Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Motion carries. Alright. I would like to introduce the nonvoting member at the table, miss Jazz Parks, superintendent of schools. Good evening. Thank you, president Feaster. 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 name called and are given an opportunity to speak or have comments read by a member 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. Telemannage your time and clock will be placed on the screen in front of you. We would like to remind everyone that public comments generally pertain to Ann Arbor 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 follow-up as appropriate. Miss Ozinski, how many times do we have for this evening? We have three signed up this evening. First, the first will be, and each person will get four minutes, is Colleen Creel.
Good evening. My name is Colleen Creel, and I'm a retired counselor from Pioneer High School. I retired from the Amherst schools about thirty two years ago. Last March, I began substitute counseling around the district at various schools. After working at all three comprehensive high schools and community for several months, I, along with Doctor. Denise Edie Richardson, went to sub at Pathways, and we were alarmed by the inequities. We were shocked to see how badly resourced Pathways is. Pathways has six full time teaching staff and two academic support teachers for 47 special ed students.
There are a few part time business, art and language teachers, but this drastically limits the classes that can be offered. Each hour, there's only allowed five to six classes, so we've had to resort to taking 77 students and putting them into 177 online E twenty twenty classes. There's one teacher that monitors that and she also teaches two other social studies classes. There's one full time social worker, one point two psychologist and one principal who deals with a myriad of issues. There's only one OP
and she not only is the secretary to the principal, she has duties regarding scheduling, budget, attendance, count, records, graduation, calling home, supporting students, and anything else that comes. Needless to say, the morale is low at Pathways. We have a number of suggestions that may help the students at that school. One, hire more support staff to address social emotional needs of the building. Hire more teachers to offer more classes. We don't believe any ninth grader should be admitted to pathways because the comprehensive high schools have quite a few resources in place. If after their freshman year,
we feel they still need an alternative, then pathways should take an have an intake meeting with them and talk about three year plans and ways to develop essentially a personal curriculum for each student. Reduction in graduation requirements. I visit several alternative schools in the area. And one thing the state does allow is a reduction in graduation requirements as well as a reduction in hours and days. I think it's something that the board should consider because it's important that these kids
know that their incentive and then they also can go and leave early for work or other programs they're involved with. I also know that classes can be eliminated or they can be replaced by other courses, and we should look into doing that, especially for our CTE programs. CTE should be in the building. These programs are so important. These kids need to understand the requirements, the expectations and the deadlines. One student I talked to who has 13 kids in their home applied to home building was ecstatic.
And he said, you know what, I want to build a big house so my family can be comfortable someday. So these kids want to have those programs. We need to provide that. And finally, work based learning should be an absolute part of those students' experiences. Many of those kids work to help pay bills and to help with rent, and they do not get work based learning credit, and that is something that they can do. And I talked to Tom Peshera and he said it's something he will look into for next year. We talk about the bottom 30%. These 129 students are the bottom 1%.
We're giving them the least amount of resources. I talked with many Pathways students who feel like going to Pathways is a punishment and not a privilege to find a way to get through school in a smaller environment. We need to make some changes to this program and Denise and I are willing to meet with you to help to implement some changes. If we don't make changes, I think in essence we're telling these kids, we're not really caring about your future. Can I finish my sentence? Please. We can't just send them to an alternative school and hope things get better. Hope is not a plan. Thank you. Next is Lena Kaufman.
Lena Kaufman? I ran because I know you're concerned about meeting time. Thank you, Superintendent Parks and Board of Education for recognizing Autism Awareness Month this month and also for the first time in over six years, sharing data on school suspensions with student and school demographics. I was heartbroken to learn from MLive reporting that students with individual education programs, IEPs, now make up an increasing number of AAPSS student suspensions. And a close friend, a neighbor,
asked me to share her story tonight as I know her and her son since he was a toddler. Suspensions, even under the best possible circumstances, can never be delivered completely free of bias because humans are biased. It is hard not to notice among my son's friends who gets suspended and who doesn't. I should not be up here tonight speaking, but my friend said she would not be able to tell her story without budget crisis, His grades declined and the school began to repeatedly suspend him for days at a
time, further isolating him from learning. Far from making things better, suspensions made them worse, she wrote to me. He was ultimately told he could not return to foresight with no real explanation of how we got to that point. This caused him great sadness. I remember when I told him, he started breaking down crying, saying, I suck, I'm so stupid, I can't even do school, I should just kill myself. Students with IEPs are entitled to the support and services necessary to help them succeed
in school. A core purpose of an IEP is to ensure that students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. This includes being physically present in school, participating alongside their peers and having access to the resources they need to thrive. It is deeply concerning when students with IEPs are disproportionately subjected to disciplinary actions, including suspensions. These students should never be seen as or treated as problem students.
Instead, their behavior and challenges must be understood within the context of their individual needs, which the IEP is specifically designed to address. Repeated suspensions do not solve the underlying issues these students may face. They only further isolate them, disrupt their education and deny them the very support they're entitled to receive. As you consider the data of AAPS student suspensions to NICE, please think of the students first and what suspension does to them and their futures,
how they perceive being suspended. Is the data showing how some students are repeatedly targeted for suspension? Do some of these students get expelled to virtual school as was one solution offered to my friend and her son? Are they moved up into high school because our middle schools cannot accommodate their needs, which did happen to my friend's son? He's in ninth grade as an eighth grader. Most of all, please don't take any one person's views that a student is a threat to others, including teachers.
My friend's son may not look like a little boy anymore on the outside, but he's still a little kid inside and is gentle and kind. He deserved better from APS as I imagine many kids with IEPs do. Thank you. Thank you. And finally, Stacy Eibron. As a member of the Ann Arbor School Parents' Intent on Racial Equity, ASPIRE, I want to thank the district for publicly releasing the suspension data that we, along with the Student Advocacy Center, have been requesting for the past five years.
Transparency is an essential first step. Unfortunately, the data confirms what we've suspected all along. Suspension rates for Black and Latino students, economically disadvantaged students and students with disabilities remain disproportionately high. Though black students make up just 13% of the student population in Ann Arbor Public Schools, they account for a staggering forty four percent of suspensions. This year, about sixty eight percent of suspended students are economically disadvantaged. Students with disabilities now make up a larger percentage of students who are suspended than
students without disabilities. So the question is not whether there is a problem, It's what are you going to do about it. ASPIRE urges the district to convene a diverse, community based task force to develop a comprehensive plan to address these disparities. This group should include parents and caregivers, students, representatives from local advocacy organizations such as the Student Advocacy Center, teachers and other school staff. Together, this committee should regularly analyze discipline and suspension data, use research based best practices to develop supportive,
non punitive alternatives that keep students in school so they can thrive. We call on the district to reinstate behavior interventionists and provide educators and staff with meaningful training in restorative practices and culturally responsive engagement strategies. Building authentic relationships with students is key to transforming school culture. Additionally, discipline and suspension data must be disaggregated and made available at the individual school level. Educators need this information to understand how their policies and practices are affecting students,
especially students of color, students with disabilities, and those from low income households. Parents deserve this transparency as they are selecting a school, and advocates need it to identify where resources and support are most urgently needed. We are calling for transparency, accountability and inclusion. Tonight's data reporting is a step in the right direction, but it's only the first step. Much more must be done to ensure equity and justice for our most vulnerable students. Lastly, making public commentary less accessible,
especially for working parents like myself, only serves to disconnect the Board from the very community you're meant to represent. In today's political climate, uplifting community voice should be a priority, not a hurdle. When you limit access, you limit understanding and, ultimately, the ability to serve all students equitably. Thank you. That concludes public commentary. Thank you. We appreciate hearing from our community. The Board would like to thank everyone who spoke and shared their comments tonight. Ms. Parks, are there any points of clarification?
President Feaster, we will talk about, in the presentation the some clarifications regarding the suspension data. As it relates to Pathways, trustees, we have spoken about Pathways, in our individual meetings. And you know that we have had, folks over there, retired staff, like miss Creel as well as retired administrators who are over there assisting assisting and assessing our next steps at Pathways. We've been engaged in that process, this school year. I appreciate Ms. Creel coming forward this afternoon to share some of her perspective since she's been there
subbing, the past few weeks. And as trustees know, like I said, we have been engaged in this process of stabilizing pathways and determining next steps, this school year, and we'll continue that and bring forward our recommendations once that process is complete. Thank you, miss Parks. That brings us to the community feedback session, which is obviously, per our policy thirteen ten, there's a link for the community feedback that was provided. And that will bring us down to number four, reports of association. And I see mister Klein has just arrived. Just arrived. Yes.
Meeting. I'm going to include that in my update. Just a brief update from the AAAEA tonight. Good evening Trustees, Superintendent Parks, Anaberg Public Schools community. I don't know if there are any AAAEA members in the House, but if you are, love you. Thank you for the opportunity to share this report on behalf of the Anarbor Education Association. As always, I'm proud to highlight the extraordinary work and dedication of our AAAA members whose efforts continue to elevate the Anarbor public schools and support student success in countless ways. I want to begin once again by recognizing AAEA member and Huron High School journalism
teacher, Sarah Beth Badalamente. Catch my breath, I just ran in. As I've shared before, Sara Beth's journalism program and yearbook team have earned numerous national accolades and tonight I'm thrilled to announce that she is currently in Seattle, Washington accompanying her student Sadhika Ramanthan, who is being honored with a prestigious National Journalism Award for Excellence in Reporting. Sadhika's award winning coverage of the Anhega Republic School's financial crisis this past year is a testament not only to her own journalistic talents, but also to the guidance and mentorship of Sarah Beth.
Congratulations to both of them on this outstanding national recognition. Yes, give it up for one. Featured in one of the AAPS profiles in excellence, I just want to reiterate, celebrating the another AAAA superstar, Maria Derosia, currently teaching at Eberweit Elementary School. I had the privilege of working alongside Maria during our time at Hazely Elementary and she always exemplified what it means to be an educator. Maria's journey began as a substitute teacher, a long term sub, a technical assistant in the Ann Arbor Public Schools before being hired as a fifth
grade teacher at Hazely where she spent twelve years teaching fourth and fifth graders and eight summers leading math instruction for grades three through six. Now at Eber White, Maria is completing her thirtieth year with the Anabra Public Schools. Her principal, Michelle Hubbard, describes Maria as an exceptional teacher committed to student success, someone who has built meaningful relationships with both students and families and has become a respected leader in her school. Her expertise in mathematics has significantly shaped the curriculum at Eberweig and her national appointment
as one of just 16 math content consultants speaks volumes about her impact and her professional excellence. We are incredibly fortunate to have Maria's leadership and talent in the AAPS. Thank you, Maria. I'd also like to share that AAEA member Emily Baywall from Steam is organizing a rally this Saturday, April 26, from twelve to two pm at the Capitol, in Lansing. The event People for Public Education is an opportunity for our community to come together and show strong support for our public school system.
I've reached out, I've sent each of you trustees the details and encourage anyone who is available and able to attend to do so. Bargaining updates. So I just came from a bargaining session with our bargaining team where we met our new IB facilitator, Deb Lotan. We have been preparing for our full contract negotiations with the district. Both teams are committed to using the interest based bargaining or IBB process, which we found to be effective in past negotiations. Several weeks ago, we met the district's facilitator, Mike Nowakowski. And as I said just a second ago,
we just met our, facilitator, Deb Loten. Our first full table IDB session is scheduled for Wednesday, April 30 with the district. In addition to full bargaining, we have two side bargaining sessions. One is focused on appendix five, which is the supplemental co curricular and extracurricular positions and pay, which begins tomorrow. And one focused on the school calendar or calendars hopefully many years out scheduled for a Monday, April 28. I want to emphasize the importance of this bargaining cycle and that cannot be overstated.
Educators like Maria Garoja and Sarah Beth Badalamente are pillars of our district and yet their compensation remains significantly below that of their peers in comparable districts. If we are to retain our most experienced and impactful teachers and attract the next generation of talented educators, we must address this disparity with urgency. Every negotiation feels important, but this truly is the most critical bargain we've ever undertaken. The sustainability and excellence of the Anheuser public schools depend on our ability to provide
competitive compensation that reflects the value of our educators and what they bring to our schools every day. Thank you for my brief time tonight. Appreciate it. Thank you very much, Mr. Klein. And I believe that brings us down to community group reports. Miss Wozinski, do we have any for today? I have received no request for community group reports. Thank you very much. And I that brings us down to number six, our special presentation from the Washington Intermediate School District. And I believe we have two former AAPS trustees here and now the,
WISD, members here to give us a presentation. Oh, poor Diane. Thank you. Thank you both for being here. Very much appreciated. We have Diane Hockett and Mary Jane Trematine. Right. Okay. Thank you both for being here. Thank you very much for including us and giving us time to share our information. I'm Diane Hockett, and I have been on the WISD Board for twenty four years and served on the Ann Arbor Board from 1994 to February. I'm a former Ann Arbor teacher,
and my three children and three grandchildren have all attended Ann Arbor schools and graduated from them. So I thank you for that service to them. I also want to, acknowledge WISD's superintendent, Naomi Norman, who is here to support and provide her expertise as needed. I'm Mary Jane Tremontin. I have been on the ISD Board for thirty one years, and, I was on the Anambor Board from 1989 to 1992. My our daughters went to, through the Annapolis Public Schools,
Lawton, Slauson, HiHi, and, even took classes at community. I am a retired teacher. I taught in Celine for a lot of sixteen years, and I was on ISD board all sixteen of the years that I was teaching in Celine, and then some. And, I would like to, move on to, what we are our presentation tonight is going to have, is gonna be in three different sections, educate, serve, and advocate. And, these are the themes that, are part of our WISD,
mission, which we will get to a little later. First, I'm going to provide an overview of the intermediate school district history and the ISD, in particular. If we raise it just a touch, can you hear me? There you go. Thank you. Can you hear me okay? Okay. Thank you. So ISDs were created in 1962 by the Michigan legislature, and the intent was for them to support local school communities at a regional level. It also means that the service from one ISD to another looks different because our
constituents are all different. This slide shows the various ways ISDs save money and provide shared resources. And moving on, a little bit of the history of the ISDs. Right. Now, we'll share some of the history of the Wasedena ISD. And you can see that there have been a lot of changes over the past sixty years. And they were the ISDs were initiated and WISD also in 1962. And the in 1960 in 1982,
the WISD opened had their first special ed millage. And I think we know over time that, that has proved to be very beneficial to local districts. And then in 1982 or in 1974, we built High Point, which was a building to serve multiple students with very significant disabilities. And again, we changed that recently and we'll talk about that a little bit later. And in 1988, there was a focus on special ed inclusion and we started some of the young
adult programs. And in 1992, we built the TLC, which provided for expanded meeting spaces and professional development, and we know we use that building well today. In 1966 and 'ninety seven, we developed the ISD developed the countywide fiber network, which connects all of the local school districts to the ISD and to each other, and the ISD built and paid for that. At the same time, the Washtenaw
Technical Middle College to be designed as a choice, a school of choice within the school districts, the county school districts and particularly a focus on Ann Arbor. And I was on the Ann Arbor board at the time, and it turned out that all the other local districts had approved this. But when it came to Ann Arbor, they did not. I will have to say it was not my choice. I felt really badly that we didn't move forward. When they when Ann Arbor refused, it ended up being a charter school within a week.
But then within, in 02/2008 and 02/2009, the WEOC schools were designed and proposed. And these were put together as a consortium that provided secondary options for all students within all of the public schools in Washtenaw County. And so I've looked at this as a creative response to the, is what happened with the Washtenaw Technical College and a way for the ISD to take a creative book and provide another way to provide these options for all high
school students in Washtenaw County. In 2012, we took on early childhood. And at that time, Washtenaw County government had decided to not administer the Head Start program any longer. And so we examined it and they did decide that the ISD was the best avenue for that because we could coordinate other early childhood programs with that. We were awarded that
grant and have served Head Start along with GSRP and early on ever since and we've been able to coordinate those services together. In 2013, we focused on the Ypsi and Willow Run consolidation. In 2019, we did the High Point renovation and bond issue. And then in 2020, we had the pandemic coordination. And now in 2025, we are looking at sustainable funding for CTE and also looking at exploring equitable options
for all of our students. One of the things that I don't think is reflected in this history is the coordination that the ISD has done with other agencies within the community to help better serve all of the students' services, but that has happened over that sixty years. So when we're ready to move on then to the next one. And this is a map of our nine districts, starting with Ann Arbor, which is the largest, and then Chelsea
and Dexter, Lincoln, Manchester, Milan, Saline, and Whitmore Lake and Ypsilanti. In alphabetical order. In alphabetical, yes. So I'm going to speak a bit about why ISDs exist. And that was a good history of what we have done, and I'm going to get into a little more about that. ISDs are responsive to the needs of the local districts that they serve. They provide shared countywide services, consortium pricing, all of this is economics economies of scale, which is in other words saving money.
Diane mentioned the fiber network that was put out that we put together and the, connecting, making the masks and PPP available during COVID. The third thing is to build partnerships between educational organizations, community groups and local agencies. And finally, ISDs exist as taxing authorities. They levy taxes to support local school districts in their service area. But how does the WISD serve our community? As I mentioned,
we are a taxing authority. As such, we have the ability to pass millages, allowing us to operate various student programs such as High Point School, Red Oak. The special education millage generates 61% of all special education funding in Washtenaw County and another 37% flows through us to you from the state and federal government. Most of the districts in the county are 100% reimbursed for their special education expenses.
Dollars 50,000,000 goes solely to the Ann Arbor Public Schools special education. The second thing we help with is infrastructure, technology. We are let's see. We arranged for routers and Internet fiber network, as we mentioned, across the county, to connect schools also. And we have finance. We've got accounting software for budgeting. We have special education software for IEP tracking. We have PowerSchool, REMC discounts on everything that we buy. We coordinate, do that as a group.
And we also, coordinate cross district communications, that you Ashley Krasinski is our Communications Director, and you may receive various communications from her as she does that. The other thing we do is we offer innovation in education. We do this by providing, inclusive teaching practices, instruction in culturally responsive instruction instruction and inclusive teaching practices as well as culturally responsive instruction for educators and administrators. We have the WEEAC programs, which are the Washtenaw Educational Options Consortium,
such as the Washtenaw Intermediate High School, the Early College Alliance at Eastern Michigan and the Washtenaw Alliance for Virtual Education, the WAVE program. So we'll talk a little bit specifically about what services are provided for Ann Arbor Public Schools. And this slide focuses mostly on the instructional programming as Mary Jane mentioned, all of the infrastructure services are also provided to Ann Arbor schools without going into specifics. So, all Ann Arbor schools,
what we'll talk about special education and all Ann Arbor schools are eligible that are eligible have the options of the center based programs at High Point and Progress Park. And they also can attend the young adult programs with community based sites located throughout in different places within Ann Arbor and then also in other communities too, so that they can serve the community. In Career Technical Education, it's countywide, we have 70 programs, but and of which Ann Arbor Students have access to 12.
