Mohammad? Here. Trustee Wilkins? Here. Trustee Wilkes? Present. Trustee Basquiat? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Present. Thank you. Trustees, you have received the agenda. Are there any changes? Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Second. Moved by trustee Schmidt, supported by trustee Wilkes. Any discussion? Saying none, miss Laskin, please. Trustee Mohammed? Yeah. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. Trustee Wilkes? Yes. Trustee Basquiat? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Motion carries.
Thank you. I I would now like to introduce the nonvoting member at the table, miss Janice Parks, superintendent of schools. Good evening. Thank you. And I believe that brings us down to our special presentation. We now move to our special presentation about the Karen Thomas Fund. Miss Parks, would you like to introduce this item? I would love to. Trustees, we have, with us this evening, mister, Andy Thomas, former trustee of the Board of Education, who is here to talk to us about, a special fund, that is gifted to our schools to encourage literacy among our students.
So at at this time, we'll welcome, mister Thomas to the microphone. Good evening, trustees, superintendent Parks. A lot of new faces here tonight. Mhmm. I big turnover since the last time that I was on the on the board and that I appeared here. So I do have a brief slideshow to go through with you, and I've also got a couple of teachers that I wanted to introduce. Can we have the first slide, please? Can we have a little larger? There. That's better. Okay. So this is this is the Karen Thomas Fund. It is administered by the Ann Arbor air community area Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation.
Next slide. What we are trying to do, you can't quite see the top of it, but it's, we're we're changing lives through literacy is kind of our theme. And our next slide, this is kind of our mission statement, and it's a quote from Elizabeth Hardwick that really, perfectly sums up what the spirit of the Karen Thomas Fund is. The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap. It consoles. It distracts. It excites. It gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind.
It is a moral illumination. That last part about, having a moral dimension to literacy, I think, is very important because, it's not just enabling people to read. We in order to engage with our society, with our government, it requires a, an ability to read critically, to read extensively, to hold knowledge from various sources, and we have a moral obligation to make sure that every citizen of our country has that basic ability.
We also believe that it's not just enough for people to be able to read, but people should have a passion for reading, of being able to go out and get the information that they want, to get the entertainment that they want, to have to get beyond the, ten second Facebook post or the the the Twitter or the, TikTok video that, is so distracting and really get to the get to the heart of some things. So next slide, please.
What we are doing is we are dedicated to promoting literacy and a love of reading among elementary school students, pre k through five in the Ann Arbor area. So we are focusing on elementary schools. We're not we're not getting into the middle schools or the high schools. It's elementary schools, and we do go all the way down to the to preschool. We have, done projects in support of the, of the preschool. The Caring Fund provides grants to teachers and other educators who seek funding for funding
for literacy related projects. So there each year, we have a a grant application, and, teachers are invited to submit their requests. And, based on how well that aligns with our purpose and our mission, then we will award funds to them. And the Karen Thomas Fund emphasizes projects targeting minorities, the economically disadvantaged, and other at risk groups. So we are looking to help those who need the help the most.
Next slide, please. This began in, 02/2009. It's named in honor of my wife, Karen Thomas, who passed away the the pre prior year. She had been a volunteer in the Ann Arbor schools as a reader. She would always come in for, March's reading month. Even when she was going through chemotherapy, she always managed to, to come in and do that. She was also a writer. She worked for many years at the University of Michigan and was also a freelance writer for, various national magazines.
We started out under the, guidance of the Ann Arbor area or, yeah, the Ann Arbor area public schools educational foundation that, disbanded in 02/2017 and was folded into the much larger Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, which, gives, I think, better, better service in terms of, really minimizing any kind of administrative costs. We have given away, over a hundred $16,000 in grants. They're all all funded by private donations,
though we did receive some gifts from Comerica and Wacker Chemical to port literacy. Next slide. Some examples of the, grants that we are, have done, real world connections through in informational texts at Abbott, and we're going to be hearing a little bit more about that tonight. This next one is really my all time favorite of the of grants that we've done. It's called mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. And I love that metaphor because it just perfectly sums up what reading is able
to accomplish. We wanted to have the concept of the mirror where a child can open a book and see themselves reflected in that book. That means having books that represent the full spectrum of the, various cultures, that we have in our community, and that's something that has often been lacking. We have not but children need to see people in books that look like them and experience what they are experiencing in their day to day lives.
But next to the where mirror, there's also a window, and you can look through this window and see people in completely different cultures, completely different, countries, different times, people from thousands of years ago, and, this expands everyone. Then the last step is the sliding glass door, and that is where the real magic in reading happens because that's where you are able to slide the door. You actually step into the book. You are experiencing what it feels like to be in that book to,
what what the protagonist of the book is experiencing, the people around you just as you would walk through, a magic wardrobe into the land of Narnia or maybe pass through a solid brick wall to get to Platform 9 And 3 Quarters and or the hog Hogwarts Express. So all of these all of these things are, that that really encapsulates encapsulates what we're trying to do. Next slide, please. This is an event that is coming up tomorrow night, and I would encourage all of you to attend it if you can fit it
into your schedule. It's the first annual multicultural literacy night at Ann Arbor STEAM, and this was made possible by a grant from the Karen Thomas Fund. Next slide. Some of the themes of our grants, we do emphasize multiculturalism and diversity. We're trying to strengthen the links between the classroom and the community. We've done some projects, for example, with the Peace Neighborhood Center and the Bryant Neighborhood Center. Expanding and updating the media center materials, This is so important because,
books in the library are go out of, date very, very quickly, particularly, science and, social studies related books. And, libraries often are are struggling to, find the funds to do a refresh of their of their publication. Some of them haven't had that for something like twenty years, so we are trying to help that out with that. And then the other one, it the finally, this is a a more recent one, but, we have we're trying to help supply,
funding to help the district address some of the setbacks in reading that have been experienced during the, the pandemic. Next slide. This is, just a couple of pictures I've got. This is from the, book tasting event that we had at Peace Neighborhood Center. I'm sure you all recognize Bonnie Billups. And, all the kids who came to that were able to select a book of their choice. The next one is, this was a social justice read aloud, during Black History Month at Dickens Elementary. It was about a a few few years ago.
The next is, this is at, Abbott, and this is one of our wonderful, literacy building literacy specialists who is helping a young reader who is struggling and with the support of Star, the, fabulous, service dog that they have have at Abbott. So as you're you're listening to all of this, you're you're you might be thinking, well, this sounds a lot like DEI. Well, it is. And we we we do not apologize. We're we're we're very proud to do that. So I I would I mentioned we have two of our teachers here tonight.
I would like to introduce, Dana Gartland, who is the librarian from Abbott, and Nicole Cooper, who is a title one teacher at Hazely. They both, just received, Karen Thomas grants, and, invite them to come forward and tell a little bit about the project. Good evening. My name is Nicole Cooper, and I'm the title one teacher at Hazely Elementary School. As a title one teacher, I support students in the classroom to provide reading and math intervention. I wanna say thank you to Mr. Thomas and the Karen Thomas Fund for awarding Hazely with a grant to purchase books for our school bookroom. Part of my role as a title one teacher in our building is being a
part of our building support team. Our building support team consists of our EL teacher, building literacy coach, speech language pathologist, and building principal. Our building support team meets weekly to discuss student and building needs. As we were meeting at the beginning of the school year, we discussed as a team that one need we had was updating and adding to our book room. Last year, part of our book room flooded, and we had to dispose of many books, so we're in the process of working to replace those books. All teachers at school have access to books in our book room. Our current enrollment at Hazely is 412 students,
and all of these students will benefit with books purchased from this grant. Our classrooms include young fives through fifth grade, severe CI, which was previously the SXI Room, and ASD classroom for students with the autism spectrum disorder. Our grant committee is in the process of selecting books to purchase with this grant. Giving students the opportunity to read physical books is very important. According to Psychology Today, reading comprehension is six to eight times greater with physical books compared to ebooks and ereaders. Physical books also provide an immersive experience for students, allowing them to touch the books,
look at them, and flip back through the pages. Physical books also give teachers different ways of interacting with students in the classroom. Books that will be purchased with this grant include culturally relevant books for read alouds and also reading instruction in the classroom. We're very appreciative to be a recipient of the literacy grant from the Karen Thomas Fund. Thank you. Alright. I'm Dana Gartland from Abbott. I'm a librarian there. You can come closer. Oops. Sorry. Dana Gartland from Abbott. I'm the librarian. My grant that I received was, real world connections through informational text. Abbott is a title one school. We have about 330 students,
pre young fives through fifth grade, and we also have a cognitively impaired classroom. And so for many of our students, school and the library is the only place where our students have access to books. And the important thing about informational books is that they help foster critical thinking and information gathering skills. That was really my focus for this school year was to revamp our sort of outdated informational book collection. And as students grow and build vocabulary and language skills, informational books can introduce new words with pictures and glossaries to help guide their learnings.
They're really important for students to look through the books. And since nonfiction books share facts and real life events, they're often great tools for making real world connections to build on their knowledge and their personal experiences. And so one of my favorite things in the library is to see a student grab a book and run over and show their friend, hey. Did you know an octopus has three hearts? And for me, that's just so rewarding that they're finding joy in what they're reading and that they're learning and sharing it with each other. And so having a library that's full of relevant and interesting books goes well beyond the curriculum and the materials.
