Close that in my comment. Everybody ready? Yes. Thank you, sir. Alright. I now call this meeting of the Ann Arbor Public School Board of Education to order. I would like to remind everyone that this is a hybrid meeting, and some of our presenters and audience may join by Zoom. Miss Ozinski, may we have a roll call, please? Alright. Wasn't quite one second. Here we go. Trustee Mohammed? Here. President Feaster? Here. Trustee Wilkins? Here. Trustee Wilkes? Present. Trustee Gascatt? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Present. Trustee Schmidt? Present. Thank you, miss Olcinski. Trustees, you have received the agenda. Are there any changes?
May I have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Second. Who says that? Oh, Trustee Wilkes. Trustee Wilkes. Right. It has been moved by trustee Schmidt, supported by trustee Wilkes. Any any discussion? May I have a roll call, please? Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. Trustee Wilkes? Yes. And trustee Basquiat? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. I would like to introduce the nonvoting member at the table, miss Jazz Parks, superintendent of schools. Thank you. Good evening.
That brings us down to the land acknowledgment statement. I'll turn it over to trustee Wilkerson. Thank you. We acknowledge that the Anaberg school public schools district occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Anishinaabeg. Three Fires Confederacy, the Odawa, the Ojibwe, and the Potawatomi. The taking of this land was formalized in a process alien to native cultures by the Treaty of Detroit in eighteen o seven. The Ann Arbor Public Schools recognizes that many other native peoples lived on this land at different times, including the Fox, Sauk,
Shawnee, Kickapoo, Miami, Muscatine, and Cherokee, many of whom were forcefully removed from their homelands. Acknowledgement by itself is a small gesture and does not exist in the past or solely in a historical context. Colonialism is current and ongoing process, and we understand our responsibility in educating students about our participation. We further recognize the ongoing relationship and dependence upon and respect for all living beings of earth, sky, and water. It is our responsibility to care for this land, and we honor with our deepest gratitude the native people who have and will continue
to steward it for generations. Thank you, trustee Wilkerson. I believe that brings us down to public commentary. The board would like to remind everyone that individuals who have signed up for public commentary will have their names called and are given an opportunity to speak or have comments read by members of our staff. Commenters will receive up to four minutes with a total of no more than forty five minutes allowed for the public commentary period. When your name is called, please come forward and speak at the microphone. To help manage your time, a clock will be placed on the screen in front of you. We would like to remind everyone that public comments generally pertain to the Anarbor Public
School District matters. Comments about individuals are expressly prohibited. Also, please understand that board members do not respond to public comments, but we will listen carefully, and we'll follow-up as appropriate. Miss Zelensky, how many times do we have this evening? We have 78 signed up this evening, and each will get thirty five seconds. Thank you, mister Zizek. And I'll read a couple. Here we go. Michelle Ding, then Catherine Archibald. Dear member of the Board of Education and AAPS administration, we, the Burns Park Elementary PTO,
stand in full support of our dedicated teachers and staff. They're the heart of our school, providing not only an exceptional education, but also a nurturing and inspiring environment for our children. Yet many are struggling, working additional jobs, commuting long distances, or considering leaving a profession because they cannot afford to live in very community they serve. While we recognize the financial challenges AAPS faces, failing to address teacher compensation would only deepen the crisis. Years of salary freezes,
unfulfilled cost of living increases, and now a sharp rise in health insurance premiums have created an unsustainable situation. Thank you, ma'am. Time is up. Catherine Archibald, Janet Yang. I'm a parent of two Clegg middle schoolers. Please pause your plans to do massive construction in Northeast Ann Arbor starting this spring. You have three new board members now. And as many of you know from prior board meetings, there is huge public opposition to the APS construction plans for the new Logan Elementary on Clegg Middle School grounds as well as for the new Thurston School,
much closer to the treasured nature nature center of the Thurston Pond. Please pause your plans for construction so that you can get proper community input about these plans, which has not happened. Please plan multiple town halls that are well advertised so community members can be informed in advance and bring forth their ideas and Well, if we can hear that one. Janet Yang, then Yasmine Moll. My name is Janet Yang, and I'm a proud member of the student council and PTSO student rep at Huron High School. I'm urging I'm writing to urge the BOE to support and fund after school clubs
as they are invaluable to both students and the dedicated teachers who make these opportunities possible. At Huron, clubs are more than just extra extracurricular activities. They allow students to explore their passions, develop leadership skills, and enhance their college applications. Many students have achieved their academic and career aspirations thanks to the experiences and mentorship gained through these clubs. However, none of this would be possible without our teachers. Yasmin Moll then Michael Lempert. I've heard that policy 1,300 is under review, and I'm concerned that board members are considering abolishing board designated groups.
This possibility was raised in the past. At a time of rising authoritarianism nationwide that disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable and marginalized communities, why is our school board dismantling our own grassroots structures of accessibility, equity, and inclusion. Since 02/2009, the advisory boards have been representing important voices in our community that are often overlooked and sidelined, including our special education students and parents. Michael Michael lamb Lempert then Sadaf Ali. I was alarmed to learn that some wish to eliminate all board designated groups,
groups that have had a voice in APS for nearly fifteen years. These groups represent vulnerable populations. The very idea that such groups from special education to the black parent group should be abolished runs against the ideals of inclusion embraced by our school system and school board. These efforts also echo efforts at the national level to target the disabled and roll back investment in addressing anti black racism. Sadaf Ali then Sonia Chawla. Sadaf writes removing of Arab advisory board and other boards that he probably planned to
be here. Okay. Sonia Chawla then Bill Hannah? She's coming. When you hear your name, just come on up. Sorry about that. I thought the other comment will be longer. Okay. So as our federal government dissolves into autocracy, maintaining democratic norms at the local level becomes even more critical. Eliminating a write in option from public commentary and removing board recognized status from AAPS community organizations will obliterate these norms. These venues for public education are or for public engagement, sorry, are vital. Our community is beautifully diverse,
and in that diversity, there are people who cannot attend meetings in person for work, family, or health reasons. Silencing these voices by requiring a physical presence for public commentary effectively cuts our most vulnerable populations out of the democratic process. I urge you to make no changes to public commentary and board recognized groups. Thank you. Will Hanna. Will Hanna, then Perry Stone Palmquist. Has AAPS stopped maintenance and repairs to schools that are slated for replacement? Parent after parent described terrible conditions at Thurston in both board meetings and to the
media. Descriptions of a child unable to find a working toilet, leaking gym roof, broken HVAC system. Students and staff suffer when descriptions like these are used as leverage rather than properly addressed. The promise of a shiny new school doesn't release you from providing a safe and proper learning environment right now. Terry Stoneholm Quist, then Victor Mendoza. I am ready to express my deep concern regarding the proposed changes to public commentary and the treatment of board approved groups. More than ever,
we need parents, student, and youth involvement in our schools locally and nationally. This should look like ex look like accepting written feedback to honor that as many do not have the capacity to attend meetings. It is also a reasonable accommodation for those with disabilities. We are also concerned about eliminating affinity groups who bring more important perspectives that may be missing from key conversations. This feels like an attempt to silence the voices of those that need it most. Victor Mendoza, then Rachel Stucker. Education is under attack across the nation at all levels from Anor Republic Schools to
the universities where I teach. We all know that direct target attack is anything that might be even remotely related to DEI. I suspect eliminating the parent and family groups, Akiza, the Abra American group, the black and parent and student group, the special ed group would be seen as in compliance with the president's authoritarian mandates. But I urge us all to resist the urge to perform anticipatory obedience. We also have basic obligations to students and members of our community, particularly the most vulnerable, and yet the states here go beyond the fates of those individuals.
Thank you. Rochelle Stucker then Bassett Zafar. As a parent of a student with an IEP, I urge you not to eliminate reporting time for APAC and other groups. Additionally, it's impossible for single parent households of those of us who lack evening child care for our young and or and or disabled children to attend meetings to present comments in person. This expectation also places an undue burden on parents, caregivers with disabilities, irregular work schedules, or who depend on public transport. Do not silence our voices. Basit Savar de Julia Blau.
I'm in I am an Ann Arbor parent of three school age children. I have come to learn that the board is reviewing policy 1,300 and considering removing all board designated groups. These groups have historically allowed our various sub communities that tend to marginal be marginalized such as special needs, Arab American, etcetera, to voice their concerns directly to the board. In the current moment, when rights of various groups, but especially minorities, are in jeopardy and there is an onslaught of basic freedoms, And this is quite shocking. Ann Arbor has a history of inequities.
Instead of trying to actively undo them and to provide voice of these subcommunities, the board is considering the opposite. Julia Blau, then Maria Lopez Chiwarkarne. I'm writing to urge the board to continue to allow written comments during regular meetings and to continue allowing recognized parent groups. The meetings are held at a location that is not serviced by public transportation. The meetings are held during dinner and bedtime for parents with young children. Limiting input from parents is an abdication of your duties as board members. Maria Lopez Chihuacan, then Julia oh.
They're they're gonna add I will when I get through reading or get through the entire 78, member list here, I will ask if I've missed anyone. Okay? There was no I didn't see a comment. I didn't see comments. We're gonna take a break here. You can, talk to me or miss Odysseuska during the break, and we can try to address it. Maria Lopez Chiuarkar, then Julia Cambasa. I'm a parent at Ann Arbor Open. I am Mexican American, and my spouse is Thai. Our child is learning about his two cultures, both at school and at home. So let let Latinx community is APS at APS is incredibly small,
and so is the APS of Pisa, has served as a place where my child and spouse can feel represented. I understand that the current White House administration is threatening all people of marginalized communities, but please consider making a difference in our communities here at home. Please allow this parent advisory group to continue being a formal APS advisory group. Julia Kambasa, then Hyo Yoon Bang. I'm submitting a comment in regard to the discussion of policy 1,300. As a former APS parent, a former teacher and education scholar,
and a teacher educator, I find the proposed elimination of board designated groups very concerning. I'm very aware of the diversity within the APS district and it seems unconscionable to take measures to eliminate structures that ensure the entire school district community is represented in the board's decision making processes. In particular, these board designated groups ensure the inclusion of marginalized community members. The removal of these groups would go against the district's very own strategic equity plan. Gyo Yoon Vang followed by Lisa Carharrow.
Eliminating the Asian Pacific Islander and South Asian American, a PISA group would be a step backward in fostering diversity and inclusion within our schools. In a district like Ann Arbor Public Schools where 13.6% of students identify as Asian or Pacific Islander, it's crucial to have spaces that uplift their voices, celebrate their heritage, and provide a sense of belonging. Groups like APISA help create a more inclusive environment by highlighting the culture and contributions of these communities while also offering support and advocacy.
Removing this group would not only erase an importance source, but also send the wrong message. Lisa Caraharel then Arika Laika. We will advise you if you remove the advisory groups. These groups exist because the district curriculum representation and equity plan is seriously lacking. Will you scrub the website of APISA's work? Is APISA no longer eligible for district funding or space to meet? By removing district approved advocacy groups, the board and administration is moving our district further in a conservative right wing direction.
Disenfranchising advocacy groups from the system systemically marginalized communities is not in alignment with our community values. Removing groups is equal to erasing our community. Erica Lycan then Jill Casara. I have heard that there is talk or potential action of removing policy 1,300 and potentially removing all board designated groups, which is deeply concerning. Allowing these groups to have a voice is deeply important, especially in a climate of fascism and repression. We need to ensure that marginalized communities have their voices represented and heard and have
access to participate and comment in a meaningful, inclusive way. Please do not dissemble disassemble this provision or these groups. Please do not silence these voices. Jill Kasara and Marco Markel Miller. Usually, elementary TAs are some of the hardest working people in the school system. They have an incredible burden to care for our most vulnerable students. They work the work that they provide to students with special needs also results in an enormous benefit to all students and teachers by helping to enrich the learning environment and reduce classroom disruptions.
The Hazely TAs are overburdened by the low ratio of providers to consumers of these services. All students at Hazely deserve equal access to education. Hazely TAs need more support. Please increase the number of full time TA positions at Hazely, a title one school, at which the need for one to one services has far exceeded the allotted resources. Markell Miller, then Richard Casara. As a parent of current Hazely students, I'm submitting comments in support of Hazely Elementary. Our teachers and TAs and the need for additional TAs at Hazely. There are around 16 mainstream classroom kids who need a full time aide,
yet there are only three or four aides in our school, so they are extremely overloaded and these children are not getting the support they deserve and desperately need. Please consider appropriately staffing the TA roles at Hazely to support these kids and the entire learning community there. Richard Kasara, then Praveena Ramaswamy. Hazely Elementary TAs need more support to help our students and community succeed. Please allocate additional resources to Hazely TAs who provide critical one to one support to our special needs students and benefit all of the students and teachers.
Praveena Ramaswamy then Min Song. Pause. Before you move forward with your site plans, please take a moment to ensure that they align with the city of Ann Arbor city council's two thousand and one commitment to protect Millers Creek. The planned removal of Habitat's extensive earth quark and the near total loss of green spaces is directly in conflict to Millers Creek improvement plan. These changes would have serious consequences for the stability and health of the Huron River, beginning right here at Millers Creek, which flows from the Thurston Pond. Did you consult with the Huron River Watershed, the Millers Creek Action Team?
No. And now that you've been made aware by email, the Board of Education is obligated to ensure that the design does not harm our fragile ecosystems or jeopardize the city's multimillion dollar investments in Northeast Ann Arbor's Waterston. Min Song then Woodrow R. Williams the second. I was informed that the APS board is planning to vote on removing the APISA group. And as a parent of Korean American children, I'm gravely concerned that this idea was even proposed. Such an action could lead to diminished visibility of Asian identities within the the district and the discontinuation of events that celebrate our heritage.
During this present time of tumultuous change, it is more crucial than ever to ensure that our existence, heritage, and culture are validated, protected, and celebrated in society. I've always felt safe sending my children to APS, but I'm not sure I can feel that way from now on after hearing this news. Woodrow are Williams the second followed by Ji Yachung. So as a parent of three Anambra Public School, children, in in a household that is multicultural and multireligious, I think it's it's pure insanity, that the board would be considering, disillusioning or dissolving,
these advisory boards, especially a time like this. The world that we live in, like, today politically and socially and what is happening in the world on the local level, the state level, and the federal level, To even consider that to me is is crazy. And that's something that you guys need to consider and and hear the voices that are being, you know, raised today and really take that into consideration when you make a decision. Jie Jie Chung followed by Peter Andres Andreskowitz. Ann Arbor is a strong and thriving community because of and thanks to its diversity. I'm writing here because I was alarmed at the news that APS was considering to
shut down the APISA parent advisory group. As an Asian American parent, even that consideration is very troubling and disappointing. Parents need a voice to advocate or represent, and I believe that a p the APISA group can do just that. APS should not shut down, but further encourage meaningful and active conversations between parents and within the community by supporting such group's activities. Everyone loses when we are divided, but we also lose if we lose our identities following the myth that we are a melting pot. Peter Andrus Andruskowitz followed by Paola Walker.
It is very disappointing to hear that the APS Board of Education is considering limiting or eliminating written public commentary, especially immediately after being inundated with comments and disagreement with the decision the board has made. This sends a very clear signal that some of the some on the board are not interested in hearing the voices of those they claim to serve when those voices don't agree with them. It is despicable, cowardly behavior. Paula Walker followed by Young Chang Cho. Hello, board. I am disappointed that such a diverse board would consider not allowing online comments.
I cannot be the only parent who came from a home where my parents worked various hours to be able to afford sending us to a better school district. There is so much wrong with only accepting comments from members from the community that have the privilege of being in person. Not all families work nine to five. You know this. Not all families have two parents to help watch their kids so the other can attend. I was also shocked to learn that you are considering reviewing policy 1,300, which will keep certain marginalized groups from con from contributing to these meetings. Young Chow Young Chang Cho followed by Kelly McArthur.
I recently learned that the APS board is considering a vote to eliminate the APISA group. And as a parent of a Korean American children, I find this deeply distressing. It is our it is crucial for our community to recognize, preserve, and celebrate the diverse histories and cultures that enrich it. Groups like APISA play a vital role in helping our children understand and embrace their identities while also educating the broader community about the rich diversity of Asian cultures. Eliminating such a group would be a step backward in our commitment to fostering an inclusive environment,
a value that is fundamental to the Anna Republic Schools. Kelly MacArthur, then Sarah Shea. Kelly McArthur just says classroom TAs. I'm sorry. Sarah Shea followed by Allison Carey. The proposed changes to public commentary and reports from board approved groups will prevent many of our community members' voices from being meaningfully included in these public meetings. Your stance on this issue tells us a lot about your view your view of your role and your commitment to community engagement. Parents, teachers,
and community members who do not have access to transportation, who work in the evenings, or who cannot secure child care would be disproportionately impacted by this policy. The current board approved group reports provide you and the community with the opportunity to hear from those who are most connected. Allison Carey, then Kelly McArthur. Please continue to allow write in public commentary. It allows for more transparency and more open dialogue. It helps those with child care transportation, health or mobility issues, and those with work obligations to be able to participate. Please consult the Huron River Watershed Council regarding Miller's Creek Shed.
The maintenance and care of the Miller Creek Shed and the Thurston flood mitigation is through a long committed partnership between the city, county, township, and University of Michigan. Please honor this partnership for the sake of health and safety and best possible outcome given the circumstances. Kelly MacArthur and Jordan Els. These are the elementary TAs are working at a ratio of four or five special needs children to one TA across many mainstream classrooms. This is absolutely unacceptable. Not only is this unfair to ask of these caring, hardworking adults, but there is no way that children with special needs are getting the support they
need and deserve. This also affects the rest of the student body. There is a there is lack of support for dysregulated behavior, which leads to classroom disruption and sometimes violence against stat students and staff. In addition, this places an extra burden on classroom teachers who are trying to support 20 to 30 students. Jordan Else, then Jennifer Aldom. I was gonna read my own statement, but Huron got cut off because commentary was shut early. So I'll I'll speak on behalf of the Huron teachers. We write to express our deep concern with the proposal to change public commentary and limit the speaking time of affinity groups.
We acknowledge that board meetings have increased in length and arduousness. We would like to invite the board to consider the impact of revoking time for previously approved community groups, many of which represent our most marginalized students, at a moment when these students are most in need of visible support. We appreciate the board's efforts to stay open to community input, sharing a variety of options for community members looking to contact them. We stress that this cannot be considered as a substitute for public commentary. We want to affirm the value of both parents and students as our essential partners in public education. Their voices must be heard to ensure that the district remains accountable to its stakeholders. I also wanna note that Kelly McArthur's statement is in the document that was on
there at 05:30. I We'll keep a list. I'll do I'll do what I can do. Jennifer Oldham and Steven Edwards. Dear BOE, your meetings frequently run too late, forcing you to make important decisions past normal waking hours when all of you are tired. You are also our spoke you are also our spokespeople in the oldest part of the American representative democracy. We need you to maintain public discourse, not curtail it. You must provide avenues for community members and recognize communities to express their experiences and opinions in public forums. You must continue to collect and make available written commentary.
As you know, the decisions you face are difficult, and the knowledge and experience community members need to share rarely fits in the available speaking time. Steve Edwards, then Charlotte Beal. Well, I was disappointed to hear that the Thurston construction will progress while students are present. I was encouraged to hear president Feaster's commitment during the last meeting to accommodate moving of students who would not be successful in a construction zone. I've applied for in district transfer, and I'm hopeful that you'll prioritize our request based upon that commitment. All three of my students at Thurston have IEPs for ADHD, autism,
and dyslexia. We feel and our children's doctors and therapists agree in writing that this will be detrimental to their well-being and education. Please make good on your commitment. Please give my students the same free and appropriate public education that their nondisabled peers have and that they're entitled to under the law. Charlotte Beal and Jackie Moylan. Charlotte Beal? No. I understand that the volume of public coming at times, but I urge you not to do away with written public commentary. This is an important forum for those who are unable to attend board meetings in person for a variety of reasons as well as a useful reference for the community
to see which issues are of interest across the APS. As a compromise, it would be reasonable to continue to collect written comments from everyone and post them fully online with the board materials, but only have comments read at the meeting if the commenter is attending in person. Jackie Moylanin, then Andy LaBarre. Public commentary. How can you take away people's voices? People send in public commentary because we have children, no transportation to get to the meetings, second or third jobs, and lives outside of APS. These meetings are held during dinner and bedtime for parents of younger children.
If you want commentary in person, are you going to feed my child with the catered dinner the board members get? If you if you're considering moving public commentary to the end of meetings, are you going to start the meetings earlier to accommodate the meeting length? I think it's time to listen to the people and respond to their comments or get rid of the current board members if the board decides our voices don't matter. Andy LaVar, then Claire McMurtry. One second. Miss Solinski? How far through got it. How far through are you? We're at We're at 42. After this, let's take a break.
We need to, allow trustees and other people to break fast. Okay. You wanna wait? You wanna just keep going? There if there's other Muslims that are here that wanna break, then I can do it here. Okay. It sounds like we can continue. So people don't wait. Okay. We're gonna continue. Okay. Andy LaBarra. Okay. We write in strong and complete support of the full preservation and protection of the Thurston Nature Center and its important body of water, Thurston Pond, in its entirety. We ask that you delay any further action on the site until additional information can be provided and considered.
We recognize and respect you are all the duly elected school board with jurisdiction on the these decisions. The communication is necessary because of the unique nature of the site and its potential for broad environmental impacts throughout Washtenaw County. We have heard from many of our constituents in the Thurston area and across Washtenaw County with concerns about APS's development of this location. Claire McMurtry, then James Freeland, a paraprofessional support at eighth elementary. And I'm sorry. Yes. And then James Freeland. Go ahead.
Several trustees have told us they're upset with Gilbane and capital programs for lying in order to stage Thurston or lying in order to avoid staging Thurston. In fact, it's only because of us that the board plans to change that relationship moving forward. The fight for Thurston is over, but it's not over because of us. It's over because of the staggering cowardice of this board. Hundreds and hundreds of people begged you to stage Thurston. We literally spoon fed you diagrams and plans from experts. This was your easiest test, and you failed miserably. For Gilbane and Pet Cap programs, massive win.
They had to beat us. If they didn't lie to win, they risked emboldening future communities to fight like we did. They dog walked this entire board, and they're gonna continue doing it. Good luck. Danielle Capitan, then Najah Robinson Meyer. Hi. I'm a teacher at Tappan, and I'm here to oppose any restrictions on public commentary, and marginalized or groups that represent our most marginalized students. I don't have much that hasn't already been said, but I do wanna point out to the board that we've already restricted people's ability to access this very public meeting by hosting it in one of the most remote
locations in Ann Arbor. It takes it takes an hour and a half to get here via public transportation, and most of that is walking and on the street with no sidewalk for a lot of it. And a lot of our teachers, our caregivers, and work second jobs, at least in my building, and so they're not able to attend tonight. Please reconsider. Thank you. Naja Robinson Meyer Van Fang Chung. Dear Interborough Board of Education, I am reaching out to express my deep, deep concerns about eliminating electronic comments to the board to be read and requiring in person attendance to voice comments and concerns.
I'm also very disappointed about the prospect of eliminating special advisory groups. You are elected by the end of our community to represent us, and you should be wanting more community involvement instead of trying to eliminate it. If you are not if you if you were to not allow write in comments and require people to be in person, this would severely limit community involvement. There are times when community members are taking care of children or loved ones. Peng Chung followed by Ed Traeger. Question for trustee Schmidt and trustee Basquiat. How much does a child's life worth to you?
Zero, because they are not your children? Or 1,000,000,000 when something bad happens to the kids and APS gets sued? For us parents, every kid is priceless. Please step down since you don't care our kids. Ed Traeger then Sadaf Ali. Modifying the Ann Arbor School Board policy 1,300 to eliminate participation by board designated, designated representative organization strikes me as a complete abnegation of the board's fundamental duty to the public, our students, and our families. You know, it's it's actually a privilege that we have a a group for special special education,
the Arab American advisory group, youth gender and sexuality alliance, and I could go on, the black parents, student a South Asian, Asian Pacific Islander, all these groups. What a privilege. It makes tremendous sense, that these organizations, have and should continue to have a role in guiding and enriching the diversity of our schools. Thank you, sir. Time is up. Thank you very much. Sadaf Ali, then Claire McMurtry. Alright. Sadaf writes removal of Arab advisory at other boards. I think they plan to be here. I apologize. That's all I have. It oh,
boy. Oh, boy. Alright. I'll have to go back and look. Claire McMartree, then, oops, Andy Brocious. And Claire just has a statement of perfect paraprofessional support at Hazely Elementary. Oh, did we already call her? Oh, I know. I've been looking. Okay. Yeah. And she's got the wrong date in here. That's fine. Alright. Maybe one sec. No. I I apologize. I don't see anything. Okay. Andy Brocious then Jiwon Lim. Okay. Hello. My name is Andy, and I'm an APS parent and alumnus.
I'm running to strongly discourage the board from caving to Trumpism by not approving or recognizing our Arab advisory group, Asian American advisory group, and other groups advocating for the needs of our vulnerable community members. Now more than ever, we need to make remain steadfast in our commitment to inclusion. Additionally, I understand the board is considering no longer allowing comments from community members who cannot attend meetings in person. As I write this, I'm recovering from surgery. Even when I'm recovered, I will be still be disabled. I hope my voice matters here whether or not I can afford to sustain the
damage to my body in person. Jiwan Lim, then Nuri Bai. As an Asian parent, APISA group is crucial for my children and the school community. Nurii Bai then Mijang Jong. I strongly oppose the dissolution of the APISA parent advisory group. APS has a significant Asian student population, and this group plays a crucial role in ensuring the voice their voices are heard. Eliminating it would weaken representation, reduce cultural acknowledgment, and send a discouraging message to our community. I urge the board to uphold equity and inclusion by voting to keep a PISA.