So, some of which are offered within the district, some of which are offered countywide other places. Professional learning networks and coaching for educators. There have been several ways for pathways for certification for educators and Ann Arbor Staff are eligible for that as well as the ongoing professional development that goes on either in individual classes or through coaching systems that are divine and networks that are put together for support for teachers.
And then also mental health sports such as Handle With Care and also the Bridge Mental Health team are all available to the NERV students. And then we'll go on to the next part, which we'll talk a little bit about advocate and ways in which we do that. And to start out, we'll take a look at our mission. And this is our new, mission statement that reflects our commitment to educate, serve, and advocate with students, families,
schools, and communities. And we wanna emphasize the with, not that we're doing them to them, but that we are looking together for how can we together serve them. And we are doing this with a focus on having a just education system and having all voices heard. Next, I would like to highlight our Board commitment to all students. After much conversation, data analysis and thoughtful discussion, we adopted this equity policy in 2018,
and I would like to read it. We will hold ourselves accountable for the ways in which we are able to address the challenges of underperformance for groups of students who have been traditionally marginalized and denied access and opportunity. Resource allocation, policy and practice is designed to close the opportunity gap to ensure equitable educational access for all students with a specific focus on achieving an equitable system for students in
poverty, students with disabilities and students of color. As I say, we adopted that policy in 2018 and there are six questions outlined in the policy, which guide all our decisions that we make as a Board as they are related to resource allocation and policy development. And continuing with advocacy efforts, WISD either takes part or leads in many of the initiatives locally,
statewide and federally. And locally, the Washtenaw County Superintendents meet regularly to talk about the services needed for students. In fact, one of the I want to identify that many of the recommendations that the ISD Board actually votes on don't necessarily come from our own superintendent, but they come from the Superintendents Association, where we get a sense of what's best for all nine local districts. And so that is a good way for us to for them to advocate for
us for the services that are needed. And also then we have the Washtenaw Association of Boards, and that's a professional the networking and professional support for all local board members. So that all of the local board members can come together to learn things as well as to get to know each other and share with each other. And one of the examples will be tomorrow to see one of the presentations and Mary Jane will talk to you about that later.
So that is something there. And then, at the state level, we have been very involved with the Talent Together, which is a professional development pathways for teachers as well as the early literacy programs. Federally, of course, we work with collaborating for Head Start, E Rate funding and also the and Special Ed and IDEA. So our advocacy this year, I want to say, I think has focused has resulted in teacher certification opportunities for our staff across the
nine districts and also new learning opportunities for our students such as driving possibilities. So that is one of the outcomes that I think we've had from some of our advocacy. And speaking of advocacy, we want to share with you an opportunity that the WISD is putting together, which is an educational town hall. The event is sponsored by the Washtenaw Superintendents Association and the Washtenaw Association of School Boards. And this is free,
and it's open to the public, and it's April 30 at seven at the Morris Lawrence Building. The community members can come to learn about changes to federal policy and funding impact how funding impact impacts Washtenaw County Public Schools. They'll hear from educators and legislators about topics such as immigration, diversity, school funding, special education, Head Start and federal staffing. There is also an opportunity to ask questions and learn how to be a strategic
advocate. You can see that Superintendent Parks will be one of the featured panelists, along with other local superintendents, the President of the State Board of Education and the President of the Washtenaw Association of School Boards. To register, you can scan the QR code on the slide or use the link that is on the slide. We are often asked about the relationship between our Board and the local boards, the nine constituent boards. And as one of those, you have three key responsibilities.
The first one is local school boards are responsible for electing the Board the board trustees of the WISD board. Each school board in the county chooses a designee to come to the ISD on a specific date, which happens to be Monday, June 3, and cast a ballot for those that you wish to have become members of WISD Board. This is to ensure that the ISD Board is elected directly by the school districts
that we serve. We're elected to six year terms and those change every two years, there's another six year group. You will choose as a Board who it is you would like to support in that election and the designee that you send to the ISD will cast their ballot. This year, there are two openings for the Ann Arbor Board representatives I mean, Ann Arbor District representatives. Only two from Ann Arbor can be on the ISD Board.
All the other districts can have just one Board member. And both Diane and I are going for reelection. And so you will choose who you and then there's another opening. Dorcas Musili is filling out the Board year for retired Teresa Saunders. And so she has to go for the election of the rest of her term. She is up for election. And so she is from Ypsilanti representing Ypsilanti. So you'll have three people that you have to vote for.
The second thing that is a responsibility of you is that on occasion, school boards can pass board resolutions, calling on the WISD board to take action. And this could be for specific bodies of work, it could be for advocacy efforts or it could be for a ballot proposal that you would like us to support for your district and students. And then finally, the budget hearing process. Local school boards are responsible for annually reviewing and approving the WISD budget,
and that meeting will be held tomorrow evening at six via Zoom, and all Board members in the County are encouraged to attend. And then at some point, you will vote on that, in a resolution in May in order for us to then finally get it back and do a final vote. Next steps. Before we close our presentation, we want to highlight the area of work that the ISD has been pursuing and focusing on, in response to requests from local districts,
and that is career technical education, also known as CTE. Washtenaw County is considered a desert by the Michigan Department of Education. Overall, students in Washtenaw County have less access to CTE programs than most students in other communities. And we have the opportunity to expand access, which is what students want. And you can hear this in their own voices, as we would like to share in a short video. My name is Jaden Dillon. Grace. My hope for our future is For future generations to get the opportunities to learn
hands on. To have more inventors. Instead of buying things, we can create them. Every student deserves to have an opportunity like that. My hope for the future is CTE. My name is Jaden. Dylan. Grace. Okay. Okay. So these are real students right here in Washtenaw County, including Grace, who's an Ann Arbor senior and on the building trades, student in the building trades program and will be going to college this fall to pursue a career in construction engineering. Or I guess, construction manager.
So, obviously, has benefited from that program. Again, we'd like to thank you for awarding us the opportunity to speak with you this evening, and we appreciate that. And if you have any questions, we could take notes now. Thank you both so very, very much. Trustees, are there any questions? Yes. I do have a quick question. First, I want to thank you all for coming out tonight and sharing what the WISD does and how it's connected to the various districts. So based on the climate that we're currently in with the federal government and the uncertainty with the federal education department,
It really sounds like the WISD is an ally. You're considered an ally with AAPS and other school districts in Washtenaw County. So in in terms of securing adequate funding for special education, grants, school meals, Head Start, and I can go down the list. So how can we work together to make sure our district is getting the funding needed for all students, again, in this climate of uncertainty? So how can we make sure we're getting the funding needed for all of our students, as well as for some of our most vulnerable students?
I'm gonna give a short answer. Yeah. And then Short answer. Thank you. They return to, superintendent to, add to that. And one of them is the town hall. That's the idea of best is to give out factual information of what we know about how it's affecting us and what's happening so that we can indeed together advocate for what we need. And also to be able to maybe prepare a little bit for anticipation of what we don't know will happen, but at least be well informed.
Mhmm. And, so so that's primarily one. And I will have to say that we as board members and as administration have really been trying to stay informed about the different pieces that are going on. And I'm gonna turn this over to Naomi to see if you wanna add anything, to that. And I would just add before that happens that Doctor. Norman has been in contact with all the superintendents across our county, including your own superintendent, and they're working diligently on what can be done.
I'm just going to add, there's power in numbers. And I think that's what we do best, not just with our local superintendents. But when it comes to advocacy, especially at the national level, we have to team up with superintendents across the country. So I've made a lot of effort and have the whole team that I'm working with make a lot of effort to participate in all the national advocacy work and help to champion in specific areas. I've had a hand in helping with school lunch funding, specifically with some national work. Right now, today,
we were doing a lot of work around Head Start. It was cut. It's already we have already it's been leaked that it's not in next year's budget. At the federal level, that's 5,700,000 for Washtenaw County. It impacts over almost 500 families and a lot of staff. So we are working with the National Head Start Association, the Michigan Head Start Association, our local congresspeople in Michigan and nationally. So we are on a full court press on every one of the topics you just named, and we're gonna talk a lot more about that at the town hall and go
much deeper into what that looks like and what you can do. Okay. That was my next question. Thank you so much. I might also add that as school board members, stay tuned to information from the Michigan Association of School Boards because they are strong advocates for us and will often send us messages that say, advocate on this issue and share with us what's going on with that. So again, there's power in numbers and keeping a track of all the different organizations, I think, will be helpful and all work together.
Okay. Thank you so much. And we will I'm sure our superintendent will keep us informed as well. But thank you again because this is very timely, and it's at the forefront, I think, of a lot of people's minds, just in terms of all these question marks and again, uncertainty. So thank you. Any additional? I don't have a question. I just have a thank you. I mean, you ladies have been hanging in there a long, long time. It just shows your dedication. Obviously, your children and grandchildren have probably already been through the programs, but you're still there advocating for other people's children.
So thank you and to Doctor. Norman for your leadership as well. Thank you. If nothing else, thank you all for being here. Truly appreciate your presentation and all your hard work. Thank you. That brings us down to Board Committee reports, and we'll turn it over to Trustee Baskett for the bond committee. Thank you, President Feaster. Well, the, committee met earlier before the start of this meeting. So, we'll just quickly remind you all that we supported moving forward the first briefing items that you will see this evening. We also discussed,
our next meeting time, which is in a pit of a flux, but stay tuned for that. There was a quick update regarding the bond advisory group and also talking about future work and, having to, again, make the appeals, if you will, in working with the city for easement adjustments and things like that. So, that's all for tonight. Thank you. Thank you, trustee Baskin. That brings us down to the executive committee. We obviously met, set tonight's agenda. That's all we so we'll move forward to finance committee. President Lucas? Yes, thank you. The Finance Committee met on Monday at 09:30AM and we covered the monthly budget monitoring
report, which we'll hear tonight. Those questions, then we're down to the Performance Committee. Yes. And we also met on Monday at 04:30 this week. The suspension report was delivered to the committee, and I'm very excited to let the community see your hard work and to also discuss the spectrum of programs we have across our district to try to address some of the issues. And I know we have some students here this evening. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. That brings us down to information in the AAPS student suspension and,
supports report. I now turn it over to superintendent Parks. Thank you, president Feaster. Trustee Schmidt's, synopsis of the performance committee meeting is a good segue. Introduce our two Executive Directors, Doctor. Roberta Hayward, who's Executive Director of Secondary Schools and Melita Austin, who is our Executive Director of Elementary Schools. They will be bookending our report this evening on student suspensions and supports. We also have, some additional guests here this evening who will be layering into this report with some
of the supports that are in place at our schools, and we'll also be talking about next steps. As was shared this evening, we have not brought this report forward in several years since, I believe, 2018. So you will see some trend data. You will see some demographic data, that is broken down by student groups. And we will also talk about, some of those things again that we are putting in place and some of those things that we need to do, that we are not currently doing in order to best support all of our students
in this particular area. So at this time, I will turn it over to our executive directors. And as our guests, come to their part of the presentation, they will be introduced. Since we do have students this evening, trustees, I would ask if we could get through the report because the student piece is at the end, and we'd like to have them be able to do their part and then get them home, for school tomorrow. So if we could get through the full report and then take your questions at the end, I'd appreciate it so we can get our students home.
At this time, I'll turn it over to doctor Hayward. Thank you, superintendent park Parks. Good evening, trustees. We will be sharing with you suspension data report from the Anarbor Public Schools. Additionally, we will share interventions and strategies where that are currently in place, to promote a positive, say, school's culture for our students and to ensure their success. Here are our objectives, for tonight's session. Review and analyze k-twelve student suspension data in the Ann Arbor Public Schools over the past six, school years as superintendent Parks has already mentioned,
highlight ongoing efforts to assess and support students' overall well-being, share current strategies and interventions being implemented by school staff, and to identify and propose next steps to enhance support for all of our AAPS students. We focused on three guiding questions as we analyzed and reviewed the data, and those questions are on the screen. Question one, how have the number of student suspensions changed over time, both overall and by level? What are the trends?
How are suspensions disaggregated among students by demographics? And question three, what are the most common reasons for student suspensions? And has this changed over time? And so at this time, I'm gonna turn it over to miss Austin, who will provide an overview of the data collection process. Thank you, doctor Hayward. So some other factors to consider. In determining suspension, we looked at our rights and responsibility handbook, and that's how we determine how suspensions are issued. Data was removed from the 02/2021 school year due to the virtual setting for most
of that year in a very low number of suspensions. In addition, we estimated our total suspension numbers overall by level for the 02/1920 and twenty twenty four twenty five years for comparability due to the COVID and partial year, respectively. In addition, we collected our student suspension data through PowerSchool. Further, all Michigan schools are He is our data analysis person. He is our data analysis person. He synthesized all of this information through PowerSchool and then made it available for us
for public view. So data was collected over a six year period between 02/2018, '2 thousand '19 school year and 2425 school year up to date. We looked at and collected a level of students suspended by level. So that was elementary, our k to eight schools, middle, and high schools. We reviewed why the suspensions were assigned. And we also categorized the students by demographics. So we looked at our economically disadvantaged students, English learners, students with disabilities, race, ethnicity, and gender identity.
And now I'll turn it over to Doctor. Hayward. Thank you. So I'm just gonna talk about the suspension data over time. Next slide. And so we go here to our first question. Again, how have the number of students suspensions changed over time, both overall and by level? And what are those trends that we see? As mentioned previously, due to the early, closure of schools, data for the 2019 and '20, '20 school year were projected. Similarly, estimates were made for the 2425 school year as the data was provided in February,
and, obviously, our school, year is still in session. The number in parentheses represent projected figures for a full school year. This allows for a more meaningful comparison with years in which we have data for that complete academic school year. The table includes the academic year, total, district suspensions, and suspensions disaggregated by school level. For this table, we observe an overall upward trend in suspensions with a notable dip during the twenty
one-twenty two academic year, followed by a steeper, post COVID increase. Next slide, please. This visual displays total district suspension by year from 2018 to 2025. The gray dash line indicates the overall trend. The red dash line highlights the post COVID upwards trend, and the solid blue line represents the actual suspension data. On this slide, we observe an overall increase in suspensions across elementary,
middle and to a lesser extent, K-eight schools throughout the analysis period. Of our total suspensions, four hundred or twelve point nine percent are a result of in school suspension and two thousand seven hundred and five, or eighty seven percent, were out of school suspensions. And again, that's over the entire six year period. And on this slide, we look at district suspensions by level. In contrast, high school show a general decrease in the number of suspensions assigned over time.
However, across the four levels I'm sorry, all four levels, there is a clear upward trend in suspensions following, the COVID related school closures. And so at this time, I will turn it back over to Ms. Austin. On the next few slides, I'm going to speak about our suspensions disaggregated among students by demographics? This table shows the proportion of suspensions by student demographics compared to the larger population from the twenty eighteen-nineteen school year through 2024 and 2025.
On the next slide, you'll also see the data, next slide, please, continued on from 2022 through twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five school year. Our next slide will show this same information in a bar graph format. So please go to the next slide. So on here, you see our percent of suspensions by race or ethnicity over the six year analysis period. You'll notice there is a higher percentage of BlackAfrican American students suspended compared to our other racial groups: Asian, HispanicLatino, multiethnic, and White students. Next slide,
please. Here, you'll see our students broken up from economically disadvantaged to non economically disadvantaged. Here, you'll see over a six year analysis period that our students who are economically disadvantaged are suspended at a higher rate compared to our non economically disadvantaged students. This bar graph distinguishes our English learners compared to our not English learners. On here, you will see that our non English learners are suspended at a higher rate compared to our English learners.
Here, you'll see our students with disabilities compared to our students without disabilities. From the twenty eighteen-nineteen school year up until the twenty twenty one-twenty two school year and twenty twenty two-twenty three, you will see that students without disabilities were suspended at a higher rate compared to our students with disabilities. Two thousand twenty three, twenty four up until this school year, the twenty twenty four, twenty five school year, you'll see a noticeable difference that our students with disabilities are trending higher and suspended
at a higher rate compared to our students without disabilities. I'll turn it over to Doctor. Hayworth. Thank you, Ms. Austin. So now we're going to talk about the common reasons that suspensions were assigned over the six year analysis period. And so our question three and final question for the data analysis, what are the most common reasons for student suspensions and has this changed over time? Our answer to question three regarding the most common suspension reasons is found in this table and a few of the following.
So this table represents the most common reasons suspensions were signed during the 2018 through twenty one-twenty two school years. You will see over the next few slides, there does not seem to be specific patterns of change over time for the reasons suspensions were signed. This table represents the most common reasons assigned during the twenty two-twenty three school years through the twenty four-twenty five year to date school years. Pre and post COVID,
the primary reason for suspension is fighting and physical aggression. Thank you. In subsequent slides, you will see physical assault is also included as the most common suspension reason with disruptive conduct and insubordination or open defiance, as common reasons as well. Each suspension reason is listed in our district's rights and responsibilities handbook. Example of definitions, include physical aggression, where individuals, are just being aggressive toward towards one another.
Fighting is obviously where you have two or more people, coming together for physicalcom contact to cause harm. Physical assault is when a student intentionally causes physical harm, with another student. And then we talk we we have alcohol drug activity. So this includes the use of possession of, being under the influence of, or the sale in distribution. This also includes, personal vaporizers as well. It is also important to note with the exception of tobacco use,
PowerSchool does not delineate the difference between substance use or the sale of illegal substances. Both of these reasons fall under, alcohol drug activity. I will highlight a little later in the program, in the presentation a program that Foresight is piloting that supports students who are, using nicotine or vaping. And our goal is to have more schools pilot this program in the fall and get just gather the data on its effectiveness. Next slide, please. The next two slides are broken down with the most common suspensions reasons by level.
And so this table is Panel one, 20 18 through 2022. This table has the most common suspension reasons from 'twenty two-'twenty three through the current school year to date. And again, to date is February when the data was collected. So again, our top reasons have not changed. We do see more physical aggression at the elementary level, fighting at the middle school level, and alcohol drug activity and fighting at the high school level.