All students in our school have access to these books, and they encourage deep critical thinking, a skill that goes well beyond school, and hopefully, it will encourage their curiosity and lifelong learning. So with the grant, which I'm so appreciative of, we were able to purchase 72 amazing new informational books, on baby animals, sports, careers, Barbie through the decades, biographies, books about instruments. I mean, it runs the whole span of, knowledge. So I'm really excited for our students. They're really grateful. So thank you. K. Can we get the next slide? It's really a lot of fun to go out to the schools and see the,
these grants and actions. I try to do that every year. I wanted to give a little bit of a commercial for why we need people to support the Karen Thomas Fund. And, so starting with, we have no marketing or salary expenses. So, there's virtually no overhead. All the money that comes in goes directly to the classrooms. We are targeting the most vulnerable students. We're helping to even out some of the inequities that exist in resources between schools. The PTO council is also very involved in this,
and it's we're we're very aware that some schools are fortunate to have a very active, well funded, PTO that is able to provide, ramps for their library, but a a lot of our schools do not. We're I understand that you guys have had a little experience with budget cutting. Trustee Baskett and I were on the board about, twelve or thirteen years ago when we really took a big hit, and it was painful. And I don't know about you,
trustee Baskett. I still have bad dreams about some of some of the cuts that we went through. One of the cuts was that we placed a moratorium on the purchase of any new books or other materials for libraries and media centers. So there no new books. K? The Karen Thomas Fund step forward, we were able to provide the district with about $10,000 to help offset that.
We are also, want to encourage reading among many genres that was, mentioned previously that, we think often think of of childhood reading. We think of the some of the classic, children's books like Charlotte's Web and, my my own favorite, Alexander's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, which I I also relate to that a lot. But, but it's also important to have, diversity of subjects so that you can have up to date science books that,
where Pluto is not still a planet and where the anything having to do with space or technology goes out of date very, very quickly. So it's important that we update those. Strengthening the, school community link, as I mentioned, we're we've worked with, some of the neighborhood centers. And finally, and I think this is really the the clincher, is that these grants go directly to teachers. In the budgeting process, as you know, as I know, from serving on the board, there's you have so much money you've got to budget,
and off the top, you've gotta pay everybody's salaries and benefits. You've gotta pay for things like, transportation for, food services, for, custodial and, maintenance, everything that's needed to keep the schools going. And by the time you get through all that, there's not a whole lot of the pie left over to filter down to the individual schools. And once it gets down to the individual schools, there's even less that actually filters down to, an individual teacher. Well, our grants are this is completely the opposite.
We're we are a bottoms up, funding, agent, And we invite, teachers to submit grants based on what they perceive as a need in their classroom or their library. And if, if it is, meets the, goals of the Karen Thomas Fund, then they can receive couple of thousand dollars, sometimes more. I think the the biggest single grant we gave was, five of our building literacy specialists got together the year after COVID when everything was trying to coalesce,
and, we provided $15,000 to provide, books that are, help are helpful in literacy and will or were intended to help overcome the learning loss that took place during COVID. So that's that's a big part of the of what we're doing is giving this, money directly to teachers. The next slide. So how can you help? Well, I guess the biggest thing you can do is help to help is to spread the word in the community about the Karen Thomas Fund. We would love to have individual contributions from
board members and also from our audience. Anything that you can do to help, get the word out about the work the work that we are doing. And to, there's a couple of ways that you can donate. One is you go to the AAACF. That's the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation website. You click on the give online button, and the, this will take you to the donate now page. There's there's a menu where you can select a specific fund because they administer literally thousands of different grants. But just type in Karen Thomas Fund,
and that will pop up. And from there, you just you select that, and then you just go to the shopping cart the way that you would on Amazon or wherever. Or if you wanna do it old school, you can simply write a check to AAACF. Be sure to add Karen Thomas Fund in the memo so that it doesn't get just sunk in the general, fund, and then, mail it to the, Community Foundation. Their address is on North Main Street in Ann Arbor. So next slide. It's I've just would be glad to answer any questions anyone has.
Trustees, any questions for mister Thomas? I have a comment. First of all, I just wanna thank you for helping those who need the help the most. That was your exact quote. I appreciate that. I also appreciate your reference to the mirrors, mirrors, windows, and sliding glass door. Every ensuring students see themselves in literature. I just love that analogy that every child needs to see themselves reflected in what they're reading. And, and I certainly appreciate that. And I there's so many other things you could probably be doing with your time, and the fact that you're doing this just really says a lot.
You're helping our children in our classrooms throughout the district, and literacy is is definitely something that we're really focused on. And like you said, the pandemic, there was a lot of learning loss during that time. And so, we appreciate you, and I appreciate you doing what you're doing. So thank you. Yes. Thank you very much. Yeah. So Of the first semester? Yes. I echo the sentiments of my colleague here. And, mister Thomas, I can't say enough about how you took a very tragic situation, the loss of your first wife, and really turned it into an opportunity to give forever in her memory.
I think that is just so beautiful. I want to ask though, I'm sure you're like a lot of other funders where demand exceeds which are able to give. Yes. Could you talk about that? Like, what percentage do you see that you have to turn away? Can folks, if they're not, eligible this year reapply? I mean, how do you handle all that? Well, the, the answer is we usually get about three times as many grants as we can fund. And, you know, it's always a difficult process to try to winnow down, because they're all good.
They're I don't I don't of all the time that I've been doing this, I don't think I I can't remember one single real clunker among the the grant requests. They were all all very good. Some of them hit the mark a little closer than others. Some of them were maybe you know, they were they were related to to literacy, but that that wasn't their their sole focus. But, we usually this this, this last period, I believe we, were able to fund four grants.
We've had more than that in the past. It all depends on how much money we have coming in, and, we've been very fortunate to have, have some, I I would like to acknowledge a couple of our our donors. I would like to thank, Steve Norton and the Norton family for making a very substantial contribution to the fund. I would like to thank the family of Peggy Armstrong, who is a former, teacher and former recipient of a Karen Thomas grant who passed away a few years
ago. And in her, her family asked that any contributions, in her memory be designated to go to the Karen Thomas Fund. So we're very, very grateful to that. Most of it, I mean, some of it was funded directly by me. Some of it was funded through a book sale that we had at Birds Park that kind of kicked everything's off. But, we're trying our best to keep things going, and, we we really could use an influx of donations at this time.
Thank you. Any other questions or comments, trustees? Well, thank you so much for that amazing presentation and for all that you do in this community. Thank you. I believe that brings us down to public calm. The board would like excuse me. The board would like to remind everyone that individuals who have signed up for public commentary will hear their names called and are given an opportunity to speak or comment or have comments read by members of our staff. Comments commenters who received up to four minutes was a total of no more than forty five minutes allowed for the, public commentary period. When your name is called, please come forward and speak at the microphone.
To help manage your time, a clock will be placed on the screen in front of you. We would like to remind everyone that public comments generally pertain to the NI Republic School district matters. Comments about any individual or individuals are expressly prohibited. Also, please understand that board members do not respond to public comments, but will listen carefully and will follow-up as appropriate. Miss Ozinski, how many sign ups do we have for this evening? We have 41 signed up tonight. And so each person would get one minute and six seconds. Alright.
And if you hear your name, you can just come on up to the podium. We have Rima Asuna followed by Woodrow Williams the second. Vote to protect policy 1,300. Our designated groups ensure that the board consults marginalized communities and elevates their voices. In a time when solidarity and community are more necessary than ever, the board seems to be denying through disingenuity disingenuity these groups access to public commentary. Public commentary is a public record. It should inform the board's work.
Please vote to protect the advisory groups and to protect popular and democratic communication with the board. Next is Woodrow Williams the second followed by Jocelyn. Good evening. I wanna be clear about why I'm here speaking before you for the second time in as many weeks. Despite the density of my own schedule as a husband, father of three, all time master student amongst many other things, as a multicultural Christian man with an Arab American Muslim wife, two teenage stepchildren at Clegg and Skyline, and a nine year old half Korean daughter at Angel, I speak for many. Some of the same many that consider changes to policy 1,300
will make more difficult for them to speak for themselves. I am here because I'm a lifelong resident of Washington County, a decades long active member of my community, representative of multiple aspects of this community, that this community elected board is for some reason going out of its way to effectively mute by considering making it more difficult for marginalized members of this community to come before it and be heard. To alter the status of any of these board sanctioned groups other than to increase their access and ability to be heard by this board as a matter of standard practice is an unnecessary self inflicted wound to yourselves and the support you receive from
this community and unconscionable within the current sociopolitical climate, and this community will hold you to account if your conscience does not. Thank you. Jocelyn Hunter Young, then Susan Kenny. As a kid attending APS over twenty years ago, the my most vivid memories about being Asian American are when I got called in to talk to the principal or a teacher alone after class. These moments felt like I was getting in trouble because I had brought up concerns about racist hand claps on the playground or stereotypical representations in class. As a parent of kids in APS now,
I'm excited that their memories are much more positive, and this is in large part due to the author visits organized by APISA. My kids have multiple district supported examples of positive representation of their heritage and other APIA cultures. Additionally, their peers, whether part of the APIA diaspora or not, also share in these experiences of seeing meaningful representation. The work of APISA has the work of APISA has truly helped the district lead by example in support of these efforts, demonstrate care for our students through the inclusion of diverse stories, and inspire my kids to be creative and consider more possibilities for their own futures.
Thank you. Susan Kenny, then Catherine Shaw. Don't silence marginalized voices at Anhebor Public Schools. These groups help help these people to be heard and to participate in board meetings and make comments. These marginalized groups need to be supported and be allowed to actively take part in relevant discussions. This is especially needed in Ann Arbor, which has a very diverse educated population. A city of this caliber considered the most educated city in The United States overall, according to WalletHub, should continue to stand out as a leader. Katherine Shaw then Jihai Chung.
