs nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you we're about to see how good this roof is we are under item two we are asking for your approval of the contract that is our architect for the new middle school we need a motion to approve the shp contract second discussion caller mr mason yes mrs nolan yes this is chestnut yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you uh under item three asking for your approval of the

171resolution for the board of education to declare student transportation impractical okay we need to uh we need a motion to approve a resolution for the board of education to declare student transportation impractical so moved second discussion john how many are in on that pdf how many students oh this is actually the resolution that allows me to make the ch make that approve that because there's a new timing issue that we would have to call a special board meeting for you to come in and approve some people impractical and so this just allows me to do that and then we bring it back to the next board meeting so you would still approve it but it would just allow that to happen that's what this is put some timing in as far as how quickly you

172have to approve it there's no sense in holding it up for the next meeting so i get it okay thank you any other discussion caller mrs mason yes mr nolan yes mr chester yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you uh this brings us to our second public participation section do we have anyone i do have one uh jenny zen um i do need to i do need to caution we the the policy states that you cannot continue on the same conversation that you have and you have to go last but if there's only one you are first and last so we have three we have three we have three two just turned them in oh excuse me um we will allow everyone to speak so it's a matter of three minutes all right

173thank you for supporting parent choice and voting to keep in the time of the butterflies and the curriculum a few years ago a situation took place that shook me to the core fast forward to this fall my daughter is now in the junior high an incident took place and i immediately emailed the principal and mr spicer i want the board to know that mr spicer met with me to discuss the situation for an hour and a half i requested to visit the junior high so i could see for myself exactly what type of environment my daughter was immersed in later that day i sent him the following email mr spicer thank you again for taking the time to meet with me today you have restored my faith in milford schools i know today was probably

174not the best use of your time but it was very worthwhile for me i needed to see for myself what the environment is like at the junior high after speaking with mr wells it is apparent the administration cares about the kids it all it's also apparent that you care about the staff based on your interactions with them you seem to know all of them and asked each one of them how they were doing this shows me that you truly care about them as individual people i know that makes a huge difference in their morale if they feel cared about they will in turn care for their students and go above and beyond for them this is so important what i learned today is that i can trust that chloe is in good hands at the

175junior high i know she may occasionally witness inappropriate behaviors but it's not as rampant as i had imagined i also know the staff will deal with these behaviors in a kind and professional manner thank you again and i know i can be a very difficult parent and i'm very opinionated and i voice my concerns i just want to thank everyone that in the district that puts up with me and um i'm sorry for all the time that i spend with my concerns anyway thank you [Applause] paul chambers all right uh paul chambers 990 business well our business 28. um i actually didn't plan on speaking tonight to the uh probably the gracious applause of a couple people here but um i actually when i showed up and i'm just going based off um what i've

176witnessed today um i and thank you to the board again i do thank you every month um for allowing me to speak um i also want to uh thank superintendent john spicer for reaching out we had some some good conversation i think we can have some more if anyone is not aware i've been speaking on the last couple months that the school board meetings about bullying and our district and although um the lady that just spoke i think that that's a great step in the right direction i still do think that there are a lot of children in our school buildings that face bullying face you know issues with um you know with curriculum that are afraid to speak up about it um funny we mentioned romeo and juliet and i was sitting there thinking

177as we're as uh some of our school remembers we're talking and i remember being in ninth grade and hoping and praying they didn't pick me to be romeo so i didn't have to at least fake the uh kiss scene or whatever you know like and there are things that make you uncomfortable and i i just want our public to realize that as i'm sitting here and i'm each month i'm coming up here trying to advocate for bullying against it let me reiterate that [Laughter] i'm a science and social studies major i am not an english major but to advocate against bullying we do have to do better and we have to start at the top with adults we came in today wanting to speak and if you want to speak you have to pick up