Mijang Zheng, then Jennifer ten Tenkanow. We need to keep APISA for our diverse and safe community and future generation. Jennifer Tenkanow, then Birgit Reich. I'm writing on behalf of the Hazely School community. Our community, comprising teachers, staff leaders, neighborhood members, parents of families, works tirelessly to ensure the success of our school. Currently, there are 16 students in mainstream classrooms who require a full time aide. We only have four TAs available. That means each child is only getting 25% of what they deserve. This shortage shortage significantly impacts the entire classroom.
What's when students do not receive the necessary support, learning suffers, experiences decline, and both students and teachers feel overwhelmed. In some cases, safety becomes a concern. Birgit Reich followed by Carol Guo. Regarding Thurston, over the next four years, you want to destroy berms, wetland, a big rain garden, oak savanna, and cut down trees. Then you want to develop a huge new construction site on hydraulic soil using specialized techniques and materials to minimize environmental impact and ensure structural integrity and add water tanks
and some pumps. Then you want to develop new bus lanes and a parking lot. Then you want to demolish the old building bus lane and parking lot to build a rain garden and green screen space. And that costs less than staging the school at New Logan while rebuilding on-site. What is the financial plan for ongoing maintenance when building in wetlands? Thank you. Carol Guo followed by Yujin Kim. Asian American voices should be heard. Please keep APISA, American parent advisory group. Yoojin Kim followed by Kristen Ochimogo.
I I oppose the abolition of the APISA parent advisory group. That is because I want diversity to be respected, and I believe that APISA contributes to that. Kristen Ochimogo, then Jeongsu Ahn. I am writing to support retaining written public commentary and access to speak for all approved affinity groups, Silencing the voices of organized, marginalized communities and individuals without physical access to meetings continues to erode trust with the community. It may not be your intent, but this is the only district space where I have felt heard.
It is one of the few spaces where I gain understanding of communities and buildings in which I am not involved. It's a space where inequities across the district can be brought to light and therefore fixed. I urge you to reconsider this decision and to prioritize accessibility and community engagement. Jung Soo Ahn, then Chris Ernt. Removal of APISA and American Arab American advocacy groups. Chris Ernt, then Nancy Khalil. As a current Thurston parent, I would like to thank the board for not delaying the Thurston plan. All sides had their chance to present their views and did so very respectfully.
I hope as a community that we can begin to heal, listen to each other, respect differences of opinion, and resist the urge to drive further wedges and divisions between neighbors. If the outcome were reversed, I'm sure the good folks of Let Thirsten Play would be similarly magnanimous. Nancy Khalil, then Isaac Yao. I would like to learn the history of the advisory groups and the process to add them to the board leading up to the process to discuss whether to remove them completely. What work is being undone by this consideration? What efforts are we losing?
Does everyone on the board know? At a time when discrimination, hate crimes, and bullying is is at an all time high, we are discussing removing one of the few tools we have to hear from and prioritize marginalized groups. There was a proposal by a group last year to add a much needed Muslim advisory group. And instead of adding that, why are we now discussing eliminating identity based groups? Isaac Yao, then Lena Kaufman. I just learned today that today's board meeting will include a discussion about potentially dissolving the APISA group. This is deeply concerning as so many families are from these countries,
are part of APS, contributing to its rich diversity. Eliminating this group would undermine the inclusivity that makes our community so strong. I firmly believe that Apisa should be preserved, safeguarded, and supported to continue fostering a welcome and diverse environment for all. Lena Kaufman, then Adelaide Lancaster. Dear trustees, it has been one thousand eight hundred thirteen days, almost five years since the board of education started reading public written public comments in lieu of having people speak in person. It was an emergency measure at the time, but that emergent emergency has long since passed,
and it is time for the board Aneward Board of Education to join every other school district in the state in leaving COVID measures behind. There are things to learn, however, and one of those is that public the public greatly appreciated this way of communicating with the board because it allowed their written message to be part of the public record of meeting. I'm therefore writing to ask the board that if you will no longer read public commentary, Adelaide Lancaster, then Becca Hogan. I'm writing to urge you to engage in a participatory and public process before changes
are made to policies around public participation and public commentary at APS board meeting. Restricting access to cross community communication and transparent communication with the board and administration, especially at this moment, feels unnecessarily damaging. Our district is already struggling with public engagement, high levels of dissatisfaction, and people saying they feel unheard. Presumably, a shift in the policy is being sought because board meetings are long. This concern needs to be balanced with the needs of the community. Becca Hogan, then Monica Martin. I'm dismayed to look to hear that you are planning to cut written commentary from
being read at BOE meetings and are considering cutting the ability of parent affinity groups to speak openly at your meetings, including the PTO Council. In a time where a public where public education is under attack at the federal level, we at the community level must must do more to listen and work together as a united front for the benefit of all students. Please cons reconsider your plans to cut commentary. You can and should do better. We elected you to listen and engage with us. Monica Martin, then Zara Siam.
Monica Martin. This is APS education responsibility to the student. Zara Siam, then Grace Christensen. Are you Zara? Okay. Hello. Good evening. I'm a APS teacher here. I fasted for Ramadan today and still made it here because I'm deeply dismayed by the recent actions, proposed about limiting free speech with the public commentary and shutting down our affinity groups. As we all know, listening to our community members is incredibly important and it is really the success for how we can help with our schools and how we can support our most marginalized
students. And for a year coming into these meetings and hearing as a teacher how all of our attacks on health care and whatnot, this is the focus. This is incredibly disheartening in this time where Department of Education cuts are are being considered and for new speeches continuously clamped down. Do better, please. Grace Christensen, then Nicole Bogovich. Grace Christensen. I'm writing to express my deep concern and disappointment regarding the proposed changes to public commentary and the treatment of board approved groups, including groups representing black parents, Arab American families, families of students with disabilities,
AAPI communities, and families of transgender and queer students. Restricting comments to in person only will decrease accessibility for adults who do not have alternative care for their children or who work during the evening. Such a decision would silence voices that it is important for the board to hear. Please preserve time for affinity groups to speak for write in participation in meetings. Nicole Bonovich, then Mary Qui. Please stop this nonsense of fail falling into conservatism. What is happening right now politically needs to stop. We need to make sure minority groups have proper representation and a way for voices
to be heard. Please keep Asians and Arab American advisory groups in place. Mary Qui, then Caitlin Anagnostu. APS Arab and Asian advisory groups are a necessary part of our school system. These practices keep our children and neighbors safe. Caitlin Agnostu Debrima Hassuna. You as members of the board were elected and have taken an oath to represent your constituents. To remove, the Arab and Asian representative groups is an egregious mistake, and you, the board members, will face a multitude of consequences from the very constituents that voted to to put
you in your position. Think carefully about your decisions going forward, the consequences that will come for this board and the community it serves. Rima Hassani, then Shewa Nitsos. I am deeply concerned that the board is reviewing policy 1,300 and considering the termination of board designated groups. This board action would be egregious in our era of increasing authoritarianism. Our board designated advisory groups have advocated for and amplified the voices of marginalized and overlooked students and their families in this community. The AAPS board must continue supporting this advocacy.
Do not terminate board designated advisory groups, and thank you. Shuyu Nizos, then Courtney Hall. APS APISA, American Parent Advisory Group, should not be removed. It is a very important group that helps students to be confident about their culture and identity. Courtney Hall, then Jonah Siegel. In a time when our nation's leaders are making decisions based on the wants of a select and elite few versus being concerned about all people, I'm appalled that APS is considering doing the same by potentially voting out policy 1,300. Removing policy 1,300
could have devastating effects on some of the unique educational challenges that students from diverse backgrounds face. These advisory groups were initiated to help students of an array of ethnicities to navigate the school system, identify unique challenges that they face, and secure resources as well as to educate APS about their histories and societal contributions. Jonah Siegel, then Bashar al Almadani. I urge the board to continue allowing remote commentary through submitting comments such as this
one submitted comments such as this one. As a disabled parent, in the APS community, meetings are typically impossible for me to attend, but that does not mean that my voice isn't important. I also implore the board board to not end commentary by affinity groups who represent my interest and the interest of many other family APS families. We need to amplify the voices of our marginalized community members, not add additional barriers to their participation. Thank you. Bashar Al Madani then Asma Azani. I'm running to express my strong opposition to the proposed dissolution of the AP of
the Arab American advisory group. At a time when Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian students and families are facing heightened discrimination, eliminating this vital advisory body would send a devastating message that their voices, concerns, and safety are not priorities for this district. It's especially alarming that the the school board itself originally established this group over ten years ago in response to concerns that Arab students were not succeeding in the district and were leaving for charter schools. The group was created to address these disparities, foster inclusion, and ensure that Arab American students had the support they need to thrive.
Asma Asani. It was brought to my attention that policy 1,300 is under review, and the board is considering eliminating various board designated groups. In keeping with the APS mission, these board designated groups are meant to be a voice and representation for marginalized groups. They were formed to also support the board, the teachers, and overall community. In a time where a political climate is targeting some and social services are becoming scarce, the board should be standing firm in support of the various board groups and not backpedal as it will create more fear and frustration.
The trust of the board is eluding many parents and children across APS. That is all I have for public commentary. Did I miss anyone? Okay. President Feaster? Yes. What would you like to do? Please come forward. A break. We need a break? I don't think so. Five, two, four minutes. Well, I know earlier, we said we were gonna maybe take a break so we could figure it out. But if we know what it is, let's just Yeah. We we we just One second, please. One second, please. Mister Mohammed. So just quickly, there are two there are two comments that were that we're seeing on our end.
Yeah. I you know, I had to completely redo I know. The line. Look. Then you find out Given that, let let's take a five minute break. Set up. We're gonna figure out where all the comments are, and then you can If you would just when you come to the if you didn't hear your name, if you come to the podium, please say your name, and then we'll give you 35. Do do we need to take a break so you can find these comments that trustee Mohammed's talking about? Why don't we take a break? Let's take a five minute break. You want. Okay. It is, 08:08. Let's come back at day 15. Yeah. The recess. Gavel. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go.
I send there at least two people who were missed. I do have, if they you could hold for just one moment. I do have two of the comments that I missed Okay. That I could read quickly before we go to those Please. Missed. Is that okay? Yes, please. Ali Sadif, says, hello. I'm Ali's I'm Sadif Ali. I'm an educator, a parent, and activist, and the chair of the progressive caucus for the Michigan Democratic Party. I've come to learn that the board is reviewing policy 13 and considering removing all board designated groups. These groups have historically allowed marginalized communities such as special needs,
Arab American, etcetera, to voice their concerns directly to the board. In the current climate, these communities should be given further protection, not less. The Anewa Public School District is incredibly diverse, and that diversity needs to be celebrated. Policy 1,300 will result in the district losing a vital source of external expertise, insights, and community engagement. Okay? And then Claire McMurtry. I'm writing as a concerned parent and volunteer at Hazely Elementary as it relates to the lack of sufficient paraprofessionals for our student population. We currently have about 16 mainstream classroom kids who need full time aide.
There are only three or four aides at our school, so these dedicated and tireless parapros are extremely overloaded. As a result, these children are not getting the support they deserve and desperately need. Because our parapros are spread so thin, there are daily instances of students interrupting their other classrooms because our team cannot be in two places at once. It is unfair to both the kids who need aids as well as those who don't because their lack of support creates a disruptive learning environment for all. Okay. Here we go. And please, again, when you come to the podium,
say your name and then your comments. Thank you. Gina Schneider, current Thurston parent. All of you voted not to stage Thurston, citing a need to keep the pre k and young fives with the rest of the community. I told y'all that staging forces out my third grade or another sensory sensitive kids. Kids and families with years of being involved in building relationships at Thurston. I'm heartbroken by your lack of attention and the implication that my son's community and experience means so little to you compared to a more favored community. Next is your baffling failure to plan for these neurodivergent kids transferring when it's a
known consequence of not staging. All five zero four IEP kids who would suffer in your future Thurston must get a guaranteed spot in a school of their choice that can meet their needs. I am baffled that you didn't think of this. Please don't add insult to injury and help us. Again. Caroline Simrow. I urge this board to continue to support the various advocacy groups that lift up the voices of different interests within our community. I want to believe that our board knows it's important to support the identities of our students and staff and build on the many years of embracing diversity and equity.
If in fact this board plans to silence those voices, I expect the board can clarify and be transparent as to why this change of silencing these voices are important now. After certain groups are not allowed to have a platform to advocate for themselves, what's the ripple effect? Do we get rid of the Native American land acknowledgment, NAPID, disability awareness day, religious holidays, equitable funding for schools. Those are all essential tenets of our school community. I believe that concludes public commentary. If we didn't miss anyone k. I don't see anybody's hands up. We appreciate hearing from our community.
The board would like to thank everyone who spoke and shared their comments tonight. We would like to note that all written comments are publicly available on the board in board docs in the public commentary section of tonight's agenda. Miss Parks, are there any points of clarification? Just a couple. The pardon me. The comments about, from the community about individual students, a member of our team will reach out, directly. As it relates to Hazely, we have engaged our substitute provider, EduStaff, with, who has now developed a substitute specific program for, paraprofessionals, teacher assistants.
So they are, now sending us specific paraprofessional substitutes. And so as we continue to get more, we are going to work hand in hand with Haisley to, see about where they need to be supported with staffing. So we are going we are in the process of doing that. Additionally, I think it will be borne out through the board's conversation this evening, but I do want to just comment that, the, there wasn't there's no intention to eliminate public commentary or affinity of groups, and I think things will be clear, through the board's conversation this evening. Thank you,
miss Parks. I believe that brings us down to reports of association. Miss Ozinski, do we have any reports of associations? Yes. We have some representatives, for the AAAEA that will step forward. Yeah. Board of trustees, thank you very much. Teachers and other support staff members from Hazely, and thank you for acknowledging that. We haven't heard anything about anything, and everybody keeps asking questions. So we thought it would be a good idea, my friend and colleague, Emily and I, to reach out to our union reps. So we wrote a letter, and our union was so, like, oh, that's great.
Let's take it to the board. So here we are to read our letter to you, board members. Thank you. Good evening, board trustees. This letter has been written on behalf of the educational staff of Hazely Elementary School and likely others within the district to inform you that one of our greatest concerns for next school year and beyond is the lack of TA and paraprofessional support throughout the district. AAPS TAs are incredibly valuable to our students and our schools, and we will not be able to maintain safety within our classrooms and buildings without
them. However, TAs are leaving the district for a variety of reasons and finding new hires to take up their positions is proving incredibly difficult. Currently, we have 10 teacher assistant jobs posted on the Applitrack system, and at least three of these Aplitrack jobs were posted last summer and have not yet been filled. This does not include the multiple TA subpositions posted on ASAP at any given time. One addition that I had made, and I guess I printed out the older, copy of my letter is that some of those, some of the 10 that are posted are from multiple positions throughout the district.
So it's actually more than 10 TA jobs out there. One reason for this, difficulty finding TAs to take these jobs is that the TA pay scale is absolutely abysmal. Class c, d, and e TAs, which includes general general ed assistance, special education assistance, and ESL assistance, make between $17.08 to $20.03 an hour depending on which step they are on, and none of the TAs in our building are at that step level at all. None of them are,
which, that's between twenty six three hundred $26,371.52 and $30,930.41 before taxes. This means that a TA on the highest step has a biweekly take home pay of roughly $1,100 if they're single and $930 if they file jointly. This is not a living wage, and the TAs in our building make much less than this. These members of our staff help with feeding, toileting, safety,
and crisis response, to name just a few of their incredibly important and difficult tasks, which are compass encompassed by their jobs. They are absolutely integral members of our student support teams, and we simply cannot do our jobs without them, not functionally. Hazely is a title one school. It has two self contained classrooms, a CI room full of students that would qualify for CSXI and an ASD room and a Wi Fi program. And we have a number of students with behavioral needs across all the grade levels
who require adult support throughout the day. There are times when we do not have enough hands to stay in compliance with the personal care plans, behavior plans, and accommodations that are included within their IEPs, which are legal documents. The inconsistencies in TA availability within our building is not conducive to the students with special needs and that depend on consistency and familiarity with the adults that they work with in order to learn the routines and expectations of school. Within the general education setting alone this year,
Paisley juggles six TAs between 15 students who hold on a second, who require their support. And I'm saying this because I'm the one who schedules all these people, so I do know. And that's on a good day, and it doesn't include the TAs that are in the self contained rooms. This is all the TAs that work in our gen ed settings. And that's on a good day when everyone's present. Meanwhile, we continue to take on new students who require adult support as per their I IEPs without any additional staffing to meet this need. We just got a new one today. I'm a little flustered and extremely exhausted and tired because that's who I was with
all day. We didn't have a TA. That's who I was with. He was great, by the way. Teachers have less time to prepare for classroom activities because of the high needs of these students and the lack of support that they are getting. And to paint a more complete picture, several of the students who require TA support in the general education setting will and do harm other students and the adult staff members without this support. There are frequent episodes of violence and aggression weekly, if not daily, and much of what is absorbed much of that is absorbed by our TAs.
They are integral in man maintaining engagement for these students in order to prevent this dysregulation and also in recognizing the early stages of an emotional, escalation that without intervention does lead to violence. This is a safety concern for all of us, and it is shared by Patrice Gage, our school nurse, who also wrote something that I would be happy to share if I'm allowed to, who has advocated for more TA support to APS admin on multiple occasions to no avail. By the April, we will have lost two of our TAs at Hazely,
and next year, we will lose three more that we know of. They're leaving for various reasons including, but not limited to, higher paying jobs elsewhere and the EMU pathways for future educators program. This would all be fine if replacements could be found for their positions. But, again, it's hard to find people willing to be physically abused, willing to clean up various bodily fluids, and willing to just generally feel undervalued by their employer on a daily basis for low pay. We know that we are writing this to the teachers union. We did write to the teachers union.
But it is an issue that is immense that immensely and directly impacts teachers' abilities to do their jobs, their morale, and not least of all, their safety. Is there any possible way for us to get help with the TA union advocating for a higher living wage or some method to actually incentivize doing this incredibly hard work that these people do. Having more TA support across our district would be a great benefit to us all, but continuing to lose TAs without being able to replace them will certainly lead to teacher attrition.
As the job becomes less safe and sustainable, bringing back building subs would be a huge help as well. We can't continue to do the status quo. Abe APS cannot continue to post TA positions and then sit back to wait for people to apply only to throw up hands and say there are just no candidates or we just don't have the people for these jobs when no one applies for them. We need to take an active role in actually attracting candidates to work in this district on behalf of our fellow OSE staff,
general ed colleagues, and the TAs who work so hard to keep the ship sailing because they definitely do. This issue is of the utmost importance. Please advise us on how we can help ensure that this problem is addressed by the district. When we have to face problems in our schools, we work really hard to find solutions, and this is a really, really big problem. And I do know that you touched on that. We wanna work together, not adversarial. This isn't like a threatening thing. We wanted we want help because we really it it's dire.
We're, like, in crisis mode. It's horrible. I could cry right now, but I'm really trying hard not to. And I can read what I have from our nurse if I'm allowed to. I don't I don't wanna step on anybody's toes. That's not the kind of person I am. Where did it go? There it is. Nurse Patrice nurse Patrice writes, I'm willing I am writing to you as the school nurse at Hazely Elementary. I'm writing out of concern for my school community as well as other AAPS school
communities. As modern medicine advances in saving lives, especially the premature and those children born with significant medical conditions, these children are now and will continue to enter our preschools and grade schools. These children are coming in with a host of issues that need our attention and care, and these children need qualified, dedicated staff to provide them an equitable school experience. To achieve this, we need to have trained staff, especially the staff member providing direct care, which is usually our TAs. We need to compensate them for the extra skills it takes to help these children.
We need to value them as a major player in the team of the student's success in school. This is my wish for our school community health and happiness, and I'm happy to lend support wherever I can to help Haisley's staff up to safety. Nurse Patrice. Yes. So that's what we have. We are open to you to we wanna talk and figure things out. And wherever we need to go to find real solutions to this problem, that's what we want. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you all.
Missus, are there any other groups? Yes. We have representatives from the, PISA group to report tonight. Thank you. Good evening, and thank you for providing the time and space to allow me to speak on behalf of the Asian Pacific Islander South Asian American parent group or APISA. My name is Jocelyn Hunter Young, and I am a proud graduate of AAPS, and now I am a teacher and a parent in the district. I'm honored to have the opportunity to speak with you, and I hope this brief message gives some insight into the history of our group, our collaborative work with the district, and our shared interests for future work to support all students in AAPS.
When our group started in 2020, it was amidst a worldwide movement to recognize and grapple with the challenges of racism in society. This highlighted the need for community in a time of stress and change. As anti Asian hate increased during the COVID-nineteen pandemic, our group found support and solidarity with each other and knowing that the Board and the Anaberg public schools were behind us strengthened our resolve to continue living our lives openly and proudly in what was truly a frightening time for so many of us. Over the last five years, APISA has worked diligently to build connections amongst parents and families while also doing targeted
projects to support APS students and the educators who work with them each day. We did a book donation drive that got over three ninety books into all of the APS school buildings. We've hosted virtual author talks for several years that provide students, staff, and families with opportunities to learn from and engage with authors who identify as Asian American or Pacific Islander. In the past three years, AAPS and APISA collaborated to host visits with Jay Torres, Carlina Dwan, Grace Lin, Robin Shirley Higuchi, Tin Pham, and Kim. In 2025, we are excitedly planning to host author visits with Richard Ho and Sadia Farooqi on
May 21 and are working with student leaders at Skyline to support their work to host an APIA student summit in the spring. We are incredibly appreciative of the time, energy, and funding that AAPS has committed to enable and promote the work of our group. This support has made meaningful changes in our schools by providing clear and tangible representation of the complexity of the APIA community. All students, teachers, librarians, and families are able to engage and learn together through these opportunities. The stories serve as windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors for us all to empathize and relate to others.
We learn from the authors, the stories, and the connections we make with one another as the conversations continue in the classrooms and at dinner tables. Thank you for making this possible and for continuing to support this work at a time when so many of our marginalized students and families are feeling under attack yet again. We appreciate you and trust that the board will make the decisions needed to continue doing what our community knows is right for our students. Maya Lin, a Chinese American architect and artist, said to fly, we have to have resistance. When facing resistance, we hope our board has the courage necessary to fly so that the district can
continue to lead, care, and inspire. Thank you. I have no further reports. I think you said that there are no other reports? No further reports tonight. Thank you, miss Olcinski. That brings us down to, board committee reports. Under a, we have the executive committee. Obviously, the the executive committee did meet. The date of that meeting would have been yes. I think it was a week ago Monday for promise. And we met to discuss the agenda for tonight's meeting, And yes. And we also set the agenda for our next meeting on the nineteenth. We set those two agendas, and that's essentially all we did.
It was a very short to the point of productive meet. Monday, March 3. Thank you. Monday, March 3. Any question? Okay. Next, we'll go down to the finance committee. I'll turn it over to trustee Wilkerson. Thank you. The finance committee met on Monday, March 10 at 11:30AM. We covered a recommendation for elementary reading curriculum, which will be presented in further detail tonight. And our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, March 17 at ten. Thank you, trustee Wilkerson. Any questions? Seeing none.
Obviously, the governance committee also met on Monday, March 3. And as you can see by a lot of the public comments, we discussed, we discussed a potential change to public commentary and the change to the board resident, board designated groups designation. I won't go much more into it right now because we will discuss it when we could come down to the first briefings on those topics. Any preliminary question? Yeah. I'll just add that as a governance committee, we are also looking at our capital expenditure process and doing some research on,
how we can, you know, ensure we have the right policies and procedures in place for approvals along the way and put more governance into the planning process as well. That is true. We did discuss that at the meeting as well. Thank you very much. And, miss trustee Baskett I'm sorry. Trustee Wilkins. I just I think it would be useful for the public to hear how that works. So the governance committee talks about certain things and then it gets put on an agenda, or do they take it to the executive committee and then they put it on
the agenda? I think it would be helpful for everyone to understand how that process An executive committee meets, and we discuss different topics that the district, are and, tells the third time we need to be to address or different things that trustees, suggest that the governance committee take up, as a topic. For instance, with the capital expenditures, that was something that trustee Wilkerson brought forward and said, this is a policy that we should look into. He's going to then create, a template for us as to what that could look like. The governance committee will discuss it,
kick it around, try to find the strengths and the weaknesses, and make it as best possible version. And then we will take it to the executive committee and ask ask them to put it on this agenda, and then it will come before the board as a first briefing. Okay. The entire board will discuss, that policy and kick it around, try to make it its best version of whatever it it can be, and then it will come back for a second briefing should it the board wanted to continue. And then at that point, we'll kick it around some more and vote on whether or not we're going to accept it or not accept.
That's my understanding. If I'm missing something I wanna add some to the process. So after the any of the committees meet, I know I will contact people on the committee because it was a public meeting and just say, okay. Now tell me more about this because I try to find out more on my own too, and it doesn't matter which committee. So that by the time it comes, you know, to our first briefing, I've tried to educate myself on these different things. So, as someone that's chaired a committee, many times I've reached out to board members and said, this is what we covered at a committee meeting.