I had the opportunity to join a virtual meeting with the author Grace Lin. Her presentation in response to questions from the host helped me to develop good ways to talk with my grandchildren about the experiences of members of our biracial family. I appreciate having sessions like this to help me support a younger generation as they think about who they are and their role in the world. Ji Jihai Sheng followed by Linda Khalil. If there are any plans to cut down on any support to parent advisory groups, especially those parent groups that have specific community ties,
like the Asian American parent advisory group, I plead to the board to reconsider. Ann Arbor is a vibrant and unique community because of its diversity and willingness to accept others despite differences. Unity can only be achieved by recognizing ourselves and other people as a whole and as we, they are. Attempting to unify the community by forcing unilateral decisions without regard to specific requests or demands that could exist within our community due to differing opinions will only last in more resistance and animosity.
As a board of education, I am sure that you mean only the best for each and every student in APS. Each and every student, including your children, including your neighbor's children, are unique in every way and should be cherished in in every way regardless of their backgrounds. These parent advisory groups are not here to hinder anything that the board is trying to do, but are here to support what the board does or to critically examine what the board does by making productive statements. Linda Khalil, then Bill Hannah. I'm writing as a parent, community member, etcetera, to express my opposition to the proposed revision of policy 1,300
that would strip groups of their standing and access to the board. In a time of fear, division, discrimination, and lack of trust in public institutions, the BOE needs to send a strong message that minoritized groups and students are respected and valued at APS. Please don't silence our voices. Bill Hannah then Caroline Simro, Bond committee board members explain why staging at Old Lawton was a key component of the plan, and yet now staging has been deemed not feasible. What are the costs and schedule impacts? What other surprise changes are in store as this infallible plan unfolds?
A simple traffic study was too much to conduct in 2021? How did this slip through Gilbane and your experts for the last five years of planning? Caroline Simro then Jay Star Oz. The Asian student population in our district makes up 13.45% of the student body, not including those who identify as mixed race like my two sons. During COVID, there was a surge of racism against Asians, and it was in response to the surge that a piece that was formed. It would have been easy for my sons to hide behind their white identities, but through APISA sponsored events,
my sons found a space where they can embrace their Asian heritage fully. My oldest son, an AAPS graduate, took his experience with APISA youth theater initiative and started a theater group in his college to promote APIA and other people of color. My younger son participated in the Pisa Group home event with Carlina Duane. In school, he gets excited when there are any references about his heritage, which he notices are very few in number. So for the 13.45% of the student population, in addition to the percentage that are mixed race, there is a need for a group that promotes the APIA identity. APISA is a group of volunteers who identified the need to infuse more positive APIA
influences through book drives, author visits. This group works to enhance opportunities of representation and equity for all of our AAPS students and especially for the APIA student population. Thank you. J Star Bazz, then Julia Blau. Good evening. I am, very sick with a cold tonight. It's also Ramadan, and at sunset, we entered into the 10 most holy nights of the month. And perhaps most relevantly, I am the mother of two children with special needs. I am incredibly privileged tonight that I had two people come to the house to be able to help get my kids to bed with my partner so that I
could come to be here tonight. The ability to give writing comments is incredibly important for some of our most marginalized parents. For so many of us who have kids with special needs, the ability to come here is just it's such it's an incredible privilege. I would like to see us keep writing comments so that we can ensure that there's greater access. I'm also a hospital chaplain. I see people all of the time who are sick with cancer, and I think about missus Thomas, and I'm so grateful that she was able to keep going in as she had chemo. But I think about our families who can't and how difficult it would be to identify who has a disability that would make them somebody who could have the privilege
of writing and who couldn't have the privilege of writing. And I just request that you please think about keeping that on. I will also say that the Native American drumming program last week, which was organized through Ann Arbor Public Schools was awesome, and my kids have benefited so much from the diversity of Broadband. Thank you. Julia Blau, then Tahani Affan. Good evening. I am the mother of the Skyline student and a recent Skyline grad. I'd like to echo what a lot of other commenters have said about keeping the parent advisory groups. It is first of all, more efficient than having individuals come up and make the same similar comments over and
over to allow people who are in a group to make a group comment. It could promote equity, which is allegedly a goal for AAPS, and it is a way for people who may not feel comfortable commenting to have their voices heard. Specifically, I'm a member of the Ann Arbor Youth Gender and Sexuality Alliance. I am the daughter of the mother of a trans child. Not everyone can do that. Not everyone can get up and say that without being targeted. I'd also like to keep written comment. This building is very difficult to access. It is impossible to access by bus. The people with this people with disabilities or health problems may find it very difficult
to be here at all. People with small kids, this is a really inconvenient time. My kids are teenagers, so I'm able to be here. And also just with my two second support trans kids. Tahani Afton, then Sonia Chawla. I am a newly retired AAPS teacher. I started my career in a public's in public school district in Down River Community in 1991, where any attempt at DEI was immediately shut down. In 02/2004, I was overjoyed to be able to begin teaching in my hometown. In AAPS, not only was I encouraged to share my heritage with students,
I was invited to share my expertise with teachers and staff. All of that unfortunately changed after October 7. Since then, the climate for Arab, Palestinian, and Muslims in our district has deteriorated. Tonight, I'm concerned that the rush changes to policy 1,300 will further escalate the dismantlement of all of the work centering equity that has been done in our district. Sonia Chala, then Deshaun Leaf. Good evening, trustees and superintendent Parks. The Trump administration has been eliminating public commentary from the federal rule making process.
Don't be like the Trump administration. Fertailing expression of community voice is an authoritarian tactic, which is and not how we do things at Ann Arbor. Keep allowing write in public commentary to be read at meetings and providing a space for all board recognized associations to speak at board meetings. Thank you. Deshaun Leith and Laura Houck. Deshaun. Just rights youth support. Laura Hauck, then Luke Jackson. Greetings board members and administrators. Please carefully consider changes to public commentary rules by prioritizing representation, consistency,
and clarity. Here are some suggestions. Speakers who can't be physically present should still be allowed to speak, perhaps by calling in to meetings. Speakers should have consistent time limits at each meeting regardless of the number of speakers. Groups should maintain their reserved time, perhaps with time limits. Prioritize speakers addressing a current agenda item and those who have not spoken at recent meetings. These speakers could have time at the beginning of the meetings while others could speak at the end. Please understand that public commentary is crucial to community members' engagement and strive to create
an environment in which the public feels empowered to contribute to our shared goals. Thank you for your consideration. Luke Jackson, then Nuri Bai. As an educator, I've seen firsthand how the work of Asian Pacific Islander South Asian American APISA parent group has enriched our school community. The virtual author talks have been have given my first and second grade students the opportunity to see themselves reflected in literature and learn about cultures and experiences beyond their own, fostering a more inclusive and engaging learning environment.
We should amplify these voices, not eliminate them. This work is vital to our community, and I hope to see it continue as it makes AEPS a stronger, more welcoming place for all learners. Nuri Bey then Birgitreik Reich. Right? I want to express my strong support for APISA and the incredible work they are doing to enrich APS. Their efforts to bring more books by Asian and Pacific Islander authors into school libraries have had a meaningful impact on students, including my own children, who have enjoyed exploring these diverse stories.
This is especially important given the size of APS's Asian population as it ensures that students see themselves reflected in literature while also broadening everyone's perspectives. I deeply appreciate APISA's commitment to diversity and inclusivity and hope they continue their invaluable work in making our schools a more balancing and balanced and enriching and learning environment. Birgit Wright, then Zhongli Tang. I hope the four board members who voted to destroy part of the Thurston Nature
Center, destabilizing the Millers Creek Watershed and taking most of the green spaces away from Thurston Students, take time Thursday or Friday to actually visit the place during recess. You will see what you so easily give up, and you will also understand why 500 children right next to the remnants of the nature reserve will drive the surviving fauna away. Next week will be too late, and I am sad you don't care at all about anything that makes our neighborhood and the whole city what it is. Care for children, care for the environment, care for the wide majority of neighbors and making decisions for the greater good.
Xian Li Tang followed by Kristen Ochimogo. Dear board members, I can I can still clearly remember the joy on my children's face when they told me that their school principal recognized Asian Pacific American Heritage Month during the school assembly for the first time and the excitement my daughter had when she told me half of their class read the book, How to Trap a Tiger, which is a book Angel Library received from the APISA book drive? These events were an important part of healing for our family from the anti Asian hate during the COVID pandemic.
The book drive and the AAPI speaker events initiated by APISA parent advisory group made me hopeful for the future of America in which we wouldn't be viewed as perpetual foreigners. Please keep supporting the efforts of APISA parent advisory group. This will attract and retain more families in our district and help build a stronger community for our children to thrive. Kristen Ochimogo, then Rachel Eiler. I'm writing in with my unequivocal support for maintaining public commentary for approved groups and individuals with no policy changes.
Despite the conversation at the last meeting, the community does not feel engaged with emails to board members. APS can be a leader in accessibility and engagement with organized, marginalized communities. Keep policy 1,300 as is and approve the three groups who have requested approval. It is our chance to take a stand and do the right thing. Rachel Iler then Sarah Shea. I'm a parent of two students at Hazely Elementary School. As a parent in the community that deeply values diversity and inclusivity, I'm writing today to urge the board to continue support of the APISA parent advisory
group and other cultural parent groups as well. I would like to highlight the amazing virtual event that the APISA group organized in May 2023 for APISA heritage month. The group arranged three student centered virtual talks from well known Asian Pacific Island American authors. My children and myself were thrilled to talk to attend to talk with Grace Lin, an author whose books we had discovered and loved at the library. To be able for my daughters to meet a beloved author and participate in a draw along made me feel so proud to be a parent in a school system
that can bring such a talented author. What a great opportunity for children to be able to see themselves represented in a in lovely storybooks. For my kids, it's an amazing it's amazing to see the the protagonist from other cultures who had the same problems, fun, and imagination that they do. I can't express enough how taking the time to celebrate our similarities and differences can help my two girls, myself, and our APS community. Sarah Shea then Ahind Omar. Public commentary and board approved group reports are designed to amplify the concerns and needs
of our community. The ability to present concerns in public holds both the board and the community accountable when we all bear witness to the experiences of teachers struggling to pay their bills, children experiencing discrimination in their schools, and families in title one schools advocating for equity. The proposed policy change changes will negatively impact accessibility. Do the right thing. Do not change the public commentary or group report policies. Heimd Omar, then Alex Belhi. Good evening. I'm Andrew Dyer.