And now I'm going to turn it back over to Ms. Austin so we can continue to play musical mics. So I'll speak on the next few slides our summary of the data. So overall, you will see that the number of suspensions assigned over our six year analysis period is increasing over these years. And we can certainly say that is in part due to post pandemic behaviors. High school suspensions are showing a decreasing trend, while we are on an upward trend in elementary and middle schools.
With the exception of K-eight schools, all levels and the district overall have a steeper increased trend line, as you saw in the previous slides. And suspensions are disproportionate over a six year analysis period, impacting our Black and African American students, our male students, students with disabilities, and students who are economically disadvantaged. Over the analysis period, the primary reasons for suspensions fall in these categories: fighting, physical aggression, physical assault, alcohol drug activity, tobacco use, disruptive conduct,
and insubordination. These reasons have not changed significantly over the six year analysis period, again, with the exception of alcohol and drug tobacco use not being private in our elementary schools, however, prevalent in our upper or secondary schools. The district suspension data clearly indicates that there is still important work for us to do, to be done in addressing our student suspensions. We remain committed to reviewing data regularly as a team with our building leaders and district leaders and our school teams and with our service providers to support every student
based on their individual personal needs, while also ensuring that our schools are safe and that our students, our staff, our teachers, and our support services and providers feel that they are safe at our schools. We are approaching this work with intentionality to ensure that schools are a welcoming and safe place for all of our stakeholders. While we focus on the whole child, focusing on the hearts and their minds in order to keep our community well. We know that when students feel connected and when they feel seen,
valued, and heard, they come to school every day. That sense of belonging and purpose is so critical in ensuring that our schools are supporting all of our learners. With the focus on our students, we also are connected to making sure that there are stronger academic performances and that kids are attending school regularly. Next, we will share the steps we are taking to systematize effective practices and to also further support the social and emotional well-being of our students and our staff.
We will also highlight data related to our disproportionality, particularly among our students in special education services. Next, I'll have Bill Harris, our MTSS, which stands for Multi Tiered Systems of Support Administrator, share about the tier supports that we offer across our school campuses k through 12. Thank you, miss Olsen. Good evening, trustees. Good evening. Next slide there, mister Cluey. So as Ms. Alston just said, intentionality and systematizing is one or a couple of our key foci as we move forward in addressing how we support our students.
Multi tiered system of supports is a concept that we've been talking about now for a couple of years. This graphic originated with the MDE and we've been using it to structure some of our conversations around MTSS. Real quickly, when you look at that graphic there, tier one are those universal, instructional practices that we believe are appropriate for all of our students in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. Tier two in the yellow are more targeted supports and interventions for just some students. And then lastly, there are tier three supports that are just for a few,
but they're intensive, level of supports. Important to notice in this little graphic is that the tier two and the tier three supports are layered on top of the universal support. So it's not in place of but in addition to. So this helps provide some of our structure for our efforts moving forward. Doctor. Sugai provides this simple definition or way to think about what MTSS is. He says that it's something to help organize the adults and their implementation of best practices within classrooms and schools.
It is not about organizing kids as much as it is about organizing what we do for and with kids and their families. I appreciate this greatly. I think many of us do. Sometimes it's been misconstrued that we have tier two students or tier three students, and that's not at all what we're trying to say. We organize our supports for those students, not the students themselves. Before we talk about those supports and the different tiers or layers of things, I want to just talk briefly about, how we understand student well-being and how that informs what supports we provide to students.
Next slide, Mr. Cooler. So, attendance data, behavior data are something that are very familiar with all of you. You've just heard a lot about some of our behavior data and I know you've heard about absenteeism and attendance data, historically. We had a multidisciplinary group come together, a couple years ago to to really ask ourselves, does that offer a complete picture about students' well-being? And the answer was no. We need more data and more information about students if we're really gonna understand their own well-being. That includes mental health data, climate and community data,
as well as information about their SEL competencies. So as we looked at different tools and different means for collecting this information, we wanted to make sure we were evidence based with this work. We wanted to stress the importance of lead data versus lag data so we could try and get out in front of some of these challenges as opposed to just responding to. And then of course anytime we can amplify the student voice in that data, we think we're going to have truer results, right? We're trying to do with, not to, our students and giving them an opportunity to share how they're doing is really important.
So the things on the right there are just a couple of examples of things that we've been, focusing on here over the last, year or so. Early warning indicators, Doctor. Berger has been producing some, datasets with attendance, behavior, and course performance together for all of the schools on a monthly basis. The Sabers, you might recall that from previous board meetings and, what have you from Pioneer High School that we've expanded this practice now to many of our secondary schools. It's a screening that allows us to understand how students are doing socially, emotionally, academically from their perspective and then SEL competencies I'll talk about here momentarily.
Next slide. So we think taking all of these types of data together gives us a much better picture and understanding about where the students are with their well-being and they help inform two things. One, what, how is our Tier one or our universal education and support system meeting the needs of groups of students? So how is that Tier one performing? Is it are we hitting that 80% target that we want to with our Tier one practices or not? So that's one. The other is who might benefit from or need Tier two or Tier three support.
So again, looking at all of those data points in conjunction with one another will help inform the direction we should go with that. Next slide please. Thank you. This is a blown up picture of what we would say is our system of support for the Ann Arbor Public Schools. We have a clear vision of what this ought to look like from the different types of data on the very left through the tiers moving left to right increasing in intensity. Some parts of this system are rock solid. We've had them in place for several years. Other parts are newer and or still being developed.
We're exploring different data points, we're refining data protocols, we're exploring different tools or other tools or supports we've got new partnerships with that we are still refining over the course of time. We're going to talk about and highlight a couple of these. I'll talk briefly about a few then several of my colleagues and some of our wonderful students will talk about some of the others here. But this is what we're striving for, very much a work in progress. So we start with Tier one. Again, that's what we want and value for all of our students.
Just like we think about on the academic side of things, we've got a guaranteed and viable curriculum. We would argue we have the same aspirations and need for supports for all of our students in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. This is a big lift for our teachers and principals and our schools. They've got a lot on their plate, so it's important that we're thinking about that infrastructure being intentional and clear, and it will be an ongoing challenge to lighten the load and make it as accessible as possible. With that said, we understand that if we don't have a strong foundation here, we simply won't be able to keep up with the student needs and provide all
of the Tier two and Tier three supports. So this has got to be our priority. Next slide. The things here in the green box should look very familiar. These are things that we've long valued in the AAPS, culturally responsive teaching, trauma informed practices, restorative practices, positive behavior supports. These are things that are tried and true that we want all of our students and teachers to experience within the AAPS. You're gonna hear about some of these, this evening, but I'm gonna call out one in particular, that's our SEL curriculum. So historically we've done some very strong SEL work around the district,
but it's often been in pockets. We've not done it necessarily district wide or systemically. And this year we took a big, big step forward by naming and supporting a district wide SEL curriculum namely TRAILS here. Like most SEL curriculums, they focus on the Castle five, those competencies from self awareness to responsible decision making. And then Trail's foundational principles are cognitive behavior theory and mindfulness and those are interwoven through all of their lessons as they teach the competencies to these students.
So it affords us an opportunity to experience some synergy of having district wide shared language, shared understanding around activities and strategies and so on. You'll see I underlined theory there. Some people will confuse this and say cognitive behavior therapy, And we're being clear that this is a theory and this curriculum is universal for all. This is very appropriate for our classroom teachers to be teaching and supporting this. It doesn't require clinician experience, if you will. Next slide. So some students we should expect and do expect are gonna need more than the
tier one. No matter how strong that may be, some will need more. These tier two supports are often provided by our counselors, social workers, psychologists, but they're also provided regularly by our principals and teachers. They work this into their daily practices, especially as you look to the right there and some of those behavior support strategies. Those are things that our teachers and principals are working, educating themselves on to bring into their regular practice. Principals are working, educating themselves on to bring into their regular practice most definitely. And then our certified support staff there running groups as you'll see, social skills, anxiety, depression, etcetera. And then of course, we lean into partners, peer partners, And then of course,
we lean into partners. Peer partners, community partners, mentors as well can all be part of those extra supports that some students will need. Next slide. And still, some students will need more. That's a relatively few number of students, but they need intensive support. So you'll see the folks, the counselors, social workers, and psychologists. Again, those are the folks that have been trained specifically to do the things on the right, the functional behavior analysis, the threat assessments and so on, further in-depth diagnostic work that really help,
build some of those individualized emergency plans, threat response plans, safety plans, etcetera. With that said, inevitably some students' needs will be so great that exceeds the capacity of the school. And for that, we're grateful that we have got some community partners that we work alongside with. Some of those are longstanding, like the U of M, psychiatric emergency services and community mental health. Others are newer, Care Solace is something you might have heard about we've started using in the past year and then just earlier tonight our friends from the ISD mentioned the BRIDGE clinical
support team, another partnership that started up just within the past year that we're very optimistic about from meeting those extreme needs. So when we take this all into consideration from our data through these tiers of support and that's the system that we're using to kind of structure our approach moving forward. With that said, I will pass it over to Ms. Lewis. Good evening, trustees. Alright. Can you guys hear me? Perfect. So, I wanna start by saying that our students with IEPs and five zero fours are,
of course, general education students first. And our goal is to keep our students in the learning environment because we want them to learn and grow and get as much from the school setting as they can. And when we talk about disproportionality, this is data that is collected annually that we must submit to the state and the federal government around the number of suspensions that students with IEPs have had. And they look at this data to see, specifically, are we disproportionate in the amount of suspensions over ten days for students with IEPs?
So this is data that is reported. And if they determine, through the formula that they use that we are disproportionate, there might be some actions that they are requiring our district to do. They may ask us to, take a portion of our IDEA funds and use that to talk about how we are going to be a bit more proactive and offer some additional supports for these particular students, or what are we doing to ensure that we don't have as many students who might be entering into the path of eligibility for special education.
You can move on to the next slide. So when we think about how we're supporting our students with IEPs, and one of the things that, you heard, I believe it was doctor Hayward talk about, was the increase at the elementary level in students that are having more aggressive behaviors. And so we also take that tiered approach from the special education lens as well. So we look at what are some things from the tier one perspective that we can do to make sure that we are have some generalized supports that are available
for all students. And so we think about those in terms of positive behavior intervention and supports. And so many of the tools that you've heard talked about tonight are accessible and available for our students with IEPs and five zero four plans as well. The other thing that I wanna make sure I talked about is that, again, our goal was to keep students in the least restrictive environment. But we also want students to understand that whether it is intentional or unintended through their actions, Sometimes there are some consequences.
There are some impact to other members of the school community. And our goal in this process is to help them understand, the impact of some of the behaviors that they may be exhibiting and how we can coach them and guide them to some better behaviors for the school community. When we think about tier one support, some of the things that we have in place are training for staff, coaching, not just special education staff, but also for our general education teachers. Many of our buildings have what we call building inclusion coaches,
which have been trained through the statewide autism and resources training program, where they are support for their building. And many of those folks that have identified and taken on this volunteer role, are general education staff that are supporting in their building because they wanna make sure that from a tier one perspective, we are being as inclusive as possible and supportive as possible of all of our students. When we think about tier two supports for students with IUPs, it might be a behavior support plan for that student to help them.
It might be you saw earlier something like a check-in or check out. We also have what we call the classroom environment and teaching assessment, where one of our staff members may guide a general education teacher through what's happening inside of your classroom. How are your systems and your structures? If a student is having some difficulty, are there some adjustments that we can make within the classroom setting to better support this student? And from that tier three perspective, let's say we we've gone through all of our tier one supports,
our tier two supports. There are some students who have some unique behavioral needs. And we might do what's called a functional behavior assessment, where we're looking at a very specific behavior that that student is exhibiting, what's happening when that behavior, right before that behavior, is exhibited, what happens afterwards, to try to determine, again, how we can support this student in choosing the most appropriate behavior no matter the circumstances. We understand that behavior is communication for our students, and so we wanna make sure that we are helping them and guiding them to
communicate what their needs are in a safe way where all members of our school community feel safe, valued, and respected. One more thing that I do wanna add that we have added this summer, and you may have seen it in the, weekly report. For some of those younger students that may be coming in that may be at preschool level, were part of our preschool program or part of our early on program, but parents have decided, I don't wanna send them directly into kindergarten. I'm going to have that my student go to ABA full time.
We are preparing a summer program to help those students bridge back into the school community so that hopefully we will see less of those aggressive behaviors. So we're taking some proactive steps to try to address some of those challenges that have come our way over the last few years as a result of COVID. We have a team in our district, that includes, I talked about our building inclusion coaches, but we also have the support of board certified behavior analysts from the ISD as well as, through an outside agency.
We also have three teacher consultants from the WISD that support our district on a daily basis. They are, really a part of our school community. If you if you didn't know, you would think they worked for AAPS, and so that is wonderful. And we also have two teacher consultants. One teacher consultant that supports students with autism, one that supports students with cognitive impairments. And they don't just support our categorical programs, they support general education classrooms, they support resource programs,
so they support all of our teachers across the district. Because again, our goal is how can we support our students in the least restrictive environment. So oftentimes, they're spending more of their time in gen ed classrooms because that's where the majority of our students are, helping teachers say, what can we do to keep this student in this gen ed classroom setting? You can go ahead to the next slide. Now, sometimes we know, that there are times when students that have an IEP or a five zero four are disciplined.
And they are general education students first, and they are subject to the disciplinary, code and policy of the district. But there also are some special protections in place to ensure that if some challenges are happening with these students, we are coming together as a team to talk about what supports we have in place, what's working, what's not working, what adjustments do we need to make. And on the next slide, I'm gonna kind of talk about the process of what happens. So, perhaps,
two students, an incident occurs, there's a violation of the student code of conduct, the building administrator is going to investigate that process. And sometimes depending upon the episode, the investigation may not be as quick as we'd like to have. So a student may be out of school on what we call an emergency removal while we really get to the facts of what happened in that situation. But once the principal has determined that, yes, there was a violation of the code of conduct, they will provide a written notice to the parent, share with the student,
here's what happened. Here's the action that we are taking as a district. This it could be any number of things. Sometimes it's not suspension, but again, they'll go through and share here's what's going on. If it is suspension, again, they will be notified. And then the IEP team or the students five zero four team would also be notified because when we talk about those protections, number of days. And if that number of days gets to ten days of removal, no matter what that reason is, then the team must come together, this is step four, to conduct what we call a manifestation determination review meeting.
And at that time the team is looking at was the conduct in question, a manifestation of the student's disability. If it was, then the student is allowed to immediately return back into the school setting, but we don't just say, come on back. The team is going to talk about clearly something, is not going as well it it needs to go for the student. We're gonna talk about what do we need to do? What adjustments do we need to make to the student's plan? If it's not a manifestation of that student's disability, then that disciplinary action that was recommended will continue to stand for that student.
Next slide. When we're thinking about, students with disabilities, you heard me talk about emergency removals. Right? And sometimes what's important, and teams are counting these days anytime a student is removed. So let's say, something happened and the bus couldn't pick up a student with an IEP for a day. That day would count as a day of removal if that student is not able to get to school. So maybe it was no fault of their own. So any type of removal from the learning environment for a student with an IEP
or a five zero four is considered a day of removal, and we must count and keep track of those days. And again, we remember that students are, subject to our discipline under the law, but there are protections. Because, again, our goal is to help them understand the implications of the actions that they're taking and how to ensure that as they move forward and progress and matriculate through the curriculum, that they are making the best decisions possible, for their own well-being and for the safety of our school community.
Next slide. So you've heard me talk about the manifestation determination review, and some people may refer to that as the ten day rule. And again, what this means is that, there are additional protections for students with IEPs and five zero fours when we get to that ten day mark. If they have more than ten days of removal, then we must sit down and have a conversation. What is happening with the student? Is what's happening a result of their, you know, part of their disability? And if so, what are we going to do differently to support this student?
And during this process, we're answering two key questions. Next slide, please. Thank you. So those two questions are, was this behavior substantially and directly related to the student's disability? Yes or no? The second question is, was the behavior a direct result of the school's failure to implement the student's IEP? That could be something as simple as, did we provide all of the services written into that student's IEP? Did we provide the accommodations as written in that student's IEP?
If the answer is no, then that means that it is, a manifestation and the student can no longer be removed and must come back. So if you answer yes to either question, you don't have to answer yes to both. But if the answer is yes to either question, it's considered a manifestation, and the student must be returned to the school setting. But again, we talk about what do we need to do differently to support this student. If the answer to is no to both questions, then the student can be removed from the school setting according to our rights and
responsibilities. Again, I just wanna say that our ultimate goal, is to support all of our students in their least restrictive environment. My advice to teams is a lot of teams get nervous when you hear the word MDR. Oh my gosh. I gotta gotta do a MDR. I tell them don't get nervous. This process is there to help us help the student. And so the purpose of this process is to help us look at the data. What is the information telling us? What is it that we have learned about this student and what the needs of the student are? And what adjustments do we need to make as a team to better support this
student? So I will turn it over to doctor Hayward who's going to talk about some of the alternatives that we have to suspension. Thank you, miss Lewis. Alright. So alternative to suspensions. Next slide, please. So it is clear, trustees, that we have work to do, and this is not work that we are going to shy away from. It's important work for all of our students in our school communities. We are approaching this challenge with intentionality, focusing on how we support students by foster fostering a sense of belonging and connectedness. This work is critical as students' connectedness is linked to improved,
apps improved attendance, academic achievement, and post COVID attendance, and social emotional well-being as well. As educators and practitioners, we understand that some of the most effective strategies for addressing student behavior include building those strong, authentic relationships with trusted adults, ensuring our students, feel safe at school as well as our staff, encouraging positive peer influences, and providing access to meaningful resources within and with outside of the school environment,
that support not only our students, but our families as well. When behavioral incidents occur, school leaders assess whether a suspension is appropriate. In many cases, they work proactively to prevent suspensions and instead focus on keeping students in school by offering supports and other interventions. So while this is not an exhaustive list, this slide highlights several alternatives to suspensions and proactive measures that schools are implementing. One example,
which I mentioned earlier is In-depth, an alternative suspension program developed by the American Lung Association. In-depth is a convenient supportive program designed to address vaping and nicotine use. So rather than focusing solely on punitive measures, it offers an interactive approach that helps students understand nicotine dependence, develop healthy coping strategies, and overcome those harmful, habits. Foresight is currently piloting this program. Since its implementation in November,
they have not experienced any related discipline issues for which they have used in-depth. So we do plan to expand this program to pilot in additional schools, including our high schools this fall. Other proactive measures taken at schools may include placement options. We offer varying placement options in the AAPS for our parents and or school teams to consider, the individual needs of each of our students. These programs include grad Grad Alliance,
A2 Virtual, our K-eight schools. Many parents, appreciate where those transitions are minimized. In smaller learning settings such as pathways and community high school. Each of our schools has its own unique context, and every school community is special. Our amazing principals and school teams work collaboratively, to implement interventions and supports for the responsive to the specific needs of their students. At the same time, we recognize the importance of systematizing and scaling programs that have demonstrated proven success.