So, you know, just to let you know what happened because you weren't in the meeting. You're not on our committee. So just so you know, this is what we discussed and, you know, to just keep the there's no decision making, no deliberation. It's more a sharing of information. Right. And and that is true. Like I said, when we discussed the potential changes to public commentary, for instance, trustee Schmidt reached out and said, hey. What did you guys discuss? Did you guys consider these different things? And, obviously, gives us her 2¢. And I think trustee Mohammed reached out when it came to public commentary as well
and offered what she thought. So trustees are are free to chime in along the way, and they're we're free to chime in at first and second briefings as well. So let's see if that's good. I just want to offer and, again, I know it's, probably problematic because the two major committees have not yet met. But another option is for the governance committee to determine that this needs to be taken up in one of the two committees, whether it be programs I'm sorry, performance or planning. So that's another option that the board has. Yes. Thank you. Yes. If I didn't miss anything on how the process works,
well, then we'll move forward. Okay? I think that brings us down to number five, information and the superintendent update. Miss Parks, floor is yours. Thank you, president Feaster. We'll have a brief superintendent's update because we are really excited to get to the the next item. So for for today, just a couple of announcements. World Down Syndrome Day is March 21, and we invite, all of our community to join us and folks across the world in celebration of Rock Your Socks Day, which is Friday,
March 21, and it provides an opportunity for all to wear the brightest color, mismatched socks in support of people with Down syndrome. Also, Slauson eighth grade student Erin Kawata was the winner of the governor's twenty twenty five State of the State Art Contest. Erin's artwork centered around the theme Think Michigan and was featured in the program book during the governor's February twenty sixth state of the state address. Two Sauson teachers joined Erin and her family as guests of the governor. On Friday, March 7, at Carpenter and Allen Elementary Schools,
they hosted math education specialists, and the this event brought together math recovery leaders from across Southeast Michigan to observe implementation strategies and share best practices. Visitors had the opportunity to observe classrooms where math recovery practices were showcased in the regular classroom setting and in and in intervention lessons, and the demonstrated demonstrations highlighted the practical applications and strategies that educators have been studying and developing. And, again, that that will conclude the superintendent's update this week because,
again, we're excited to get to our our next item. Thank you, superintendent Parks. Any questions on the brief superintendent's update? Alright. Seeing none. Thank you, miss Parks. And we'll move down to the next item, which is b, career and technical education CTE update. Thank you, again, president Feaster. At this time, time, we're gonna have, Doctor. Ryan Rowe come forward. Doctor. Rowe is the CTE director, so the career and technical, education director for, the county, through Washtenaw Intermediate School District. We also have Tom Pachero, who is our AAPS,
career and tech education director. And they are going to be, talking about countywide CTE efforts, and they are joined, as you can see, by some some some VIPs, Aiden Dooley, who is a student at Huron in the IB, CP career program, and chef chef Sam, Samantha Day Goring. So we will, turn it over at this time to mister Rowe or I'm sorry. Doctor Doctor Rowe. Pardon me. Doctor Rowe who will, get us started on, how the county is expanding its efforts in in CTE. Thank you so much to,
board president, board trustees, to president Parks for a few minutes this evening to really celebrate, efforts at Ann Arbor Public Schools with career technical education and career related instruction throughout your organization. I will speak for a few minutes this evening and present, and then I will turn it over to, chef Sam, CTE director Pachera, and more importantly, student, Hayden, who's going to talk about his experience in CTE. We certainly recognize that a world class education, like what is provided here, includes a variety of different, areas for students to choose from.
We here tonight will present on career technical education, but we recognize that advanced placement, international baccalaureate, dual enrollment, FIRST robotics, and project lead the way provide opportunities for students to align their purpose and passion through their teaching and learning experience. How do we get there? How How do we talk about a world class education and expanding access for our students? We have to shift mindsets. School looks different today than it did when I was in school, certainly. And the best compliment that we can receive is when we tour students and parents and educators through our CTE labs,
and they say, if school was like this when I went to school, that's a great compliment. Launching new programs. So we're gonna celebrate Ann Arbor's successes tonight with launching new programs. We have been engaging the community. So when I talk about CTE today, post secondary institutions like WCC and EMU and U of M are at the table. Toyota research and development, U of M health, Liebherr Aerospace are at the table. Our workforce development representatives are at the table. We have everyone at the table at this point in time because everyone has different
needs when it comes to CTE. If we are going to create something and expand access in Washtenaw County, it should be data driven, and we'll talk about the research that was developed to guide our findings and recommendations. And then, obviously, anything done here in Washtenaw County should be world class. We are unique in Washtenaw County, and I will show you some illustrations on how CTE is, decentralized. Most of our programs are not housed at a CTE center like in a lot of counties, nor does it have to be. But ours is unique in Washington County, whereby we have 70 plus CTE programs within our traditional high schools.
We have, at times, I don't know if you've heard, but an inefficient and complicated transportation system, and that's not unique here. It's throughout the state and the country. Teachers work for local schools or training partners. So often, if you have a vocational millage, if you have a CTE center, some of those teachers may work for the ISD. Our CTE teachers work for local school districts. Our supply of CTE programs cannot meet the demand, and we'll show you some of that enrollment here in a minute. We lack a countywide system of career awareness and exploration. We look at career, technical education as a continuum of care of experiential applied learning opportunities kindergarten through twelfth
grade. We and our goal is to have every single student in Washington County approach the the stage of graduation with a inspired and informed post secondary plan to and through college. Programming is funded through general funds. We'll talk about how unique, we are in Washtenaw County with our funding model with CTE, and we recognize that we have an energetic and excited, committed, and very resourceful county when it comes to CTE efforts. So we've been building the system. We've been doing this since 02/2019. We'll show you the research with that, with our k 12,
educational partners, business industry, all of our post secondary institutions, and our community organizations coming together to say, we can do better. We can do more. So the State Board of Education recognizes that there are CTE deserts. You would not think in Washington County that we would be a desert, let alone with CTE, but we are. And that creates an opportunity gaps where we have disparities specifically with our students of color, students that are economically disadvantaged, and students from our smaller size districts that do not have the access to CTE
programs that other areas might. And even in areas like the Southwest Washington Consortium and Ann Arbor Public Schools, we have wait lists for our students who want to get in high demand, in demand, high wage programs. In the state of Michigan, you may you may already know this, those that passed a vocational millage prior to 1994, Prop a, could pass that for as much as they wanted for as long as they wanted. So if you could look at Lenawee County, 2 Point 9 mills, that 2.9 mills in Lenawee County is forever. And it's for as much as they'd like.
They collect about $14,000,000 a year in, taxes for CTE programming. There are 41 ISDs that have a vocational millage, and, obviously, those vary by the tax rate. I just said that 2.9 mills in Lenawee County generates $14,000,000 a year. Here in Washtenaw County, 1 mill would generate $20,000,000 a year. Currently, we in Washtenaw County receive two fund, two funds, a federal Perkins fund, and about $585,000 and our added cost funds through state aid,
that's about $850,000 So we receive for our 70 programs about 1,400,000 a year. The rest is invested through general funds. To put that in perspective, enrollment wise, Lenawee County in total has less students than Ann Arbor Public Schools. They collect $14,000,000 We have 1.4. The offset is general fund dollars. There are 15 ISDs with no vocational mill millage. We're one of those. I would say the more progressive, more economically viable, drivers in the state, Washtenaw,
certainly Wayne, Livingston, and Macomb Counties. What do you use, millage funds for, vocational millage funds? Well, they're you're vocationally certified teachers that are within your organization, for state approved programs, curriculum and assessment cost, maintenance, repair, and replacement of buildings, equipment, supplies, transportation cost. So if a student were to go from Ann Arbor, Pioneer here on Skyline to the Building trade site, millage funds could be used to reimburse the entire cost of that bus driver and transportation cost. We have general fund dollars and other readiness activities,
again, a through 12. So not all funding is equal in Michigan. Again, we're unique in Washtenaw County. When you think about some of the students that are enrolled in the, CTE, computer science, cybersecurity, when they go and, take their assessment at the end of the year, at least one industry recognized assessment credential or license is required in all of our state approved CT programs. That cybersecurity assessment may be $200 to $300 each because it's value added as that student goes on to college or a university and takes that with them,
same with the CNA. So most of our CNA students, earn their CNA as part of health sciences, and they go out to a nursing, program. That CNA also costs cosmetology license. So when you take out that out of the average of $679 per CTE student, it doesn't leave a lot left. On average, it it cost about $2,400 to educate a student in a CTE program. So with the possibilities of our partnerships with post secondary institutions, WCC, EMU, and U of M at the table, partners like U of M Health, like Toyota Research and Development,
Liebherr, Zoller, and others throughout the county at the table and contributing financially, along with legislative means. So right now, the State Board of Education had four students, one from Ann Arbor, Two from MIPC, and a graduate from Lincoln join me on December 10 for the State Board of Education presentation about increasing, funding for CTE programs, so as a whole, and then also in the CTE Deserts, including Washtenaw County. We certainly want students to graduate from high school with a purpose, explore career paths, earn recognized credentials on their way to and through college,
and then we must reach students at a much earlier age. What could that do if we came together with all of those funding that rated funding model? We would have resource allocation. We would have program quality, so, improving the, equipment and supplies, resources, and curriculum in those courses, and, also, we would increase the program quantity. So what does that look like? Well, currently, we have four consortiums that exist in Washtenaw County. They used to operate independently. If you're an Ann Arbor Student, you can attend Ann Arbor programs. If you're an Ypsilanti student,
you can attend Ypsilanti programs. If you're a Whitmore Lake Student, you can attend Whitmore Lake programs. And if you're a member of the Southwest Washington consortium, which is six districts, Chelsea, Dexter, Manchester, Milan, Lincoln, and Saline, you can attend those programs, at least on paper. If you are a Lincoln or a Milan Student and building trades is housed at Dexter, transportation is going to be an issue. Where you attend school is where you can attend CTE programs. There are a few exceptions like cosmetology that the Southwest Washington consortium in Ann Arbor Public Schools partner on. But for the most part,
outside of one district, if you wanna go to a welding program, you have to be enrolled in that district. If you wanna enroll in exercise science and sports medicine, you have to be enrolled in that program. So we're looking at these four consortiums and saying, how can we consolidate services so that students can follow their passion regardless of where they reside? All of those proposed programs on the left, you see a lot of those in the bubbles for Ann Arbor. Those were initiated over the last two years, and so we've looked at places that, districts that really needed to expand access to future focused programs.
So what are those? In 2021, obviously, coming out of COVID, engineering technology and robotics, hospitality and tourism, exercise and sports science, cyber. Then we hit 2023, '20 '4, and you're gonna see a consistent message here. Director Pachero worked diligently, to establish advisory committees and all of the requirements that come along with CTE programs to launch these. That means adding additional sections, adding adding additional programs, And you can see that those are future focused preparing students for, high demand and in demand high wage and in demand jobs.
That was 2324. The most recent additions are building trades at Milan, computer programming at community, cybersecurity at community, engineering technology at pioneer, hospitality tourism management at Huron, so on and so forth. So what does that mean with enrollment? Well, at a time that 09/12 enrollment in the county is declining, CTE enrollment is growing rapidly. You can see in the yellow, that is the countywide CTE enrollment coming out of COVID, going from about eighteen hundred and sixty six to thirty one fifty seven. In the purple is Ann Arbor's enrollment growth in CTE from 800 to 954 to
1,500 to now 1,677. That's a lot of students enrolled in CTE programs. Last year when we followed up, which is required by the state, about seventy seven percent of our students were going on to college or university out of our CTE programs. Over 98% of them are enrolled in college, in employment, or enlisted in the military, and about three quarters of those students are doing so in an area that aligns with their CTE program and path. I'd like to congratulate you on this. This is phenomenal that students are finding their purpose and passion,
maybe affirming what they want to do or perhaps what they don't wanna do before they graduate high school on their way to accumulate potential debt. So how did we do that? You just told me, Ryan, that we're we're, you know, we're low on funds. We don't have the financing to pull that off or expand programs. How did we expand program that rapidly? If you build it, they will come. Well, the state recognized these CTE deserts and non millage funded counties received, legislatively, funds to purchase CTE equipment and expand programs over the past three years.
So Tom and I would tell you in 2122 that half million dollars, and a lot of that went to Ann Arbor Public Schools, simply replaced outdated equipment to, update our medical supplies and equipment, engineering equipment, computer equipment. The following year, $576,000. Last year, $1,153,000. And this year, nothing. So we have reached a tipping point. The point of this fund was to showcase if we can do this with 1,153,000.000, what could we do with a braided funding model with legislative funds,
business industry partners, our post secondary partners, and a potential sustained funding model such as a vocational millage. So we applied for a quarter million dollars to look at what consolidation looked like. Our good friends at the University of Michigan Youth Policy Lab right here in our backyard looked at the inequities to accessing CTE programs as a county. Based on the findings of that report, we received a grant of $5,000,000 to institute the findings and recommendations, and that's what we're doing now. Like I said earlier, legislatively, we recognize and the state recognizes more funding is needed for career tech programs.
By the way, again, another, compliment to Ann Arbor Public Schools and Ann Arbor Public Schools' current student and CTE programs, two from Ypsilanti and one from Lincoln with me to present to the Board of Education on increased funding needs. And, one month later, the press release happened. It aligns with Michigan's top 10. The Board of Education recognizes that. I think CTE could provide, improvement all of those areas that are listed in in the top 10 strategic education plan. And I wanna take a step back that this isn't happening over the last twelve
months. In 02/2019, we commissioned the University of Michigan Youth Policy Lab. They did their very first report for us on the inequities to accessing CTE programs, and you can see the results, lack of widespread familiarity, CTE courses do align with emerging occupations, and there is a desire to expand programming. This is in 02/2019. In 2020, about ten weeks before, the shutdown, you could see the findings that the state commissioned with the U of M Youth Policy Lab. At that point, pre COVID, about a half million skilled trades careers would be available through 2026.
That's pre COVID. COVID accentuated an already existing problem, which is we had sixty five to seventy year olds retiring at that point. Now we have fifty to fifty five year olds and a low birth rate. We need every single student who graduates in Washington County to graduate, go on for a post secondary plan to be a contributing member of our workforce, and we all recognize that today. We cannot allow our greatest export to be our talent. In 2021, the demand for CTE is equal across all districts if it's easily accessible. Twenty twenty two,
the state comes back, says, great report, ISD. Low income black and Hispanic students have less overall access to CTE and are less likely to attend schools with at least one CTE program. CTE participation and completion rates are significantly higher in schools with on-site CTE programs. That's to our advantage. They're in our high schools. So out of that quarter million dollar consolidation studies report, we commissioned the U of M U policy lab in July 2024, and they came up with the following findings and recommendations that we're now using the $5,000,000
to achieve. All Washington students have less access on average when compared to the state. How does that happen? Low income black and Hispanic students have less access to CT compared to their more affluent and white peers. Access is dependent on which district and building a student attends, and there are many opportunities in front of us that can increase access for students, including others' funding models, like with our postsecondary institutions, our business industry partners, legislative means, and through a potential millage. Postsecondary credentials.
So here, every one of our programs has at least one industry recognized credential, and that's throughout the state. Every dollar that's invested in CTE, our economy in the state, reaps it five times over. Here's the one two seven rule. So for any organization that every 10 employees that they have, like U of M Health or Toyota Research and Development, at those organizations, one employee out of every 10 requires a master's degree of more, Two require a bachelor's degree. Seven require an associate's degree, certificate, or credential. And when I think about a health system,
I think about physicians and doctors. I also think about ESNs. I also think about X-ray technicians and stenographers, hysteroprocessors, and CNAs, and medical assistants, and those that work with maintenance and custodial. I could go on and on, but the one two seven rule really does resonate. So what are we doing with the $5,000,000? Well, we're increasing capacity. We're building a team that has never existed in Washtenaw County to serve and support The districts and the students. So we have a CTE coordinator, Marshawn Brooks, Chicago Public Schools is here this evening.
Our work based learning coordinator is Eric Jackson, proud Ypsilanti graduate. Our coordinator of special populations is Ann Arbor's own Skyline grad, Jackson Greenstone. And this is in concert working with Charlie Jones, who does data and reporting specialist for the county now, not individually, not nine times over, along with our partners with our CTE directors in each of those consortiums. We're also looking at supporting those 75 CTE programs that currently exist and expanding those, and looking at countywide programs. What programs could we launch that students from all nine districts could attend?
Well, the first is aviation aerospace. We're gonna launch this in the fall, paid for out of the grant. Students would earn their FAA drone certification license, part one zero seven license, on their way to being entrepreneurs. They could do that for surveying. They can do that for, security. They can do that for public safety. That's gonna be an opportunity we launch countywide this fall. Ramon Crowe, right, just retired after thirty seven years. FAA is helping launch that program here in Washington County. It'll be world class. Engineering construction trade. So in our Ann Arbor Public Schools, we have wait list for health sciences.
So we have about 40 spots for health science at the Southwest Washington Consortium. Eighty seven applicants that wanna be nurses. Forty seven students cannot attend that program. Same with building trades. We have a wait list for building trades. We're looking to expand that countywide so that it can be regional, lower the transportation, have any student that wants to access that, and then partner with WCCU's relaunching their construction technology program. The last one is the best leadership program. So regardless of which CT program an eleventh grade student comes out of in the county,
we know that a lot wanna be entrepreneurs, and we need more entrepreneurs. So the best leadership program is in, partnership with WCC and Destination Ann Arbor. We are launching this and piloting with two students in each district that are coming out of their eleventh grade CTE experience, whether that's culinary or that's building trades or that's manufacturing. They will take entrepreneurship one zero one in the fall as part of their senior year schedule, entrepreneurship one zero two in spring, entrepreneurship one zero three in the summer after their senior year, along with an aligned work experience, and graduate with a management certificate on their way to and through college.
No cost to the family or the student. It's 18 students this fall. I hope it's a 80 next year. These three are models that we believe can transcend other opportunities for our students as we continue to expand programming. Finally, we've done a lot of research, communication, and marketing out of the grant. Hanover Research, had some work groups. We had parents that gathered on the East Side of the county. Parents that gathered on the West Side of the county. We had student focus groups, including Scarlet Middle School, that provided their perspective on their purpose and passion of moving forward.
We received 4,000 surveys that allowed us to gather data. Forthright advising is going to take that data and craft a report to the community on where we stand with CTE, our parents, our students, our business industry partners, postsecondary partners. And then finally, we're doing branding and marketing. We've never done that. We don't know what the internal and external messaging is for CTE. It's hard to market something that you don't know how to define, and we're doing that now. We're moving forward now. We're going to have a community summit next week where we will be, releasing preliminary data from all of that research,
talking more about our pathways and positions and programs that we're launching. And then, we will do some polling with the community to find out where they stand with our braided funding model. And, that will potentially lead us to a decision day in November of twenty twenty five. At this time, I will entertain any questions, and then, CT director Pachero is here along with, your fabulous chef Sam and your fabulous student, Aidan. So I will, entertain any questions, but allow them an opportunity to speak as well. Alright. I see trustee Schmidt has her hand up.
So when you talk about CTE k 12, how do you envision this? And is I don't know if this is related. Because I can imagine PTL p oh, I'm gonna say it wrong. PTLW. Yeah. Project Lead the Way. That that could look like a hands on kind of so but talk to me when you're talking younger grades because what I think about is the you know, we only have so many hours in a day. Yep. And I often say it's not putting more on the plate. It's making what's on the plate better. And I think Tom would tell you that the reason you have had such tremendous
growth in CTE programs is not due to the CTE programs independently, it is due to Project Lead the Way and other experiential and applied learning opportunities, hands on opportunities, taking place much earlier than a student's eleventh or twelfth grade year. Whether that's Allegro Robotics, or that's FIRST Robotics or that's Project Lead the Way, we know that it's not about the drone. It's about having that drone build excitement to deliver mathematics concepts and science concepts and engineering concepts. Great question. And the money we get right now, I PLTW is co all grant funded.
Right? Isn't that correct? I've got it. No? Or maybe we just got a huge grant. We we talked it. Maybe that's what I'm Go ahead, Dawn. In response to our financial situation, our partners at Project Lead the Way have waived fees and donated professional learning this year. Okay. So just general Funds are coming through '61 c. That's a whole different Well, thank you to our partners. That's right. Yeah. So that was a I'm kidding. That was a one year a one year agreement with Project Lead the Way, a one year grant from PLTW. Most of our funding from PLTW comes from the general fund currently.
K. That again, as, doctor Rose suggested or implied, would be able to come from, a CTE millage, that of the general fund. That was that $4,000,000 amount you saw that we put back possibly put back to the general fund. I credit our success, that growth from over 800 to over 1,600 in the last four years, to us utilizing PLTW STEM curriculum, with our younger kids. So they're more aware of what's out there, not just, I don't look like that person in that career,
so I can't do that. When those social emotional things hit in the middle school, it's too late. They've already made up their mind or their minds are made up for them. So getting to them early and PPLTW and STEM, we're able to grow our CTE programs. That and our fantastic instructors. We have an amazing team in Ann Arbor. With the state's help, we've been able to, activate, 14 new programs in the last four years. Thank you. Yeah. I have a quick question. First of all, how can I get a tour or how can we get a tour of one of these CTE labs? And, there are a lot of slides,
and one of your slides mentioned that there's currently no vocational millage in Washington County. Is there maybe an effort to try to introduce one? I think that that's sort of what I'm hearing. Or Yeah. At this at this time, I think we have a moment in time to continue to explore that possibility, at a time where our our local district superintendents, our state board of education legislatively, our post secondary partners, and our business industry is saying we want to help, in this rated funding model. It's a time to further explore that possibility.
I think we will have the summit next week on Tuesday and see how that data is released, a report to the community later this spring, and then potentially some polling to find out where the community would would feel, if we were to move forward with that. Okay. Thank you. To answer your first question, I'd be happy to take any and all of you on a two or two. All 36 of our programs or one or two that you're specifically interested in? Oh, thank you. I see. Trustee I'm sorry. Figured out. Yeah. I see. Trustee Wilkinson? Yeah. I had one quick question around partnerships. So you touched a little bit on,
like, higher education institutions. Can you talk a little bit about how those partnerships work? And then I know the Michigan department or Michigan Economic Development Corporation has very similar targets for the state of Michigan as far as workforce development. I was just curious if there's any collaboration around that as well. K. I'll I'll start at the local level. So, each of our programs is part of a a larger, pathway. Each of our pathways has an advisory group. As a former engineering teacher at Skyline High School,
our advisory group was made up of about 50% educational folks or 49%, fifty one % folks from business and industry. We meet twice a year with that advisory group. That's the minimum. Home building our home building program, as an example, meets once a month, with their board, and we just take their input. We tell them what we're teaching, how we're teaching it, and then we take their input of what they'd like us to be teaching, what certifications we should be offering to make our students successful in their business or their organization. I'm gonna have Brian answer at the work based development.
Just just one more I'd add to that is Charlie's collected the data that we have to report on work based learning experiences, and I would just say that our employers, provide opportunities for paid internships for our students, job shadows, guest speakers, and field trips. They're all calculated, and there were 4,000 of those that took place in a given school year with our CTE programs. We are hand in hand with MEDC, and MySTEM, and their talent action teams, employers such as Toyota that's local is at the table having this conversation and in support of our efforts. Okay. Awesome. If there are organizations in the community that wanna get involved,
is there a certain path to do so? Just contact their CTE teacher if they're not sure who that person is, their closest CTE teacher. They should contact me and I'll connect them, with our advisory chair people. Yeah. I'm talking about businesses specifically. Yeah. So go through that route. Actually, if there's no other questions, it's a perfect leeway for, chef Sam to talk about her latest and greatest. There's probably an invitation in your inbox right now. Experience. Mhmm. I can't wait to hear. Chef Sam. Thank you for having us. So I'm chef Sam. I've been with Huron and Ann Arbor Public Schools for seven years.
I've taught CT for twelve. I started at Schoolcraft Community College, and then I was part of the Wayne West Land, tech center. And then they kind of recruited me and got me to come out here. So our latest and greatest partnership is we've been working with Zingerman's for the last six years. They're huge, contributors from chef Bob to Paul, to Ari. And then lately, who's up for seventh James Beard award Oh, wow. Has took us under her wing, and she is allowing me and the students to take over her kitchen on April 1. So we're gonna have a pop up dinner.
All the proceeds go back to our program, so that helps kind of with our funds and our food costs. So we're super excited. So just part of that journey, it's been a year. The students had to design and come up with a Korean Asian style menu. So we did that in our lab, and then we had to present it to her at miss Kim's. So we all traveled over to miss Kim's, and we cooked for her. And after she deliberated with the students and took apart their food, she came up with a menu based on their meals they presented. And now we are in the next phase, so you'll see that invitation, for April 1,
so for our pop up dinner. So things like this, not only is it Zinger Men's, but Saba's, U of M dining, Washington Dairy, US Foods, they're all on our board. OCC, WCC, I'm sure, is gonna get back on with us now that they brought back hospitality management. But OCC, Schoolcraft, Northern University all support us and articulate with our program. So the students just going through our program not only get the ServSafe manager certificate that they need, to attend a hospitality or culinary school or go into the industry, but they also, get to skip college classes that they would have to pay for as part of,
like, me teaching certain things and then looking at our syllabus and coming and visiting our classroom and seeing and recognizing that our kids are skilled and they're able to pass those intro classes. That's really big for us. So if I'm a restaurant and I'm like, I'd really like to be part of this. What do I do? You contact me. Oh, so I have to call the school and I have to say, who is the CTE person? Yes. Okay. And, we are really when I came out here seven years ago, we've been really prevalent in the community. We've been going out. We're getting hotels now for next year because we're starting the hospitality management program.
So a lot of it is on my time, going out and building these community relationships and going after school and meeting with their chefs and contacting them because, sometimes they don't know about us. Right? And so they come and then, they're like, wow. Okay. Now we know about you. And, like, one of the compliments the students got, and I'm sure Aiden will share his experience, from from Jeff, chef Jihye was that she was impressed. She was like, I was really nervous about letting high school students come in and take over my kitchen. And she was really impressed, and she told the students, like, I was not cooking like this and had these skills at 17.
Right? And she was, like, really nervous about it, and she was honest with it, and she's really excited for it. So that was really cool feedback. But, yeah, we have a great board. We have about 15 people on the hospitality board, and we meet twice more because I go see them. I take the students to them. They tour. They job shadow. They're all job shadowing next week at the restaurant before the dinner, so they have to, jaw shadow their position. Mhmm. So there's definitely different steps to everything we do. Really great. Yeah. And I watch all those shows. Yeah. Next level chef, master chef, TLC. And that's where,
like, we have a challenge. Right? Food is big. Yeah. Everybody And that's where, like, we have a challenge. Right? Food is big. Everybody loves food. So our challenge is, you know, when we go through the numbers at the end of the year. So I currently cater for the five high schools. So mister Pachero, provides transportation. But a lot of times, those students have to get home, and that limits them. Okay. Right? They get a bus over to me, but if they can't get transportation home, they can't come. Mhmm. But we are turning away, like, about a hundred students. And I am over. Wow. I am only supposed to have 22 to 24 in every section. I'm, like, at twenty seven thirty.