I'll be making comments on behalf of Hind Omar, who is legally blind and cannot see the timer, above, but is present today. That's alright. So, my name is Hind Omar, a proud AAPS and U of M graduate, and a mother living in Pittsfield. I was a student at community high school when the Arab American group was formed. I was the only Arab American at my high school. I was in first grade at Allen Elementary when I became the designated translator for Arab for Arab students newly immigrated to The United States, for everyone. I was in third grade, the first time I learned the word terrorist,
when in social studies, and a Time for Kids magazine taught me and taught us that that word was what looked like me. I was in sixth grade, that's happened, when I learned that my religion was described as, quote, beheading women during social studies. In high school, I was not allowed to introduce Palestine at, as a multicultural event idea without splitting the room in half. I was told that it would be unfair to introduce my Palestinian culture outside of the context of Israel. Our group allowed for a group that we worked together, allowed for healthy engagement between students, parents,
and the board. You're all celebrities to us making decisions on our behalf. These groups, based on their lived experience, felt necessary to form groups. The equity and advocacy of our children should be celebrated and not hindered. Alex Bellhaj followed by Kristen Abuzar. Changes to policy 1,300. My name is Alex Belhaj, and I am an APS alumnus, Anabra resident, and community member. I'm writing today because it is my understanding that the APS board is considering doing away with board designated groups and their guaranteed ability to participate in school board meetings.
These board designated groups represent marginalized students and their communities within the Anheuser School District. It is difficult to understand how at this moment in our country's history of complete and outright attacks on DEI and marginalized communities that such a measure would even be considered by the APS board. Shouldn't you be doubling down on your support for these communities? How does removing these boards' designated groups work towards the goal of diversity, equity, and inclusion? I encourage you to consider making even more time to hear from the board designated
groups. Christine Abuzar, then Ahmad Dari. Respected board members, my name is Christine Abuzar, and I'm here as a community member. Concerning the board designated representative organizations, I see you as being among the beneficiaries. You need to have open channels of communication with all subsets of the community you serve or else be at risk of inequitable treatment and resulting lower quality education. Frankly, I will say that I consider it discriminatory to bring this issue up for debate in Ramadan when it is hard for those who are Muslim to attend.
What would others think if an issue of special significance to their ethnic or religious group was debated at the time of one of their religious observances. And seriously, with a start time of 07:45 when the fast today ended at 07:47? This situation is a prime example of the need for the designated representative organizations, including the Arab American advisory group. Please keep these designated groups, all of them, and keep communication with them open. Thank you. Ahmad Dari, then Jennifer Aldham.
Ahmad Dari. Jennifer Aldham, then Hassan Shanawani. Here are my public commentary suggestions. One. Maintain groups with speaking status and consider new applications on the basis of relevance to education or protected characteristics as laid out in the Michigan Constitution. Race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. Most of these groups rarely speak, and this section of your meetings is not lengthy. Two, a, allot speaking time to those who are present or make advanced arrangements to speak by phone as needed for reasons including child care,
disability, lack of public transportation, and scheduling conflicts. Limiting speaking time to those who are present in person or on the phone will reduce the time spent on public commentary and meetings. B, collect continue to collect and share written comments as you currently do. This is public discourse. In contrast, emails to the BOE are not automatically or quickly public. Consider adding a column to your calendar with a link to written public comments, meeting minutes, and meeting recordings. Thank you for your because thank you for considering these suggestions and finding ways to
engage with these investments that protect public discourse. Hassan Shanawani, then Hardeep Balina. I regret I can't join you tonight as this meeting time overlaps with our worship during the month of Ramadan. Please accept these written comments. Regarding removal of advocacy groups, please keep the current groups and add more, especially with prevailing social and political conditions. More than ever, the APS board and the students, faculty, and staff it serves will all benefit from input from affinity groups and community organizations. I myself, this time last year,
presented the proposal to add a new group to serve the a a Muslim community. Alongside our Jewish friends and neighbors. To date, neither organization was allowed it. Please don't remove more groups. Keeping them is better for all. If the issue is efficiency of meeting management, there are thoughtful ways to keep the groups without sacrificing more effectiveness. Thank you. Hardi Belina, then Allison Carey. It's incredible to see the impact of the Asian Pacific Islander South Asian American APISA parent group in bringing Asian American authors into schools and collecting books that reflect the
diverse stories of our communities. Representation matters, and when students see their own cultures, histories, and identities reflected in literature, it fosters confidence, pride, and a deeper connection to reading. My nine year olds are even entering writing contests, not only because of their love for reading, but because they have many examples of diverse author authorship in children's literature, something neither of their parents had growing up. Allison Carey, then Mohammed Ibrahim. Please continue to allow writing public commentary. It allows for more transparency and more open dialogue and improved community engagement.
This would be a big step to restore trust instead of further alienating communities, teachers, homeowners, students, and parents of school age children. Like myself, please consult the Huron River Watershed Council and city and state experts regarding Miller's Creek Shed. The maintenance and care of the Miller Creek Shed and the Thurston flood mitigation is through a long committed partnership with the city, county, township, and the University of Michigan. Please honor this partnership for the sake of health and safety and best possible outcome given the circumstances. Mohammed Ibrahim and Shareen Ashkar.
Thank you. Good morning good evening. Dear, board members, I am deeply concerned about the proposal to eliminate the board designated advisory groups. As an Arab American, and a parent of four, I this is this touched me very, greatly. I'm an educator at the University of Michigan, and I have dedicated my life for diversity for all the the students, and I would love to see that going on to my kids. In life, we have seen over and over how eliminating supporting system will fire back and get
worse results rather than, serving the purpose that was it was proposed for. These groups represent the critical space for addressing disparities and fostering belonging. The goal should not be to remove them, but to strengthen their presence and their existence. Now I wanna say something, you know, and you probably have heard it a lot in the past. This country is a melting pot, and our groups are the flavor of this society that need to be existing all the time. Thank you very much. Shireen Ashkar.
That's Azmazani. As an APS parent, I am writing to express my concern and strong opposition to the proposed revision of policy 1,300. By removing these board designated groups, you would be cutting a vital line of communication with administrators, educators, parents, and students who make up our district. By removing these groups, you would be telling us that our voices do not matter and that our already marginalized communities are not welcome. These groups provide critical representation, ensuring that all perspectives are heard and valued in shaping our schools. Eliminating them would be a step backward in fostering an inclusive,
engaged, and responsive district. I urge you to consider this proposal and prioritize equity, transparency, and community involvement in your decision making. Changes of policy It seems like many of the reasons given for no longer recognizing the board designated groups were disingenuous in tone deaf. I would ask for one to sit and think back as to why these groups formed in the first place. I would ask one to think of the great efforts that were made for these initiatives so that these groups can exist and be seen and heard. Have we reached our aspirations? If we look around today, are these groups safer,
heard, seen? And when an injustice strikes them, does our group board a group board and the like combat with equal or greater force? These are all rhetorical questions because the answer is simply no. There's still much work to be done. Let us work together. Let our marginalized groups and students feel respected, heard, and seen. Thank you. Sadaf Ali then Kate Curry. Good evening. I'm Sadaf Ali. I'm an educator, a parent, and activist, and the chair of the Progressive Caucus for the Michigan Democratic Party. I understand that the Anaberg School Board is continuing to review policy 1,300
and is considering removing all board designated groups. These groups have historically allowed marginalized communities, such as special needs, Arab American, LGBTQ, etcetera, to voice their concerns directly to the board. In the current climate, these communities should be given further protection, not less. The Anima Public School District is incredibly diverse, and that diversity needs to be celebrated. Policy 1,300 will result result in the district losing a vital source of external expertise, insights, and community engagement. This can lead to a narrower focus, potential missed opportunities for improvement,
and a weaker relationship with the local community. Designated school boards are designed to give the community a voice in their children's education. They not only advocate for students, but also provide accountability and transparency for school district's performance and student achievement. At a time when our schools are being attacked, it is imperative to include marginalized voices. Kate Curry then Sarah Thompson. My name is Kate Curry, and I'm both a Lawton parent and a resident of the neighborhood next to the school. The lack of clear communication and meaningful community involvement in this project is unacceptable.
After six months of silence, an open house was scheduled, but notice was last minute and ineffective. Only about 40 homes directly next to the school received door tags, while hundreds of others were left out. Parents weren't even emailed until forty eight hours before buried in a newsletter. The signage was also misleading. Signs didn't mention the open house at all, just a QR code. The Gilbane Representative admitted the date was left off because adding it would make the text too small. That's not an excuse. It's a failure to communicate the most basic and essential information.