And this is our ongoing commitment to this work. Next up, you will hear school level spotlights. These spotlights include some of our leaders and students who will share the impactful work they are doing to support students across their school communities and how their school is working to reduce those negative behaviors while promoting respectful, responsible, student conduct. So next up is Casey Elmore, principal of Skyline High School, and she'll talk about the restorative practices that are taking place there.
Elmore and our students are coming to the microphone. The what you will see in this next section are, what we consider to be exemplars, of alternatives to suspension. As we talked about earlier, I think it was Mr. Harris, part of it the challenge is that we do these things in pockets though. So our ongoing work, our future work is to, again, scale the things that we see have had proven success across the district. So we're happy, to highlight some of those things this evening. And again, as Doctor.
Hayward introduced, Ms. Elmore, our principal at Skyline, she'll start us off with, what Skyline is doing. Good evening, trustees. It's my pleasure, to talk to you tonight about our restorative practice program at Skyline High School. As some of you may know, restorative practice is an approach to building community, and restoring and responding to conflict or harm that's been caused to the community. We do that through inclusive, collaborative processes that promote healing, accountability, and positive relationships. Many of you may also know that restorative practices are rooted in Native American traditions for conflict resolution and problem solving.
And so we extend this practice into our schools. It has also happened in the justice system in in lieu of some harsher punishments in trying to find the right fit. In educational settings, restorative practice aims to foster that sense of belonging, mutual respect, and make sure that students are taking responsibility for their behaviors. Rather than focusing on punishment, it really emphasizes the understanding and the impact of one's actions, on the community in making amends and restoring relationships. Next slide. So this really is an alternate method used,
in place of harsher discipline, that seeks to balance that process between being too forgiving and too punitive, and finding that sweet spot. So the goal is to work, with students, the victim and the accused, to come up with a solution rather than handing down just a punishment. We wanna make sure that there is some resolution so that that conflict isn't ongoing, that it's repaired, and that we can move forward and welcome everybody back into our community and have a safe, and inviting place for everybody. Next slide. So some key components of restorative practice include the restorative conversations.
So these can take place in many settings and can look very different. But that's really to address the issues, clarify the harm that's been caused, and to promote mutual understanding. Our restorative circles are community building or problem solving gatherings, where everybody's voice in the circle has an equal opportunity to be heard, and has an opportunity to share. Our restorative conferences are more formal meetings involving those affected by an incident, focusing again on that accountability of one's actions and how we repair that harm that was caused. At Skyline and through restorative practice,
we have a focus on relationships. We believe relationships are the foundation of everything that we do, and without those, it makes everything else extremely difficult to accomplish. So we have a strong emphasis on the connection, the empathy, and the proactive relationship building that we do. And we believe that is central to maintaining a positive learning environment. We know that from our work, restorative practices contribute to a safer, more supportive school climate, reduce our disciplinary issues such as suspension, and strengthen the student teacher and student student relationships, while promoting social emotional growth.
Next slide. So the process. So what this looks like at Skyline. Students who are in conflict can refer themselves. We have QR codes all over the building that they can fill out a form, and we'll follow-up with them. Or they could be referred by friends, teachers, or administrators, to the process. Students returning from suspension who may have done a behavior that caused them to be removed for a short period of time, all come back to a reentry meeting, with our Sky Squad or administrators, upon their return to welcome them back into the community. We know that students are learning.
They make mistakes. We wanna make sure that they know that they start fresh with us when they come back, and they're welcomed back into the community and they belong there. Our Sky Squad, which I'll talk about in a moment, those it's our student led restorative practice program. They set up the room and escort participants to and from their circles, rather than an administrator walking them down the hallway. It's a lot more welcoming. Participants have pre conferences ahead of time to make sure that both parties are willing participants and that they, are all going into this with the right mindset, to come up with a resolution that works for everybody.
Immediately following the circle, there is a debrief and reflection with the advisors. There's a survey to get the feedback from the participants about how it went. And then from there, we determine if there are ongoing check ins needed or other follow-up. So, this is really the gem. Our Sky Squad, which is, I have two representatives here, two amazing students, Annalise and Tyson. They are part of our Sky Squad this year. This is a group of amazing students who work with our administration, to try and resolve conflicts in the building, before they reach the point where suspension might be needed or,
a bigger disruption to learning environment happens. So, in the use of restorative practices, they're, you know, not picking sides, but they're a non biased, objective party to help in the resolution of conflict. So again, we talked to this could be student to student, this could be teacher to student, this could be a classroom circle when the class isn't vibing well, or there's been some harm that was done to the whole class, as well as community building circles. So our Sky Squad facilitates all of these in our building. So who is Sky Squad? So there's a list of the names that are in this year's Sky Squad and
a beautiful picture of our group, led by miss Schimmel and miss Bass, two amazing school counselors at Skyline. Our practitioners in Sky Squad must represent all aspects of the community. So we make sure that everybody in our is what best we can have somebody who looks like them and represents them, in our Sky Squad so that when they come in a conflict, they feel comfortable. They are this members are chosen and interviewed by current Sky Squad members. So right now, we're in the process of selecting Sky Squad members for next year. So they're narrowing down their lists and conducting interviews,
to choose that team. They also students must demonstrate a passion to think differently and critically, which they very much do. They must embrace their role as change agents and peacekeepers, which again, they do that very well in our building. And these are brave, courageous, vulnerable, and empathetic young adults who are giving us all hope for the future. Next slide. In addition to, facilitating the restorative practice circles, and some of that work, they also have focused friends mentorship, where our Sky Squad, members are mentors and they are assigned a mentee,
a focused friend who may need a little bit more support. Often these are underclass, especially, incoming ninth graders that we know may need some additional support as they enter our school community. Sky Squad member is a familiar face for them, a supportive friend in our large building. They kind of act like an older sibling for them, kind of ushering them under their wing. And the goal is again to make that transition to high school successful and provide an ongoing support network for students. Amazing practitioners, Annalise and Tyson, to give you a little bit about their Experience. Annalise is a senior, so she's been doing this for quite a while. And Tyson is one of our special tenth graders.
We only pull up one tenth grader a year. It's mostly eleventh and twelfth graders, and Tyson was the chosen one this year because we saw the potential in him. So I'm gonna let them both share with you a little bit about their experience. So personally, one, like, point of pride for me has been my experience with my mentees. So I've had the experience to work with five or six mentees, with working with the class. So it's been, an amazing opportunity, and I love just being, like a face that they can see, in the school. So I just, I work with them and I make sure that they're, like, doing okay. I meet with them about,
like, twice, every month, and making sure that they're doing well, in their academics and social life. I think a moment of pride for me is, like, being able to see how these circles that I'm involved in and help facilitate or even my partners help facilitate works in real time. So, like, after the circle, like, sometimes students hug or even if they don't, plan to get along again, they're cordial. So there's not tension when you see them passing the hallway, and their friends are like you know what I mean? It's very nice to see that. Wait. Can you bring the slides back there?
Or somewhere? Thank you. Oh, what Sky Squad has meant to us personally. So personally to me, Sky Squad was my pathway to Skyline because I was a mentee. So in eighth grade, I went to foresight. So in eighth grade, Sky Squad came to foresight and mentored a couple of people who were there who are they gonna mentor when they were ninth graders. So, like, one of the Sky Squad seniors right now, Johan, was my mentor. And I just think that was really helpful for me even just to know what Sky Squad is, but also to have somebody looking out for me,
like, upperclassmen because, you know, high high school is kind of intimidating. So I think it's cool that I get to do that now, but it's also cool that they did that for me. That's awesome. And then for me personally, it's been a real opportunity for growth and leadership and empathy. Just working being able to resolve conflicts is such an important skill that I really think everyone should be able to do. And we've gotten the opportunity to really spread, what we do at Sky Squad, and spread it to as many people as we can. So I'm really grateful for that opportunity, and I've gotten to grow, as much as possible. Oh, that's awesome.
We can also open it up to questions if you guys have any questions about what we do at Sky Squad. Well, I have a comment. I, I'm just so my three sons went to Skyline, and I am just so proud to see, Skyline students coming after them who are still carrying the torch and just really being impactful on the community at Skyline. I mean, this is what makes this district great, in my opinion, that that our students are really trying to do what they possibly can to help our district. And you sound so sincere. You are.
You are. You were you are sincere about what you're talking about. I can feel it. I can sense it. And, Tyson, you said that high school can be intimidating. Yes. It can. But it's so wonderful that this organization, this group exists to to to sort of help students, just sort of get acclimated to high school. And at the same time, you're also doing a great service by being peacekeepers in in in Skyline. So thank you. I do have a question. Is this program being is it in other high schools in in the, community, or is it just at Skyline?
Do other high schools have, like, a Sky Squad or well Some of them have other Some of the high schools have other conflict resolution, mechanisms, not exactly like Sky Squad. But there's I know we've been talking about how we scale it. I also wanna brag on these guys that they also have, presented at multiple conferences and have been, gotten lots of accolades because of the work. Sure. Okay. So I'm gonna let you guys know on a little secret. Honestly, now that I'm, like, you know, you can tell all your friends. It's okay. So Sky Squad for next year, we're looking to host a symposium.
And at this symposium, we're gonna try to have a guest speaker who just teaches about restorative justice, what it is, why it should be used, why you guys need it, and as well as, like, a little bit of workshops. So, like, a mock circle, it would be. And then just like just, like, being able to present what Sky Squad is. And we're gonna try to we will try to invite at least two student leaders from each, like, school. So we'll do, like, Ann Arbor schools as well as, like, the surrounding areas. So Y High, Dexter, Celine, maybe Brighton, and so on.
So, like, that's the word we're working on trying to do. We unfortunately did not get a grant, but we're gonna try to do some fundraising, and we're gonna try to make that happen. So it currently, it's not in a lot of other schools. We're trying to make it toted. That's awesome. And just thank you for sharing that. That. So why are like, Sky Squad is so important and why we're trying to, like, spread it in the symposium the way that Ty said, is because we're completely student led in our, like, circles and our organization. That's kind of what makes us unique in the high schools. Like, other schools do have a restorative justice organization,
but it's not necessarily student led. And what's important about student led is that we can connect much better with all of our, like, mentees and all of the people in the circles because it's so much harder to connect with adults even though, like, you may try to connect, but it's much easier to connect with other students who understand just on a deeper level what they're going through. Thank you. And I'm sorry. Us please keep us, abreast of the, symposium and and the fundraiser. Okay. Please please keep us, in the loop. Thank you. Thank you so much. And my Mr.
Schmidt? Yes. I have to tell you, probably fifteen years ago as a teacher at Eastern High School in Lansing, I went through a restorative justice process with a student. And we had a conflict, and it was really amazing. And it taught me ways to act differently and to work differently with my students. So I think it's not just for students. It's actually very powerful. And in the society we're living in right now,
we have to find ways to get along. Dress up, that's good. Yes. First of all, congratulations on all your great work. I'm very proud of you guys. When you do your invitations for your symposium, I ask that you invite, retired judge, Tim Connors, and a little bit of history. Judge Connors does a lot of work with the Native American culture. And many years ago, he reached out to me and said, we need we, the community. You've got to do the restorative practices, your peace circles in your schools. Judge Connors had a case which we affectionately called the ketchup case,
and I can share that with you later, where basically he says my courtrooms are starting to look like what used to be the principal's office. You guys have got to do something. Now being the Huron grad, he figured it should start at Huron. Being the Pioneer grad, I said it needs to start at Pioneer. We brought doctor Swift in. She was very recent to the district, and she said basically in her polite way, on both of you, we're starting it at Skyline. And which is like, okay, she's in charge. And you guys have just taken it to a whole different level. And so I want to congratulate you on that.
But could you share my one question, for this evening? Do you keep any statistics? And are those shared? Because I think it would be very valuable to, again, not only document your work, but, again, to be proud of the work that you've done because, as Judge Conner said, he didn't want students in his courtroom for things that could be resolved in the classroom. So do you have anything that you can share? So And it doesn't have to be tonight. You can get to it you can get to it later. So we track all of our mentee meetings. That's something that we've recently been doing.
So we do have a form as best as we can, to track all of our mentee meetings, how, like, successful we were and what we talked about. And then it's much harder to track our, like, circle progress because, not all circles are, like, resolved necessarily in the same way. So some are gonna be they're gonna be, like, friends again afterwards, and some, the resolution looks a lot different where it looks like they're gonna avoid each other, but at least they're not gonna cause conflicts. So it's much harder to get data on that, but we do have a really high resolution rate. Like, we usually don't have re conflicts afterwards. But I'm not sure what our data looks like on that.
We keep track of all of the circles that are conducted and that kind of data. So we do have some data. That's great. If you could share that with us later, I'd appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you very much. We appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We appreciate that. Next, we have, one of our high school deans, mister Keith Wade. He is the high school dean at Pioneer High School, and he is going to talk about the role of the high school deans across our, high schools and the role they play in helping to, connect with students, build those authentic relationships,
and, work towards reducing out of school suspensions for students. So good evening. First of all, I'm sorry. I don't have any amazing cute kids up here with me. You're just stuck with me tonight. I apologize. Find some. We find some. We do have some amazing deans, though. And so we work, extremely hard to provide a number of supports for the students. We try to build the student connections. We work with the principals of each school to maintain a positive and safe school climate.
We meet with the students to help them with reflection and decision making, throughout the day things are going on, and we try to make sure we get with, any kid and make sure we're guiding them in the right direction. We assist students with making a plan for better choices to try to prevent, the discipline that comes with some of the choices they make. We do, I know at Pioneer, I will if we catch wind of anything, I'll make sure I get with that student or students and try to cut it off, so to speak, and meet with them about some different things and different choices they need to make.
We're pretty proactive and not reactive, mediating conflicts between students. And as we just spoke about, students and staff to avoid circumstances that might lead to discipline. And as miss Elmore and the Sky Squad talked about, we help lead, restorative circles. At Pioneer, we do have the peer to peer mediation program. It's not it's similar to the Sky Squad where the kids run it, but we do have that program. I know, someone asked, I think miss Wilcox asked if we had anything at other high schools.
And at Pioneer, we do have a peer to peer program, mediation program where they all go through training and they run some of the mediations and that's going to pick we got to get a whole new squad in starting each year to get the kids to run it. Next slide, please. Additionally, we obviously support with academic support. We believe that students engaged in their academic work are less likely to exhibit alternative behaviors relative to work avoidance. So we collaborate with teachers and counselors to monitor the students' progress.
That's done a lot throughout the week, throughout the day. We're always pulling up PowerSchool, seeing who we need to check up on. We meet with students who are struggling academically to try to develop plans for improvement of their grades or their attendance or their tardies, and just improve their student success altogether. We encourage students to stay engaged in their learning and take advantage of all the many support resources we have in the schools. We have the tutors, we have the learning center, we have the writing center, a number of different programs and resources that can help them be successful.
And of course, if they're not present, they can't have success, so we meet with students regularly about chronic attendance issues and try to get to the root of why they're not at school and not going to class and see what we can do to help prevent, the attendance problems. Next slide, please. Social and emotional support is always a big thing for us, and it always will be. Students' well-being remains a top priority for us. There's a number of things we do throughout the day to help with that. Individual check ins for students. We do that a lot for a number of different things,
but we meet with a lot of students that are going through personal, social, or academic challenges. Be surprised at some of the things we deal with throughout the day, but everyone needs somebody, and we try to be there for everyone. We work close closely with our school counselors and our mental health professionals, to make sure that we're providing the resources and the help that they need. We have a reset room, which the kids it's ran by our kids, kinda talking about the peer to peer. It's peer led, and, we have a reset room where kids can get away and get in there and
kinda reset, recharge, reboost, get back into their day and try to have some academic success. They might be grown going through something, and the reset room helps them kinda relax and kinda regain, you know, get their day back going. Then at Pioneer, which is a Pioneer specific thing, we have the what we call the RAS group, which is a regional alliance of healthy schools, Student University of Michigan and they provide mental and physical clinical services for our students and that's a great program. We work with the parents and the kids to get them involved in that program
and that is a Pioneer specific program. It's through U of M, and that's a great, resource for us. We meet with the students to help build their confidence, their resilience, and their self advocacy skills, which we all know we need those throughout life, and we provide the students with our many community resources. Some students just they just need to be led in the right direction, and we try to help them, get these resources they need. Next slide, please. As emphasized throughout this presentation, positive student engagement is essential to student success.
This is some of the things we do. Obviously, building relationships is so important with the students in order for them to trust us, to connect with them. We work hard to build connections. We connect with students throughout the day. We connect during their arrival. We connect when they're leaving school. We connect during lunch. We connect during hallways in the transitions. Any of the unstructured times, we try to get to know a different set of kids, a different group, because we want them to know that we see them and we hear them. We engage with students during extracurricular and after school activities.
There's nothing better for the kids to see you show up to their choir concert or the lacrosse game, and just see that you care. You know, that's something we all try to do. Support student voice initiatives to include, clubs. We have a number of clubs, throughout our high schools, different types of programs, different type of clubs. We encourage kids to get involved with those clubs in a number of leadership opportunities. And we know, of course, we get those kids who want the leadership opportunities. They wanna be the club leaders. They wanna be this president of something. And so we try to encourage that.