So we are always over every year. I'm always taking on students. You know, council over, reach out and beg me to take on a student. But so that is one of our challenges that we see. And then another challenge, that I just wanna point out, our labs are great. Ryan and, mister Roe and mister Pachero have been doing an awesome job at really supporting us the last three years and getting what we need. But there are limitations still. Right? So we have constructed We basically took apart an old home ec room Mhmm. To adapt somewhat of a commercial kitchen so we could provide the facilities and the
equipment for the students. But there's still a need there that we're not providing, and we recognize that when we go to, we go we do competitions like your shows. So, SkillsUSA, when we do those competitions, we recognize that when we walk into those kitchens, there's equipment there that my students haven't touched, that they have to touch for the first time. And that's where some of our community partners are helping us. They're allowing them to come into the kitchens, get used to that equipment before we go and compete versus their peers. So Pardon me? Anybody have questions? I don't have a question except to say I am so proud of the CTE
program. I remember years ago now as a student, we had remember the covered wagon? And if anybody's old enough to remember that program, the pioneer, was a culinary arts program. And when that teacher left to go to WCC, right, a lot of students from high school followed him there. Mhmm. And a lot of students in that program, I'm speaking personally, you know, went to college for the hospitality management program. I know personally people I thought you were gonna talk about the home builders program. That's one of my favorite, but personally people I thought you were gonna talk about the home builders program. That's one of my favorite, but we'll make that happen another time. Because I've known students again from diverse backgrounds who never thought about the word engineering
Right. But they started in carpentry. They started doing masonry. I mean, it I mean, I mean, just this past weekend, I was in the home. And so what I do dearly, who I had no idea, you know, whose whose son was in the, the home builders program. I saw his little trophy. And I'm thinking that's why he's building his parents' deck. That's why he's making that handicap accessible bathroom for his parents. Right? And he went on to engineer. Right. I mean, it is just a phenomenal, fascinating program. And after all the negativity that this board's had to go through for the last
few weeks, thank you for being here. Right. To show that we do do something right. Yeah. In terms of supporting you. But please let us know how we can do even more. Trustee Wilkes and I were at a meeting at, the ISD, and I have to say their executive director started talking very excitedly about this aviation program. And I kinda thought we'd get a little more of a sales pitch, but doctor Rowe, you may come back later, I'm sure. Because that's something that can bring us, as you say, across the county together. And that's what we need to do more of. I I remember being very disheartened when we,
as a board, had to make the decision to not have the culinary arts program in the school because it's an expensive program. Mhmm. But I remember the superintendent saying that we have that connection at WCC. But we acknowledge the challenges to get to WCC. And then when they can their program, it's like, oh my gosh. What do we do? But thank you for for, again, enlightening us is what you're doing. I hope as trustees, you'll realize we got a lot of work to do beyond one school project. We've gotta look further. And so let us know what we can do to be more helpful,
more supportive. And I would I guess my question I do have a question now. Is how do students get into your program? Because we often hear kids don't know about it. And we also have program you know, schools where students who, for whatever reason, behavior are not engaged in in the traditional, as you guys know this, the traditional college prep program. But, boy, again, like I mentioned, the student who got into the carpentry thing, and he ended up with engineering. Mhmm. You know? So how does a student access your programs, Curt? Amy,
why don't you come on up and Oh, I'm sorry. With chef, no. You start, chef Sam. So, currently, we have, the counselors can share out. We have an application process for some of them, like home building. Right? Because they have to go on-site in our nursing programs. And then, also, we do a lot of promoting. We have the college and career fair at Skyline where we go and we promote all through, like, k through twelfth grade can attend. We are always at mister Pajar always, finds us a sub, and we always go to any class course selection. I've sat in the Skyline cafeteria to recruit community.
And just getting our name out there and through your guys' socials and our Instagram and things, we have become more popular. And one thing I wanna say that I really liked what you said is about the home building and just the massive umbrella, and we're seeing that in culinary. And that's one of the reasons why we approached the new program for hospitality management. Mhmm. Aidan will share his future with you. And, we've had a lot of students grow past, I don't wanna just be the chef. I want to be the business. I wanna manage. I wanna operate.
I wanna oversee. So as a program and as a unit and with all their support, we are adapting and providing these needs for our students, and it's really great. But I'm gonna go hand it over to Aidan and let him share. Thank you. Welcome, Aidan. Thank you. I'm Aidan as it's been said. I'm a senior at Huron, and I'm in the c IBCP program for culinary. My freshman year is when I started taking the foods program classes, which are like the introductory classes. And I was kinda just taking them take them because I needed a class to
fill my schedule. But I was really struggling through school. Didn't really like the normal format. It was demoralizing once I did bad at a test, and then I just wouldn't do the work. And I realized that at the end of my sophomore year, which is when you choose to sign up for the CP program, And I decided to push myself towards the CP culinary program because I was already gonna take the classes, so why not add on the extra honors class. And as I did that,
I was seeing the program grow to more of a serious program than the room that I had taken the food classes in. And taking that program has led me to want to pursue hospitality management as my major in college, which I'm going to Northern Michigan for, as that as my major. As Chef Stamos said, the biggest challenge that she faces is being spread so thin. She works before and after school most every week trying to get stuff and grocery shop and make sure that everything's
planned and organized before we come in and do our work. And she has to do that while managing her mass amount of students that she's taking on. Overall, my experience has been extremely beneficial and has brought my grades up to a point that I didn't think that I'd have, and I didn't think that I'd be that academically successful. And, having these skills and going to these events like the Miss Kim pop up dinner, and, we do lunches for the teachers, and they compliment me, and they say that I'm doing an amazing job.
And it's just amazing to hear that, and it makes me wanna try harder in school. And knowing the path that I wanna take past high school is an extremely beneficial thing. I'm happy that I was able to take advantage of the CTE program. If I may. Any questions for Aiden? Yeah. Alright. Come on back up. Not so much for Aiden. You can call for a lifeline. But I remember and I'm looking at mister Pachero when we were talking about IB. Right? And we were also talking about we wanted no student excluded because IB had this sense of elitism. So, Aidan, if you talk could you talk about CP?
Because some trustees may not know what CP stands for. And, mister Pachero, if you can talk about I mean, I'm so proud of you guys because we made it happen. I remember taking that trip looking at other schools and saying, what can we do here? And I'm so glad it's food because everybody loves food. But we also have some wonderful schools here that aren't big expensive schools that really major. I'm thinking Northwood, one of my, partners alums. You know, it it was it's such a good program. But could you talk more again? Being part of CP as opposed to just IB, and mister Bacharach, can you talk about the evolution of how we got here for the CP?
I'm so proud of you guys. So the CP is a program where home it's this It stands for It stands for career program. So it's more focused towards the CTE aspect of education. You're required to take two IB honors classes, one two year and one one year. Why am I blanking something? Okay. Oh, yeah. You have to do this for two years, your junior and your senior year. There are requirements in the class such as you have to do language development and personal professional skills,
like learn how to build a resume. We do work based experiences just with that. And those work based experiences are amazing because they're not limited to just me being culinary. I could go to an engineering one if I wanted to, and I wanted to explore that. And the CP program is, in my experience, more more accepting of students like me than the DP program, which is the full IB. You're taking all honors classes. And I think that flexibility is really what led me to it. It allows me to be the person I am.
Congratulations. Good job. Just my experience with the CP as a CT teacher, and the last couple years when we joined CP and we joined the IB world for culinary and our other, like, home building and auto is also in it, I have seen a more diverse group of learners. Mhmm. So I occasionally would just always get, like, the hands on student. Now I'm getting support from parents that wouldn't let their students take the course Mhmm. Because they thought if it was on, you know, their transcript, they wanna get in the four year university. Mhmm. So we are seeing a more diverse group of students,
and it's amazing to see those students having that opportunity to get to take something that their parents at one time might have not have recognized as an elite program. Right. Yeah. Being similar in our other CP programs like, Chef Sam mentioned, It it really the CP program and what we saw in DC was it really helps students develop their soft skills, which we work hard at on all in all of our CT programs, but not at the level that CP does. They do a personal project Yeah. In tenth grade Yes.
As part of the Can you guys speak right at the microphone, please? I'm sorry about that. They do a personal project, in the tenth grade year, and that's their real their first application of what they've learned presenting to others and their classmates, but also in front of an audience when they walk through the, the gym and the cafeteria at at Huron High School. It's you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna go back to bringing STEM, and and we happen to bring STEM to our elementary schools Mhmm. Through Project Lead the Way. But that early experience has led to the massive growth we've had
at at the upper levels. To, I guess, get into the aerospace a little ahead, we wrote a grant this year with the Michigan NASA Space Grant Consortium. We're still looking for, funding from other sources, but we'll start flight in space with drones at, seventh and eighth grade at five of our seven middle schools Awesome. This upcoming year, as a pilot. But, again, to get kids excited about drones, about aerospace technology, leading them to a high school course ultimately and to the, the county wide courses when they become available. That's awesome.
Well, thank you so much for that part. And I'll I'll Yeah. Any more question? Can I just make a comment real quick? So, Aiden, I heard in your testimonial how you were sort of demoralized, you said, in some of your classes. And it's really evident that you're really engaged and just excited about this program, and, I'm just glad that AAPS that we're a part of that. So, and congratulations on your college acceptance. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Awesome. Alright. Doctor Rowe, why don't you close this out with one last, plug for the summit next week?
Yep. So the, CTE summit is at Community College Morris Lawrence building on Tuesday, the eighteenth. It'll start at 10:00. Chef Sam and Aiden will be there because from ten to 10:30, we have various student engagement stations for half an hour. From 10:30 to twelve will be the formal program presentation. From twelve to one will be lunch with a panel. And at 01:15, we will dismiss for feedback stations. No charge. Mhmm. But we'd love to have you if you're able to attend. Ten to two, WCC Morris Lawrence Building on Tuesday.
Thank you so much for the opportunity this evening and for all that you do. Thank you for waiting. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Addition. Valley. Alright. I believe that brings us down to first briefing for, letter a, n x a n two two zero three, elementary English language arts curriculum recommendation. Thank you, president Feaster. This at this time, we have, miss Linden coming forward, regarding the English, language arts curriculum rec recommendation for elementary. Trustees, a few weeks back, you may remember, miss Linden and some of our,
wonderful staff talking with you about the pilot that we have been doing this year in our elementary classes, classrooms, across the district. And and so now we're at the point where we're ready to make a recommendation. So miss Ozinski is passing out a sample of the curriculum for you. For sure and tell. Yeah. Show and tell. Absolutely. So miss Ozinski is passing that out for you, for you to be able to peruse as miss Linden brings forward the recommendation. So I'll turn it over to, you at this time, assistant superintendent Linden. Thank you very much,
superintendent Parks and president Feaster Trustees. It is my great privilege and honor to bring forward a recommendation this evening that will, should it be approved, have a monumental impact on students across our district. Rarely do we have an opportunity like this where we can make a decision that has this kind of impact and sweeping support. So I am really, really grateful for the folks who are on the screen this evening and would like to recognize a couple who aren't here.
So, first of all, we're joined by Kristen Smith. She is our, coordinator at the elementary level for ELA and social studies, and Kristen has spearheaded this entire process, has led us, soup to nuts to this evening. So, Kristen, thank you very much for everything you have done to prepare for this recommendation this evening. Kristen's partner is not with us this evening, Emily Wark, and, she was also really instrumental in, the work and supporting much of what occurred. And we are also joined by two of our esteemed teachers who piloted curricula this
year. So we're joined by Ali Katavecchio and Julie Cooper, who are gonna wave to you. Julie, would you give a wave so we know? Yeah. There we go. Okay. So thanks for being with us. I do have to say that your work, ladies on the screen and those who are home potentially listening, your work will have an immediate and lasting impact on our students. And I am beyond grateful to you both for participating and facilitating and being part of the pilot and for being here so late this evening. So thank you. Thank you. So, trustees, we're going to share a presentation with you.
In finance committee, we we went through these details. The memorandum has all of this in shorter form for you, but you'll hear a lot of this repeated in the presentation. We've also included included copies of the quotes for your review. So, let me take a moment and just recognize the the 100 folks that aren't on the screen this evening who participated in this pilot. I would love to read off their names to you one by one this evening, but, I do want them all to hear me say how how grateful we are for them volunteering. We have over 180 teachers in the Ann Arbor Public Schools who've completed voluntary training,
really intense training in letters. And that training is significant because it is sustaining our work in the science of reading and understanding what the brain and the development of the brain needs in order to learn how to read. And those pieces have been fundamentally different from the way we have taught in the Anar Republic Schools for some time. So of those 180, we opened up our pilot teachers to volunteer to participate in this process. So yet another really lengthy,
process that includes professional learning and a commitment to implement curriculum that may not make it to the recommendation. So you may let that go, and we'll have to learn a new one. And so it is a significant thing that we had 100 people step up and say we want to be part of that. So here's the recommendation this evening. Very nearly a year ago, we began this work to bring this to you. So this evening, we are asking for your approval in the adoption and five year agreement with Grapevine's Arts and Letters English language arts curriculum using 35 j grant funds at a total
of $1,289,200.19 for the first three full years of implementation. So that grant will get us funded through the year 2028, that spring of twenty twenty eight, fully funded. The remaining two years of the five year agreement, that would be for 2829 and 2930, will not exceed a total of 225,000. We do anticipate additional grants coming our way. We will move heaven and earth to not impact the general fund, but it could be a combination of grant and general fund dollars at that point.
So that is the recommendation this evening, and we're gonna take you through a few slides. My job tonight is to share a quick recap of the pilot process for those who may not have heard it when we brought it to you, I guess, a little over a month ago. Kristen will join us, and she'll talk about the pilot data collection. I'll come back to share a little bit about those data synthesis results, and then we'll share an overview of the curricula. Now miss Osinski did, pass out to you a small bag that has a representative set of materials. You might see some of the text that students will be reading in class.
You'll see some handouts that are are there for your review. So we encourage you to peruse those and to bring any questions you may have for second briefing as well. Those materials, unfortunately, we have not purchased. They're on loan. So just wanted you to let just to know that. We'd love to get them back at some point. But when we do buy it, if we buy it, we'll make sure you have access for sure. Alright. So let's move to the next slide very quickly. This is just a quick overview of the pilot process and how we got to this point. So just a reminder that it began with a teacher review committee of 19 members
to really peruse, the top curricula on the market at the time. They made selections of two curricula, bookworms and great minds, wit and wisdom. The teachers then, were invited to apply to pilot, and those 100 amazing folks, volunteered to be part of that process, and they participated in training in May. We began in August in-depth, launching the school year with the curricula in their hands, and in-depth launching the school year with the curricula in their hands and really deep dive. And from there, a long journey took place with ongoing PLCs taking place weekly with PLCs, our building literacy coaches in and out of classrooms and supporting those professional learning communities
or PLCs. And, that very incredible process, has led us to this recommendation this evening. And should it be approved, the first day of training would be as early as May 6 with all of our k five teachers. On the next slide, briefly, what we needed to know during the pilot was the impact of the materials, the impact of the routines on instructional practice, and the impact on student learning. So you see within these slides, we really wanted to look deeply at the resources, and this meant that our educators had to commit to fully piloting every every component in the curricula. So, again,
that is no small, undertaking, and I'm really grateful to all of our teachers. So we'll go to the next slide. We had to map out how we would learn the impact of those things. So we did that through those support check ins, those PLC meetings weekly, through surveys, and through classroom visits. On the far side, you'll see on the student learning side, we looked at student work samples, student interviews, surveys, feedback, and all those classroom visits that were taking place. A little bit later, miss Smith will share more about caregivers, how our parents and guardians were a part of this process as well, so you hear some of that.
On the next slide, this is just to show that the data tells a small part of the picture a lot like an iceberg. So we can look at all that data, but it's the discussion, the conversation, the narrative that goes behind it. Those elements are really important. So the data by itself is incomplete. An example of this might be how students adapted elements of the curricula to meet the needs of students be sitting before them in the classroom or to what degree, you know, the students engaged and applied their critical thinking. That may not come out in the surveys and the data,
but comes out through the discussions with pilot teachers. And all of that qualitative data is also important for us to consider. So, the discussions that took place particularly during the two days of data synthesis, which I'll talk about a little bit later, are also a big part of this process. So at this point, I'm gonna hand this off to miss Smith. I don't know, Andrew, if we can bring her image up alongside the slide or not. But Kristen is going to talk a little more about the data collection, which is really significant. Thank you so much.
So on the screen, we see an overview of the data collection opportunities provided throughout the pilot process. And we will spend some time in the next few slides detail more information about each form of data collection and the trends revealed by each. You can go ahead and move to the next slide. The educator current curriculum perception survey collected data from our pilot teachers and the building literacy coaches who supported pilot teachers regarding the confidence in various areas of instruction and
perspectives on the current k to five ELA curriculum. So this was the curriculum pre pilot. The survey aimed to gather information about educators' roles and experiences with literacy curriculum to support the instructional materials adoption process. When we look at this data, the why for a change in instructional materials becomes even more clear. Next slide. Hi, Liz. Sure. You did a survey. We're gonna pause for just a quick sec for a question. Yeah. Could you go back to that? I just wanna understand what what the survey was.
Could you go back a slide? So that survey was, prepilot asking our educators what their perceptions were about the current program. So okay. So help me understand help us understand. When I think of the current program, I think, well, a lot of schools are using YouFly. So and they're using Heggerty, and I'm looking at a 36%. So is UFLY at every school? And when they do these surveys, what what are we what are we giving a perception on, I guess? So Kristen can share a little more detail, but it was not about,
You Fly. It was more about the gaps that we currently had, which is on the reading and the writing components. But, Kristen, is there more you wanna share about that? No. It was, asking teachers to think about what we currently use to address reading and writing. So for us, that was our Mesa units of study. So when asked these statements, like, does it sufficiently attend to students' linguistic diversity, only 1% of pilot teachers felt that the Mesa units of study met that indicator, and 0% of our building literacy coaches felt that that met that indicator. Please do slow us down because I know it's late.
We're trying to speed up a little. I think of okay. So I don't know exactly what every school is using, so I'm a little bit, it's hard for me to ask the question. But Lucy Calkins is being used in some schools for writing. Right? For our schools that did not pilot a curriculum, we are currently using Mesa units of study, which were based on Lucy Calkins. We have made some APS adapt adaptations to them, but they are based on a reading and writing workshop model. Right. Okay. So those when teachers answered the survey,
they were thinking about those Mesa units of study and how well the Mesa units of study met these indicators. Yeah. It isn't surprising, and it's also why we say this is a monumental moment for us. Right? Thank you, Kristen. So on this next slide, this helps us to capture some of the information from the pilot implement implementation surveys, which were given three times throughout the pilot to better understand the experience of implementation from the perspectives of teachers and building literacy coaches who put the instructional materials into
practice. Here you'll see a summary of the overall findings after the data from all three of the collections was coded, analyzed, and synthesized by student achievement partners. We know there's a lot of text on this slide, so I'm gonna highlight a few, of the strengths that came from each set of pilot materials. So for bookworms, the overall structure and organization of the program and ease of adaptation for all learners were the greatest strength. Wit and wisdom teachers identified thematic depth, challenge, and the ability to foster critical thinking as the greatest strengths.
In addition, it was noted that wit and wisdom push students deeply in engaging with and analyzing complex text and provided collaborative structures that were effective in meeting the needs of multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Our next form of data collection was our learning walks, which were conducted in over 60 pilot classrooms. These learning walks occurred November 2024 and generated data to understand how well each set of curriculum materials aligned with AAPS instructional priorities.
The focus for the classroom visits included foundational skills direct instruction and foundational skills student practice, reading of complex text, building vocabulary and academic language, volume of reading to build knowledge, prominent writing opportunities, affirming and centering students, and critical literacy and real world connections. So you see some of the results on this slide. And then if we move to the next slide, we see the remainder of the results. So overall trends, revealed that both bookworms and wit and wisdom performed similarly when observing for engaged students
around shared content knowledge. The learning walk data also signaled slightly stronger wit and wisdom alignment to all grade level and affirming practice other than foundational skills, which is not a component of the wit and wisdom program. Yes. We're pausing real quick for a question. So can I guess I'm kinda confused? So can you give us a little bit more as far as, like, for these learning walks, like, what was the process to evaluate the information? And then maybe even explaining a little bit of, like, slide 11 and,
like, what does this mean? I'm trying to understand this data. Yeah. We we can unpack it a little bit more. Okay. Not a problem. So prior to the learning walks, we worked with student achievement partners who's been helping, as a thought throughout the process, and we had a rubric that aligned to the different indicators that you see, in the graphs. And these were the same indicators we used during the curriculum review process. So we were looking for, curriculum materials that showed evidence of each of these things. So prior to the learning walk,
we did some norming work with the rubrics, and then we visited classrooms for ten minutes during pilot instruction time. And while we were in the classroom for those ten minutes, we were looking for evidence of these indicators. And then upon leaving the classroom, we would again do some warming as a group, and we used, a database that student achievement partners provided to be able to put in real time data so that we could generate these graphs to show which of these indicators we saw in each classroom and how each pilot curriculum sort of compared with those indicators.
So I was real quick question here. Well, just a follow-up. So so for example, can you go through each graph? Because that that's what I'm kinda confused about because I'm seeing, like each topic is and Yeah. Because if you look at, like, for the first graph for foundation skills, direct instruction, it seems like only, like, 20 if I'm reading this right, only 25% of wit and wisdom achieve this. Is this what how I'm reading this? Or So earlier, Kristen mentioned, and we just kinda breezed right through it, so I'll back up.
You're looking at bookworms is a comprehensive program. It's not just reading and writing. It includes the foundational skills as part of that. So it would replace Ufly, which we currently use. Haggerty, Morphe Magic foundations, what we currently use for foundational skills. And it would be the beat all and end all. So wit and wisdom scores low because the program does not include those components. But we didn't want to not evaluate bookworms and those components because we have to understand whether those components are going to be good replacements for our current.
So that's why that's scored so low. But 54, but book forms addresses it. But what is this 54? Because it's saying 54%. Whether it was observed during that learning walk or not observed. So it's based on observation. Yes. These learning walks are all observation of the practice in the classroom. So it's meant to be that snapshot walk through. What do we notice? What do we see? And we had 60 of those 60 different classrooms, experience those with different teams all across the district. I think because we don't know what that so out of a %,
fifty four % of those So a % is of the total observations? Correct. So So 54% said we saw that. Okay. That's what I'm seeing. 24% said no. We did not see it, and we expected to. It should have been there. Okay. And the gray, the NA said it probably wouldn't have been observable during that part of the lesson, so it's not applicable. Are those percents or respondents? So this is this is percent. Correct, Kristen? Yeah. Hold on the slide, and then the numbers are the response.
Because this is So the numbers are Correct. Thank you. The numb I'm sorry. I was reading the n and not the percent, so I've just confused you more. The numb and I think, to me, the thing that I take away from this is that, Witten Wisdom is the one chosen, but it cannot ride by itself. I am correct. I mean, that's really important to me because if children don't learn the code, all the great stuff that Wit and Wisdom has to offer isn't going to be realized. So, you know, we I just you know, I'm just hoping that this is all gonna work,
that they're we're gonna make sure that uFLIGHT doesn't lose its those foundational things. It's not that I don't trust you, but I'm just saying that. I want I I just hope that everybody, teachers, everybody, they're utilizing these two programs. They can't lean on just WIT and WISDOM because it won't take care of it in the early grades. And without that so the to address that, if I may, the the pilot teachers of WIT and WISDOM continued to use UFLY alongside. They didn't ditch foundational skills. They continued to teach UFLY. They continue to use foundations in the title one schools.
Yeah. Yeah. They just used wit and wisdom for the reading and writing components. So we know through experience how it will mesh. I gotcha. And it does so extremely well. I think you'll hear from our teachers. And what did what was the Lucy Calkins based program, Mays? Was it Mesa? Oh, Mesa. Mhmm. Okay. So currently, that was what was going on because there was UFly and Mesa and I don't know. Correct. We were on to Simpennell still out there somewhere a long time ago or if it's still around some places. I'm not sure I'm not sure what you're referring to. I I can just say that we've been on a very,
intentional path to transition our practice and our curriculum in a way that we can financially afford and that our teachers have the capacity to build toward. So the letters training happening behind the scenes with a 80 teachers that's been going on for multiple years now, that's really intentional. No. The addition of Hagerty and You Fly as the foundational skills filled an important gap that was not there in the Mesa units. So we did that next, and this is the next step. This is the last and final step of curriculum adoption. Right.
So I don't want folks to think that this has been haphazard in any way, or we're not sure if it's gonna work. We know what the recommendation we're bringing tonight works because we've experienced. No. I got it. What I'm saying is UFLI was already being used with something so that it should be easy to connect it, right, to this program as opposed to the what UFLI had been used with currently. Do you see what I'm saying? Like you said, teachers are used to using the two or the three programs. Am I So the so the compatibility of the two, it should be So easy. Through the pilot Mhmm.
I think I if I'm not clear, I apologize. Throughout the pilot, all of the teachers piloting Witten Wisdom in conjunction with You Fly Yep. Or in conjunction with Foundations did so intentionally to see how well it paired. There you go. And the teachers have said, yes, it pairs beautifully. They fully support it. And you'll see that in the data synthesis. I know we're certainly unpacking this and we need to, and we can do that on each of the data slides. We intended to sort of summarize, but we will spend as much time as we need to because something this critical
needs to be critiqued. It needs to be discussed. We will spend as much time as we need to. So I appreciate all these questions. This is it's a marriage that's great. I mean, between those two, I'm not I'm not I'm I'm cheering on. No. It definitely works. I saw Trusty Wolf's hand next. I just had a quick, question comment. For those people who may not know what YouFLY is, I think maybe we should explain. From what I understand, YouFLY is more of a a phonics type based program where you're talking about blends and Yeah.