Separately, I would urge the board to continue allowing written public comments and not change policy 1,300. Limiting public input would only further shut out the voices of families and community members. This process needs to be more transparent and accessible. I ask the board to do better. Thank you. Sarah Thompson then Erica Le Levin. Sarah? Are you Sarah coming to okay. Sorry. If the board wants to shorten meetings by having less public commentary and less time devoted to underrepresented groups, the solution is not to attempt to silence those voices. The solution is to be sure that the community feels heard and represented in the
first place. Unfortunately, the scorn several members of the board have shown for the public in recent history demands that as many people as possible lift their voices in as many ways as possible. Erica Levin, then Andrew Dyer. I want to ensure that materials for Arab Heritage Month is balanced, objective, and respectful of all students for board policy 06/1990. Information posted on the AAPS website by the Arab American Advisory Group in previous years refer to sources that Israel should not exist.
Certain books and resources may add to antisemitism by marginalizing and demonizing Jewish people. There is already enough hate in the world. And since the main theme of tonight is policy 1,300, it seems clear to me that the minority Jewish community is not is not represented. Thank you. Andrew Dyer, then Nancy Khalil. That's all the time. Good evening. So tonight, a wonderful presentation was made to this board, that gives me hope as I raise my two Palestinian children, to find books that represent them and find happiness in them.
And as was mentioned earlier from a member of the board, it's important to, quote, help those that need help the most. I would also add on to that, also, when they need help the most. Timeliness is paramount. Removing the title of designated groups strips opportunities from important groups, such as those described tonight, parent organizations, and also those exist in and also those as the existing policy states, those collective bargaining employee groups, which and my mother, a teacher of over fifteen years here in Michigan, always seem to mention how important those pesky collective bargaining employee groups are in being
able to convey to who they need to convey in a timely manner. The standing opportunity to communicate with the Board allows for timeliness and response. And additionally, as the policy also states, the Board is within its rights to add additional groups that they want to provide that opportunity to. Thank you. Nancy Khalil, then Michael Lempert. It is the month of Ramadan. Muslims fast from dawn to sunset. Sunset in Ann Arbor today is 07:47. You scheduled a meeting for 07:45. In addition to eating the first meal of the day, Muslims also need to pray the sunset prayer before the nighttime one at 09:10PM.
Your meeting timing is causing undue hardship on fasting Muslims, of which there is a large population in Ann Arbor. You want to eliminate your designation of all community groups when you need to be adding them. You want to eliminate your public online commentary at the same time, so I wouldn't even have this forum to be heard through a narrator. I didn't choose to move to Ann Arbor because it was an exclusive city that only accommodated the privilege. I moved here because it was supposed to be a welcoming city that wanted to accommodate and care for all of its residents. I have never felt less cared for or welcome living anywhere.
Michael Lempert, then Yasmin Moll. I'm a Jewish American parent in AAPS who was alarmed, to learn of the proposal to eliminate the board designated status of parent advisory groups. For the board today, I have a question and a comment. The question is simple. Why is the board even considering this? The board has failed to explain the problem that has led it to want to eliminate the status of board designated groups in the first place. Simply put, what problem is this trying to fix? Second, eliminating designated status follows the same logic of eliminating DEI. It resembles what the Trump administration wants to do.
It would mean that AAPS would now treat all students as if they enjoyed the same privileges of inclusion. I wish they did, but they do not. That is the whole point of diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI challenges us. It challenges us to recognize who within our diverse community needs special attention due to discrimination so that our schools become truly fair, truly equitable. This is why it's urgent to maintain board designated status. Yasmin Moll? As parents, we have asked the board repeatedly to explain exactly why it is considering no longer
distinguishing specific groups as board designated. We have yet to get a clear and honest answer. To whom is this designation upsetting? If it is upsetting no one, then why get rid of it? When the Arab group was formed in 02/2011, there was a range of hateful and racist comments directed against it. And in the years since, this racism has grown and can now be heard openly at the highest levels of our government. Just on March 15, NPR reported that after a recent change by the Trump administration, the federal government will no longer explicitly prohibit contractors from having racially segregated restaurants,
waiting rooms, and drinking fountains. Let that sink in for a second. In These United States, in the year 2025, our government is okay with for whites only signs. I urge you to consider carefully the harms of eliminating the board designated status at such a frightening time. To accept the arguments that some that this constitutes preferential treatment for minorities is to accept Trumpism. That concludes public commentary. We would like oh, excuse me. We appreciate hearing from our community. The board would like to thank everyone who spoke and shared their their comments tonight.
We would like to note that all written comments are publicly available on board docs in the public commentary section of tonight's agenda. Miss Parks, are there any points of clarification? Thank you, president. I know that the board will continue, its conversation about public commentary and board designated groups. And so the point of clarification that I would offer tonight is about the comment related to the timeline for the Lawton open house. We received the feedback about the signage, and the the team has heard that message, and we will, look at how we can better communicate dates through some of that signage.
But the the dates were publicized prior to forty eight, hours notice. Those dates have been publicized for the past couple of weeks through the Friday, email that goes out to district families. And so, again, that said, we will still continue to look at the feedback we've received about, the dates on the signs. I'll also, add a point of clarification. Many of the comments tonight, indicated that we would be eliminating groups. I wanna make sure that it's absolutely clear that this policy 1,300, the change that is being proposed is not contemplating eliminating groups.
It is contemplating eliminating the designation status. We did not create these groups. We cannot eliminate these groups. So I wanna make sure that's 100% clear. Miss Zelensky, do we have any reports of groups and associations? Oh, we do. First from, mister Fred Klein for the AAAA. Oh, thank you. Hi. Good evening, trustees, superintendent Parks, Hanover Public Schools community, and all my fierce and dedicated AAAEA colleagues that are here or listening in from home. My name is Fred Klein, and I'm the president of the AAAEA,
which is the union that represents the professional and teaching staff of the Annette Republic Schools. Tonight, first, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank trustees Wilkes, Wilkerson, and Schmidt for attending our AAAEA elementary caucus yesterday. Your presence allowed for a robust and meaningful conversation where our caucus members were able to share their concerns and the challenges specific to our elementary staff. It is this kind of engagement that fosters positive relationships and solutions for our educators and students alike. So thank you.
I also wanna take a moment to highlight and recognize the important work being done by our AAAEA caucuses. These groups are integral in advocating for and representing their specific constituencies. We currently have five active caucuses working on behalf of our members. The elementary caucus, chaired by Anita Ringo from Bach Elementary School. The secondary caucus, co chaired by Kim Dean from Skyline and Karma Nordstrom from Clegg. Our office of special education or OSE caucus, co chaired by occupational therapist,
Christy Yee, and school psychologist, Tracy Loveland. I would also like to recognize Concetta Lewis, the director of special ed who makes regular appearances at their meetings. Thank you, Concetta. Our special area caucus. So that's a caucus that represents our elementary art music PE library and our secondary electives teachers. And that is chaired by Abby Alwin from Clegg. And then we have our LGBTQ plus or pride caucus, and that's chaired by Maggie Rody from Bryant and Pittsfield. These leaders along with their dedicated teams are deeply committed to ensuring that the voices
of their constituencies are heard and that we continue to make progress on issues that impact our members and ultimately our students. Watch your email inbox as trustees for future invitations to attend these caucuses and to engage with them. Speaking of our pride caucus, I would like to recognize that this week marks the twenty third national LGBTQ health awareness week. While we as educators are not health care providers, it remains essential for us to provide safe and welcoming spaces for our LGBTQ plus
students and colleagues. Mental health and well-being are critical components of the educational environment, and it is incumbent upon us to create inclusive spaces where everyone feels valued and supported. I wanna express my gratitude to all AAAEA members who contribute to creating these safe environments, especially during these challenging and politically turbulent times. Turning to the issue of bargaining, our AAAEA bargaining team has been working diligently in preparation for our successor agreement bargaining, which will begin soon after the upcoming break.
In addition, we currently have two teams preparing to negotiate the school calendar and our appendix five of the collective bargaining agreement, which covers supplemental positions within our contract. As I've emphasized previously, the successor agreement will be crucial for the future of AAPS and the stakes are high. One pressing concern that we continue to face is the ongoing loss of teachers, particularly our more experienced veteran educators. The reason for this exodus is clear. The pay scale for our teachers at the top level falls far behind the salaries
offered by our comparable districts. While AAPS claims to be exceptional, it is important to note that we are not exceptional when it comes to how we compensate our teachers and staff. Those who are directly responsible for the education of our students. This is a serious issue, and as a board, you must demand that the district take a concrete path toward excellence. That path begins with ensuring that AAAEA members are financially respected for the critical work they do day in and day out for our students. It is imperative that we work together to restore the excellence of this district.
If we fall short, it will have disastrous consequences, continuing the erosion of our programs and accelerating the departure of our talented members. Thank you for your time and attention. Let's continue to collaborate and make AAPS the exceptional district we all know it can be. Thank you. Next, we have a report from the Anabra Public Schools Arab American advisory group. Good evening, trustees, superintendent parks, and community members. My name is doctor Shadden Natia. I am a parent of two students at Abbott,
and, have been a member of the Ann Arbor Public Schools Arab American advisory group for the last year. So, and I'm honored to represent our group in making the statement about, policy 1,300 and asking that it not be revised so as to do away with the des board designation of this group and our ability to, to speak to at board meetings. I apologize. We had created a brief slide deck to help demonstrate our points. I was asked not to share it. I'll I'll I'll do my best. So we want to explain to the board the origin of our group as an
invited group, why we our work in partnership with the district is crucial, and why we think any revisions of policy 1,300 should not be done in haste and in a way that further marginalizes and alienates community members. We're hoping to start with a brief explanation about the community that we represent. Arab Americans are a heterogeneous group that includes people with origins, from 22 Arabic speaking countries in the world. These countries and by extension, our community here in Ann Arbor are home to diverse ethnic and religious groups.