We advocate for all students to focus on students. We advocate for students and we focus on the students who are disconnected, disengaged from the learning environment. They're a lot easier at the spot than you would think, and we try to make sure we connect with them and try to get them involved again in some different things and make sure they know that we're a valued resource for them, whether it's just come by the office and talk or whether they wanna come open up or sometimes they just like to hear you say hi to them. So we make sure that we do that. We promote school culture where every school every student feels seen,
feels heard, like I talked about earlier, and valued. We want everyone to feel that they're a part of our community. We don't want anyone to feel they're not. And as deans, we work hard. We know that's our goal every day is to get with another set of kids to make sure that they feel seen, heard, and valued. We have some targeted interventions, such as the girls group. All the school all the comprehensive schools, I believe, have the girls group. The boys group, I know Skyline has it because I was over there before I came to Pioneer. And at Pioneer,
we have the boys group, which is similar to the girls group where we meet with the young men and talk about life and talk about life skills and a number of different things, a couple times a month. We assist the eighth grade students with their transition process to the high school to build some community prior to their ninth grade year. We do one for the parents, to let the parents get in, ask their questions, see where their kids would be. Then we do another big one, actually next week for the eighth grade students to come tour the school, meet students, meet staff,
and we try to put on a big show for them. So that helps build the community and make them want to be a part of the high school. Next one. One of the big things is strong family connections is very essential to student success. All Deans, along with our administrators, school staff, we work collaboratively to support families by connecting them with appropriate resources tailored to their needs. I know miss Hayward talked about that earlier. Doctor Hayward, I apologize. We wanna everyone has their own unique needs,
each student and each family, so we do our best to try to connect them to the correct resources or whatever they need. We act as liaisons between the home and the school, make sure we're communicating everything, make sure we're providing any services they may need, partners with families to support student growth, connect with families with community resources and communicate with families regarding supporting students when there are some concerns, which there is a lot of different things that go on and we want to make sure that the parents are aware,
that we are aware and we're working collaboratively to work to help the students out. So the deans do a lot, and we do a lot to support our students, and our days are full of a lot of love and laugh and and trying to make sure all of our students feel needed, heard, and valued. Thank you, mister Wade. And next up is doctor Parnell. Is that correct? Alright. Alright. Doctor Parnell, our thank you, mister Wade. I should mention also, trustees, prior to this school year, our deans were specifically ninth grade deans.
We changed that this year so that they could help to, serve all students in the school. So they are now just high school deans, no longer just, solely ninth grade deans. Although they do work, continue to work with ninth graders, they work with all students now. So next, we have doctor Parnell, and she has some friends with her. Doctor Parnell is our fantastic principal at Tappan Middle School. One of the things that doctor Parnell and her group are going to highlight, in addition to student agency, obviously, is the value of the our community partners in,
helping to provide wrap around support for our students. We just had a great, event last week where we thanked and celebrated our partners because while I us here in the district, we certainly have work to do as it relates to, the data that we are sharing this evening. We are not able to do it alone. We rely on families. We we rely on our community partners to provide that full wrap around for our students. And so doctor Parnell and her her friends here are gonna talk a little bit
about how this, looks at tapping. Good evening. Thank you all for having us. And before I get started, I just wanna thank the parents who helped get their kids here and for my kids sitting, so patiently to get through this meeting. We are very fortunate to have many community partnerships and organizations at Tappan, that offer opportunities and support for many of our students. In the next few minutes, you'll get to hear about, seven of our programs that are really big that service about 250 of our students. We are intentional with encouraging students being involved in finding something that draws their interest
at Tappan. We also will connect those other students who don't just, you know, jump out to do it, by showing them other opportunities with, support groups and providing them with resources. Some of the partnerships that we have at Tappan are Digital Wellness, MSAN, P2P, Youth Action Research, Trinity Health, AAPD We Care, Check and Connect, Empowering Students Tutoring Group, Highcone and Bryant Community Centers, CORE USA, and Student Leadership. I have found, as the leader at Tappan, when students feel connected, behaviors are cut down,
the they buy into our school vision, and then they make the choice to find something that they're interested in. Over the next few minutes, my student leaders are gonna describe some of our partnerships, give some student voice and experiences that they've had, and just finally know that by partnering students with community organizations, we are striving to elevate their student agency. We want to lead them to be connected and have positive peer influences with the overall goal of reducing suspensions. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening, everyone. My name is Isaac Fenick. I'm in seventh grade at Tappan Middle School,
and I'm here to talk to you guys about Leadership Group. Leadership is not just a group of people, but a forum where student leaders can spread their ideas to help classmates, teachers, and the Tappan community. Leadership has helped me connect with more people, spread ideas, and voice my opinions. And I've had the opportunity to interact, influence students, staff, and Ann Arbor Bucks for leadership. It has also helped me take leadership skills into my sports and everyday life. I now feel more confident taking risks, speaking out, and advocating for others. As a school leader, I try to set an example of someone who is kind, helpful, and considerate. And through my service,
I hope to show others that everyone's voice matters and that every student should have a voice to speak for what they believe in. Some of my best memories as a student leader have been speaking to younger students, sharing my ideas with the board office leadership, and welcoming people to the TABM community. Before I finish up, I want to give a shout out to our amazing leadership advisors, Ms. Azanoff, Ms. Doherty, and the amazing Doctor. Parnell. Thank you. Hello. My name is Chandler Smith, and I'm in the seventh grade. And I've been on the leadership team for about two years and I've been on the leadership team for about two years now. Leadership gives me an opportunity to use my voice and has made me become a
great role model and a leader around others. Being on the leadership team has made many impacts on my school experience. It makes me feel like I can share my opinions and my ideas. But today, I'm going to be talking about the Highcone Community Center. The Highcone team is very involved with Tappan. They have monthly meetings with administration and communicate frequently with questions and concerns. They support the well-being of Tappan students, and they check up on everyone. They even check our attendance and reach out to the school when we are absent. Teachers also support High Com by taking time out of staff meetings, to confuse to visit the community centers.
Teachers participate in community events, after school tutoring, back to school events. They also provide and assist us with school work, support behavior, and whatever their needs are. This partnership plays a pivotal role in making sure that students know they are supported in school and their community. Hello. My name is Bianca Starks, and I'm in second grade, and this is my second year on leadership. Leadership has done many things that impact my school experience. It has helped me want to become a better person and set a better example for the people around me. Today, I will be talking to you about the Empowering Students Tutoring Group. This is run by high school students and takes place after school.
The tutors are mentors to the students and build relationships with them by being there for them and helping them set goals in their class and for school. They check on these goals weekly and connect with teachers when they have questions or concerns. The tutors meet with the students once a week but also provide more help when needed on Zoom and with appointment. The tutors attend information day and meet the parents at curriculum night in the first parent teacher conference. Tutors also work with teachers to help support students. The tutors meet with Doctor. Parnell to make sure that the students are getting what they need. They also communicate when they won't be able to tutor.
The benefit of this program for students is to help us feel like we have the extra support to we need to do well in our classes. It also helps us connect and feel comfortable asking for help when we need it. Thank you. Up or down? Down. Down. Okay. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Ivy Fuller, and I've been on leadership for three years now. Leadership has helped my middle school experience because I've connected with more people, shared my ideas, and voiced my opinions. Very similar to Hicon, Bryant Community Center services many of our students after school,
during the holidays, and in the summer. Tappan also does a yearly canned food drive with Bryant for Thanksgiving. Bryant's supervisor has connected with doctor Parnell to do restorative conversations with students that are having issues. Another connection we have with Bryant is a women's group called CORD USA. This is an opportunity for moms, grandmoms, and or other guard women guardians in the community to yearn learn skills and get resources. Our lovely doctor Parnell and other women teachers at school participate. This connection to this organization means to me that I have multiple people working on
my behalf to make sure that I have the tools needed to be successful. I know I'm not alone because I have so many people supporting me. Hello. My name is Ananya Iyer and this is my second year on leadership. Leadership has been an amazing resource for me to find ways to be a better person and a better part of my community. One of the groups I will be speaking about tonight is Girls Group. Girls Group is probably one of the largest groups within our school. We meet weekly by grade level during lunch and advisory. Sixth grade meets on Tuesdays, seventh grade on Thursdays, and eighth graders meet on Friday.
We talk about different subjects each week, including inflation, mental health, and community service. These topics are important for us to discuss because they are all things we will experience in our adult lives. During summer, we have sessions every day, Monday through Thursday. We do different activities and talk about different things. Meals are always provided and it's a great way to spend the day with your friends and mentors. Girls group has given me the opportunity to speak about topics that I find important while also helping me build friendships with people I wouldn't otherwise speak with.
It also is amazing for our school because it helps build a community of girls who support and care for each other while also helping us learn more about the world around us. Another group we have within our school is Check and Connect. Check and Connect is a program for students who are disconnected from school and learning. The heart of this program lies in the relationship between students and caring trained mentors who will challenge Tappan students academically while partnering with parents, Tappan, and our community to challenge students and helps with supporting how we learn and grow
as students. Thank you, doctor Cornell and our faculty students. Next, we have, principal Samantha Cuckoo, principal at Mitchell Elementary. Trustees, I I'm sure I don't have to remind you, that we we know that, Mitchell Elementary School had some challenges, to start the school year. Miss Ku Ku transitioned into leadership, midway through the fall. And, boy, what a remarkable difference, we have seen at Mitchell Elementary, and we wanna spotlight just some of the exemplary leadership that miss Cuckoo and the Mitchell staff and community are doing at Mitchell.
If you were at the groundbreaking, you saw just how fantastic our Mitchell students are, and they what we saw did not fit the narrative that we heard. Right? Yes. And so we have to tell our own story, which is why this, report tonight, we could have just presented to the data. But we wanted to also tell our story, our full story about what we are doing to support students and miss Kuo's miss Kuo's leadership, at the elementary level is one of the ways that, leadership really matters.
And so I'll turn it over to her to talk about what she has done to transform our incredible Mitchell Elementary in just a short amount of time. Thank you, superintendent Parks, and good evening, trustees. I do have slides. I just wanted to say that. So Thank you. There's something else, though, to look at this face. Alright. So, as superintendent Parks has mentioned, Mitchell has had its challenges and faced its challenges this school year and and previously. But, however, over the course of this school year, it has grown to a place
where students are stepping into leadership roles, staff feel safer and more supported, and the broader community can clearly see the positive changes taking place. In preparing to speak with you today, I took time to talk to our Mitchell students about what they believe has contributed to this transformation. Students shared that they feel seen and cared for by our staff and by me. They mentioned that I'm present every day speaking with them, checking in with them, and working alongside them. Next slide, please. We began our school reset by grounding everyone in a strong understanding of our Mitchell
expectations supported by fun and consistent assemblies, and we understood that frequent assemblies can disrupt student routines. I introduced regular video updates to maintain connection and reinforce these expectations in a flexible way. Furthermore, a focus on daily positive messaging helps our students feel proud of themselves. Next slide. Students also engaged in new and revitalized partnerships that further strengthened their sense of involvement. We proudly reinstated student safety leaders and brought back our student council,
which now includes over 70 student members. Through student announcements, school projects, and visible improvements across campus, student voice is now a driving force. Just last week, our student council met to help design a new mural for our school's entryway. They selected inspiring phrases that reflect Mitchell's identity, such as global diversity, learner profile, and even a nod to our beloved Courtyard Ducks. Next slide, please. Most recently, students and staff collaborated to create a reset room,
a calming space designed to support students who need a moment to reflect and regroup. Training our adults is occurring now, and our students are working to develop video resources to share with the school community. Mitchell's transformation this year has been driven by student leadership, meaningful connection, and a renewed commitment to our community. Of course, all of this work does not happen without support, and I'm very thankful for our Mitchell educators and stakeholders as it has truly been a team effort. So thank you for allowing me to share, information regarding Mitchell's student supports and intervention,
and I'll now turn the presentation back to Ms. Alston. Alright. So we're at the home stretch of this. Our work is not done. It is not complete. You could clearly see from all of our speakers, our students especially, from Skyline to Tappan to even hear missus Cuckoo speak about our Mitchell students, what really brings students to school is them feeling a sense of connectedness, a sense of belonging, ensuring that there are leadership opportunities for them, as well as being engaged in school. So that is so key in ensuring that our schools are supported with our students.
So to the presentation, behavior is communication. How do we create safe spaces where students feel connected, valued, and supported, leading to increased belonging, connectedness, and engagement with decreased suspensions? So what will what are we doing now and next in the Anar Republic Schools? This is our call to action. Moving forward is about strengthening supports and reducing suspensions. As part of our work in next steps, we will establish a work team that includes district and building leadership, teachers, staff, students,
parents, caregivers, and community partners to develop an action plan with goals and strategies to reduce suspensions and disproportionality disproportionality among black students, male students, students with disabilities, and students who are economically disadvantaged. In addition, we will train and develop administration in alternatives to suspension. We plan to expand our tiered supports and to systematize the supports that we have across all of our K-eight buildings. We will continue to use data to identify patterns and respond with equity.
We will also continue our partnerships with community organizations to expand our resources and lastly, identify recommended policy adjustments to our superintendent. Next slide, please. Our commitment is to our students and to our staff, to our community. Every student deserves to feel connected, valued, and seen to learn in a safe, joyful, and welcoming environment, to get the support they need to make positive choices, and to be present and engaged in school every day. And so you'll see in this picture, this is one of our classrooms in the Antelope Public Schools,
and you'll notice there aren't any kids in there. However, you notice a little bit of piece that says good vibes. We want good vibes in all of our classrooms across the schools, across our k to 12 campuses, and we want schools to be a safe place for our students to thrive and for our teachers and for our support providers to feel that they can come to school to teach and that our students can learn in a safe environment. In AAPS, it's essential that our students, teachers, support staff, and families feel safe every day in our schools.
Collectively, together, with hard work and intentionality, we can build learning communities for all of our students. And that concludes our presentation for the evening. Thank you, miss Austin. Trustees, I thank yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Good job. Again, I know that it was, a hefty, report this evening, but we felt it was necessary to to provide a a a full picture of where we are and where we are headed. We have some of our administrators still here. We have, miss Austin, miss Lewis, and doctor Hayward here, and myself.
And we are happy now to take, the questions that you have for us. Trustee Schmidt? Okay. So I know that, especially for our middle and high school teachers, when you have a caseload of or a number of students that you come in contact within a day, if you teach five periods, 25 students that's 125 students. And it's impossible for you to keep track of what's going on in their lives. And, so you do these check ins that quantify where students are. I'm just wondering, what do students think about those?
Are they actually doing them? Do they say, oh, I'm not going to do that? Do we really know? And I explain to me what the program is. I saw FastBridge. I saw the different ones on that one slide. So I think the the so with the Check and Connect, it really depends on if students feel like they have an authentic relationship with the teacher. Many of our students do. And so they're if if that's the case, they're more willing to share information about what's going on in their life. That trusted adult is critical, to the success of our students because we know if they have a trusted adult
that they can talk to in the school setting. And oftentimes, it's their favorite teachers, right, who give them that time at the beginning of the class period to talk about what's going on. Let's let's have some connections here. And so students are more willing to open up when they have that trusted adult. And so I'm trying to understand how this is used. I mean, at Scarlet, there was a CCA period, and that'd be first thing in the morning. Students might check-in then. When do students do this where they would go online and give a read on I think of a doctor's office that has little faces,
you know, the happy, the mute and the sad. I mean, what when do they do this? I don't So we have Mr. Harris will come up as well. We have the advisory time. So Scarlet, it's called it's worded differently, but we have advisory class, classes at all the middle schools when they do this, and then mister Harris will talk about the high school. Sure. True enough. Yep. So you mentioned the Sabre's screening tool, and that, speaks right to the heart. The importance of, the adult connections cannot be overstated,
but when you have a 25, hundred and 50 students, it makes it challenging. The purpose behind the screening tool is because it's quick. This is a five or ten minute little, survey that can be done with students whether it's an advisory or SkyTime or forum that gets us a quick, read from the students. Again, evidence based that can allow the adults then to take those responses and be more intentional to say, okay. I'm gonna make sure that I get to these students based on their responses. Again, when that's done multiple times over the course of the year, then it kinda guides our our support.
It's not a daily thing where I come to class and I would check-in, and that teacher would know? The SABRE screening tool in particular is done two to three times a year. We have experimented a little bit at the elementary level with a rhythm student check-in tool, which is more daily and multiple times, of course, over the course of a week. Gotcha. Yeah. Please. Come on, to the micropharmacy. I think we do have students that are in Tier two and Tier three that do have designated check-in and connects each day. So based on the need or elevated,
you know, whatever's going on, that they may need that. The deans often do that. The counselors do that. The administrators do that. Typically as, like, those kind of regimented, making sure they're happening every day for those, students that need additional support. Miss Mohammed. So first of all, thank you for I know this was a big task to bring this data together for all the speakers that have talked, and it was definitely due for us to look at this data. And just looking at it, I mean, there are concerning numbers. Obviously, we all are aware of that when we see two times increase in suspensions
at the overall, but especially focused on the elementary and the middle school, it's almost 3.5 increase in those grade levels or those schools. And then I know that with the current environment and state obviously that's we're going to probably see those numbers increase obviously hopefully with those interventions that will help. And I know COVID impact had an impact, but obviously there's other factors that I'm hoping that this work group could also consider, including social media,
phones in the schools, there is increase in bullying. So things that are external factors that are impacting, that are going to affect, suspension rates. I love that there's a working group. What I was hoping what I'd recommend is definitely getting, you know, especially those parent and student groups. These would be a great opportunity for them to be involved to provide feedback, especially marginalized groups, and also experts because, you know, we have experts, you know, in our backyard in Ann Arbor. So,
you know, using their expertise when you're developing, like, you know, interventions or policy changes, I think it's gonna be important. And, you know, there are some great programs. I did wanna have a shout out to doctor Parnell because you made a pretty significant impact to my my kid's life. He did the leader or he's part of the leadership program. And I loved hearing all the students part of that too. But one thing I wanted to ask about, and I brought this up the last time, especially looking at the suspension data, and I brought it up at committee as well,
but I wanted to kind of bring it up here is looking at the the more detailed look of suspensions, especially looking at, like, the number of days of suspensions. And then we talked about kind of the action level of where the suspensions are because we know that there are several levels. And then also looking at if we have that data, looking at the number of days of suspension and average number of days per the different groups, especially since we saw in the data the groups that were mostly impacted are students
with IEPs, also black students as well as English learners students. So looking at how what's the overall impacts, we have the general numbers, but like how many days of school, are they missing due to suspension, which can impact their learning? And then how suspensions and absenteeism is connected in any way, because we I mean, overall, I think not just in Anna Republic Schools, but overall chronic absenteeism is a problem. So how is that is there like a correlation between that and I know that
we're looking at that data. And then two other things I was hoping to ask you know, if and and again, data to look at that's important, I think, for the board to to see. But the reasons behind the different groups, because I know it was categorized by, the grade levels, I believe, but not not necessarily, like, the reasons behind, you know, the different the black the black student group, the, ELL learners, like, the different groups. What are the reasons? You mean reasons for suspension? Yes. Okay. Yes.
Just like how it was because it's we know that there's data. I mean, there's been reports that these groups are already going to be at a higher rate of suspension. And there was like a recent report in the CDC that showed that some of these there are this kind of feeling that some of these suspensions some of these groups feel like these are, you know, and I'm gonna say it. I mean, not that we're doing it here, but they feel that there's this unfair, increase of suspensions in these groups.