Really the basics. So maybe we'll move forward real quick to a slide, Andrew, and then backs so we can explain that part. I just need to find it. It's the one with the reading rope. Yeah. Just think two folks don't know. Not as good to see the first Can you go to the VA, Andrew? Institute, and it's really highly researched. It's an excellent Yeah. I'm familiar with it. Yeah. Yeah. No. I'm saying it more for the Alright. Alright. Kristen, do you wanna explain the slide before we go back to the data? That's great. Is that okay? Sure. So I think it really speaks to one of the things that just came up in the question of making sure that we are addressing the whole reader and that
we're not just focusing on decoding or we're not just focusing on language comprehension. So we know from, our pilot overview, and I think many of you have seen this image before, that in order to build a skilled reader, we need to make sure that they have explicit instruction in all strands of the word recognition area. So phonological awareness, decoding, sight word recognition, as well as language comprehension, which means that we're giving them explicit instruction and background knowledge, vocabulary, language structure, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge.
And so what we're showing here, as part of our recommendation this evening is that we have been using, some very strong instructional materials to support word recognition already. And so you can see that UFLI is listed there as well as foundations and Hegarty and then an instructional resource that we use with some of our upper grade readers to really focus in on morphological awareness. What we were lacking as we began to look at curriculum materials was a solid resource, a research based resource to help us with language comprehension.
So arts and letters great minds arts and letters is what we'll be recommending tonight, and we'll continue to walk through this process. But we hope that this shows the instructional plan to address our whole reader, making sure to provide that instruction in both language comprehension and word recognition together. Appreciate that. And I know very helpful. And I know from talking to a school psychologist, she was over here at Earhart for another training. She was saying, or no. It was a speech teacher. She was saying, boy, I can tell. Students come to me,
and I can tell over the last couple years what that instruction has changed. Yeah. Yeah. It is huge. So so when we go back to slide 11, we've talked about foundational skills and what those are, and you've just sort of seen that as part of the reading rope, that that phonics part, that word work. These other elements, so right under that foundational skills is the reading of complex text. So, Kristen, do you wanna unpack that particular square? Sure. So when we walked into classrooms during these learning walks, we were looking for specific examples of what it meant,
for students to be engaged in complex text within, that type of first that we saw. And so whenever we saw those indicators during the learning walk, we were able to put that into our little learning walk app. And so the results here show that in, slightly more weight and wisdom classes, we saw engagement with complex texts. And so that's kind of how each of these squares work. We would look for evidence of the indicator and then, just in sort of our high level analysis and then some of the trends I shared on slide 12, we kind of compared what we,
how many of the indicators we saw in bookworms classes versus written wisdom classes. Thank you, Kristen. The the building vocabulary to the right of that that lower right square, and academic language, you can see we're neck and neck with both curricula. They they did a great job of unpacking new vocabulary, helping students connect new terms to things they already knew, lots of visuals. So, that was pretty solid. And then if you turn the page, you'll see the volume of reading to build knowledge. And, Kristen, you do a beautiful job talking about knowledge building. So do you wanna unpack knowledge building a little bit?
Sure. So, this is one of the big shifts that we, we're focused on in looking for new curriculum materials to pilot. We know it's critically important for students to learn about the world around them and to be able to learn about topics in science and social studies and to really build content knowledge. So when we went into classrooms for both Bookworms and Witten Wisdom, we were looking for evidence of what those, specific content areas or topics were that students were studying within the module. So we were looking for examples of potentially informational text or what kinds of written
responses, students were doing. In some classrooms, they may have been studying art. So that was a way for us to look at whether or not students were having an opportunity that day to build their knowledge of the world around them. And this is connected to some of the summary points that Kristen shared earlier in terms of of the synthesis that student achievement partners put together when they said wit and wisdom rose to the top when it came to rigor. It's it's related to the complexity here, the knowledge building and the connections. So students were able to read multiple text and make very complex comparisons between the
two, both in the way they discussed, which, by the way, Socratic discussion is a part of Witten Wisdom starting in kindergarten. And that's one of the things that kids really love. So I stole your thunder, Kristen. I know that's coming. But, those those are the ways that students share and build knowledge together through the discourse. So a lot of those things were evident a lot more evident in the great mind's wit and wisdom. And then in the writing, if you wanna share a little more about the differences in the writing here, Kristen. Yeah. So another area that we were observing for and an indicator we used when reviewing
curriculum at the start of this process was ensuring that there were prominent writing opportunities for students, throughout the daily instruction. So when we entered classrooms, you know, of course, there were some classrooms where students might have been engaged in the ten minutes that we were there. So that would have been a classroom we would have needed to mark a no. But in many of the classrooms that we walked into, students were engaged in some sort of, writing process, whether that was working on an end of module task or perhaps working on some type of foundational writing skill. And then as far as affirming practices to the right,
these are, additions that were very important in the Anarbor Public School as part of our values, so we wanted to observe for those as well. So did we see the affirmation and the centering of students, and did we see that critical literacy real world connection? So were those things evident or not? We looked at the text the students were engaged in. We listened to the discourse happening in Socratic discussion, and anything that was observable, was noted. Yes. Affirming what? Is this a representation Identities. Or identities? Identity. Okay. As far as, learning abilities also or more,
social advice? Actually, yeah. Some of it is evident in the kinds of texts that students were engaging in. So whether or not the the titles represented different students, different walks of life, diversity. But what we did hear from students, and, again, stealing your thunder, Kristen. But what we heard from students was that concept of reading the same text together as a class, for many students, was the first time they were actually included. And sitting around the circle together, having a a a Socratic discussion, and every student having the ability to connect and the respect of listening to each
other for oftentimes was the first time for some kids who had been maybe pulled out or in a different small group, to experience that. So pretty powerful. So so thank you for going through that because I was just so this from my understanding is looking at this, this is really looking at when they did the learning walks that they identified these things happening, and it's really comparing really the two curriculums that we were piloting. Correct. How does this compare to because this is gonna be an add on from now you're explaining. This is like the last
implementation to what is currently existing. How do we know that this is actually improving student student learning? I mean, do we have data to show, like, okay. Well, this is great. It's touching on these these points, but, you know, proving this curriculum, are we seeing a change in student achievement? Is that I know that's not what's captured here, but has that been captured anywhere? So, I'll answer that question by sharing that in a pilot situation where teachers are learning the curricula for the first time,
you often see a dip in achievement. So we don't use measures of NWEA or other tools to monitor growth or achievement in a pilot, but we did look at it. We looked at fall to winter to see what we saw, and Yeah. We're we're pretty glad to see that there were some rising scores, but not significant yet. Yeah. But we look again in the spring, and my guess is we'll see it even though this is still a pilot year because the change is so significant, but it does appear in the writing very clearly. And that's I didn't mean by assessments.
I meant, like, was there anything similar to this done to the prior like, to compare, like, what was hap what was being observed with the prior commit you know, curriculum? No. But the That's what I meant. Because I know you will see it quickly. I know. We didn't we didn't spend time doing learning walks in the current because back on slide nine, we we asked educators, how well do you think? And it was 1% to zero in most areas. So we we didn't we didn't spend time doing learning walks. We we do know that curriculum pretty well.
It's been in the district for well over a decade. So, yeah, thank you for that question. Sorry. When you said achievement, I I thought we were talking about assessments. Okay. Alright. Any any other questions about those? Okay. So now we'll continue on looking at some of the other forms of data that we collected, and, hopefully, this will show in some ways, the achievement and the impact that we saw of materials. So here's some statistical information to illustrate student representation for the collected work samples and interviews, that we conducted.
The students who we collected work samples from were also then interviewed by the building literacy coach using the following questions as they reflected on their experiences in the classroom and that work sample that they had produced. What do you like about reading and writing in your classroom? What about this writing project makes you feel proud? What did you learn that helped with this project? And if you could change anything about reading and writing in your classroom, what would it do? So the next slide will show, some of the overall trends from those interviews. So when asked what they liked about reading and writing in the classroom,
the majority of our Bookworm students responded with the shared reading of text, and the second most popular response was learning new reading and writing skills. When asked what they liked about reading and writing, in the classroom, the majority of our wit and wisdom students responded with building knowledge about topics studied, and the second most popular response was utilizing learning routines that were taught within the curriculum. Next slide. When asked what they would change about reading and writing in their classroom, the majority of our bookworm students responded when having more choices of text and topics
to interact with. And our wit and wisdom students reported, also the choice of text and some more flexibility with trying to engage and learn. Here are two specific quotes that surfaced during our student interviews, so I'll just give you a moment to read, the words from the bookworm student and then from a Witten Wisdom student. So the culminating tasks from module one from bookworms and win also collected from 37 students that represented 12 of our pilot schools. Work samples were collected at each grade level for each curriculum and represented striding at
grade level and some accelerated students. When we looked at the work samples, we analyzed based on the following criteria, knowledge building, culturally responsive sustaining, grade level, accessibility, student learning and impact, and additional, context. On the screen, you can see the top trends that emerged from the analysis of these work samples. You also have work samples included, in the bag of materials that miss Linden shared. It is tough to see them on the screen, so thank you, Kristen, for including those in the pack. So as we click through the next slides,
this is going to be able to show you just a glimpse of that student work, and we'll also show you, what the student said about the work that they completed and then what the task overview was for that grade level at the end of module one. So all of these slides will be structured the same, and we'll see a first grade example from Bookworms and Wit and Wisdom, a second grade example, and a fourth grade. So, again, just kind of meant to click through, but definitely take a look at the quotes and also just kind of looking at the type of task required by each curriculum.
So here's first grade for bookworms. And and let us know if you'd like us to pause longer. I have to. Wit and wisdom, first grade. Aquarium second grade. Went with some second grade. And Bookworms fourth grade And what and what's on fourth grade? Kristen, I'm gonna pause you at the writing for just a quick second because, this is one of the things that that our teachers and our families mentioned when we surveyed and when we talked with them was the astonishment at the quality of writing and the rigor that they were seeing,
for students. So, at at this point, you can see both curricula, provided pretty great opportunities for writing and synthesizing. There's just more rigor that came through and more connection and what voice inversions of what students were able to produce. So any any questions about the writing samples or how those were collected? That's it. Appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. So then the final piece of data we wanted to highlight was our caregiver survey. This survey was shared with all families who had a child in a pilot classroom. We translated the survey into six languages,
and families had seven days to respond. The survey asked the following questions. Does your child share about reading and writing at home? What have you heard from your child about their reading and writing this school year? And what have you noticed about your child's reading and writing this year? On the next slide are a few high level trends from these caregiver surveys. So when asked about what they've heard from their child about reading and writing this school year, the majority of Bookworm's caregivers heard about book titles and topics. The second most popular response was foundational skills growth,
like sight words, sounding out words, and learning new words. When asked about what they heard from their child about reading and writing this school year, the majority of our wit and wisdom caregivers heard about topics students were learning about and information about books that they had read. The second most popular response was about the writing that their student was doing or writing that the child had shared at home. It's important to note we also heard from a lot of wit and wisdom caregivers about improved foundational skills that was attributed to the use of UFLYER foundations during this
pilot as we know WIT and WISDEM didn't have its own foundational skills component. And then, the next slide is kind of the wrap up of the survey trends for the caregivers. When asked what they noticed about their child's reading and writing this year, our bookworms caregiver caregivers reported overall improvement in literacy skills, especially writing, and then the second most popular response was increased confidence in reading and motivation and an interest to read at home. Wit and wisdom caregivers reported improvement in literacy skills and competence,
and the second most popular response was excitement about reading and writing. The following two slides will be, some quotes from those caregiver surveys. Here is a bookworms caregiver, And then here, the wit and wisdom caregiver that, speaks very specifically to the writing, progress that we just mentioned. Thank you, Kristin. These next two slides are an overview of the two days spent together with our representative team of teachers, really synthesizing all of the data, seeing the raw data, soup to nuts, the summaries, and discussing, the feedback they'd received from their school teams who piloted,
the feedback that they wanted to share about their pilot experiences, and weighing those things against the AAPS values and the criteria for effective curriculum. So this is an overview you'll see. We spent time on day one just reframing and having context about how we would spend our day understanding folks knew their role, the incredible value of the data and making sure that we're centering the perspectives of multiple, stakeholders and diversity. Really, my charge has also been that the commitment we are making here and the change
we're investing in would last a decade. And so really putting, the weight of these decisions upon those making them, that we are doing so with students at the center and making sure that whatever we select is gonna work for all students, particularly students we've underserved historically. So that's been really important to us throughout the process. We reviewed all the criteria by which we would be, coding and and scoring and discussing, including those values, and you'll see some of the artifacts coming up here in just a second.
On day two, we spent time in special considerations. So, really, what were the standout strengths and challenges, that we heard regularly during our PLCs every single week and those monthly meetings where the pilot teachers all got together and, shared results in their classrooms and pain points and things they were excited about. What were those? So those were noted and discussed. The data analysis protocol, occurred in small group and then shared out to large group, and was really quite consistent across those small teams. That's part of the vetting process.
And the facilitated discussion, and finally, the decision making process, which involved some doc conferences that we'll show you some slides for. So on the next slide, you'll see some examples. That chart to the right was was, something that was guiding this entire process. Those values were developed by our educators participating in the pilot saying these are the things that we hold dear, in the Ann Arbor Public Schools that we know and recognize. And so you can see the original artifact, but we've typed those out because it can be a little hard to read in that photo. Those were really important to us,
throughout the process. And so at all times throughout that evaluation, we came back to those values to ground ourselves. Here, you're seeing those things that stood out, the common themes that we are bringing back from our school teams, what was observed and what we heard, including the data. So what were the standouts and reactions to wit and wisdom versus bookworms? All of those things really fell under really common categories for each, and that's one way that you know you have a pretty good bead on what the curricula is doing for you. And then finally, on the next slide,
this is when at the end of day two, we ask the question, is there anything more we need to know, and are we ready? And the consensus was we are ready. So everyone in the room, a balanced group of bookworms and great minds, wit, and wisdom teachers, were given five dots and two index cards. One for great minds, wit, and wisdom and one for bookworms, and they could distribute those five dots in any way they chose. They could put all five on one. They could put three and two, one and four, where they thought that the curricula really met the needs of the Anarbor public schools.
And you can see here that we had 50 for great minds, wit, and wisdom and 10 for bookworms. So a pretty clear front runner, in that process. Any questions about the data synthesis? I don't see any now. Okay. Super. So I'm gonna hand this back to Kristen, and she will introduce, Julie, who I know or is it Ally who's still with us? Let me see. I can't see your faces. You still have both of them, and I do just wanna take a moment. This is a very special part of the night because we have, some of our spectacular pilot teachers,
our teacher leaders here with us, and I am so excited for you to hear from them, about their pilot experience with Grapevine's curriculum. And also just wanna acknowledge that for them to be here at 10:20PM after a full day of teaching, a staff meeting, and up early tomorrow morning to be with their students is just extraordinary. So thank you so much to both of you, and I'm excited, for our board to hear the stories that you'd like to share. So I'm gonna have, Ally go ahead and kick us off. Ali is a Lakewood Kindergarten Teacher. Good evening, members of the board.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak this evening. My kindergarten class had the opportunity to pilot the great minds wit and wisdom reading curriculum this school year. As I was preparing to speak with you tonight, I was trying to think of the right words to express how much my class has grown using this research based curriculum, but I thought I was. So in alignment with AAPS's mission to keep our kids at the forefront of district decision making, I thought it would be appropriate to ask my students what they have enjoyed learning
during our reading lessons this school year to hear about their words. Larry said he likes acting out the stories and explained that when you learn, your brain gets bigger. Leah said that it is important to listen to others' ideas and it is fun to learn repeated language. Analita likes learning new things that she didn't know before, and she enjoys participating in Socratic seminars. Gabby enjoys learning the story elements and finding text evidence. Atindra explained that rereading is important to help know the books better,
and Liam said that it is important to read, write, and look at the illustrations to understand a story. These words and ideas may seem big for five and six year olds, but these are the types of critical thinking conversations and activities we engage in each day during our reading block. Initially, it was a little daunting to wrap my head around implementing a new reading curriculum into our daily learning. However, with continued support from my building literacy coach and weekly collaborative meetings to reflect and
plan, I have been able to see the value of this curriculum along with my students' growth and an overall sense of joy while engaging with different texts. The great minds wit and wisdom curriculum has allowed my students to interact with a great variety of texts in a new and exciting way. I am very excited to continue to see their growth as our school year progresses, and I look forward to the implement implementation of a new research based curriculum to benefit all students within AAPS. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Ali. And now we would love to hear from Julie, who is one of our incredible second grade teachers from Bryant Elementary. Thank you. Good evening, trustees and superintendent Parks. My name is Julie Cooper, and I am a second grade teacher at Bryant, but I'm also a proud parent of a Bryant Tiger and a student. So I had a unique perspective as I got to kind of look at this, as an education and as a parent of two children who would hopefully be experiencing a change in their curriculum. My experience was engaging, it was rewarding,
and it was actually joyful, as an educator. I got to experience things that I tried to make a priority for the learners in my classroom, but I actually got to do that as a learner with other colleagues that were also piloting, and I felt a real connection to everyone that put their time and energy into this. I also felt that there was layered intention every single step of the way and every time we met and, every bit of information I was given and I'm super excited to see that there is a shift for AAPS and heading positively towards supporting literacy development for all of
our students. I received incredible support from Dawn and Kristen and the rest of the curriculum, staff. My building admin, Jamar Humphrey, was incredibly supportive of the choice and time and effort that went forth, as well as my colleague and my BLC. My grade level colleague piloted with me, so it was great to be in the trenches with someone so close by. I knew what was expected of me each way, and I knew that I walked away with a feeling of being heard, a feeling of being validated within the district. And, it made me realize that this choice could and would place our AAPS students on
our trajectory for future literacy excellence. And change takes time and it's hard, but it's definitely the first step in a wonderful direction. The easiest way for me to explain this to you or to show it to you would be to share a story that I shared with Kristen right as we were kind of they were getting ready to prepare for the the data the final data synthesis. I have a student in my class, who is nonverbal and, has not yet found his words but will one day. And his, reading comprehension has continued to be a challenge and,
up until this point of the year, any other teacher, any other way has not been able to assess, that it's been an unknown area of unknown ability. And on that day when I emailed Kristen, the student actually had found a piece of paper from one of the earlier lessons when we were doing, like, a gallery walk through an anchor text. And, when I came around to where the student was working, this picture from the book, it's called The Buffalo Are Back and the picture that the student had was just
a picture of plains with large grasses and no animals or anything and the story of the Buffalo Are Back book is all about how the buffalo existed and the Native Americans lived in, you know, peace with them and this cooperation and just kind of all of the changes that went on, and then how the buffalo ended up coming back is the arc that it follows and the change that exists. So the student had this just this image with no buffalo and nothing on it and I watched as the student was drawing and my student,
who had never been able to, share comprehension or, verbally express, his level of knowledge, I watched him draw the buffalo back into the picture. And, I was astounded. And it was because that curriculum allowed him to be engaged. We were anchoring on knowledge building, and not just, like, just reading words, and he was able to participate at every level. And even though maybe an observer might not have seen those days,
this reached that student and then there was a wonderful moment where he was able to show myself and his fellow students and now, that picture proudly hangs on what we call our fridge in the classroom and and he hung it up with a smile on his face. So I think that altogether that story, really encompasses how I feel about great minds and how I feel, sharing with you about my hopeful, choice that you will support this decision tonight. Thank you, Julie. Thank you, Ali. Really appreciate you being here.
Amazing stories. May I? I I wanna thank you. Teachers, you, first of all, did the letters training, and that's a huge commitment. And I I know it's like a two year, I don't know how you did it, but it's it's a huge amount. And that you took a risk to say, I'll do this pilot because I'm the the job is so hard and then to take this on. And I just applaud you so much because, reading is my passion, and it's what I've spent my life doing. And I just you're part of my club, and and I just cheer you on because kids can't read.
They can't their lives will not be as full. So thank you. Awesome. Alright. Mister Boop? I was just gonna say thank you so much. Yeah. Now get try to get some sleep. Thanks again. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, ladies. Okay. Kristen is gonna pick up and talk about the arts and letters, which is the second edition of Great Minds that wasn't available during pilot but is the newest and, better edition. So Ariane. The finish line here. We're gonna go ahead and detail the final step in our decision making process.
So on Friday, March 7, a team of educators met to analyze the updated version of Great Minds. Arts and letters is based on the same DNA, instructional design, and pedagogical approach as wit and wisdom. The update, however, in arts and letters were based on input to further improve the teacher and student experience. While many of the module topics are the same, some of the improvements include new texts that are more authentic to you that more authentically represent the lived experiences and backgrounds described in the text,
stronger within the lesson and from lesson to lesson, and then increased usability of teacher and student resources, including the student workbook platform. And finally, there was an increase in built in scaffolding to support diverse school. So this team that met on March 7 to analyze great minds, weight, and wisdom alongside arts and letters included 12 of our classroom teachers, four BLCs, four representatives from title one, EL, and OSE, and then three representatives from our district leadership team.
And during this session, we had facilitators from Great Minds with us, and they engaged us in side by side comparisons of the curriculum, with a focus at looking at learning goals, lesson structure, text, assessments, and teacher student experience. Our participants also had an opportunity to teach lessons and engage in q and a. So similar to the data synthesis process, this process culminated in preference voting as a way for our participants to indicate which version of the curriculum best aligned with our values. Voting indicated that arts and letters, the version of Grapevine's ELA curriculum that we would like to recommend to you tonight,
was the preference. And on the previous slide, we had sort of a very majority vote with 99 votes for arts and letters and six votes for art for written. Can you repeat that last stat, Kristen? You were cutting out. With our preference voting, again, the dots to share, everybody had the five dots. 99 votes were for the updated version, Arts and Letters, and six votes were for wit and wisdom. So moving to the next slide, we're just gonna give a little bit of an overview, of some of the components of Arts and Letters.
So Arts and Letters provide students with authentic grade appropriate knowledge rich text. Each module lends literary, nonfiction, fine art, and multimedia text to engage all students in learning. The curriculum really revitalizes the traditional ELA block and seamlessly integrates literary knowledge with subjects like social studies and science and helps to cultivate a dynamic and cohesive learning environment that builds language. On the next slide, We just wanted to show that Arts and Letters really offers an approach that goes
beyond just identifying a story's main idea to develop students' comprehension and really dig into critical thinking and imagination. It builds essential skills and deepens understanding and enriches students' grasp of literature and analytical thinking. Because students will explore topics through multiple modalities, students build knowledge and make connections across content. With this solid knowledge base, they'll be able to more effectively listen, write, and absorb information, deepening their learning and ensuring it has relevance for all students. The next slide we've already taken a look at,
but this was just to emphasize the importance that with the addition of Arts and Letters to our existing foundational skills materials, we will be able to support students in each specific strand of the reading rope, so making sure to support both language comprehension and word recognition. To consider the impact of this implementation, we can also refer to the Simple View of Reading, which was proposed by Goff and Tumner in 1986, which is a formula that makes clear that strong reading comprehension cannot occur unless both
word recognition skills and language comprehension abilities are strong. So we must teach students to decode expertly as early as possible. When the students can decode expertly, their reading comprehension capabilities equal their language comprehension ability. We must also provide students with strong content knowledge in many domains at all grade levels in order for them to develop adequate language comprehension abilities. Thank you, Kristen. So we are, as you can't probably tell, we're extremely proud to recommend tonight Great Minds Arts and Letters.
Quickly on the next slide, just to go over the components for teachers, they will get what used to be called a teacher manual, but here is called a teach book. It has daily plans and, match, much guidance. It it's really like a a small professional learning, teach book as well. It includes the new elements that wit and wisdom did not have, which is a prologue that is designed for, supporting multilingual learners to bridge knowledge and, make connections in their home language and in the English language that they're learning.
It works really well for a lot of students, though. Included in the teacher version is digital versions of the teach and the prologue teach books. There are also slides that are customizable so teachers can edit and make them relevant to the students sitting in front of them if they so choose. There are digital assessments available, as well as one on ones and paper pencil, of course. And then classroom posters, are there to support the learning for each of the modules. For the students, they will get learn books. We used to call these workbooks.
They're learn books, and those are really critical. They they love writing in those, by the way. There are also access for students to videos and multimedia resources so students can, have multiple ways to view and receive their learning and their knowledge. That's also very important to, how we teach modern learners. There is a volume of reading text available to them, very rich and diverse text, which you'll see a bit of on the next slide. And then my favorite part of this is the family tip sheets that go home so that we can engage our families and caregivers as their students' first teachers,
right, to, support their reading development at home. So on the next slide, you'll just see a quick snippet of some of the texts that come with the program, that will be in our classrooms and used by our students. You can see that the library is really beyond equal, in my opinion. These are real books. Many of them are award winners. They're not contrived, and they're they don't speak down to children. They really honor their intelligence. They represent diverse characters. They're very affirming stories that that show everyday ordinary families that look like them.
They, represent also a variety of genres. So you'll see social studies, science represented the arts, because what we know is that while students are learning to read, they can also read to learn. They don't have to wait to third grade. Right? So, these are some of the springboards for those Socratic discussions or, forums that you heard our wonderful teachers speaking to. So this is the wrap. We've survived. To reiterate, the recommendation this evening is to approve the adoption and five year agreement with Great Minds Arts and Letters English language arts curriculum using 35 j grants for a total
of $1,289,200.19, covering the first three years of implementation through the year, the spring of twenty twenty eight or June of twenty twenty eight. And the remaining two years of the five year agreement, that that would be the 2829 school year and the 2930 school year, not to exceed 225,000. That's about a 14% contingency should we gain enrollment. The actual quote is for January, But we're hoping through our efforts that we're going to recruit new students to the Ann Arbor Public Schools,
and that we will do everything we can to ensure it's 100% covered by grant dollars, but we cannot guarantee that. So it will be a combination, if we can't support it 100 by grant dollars. And I do want to share that after meeting with our finance team, given the current situation, everything can change. We are reasonably assured that the general fund can tolerate that cost should it land fully on the general fund. Thank you. Ready for questions. Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Trustee Wilkins? So arts and letters is kind of the upgrade to wit and wisdom that happened
somewhere along the way, like a rebranding kind of thing? Correct. Okay. Yes. So it's the same thing that was all tested. It's just called something else now. It's just the new addition Okay. With that teacher input and that new element called the prologue. Okay. They also adjusted the time so that it it streamlines and fits much better into our school day, which was quite honestly one of the struggles that we were facing. So it's a much better fit for us at this point. Yeah. What else would you say about it, Kristen? Have I missed anything? I think I would just mention some of the text that they Yes.