Not all Arabs are Muslims, and not all Muslims are Arabs. We represent, individuals who are Christian, Jewish, Alawite, Druze, and Muslim. We further thought it'd be helpful for the board to have more information about the origin of the AAPS Arab American advisory group. This is crucial for the discussion tonight, because as you'll see, removing the board designated status would in fact amount to dissolution of our group. The Arab American, advisory group was created in collaboration with AAPS in 2011 as a result of the
strategic plan of 02/2007 to 02/2012. In 2011, trustee Glenn Nelson approached members of our community, asking them to partner with the school board to create the APS Arab American advisory group. This is because the district was concerned about Arab Americans leaving our district and because this there was a lack of representation in the curriculum and staff of Arab Americans. The group did not initially grow out of a community impulse. We were not, started to come here and and take the board's time with complaints.
We were asked to support the district, and we followed this invitation. Over the last fourteen years, the group has been composed of a diverse group of active members from the community who have volunteered their expertise. We are parents of Anarbor Public School students, faculty members at academic institutions, and a number of APS teachers. From its inception, we have had a board of education liaison. For the first ten years, it was Glenn Nelson. When trustee Rema Mohammed joined the school board, she became our liaison. The Arab American advisory group has worked closely with the district to benefit all the
students since 2011. We facilitated programs with the University of Michigan, the National Arab American Museum, and the National Arab American Orchestra. We have supported teachers by connecting them with experts and resources. When we enrich APS programs, we enrich the education of all of our students. We have served as community liaisons and a resource for superintendents in moments of crisis. Currently, we are hoping to support the district as it addresses a September 2024 findings of the US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights that APS has failed to comply
with title six obligations when it dealt with a racist comment made by a counselor to a student of Palestinian descent. We commend the district in their voluntary cooperation with the OCR, and we look forward to supporting them in their efforts to address this. As we've laid out, our group's origin is one of partnership and volunteering our expertise, our time, our efforts, our resources in order to support the district in its efforts to meet its strategic goals and counter the enrollment crisis. This has been a partnership based on trust, mutual respect, and a desire to improve the educational outcomes and resources for all students in our
district. We're not asking for a preferential treatment or status. We're highlighting that the Arab American community is facing discrimination, marginalization, and lack of representation, both nationally and locally in this district. We ask the board to remember that equality and equity are not the same. As such, a board that is dedicated to achieving equity for its students should continue to strengthen the partnerships that provide resources for Arab Americans and others in our district. We're opening to deepening the formal relationship in any way that the board is interested. For us, the appropriate and natural venue to discuss the parameters of this partnership in terms of
the frequency of meetings, reports to the board, or communication is equity committee. That forum is better suited to think to discuss in detail what an equitable and productive relationship between the board and all groups would look like. Formalizing and clarifying the criteria for these partnerships would benefit the board and the district in the long term as it would assure that marginalized groups have access to the board of education. We're therefore asking you to vote no on changing policy 1,300 at this time and ask you to direct the equity committee to take up this
question. Abolishing these groups will contribute to furthering the racist and deeply anti democratic forces currently governing our country. It will send a message that the board doesn't value the grassroots community work that makes our city a vibrant, democratic, and strong place. We need to all work together to resist these forces in our local institutions and not take our inclusive environment for granted. Thank you. Next, we have a report from the Ann Arbor youth gender and sexuality alliance. Okay. I'll need to put this back down again. Okay. Hi, everybody. Good evening.
My name is Jenny Allen, and, I'm the administrator for the Ann Arbor, youth gender and sexuality alliance. And I'm joined by, my colleague, Susan Grossman Vaughn, and Julia and Marcus who are some of our, various members. We represent, a, a group of 276 individuals, and we're getting new members literally every week. We have new people join our group. Our mission is to protect and advocate for LGBTQ plus students in Anambra public schools. It's that simple. In order to join our group, you have to be either an ally or a member of the,
of, you know, of, the LGBTQ plus community, and you have to be affiliated in some way with the Anab Republic Schools, either as a parent, student, or staff member. And and, Susan, I I remember when you came to our very first meeting back in the day, which I really, really appreciated. We don't report to the board regularly. We do a lot of work behind the scenes. And if you if you guys want more regular reports, I would totally do that. I don't it's not that I didn't think that was the intent behind everything happening tonight, but certainly if you guys wanna hear from us and what we're doing, we're always happy to share that with you guys.
A lot of our work is creating and publicizing, programs that are geared towards LGBTQ plus kids here in Ann Arbor. We have a lot of partners in that effort, the YMCA, MOASH, the transgender task force that we liaise with here. Anytime you wanna know all about that, I'm happy to sit down over coffee and tell you guys all about it. We also share resources for kids and their families, and then we also just form a safe space, in our Facebook group for parents and kids to ask questions about anything they wanna know about school, name changes, you know,
what rights they have, that kind of thing. We get a lot of questions. We also get a lot of questions from people who are considering moving to Ann Arbor to Ann Arbor public schools because they know that we're a safe district. And so we hear from people all the time. I've I've gotten some really crazy stories from people who are coming from rural parts of Michigan. One family sold their house, sold their lakeside house, sold their boat, and moved to Ann Arbor so that their trans kid could be safe and enrolled at the school where I'm a a teacher and parent. So, I mean, we also just sorta,
like, I think act as, like, an onboarding ramp in a lot of ways for families that are looking for that safe haven. They can reach out to us. We have this robust public presence. They know where to find us, and we can help them get situated here in Ann Arbor when they enroll in Ann Arbor public schools. So, so, yeah, we also you know, we help coordinate community dances and playground hangouts for the for the little kids and, other events for LGBTQ plus kids in the district. So anytime you guys wanna know about any of that stuff, I'm happy to take questions now or any other time if you guys wanna know what we've been doing.
We have some questions about the proposed resolution. None of us have seen the exact wording. We don't know what's in it. It hasn't been made public. So we have no idea what's actually in this resolution that that we're all sort of concerned about. But we're we're obviously all concerned that any attempt to limit our voices and access sends a pretty horrible message, a chilling message, if you will, especially to people who are considering moving to Ann Arbor Public Schools because we're that safe haven. Yeah, at this moment in history, it's really not a good look, right, to be limiting, the the voices and access and representation of marginalized populations.
Hopefully, that's not actually what's going on here, but without any knowledge of the proposal, I can only say that we are trusting you guys, the board, to remain accessible to your most vulnerable constituents, to to not you know, to use this as an opportunity to amplify our voices and not cut them off. We are, in many ways, your ambassadors to the larger community, and and we're just asking you guys to continue to support us so that we can continue to support LGBTQ plus students here in Anarbor Public Schools. Thank you for your time. We are allowed to take those. So if you have any questions for us, we're happy to answer those now or any other time.
I'm very easy to find. So Thank you all. Are there any other reports of groups and associations? Yes. Okay. Who is Wake up. Asian and and next, we'll hear, from the Asian Pacific Islander South Asian American group. Good evening to all of you, and thank you again for continuing to provide this space and opportunity to speak with you on behalf of the Asian Pacific Islander South Asian American parent group, commonly called APISA. I am Yuyin Tian,
and I am a parent at Huron High School. Our group has done a lot of listening and reflecting recently as we worked to process what was shared publicly at last week's meeting in regards to board designated groups like APISA. We know and trust that each of you has done the same. And as you move forward to discuss and ultimately vote on changes that could impact our group and the multiple other groups of parents,
we wanted to take a few minutes to share some of our thoughts and questions. First, know that we recognize this is a complicated time for our district. There are national and international concerns that play out locally. There are constraints and limitations that we can't be fully aware of for a variety of reasons, and yet we know the board and our district leadership are working diligently to ensure a better and more secure future for AAPS.
You all have to navigate so many demands and make hard decisions daily. We value and appreciate all you have done and will do to continue improving life in our district. Next, we want to share that we greatly appreciate how each of you acknowledged the importance of engaging with families. It was encouraging to hear you all express genuine interest in listening to and collaborating with groups throughout our community in the spirit of making our schools better for our
students. In fact, we would like to extend an invitation to each of you, trustees and the superintendent Parks, to join us for our next APISA meeting. On Tuesday, April 1 at 8PM, our group will meet on Zoom. We hope to preview our plans for celebrating APIA heritage month in May and also discuss episode two of the inheriting podcast, which highlights different stories of Asian American and Pacific Islander families.
Episode two showcases the learning one Korean American woman has done as she processes her own experiences as a child growing up in the nineteen ninety two Los Angeles uprising. Well, we know you all are very busy. We do hope that you will consider joining us in April. We can, you can get the meeting information by emailing 828pizza@gmail.com. I can share that one later.