So it's important to kind of look at what can we do to support these different groups, because we're seeing an alarming increase of suspensions. I mean, they're higher than the other groups. And then the last thing is, I know that we kind of separated male and female, but it's important for us and I don't know if we have this data, but to look at also people who do not like the LGBTQ community, we know that there are risk of suspensions and how do we also make sure
that we're seeing that group of students and how suspensions are impacting them as well. So those are I just wanted to summarize some of the data that's going to be important as we're looking at and who to get involved when we're looking at addressing these issues. Can I just add to what Trustee Mohammed said? Mr. Berger, when we have these categories and we say somebody is in the disadvantaged or Black or whatever, Somebody can fit into more than one category.
Yes. And you have that. So it's important for us to think about that. This isn't these are just kids that are this and these are just kids. So I think that, that's a nuance that has to be looked at that you can have one child that populates all those categories. And it looks like there are five kids all being suspended and it's one child. So I don't know how we work with that, but that's one of the difficulties with this, I guess. He gets to play at the microphone too, yes. It's fine. I have a big mouth. So none of the so the suspension percentages that you saw in the presentation are
not students with suspensions, but they are incidences of suspension, if that clarifies anything for you. Oh. I I think that I'm sorry to set it down before I get that Clarification. Yeah. I'm not sure I understand what that means. So so when I when we say there are, like, I forget the exact number. It was, like, 3,105 suspensions over the six year period. That is not 3,105 students who were suspended. That is 3,105 incidences of suspension. So some of those are one student who might would be have been suspended twice,
for example. So just when so when you're saying that students have been in different groups and you're counting, we're actually counting incidences of suspension, when we're when we're looking at the data that the way we presented it this evening. So the same student may have multiple Yes. Yeah. I have some other data questions if you wanna stay up there. I'm happy to stand up here. Okay. Awesome. Has has our definition of suspension changed over those six years, with relation to our rights and responsibilities handbook? No. I don't believe so. It has not. Stay consistent.
Yes. It has. Okay. And then, I think we said, like, eighty seven % of this were eighty seven percent of the suspensions were out of school That's correct. Suspensions. Is that consistent in our trending data as well or That is something I'd have to look up specifically. I looked at it as a whole body, but I didn't look at that specifically. So that's something I can I can look for? Okay. Couple other questions related to the trends. Do we know if like our students with disabilities or English versus non English learners
or economically disadvantaged groups, do we know if the trends that we're seeing in suspension are also trends in our population changes? So like for instance, do we increase our students with disabilities those last two years where we see an increase in Definitely there's been an increase in English learners, although that is a group that is underrepresented over our analysis period and suspensions. So they actually in general are suspended less than their proportion of the population. They make up less of the proportion of suspensions. There was actually a table in the presentation.
It was probably around like Slide 20 or something like that. I don't know if we can bring that up. I don't know the exact slide number, but it's somewhere around 20 ish maybe. Before that is it 13? Is it all the way back to 13? Yes. So that's going to be maybe a little hard to read from where you're sitting. But if you look at the columns there, the first column in each of these has the percent of suspensions that were made up by that group. The second column has the percent of the population. And then the third column in each of those year bands has the percentage point difference. So that should give you an idea of how much they were over or underrepresented
compared to population. And I did, look at the percent of the population each year individually. So that's going to be year over year, it's a different they make up a different percent of the population. So you can see what that under or over representation is for each of those groups. Okay. Well, that's helpful. Couple other things. Do we do any comparability to Michigan, our peer districts or, you know, national trends? So I don't know what data is available. I was having a hard time finding a lot around, any of the other districts that was easy to do like deep level of comparison.
Okay. Alright. That makes sense. Couple other questions on data. So we talked about it being reported in PowerSchools, and maybe there's not a distinction for, like, substance usage, right, at the high school level that gets very granular. Yeah. Do we feel like we have the reporting capabilities that we need in the district, or are there opportunities for enhancements there? I'm not super familiar with the technical side, so I'll have to go with somebody else for that. I can pull the data out, but I don't know a lot about what PowerSchool is capable of in the recording side. Yes, we would have to look into that.
Okay. I'm sorry. So Trustee Wilkerson, are you suggesting that PowerSchool isn't adequate? I'm just asking if if we feel like we have the data that we need to support the efforts and how we want to help our students. Like Right? Do we have the right level of detail? Are we able to parse that data how we need to get to the some of the root causes of some of these disparities. Okay. I actually had a question. If we could go back to Slide number nine, There is a significant decrease in 2021, '20 '20 '2 suspensions and then there's a steady increase in 2023 and thereafter.
I'm just wondering and there's also a decrease in high school suspensions. And I'm just wondering, do we know what we can attribute that decrease to specifically? Is there any I'm sorry. I missed it. Slide number nine. I'm sorry. It's true. Wait, wait, wait, wait. It was actually if you could I think the slides are different. I was looking at some slides that were given to me before the final. So if you could maybe 12, let's know, where it shows all the different wait. This might be it. So 2021,
'20 '20 '2, there was a slight decrease. Yes, and then it goes And then slide nine. I thought it was. I thought it was. Is that it? Okay. So yes, so there's a slight decrease in 'twenty one, 'twenty two and then steadily goes up after that. So, 'twenty one wasn't necessary. Yes. Well, can someone answer that for me besides the folks on my So we've got some high school folks here. Ms. Elmore, Mr. Wade, do you guys want to contribute to some speculation as to why those numbers increased?
Well, high school I mean, I think that there obviously, COVID changed the landscape of schools. Right? And so that those years coming those first years coming back were very transitional, I guess I would say, and definitely not normal. And so there was, much more latitude allowed, I would say, in some ways. That's true. And then I mean, I can't speak exactly to why the, they have risen. However, I will say at a high school level, we've made a very concerted effort, to have make sure that we are really only suspending for,
like, safety or alcohol or drug related issues, that impact the safety of the school community. So we're trying to handle, those really in house as much as possible. And when we did have the behavior intervention specialists, that was another layer of support that really allowed us, to have additional hands that weren't assigned somewhere else to work through some of these issues. But I think, you know, overall, there has been an increase, which I can't speak to exactly. I will say, there has been a rise in vaping and the use of electronic,
vaping devices. And so that probably contributes. I mean, just that's my gut. I don't have the data to support that right now, but just knowing what we deal with every day, that has definitely we've seen an increase in that significantly. And I don't know if mister Wade has anything else. Yeah. Thank you, miss Hill. Thank you. Yeah. I just don't know if there's a way to capture that because, I'm I'm it's a notable decrease. Yeah. And, yeah, if if it was just going underreported, then that would make make sense. So here are my thoughts. I think the presentation was amazing. Thank you all for all the hard work you did and bringing the children,
for all the creative ideas you have to try to make things better moving forward. But the trend is is unsettling. The trend is increasing. And specifically, what I saw in the presentation is that black, poor, and disabled children are disproportionately represented. And I didn't hear why, and I didn't hear how we're fixing it. And so those are my problems. And maybe that's not for you all directly. Maybe it's for the performance committee to help and look into an addition with your
and to to support your efforts. But 13% of the population making 45, 50 percent of the suspensions is a problem. And I don't know why we're there, and I don't know how we're going to address it, but we need to address it. And so I'd ask you all to work together to help find some solutions to the problem. Yeah. I think that's the purpose the the the entire purpose of the work group that the team talked about are is our immediate next step is to assemble, a representative group of folks who will come together,
who will, help me inform our thinking in our direction around why we know that, there are national trends that echo what we see here in the district and have for many, many years. This district the data is not new to this district, and the national trend is not new either. And so I don't know that anybody has figured out Mhmm. Exactly why, or it wouldn't be national trends or the trend for our district decade after decade after decade. Mhmm. But we are going to assemble this group together so that we can have some
collective thinking about Ann Arbor Public Schools and what we might be able to do to change that. That's what I would love to see. Trustee Muhammad? Yeah. And and that's I mean, that's what I was seeing too. And that's why I think more, you know, working with the working group and having more data as far as looking at the reasons, because they did report reasons for the overall like the overall population in the different buildings, so elementary, middle school and high school. But I think it's important to dig deeper and I didn't realize the data was not for like it was all suspensions and it's multiple suspensions.
But I think digging deeper in the reason, but also including these definitely the parents, but also including like the I mean, some of we have great groups that are willing to help provide input of what's happening. We need the blind needs to be. The parent group and the special ed group and I mean, they can provide on the ground reasons, you know, for what what is happening. Yeah. Those are some of the community partners and caregivers that we haven't had in mind when we put that on the slide for our, participants of our work group.
But yeah, I think that would be helpful and it's and so but I think more data and especially per person not necessarily or per student not necessarily categorizing all the suspensions but what's like the true impact especially looking at students not categorizing all the suspensions? Trustee Wilkinson? Yes. I think I mean, the right thing to do is to focus on how we can fix it, of course, right? So I think, you know, this work group is great. I think we need to understand not only what do we need to do,
but how do we do it. So, you know, we can ensure that the board is taking the right look at supporting these initiatives too. We're thinking about it from a budgetary perspective. We're building that in first strategic planning process. Because a lot of the supports that I heard, you know, we talk about professional development. But to me, these are all, like, additional supports. Right. And somebody has to do that. And I know we've had to make some cuts in the last couple of years for those support staff. So I think we need to understand what do we actually need to prioritize when
we go back to the budgeting process. Right. We need to find out how we can help us assist in this progress. And my suggestion is the district that has more resources than most. Absolutely. And so we need to use those resources to not just be a part of the national trend, but to change the trend. Yeah. And I think we can do that here. It starts with us. Absolutely. And so that's where I want it. Yeah. And then and then I do have one other question and I think I already know the answer to this, but I'll ask it to miss Parks. How are we going to ensure that this data is presented on an annual basis?
Yes. This used to be an annual report, and so now that it is back, it will continue to be an annual report. Okay. Thank you. And thank you for all your hard work, everyone, for putting this together. Greatly appreciate it. If the Trustee Wilkins? I want to echo the I think some of this might some of this is definitely attributed to not having behavior intervention specialists in the schools. I think, anecdotally, I've certainly heard that that's one of the things to blame. So we need to figure that out somehow.
And I also want to make sure we're able to measure our successes. So with these whatever all the different programs we're hearing, you know, is there a way to I know it's hard to measure what didn't happen, but if there's a way to as this we're keeping track of all the different circles you had or whatever and if you can keep track of what ones were successful or were you know, what kids you saw, what students you saw again or what students you didn't see again or that kind
of thing. I think it'll be important as we put in put these more measures in place, put more supports behind these measures in place to make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. Absolutely. It's one of the things that we talked about as we were going through the data. Like, how do we know what's working? Yeah. And what what evidence do we have of that? So that is definitely top of mind too. Thank you. Yeah. I just wanted to add, Superintendent Parks, thank you so much for this presentation. Thank you and your team, for not only just showing the data,
which is quite sobering, that's an understatement, but emphasizing support measures and proactive next steps. I mean, you took it one step further, and I appreciate that. And I also want to say that we take pride in being an exceptional district. And I believe that when what does that mean? In my opinion, that means setting trends and not just being a part of a trend. And so I I would like to see us set a trend. Yeah. There's a trend across the nation that pretty much reflects this exact same data,
but we can dare to be different. We can dare to set the tone, set the trend, buck the trend, that's b u c k, buck the trend, and really set the tone and be a model for school districts across the country. So, again, exceptional is a word that we tout, and I believe that we need to show what that means, illustrate what that means, show the country what that means. And, I believe that we were all elected to make a difference in this district. Here's a challenge. Here's an an opportunity for us to be problem solvers,
you know, alongside you and with everyone in the district and on your cabinet. And I know there was one slide that, said something about identifying that your team was gonna identify recommended policy adjustments. And when I saw the word policy, this sounds like board involvement. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's exactly what you had in mind when you put that there. Yeah. So we want to find policy adjustments to be able to correct this problem. I have lived in this district for more than twenty five years, and the data has not changed.
And so, I'm on the board now. So we need to make some changes. I again, I have been in this district for a while. I haven't been on the board twenty five years, but I've been in this district for twenty five years. And we need to see some new data. In the room where it happens. Absolutely. Trustee Vasquez? So I hope to kind of round this up and say it is the board's job. Okay? And to support the superintendent and her team, and if there's ever a team to carry it on, it's this one. Yes. But we as a board have got to allow and support their work.
You know? We have been too distracted with other things, other things, and we cannot educate children if we don't have them in our buildings. And when they're in their buildings, we have to have them safe. And I was very surprised but and very disappointed. We the fighting has got to stop. And that didn't all start in the classroom, okay, or the buildings. And I appreciate someone saying this is a community resolution because, again, some of these ideas came from outside of our buildings. And I know these groups, and they are working with the very children that we say we need to address
the issues. So please, as trustees, superintendent and her team, and yet sometimes it'll be looking at the budget a little different despite what we may be hearing from the outside. If the superintendent says she needs this position, we need to stand firm in supporting her for this position. Despite with people who are outside who may be well meaning but don't have the information or the expertise, but they have loud voices. And so some of us cower, and we cave, and we put pressure. We know how to fix this problem has been on for years. And I've said for years, we know how to resolve it.
But do we have the gut and political will to do so? And so I'm gonna ask all of your trustees, new and veterans, if you will, you know, are we committed to giving the resources and standing firm to resolve the issue? These folks, as we've mentioned, they they have been doing this work for years, but they can't fix this alone. So, again, whether it's policy, whether it's budget, whether it's just hearing, what we need to do, let's just be committed to doing it together. Thank you. And if there's nothing further, I think that's a good place to take a ten minute break.
Thank you. So we will adjourn until 10:20. Okay. So We'll recall the meeting to order at, 10:23. Next, we had the superintendent, but we're gonna drop that down a little bit and try to jump to our school librarian month update, please. Alright. And, try to allow them to get out of here. Thank you very much, president Feaster. We have, Rachel Goldberg, who is our elementary chair for our library services department, and we have Jennifer Colby, who is our secondary chair. And they are here to,
do a school librarian month, overview, preview, FYI, update, all of the things for trustees and the community as this is, school library month. So at this time, I will take turn it over to the two of them. And we have some slides. Yes. Excellent. Okay. Thank you, trustees, president Feaster, superintendent parks, lovers of books, supporters of the freedom to read. That's actually our last slide. That's our last slide. Yes. But happy school library month. Happy every month. I'm Jennifer Colby. This is Rachel Goldberg. Besides being defenders of democracy,
among other things, we would like to share Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. All the good news we have from our library program across the district. Mhmm. So, yes. As superintendent Park said, we're here to tell you a little bit about what we do all the time, but highlighted in April, which is National School Library Month. So we support all of our diverse learners in young fives through twelfth grade in our libraries, including our English language learners, our students in self contained classrooms, our students with diverse learning needs.
Library is a place where all of our students can be successful, pursue their interests, engage with stories, learn to find information for research and individual, you know, personal growth. Libraries are the heart of inquiry driven learning. We have librarians in all 31 of our k 12 buildings. We have our masters in library science or information. We are certified ND, which is the media specialist certification, although we use school library programs here. We use school library, school librarian. Forgive me. I taught all day. And here we are. There we go. We provide instruction in a wide variety of programs.
I'll get to more of our content, in a little bit. We also we'll also host special events and activities. We have a big district wide author we have an author coming, Newberry award winning author coming to visit three of our elementary schools, just Oh, okay. In a few weeks. We have book fairs, we raise funds to, support literacy initiatives in our libraries, with print and digital collection, and we are supported by our amazing Friends of the Anarbor Public Schools Library group. We provide resources to students and staff and families, print books, digital books as part of our Sora ebook and audiobook collection.
We subscribe to several research databases and have a streaming video library. Next slide, please. And so we directly support around 6,000 students per day in our high schools, our comprehensive high schools, our alternative high school, 200 average per middle school, and 125 average. Our school librarians and elementary schools are teaching full course loads, within the specials rotations. So when students come to our libraries, they're coming for classes, they're coming for book checkout, tech support, test prep. They're coming because, we've talked a little bit tonight about students needing,
a safe space to feel like they belong, to have a familiar face with whom they can connect. And our buildings, our libraries are those spaces. Also students who are taking classes through a to b, often take those classes in the library. Our librarians, at the secondary level advise clubs and offer homework help, and so much more. It's hard to capture all of the, like, busy sort of community center nature of our school libraries, with these statistics, but we'll do our best. Next slide, please. So there we are a cardiganed bunch. And, just as a sort of what we do in terms of our professional work when
we are not working directly with students, we, there are protocols for doing diversity audits for our collections to make sure that our literature is representative, inclusive, that we're not promoting harmful stereotypes. So we have a variety of tools that we use to do this. We are monitoring and managing our collections, weeding out old books to make room for new materials. We catalog and process those materials so that students can find them so that they last for a long time. We directly work with classroom teachers and other, special area teachers to deepen and,
sorry. Forgive me. I'm a little less articulate at this time of the evening. It's 10:30. No worries. To to deepen students' learning, in their classrooms, with library skills as well. We are certified as common sense media educators, which is a program that we went through a few years ago, and are renewing this year, to, certify our commitment to using common sense media as a guideline for information literacy, media literacy, and digital citizenship. We present at conferences here in Michigan and across the country. And, next slide,
please. And this year 28 of us became certified school libraries of the twenty first century. So, this was an extensive application process through the State Library of Michigan that we engaged in with our principals And, there was, there were several there was a rubric for this and the the sort of key benchmarks are up there. Teaching for twenty first century learning, so that was specifically about our instruction, building the twenty first century learning environment, that was like the infrastructure and the budget and the, sort of district wide supports that our students have in the,
our librarians have for our library programs. And then thinking, about the future and what we're doing to build, strong digital citizens, as well. And so using all of those benchmarks, we worked with our principals, and we either obtained, exemplary or qualified status in 28 of our libraries. It's worth noting that those are the libraries that have a full time that one full time school librarian in the library. That our building that we have buildings that do not have a full time school librarian in those buildings, and so this would be something that we would love to to work toward, in the future. Next slide. Instruction.
So you'll see the elementary resource portal, the middle school resource portal, and then some of our high school data our subscription based databases. Forgive me, I'm going to read a bit. Some of our our AAPS library curricular standards are that we're hoping to teach students to evaluate information critically and competently, using information accurate accurately, creatively, and ethically to share knowledge and participate collaboratively and productively as a member of a democratic society, appreciating literature and other creative expressions of thoughts and ideas, and pursuing knowledge related to personal interests and aesthetic growth.