Replaced, not necessarily the module topic, but a few of the text that were more representative. Different cultures and diversities have been upgraded to still support the same module topic. I would also say usability was something that they reflected Yes. A lot upon based on teacher feedback. So as Dawn said, the teacher manual and the student manual, are just a little bit easier to use, and that was one of the really wonderful parts of our side by side experience was to kind of look at what the lesson looked like in in wisdom versus
what it looked like, in its new kind of updated form. Sorry, Julie and Allie. I should have asked you. I didn't realize you were still with us, and you haven't gone to bed. I see your faces now. Yep. The these, BLC coaches, will they be was that just part of the pilot? Will they still have access to these coaches? How does that work? Yeah. Great question. So we're blessed, through a variety of grant dollars to have building literacy coaches in each of our buildings. So they will be there throughout the duration of implementation. Are they connected to this program?
No. They've been in place. They're they're An EPS thing. Correct. Okay. Yep. I didn't I didn't understand that before. No. They they've been with us for many years. And awesome. They have all been instrumental. Alright. Last question. What happens after the five years? So after the five years, we would make a decision about renewal, and we anticipate this is a curricula we're really invested in. But after five years, we'll reevaluate and determine whether there's something else on the market or whether we continue with great minds, arts, and letters. Great question.
Professor Wilkerson? Couple of questions. Yes. Related to the comparisons between the programs, some of the highlights of the, bookworms was the group reading portion. So are we able to roll that into our implementation of wisdom? Great question. Kristen, do you wanna address the group reading? Yes. And then I might ask if Ally or Julie wants to jump in. It is a daily component in in wisdom arts and letters as well. So I don't know I don't wanna put you on the spot, but if Julie or Ali would wanna mention, what the shared reading component, of your day to day instruction looked like,
that might be helpful. Oh, go ahead, Julie. I was just gonna say, just jumping in from, like, the second grade perspective, there is still tons of opportunity, where we engage in share reading where you are sharing with a partner or we're actually sharing reading within smaller groups. So it is an integral part of just the daily routine based on what whatever point we are in a lesson. So, there is, but then there's also opportunity for those students who are independent readers at a a second grade level to go ahead and experience a text at an independent way,
but then also still engage with it, if they want to in a shared way. And I was just gonna share, our lesson from today. We were reading a story by Cynthia Ryland, and, it's called when I was young in the mountains. And my students, were in pairs, and, what's really nice about this curriculum is they get the books into the students' hands. So I'm not just reading it, but the kids are actually interacting with the book as well. And we, determined the main topic of the book as a class,
and then the students work together to find text evidence and, key details that support the main topic. And, so then we created a web as a class, like a graphic, organizer to, organize our thoughts. So that was another example of the shared reading within, the curriculum. Thank you. Cool. You you know, another one of those areas too is the ease of learning how to deliver it. Right? And I think Yeah. Seeing that one is much stronger in that area, I think maybe that's a area we could go back to our providers and and
look for more partnership, if we can try to negotiate some investment in professional development because we know this program does cost more, that might be a great avenue, especially as I think, you know, if we look at the list that's in the presentation of the districts that have adopted it, I think we are still going to be one of the largest districts in Michigan that would roll something like this out. We definitely are. So perhaps we could, you know, try to be a partner and a brand ambassador. Yeah. I I love that you you asked that and that you said that.
And I I probably should say that the reason arts and letters was not piloted is because it wasn't available. It's it hadn't been printed yet. They were still in the print development part of it. So we have grant dollars that will expire September 30, and we knew we couldn't wait. So we were assured that there were incredible similarities in first edition, second edition. And one of those major changes was that usability from teachers. And I'll be honest with you. One of one of my worries, and Kristen probably shared it,
was, we may be on the cusp of adopting a really great curriculum. But if it's really challenging for teachers, how do we help them? How do we get over over that initial, you know, sort of tough implementation learning stage? And arts and letters answered that in a really big way for us. So it's become a much easier lift for teachers. I'm not suggesting it will be easy because it's going to change habit, it's going to change practice. Anytime you do that, it requires a lot of support and grace,
but it definitely has improved. And we do we are working on that professional learning agreement so that we have that kind of deep support in exchange for them using our our name and our success, right, as a marketing tool for them. So you're spot on. We never want to not use the Ann Arbor Public Schools reputation to get some partnership and buy in back. That's really important. Yeah. Okay. And then one one other question. On the actual contract itself, some of the changes that we looked at between the finance committee review and tonight,
I I think on the supplemental for years three and four, we only have programming for 1,300 students. They think we might need to increase that to 2,600. Yes. We do. We do. We do indeed. Yes. I think that is a typo on their part, but we'll we'll address it. Okay. But would do we think that would double the cost of that supplement for We have been assured that $2.25 total for those two years, but billed, in one bulk. So Okay. We'll be able to cover that initial total cost.
Okay. Perfect. Yeah. Thank you for that question and for grabbing that. I will point out, too, in the in the three year agreement, you'll notice that the teacher licenses, are are free in years two and three. That's another part of the bargaining and agreement. You'll also note that we were able to lock in the 4050% discounts on the student bundles partly because we're the Anarbor public schools, and this is the first year of implementation of arts and letters, and we're gonna be a big help to them as they market. I have one additional question. So this program is uniform across all our k five.
Yes? And so currently, like, foundations might be used at some elementaries. You fly at others. I I don't know this, but I think that's right. So do you envision, just for the ease of trying to everybody being on the same page that you're gonna move to everyone doing UFLY or whatever with this? What what do you It's it's a really good question. And, you know, some of the history of of how we got here, is being able to use title dollars for title one schools to get them a really great foundational skills curriculum when we didn't have funding to do that.
Like a Dickens. Correct. Yeah. Right. So that's how we wound up with foundations in our title one schools and you fly in our non titles. We do plan to transition to UFLY as a district, so Kristen can share maybe a little more about the process, but it would be a a phased approach for those teachers because it's tough to learn a brand new curricula on top of another brand new curricula. So Yeah. Kristin, what would you what would you share? Yeah. That it definitely is our goal to work towards, a guaranteed literacy curriculum for all students regardless of what school that they go to,
which would mean a transition to one, phonics program. We are also just trying to be extremely mindful that there is a brand new implementation of arts and letters coming next year, and we really wanna make sure that teachers, are having an opportunity to share their voice about capacity before we make any major shifts. But I think our goal would be to be a district where we use the same set of materials for all areas of reading instruction. So we will hope to share some more details soon, but we know, there's big change coming already, and we really wanna think carefully about our teachers and what they are already gonna
be shifting to, but I think you just bring up a good point that we really want students regardless of which school they go to or which teacher they have, to experience the same set of instructional materials. Thank you. I really appreciate that question because the guaranteed curriculum is really I have one quick question. Let's see what So miss Linden, does the so the cost does the cost include, support and additional coaching for the teachers? It's not just for materials, but it also includes support. So what we're bringing you today is the materials quote.
We're working now on the contract for professional learning, but that will be completely funded by grant dollars. And that professional learning, I'm really proud to say, maybe for the first time in a long time, is gonna include all of our resource teachers and our self contained teachers together with our general education teachers because we believe that all students are general education students, and they belong in the tier one environment as much as possible. And that means access to the general education curriculum. So all of those resource teachers, self contained teachers will get full sets of curricula,
have access to all of these tools, and will be alongside teachers. We're also really proud that our paraprofessionals will be included in much of the training that that the teachers are receiving as as aids in the classroom and really integral members. So this is something we're still negotiating and getting our accounts together for. I'm really proud of the way Great Minds does professional learning because they do them in small groups, but that means a lot more trainers. So, yeah, we'll be leveraging the Anarbor Public Schools, reputation and the implementation should it be approved. Okay.
Wonderful. One more question. Was there I don't know if there are additions of this particular program that are used that our district could have possibly tried to to get at maybe a cheaper rate? That's a great question. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah. So because we're purchasing something that that is finishing print for the first time, in mid May, We we were not able to find any used copies of this. Even the copies that you have, we have to take back when you're done with them. So, there isn't anything available for us to purchase used.
But I will say that many districts who have used wit and wisdom for several years are looking to make the transition now to arts and letters. So I feel like, our waiting actually positioned us really well, to use taxpayer dollars, really thoughtfully, rather than purchase something and four years later move to another. I think we've made a really good decision to invest in foundational skills and now move to that reading and writing. Thank you. You bet. Anything else, trustees? Well, thank you all so much for taking the time to present and for all of the information you gave us about the process it took you all to come up
with this recommendation. We truly appreciate all of the hard work. Thank you. So, have a great night, and I'm sorry you're up so late. Tomorrow. We'll take care of them. Thank you. We'll do something special for both of you. Don't worry. Alright. Thank you, miss Linden, and, just the wonderful work that you all have done. Mhmm. I believe that brings us down to item b, annex a N220 2, New Dick Elementary trade contracts part two. And I will turn it over to superintendent parks and maybe miss Corona. Yep. We have miss Corona coming,
forward That's how we appropriate with the new Dick and element elementary trade contracts part two. I see saw this in committee of the whole. If you refresh, you'll see the reordered, items. I see that some looks on some faces. So just do your, refresh, and you'll see the new order, for this particular section. So we're gonna the guidance. Some of us were a little confused. That's okay. That's okay. So we'll turn it over to you, miss Corona. Thank you, trustees and superintendent Parks. So tonight, we're bringing forward, the Newdickin Elementary trade contract recommendations part two.
Part one was previously brought to the board that incorporated some of the early work of concrete masonry, structural steel, items that go into the basically, into the ground first. The second half is, the remaining of the items minus, landscaping, painting, flooring. Those are items that will really be put in near the end of the project closer to two years from now. So, we will be bidding those out at a later date when we get a little bit closer to, have some better pricing versus having somebody try to hold pricing for over two years, which will probably see,
escalated pricing in order to hold that. So, we're gonna tip try to take advantage of, hopefully, not having escalation. So, it does include a 5%, contingency, and, we are bringing forth, roofing, doors, frames, hardware, storefront glass and glazing, elevator, fire suppression, plumbing, HVAC, geothermal, and electric, and fire alarm. Alright. Any questions for Seuss? These are bond dollars? These are these are bond dollars. Yes. Thank you. Appreciate it. Is there no other questions? Then I guess that brings us down to letter CNXAN2 1 9 7,
New Logan Elementary trade contracts part two. And I'll do that still, miss Kron. Yep. Go ahead. Take it away, miss Kron. Thank you. Again, this is part two. I think I had mentioned, in one of the last board meetings that, I was bringing forward everything minus, the HVAC. We had held off on that. Actually, I pulled it, between the first and the second briefing. We wanted to make sure that there was a complete scope and that, we felt comfortable bringing this contractor forward forward. We are, and we are making a recommendation to bring quality air systems for the HVAC for,
the 11,000,787. We are carrying a 5% contingency. And, again, with, same as Dickon Elementary, our painting, flooring, and landscaping contracts will be bid at a later date. Any questions for us, please? Bond dollars. Thank you. That's my question. And to clarify. Right? We're still doing geothermal, but this is the HVAC system to support that geothermal field that will be installed. Yes. Thanks thanks for, bringing that up for a clarification. The geothermal, field is, by one contractor.
They bring up, the piping and everything basically to the wall of the building, and then the HVAC contractor picks up everything from that point and, will be providing everything from heating, cooling, pumps, piping, everything involved with, heating, ventilation, air, and air conditioning. Again, any trust any questions for us? Alright. Seeing none, thank you so much for your time. I did have one additional thing, and I didn't know if it was gonna come up at about the upcoming, engagements. I don't know if that was gonna be coming up later in the agenda. I don't think so. So this is probably the best time to do it.
Yeah. Yeah. I I would like to, bring up, please check a 2schoolsbond.org website, but we do have some upcoming open house events, that will help kick off some of our new projects. King, Burns Park, and Wines all have engagements open house engagements that are open for the community to learn about the process and, what's going to be coming, to those schools. Wines is on April 1 at 6PM. Burns Park is on April 3 at 6PM, and King Elementary is April 9 at 6PM.
In addition to our three projects that we're looking to, kick off, we have Lakewood and Lawton that have been in the middle of engagement for the first year of engagement, and we're also having an open house for those communities on March 18 at 6PM and March 20 at 6PM. You do not need to RSVP. So if you'd like to, feel free. You can go to info@a2schoolsbond.org. But you can just come. It's gonna be between six and 7PM on all of those nights.
Thank you so much for that information, miss Corona. Any additions or questions, trustees? Okay. Thank you so much. Have a great night. Thank you. Alright. I believe that brings us down to letter d, policy 1,300, public participation. Trustees, this is the the the the the section that you probably heard a lot of public commentary about tonight or one of the two you heard a lot a lot of public commentary about tonight. The governance, committee did have, some discussions about making some changes to a few of our policies. This is the policy that focuses on, on board designated groups.
The governance committee has been considering making changes to this for over the last eight months. So this is not something that's new, but we did decide to bring it forward today for first briefing so that we could discuss it and determine, how the board might want to address it. What this what this, proposal is, is not that we eliminate any groups. This board did not create these groups. This board cannot eliminate these groups. The only thing this proposal would do would be to no longer have designated groups
as a portion of this board's weekly or regular meeting agendas. These groups are will still exist, and they can still seek permission to come and speak at every meeting that they wanna come speak at. So it does not eliminate that in any way. So I just wanna make sure that's 100% clear. There was a lot of comments tonight that suggested we were going to eliminate groups. We're not doing that and we have no power to do it. So that is not anywhere on the table. That being said,
the proposal for the change in policy eliminates the, quote, the the designation as board designated groups and it allows them to seek time at the president or from the president, from executive committee, or any trustee, to seek to have them added to the agenda when if should they wanna speak. It would allow for them to still have, longer time periods. The proposal we are suggesting is a time period of eight to ten minutes per group, and it would allow us to be able to be in compliance with,
some of the best practices that we've been given direction from, from MASB and other governing bodies to get rid of and terminate the designation but not terminate any groups. So let me make sure we're clear on that. And with that, I'll open the floor for some discussion from trustees. Trustee Wilkins? I I would just also like to add, I think the other consideration that it changes is historically, these groups were approved at our organizational meeting on an annual basis.
And so this expands access to new groups that are founded throughout the year to seek opportunities to speak at meetings. True. It opens it up to more groups. It does not limit it to to fewer groups. It allows more groups to have access to present and and be incorporated into our regular business meetings. So So I have a question. So one thing you mentioned, you said that, a group could go to a board member, you, the executive committee. So I think we have to have it tightened up,
what our protocol is. So if it means they're gonna contact you, it goes to the executive committee or I don't know. I just think to have that a little clearer would might be helpful. That makes total sense to me. And it could be that they go and talk to me and then I contact or I say, hey. Go talk to Right. The president. Drop them an email or whatever. But I just think if that's clear, that would be good. Okay. Thank you. If I could support that. Yes. Yeah. I think to be very clear, and I appreciate that, Trustee Schmidt, nothing is going to change in terms of how our agenda gets determined.
That will be up to the members of the executive committee, of course, the support of the board because at any point, we could change the agenda Right. Should, you know, we we choose to do so. So, again, let us know if you want to speak. Executive committee hears that request, and we'll try to figure out how to fit it on the agenda at the appropriate time. Question? Yes, trustee Wilkes. So those groups who would like to speak, what exactly is the, I guess, the protocol, or is that something to be to to be determined? Would they just do what they I don't know. How would someone So let's say,
I have a group, and we wanna speak at your next at the next board meeting. Right. What would be my first what are the steps? Right now, for the designated groups, they're on the agenda as a standing committee every regular board meeting. Okay. And they notify miss Olzinski or, miss Park Seisme or someone in administration or you that they're intending to give a presentation at the regular board meeting. And that's how it works at this time. How it will work in the future is any group that is related to education
and in line with the district's mission, can seek to speak. As trustee Schmidt was saying and I think trustee Baskett was saying, they would contact either administration, miss Olzinski, or they contact the trustee, and that trustee would direct them to the executive committee or president, and we would find space for them on an agenda so that they have a, a time period to speak at one of our upcoming meetings. And that's how it would be as of right now. We're open that's open for discussion, consideration, and then what the board thinks is the best practice for that.
Trustee Vasquez, could you you've been around doing this a lot of years. Could you give a little historical perspective of how it came to be we have designated groups in the first place? I thought that was a little odd when I got on the board, actually. It it like a lot of things in Ann Arbor, we are unique. You know, I can only speak to a few of the groups. Let's see. Get back here. First, let me say, you know, for a while, we didn't list these groups on the agenda. And yet we and and so people forgot they existed and accused us of having
no way of having, you know, feedback, from the community. And so I requested again with the board support we list these groups. So at any point, the community knows they're there and they can reach those groups should they choose to do so. Let me start with I mean, first of all, we know the AAAEA, that's a contractual obligation. So that's going nowhere, in terms of off the agenda. That. I see curious looks. So please explain what you're saying. Contractual? Yes. I don't know the all trustees I'm sorry. So contractually, with our agreement with our our partners,
the teachers, they have a space on the agenda to speak to us anytime they choose, as we have seen. And sometimes there, you know, there are periods of time when they don't choose not to speak, and that's fine. But we allow them that time. We prepare in our meetings for that time for them to speak. One of the, quote, unquote, advantages with the reports of the associations is there's no time limit. There is no, you know, as you saw today from from our teachers, we gave them the time they needed to express themselves,
and we will continue to do so. I believe the AAAA, the the administrators came along, and, you know, it just made sense to give them time too. But as I understand, there's no contractual obligation to do so. Require. And, again, we have not heard from them in a while, and that's their decision, you know, as is with all of the groups. Let me start with, I guess, the black parent student support group, I believe, is our oldest group, started in '76, give or take. K. I was not on the board in 1976. Okay? Just wanna clarify. Yeah.
But it but it the the the group came out of a serious need. There was a lot of racial tension in the community, in our schools, a lot of violence, and community leaders, for various, you know, African American groups came to the board, and they formed a, if you will, a partnership. And so that group was designated to speak with the board, work with the board on the solutions at the time. Again, I was not I was just a student. Granted, I you know, I was a student, but I was definitely not the on the board. And so that is part of the history as I know of.
Having been a member of the NAACP, there were a lot of leaders from NAACP who helped form this group, so as I know. With the APAC group, the Ann Arbor Parent Advisory, group, that was focused on special education, and that group was one of our most active groups who spoke at every meeting, every meeting. Again, their voice is heard. We haven't heard from them in a while. And, again, that's that's their prerogative. But they also started doing something special, at least with this last superintendent, where they met, and it was a different It was It was addressed differently.
It was addressed differently. Because like all of these groups, they they had the opportunity to express themselves sometimes in a positive manner in terms of what's working well and what's not. With the PAC, what we affectionately call the PAC, the Ann Arbor Parent Advisory Committee, the previous superintendent, and and the team, her team, went to their meetings, again, going to where the parents and families are. And, the PAC made made time on their agenda for the superintendent and her staff. So a lot of the issues that they may have brought forward to the board
actually got resolved within their meetings. And, again, I'm sure that's, you know, an opportunity other groups would want. Speak to the superintendent, and her and her staff can figure that out. So the other groups came later, and there are some groups which I will challenge this board to tell me when we last heard from them, okay, including the of the, African American parent I'm sorry, the district wide black parent student support group. We heard from APISA. Again, I think we last heard from them about, what, May of last year. Again, we're not we're not saying that we don't hear from you.
We're not saying that you don't continue to meet. But I did have a question, if I may, president Feaster. Yes, ma'am. One group talked about financial assistance, and I guess I would look to the superintendent. I didn't know we had anything in terms of financial assistance for any of these groups. Not that I can recall. I mean, I'll check into it, but, we have certainly supported programming efforts and, bringing in all the, you know, publicized events and things of that nature, but I'll have to check into any financial contributions. I don't recall that. Yeah. I I I was a little surprised by that because I don't remember it being
any line. I've been in the budget. It's definitely not not a part of our policy. Yeah. Thank you. And we're addressing the policy. I'm sorry. You're right. So, again, policy. So I hope that helps. Are there any specific questions? Yeah. So that I think it's good because it's kinda like how where did it come out of? And then it's interesting that since I've been on the board for two years, I don't I haven't seen a lot of those groups. So it's you you make the point, present Feaster, this actually opens it up to more. I'm thinking if there's a group that's not so official that doesn't have maybe they're
for 05/2001 c three or whatever, but they have something that would be maybe we would even invite them to come and speak. And I think of the Karen Thomas Fund, and I think, you know, that was asked if they could or he could present. We might have invited him because he gives many books and to our teachers through grants. It's a great thing. So, I think what this will do is is to help tidy up our agenda and expectations. And as you as we've all said here, we welcome the feedback, you know, and, again, we don't wanna place any undue burden on any of the groups because,
again, these are volunteers, parent volunteers often. And so, again, their their time commitment is, you know, is valued. And, again, I I guess I'm disappointed that people are assuming that we wanna disband. As the president said, we don't have the power or intention to disband anybody. Please continue to meet and let us know when you wanna talk to us. This is Mohammed. So I'm gonna be honest here. When I heard this because initially, when we were talking about this, I remember this came up when the Jewish group was was asking for them to
get approved, the Muslim group, and the Aspire group. And from my understanding is that, you know, this was, like, more than a year ago, and we were going to look at building structures, not completely eliminate these board designated groups, but building some structure because I mean, I've been part of the Arab advisory group for three years now. I understand how other groups work, but I can't speak for them. I know that the special ed group already has a pretty strong structure in place where they have,
you know, assistant superintendents and superintendents attend, so it's a little bit different. But my question to you all is, what problem are we trying to fix here? Because I understand, like, I understand it's like we wanna open it up, then open it up and include more groups, especially these groups came out from troubled times. You know, they didn't just come out. They didn't become more designated because there wasn't an issue. You know, you heard from the Asian American, group is that, you know, during COVID, there was an increase, you know,
amount of Asian American racism because of COVID. You know, more and more important right now with I mean, I can only speak about my community is that, you know, all the Islamophobia, you know, anti Arab racism, anti Palestinian racism. I mean, we had someone you know, we're dealing with a case at Tappan. And, like, so I'm just trying to figure out why what problem are we trying to fix and saying that all groups we need to include all groups sounds a little bit like all lives matter kind of kind of statement.
I'm I mean, that's when I hear that, I think everyone should be able to speak, but we're doing a disservice by removing this as board. And I think most of the people that talk knew what board designated groups are. They don't think I mean, maybe some were scared and they're like, we're removing the groups completely, but they understand that this is specific, unrestricted time where we can provide guidelines, not remove it to to be able when something comes up or there's something they wanna share that
they can share with the board. Currently, how the policy reads, they have to get permission. So you already are disenfranchising marginalized communities that already feel scared to I mean, there's many times where I'm like, just come and talk to the board. Feel scared to come and address the board by creating more barriers, by saying, okay. Well, now you have to get approval because that's how it's reading by the executive board by a case by case scenario.
That's and I don't know why we're not showing the policy on the on the screen, but that's what it's saying, case by case scenario. So that means you're leaving it to three individuals or whoever, you know, the executive board changes year to year to decide who gets to speak at a board meeting and who doesn't. And so now marginalized communities now have to decide, well, wait a minute. Like, I have to go through this process. Are they gonna deny me? Where, honestly, like, I was I was okay, and I've said it very loudly last year.
Approve the Jewish group. Approve the Muslim group. Approve ASPIRE. Actually, these are groups that need to be heard. They need, unrestricted time to be able during contentious times like this, be able to speak to the board and have time. But instead of, you know, spending time by just okay. Well, we don't wanna give them, you know, we need we we have an issue. Let's just remove all of it. Provide guidance to these groups. Say, once a year, come out here and give us some kind of report of what you're doing.
What are like or, you know, instead of giving them unlimited time, give them maybe max ten minutes. I mean, I don't think any group spent more than ten minutes. But it but it does say that they have to get approval from a case by case scenario case by case situation by the executive board. That is only that is a huge barrier. And then think about what this message is going to send. There's a lot of people that are are watching this, and they're gonna see that we're removing now Anarbor Public Schools are now removing these
marginalized groups, these minority groups. When we had this for a long time. I mean, this is not something that was new. We had this for a long time. Like, so why what problem are we trying to fix? That's that's my and and, honestly, why did we prioritize this and the public commentary? And I you know, why are we prioritizing this as an agenda item when we have bigger issues for us to talk about? That is that's where my frustration is is that I don't understand what problem we're trying to fix.
Honestly, I think it's gonna create more problems and more frustration. And families and kids feeling that they they're being discounted, and they're being further disenfranchised by this move. So that's that's all I have to say. So I'm not gonna support this at all. Thank you, trustee Mohammed. Do I see your hand, trustee Bessette. I'm not quite sure where to start. It was a lot. Yeah. It it it was a lot. I mean, I guess the what we're trying to resolve is cleaning up our agenda and being
very honest that we are talking about expanding the number of people who can talk to us. Some people looked at these this list and said, oh, well, my issue is this. Which group do I go to in order to bring it forth? And we have said we have said, you know, you don't have to have a group to come forward. You can talk to us. The fact that we're talking eight to ten minutes or unlimited time as as other trustees have pointed out, that's what we're currently proposing.