Finally, we have some questions that we want to post. We recognize that some of these may be answered as you continue this meeting, but we wanted to be sure these questions are asked and hopefully considered as you discuss policy 1,300. Because we were unable to find the actual language of the prop proposed policy before writing this report, We apologize if some of these questions are irrelevant or redundant, yet we still appreciate you considering and clarifying this because they are likely questions that
others have as well. Question number one, will the changes to this policy limit how families can find out about and access parent groups like APISA? Will our website still be linked to the AAPS site so that it is accessible to our community and others who may want to use the resources provided on our site? Question number two, how will this work in the long run? As board members and the leadership change, what can be established to ensure groups are consistently able to share reports with the
board in an equitable way? Question number three, what can be done to ensure the district and the schools know of our existence? We have served the district in multiple advisory efforts over the last few years, given feedback on the implementation of the latest social emotional learning curriculum, being present at family nights for new immigrant families, and more. How will these working relationships be maintained on a consistent basis,
if at all? Question number four. In what ways will the policy changes limit the credibility of our group as we approach authors, guest speakers, and others with whom we hope to engage in designing programming for AAPS students. Question number five. While recognizing that the inclusion of multiple perspectives is essential in a democracy, there is also a very clear need for equity. In contrast to the idea of fairness or equality of giving everyone exactly the same
thing, Equity is about giving people the resources and the support they need to have the same access as others. So we ask, in what ways do the policy changes support equitable representation of parent groups at board meetings? Again, thank you for your time and consideration and for your continued work to make harder choices that are for the best interest of AAPS students. We hope that you will take us up on our invitation to join our meeting
on April 1 or at least consider listening to the Inheriting podcast to continue learning about the experiences of Asian Americans and the Pacific Islanders in today's world. Thank you. Next, we have a report from a representative from the district wide black parent and student support group. Good evening, esteemed members of the school board and superintendent, Parks. We come before you today with a shared deep commitment to creating an inclusive and collaborative education environment for all students,
family, and communities within our district. We keep hearing the word equity said. What does it take to have an equitable black parent students? We need help. I'll look up here as I think about myself. I think about many people that have come up and spoke today and there. I can just hear their education. I can hear their understanding of the systems and how many of our parents don't have that. How many of our parents struggle to meet the needs? I know I drove a cab for ten years, putting five kids to Ann Arbor school districts and trying to make ends meet.
And what does it take to organize and to get other parents out that maybe don't understand? We acknowledge and respect the board's intention to improve inclusivity. However, we believe the proposal the proposed changes will hinder this goal. There's an old adage that says when America gets, a cold, black folks get the flu. It's easier to build stronger children than to repair broken men, and we've got a lot of brokenness in our community. Ann Arbor Schools, we need you to stand by us. Standing speaking spots are not just a platform for certain groups.
They are vital spaces for dialogue, understanding, and collaboration. As your onboard policy suggests, collaboration, should collaborate as your onboard policy collaboration should be the priority stating that groups may participate. My phone is killing me. That, group should participate. Now is the time for the board to reinforce this commitment to partnership, not diminish it. In the light of all that's going on nationally, we need you. We need you to hold our, stay by us and, work with us and not against us.
We heard a lot of blame placed on the absence of certain groups during the last meeting. But rather than casting blame, we must ask, why are these groups not engaged? Do they feel safe to participate? Has trust been broken? Were expectations for engagement clear? Has the district worked to ensure that affinity groups have spaces to grow and thrive? The answers to many of these are no. The board has failed to meaning meaningfully engage with and support these partnerships. We urge you to reaffirm your commitment to working with groups representing marginalized communities and
to keep written public commentary open. Before making any decisions to eliminate standing speaking spots, we ask that you engage directly with these groups, convene them to talk about the impact, work with them to develop a plan for regular meaningful engagement moving forward. Yes. It may take a little more than some of the other affinity groups, but we're needed. What happens to the blacks? The black, youth and students of Ann Arbor schools? Create opportunities for more two way engagement with the community to both rebuild trust and
lessen the weight of public commentary. Please consider these decisions. We believe there is an opportunity here to enhance and refine these platforms for collaboration and engagement. We know that this community is one of leaders and best. Let let us demonstrate that by practicing best practices and collaboration between the board and our community. I thought when the, gentleman got up and read the piece about the greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap. It consoles. It distracts. It excites. It gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind.
It's a moral illumination. How many black kids suffer with reading right here at Ann Arbor Schools? Right in the midst of the most educated city in the nation. We got black kids that can't read. I'll follow-up with me today, miss Kahari Moore, and she is a willing participant of the black parents student support group and ready to take on this mantle. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I just wanna say that I'm just now jumping back on the bandwagon with coming to the meetings and getting back up to speed with everything. It's a lot of rumors.
It's a lot of half told truths, and there's a lot of lies going around. And with the board partially wanting to communicate and not working together as a whole, it's hard for the community to actually know what is true and what is false. By the board, you say that you guys are going to respond when people come and speak, but when the board doesn't give a rebuttal to what's being said, you cause problems for groups to continuously come up and question what's your real motives are. You're not even putting out there for people to actually understand what's going on.
And that's why you keep getting this consistent groups of people coming with the same issues. You guys are making it hard for yourselves. Nobody in the community is making it hard for you. And I don't see why none of you even understand that. Maybe some of you do, and the ones that do are getting backlash from the ones who just don't care. I really don't know what it is. But it's a shame that parents have to take out their time and continuously come and talk about something when it could have been dead long time ago. All it takes is just a simple response.
It's how many of you sitting up here and not one can say anything. All it takes is just for one person to stand. Nobody is. That's not what we voted you on here for. We didn't vote for you to decide what was gonna take place, whose meeting it was, what's gonna be done. We voted for you guys to actually handle business like you're supposed to in the best interest of our children. And you guys are failing at every aspect of that with every race and gender. Make it make sense. So, yes, I am taking up the baton for the black parent support,
and I will be a active member, and I will be a active force in the community, and I have no problem withholding the board members accountable for their action. Thank you. And finally, we have a report from the Parent Teacher Organization Council, BTOC. Good evening. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the PTO Council. For those who are less familiar with us, the PTO Council is a space of community support. Because we bring together representatives from every PTO across the district, we have the opportunity to engage and understand greater insight into our community and to
bring alignment across and within our greater community. The PTO Council strives for an ongoing partnership with AAPS administration and the Board of Education in service of all PTOs. We are one of the board designated groups at risk of losing the speaking space based on how the board trustees decide to vote. I would first like to take the time tonight to remind the public about our equity fundraiser, which raises funds for Title one schools. Last year, we raised $55,000 which was distributed to Title one schools.
The year before that, we raised $60,000 which was also distributed to Title one schools. I wanna thank superintendent Parks for raising that fundraiser up this year and we hope that we will continue to meet the need of our title one schools to bring greater equity across the district. We know this is just a band aid at this time, but that's one of the things that we do at the PTO council. Next, the PTO Council would like to join in the chorus of Voices tonight calling for this board to reconsider their planned removal of speaking time for board designated groups. Currently, public education is under attack in many directions,
from many directions, and we all know this. We are at risk of losing the federal Department of Education and the many protections that come with it for things like Title I. We are also at risk of a 25% reduction in the state education budget, which would cut all free meals, among other services. Our only chance of ensuring strong public education for this and future generations is to work together at the local level to collaborate across differences and to create solutions that work for everyone in our community. And the only way to do that is by listening and engaging with one another,
even more so when we don't share the same backgrounds and experiences. Now is not the time to reduce the voice of student, parent, and caregiver groups. Particularly, you should not be taking time away from those who have been historically and strategically underserved. Now is actually the time to double down on listening to marginalized groups and increasing our support of those most vulnerable to potential cuts. As elected officials, you are supposed to represent us, listen to us, and take to heart what we, the people, are asking of you. Public Board of Education meetings are for the public.
We need spaces to engage and be heard, and now we're at risk of the Board stripping that away. So I'd like to also present an alternative space for voices to be heard. The PTO Council would like to extend a warm welcome and invitation to everyone in the public, including the Board of Education, which has already received the invite, to a community conversation on public education that we're co hosting with the AAAEA, Aspire, and the Student Advocacy Center. The event is Wednesday, April 9, from seven to 9PM at the Washtenaw Learning Resource Center.
And at this event, there will be dedicated time and space to build community, engage with one another, and have your voice heard about the issues and things that are going on in your schools. And, I'm delighted to also tell you all, we are expecting most of our state representatives and senators in our local districts to be present, so it will truly be a place where your voice can be heard, and we will be working together for equitable and fully funded public education. With this and future events, we aim to move toward a future of high engagement and true community care, and we hope the public will join us in making that vision a reality.
Thank you. That include that concludes reports of associations. Thank you, miss Ozinsky. Thank you to all the groups who presented. I wanna make sure everyone knows that, we are not voting on policy 1,300 this evening. That will be up for April. So if you are here for that, there will be no vote and it's not on the agenda moving forward tonight. So thank you all for your comments. I believe that brings us down to, board committee reports, and I will turn to, trustee Baskett for the bond committee report, please. Thank you, president Feaster. The bond committee, met to this evening earlier this evening,
and, we reviewed contracts to come to the board this evening. So I won't go into detail on those. We did hear feedback regarding our first open house, which was last night at Lakewood. As superintendent Park said, we heard the feedback regarding the communication modes, and we're always working to expound on, better and extensive ways of communicating with the the public. And so we accept the feedback and welcome more as, we roll along, if you will. Future open houses that are scheduled right now will be Lawton tomorrow evening at 06:30
to eight. Wines, on April 1, Burns Park, April third, and King on April 9, again, from 06:30 to 08:00. So all are welcomed. We appreciate, again, hearing from the community and sharing, the exciting news regarding our new buildings. We are looking at, confirming the dates for the, ribbons I'm sorry. The break ground baking groundbreaking ceremonies. And so trustees, please check your emails for those upcoming dates. We'd like everyone to be there if possible. Thank you so much. Thank you, trustee Basquiat.