And so we're working, to also, I didn't mention digital citizenship, but understanding and practicing Internet safety when using electronic media for educational, social, recreational, purposes, practicing strategies that promote personal safety, and understanding the need for protecting personal privacy when engaging online. And so those are these are key elements of our library program, pre k through 12. Next slide. We also have a lot of fun in our libraries. We partner with the Ann Arbor District Library, and they they come to us. Our students visit the library,
in second grade and then for other, various projects as they get older. We work with community groups to do cultural heritage month activities and displays. We host a lot of exciting events in March. March is reading month, even though reading month is every month. We have community partnerships. We do book drives and giveaways. Our high schoolers do voter registration. We have family reading nights. We have seed libraries, we do author visits, book clubs, story walks, and so much more. Next slide, please. While we are grateful for, the money that we get from the district, we also,
want to provide our students with even more. And so our librarians are often working to be out in the, in the community advocating. You'll see there are links to articles, featuring librarians in local publications. And last school year, librarians raised over $25,000 in grants, to supplement our budget. And there's a link in the note for that slide. It's a spreadsheet. And then next slide. And then our Friends of the Ann Arbor Public School Libraries. This group was started last year as a group of, people who are direct stakeholders in our school libraries.
We are either the first or one of the first, school, school districts to have a friends of the school library group to support us. Their goal they work to provide volunteer services, so they have a sign up genius where they match volunteers in the community with libraries for all sorts of different projects. They raise money for needs not normally covered in our operating budget. They also advocate for the library at the state and local levels. Recently, they, secured a 15,000 Knight Foundation grant to purchase of audiobook titles for us in Sora. And so we are so grateful for all of the work that our friends do,
and excited that here in Ann Arbor, we are lucky enough to have a Friends of the School Libraries group. So that $15,000 really helps us cover, the audiobook needs that we have in the district for students who have a need for an audiobook. When an e book or a print book, does not support their learning, then we can have we have that money to provide those audiobooks. So right now, we're purchasing books in audiobook format that represent our most popular ebooks in our collection that we already do not have an audiobook for and then we're taking recommendations and
requests from teachers and librarians and students throughout the next two years. We'll spend down that $15,000 on audiobooks. Next slide, please. We have so many resources. Many of these are district provided. We have our Fallout Destiny catalog, which is all of our print collection in all of our libraries. We have our Sora e book and audiobook collection, which we started post COVID, thanks to the board for funding that and continuing to fund that. We have our Gale databases, which we use at our middle school and high school buildings that we teach our
students how to find authoritative and accurate information online through the databases and the same with PebbleGo at our elementary buildings. We also have MyVideoSpot, which is our digital video streaming service that we provide, mainly to our secondary buildings, so that teachers and students have access not only in the building to watch the movies that support the curriculum, but also outside of school. They can access the links through Schoology if they're absent or if they're out of the building for some reason. They can access that learning material outside of school. So print plus digital equals equity.
It supports all of our learners to have these resources in multiple formats. Next slide. As of about 09:20 today, we've had 256,671 print checkouts throughout the libraries this school year. And those are examples of displays that we have throughout the school district. These are focusing on Native American Heritage Month. Next slide? So Sora, we love Sora. Our students love Sora. My favorite thing about Sora is the 20 fourseven access all year long.
When our libraries are closed, our students still have access to books. People will say, well, why don't they go to the public library? Well, some of our students just don't have access to the public library even though any every Anarbor Public School student and teacher can get a library card to the Anarbor or Anarbor District Library no matter where you live. We know that some students need access to reading materials outside of the school day, so that's one of the reasons why we love SOAR. Another reason why we love SOAR is it develops digital reading skills to prepare for online testing with on screen reading,
notes and highlights tools, and the ability to find words and look up things online right from the screen in our Sora ebooks. There's a link there to the usage dashboard if you ever wanna see what our students are checking out at any given moment. It's mainly diary diary of a wimpy kid, just to be perfectly honest or dog man. One of those two are always are always on top. Reading is good. Reading is reading. I encourage you to click that link just for fun, someday and see what our students are checking out in Sora. Next slide. Again, we have high usage in Sora as of,
again, about 09:45 this morning. We had a hundred and we've had 140,309 ebooks and audiobooks checked out district wide. The graph there shows you the dark blue are ebook checkouts. Light blue is audiobook checkouts. That also represents the number of copies we have of each. You can see we have 15,362 copies of ebooks right now at this moment and 2,137 copies of audiobooks. But ebooks are generally more checked out than audiobooks advantage wise by our students.
Next slide. What's great about Sora and my company Overdrive is I can get just about any statistic you want at the touch of a button. So I was able to find out today that with all those checkouts, we've had about eighty six thousand eight hundred and twenty seven point two three hours read. That's active reading. They measure the movement of the page on the screen. It's not just the book open, but the active movement. You have to swipe to go to the next page. Same with the audiobook,
it has to be plain, for it to count. Next slide. We are one of the highest users in Michigan for Sora. In twenty twenty two, twenty three school year, we were the first, public school district to hit 500,000 checkouts all time ever, in the state of Michigan. We're still up there, and with 783,074 all time checkouts since we started in 2021, we're on our way to $1,000,000
if our budget continues to be funded in the next two years, I would think. Next slide. Then along with our digital resources, we have Gale and the twenty twenty two-twenty three school year. We were the top user across all of Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. And again, that's one of our secondary resources, and that equates to three thousand four hundred and fifty five hours of researching for our students. All right. So, I got to share the numbers. Rachel got to share the fuzzy, warm stuff.
We wish you a happy school library month, and we're happy to take any of your questions. Trustee, this has been bothering me. So when I grew up, we had librarians. Then I became a board member and they became media specialists. Is it okay to call you librarians again? I've heard the name is librarian. Yeah. We are the library services department. Yeah. I'm really proud to be part of a long history of librarians. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So again We are librarians. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you for the the work that you do. I mean, for a lot of kids like me who never got to travel much, who didn't get to see outside my little three blocks,
but I got to go to the public library. I could walk there. Reading, as you know, opens up your whole world regardless of where you are or your circumstances. So thank you for supporting that and and for supporting your students. Appreciate you guys. Thank you for supporting us. I would say, given the given the state of the world, it feels, we feel good, as librarians here knowing that our school board trustees and our superintendent and our district, also values the students' right to read and access to information. Absolutely. Trustee Wilkins? Yeah. Thank you. It was this is I like all the warm and fuzzy and I like the
numbers. So and I like books. This is good. The, diversity audit, was is that something that is there, like, a national rubric that you follow for that? Did you guys come up with what you should do? How does that how does that work? So, our live our, circulation system is Follett Destiny, and there are built in reports, so we can break down, like and, that sort of metadata about the identity of the author, the identity of the protagonist, you know, where the story takes place, all of that, like, additional information about a book is built into,
like, when we catalog and process books into our catalog. And so if we wanted a report of all of our books that feature, you know, protagonists who've been adopted, for example, or, you know, other you know, we can sort of, dig in and find out how and then so the the diversity audit is a feature is a, a tool within the circulation system that that does that for us. And then we make decisions on per purchasing based on Okay. Those reports and making decisions to, you know, provide those windows, mirrors and sliding doors for our students through books.
Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Trustee Wilkerson? Yeah. I would just like to say thank you too. I mean, it's it's, you know, the library really is a hub of the community at each of our schools. You know, I think I had the opportunity to go to the multicultural or the multi, I think it was a multicultural literacy night at Steam. Yeah. Yeah. And just the breadth of books and the, you know, the number of different cultures that were represented and the books that were out for selection. When you think about what that looks like in other communities or what that looked
like ten years ago, it's just a huge difference to, you know, allow our students to see themselves in the books they're reading. So it's it's really a huge impact to our students and we really appreciate it. Thank you. Alright. Thank you all. Sorry to keep you so late. Alright. Thank you. Thank you. Good work. And we're gonna, again, bump our superintendent down a little further. All right. And we're going to move to the monthly budget monitoring report for March 2025 and try to allow you to get in and get out.
Thank you very much, President Feaster. We have Ms. Frank Korr here providing the monthly budget monitoring report for March. So I will turn it over to her and she'll get us going here. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. I am here to present March monthly monitoring. Yay. Thank you, Andrew. First slide always is cash and investments and you see General Fund is in a great cash position still. But I'd like to point out, we've talked about the waning tax collections the further we go into this calendar year
because January, February is our largest winter tax collections. We are actually our cash in February was $5,500,000 higher in comparison than it is in March. So that's not to be alarmed. It's what we expect this time of year, but I do want to point that out, because and also and I point out in every meeting that or every board meeting that this is a capture of a point in time. This is on March 31, we were at $51,000,000
for the general fund, which is fantastic. I'm gonna bump right down to food service because that one kinda stands out a little bit. The one thing I would like to note about note about our food service fund, there are two federal grants that we did not receive this year, and it's not be it's just because they were done. They expired. It has nothing to do with the current state of our our country. It it just they were expired expired. They were the local food grant and this supply chain assistance grant. So that does affect because we still are buying food while our vendor is and
we're still buying equipment and we don't have any grant funds to supplement those. So it does affect our cash position. This is our monthly expenditures for March. And the one thing I do want to note about the general fund, this does include the last two groups, the pair of pros and the non bargain that have the retro and the increase. So that last two groups actually happened in March, so the general fund does reflect that. This is the comparison of summary of all funds report.
And the one thing I will note and mostly on these reports, as I say, unless something really jumps out or if you have a question, I mostly focus on the general fund. As you'll see, our general fund over prior year to date revenues were at 1.3, higher than we were last year in March. And what that is, is the last small bit of tax revenue collected. It also our interest earned for the year is higher than last, so that $1,300,000 captures both of those. And then if you jump right down to general fund expenditures, we are $15,000,000
less than we were last year. And as you know, it's consistent with other months that we present or I presented this year, this fiscal, and that's due to changes we made after last year's end of year, after our budget. So that is the $15,000,000 And as you see to our community service, food service funds, they're all really pretty steady. If you go down to even like the student and school activity expenditures, they're only, it's a very nominal decrease in expenditures.
So really those funds are maintaining. This is the second sheet of that prior slide. And the one thing that, Sarah will point out, in the year to date, you will see our addition to fund balance is if we were to end actually as March 31, we were ending, our addition to fund balance would have been $34,600,000 Last year, it was $18,100,000 Go down to the and I'm only, I'm sorry, reflecting the general fund again. And going down to the beginning fund balance, we did start the year out with a smaller fund balance or beginning fund balance
over last year. But then if you go Way down to ending fund balance, if we were to end the year on March 31, we'd have been almost $42,000,000 in fund balance. In comparison, last year at the same time, we were at $31,000,000 So, yes, we're still maintaining. So this is our we're doing comparison of month to date, year to date to what our current budget is. And just to note, I did put a little asterisk. So our budget reflects the Board approved budget that was amended on March 19. So all of these numbers have been updated to reflect in these reports.
And as you'll see, our month to date revenues for the general fund are almost $19,000,000 year to date, dollars $225,000,000. So we still have about $91,000,000 to collect. And I always like to remind you that we still are collecting revenues all the way through August. That's how our state aid runs all the way through August for this fiscal year. And then I'll go down to the expenditures. We are, as I said, at almost $25,000,000 in expenditures, year to date $190,600,000 in expenditures, and we still have a balance compared to the budget of 114 remaining,
and that is will carry us through the end of this fiscal. Quick question on that slide. So again, just to point out, we've collected 71% of our revenue. Correct. We've only expended about 62% of our expenses, so we're sitting in a pretty good cash position as of now. Correct, absolutely. And this is the trend that we're following all year. Yes. Okay. So is that expected to change? I know that we have three payments, three payments in May. So You will see that and that will be reflected.
When I get a little further down, when I do the one where it's I have the slide that is our estimated versus actual. And then I have some graphs. And actually, we've added a new graph that it will show like the fund balance and we've carried it out all the way through June. So that should help. But yes, yes, you will see this and, you'll see it a little further in our slide one of the slides coming up too. Okay. You can go ahead, Andrew. Okay. This is the second sheet of the prior slide. And the one thing I'm going to jump right down to show you what I
was talking about as you will see things change going forward. See where I have the fund balance as a percent of revenue for the general fund and of expenses. Last month in February, it was 15.1% as a percent of revenue and 15.6% as a percent of expenses. So you're seeing that fund balance go down and that's exactly what we projected in our budget that we presented in March. So this is the trend. We don't have a lot of revenue collection right now, and we still have maintaining expenses plus we do have the three pays in May.
And so you will see our revenue was less than our expenditures for the month of March. General fund was almost $5,900,000 less than what our revenues were less than expenditures, and that's in the middle column month to day. Right. And as of and as in the other one, as you see, is if we ended in March 31, our general fund would be at almost $42,000,000 of fund balance. And this is a slide that's very busy. So what we've done at the suggestion at our Finance Committee meeting, I highlighted the numbers that I talk about pretty much every month.
And this slide only talks about the general fund, expected versus actual, and this is where we look at the trends and what we've I don't want to say predicted, we projected going forward. And as I said in the last slide, the budgeted well, the amended budget is as of threethirty one thousand and nineteen. So everything in this budget has been updated as well. So I'll start out. The in month to date, the expected March, we expected to have almost $19,000,000 in revenue, and we were at almost $19,000,000 in revenue. The only difference there was $16,000
So we were pretty much spot on projected versus actual. Now if we go all the way over and I'll go to year to date since we're on revenues, our expected in March is two twenty four million dollars almost $225,000,000 and we did, we have collected actually $225,300,000 So we are have collected $427,000 more than expected. So that's great. But still $427,000 in the scheme of over $300,000,000 budget, It's minimal, but it's still good.
It's trending how we want it to trend. So then we're going to go down to expenditures. I'm going to go down to total expenditures. We expected to spend $24,200,000 in the month of March. We spent $24,600,000 The difference is only $460,000 difference. We expended more than what we expected, which still like I said in the scheme of things with our budget that's very minimal. Then going over to year to date, our expected March was $192,000,000 in expenditures and we've so far actual March year to date,
we've expected we've expended $190,000,000 which is almost $1,600,000 less than we expected this time of the year. So just as a reminder, I'm going to go all the way back to the left, you'll see that our projected fund balance at the last amended budget, which was in March, we expected 5.9% as a percent of revenues and 6.16% as a percent of expenditures. Then I'm going to slip all the way back to year to date. Our expected at this time was 12.5%
as a percent of revenues and 13% as a percent of expenditures. But actually we're doing a little bit better than we expected. We're at 13.22% of revenues and 13.7% of expenditures. So we are trending really close to where we thought we would be, so we're doing well. So these next slides, of course, they reflect the information you just saw on the previous slide. So you look at the revenues and the actual is in orange, the expected is in blue and we're right on in actual revenue. So we're right where we expected to be at this point in the year.
Expenditures, not far off. We're only at $460,000 difference, so we are pretty spot on in expenditures as well. Fund balance, you'll see we're doing better than we expected at this time of the year at the March. So, we're higher than expected, so we're trending, like I said, in the right direction. Now this last slide, this is the new slide that we did add and hopefully it gives you information. This will this is taking our trend out all the way through June 30. The green line that you see, that is the fund balance that the policy that the Board approved,
I believe in December, so and that reflects 7%. So the orange is actual, the blue is expected. So right now, our fund balance is trending higher like you saw on the last slide than what we've projected. But as you see, and this is where I talk about, really take a look at what we brought to your attention in the budget amendment that we expect to be around 5%, six %, fund balance at the end of the year and you'll see that happen. If you look at May, that will reflect the three payrolls in May. So you see that big dip that's going to take us back down to below
7%. Maybe a big bold line at the 5% would be a great idea. Which one? Like a big red line. Where you can't go 5%. Oh, where you can't go under. That is a great suggestion. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Right. I I understand that. I'm gonna make a little note. Well, it is it's a good thought because, you know, that's what we're required to be, five and over. And, you know, that's why we report to the Department of Treasury every single month. So and we are turning in the right direction and just this is a little added,
but, all of our meetings with Department of Treasury are going great. We're heading where we're supposed to be. They're very happy with our progress. They like everything we're doing. So and like I said, we do meet with them every single month. We provide some documentation on cash flow. They've seen our budget amendment. So we have to ask every month to be released. Every month. But I can tell you we won't be it just is inevitable to wait till after the audit at least. So Fair enough. Fair enough. That's what I say. Fair enough. I mean, that's what I expect. So I like the new slide.
Do you? Thank you. I really do too, honestly, because I think it gives when you're talking about to the end of the fiscal year, it kind of gives a better picture of where we're heading and you can see the three payrolls, take the fund balance down. So yes, I like it too. Thank you. Any questions? I just have a comment. I want to say thank you very much, Ms. Francoi for incorporating the feedback and questions we had, putting that right into your presentation. So it was really nice to see those improvements. You're welcome. Thank you. We always appreciate the feedback during finance committee as well.
Thank you. And I believe that now brings us down to our superintendent update, Ms. Parks. Thank you very much, President Feaster. Trustees, I appreciate the opportunity to, deliver the superintendent's update at this late hour. April is National Bilingual Multilingual Learner Advocacy Month, and this month is dedicated to celebrating the accomplishments of our bilingual and multilingual students, the fastest growing student population in our district. So we affirm and appreciate the valuable contributions of our AAPS multilingual students and families.
This month, we have an opportunity to help our multilingual students feel empowered by their strengths, reinforce the benefits of multilingualism, and advocate for the resources that support multilingual student success. We are grateful for the dedication of our English learner teachers and staff who support students in developing proficiency in multiple languages while honoring students' cultural identities. Our teachers and staff work not only to enhance academic achievement, but also to prepare our students to thrive in our increasingly interconnected global society.
This is, also National Volunteer Week, April twentieth through April 26. This week, we recognize National Volunteer Week, which each year provides us with an opportunity to express our appreciation for the wonderful parents, families, PTO members, community and strategic partners who selflessly serve in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. Our volunteers support classroom and school enrichment activities, field trips, office and library support, academic and bilingual support,
noon hour, recess support, after school and homework support, and in many other capacities in the daily life of our schools. We recognize that strong communities are characterized by strong public schools, and our AAPS schools are strengthen strengthened and made more vibrant and connected through the successful engagement and participant participation of our committed school volunteers. So we thank them. Speaking of thanking our strategic partners and volunteers, last week, we celebrated, the excuse me.