No group should feel excluded, but let's be very honest. I challenge you. When have we heard from the, let's pick this one, Ann Arbor Youth Gender and Sexual Alliance? We haven't. Right. And if we followed our policy, then we should have eliminated those groups because We haven't heard from. Right. But I'm sorry, ma'am. You are not part of this conversation. You are not part of this conversation. So it's it we're not it's trying to exclude anybody, and I guess it's the the the attitude, trustees, that we have to look at. We're not trying to exclude anybody.
We're not trying to take anybody's rights away. We're not trying to take any access from any of these groups. We don't control that. We can't tell them when to meet, how to meet, or when to come to talk to us. So I don't know the problem. Trustee, Wilkinson said he wanted to speak, and then I saw trustee Wilkes excuse me, Wilkins, and then we'll go to trustee Wilkes and come back to trustee Muhammad. Yeah. I just wanna add, you know, part of part of these updates and changes and discussions was a result of closed session, information that we all received as trustees.
Of course, to go into that any further, we would have to waive, attorney client privilege, to get an update from our our legal counsel. But I do think that's an important part of the discussion that, you know, we can't publicly share today here. And, again, unless we motion to, set that aside and get into that detail, but I I think that really predicates some of these changes. While the board still works to expand access to other groups, You know, I I if you have suggestions if anyone has suggestions on how to make this
process more supportive, put other supports in place to engage groups more directly, you know, designate certain meetings where we want those groups to come out or, you know, each of us as board members can also, work with specific groups to engage them in part of the community discussion and bring them to the table. But it that onus is on us as board members. So I think that's another important part of the consideration. But I am open to supporting various ways to ensure the access is more open As am I. And more engaging.
As am I. As am I. Trustee Wilkins? If our goal is to make it so that more groups can address the board whenever they want to and need to, then as trustee Schmidt said, I wanna see the structure behind that. And I don't think them having to approach the executive committee and the executive committee gets to decide. I don't think that's gonna be more that's not gonna show that we're being more inclusive. If the goal is to be more inclusive,
we have to come up a way to show that we're more inclusive. There's also a timing thing there. So there might be something that happens that's happened on Monday, and the group wants to address us on Wednesday about it. If they were already on the agenda, then they just get to come and talk. Right? But if they have to go through four steps to get there, then they're not gonna get to do that. The other thing is what's the other thing? Who what constitutes a group? We need to define that. Well, I don't think we can. So does anyone get to come,
or is it still because then you use something or someone said, as long as it's educational I think related or President Feaster said said in the policy. Yeah. I don't know. As long as it's educational related. So that's gonna be subjective. And just a side note, the reason we haven't heard from the parents of LGBTQ students is that they're all afraid to speak about anything right now. I don't think that's fair. Yeah. How how do we know that? Think that is a fair statement. For Arab Americans, they do. They're scared.
And and so I'm sorry. No. Absolutely true. Well, trustee Wilkes, you have something, I think. Yeah. Well, first of all, can first of all, I I don't I see why we're doing this. And like trustee Wilkerson said, I there was a a discussion in closed session that sort of led to this point. Didn't lead to it. Well, it it was a part of it. Oh, yeah. But it it was a it was a part of it. Of course. So, technically, can we actually I'm not in favor of the executive committee determining who can speak.
We can find whatever option Like, is that actually can we act can we actually deny groups the opportunity to speak? I mean, just based on the Open Meetings Act, don't we have to adhere to I think we can if it's not related to education. Okay. They would have to go through public commentary. Yeah. So so for instance, if if I if I was part of a WICN group and I wanted to contact the president and say, I wanna do a presentation about the Wiccan religion and how I think you're not
talking about it in your social studies class. So think about that. You know, how that's a a religious group that we would whenever schools do things that, do anything to promote any religion, it looks like an endorsement of, which is this problem with separation of church and state. So but if I still wanted to speak, let's say I don't fit, you know, I'm a little problem there. There's public comment, and I can read out of a dictionary at public comment. And I can have two of my friends with me, and we can read nine minutes out of the dictionary.
Or I can talk about the Wiccan religion I want you all to hear about that you're not taken care of in social studies class. So, you know, you would hope at our business meeting Mhmm. A school board business meeting that we can, in good faith, try to any group that wants to come speak about things that apply to our schools so that we can do a better job of educating children, and we can make that decision fairly. Yes. Human beings are involved in this, and it will be have some subjectivity. And we do need a protocol. And maybe it isn't the executive committee,
but I don't think it should just be the board president. I think that that's just not fair to that person, and, you know, I I there's another way to do it. But nobody has ever stopped from saying anything unless they create a riot or something, right, because of OMA, of the meetings act. Wait. You're not a part of this conversation. If if I'm not, May. So a part of And and we did let let Thurston play come and present for thirty minute forty minutes at our study Forty minutes. Forty five minutes. At our study session when they requested to come speak.
Yeah. I also want to make one other suggestion. Instead of having groups come to us, again, let's go to them, forums. This is something that school that our school board used to do in the in the past, having more educational type forums where we would go out and, you know, engage more with various groups Yes. You know, in the community. And I I'm completely open to doing that because it's really I feel as though we when we actually go out and engage with the public Right. It, I mean, it says a lot.
Right. And I think that it actually, it it it it does a lot. Right. It doesn't jam up the meetings so that decisions that we have to make at these meetings are not at 12:00 at night. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, we have to figure out where to put things so that we're doing an efficient, good job. I I don't know. It also I just think that by having forms and actually engaging with the community, we're able to to have conversations outside of the boardroom, and I believe that we're maybe able to sort of, you know, get to,
you know, maybe cut things off before they explode or whatever. You know, just sort of engaging and talking with the community and having really good conversation before matters get bigger. Right. And to the point I heard, we we did let the Thurston PTO group speak at the study session when they requested to speak. We did let let Thurston speak at the study session when they requested to speak. Yeah. So I think this board has shown that we are open in letting people speak if they request time, and it's related to education and the mission of this district.
So I just wanna make sure that misconception is not floating out there. I saw trustee Mohammed and then trustee Wilkins. Hello? Oh, did I miss you, Trustee Baskin? Yes, you did. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Trustee Baskin. Are you gonna allow me? Yes. Okay. Thank you. So so first of all, regarding the agenda, every organization has a right and responsibility to control the agenda. And right now, we have the executive committee. And if trustees are not happy with that, propose something different. I think the president, as he said, he's open to suggestions. We all should be. Regarding, you know, these organizations and going to them,
I tried. Okay? I think we have had this conversation with some of you. And what I remember talking with the the sponsored leader, if you will, of the Ann Arbor Youth Gender and Sexual Alliance group, she said, we are an active Facebook group. Mhmm. And so they didn't see the need to come to us to to garner support and knowledge and resources. They're already doing their thing. Mhmm. And so to say they're afraid well, my question, if if people are afraid, how is having them on the agenda making them less afraid?
It hasn't so far, and people who come forth, who wanna come forth have come forth Mhmm. From each one of these groups. But we also know some of these, as far as I'm concerned, when I reached out to some of the people, even tried to find the contact for some of these people, that is lost. Right. And I contacted for the black parents student support group, the last known leader that I knew of. And this was probably I see him at every year at this annual event. Right? And he doesn't have the same interest as he used to.
Okay. That's your right. Now how they succession planning turned over, I don't know. It wasn't shared with us. So we don't know I don't know what more we can do. In terms of going out to the community, trustee, I I fully support that. But let's face it. We have a hard time trying to decide when we can meet to do board business that is not engaged with the community. If the community wants to invite us to an event, let's talk. But we can't guarantee all of us will show up because, again, we have busy lives, but let's work.
I mean, that would be a nice problem to work on. Right. You know? So I don't think any of us are opposed to, but the issue we have tonight is whether what to do with this list of groups on our agenda. Right. Trustee Mohammed and trustee Wilkins. So, you know, as far as again, part of the policy is leaving the decision to a group of people regardless of who it is, and we have our own biases. Right? So that is that is why the policy is written the way it is. It's because you create the space for these groups,
especially all of them are, like, marginalized communities to at any time can come, like, if there is a crisis happening, that day, they can email you, the board president, and say, we really need to speak on this issue, and allowing that that flexibility where how it's written now, you do get to decide who gets to speak and who doesn't and what is a priority and what isn't. And you brought up the example about the Thurston. You know, you did allow some, but there was a group that wasn't allowed.
So the Thurston Nature Center It wasn't related to they didn't wanna talk about education or students. They want to talk about the history of the Nature Center But do you which is not related. But do you see? Yes. If they have to speak outside of the study session at a different event, I would have allowed them to speak, but it was not appropriate for the study session. Okay. I didn't allow them to talk to them. Yes. But the thing is now you're gonna be making these like, if it's something to do with a crisis happening, and it's not specifically related to what's on the agenda or what is the you're
gonna have you or whoever the executive board is at that time are gonna make decisions on, is this a priority? I mean, you're gonna it's gonna be subjective. Right? Just like you did maybe for the thirst and maybe that's not a good example. We're elected to make decisions. And if if if if I make a decision that a group is not able to speak and the board thinks I'm wrong, then you can vote them onto the agenda But that's the barrier. Because you're now depending on the board and whoever instead of giving them protective space. Because that's the reason why you have to think about what problem are we trying
to fix. That is the reason why they became board designated groups because there was a major issue that has happened. And because of that, they became designated because it gave them that safe space to be able to speak at that you know, at any time, but we just didn't give them you know, there was a there was a comment about structured guidance. They didn't come to us. Honestly, a lot of them didn't know. Like, they you know, when I when they would ask me, well, are we are we supposed to come? When should we they didn't they didn't wanna bother us.
So we didn't give them guidance as far as, like, when should they speak? Should they come and update us once a year, what they're doing? So is is your problem that the number three that can originate reports of associations would not be on the agenda? Because we could have reports of groups on the agenda and still have a space for them, and they just let us know they wanna speak. And then we'll add them to the agenda if that's your concern. No. My concern is you just removed all this board designated groups to be always on
the agenda. And at any time, they can come and speak. How it's written right now What do they say to you? Tell us they wanna come and let us know. They do let you know, but they don't need such request to be reviewed on a case by case basis through the executive committee agenda planning process. That's a barrier for them. So they just right now, they just email literally sometimes the meet sometimes they even show up. But, trustee, did you hear president Feaster's suggestion if we were just to have reports from Groups.
Groups? No. That's not it's not that is not my concern is that you are not allowing them dedicated space at every meeting so that if something did happen It would be on the agenda for every meeting. It would just be reports of groups. Where does it say that? No. Because that is an option. A change. Yeah. He's proposing that. As an option. Okay. I have to see what the change is. But my What I'm saying is if you're concerned that there would not be space on our regular business meeting agendas for those groups to come and present to us
as opposed to having what we have now, reports of associations, and we have a through I, a list of groups. We could just have reports of groups, and whatever groups would like to come speak can let us know, and we can fill them in for that particular meeting. And we have had that in the past. So but how is that gonna be different than you said such requests will be reviewed on a case by case basis through the executive committee. That wouldn't be part of it. We're not yeah. We we we can discuss remove the the language, and you can come up with a change to the language that's not,
like, in stone. So help us come up with appropriate language. But what I'm asking is, would that fit fix your problem with the agenda? So how is that that's what I'm this is what's kinda confusing. How is that why so how is that different than just keeping the current policy? As trustee Wilkerson already said, we're trying to be in compliance with one, best practices and two, with what we have been Advised. Advised in closed session. Which is one issue, but in because of that one issue, now we have to remove where we're pretty much saying these groups That is why
it's here. Yes. So we have to remove all the groups. That is why it's here. That is why it's here. To level the play. But that's what that's see that? That does not resonate very well for me because that means you're saying all all lives matters, to be honest. You can say you can feel that way. I But that's what it is. Okay. Well, you say that. I don't agree. Were picked, were were approved by the board over many years. Okay. Not during my time, not during, I mean, during trustee Basquiat's time, but not during any of our times. They were approved for a reason.
So, you know, it just sends a a wrong message by just saying, you know what? We're gonna eliminate it. We're gonna even the playing field. Now all lives matters. You all can show up whenever you want. I think it's just it's not it's I mean, we're Ann Arbor. And for us I understand your position. To do this, honestly let me finish my point. Oh, okay. To only let me please, let me finish my point because I haven't even to to pretty much that sends a very strong message that we don't prioritize our marginalized communities.
That's how people are gonna see this. And I understand that there's some whatever and, honestly, like, if this is a major issue and this is what led to this, then maybe we need to get that out, and maybe we do need a vote to to be able to discuss this with our our our council and say, like, what is the reason? Because right now, it just looks like we are just pretty much silencing marginalized communities and allowing now everyone to have equal playing fields as far as when they can speak and when
they cannot. So that is that is my concern of how this looks. And then as far as just one other point before and I'll stop. The the policy and I know community engagement, I know there was you know, you made the point about let's get engaged with the community. Let's try to go get involved with these groups. And I remember I proposed that when I first started. The on the school board, I really wanted to us to engage with the community. The problem is is that some of these communities are not easily like, it's not easy for them to let people in and especially people that are not
within their community. And so I think it's great. That's why this space was created so that when they do have something they need to communicate to the board and to the superintendent, that they they do it and are able to do it in a public meeting rather than behind the behind the doors. There's a lot of distrust, especially amongst some marginalized communities. And, yes, they may not be open for you to come in and talk to them. You know? So there and there's a lot of fear,
and they wanna be able and that's why I think it's important to allow that space so that they can come up. You know, if they feel that they need to communicate to the board at that time, they have one representative being able to do that. They feel that that representative is not going to be, you know, in jeopardy, for speaking on behalf of the group. So, again, I just don't understand what problem we're trying to fix. And if it's something that has to do with the closed session, then I feel that it's important that we do we are able to talk about that so that the community understands where this is coming from.
Point noted. What I would suggest is that, you take a look at the proposed policy and come up with any suggestions to the language you might want change. And then at the second briefing, we can address the closed session portion of it. And if they move forward from there, your proposed changes will be considered. And so that would be my suggestion to you. In case this move forward over your objection, you may wanna have whatever changes you want, up for consideration. I would just like to say, so as former president of the district wide black parent student support group,
I I consider myself to be a part of the marginalized community that you're speaking of. And I don't have a problem with this because I know that this this group still has the right to speak at our board meetings. There is nothing preventing any of these groups from coming and speaking. So I I guess I'm just not really sure I fully understand your argument because these groups can still present. They can still come and speak.
And, trustee, I'm not sure. Were you privy to the closed session, information that we had? Because I I just I just wanna make sure you're aware of what was said. I mean, we really can't talk about it right here at the table, but, I guess that's a fair question. Were were you at that particular meeting? Yeah. No. I was at that meeting, but where where I when I came out of that meeting, it did not it it from my understanding, it was not gonna result in removing the board designated groups. So but we can talk about again,
I don't wanna I don't I think I think it's important for us to be able to do if we are going to open up what was talked about in the closed session. We have to do that before we talk any further about what happened in the closed session. We should have. I saw, trustee Wilkins and then trustee Vasquez. I first wanted to say I love the idea of trying to be engaged with the community groups outside the board meetings, but that can't replace
groups wanting to come and speak to us. Right. And, again, the timing is the issue here, I think. If they're already on the agenda and something happens on a Monday and they wanna talk or a Tuesday or Wednesday and and they wanna come talk to us, they know they're already on the agenda. So, yes, that might be fixed with your all groups thing. It's a communications issue. So we saw just from what you were discussing in the governance committee, that we saw just from what you were discussing in the governance committee that turned
into a gross miscommunication of what it was actually gonna mean. Right? Mhmm. So we need to be super clear about, again, why we're doing this. We're doing this to be more inclusive, then we need to be super clear about that. If we're doing this to make sure that all the underrepresented groups can have a chance to speak at the table, we need to be super clear about that. Can that be in the policy? Any changes you want can be in the policy. Okay.
Just suggestion that we can we can kick them around and find what's the best solution before we So we're not planning to vote on this tonight because we really need to talk about those. Yeah. Okay. Got it. It's just the first briefing. We have a lot of around and find out the best solution. I sent trustee Baskett and then and then back to, trustee Wilkerson and then the trustee will have it to close it out. So first of all, this for me, this conversation was not an a a result of what we discussed under with the
turn our attorneys. To be very clear, I am not willing to waive our confidentiality with our attorney on this issue and nearly any issue that I can think about. K? We do not need to be a red flag for who knows who. We're already vulnerable being one of the largest, more successful districts in the state. And we took a I mean, I can remember the hits and and the challenges we took when we were decided collectively to take on the gun issue. We have not been collective in a long time here on any issue,
and I do not want to, again, waive our confidentiality just to appease this because it's more than just one thing. And I appreciate trustees saying we have to be very clear, but there's not one it doesn't have to be one reason of why we're doing this. It can be multiple reasons. We and and to regarding the communication, we didn't make the news article. We were observed by a reporter, and trustees may have had misinterpretations or whatever.
No one spoke to me about their thoughts of this designated group thing and what we were trying to do. I would have easily given opinion, and I would have welcomed the opportunity to clarify. But this was not an intention to squash anything, to disenfranchise anybody, or to make anybody feel bad. So I just wanna be very clear on that. Thank you. No one reached out to me either. Trustee Wilkinson. Yeah. I just wanna make one comment into in regards to trustee Wilkins' question or commentary about, you know, an issue coming up last minute.
I think that opens it up to any one of us trustees to bring that as part of agenda planning and suggest adding it to the agenda for the evening. That's a very public format. So if we bring something ahead or bring something to that portion of the agenda, suggest it for an addition, the public can see that, hey. These are the trustees that have, you know, voted to support that or voted not to support that. So I think that's another avenue that we we will always have access to as well. Did you have some notes,
Trustee? Yeah. So and I and I wanted to respond to, trustee Wilkes about your comment about, like, not feeling that some groups feel like not being able to speak. I can tell you, I know, even just within my community, that there are people that do not feel that they can speak and that are being pushed away. And we're seeing it By us? By us? No. No. No. I'm not saying that talking about us? By the thing but not by us. But what I'm saying is is that,
you know, I just wanted to respond that there are, like, this is this is, like, there are people that feel that way. So if you don't create that space for them, they'll never they'll never you know what I mean? Like, they're gonna feel that they don't Well, we're not stopping anyone from coming. No one's from your group or your community who's wanted to speak if we told them no or push them away or cut them off or anything like that. And it's not our job to to maintain these because of what's happening in the rest of the world. It's our job to do what's best for this district and for our students and
our staff. And I know the world is has a lot going on right now, but we're not at fault for that. And we have to do what's best for this district. Okay. I guess what I'm saying is, like, you are you are still again, by having to approve groups from Suggest a change to the proposed That's fine. I will look at it. But, again, I just I still think I don't know what what issue we're trying to fix. You you said that and misnoted. Thank you. Anything else, Trustee Wilkins? Yeah. I do think it's important, again, back to the optics.
Right? So, yes, the it was because of a newspaper article that didn't actually get all the facts. Fine. That's gonna happen again. I mean, the headlines are gonna be, and our schools decided to get rid of all their advisory groups that are have to do with underrepresented community. That's we're gonna see that headline. We've already seen it. We can't control the media. So we can't but we can help to control that. If you wanna talk to us, then can we count on time there? Steps further to be more inclusive Mhmm.
To and if it means keeping these groups here because it shows that Ann Arbor does care about these groups, then that might that would be a good reason not to do this so that we can just be that be that organization that takes that stand. Mhmm. And I get it. I get the target, argument, and that's another way to do it. But Alright. I wanted to put that out there. Thank you. In all fairness, I think taking the groups off of the agenda does not indicate that we don't
care about these groups fine. And that we're not Thank you. We don't care about the May I have may I have the floor, please? Thank you. That does not indicate that we don't consider care about these groups' concerns. So I just I I think that's a stretch bit of a stretch. Well, that's not what I'm saying, but that's how it's gonna if it's not handled properly, that's how it's gonna look. You know, if I may suggestion. Trustee Wilkins, I agree with you, but it doesn't help when I hear a board member say to me, well, you mean all lives matter.
I mean, that is just inappropriate because the goal here I know. But I think you said to me directly. But, I mean, that isn't what this discussion is about. It's not like, well, who were those groups that were able to get their group together and get chosen to be put on this list? It's why don't we open this up and let other people also have an option? That's what this is about. You know, we talk about equity and having everybody having a chance, and so what we say matters and how if the optics goes, what comes out of our mouths at these meetings Because that isn't the intent of
shutting anybody down. I mean, it just that that isn't, I think, where this came from, and this has been discussed for, like, eight months. Longer than that. And I'm sorry. And I'm sorry. I didn't say you. I said it comes across as all lives matters. I mean, that's what people are gonna hear. That's not from you. I'm not I don't mean to say None of us have said all lives matter. Can I ask one more question? So if this has been tossed around this whole issue has been tossed around for the last eight months The longest. Longer. Some of the trustees, three of us are new, so we haven't even been on this board eight months.
So I guess, my question is, trustee Mohammed, I guess, did you raise these concerns prior to to tonight? I mean, if this isn't the first time that this issue is coming up, I guess I'm not really sure why why you didn't raise this level of of concern prior to to tonight. So I did. So if to give you some history, the Jewish and Muslim and Aspire group came toward for like, they they this is all started by this.
They wanted to get approved as board designated groups. At that time, I was president, and we were going into the January meeting, and it was our organizational meeting. And we wanted to give them opportunity for us to present and be considered. All of a sudden, everything changed, and I remember that agenda got sabotaged pretty much. And and instead of us deciding at the organizational meeting to approve them or not, it got delayed. And it got delayed. And there were several times that I brought it up and said,
let's you know, I motioned at one point and said, let's approve these groups. This was in February. I think that's when the financial crisis hit. And then the financial crisis hit. Oh, so I would say so much. But all that. But at that time, my understanding is that this was going to go to governance so that we have structure. Just to answer that point. Yeah. It went to governance. We discussed the structure, argument, and whether or not that made sense, and we decided if this made more sense. And that's why we're here to discuss was I'm talking about, like, past year.
Over the past year, trustee Dupree, myself. We discussed changing structure and different things of that nature. Okay. And then this governance committee decided So it this made more sense. For it, but at any but none but no one there was no updates as far as what is not happening. Ready to present until now. Exactly. And now it's here for us for first So it needed it needed to be evaluated for a whole year where you know what I mean? Like, this was this whole thing started in in January,
and why did it have to take a whole year until finally, just with this this current new board, all of a sudden, we're like, okay. Well, let's just decide to remove our new board. Aware that from February to July, we would financial crisis We have focused on other things. Yeah. Like like, it's not like we just ignored this. But I You understand that. Right? But it was now. I understand. But, again, I mean, why did it have to wait till now? Why is it happening now when there were governance meetings that were happening even before
that? Okay. May may I just Well, before we because we're gonna have to Oh, yeah. Do I have a time check? Trustee, is there a motion to extend the meeting by thirty minutes? Thirty minutes. Moved by trustee Schmidt, supported by trustee Wilkes. Any discussion? Missus, please. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. Trustee Wilkes? Yes. Trustee Basquiat? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Motion carries. If I may, there's a piece of history here that wasn't included. That January meeting was a vote on a resolution that caused
amazing response from the community and made people feel disenfranchised and the Jewish people that were sitting in the audience. I mean, it was it was a a very difficult meeting. And so it was interesting that our leadership decided to throw a special meeting on top of that agenda without having had a public executive committee meeting that was public for people to see that was being added. And so it was things were removed. And just because the votes were there, it was like, well, since the people were here to make their presentation,
we'll let them go ahead and do that. But it was kinda shoved down the throat of us that it was a setup. So that whole concept of, first, we're all gonna vote on this resolution, and, oh, look. I've gone ahead, and none of us knew because there wasn't a public meeting about it. I brought these three groups, and they're gonna try to, become designated groups. It really created a really weird situation. So the whole thing kind of started off in not a an open way. And then, of course, there's been legal counsel involved in giving us advice and everything like this.
So, you know, there was a lot lot to that more than just, oh, we it's an organizational meeting. We wanted to prove designated groups. So I I just wanna fill that in. Miss Mohammed. So I'm not gonna rehash, you know, the whole that whole meeting. But just to clarify, if you remember, trustee Dupree at that time, she's the one who said, remember, we did the vote to delay to table our vote until the organizational meeting. So that was what that's why it made the agenda because we were supposed to vote on it in December,
and it got tabled to our next board meeting, which is the organizational meeting. It was I I don't think we need to vote about the history. But I just We're we're we're here now. Yes. So let's decide how we're moving forward. Yes. But but regardless, at the organizational meeting is when we were supposed to approve any board designation. We're here now. Let's decide how we're moving forward. Trustee Wilkinson. Yeah. No. I was I was actually just gonna add a comment similar to that. You know, I think the history is is what it is at this point, but I I can say with this new board,
I think our committees are very engaged in wanting to move things through our committee work, coming to the table. We're having sessions and meetings. And and I think the byproduct of the governance committee that we had is taking action and making suggestions based on the things that were on the agenda. So this was the first draft that came out of that. I think, again, collectively, if we if any of us have suggestions to make this process better, to provide guardrails, or, make it more welcoming or open for the community,
I think we all welcome that. We do. We discussed that, you know, obviously, we don't make any decisions. So I I I think we're all open to that, and we wanna get to the right spot. But but I do think, you know, I think we have a good board that's trying to move things through committee. Yes. Agreed. 25. Let's move on then. Let's move down to e, new policy thirteen ten, public commentary. I'm sorry, president Feaster. Can we just, before we move on, can we kind of summarize suggested deck steps regarding this issue? You mentioned people bringing suggestions,
making suggestions, and excuse me. Those suggestions should go to you, the president. Yeah. I'm the chair of the governance committee. So Alright. Yes. I will suggest an email with your changes, or if if there's access to the draft under consideration, you can send us whatever, suggestion you have, and the governance committee, you know, we'll we'll view them, and then we'll come back, and figure out where we go from here. Thank you, sir. Alright. That moves us down to new policy thirteen ten, which is regarding public commentary. This too has been being kicked around for over a year since I've been on
the board. And what the governance committee, discussed is that this district appears to be the only only district in the state of Michigan that still allows for write in public commentary for regular board meetings. And what this what the government committee thought would be appropriate or best, would be to review that and decide if we wanna continue or if we wanna go in a different direction and be more in the line with best practices and other districts across across the state. To that point, the suggestion from the gov the draft from the governance,
committee is that electronic writing commentary remain in place for committee meetings. So public commentary would still be read and submitted electronically if people chose for committee meetings. But for in person regular meetings, electronic email public commentary would not be, acceptable in Reddit meetings. We made that proposal because the board all board members have can be reached by
email by anyone in the world at any time. Oh. And so we do we did not see that there was a need to have that read into the record during public commentary. And by my calculations over the last sixteen months I've been on this board, approximately 80% of the public commentary has been write in and read public commentary, which substantially limits the amount of time that people have to come up here and speak to us. And we get men meetings where people get fifteen seconds or twenty seconds to speak.