178a yellow or green card not colorblind and i hope that you can get on and speak um in front of everyone in front of your peers and in front of the board this is the last line of defense of defense in our democracy of a district with the school board or with the schools to make changes or to keep things and that's great that it was great and we were mentioning democracy and that's what the great country we live in today but i also saw some of that that bullying and it always starts with the adults it always starts at the top and if we don't start talking better to our children and tell teaching them how to speak how to act in public i witnessed a couple people a couple of our board members

179not be able to say what they wanted to say today because of people speaking out and you know everybody that came up i do want to commend uh miss fox for her her message today it was a very heartfelt thing and it was good to hear um but also there's the the passion that was in in this room today and you got to have that passion a little bit more there's only half this room filled right now and most of these people were not here the last couple months so please be more active with your children you were be more active with your children and i will continue to advocate against bullying in our district mr chambers thank you annette zimmerman excuse me um you can only speak on your topic one time so if

180it's the same topic then based on core policy thank you sure so we are quiet we are complete okay the next board meeting regular board meeting for the milford exempted village school district is thursday june 16th 2022 at 6 pm in this room now have a final opportunity for the board for conversation i just want to say real quick um it's been really fun to see all of the senior traditions on facebook and everywhere it was really cool to see some of the biking video i think that's a wonderful tradition and um i had a lot of fun seeing the slip and slide video as well i believe that's a new one is it not that was that yeah it was pretty cool i was trying to figure out where the hill was it took

181me a while yeah but that was cool i wanted to come over myself any other comments just quick uh thanks again to all of those that are retiring from the district i know we had a presentation but just know that we talk regularly about all the the sacrifice and dedication for all of those that have spent so so many years with us when i see a four in front of a couple of those folks um it's amazing so thanks to all that uh it's given what they have that's that's stepping away from our district anyone else if i may because i know you've got good news to report on yes i do um i need i need a work session on july 18th or 20th 18th 18th or 20th after those are weekday they'll be

182afternoon or evening uh probably evening i mean you decide that but i think evening if you want to make it a a session that folks can come to and you want to discuss the topic yes the it's it's the um the robin's building in the weight room that's that's the discussion so what are we going to do with it shp and congress will be here the construction management group to discuss efficiencies et cetera with what's next so i'm available either jeff's coming up to the microphone i'd give him a quick point i don't i don't know yet but i can i can figure out quickly i i would i would prefer to be the 18th because we get real busy the day before the uh the board meetings with that's true final clarifications and uh

183talking about any last-minute agenda changes so i'd like to i'd like to get that out of the way before we could okay any questions for jeff so jeff we've talked about this openly um during this work session are you going to be presenting some of the options we talked about yeah that that's the whole idea is to kind of confirm budgets you know what does it look like if we don't do anything and those buildings stay there and how does that affect our new middle school how does it affect parking and site circulation what are some of the costs associated because because even if we leave them there there's some costs associated you know the utilities come out of the current junior high which is obviously eventually going to be gone you know and then

184what are some options and efficiencies that we might have to replace those on the same timeline as when we're doing the middle school and and so shp will be there conger will be there and we'll have a presentation and obviously we want to be able to speak to you know we've talked about this in building a grounds for for a while now and we thought it was best to have a work session with all five board members public can come ask questions and you know we'll kind of present that and then if you guys have any questions we'll go through that and try to answer those because we're going to be getting to the point here by you know late summer that whichever direction the board decides to go we need to know because we

185need to design around whatever that decision is thank you thank you all right and um i just wanted to just took two comments last levy that was passed in this district was may of 13. correct may of 13th i think people need to know that we've talked about it the last two years um and certainly the last year before the bond so may of 13 that's very important for folks to know i would like to thank my staff all the people that that i work with on a daily basis and all the work that they do i can only tell you the amount of hours they put in but also um just the entire district our teachers our classified staff sort of everybody has been grinding it out this year and they are tired and

186they've put a lot of work in for your kids your grandkids whatever and i'm just grateful for everything that they do are we picking a work session date now but we'll make it later in the day and that hopefully can work sounds good yeah i think late day is good six six seven six six six ish yeah that's fine july 18th 6 p.m anything else no sir anything else from anybody here always like to have the good news report last since the last thing that people wait all the way through a two-hour and 55-minute board meeting they get to hear all the good news before they go home or go to sleep um good news report for today um the biggest news around campus is that uh the ecc all sport trophy was won by