We celebrated our partners and volunteers on April 17, and that event was a huge success. We had almost 200, people attend, and they represented many community partners, businesses, donors, PTOs, volunteers, and staff. And we thank the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation for sponsoring the event, which was held at Huron High School. And the evening of appreciation included food prepared by our Huron culinary students and entertainment from the community high jazz band. And so thank you,
trustees. Many of you were able to make it out to that event, and it was wonderful. Save the date, please. The annual First Step Kid Fest family concert will be held Saturday, May 3, from 03:00 to 05:00 at the Leslie Science and Nature Center. Popular local musician Joe Riley will lead an outdoor dance party for babies, toddlers, elementary aged children, and their families. Proceeds from KidFest fund scholarships sorry. Proceeds from KidFest will fund scholarships for Reckon Ed's early childhood programs, and the link for that is on our website.
Site. Trustees and community, as our guests from the Washtenaw Intermediate School District Board, shared this evening, the Washtenaw Superintendents Association and the Washtenaw Association of School Boards are sponsoring an education town hall on Wednesday, April 30 from 07:00 to 08:30PM in the Morris Lawrence Building at Washtenaw Community College. The event is free and open to the public, and there is a link to register on our AAPS website. Please come out and learn how changes to the federal policy and funding impact Washtenaw
County's public schools. We would love to see you there. It is with great excitement that we, share that miss Shaima Busuni, one of Huron's incredible world language educators, has been named the commendable teacher award winner, earning third place in this year's teacher of the year recognition by Ann Arbor Regional Chamber in La Fontaine Automotive Group. Selected from a field of competitive competitive from across the region. Miss Bassuni's passion, innovation and care for her students stood out in powerful ways.
In honor of her remarkable impact, she will receive a classroom grant for from Lafontaine Automotive Group and will be honored at a special teacher of the year breakfast of May 21. Are we gonna show the video? No? Okay. Alright. Yeah. It was a surprise. It was a surprise. It was a great moment. Skyline's Minjee Kim, a Skyline senior, has been accepted to the National Youth Orchestra of the USA for the second consecutive year As part of the orchestra summer tour through Asia with stops in Hong Kong,
Beijing, Shanghai, and Seoul, they will be visiting Japan for the first time, performing in Osaka and Tokyo. Being a member of this orchestra is a special honor for Minji because she will visit Korea, her home country, as a youth musician ambassador. Each year, Columbia and Juilliard select only 10 to 12 students for the Columbia Juilliard program. So it is an incredible honor that she has been chosen for this opportunity. We are very proud of her. Oh, beautiful. Good job. The three powerhouse robotic teams from Ann Arbor Public Schools,
Skyline High School's Eagle Evolution Robotics, Pioneer High School's Pai Hai Samurai Robotics, and Forsyth Middle School's Rock to Toaster Robotics qualify for the twenty twenty five first world championships in in Houston, Texas. Their journey to the world stage is a remarkable accomplishment. We celebrate all, the efforts of Skyline Eco Evolution who found themselves in as an alliance member in the playoffs and Pioneer High Samurai whose talent and persistence brought them to Houston alongside the world's best. Together,
these teams showcase the strength and spirit of Ann Arbor robotics, proving that passion, collaboration, and community engagement fuel excitement at every level. So we congratulate all three of these teams. Trustees, we had doctor Parnell, principal of Tappan here this evening, and I wish wish I would have remembered to to share this news before she left so she would have been here to receive this, special acknowledgment. We wanna congratulate doctor Parnell, and Tappan Middle School for receiving the Schools to Watch redesignation. Schools to Watch is, the middle level,
equivalent almost of the blue ribbon honor. And so they have been designated before, and they just received their re redesignation. Schools must show that they are a learning organization that establishes norms, structures, and organizational arrangements to support and sustain their trajectory towards excellence. So we congratulate the TAVN team, doctor Purnell, and the wonderful students, few of whom which were with us this evening. AI. Let's talk about AI. So the the rapid increase of generative AI tools in our global society has considerable
impact on teaching and learning now and in the future, requiring districts to make decisions about how students, staff and building leaders engage with AI responsibly, ethically, and safety safely. This school year, a variety of cohort groups, which includes our building leaders, our staff, our students, our peer districts, and external thought partners, but led by our secondary students, have been actively learning, collaborating and co creating future AI district guidance documents and coordinating AI workflow resources based
around four essential questions. The secondary student cohort is currently working through their final drafts of the AAPS AI Bill of Rights, which includes student and staff rights, student responsibilities, teacher and district rights and responsibilities, and suspected AI misuse guidelines. Those refined draft documents will then cycle back through the adult cohort groups for their review and feedback. So we will share more details in the coming months as different stakeholder groups wrap up their cohort work in preparation for the intentional and co created AI rollout during
the twenty second, we second, we make we mark the anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1970 as the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Today, Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world. More than a billion people celebrate every year this day of action to change human behavior and create better global, national, and local policies to protect our health and environment. Lastly, trustees, today, April 23, is Administrative Professionals Day, and we want to recognize our AAPS office professionals and their work as vital partners
in our AAPS family. We appreciate absolutely. We appreciate we're so much fun. We appreciate the dedicated service they provide throughout the year, and their efforts, knowledge, and expertise are crucial in enabling the strong connections and service our districts our district provides to our students, staff, families, and the Ann Arbor community. They do so many things seen and unseen every day to make our schools and our departments and our buildings operate. And so to close this out, we I'd like to thank our very own miss Ozinski,
this, administrative professional stand. And that concludes the superintendent's report this evening. Thank you, miss Parks. I believe that brings us down to first briefing. Annex AN 2204 Skyline Clegg Freeman Transportation South Bus Lot solar array installation contracts recommendation. Thank you, president Feaster. We have our capital team coming forward, for these three items. The first that you just, shared, President Feaster is the Skyline, Clague, Freeman and Transportation, South Bus Lot, solar array installation contract recommendations.
Trustees, we heard, prior to the regular meeting, at the bond committee of the whole these items, and they are now in front of you for first briefing. And nothing has changed in the last four hours? Okay. Okay. Other than we do have an answer to the question that was presented in the bond committee meeting. They are good. Any questions? You want to remind us of the questions? Yes. Good evening, Trustees. We don't deserve any answers if you don't hold the questions. When we were discussing the Solaris, we were asked about return on investment and what we might look to see
capital investment cost of 3,192,300 and you subtract our 30%, $300,000 and you subtract our 30% tax deduction, you take that value and utilize an offset on an annual basis of approximately $200,000 a year. And so factoring in no inflational cost of electrical consumption over the lifecycle of this system, it's about eleven year of simple payback. So if we factor in an escalation cost for the retail price of electricity,
then it's somewhere in the nine point five year window and we ended up you end up saving somewhere on the order of $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 over the lifecycle of the panels or we're positive we're in the positive. So it's a really fun analysis to do. So I appreciate the question. And you made the world a better place because we didn't pollute as much? Yes. Correct. It's about the greenest energy you could you can generate because we're we're producing it
right right there on-site and using it at the point of use. Greenest energy. And that's general fund money, right? So it's fund money being spent and general fund general fund money saved. Yeah. Alright. Perfect. Thank you. What and I missed some of that, maybe. What was the life cycle? How many years? So there's different system components that have different sort of anticipated life cycles, but the system generally speaking is twenty five years rated life. That's the modules themselves,
the solar modules Right. Yep. Alright. Thank you. So I know I'm sorry I couldn't come to the meeting because I was stuck with clinical stuff. But, could we just go through this? Is it his first briefing just to go through generally the info for each part? We sure can. So this was publicly bid. And our qualified low bidder is Homeland Solar. Homeland Solar has done several of our solar installations dating back to 2020 when we first started solar installations within the in the district. This adding of solar for these projects alone will actually double our solar
in just this approval right here. We had been asked, what was the life cycle of the solar, so that's why we're coming back with it. And we just wanted to note that this work would start this summer, and it's for Clague, Skyline, Fremont and Transportation. As a to go over, it would be rooftop at Clague and Skyline, and transportation would be our first Canopy along with Freeman, our first Canopy installations where the solar goes on a Canopy and you could park vehicles underneath the Canopy at
Transportation Center at the South Lot and at Freeman. The canopy would serve as a shelter, a shaded shelter for outside learning. Thank you very much. I'm good with reading it. It's Annex AN-two 205, H. O. Steam, Baugh, Community, Forsyth, Freeman and Skyline Roofing Repair and Replacement Project recommendations. Thank you, Superintendent Parks. So again, this is publicly bid. Oh, I also want to point out the last one was for being funded from bond. Actually, the last one will be sinking funds.
So but out of the capital program budget. This one is roofing and this is our ongoing roofing improvements. This is coming back to buildings that, we have finished either air conditioning and lighting, which we said we would come back and do roofing after we were done doing some of those that improvement work. We're looking at partial roofing replacements at steam. Baugh is looking to have a roofing repair only because we're going to be coming back in the near future to do a major improvement project there. So we didn't want to invest too much into that roof.
Community High School is looking to get a roof replacement because we had a major air conditioning and lighting project, same with Foresight, Freeman. There's the part over the, environmental area that needs to be reroofed. We've been kicking that can down the road for a while and that needs to be reroofed. And then a portion of, Skyline High School, which we've been there in the past, but we're doing sections at a time. And so we're coming back to do some work at Skyline High School. Why sections at a time at Skyline? Well, we did sections.
We're doing, solar. We're getting ready to come back to do some more. So before we put solar down, we'd like to do roofing. Gotcha. Okay. Bond dollars. Bond dollars. Any other questions? Alright. This first. All right. Then we have Annex AN-two Thousand 206, New Thurston Elementary Trade Contracts Part two. Thank you. This is we said we're going to come back with additional contracts. This one is for foundations, the Rammed aggregate peers and the electrical. I do have an answer to your question. So the Rammed aggregate peers are it's an engineered system.
So the actual exact number of peers is still to be engineered by the low bidder. They will engineer it. But I will tell you that it does, each peer is approximately 30 inches columns, up to 30 feet deep. And they're at 22 locations located in the Northeast Corner of the building where the basement is. So very, select space on the Northeast corner. I'm anticipating, as we had said before, it'll be approximately 100, but it's to be determined after the engineer after the low bidder engineers it because
that's their part of their responsibility. Any questions? Well, could you just address looking ahead at tariffs and how that could impact projects? I know you talked about it a little bit earlier during our committee meeting, but some folks weren't here. So if you could just share a little bit more about that, that would be helpful. Thank you. I sure can. So tariffs are an ever changing moving target. When we started back in January, we thought the tariffs were going to happen before items left that it was going
to apply to everything across the board. We now know that every day it changes. Tariffs are changing. The the quantity or what is being tariffed and how much is being tariffed and depending on what country it's coming from. And even if it's coming from a country, there could be a a scale of zero to, you know, 50% or whatever, but it's changing all the time. We have now the latest is that the tariff occurs when the item not just hits the port but after it is processed at the port. So it could sit at the port for three weeks and in that three week
timeframe, the tariffs could change. And it's not until they actually process it into and officially bring it into the country, that's when tariffs are applied and that's when we would find out how much it costs. And again, it varies on what the item is, where it's coming from, and how it's designated. So our company is trying to keep up on it. We get daily memos on the changes of tariffs, but it's I mean, you guys see the news, it's changing every day. So at this point, we do not have tariffs included into the contracts because by the time some of
these items come, it'll be a year and a half from now and the tariffs may be gone. So, many of the items that we have are here in The United States, and so so that's that's good. But at this point, it's a moving target. Have we received notifications? Yeah. Everybody's covering, you know, covering themselves right now by putting everybody on notice. But reality is until that item hits the shores and is processed and we know what applicable tariff or law applies,
it's a waiting game. And that's the best way I can put it. I would love to say it's anything different, but that's what it is today. Ask me tomorrow, it could be something else. Well, thank you for sharing that because I know when you mentioned it earlier, I hadn't really given it that much thought, but it obviously is impacting a lot. We're thinking about it every day. Yes, I see. Every day. So short answer is we don't know. Short answer is we don't know. And I unfortunately I don't have a crystal ball. Nobody does. And I think what we thought in January is even vastly changed to what we
see today. Actually what happened two weeks ago has changed from today, So Sinking fund out. This is bond dollars. Bond out. Okay. Anything else? I get it. That would as long as it's not general fund. Okay. It's not general fund. It's not general fund. Alright. That's it. Alright. Then I think that brings us down to oh, thank you all. Appreciate it. Thank you. Good night. Good morning. That brings us down to the consent agenda. Miss Osiska, do you read that generally? And it's approved minutes of the 04/02/2025 regular meeting and approve
alright. Approve donation. Would anyone like it would anyone like anything removed from the consent of it? Let me just read the donations real quick. Susan Lewis donated a full size cello to the Scarlet Middle School Fine Arts Program, and the Joseph and Allison Valerio Charitable Fund donated $1,500 for baseball and softball uniforms at Slauson Middle School. Would anyone like anything removed from the consent consent agenda? If not, is it if not, is there a motion? So moved. Second. Moved by Trustee Schmidt, supported by Trustee Wilkes. Any discussion?
Miss Jones, please. Alright. Trustee Wilkes? Yes. Trustee Baskett? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. And I believe that brings us down to number 11, Board Action. Motion to hold a closed session at adjournment for the purposes of attorney client privilege and, informal, superintendent evaluation. So moved. Second. Moved by Trustee Wilkerson, supported by Trustee Schmidt. Any discussion? Ms. Ozinsky for this. Trustee Basquiat? Yes.
Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Motion carried. Thank you. That brings us down to number 12, item four agenda planning. Trustees, are there any item four agenda planning? Seeing none. That brings down to number 13, items from the Board. Trustees, are there any items from the Board? Trustee Wilkins? One item. I just wanna remind the community about the ongoing fundraiser for our title one schools. It's the 20 for 30, fundraiser, and we're at,
like, 23,000. And, the PTO Thrift Shop will match 30,000 of it. So that's the goal that we wanna get to. So it's easy enough to find on Google. It's been in all of the superintendent emails and things like that. So and encourage everyone to give their $20 toward it, please. Thank you very much. Trustee Wilkerson? I'll just add that we do have a upcoming planning meeting, on Friday at 10:30 a. M, twenty five. Yes. And I know we're all looking forward to Sunday's retreat here,
two p. M. Please be on time. Be here on time early so we can get started. It will last till seven There will be a meal served around four, four thirty, something like that. And we're going to hold that in the actually in the big house. Big house room. Great. Okay. And Ms. Osinski is helping do the food and everything. She's great. All right. Trustee Mohammed? And again, I want to remind that we have an equity committee meeting tomorrow at four. Equity Committee is tomorrow at four. Yes. I just wanted to say one thing real quick.
Many of us serving on the Board had a chance to participate in the ceremonial groundbreaking for the new Mitchell Elementary on Friday, April 11. The event marked a huge milestone in the district's ongoing efforts to bring twenty first century learning environments to our deserving students, staff, and this entire community. Principal Cuckoo and her students' excitement was palpable, and their student council president, who had quite the fan club, cheering for her, did a fine job representing her classmates. It was a beautiful picture perfect day, and we're grateful to have been a part of this.
We just want to thank the Ann Arbor voters who approved the twenty nineteen millage, which has made this building project and others a reality for our district. Thank you. It was just great to see that happen. Trustee Baskill? And last but not least, I just wanted to make my colleagues aware that there is legislation, both houses regarding cell phone cell phone usage, a policy. One way or the other, I believe it's coming down that we as board, school board districts, school districts and school boards, will have to draft a policy around,
cell phone usage in our schools. There are two competing bills. One is more proscriptive, if you will, that, and some of you have seen this, where the sponsor has basically outlined when and based on age cell phones can be used in our buildings on our properties. And there's one that's a little more generous in terms of, self determination by the school districts of when, how we want to conduct our cell phone policy. But either way, trustees, I know we have a pilot that, we are we have been doing.
We look forward to hearing, the results, the outcome from that. In sitting with other school districts, school board members from other districts, they were really intrigued by the fact that we have been piloting something. And so as soon as we learn anything, I'd love to share. But, I just say we need to make time to start drafting a policy. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Baskett. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. One more thing I forgot to report on. Last week, I attended a teacher morale event. It was in Detroit. It was put on by the newspaper Education Week and Chalkbeat Detroit.
Mostly, they were Detroit Teachers that were there. And it's funny, the table that I sat at, we could choose the table with the topic of our interest. The one I sat at was phone cell phone use and just how these different Detroit schools did it differently depending on the school. And I can share details with you if you have any interest in that later. But they did a lot of surveys looking at nationally what was happening with teacher morale. And here in Michigan, it has gone up a little bit. It's still very low. And the one thing I took away from the day was the State of Georgia.
Georgia as a state has made it a goal to actually take tax dollars to funnel it into schools specifically for teacher compensation. And when you look at their ratings of teacher morale, it was significantly higher. So they had a range of plus 100 to minus 100. And we were sitting at about I think Michigan was like plus 23, but Georgia was like plus 60 or something, I mean, notably more significant than anybody else. And so, I know that there's efforts, different efforts going on,
related to talking to our state legislature. And I've sent all of you I believe We we need to continue to write our personal stories to legislators and the ones that, control the purse strings. So I wish you'd take time to just I did a block email so you can send it to everybody, but the best are phone calls and handwritten letters or, you know, typed up, sent U. S. Post mail. So anyway, so it was I have the report. I can share the link with you about the teacher morale point nationally and in Michigan and all, I can send that to you.
So what you basically said is that Georgia was pouring more money into education? Yes. And they decided to do that on the state level so that they made a commitment and it really has made a difference statewide. What I'll say before we wrap up is several of us had an opportunity to go to the National Association of School Boards Conference in Atlanta on the, fourth through the sixth of this month. There was some great training sessions there. Learned a lot. Met a lot of other, trustees from across the state.
Heard about some struggles and some successes in their districts. Just a great learning experience. I'm excited to get the training and to bring it back and try to implement it here and make our board better and make our district better. And so I'm thankful I was able to go and have that experience, and several of my colleagues were able to go as well. Superintendent was obviously there. And so we had a, had a good time, learning some new things, trying to improve our district. Alright. If there's nothing further, that brings us to I have one quick question. Trustee Wilkes. So while we're in closed session,
I have a feeling we may go over. So do we need to vote to extend the meeting or not? The meeting will be over, so we should be all set. Oh, okay. I okay. Okay. Good. So, sir, I will now entertain a motion to adjourn by voice vote. Am I adjourning into closed session or just adjourning? Do I have to say adjourn into closed session or just adjourn? Okay. Just Do I need to say I'll accept a motion to adjourn into closed session? I'll accept a motion to adjourn into closed session. So moved.
Moved. Second. Moved by trustee Wilkerson and support supported by trustee Wilks. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Aye. Motion care carries. We adjourn at 11:31 to close session. Thank you. Record.