But if we eliminate that 80% of written in written to the record, public commentary that we can read independently, if someone emails it to us, then the people who come to speak can actually have time to make their point. And so we thought that it might be best to consider that alternative. And just for clarity's sake, each of the board members' email addresses and phone numbers are public on our website, and there's no barrier to accessing us if we strike this from public commentary because
you can still send us the same comments to our individual or board email addresses. So it no way limits people being able to reach us and communicate their issues. And that's why the governance committee is suggesting we review and make a change to this policy. Trustee Wilkins. Is there an urgency to this, or is this something that we could move to first briefing of next week's I know. But if we could we not do the first briefing until next week?
Because I think there's gonna be the same level of discussion that we just had about the first policy change that's gonna take yeah. Why don't why don't why don't we give it fifteen minutes now and see where we can get to I think it's And then go from there. Because this is the last major thing we have on the agenda. If I may. Yes. President Feaster, thank you. You did a wonderful summary. However, we may want to remind folks as well, we as with a lot of our with all of our policy changes, we review it with legal.
Yes. And we've got an illegal opinion that we should consider. Yes. So I I'd like to And I forwarded that to all trustees by email. Yes. And and I believe all of us read it. So given that, I'd like to make a suggestion. Please. But let me first say what public commentary is because some folks, previous board members I know, did not understand the purpose of public commentary. Public commentary is for the public to publicly come before us and give us their thoughts. Right. We cannot control what they say.
We can try. We can make suggestions. Well, you know, some places even have a horn if some of the language get out out of hand, but we don't do that. K? It is a and and it's a public or let me talk to our emails. It's a public document when you send us something. There's no secrets. Right. If someone asked to get all of the emails sent to Susan Baska, we we prepare that. And that means, although you as a sender may not be comfortable, once you send it to us, it's a public document.
I know in the past some people said, well, I wanna send a public comment, but please don't read it. Please don't use your name. We can't do that. Okay? It is it is public. So we were advised about concerns with possible ADA issues, and we've seen some emails regarding that. So I'd like to make a a suggestion to kinda modify what what we said in the governance committee, is that we have right now, miss Osinski and the team has prepared a form for public commentary. We, again, want to incur we don't wanna discourage anybody from having access to us,
but we don't want to, again, inundate our staff with the same old stuff that we've seen in the past. So could we add this is a suggestion. I'm not the technician here. A box that says, you know, I I am submitting this public commentary due to my inability to attend, in person, if you will. That comment is part of our document is public comments. K? Any of us can read it. And as as we know, we we usually get a preview of what's sent to us,
so we as board members can read it at our leisure or not. But again, when anyone wants to review our meetings, here is what was sent. We have the video and we have the written public commentary. So it resolves the issue of, again, we have to get legal clearance, of course, addresses the issue regarding, prohibiting anybody due to, again, a disability, but it also manages our time better, as you said earlier, to give people who made the effort and had the ability to come speak to
us have more time to speak with us. And, yeah, I think that's all I need to say. So I'd I'd welcome feedback on that. Trustee Wilkins? I have feedback on that. So they can for any reason, they can check the box and say I wasn't able to be at the meeting because I didn't I I don't have childcare. No. No. ADA. ADA. Only ADA reasons. K. Okay. Then I don't like it. Yes. All of the emails to the trustees are
theoretically public, but There's no theory. One of the reasons that people want their public want their comments to be public, on public record, is so that they're public, so everyone can have easy access to them. I no one here has easy access to my emails. They'd have to do a FOIA request. That's not easy from what I've heard, especially with the district. So that doesn't I don't think that fulfills the public comment. I guess, trustee, in all fairness, I'd I'd appreciate you clarifying why it's not easy,
especially for the district. I mean, that that was a snide remark. And, again, we don't have to address it given our timeline, but I guess I'd appreciate clarification. I did not mean it to be snide. I have several complaints from people who have attempted FOIA requests in the past. Well, believe me And they're still waiting. We had to hire a full time person to handle FOIA requests, so we do take it seriously as a district. I can't speak to what that So hopefully, it's gotten better, but I don't think people should have to do a FOIA request in order to
see comments that other people, wanted to get are for us. The comments aren't for the rest of the world. I think that's the the the the the the the Yeah. I mean, some people have used our public commentary to make a point. Right. And that's not the performance of it. Purpose of it. But trust, Muhammad. So just because of the time that this is needed and to hear more from Mhmm. The community as far as how they feel about this, I'm gonna motion to table this at the next board meeting. No. It's not the first first briefing at the next board meeting because it's midnight,
and I don't think there's any urgency in this. So I I motion that we do table this at the next board meeting. That's the your your motion that we table it tonight and address it at the next board meeting. As first briefing. Just like what Leslie suggested because this is gonna take longer than fifteen minutes to discuss. It's been moved by trustee Mohammed to table this. It was supported by trustee Wilkins. Any discussions, trustee? I would've I'm sorry if I may. Yes. Trustee Baskin.
I would advise that you revise your motion to postponing it as opposed to tabling it. But I guess I'm not quite sure what's the purpose. We've already acknowledged that we have a time limit here. I mean, what's My I guess my comment would be, I've been at this board table very late, multiple nights dealing with issues that I didn't wanna deal with. And I sat here and dealt with it. And I would like to have this first briefing and then figure out how we're moving forward personally. Right. So, trust me,
Mohammed. What should I do? Discuss it. No. She's not. Okay. So we can do it for So just discuss discussion. I like I said, I mean, I'm fine with saying, you know, late. I just feel like to give it the time it needs, I honestly especially having these two topics back to back that came honestly, I didn't I didn't even know about this until yesterday. So I don't even have enough time to even process these two things that were just added on to the agenda and to, again,
find out about it yesterday. So what I'm asking is, because both of them are gonna need a lot of time, is for us to just since there's no urgency for us to postpone it, and I can change that motion to postpone it first briefing at the next meeting. Just, again, to give it a little bit more time because I'm assuming the second time we're gonna talk about policy 1,300 may not need as much back and forth as the first the first time. Respectfully. And I don't mean this to be like a gotcha, but I believe you heard about this before yesterday as you text me about this
on March 10. This one. The not this one. No. No. Not this one. The other one. Sorry. Not this one. Okay. Sorry. I meant that 1300. When was it placed on the door dots? Not this one. We we vote at the agenda on March 3. And just to clarify, it was because, the story went out. So I think I found whenever I found out, the story came out, what, Monday? Yeah. You reached out to me March 7. Okay. So not this one. It's the Okay. The 1,301. Okay. That's it. Right? So the whole concept of doing this came about because COVID.
They didn't want people congregating in the room and getting sick. And so to me, just like every other district in the state, a year ago or more, other districts rolled back, and we didn't. And I think what you've seen is rather than we have a board meeting in public, that's what board meetings are. They're a meeting of the board doing their business in public. We have to do that OMA. That's the right thing, and people can come and address the board in our public meeting. Right? Yeah. Go ahead. I I mean, I think we know that we wanna vote on the motion.
Yeah. Let's just vote. Sure. Okay. I mean, because the Yeah. That's right. I didn't hear a second. So I didn't It was voted by Mohammed, second by Wilkins. Yes. The missile is just deployed. Okay. Okay. Okay. Trustee Wilkes? No. Trustee Basquiat? No. Trustee Wilkerson? No. Trustee Schmidt? No. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. Trustee Feaster? No. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. Motion fails. Thank you. Alright. I'll place back to you. So so what I've watched, and I was on the school board twenty years ago where we ran public meetings
according to OMA, and we had people come to speak and ran it, an official meeting, and I don't remember going till midnight because what's happened here with this, online, submissions is that we're hearing 40 versions of a form letter. We're we're getting it from people that don't have any contact with us. We get things from Washington, DC. We get some people don't identify themselves. I mean, it's it's just, it's basically taking our board public comment and using it as a forum for,
I'm gonna I've got an axe to grind or I'm gonna mobilize people. I'm gonna and so it's not our board running a meeting, and we're here to take public comment in our board meeting. It's turned into something else. And it's just I mean, I think the night I will never forget is Gracie the dog, and I I think there were 50 of them all the same, and I just thought, what is happening here? This is, like, completely out of control. And so, there's a reason that everybody dialed back across the state. I mean, some people could say, oh, well, you guys were the the trendsetters that you didn't.
No. I think it what happened was that about the time it would happen, we had inexperienced leadership. And so it was like, you know, they maybe didn't know what it was like before, but it to me, it just seems it's just not effective. That's not trustee Wilkins and not trustee Palmer. I agree that the current way is not effective. So if we want to come up with a way to change that to make it better and to make it so that everyone else everyone feels like they can still have equal access to make public comments to the board,
then that's great. We can come up I think we're we're a smart bunch. We can come up with a good way to fix this problem, but I don't think this is it. I'm I'm all ears to that suggestion. This is the best suggestion that we could come up with within the law. And so if you can come up with another suggestion, we're all ears to that. But it's not as if we can say, we're only gonna read that form email one time if 50 people send it in. We still have to do that. Okay. So this is the best objection we could figure within the law.
And I'm sorry. One other comment is just because all the other districts have gone back to pre COVID things is not a good reason to do it. I I knew that that would be said. It is like, yeah. But we're different because I always hear we're so different, and and the fact that we didn't, it must make us special. But if anything, we're looking foolish because anybody that watches these meetings, and I have people saying this to me in the community, and I never wanna say I've talked to people because that always sounds so light, but they'll just be like, I can't believe you guys are you do that riding thing.
And we've talked to people when we've been to statewide things. As a matter of fact, when we had our, what was it, a retreat? And the woman running it who works with other districts just was like, this is Why did you do that? This is so strange. And I was like, yep. It is. And she didn't get to hear 50 of them all the same. So I just think it's it just makes us look it's just an inefficient way to run a meeting because, because the people that really have something to say that show up This week. Can't complete it. And and I'll hear anybody's email. I mean,
I'll listen to everybody's email. I'll meet with them. I'll talk to them on the phone. You got something to say to me. I know all of us respond, so it's not like you can't communicate. Trustee Mohammed, you had it kinda? Yeah. So, yeah, my concern is how it's written right now is going to limit accessibility. And especially because pre COVID, you know, the meetings were a little bit more accessible in some ways where you can get a bus, you know, to the area. Like, I again, they were at the Marriott, Foresight, Huron, a two seam, Westerman. I looked at pre COVID meetings,
so it wasn't in the middle of nowhere where it is here. So I'm really worried that we're gonna end up losing. And I'm not saying saying writing comments is the way to go, But we're gonna lose, again, gearing from marginalized communities and especially those, like, single parents and, you know, people who are working in the evening that you just cannot show up in the meetings. And and it is important for them not to just write to the board, but for them to feel that their comment is being heard publicly. I think that is very important.
I was looking at Detroit Public Schools. They still have virtual public comment protocols. So there are still districts that are allowing virtual for people to be able, during the allotted time, to raise their hand. And, again, we have to look at big schools, especially school like ours is very diverse. We need to look at what big school districts are doing. So we need to be a little bit we have to increase access, but I understand written comments are not the way are not always the way to go because you're right. Having those, you know,
repeat comments cut and paste are not helpful. But we do need to allow an accessible way so that someone who cannot come here because of any reason doesn't have to be to be able to and I don't know the technology piece, to be able to call in or or, you know, raise their hand or whatever it is. And I know that, like, other, governing bodies here in the county do that. They do offer a call in. So city council offers a call in.
They figured out their system. I guess they do comments the fur I don't know if I agree with this, but they do the the first chunk related to agenda in the beginning, and then at the end, they do the the second half. They don't limit. They keep it to three minutes, you know, a person regardless of how many signed up, so you don't limit the time. So what's your suggestion, trustee? Well, I'm so we need another option. I'm still Please propose one. I think president Feaster no. In writing, please, to to president Feaster so that the committee can review it.
So what I'm suggesting is that there's an alternate option such as a virtual call in for people to be able to during the dedicated time and not necessarily have that would substitute the write in. Because I I did think So I mean Fine. Yeah. I did think the write in was I mean, I'm I'm I mean, at least there was one method for accessibility. I don't know of any other I'm trying to think of other governing bodies that do the write in. I don't think anybody does locally. I think most of them have at least an accessible option like a phone like
a phone in or a virtual option for them to provide their public commentary. Well, could you not make the same argument? I can't don't have a cell phone. I don't have cell phone minutes. I don't shouldn't have to spend my cell phone minutes to talk to you guys. I mean, could you not make that argument? Then maybe we can get that out of 10. I don't know. But please submit your suggestion in writing so that the committee can review it. Thank you very much for the suggestion, trustee Mohammed. Trustee Wilks. I was a little confused by the bus reference that that trustee Well,
I think she's made. I'm not sure what that's all about. What I think she's saying is that, oh, as someone said in public commentary tonight, this location is not the most accessible location on the district. And And what I think is what Mohammed is saying based on that is Washington should have another option aside from just in person commentary. The the if I misspoke, let me know. Yeah. That's it. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. So do we actually have the option of of moving our meetings occasionally? It's dismissed. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. It's dismissed. Alright. I just wanted to throw out an idea.
And if that's the suggestion that we do a meeting every quarter in a different location? We can consider that, that suggestion. I don't think But it's not gonna be and it's best. It is. That's So Trustee, what was The class. Trustee Mohammed, I just did wanna add. We you know, there were discussions as part of the governance committee too about, you know, potentially breaking, you know, so many slots and and time blocks at the beginning and then everything at the end. We're just like we had a difficulty coming up with something that made sense given
our meetings go till 12:30. Yeah. And how would we, you know, make the public stay for that type of comment, to make that type of comment at 12:30 at night. So that I mean, it was at least a consideration It was. And we could do that. Discussion. But I'm not sure who would be here. Know. And, honestly, if you had an alternate method, either phone I mean, I mean, a lot city council I think the county commissioners do this. A phone or virtual, and I agree. I wouldn't I would not I was just giving it as an option of what city council does. I don't agree with that method because our meetings go long.
Because then people will have to stay up till, what, midnight till 1AM to be to be able to finish their public commentaries. But I do wanna push if we can have an alternate method, and it does not have to be write in. Yeah. Okay. And I I just wanna add on to that too. I I think for me personally, like, obviously, I think we wanna hear from the community. We wanna increase engagement. I I don't think sixteen seconds or twenty two seconds or even thirty five seconds tonight was really enough time to hear from the community. There. And one other consideration personally,
when we get write in comments, of course, we can read them. But we can get an extremely long write in comment, that far exceeds the time that's awarded to those that are in person. And so, like, you know, when you think about equity and trying to be equal to all those people that are here to present too, that's another concern of mine personally. Yeah. Thank you. That's the best to have. Thank you, trustee Wilkerson. I will also add the committee did talk about the phone issue Good. Possibility. And we did talk, you know, with our technicians of what could happen and did happen at some board meetings,
not us specifically because we didn't have the phone issue. But there were some not so nice situations. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. So open to any suggestion. So please send it our way, and we'll discuss it before we come back. But I think we'll leave it there if, there's nothing nothing else. This is obvious obviously, the board's discussion, but I would also add, as you all are considering how to proceed, the impact to to staff, and the physical structure that we have to be able to accommodate whatever changes made, are made audio, visual, all those things. So those are certainly considerations that I would ask that you take into account also.
Moves us down to the consent agenda. Approve minutes of the 02/25/2025 study session and approve minutes of the 02/26/2025 regular meeting. Anyone like anything removed? So moved. This is motion. Second. Second. Moved by trustee Wilkes, supported by trustee Schmidt. Any discussion? Seeing none, miss Laskett, please. Trustee Basquiat? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. Trustee Wilks? Yes. Motion carries. That brings us down to number eight,
item for agenda planning. Trustees, are there any items for agenda planning? Trustee Baskett? I know this is in the works, but I just wanna put a reminder out there. Trustee Schmidt, I know you're trying to find dates a Saturday for our next professional development. So trustees, if you would please respond to whatever method she is using regarding a doodle poll or whatever, because we need to get that scheduled. As we know, we're all busy people. Again, I know it's in the works, but we need to get the event superintendent's evaluation dates put into our calendars. And, last but not least,
I would like to schedule, again, a tour or some type of event so that we can get out as a group, whether it be a a bonding experience or not. But, you know, our students have done some fantastic stuff, and I'd love for everyone to see that. We could all go eat. There you go. There you go. Alright. So this is I like that idea. Trusty, welcome. A question. What's what's the purpose of the first one that you mentioned? If it's not Professional development? It's the vice president situation. Purview to to run to run board professional development?
So my responsibility are twofold. Mhmm. One is I have to keep the suit the, superintendent evaluation moving forward. Right. Organize that. The other one is to try to set up professional development for us, retreats, whatever. And so, from our last meeting, there was talk about us moving forward and trying to set goals. We Right. You know? And so That's what I'm asking. Is this the goal setting thing or not necessarily? Yes. Or I think. You know? And that may be part of the email that comes to you. Okay. But we're trying to get a date. And, I mean, I was asking around saying,
okay. Looks like April 12 might be it, but we'll send a Doodle poll to try to see what people can do because our last one, we didn't have everybody together. So I'm really hoping we can get everybody together this time. Yeah. For sure. And I'll be in touch with everybody about I'll meet with the superintendent. We sorta got stalled out on that, but, because of other issues. So now we'll meet, and then I'll we'll set up, hopefully, time for a closed session for all of us to meet with her. Just a moment. Yeah. That's what I was gonna suggest. Maybe at the at our next meeting to have, like, board goals and then also,
like, thinking of more, like, strategic goals. Because I don't think we have those I don't even think we've we've had time to even work on board goals or strategic goals. So something where we you remember where you weren't at the retreat. No. I not the first retreat we had was about setting up We've got two minutes. Sorry. But I got yes. That's what I my request. Should should we look at a potential closed session for the next meeting? Thank you. Discuss. Yes. It's a good idea. Okay. Thank you. K. I motion that we add ten minutes to the agenda.
Moved by trustee Schmidt. So support Support. Support by trustee Baskett. Any discussion? K. Seeing none, miss Solinski. I'm sorry. Who who moved that? I'm so sorry. The moved by Schmidt, supported by Baskett. Thank you. Okay. Here we go. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. Trustee Wilkes? Yes. Trustee Baskett? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. K. Go ahead. You suggested? Yeah. Just closed session, related to the public groups Public commentary. Designated groups. Yeah. Yep. So how about next week at six again?
We're gonna Well, we have a bond committee of the whole committee then. So 05:30? Is that gonna be needed? How much time do we need? Like, 05:30? Oh, god. Get here 05:30? You won't gotta be I mean, I know you have to schedule on Wednesday. I know why. Delay do we do it during the meeting? Yeah. Maybe. The the executive committee can can look at it that in a few minutes. During the meeting. We just did, like, begin our meeting and, then say now and well, we're gonna dip out and do we're closed session. We could. Is that what you mean? I guess I think it's better to put public commentary first.
Yeah. Okay. I mean, on the agenda, but right at the beginning. So let's just put it on for for seven. So executive Wait. Public commentary? Okay. Executive We're now we're we're now we're just for public commentary. It has to be after public commentary. That's fine. Whatever. Yeah. Makes sense? I'm fine either way. I'm done. What what I'm sorry. What was the last suggestion? Public comment, and then we did that. Could vote to hold I thought we could a closed session at 7PM. Yeah. Can we but at least let the public know, like, the executive committee show up at 07:30? It will be on the agenda if we decide right now. To can we do that?
Wait a minute. Amy's got now. You can Yeah. You can vote to hold a closed session at 7PM, and then, the the regular meeting would start at 07:30. Right. Yeah. I think Right. Gonna be a No. Closed session for thirty minutes is not gonna work for us. Let's get real. It's only one time. One No. No. What about forty five minutes? No. Sometimes people don't even show up in time, and then you gotta deal no. We'll already be here. We have the bond committee. Well, somebody in the motion. Yeah. We might go in. We might we might go into closed session a little early. Well, you all can start without me. I already know what's in the what's in the what's in that legal brief.
Five minutes. Alright. So that's a motion to Yeah. So move. Thank you. And the motion to go I move that we I have a closed session at seven session at 07:00 for forty five minutes. Thank you. And I'll second. That's moved by trustee Wilkes, supported by trustee Wilkes' son. Any discussion? Regular meeting. At seven. Forty five. Yeah. Forty five. It's always been odd. Yep. And it's Yeah. I can't go back to happen, but, you know Okay. A good try. If there's no discussion, then we are ready for the roll call. So that's good. Wilkerson. That'll be good.
Moved by Wilkerson. Second by Wilkerson. Hold a closed session at 7PM on March 19 for forty five minutes starting regular meeting at 07:45. Thank you. Yes. Correct. K. I don't think that okay. Okay. We good? Yes, ma'am. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Wait a minute. Don't we have a discussion? Yes. I'm sorry. What's the discussion? Yeah. I mean, given what what we heard from the bond team, miss Corona, I that's gonna be a full meeting at six. So I don't think that's possible to do it at seven, but, hey, I'll support you. But I'm just putting out realistic expectations.
And and are you potentially suggesting maybe we do seven to eight because that to allow more time for the closed session because that first meeting might run over? Or what what are you thinking? Yeah. I I mean, I I'm thinking, actually, that it's gonna be, if not a full hour, over an hour to go through all those bids. Oh. But, you know We've done enough bond committee meetings to know this. So there's a lot. Might I make a friendly amendment? Who made the amendment or who made the I made the motion. Sorry.
Yep. That we just changed that to, eight of guess? Well, I was gonna say, can we just can we leave it open and say we you you move to have a closed session, say 07:30, you know, and not put the limit on how long the closed session is. Well, we have to we have to post the regular meeting time. Right. Right. And what about holding a bond committee at 05:30? Say seven to eight? Miss Ozinsky just suggested what about starting the bond committee of the whole at 05:30? We've tried that. I mean,
when we did the Google poll, they've I mean, but I mean, our schedules change. Well, what's everybody thinking 05:30? How's that flow with everyone? 05:30? Next Wednesday. 05:30? I have to go once. Going once. I mean, if if most of us make it, it's fine. Okay. I mean, because because that's not something we, you know, we have to have everybody here. Right. Okay. So finally, amendment. How about we incorporate in that motion that we start the bond committee at 05:30? We go until seven. And at seven, we have a closed session, and that goes until
eight. I don't think we're When our regular meeting starts forty five. Yeah. I would say seven. Do we really need this much time? Oh, no. You know what? 07:45 since we're starting early with bond committee. I like that. Okay. So 05:30 to seven is bond committee, and then seven is the close session to 07:45. Seven forty five is the regular meeting. That's a friendly amendment. Friendly amendment. Did you like that? Oh, I I loved it. Okay. Hey. Realistic, but I'll Are you still a second? Yes. I will I'll be second, though. It's been is the friendly amendment's been added?
It's been accepted by trustee Wilkes. It's still supported by trustee Wilkes in any additional discussion. Seeing none. This is his complaints. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. Trustee Wilks? Yes. Trustee Basquiat? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Hey. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Any other item for agenda planning trustees? Seeing none, that brings us down to number nine, item from the board. Is there anything trustees would like to share? Oh, I think I have two two quick things. I did wanna say, we have amazing student artwork up at the WCC.
There's a student showcase exhibit going on. I was able to tour that. There was a kickoff on February 28. Amazing amazing pieces by students of all ages across our district. I think there's 47 different pieces out there. And then I also wanted to bring the board's attention to the fifty first annual Dance for Mother of Pow Wow being hosted by students at U of M, and that's going to be hosted at Skyline High School on March.
It's a Saturday and Sunday. Lots of festivities to come out, learn about native cultures, some traditional dancing, food and vendors as well. What time? Typically, it's not quite posted yet, but typically it starts around noon. Okay. Then they call it a grand entry that's like a big event for people to kick off with dancers and drummers. That would happen again at 6PM on Saturday, and then on Sunday, I believe it starts around noon as well. Is that indoor or indoor? Indoor. K. Oh. Yep. Okay. Cool. Okay.
Trustee Wilkins. Yeah. I just wanted to, congratulate all of the amazing, orchestras, Ann Arbor Public School Orchestras. Trustee Wilkins and I were at orchestra night. The orchestras were outstanding. It was just just unbelievable. I mean, as usual, they're always great, but, a really special evening and just, again, makes you proud to be a part of this school district. Yes. It is. Anything else, trustees? Trustee Wilkins. Wanna second that on orchestra night. It was amazing. And there will be I know it's gonna be aired on,
CTN, and there might be clips on YouTube eventually or something like that. So check it out. It's great stuff. I also wanted to point out the Anarbor PTO Council's fundraiser has kicked off. So this is the one that they've done for the last two years now that's specifically raising money for title one school PTOs. And if you go to GoFundMe and type in Anarbor PTO or PTO council, it'll come up. But, this is they they say it's the they call it the 20 for 30.
So if everyone gave $20, their goal is $30,000 to be raised. And then the PTO Thrift Shop has already agreed to match whatever is raised, which they've done the last two years. So spread the word, please. Alright. Thank you, trustees. If there's nothing else, is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Oh, I'm sorry. It was moved to adjourn by trustee Baskett. It was supported by trustee Wilkerson. And and any discussion? Saying none. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay.
Motion carries. We are adjourned at 12:38AM.