187milford high school by about six and a half points congratulations to all of our fall winter and spring athletes it wasn't just one team in the spring that made it happen uh we had good success in the spring just like we did in the winter just like we did in the in the fall uh softball had a miraculous turnaround they lost a game and thought they were out of first place and then the team that beat them we beat them back and somebody else got them too and we ended up winning that that's uh that's uh was we we didn't we weren't sure that was gonna happen and that's that's great they ended up winning league championship there we had girls track had a miraculous performance they lost the league meet by one half of

188one point it was that close it was it was a dead heat between two runners that that got us there also the boys lacrosse ended up finished second to loveland this year another great season they had seven kids on the all district team which is really exciting um baseball and tennis both finished fourth got some uh some young talent uh tennis is up and coming and baseball is uh i believe it's still a little bit young i think their best days are ahead of them next year and that we got to also see tom kilgore get his 400th win as a coach he's retiring this year so uh what a what a nice way to go out with 4-0 something 406 407. i'm not sure what it ended up being um girls lacrosse ended up

189in fifth place um they're uh i think they're an upcoming up-and-coming team too and i think we we look forward to great things from them in the next year and uh that takes care of the all sport a wonderful accomplishment i know i've talked about that at every meeting since february and it's really exciting and it was really cool because i was not in town and i had coaches texting me and telling me what the scores were and how things were going the coaches were really into it and that's that's the way you want them to be uh the fine arts fair uh we had that at the end of at the end of april there were over 2 000 people there for works of art there were 1500 works of art and they also

190had the the theater program was also doing kind of a cabaret in the auditorium which was which was really cool i went in there and just kind of stayed for a while i eventually got out to see the artwork but that that was kind of mesmerizing for me also the high school uh drama departments announced their two productions for the 22-23 season they're going to do the annual putnam county spelling bee in september and they're going to do what was explained to me is a unique um production of jekyll and hyde where i think the audience may actually get to be on the stage is that correct yeah that's good it sounds kind of out there but always trying to find new ways to do things um bands revving up for their summer practices their

191new show is titled masquerade 150 people out there and we expect to have good things from them good results we had a large presentation on vex robotics suffice it to say that they are doing great and continue to do great and get better every year um maybe win an international championship here one of these days we also talked about the film crew for esports being here i'm looking forward to seeing that and hopefully getting that up on the website so we can so everyone can see that and be excited about that dates to remember not so many um two days from today okay amanda relax two days from today at four o'clock at the centos center uh we will be uh handing out the diplomas to the class of 2022. uh that's an exciting time

192it's one of my favorite things as a board member to get to uh see those kids be so happy and and smiling and throwing their caps in the air so that's really cool and um two other things that uh the band will be in the band is going to be of course in the frontier days parade they're in it every year that is june the second but also uh memorial day they do they march into memorial day parade down by kroger and the downtown area and march over to the cemetery and and do a ceremony over there that is monday may 30th so that's all i have um thanks for listening and will probably be a little bit less during the summer but uh fall is right around the corner oh there was one other

193thing i'm sorry um i don't know how i missed that flight night was a huge success over 500 people i saw mrs moore here earlier um there she is she's back there waving at me uh she and her husband todd do a do a great job in running and running that program it's a huge money maker for the athletic department through the athletic boosters and there were over 500 people there so that was a that was a nice night that's all i've got so um we are going to executive sessions um and the purpose of the executive session is uh to enter into the executive session for the purpose of investigating of charges and complaints against an employee official licensee or student we will not be returning here we will be returning long enough to

194to vote to adjourn there is absolutely no need for you to stay here unless you have nothing else to do at nine o'clock at night um and uh i need a motion to move into executive session so moved second the discussion will handle in there so call the roll one more time mr mason yes mr nolan yes mr chesson yes mr combs yes mr miranda yes thank you you