Well, that brings us to the finance committee, and I'll turn it to trustee Wilkerson. Yeah. Thank you. The finance committee met earlier this week on Monday, the seventeenth, at 10AM. We covered, the February monthly budget monitoring report, which we'll hear tonight. And we also discussed the FY twenty five general fund's second budget amendment, which will also be presented. Thank you, trustee Wilkins. Thank you. And I believe that brings it down to number six and the superintendent update. Superintendent Parks. Thank you, president Feaster. As we prepare for a much anticipated spring break week next week,
I just wanna highlight a few of our recent activities that have put taken place, in the Ann Arbor Public Schools and highlight also some important upcoming events to look forward to when classes resume after spring break. So CTE participation in Ann Arbor Public Schools. It was a pleasure to represent, our district, along with my, county colleagues to, at the CTE summit yesterday at Washtenaw Community College where, again, it was my privilege to speak on behalf of Ann Arbor Public Schools advocating for, the continued partnership with many of our local and state leaders who support our CTE
programming in staff and students. We also have had many of our CTE students and staff very busy since we heard from, from them last week. So last Thursday through Sunday, 50 of our CTE students were in Grand Rapids attending the BPA state leadership conference. On Friday, 14 of our students participated in the cybersecurity immersion workshop at Washtenaw County Community College. Thursday and Friday of last week, an additional 14 students were at Huntington Place, in Detroit for the DECA State Conference.
And this Weekend on Saturday and Sunday, 25 of our students competed in the first robotics competition at Brooklyn Columbia Central High School. And last week, trustees, you met chef Sam who, will be taking 20 of our students to miss Kim's Kitchen for restaurant takeover on Tuesday, April 1. So, again, we had about over a hundred students, last week alone participating in content related experiences outside of the the school and the classroom, and we appreciate, mister Tompacheara,
our CTE director, as well as our, talented and dedicated staff, in our CTE program who provide these opportunities for our students to be engaged, in these wonderful opportunities outside of the district. Upon our return from spring break, we have our Ann Arbor Public Schools in person job fair, which will be Tuesday, April 1 from 03:00 to 06:00PM at the Huron High School cafeteria. We invite all interested applicants to bring their resumes for screening interviews, as we have positions available that include teachers,
para educators, special education staff, title one tutors, bilingual liaisons, English English language co teachers, English language instructional assistants, bus drivers and assistants, as well as substitute teachers. That following day on April 2, we have our college and career fair. The fortieth actually, fortieth actual, annual college and career fair will be held Wednesday, April 2 from 06:00 to 07:30PM at Pioneer High School. Representatives from over 70 plus colleges and universities will be available to meet with students,
and students will have the opportunity to learn about skills and technical trades from local business and industry teachers also. Pardon me, leaders also. Students must preregister in advance to participate in the event and receive a barcode. So that information is on our website for, students to be able to preregister. Lastly, again, as I shared at the top of the report, next week is spring break. So it will be March 24 through March 28, with classes resuming on March 31, and we wish everyone a safe and happy break.
And that concludes superintendent's report today. Thank you, superintendent Parks. Thank you. I believe that brings us down to letter b, our monthly budget monitor report for February 2025. Thank you, president Feaster. At this time, we have, miss Darcy Franckor coming forward with the monthly, budgeting budget monitoring report for February. Good evening. We'll get the slides up and show show us started. Yeah. As I said, I am here to present the February monthly monitoring reports, and we did meet with the finance committee on Monday.
And the first slide that we always show you is cash and investments, and we're in comparison to the prior year, same date. And like I always especially, I think everybody else has heard from me many times, but these, reports reflect the February. Not projecting further, out, but this is just February numbers through February, I should say. We will talk about our budget, amendment here shortly after my presentation. So, as I spoke about before, I really highlight at the board meetings the general fund because that is our operating
fund and very, very important, not that the others are not. They all are. But as you can see, this year, we are $16,200,000 ahead of where we were at last year, which is great. A lot of that has to do with increased revenues and reduced expenses. I mean, it's quite that simple. So, we're in a really great cash position at this time. This is, the slide Was Quick clarification now. Just wanna make sure it's known that that's as of February 28. Correct. Right? And we are still trending toward our planned Correct.
Correct. Yes. And that's what I mentioned that anytime I present these reports, they are as of that last day of the month. And I literally pull the reports, not on that last day, but when I know all of all of our transactions are in our system. Yep. And then, you know, it's collaborative effort from the whole finance department. And that's when I pull my reports to put this together for information from or you all for this meeting. But, yes, it does reflect the last February. Correct. So, but, yes, that's and our cash position right now is very good. And well,
I'll talk about it as we get forward in the slide. Jump ahead of myself. This is a slide that talks about what our monthly expenses were for the month of February. And I don't know if you remembered, from January, it was around 23,000,000 for the general fund. We're trending a little higher, and and I will talk about that a little bit more when we get further into the presentation. This is, the comparison, from prior year to this current year, and this is year to date numbers, year to date through February. As you can see in our revenues for the general fund, we are trending ahead $3,400,000
And that is some of it's attributed to property tax collections, which really this February was the last full month, I would say, for winter tax collection. You will see a great reduction in that, going forward from March to June. But what this also has in it is we did receive from the state the two and a half million dollars for the 3% reimbursement funding that was in our state aid in February. It will be expensed, though, to our staff in March. So there is a little bit of a difference because we didn't receive the funds until February 21.
So, two and a half of that is because we received the additional funding in state aid. So down in expenses, you will see we are 13,000,000, less spent than last year at this time, which is fantastic, and there's a lot of things that contribute to that. We have been really watching expenses, and I've talked about purchases purchase services. For example, our EDGE staff, our subs, we have really, that's been quite a reduction and, everything that you can imagine that has really helped this year. So like I said, we are watching these trends going forward.
This is the second slide or the second sheet of the slide you just saw. And what this is talking about, this is showing the prior year to date versus this current year year to date. And the first section is the addition or the reduction to fund balance. So if we were to end today, or I shouldn't say today, but it's February 28, you will see an addition to fund balance of $40,500,000 Going down going straight down from that, our beginning fund balance, and that was as the first amendment that we presented to you in December, that was 7,100,000.0
at that time, what we thought the beginning well, the beginning fund balance was for this year, which was changed, from our originally our original budget that we presented back in June. So if you add those two together, you go down to the final column, and that 47,700,000.0 is where our ending fund balance would be if we ended on June or February 28. And as you can see last year, it was 36.9. But going forward, I always like to, you know, preface this, though. You're going to see, some things change with that because,
like I said, less tax collection, more expense we will have going forward. We have three payrolls in May that will add, you know, more to the bottom line expenses. And then things in June, you know, if we have term pay and and different things like that for year end. So and we do, address that actually in our budget amendment as well. Quick question. Yes. And and I know you we've we've discussed this, but I just wanna continue to point out, and you just mentioned it. Right? We are sitting above where we were last year.
Mhmm. Right? So we have a cash positive balance, but we're trending back to the 16,000,000 in fund balance that we projected or 16.9. Correct. So these reports that I present to you every month are a snapshot in time. That's all they are. Yep. But I don't want to mistake that with I don't want you to think that we aren't looking ahead. We are all the time every day. But stopping and showing you where we're at where we are at for that month is important too because things happen. The three pays in May. You will definitely see that when I do the report for May.
Things happen during the month. Thankfully, nothing unusual. We haven't had any kind of gross reduction in federal funds. Hopefully, that never happens. Or in state funds. So they aren't reflective. That's really important that you see these every single month so you're aware and not like when we do a budget projection or a budget amendment at the end of the year or midyear. That to me is it's a surprise, and, you know, nobody likes a surprise. So, yes. Moment in time. I have a question, please. Mhmm. If I may, mister president. No. I was talking about the food service fund.
Mhmm. I'm sorry. Yes. Could you help us understand the difference here of what's been happening? Well, for one thing, the expenditures from this year versus last year, there's a timing difference, definitely. And what that is is that, some of the vendor payments were lagging last year where they are not this year, and it's a timing of receiving invoices. But that's actually, you're up to date where last year was not. Also, what we did is investigated its timing of when we submit meal claims to the state for reimbursement.
Okay. We found that some of the, 30 d payments on the state aid, if we didn't have that claim submitted by the fourth of the following month, And but let me preface that the claims are not due to the state till the tenth of the following month. That's just how it operates. Mhmm. What we've noticed that we didn't receive funding, I think it was January, there was no 30 d funds. But in February, we did receive 30 d funds. So it's like a catching up effect. And, I wish I could say it was it's great, but it's not.
And it's just how the state works with the reimbursements for food service. I did food school food service for over sixteen years. Mhmm. And it it's always been the following month is when you receive the funds for the prior month. Alright. So it's not it's more in a reporting and, like you said, the receipts. Okay. So it's not a decrease in in services to our students or anything like that? No. It is not. Okay. We're we're still providing lots of services to our students. So yes. And it's really a timing difference that I think in June,
you well, in June, you will see it catch up. I mean, that's when the year ends, and that's when we receive the rest of our funds. Gotcha. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thanks for asking. So this is we're talking month to date and year to date in comparison to what we budgeted, and this is reflection of the last budget amendment that you approved in December. So currently, year to date, we have, actually, received in revenue general fund revenue, $206,500,000. In the month of February, we collected 31,000,000. And as you can see, we are 65.6%
of what our budget is, which is fantastic because at this point in the year or fiscal year, we're at 58.3. So having that revenue higher than where we're actually at at this point in February is great. So if you look down, and I'm highlighting general fund again, the expenditures, we have $24,800,000 in expenditures for the month of February, almost a 66,000,000 total year to date in February. We're at 54.4% of what we have budgeted, which I said which is good because the school year, the fiscal year, we're at 58.3%
of the fiscal year because our fiscal year runs from July to June. So quick clarification. Mhmm. So based on what we're seeing on this slide, so we've spent thus far 5454.3% of what has been budgeted for the year. So we still have quite a bit more to spend. Correct. So which is good. And is this where we were at this time last year? Where were we? Do you know that? Not off the top of my head. Okay. It's too much to retain, but we can get the answer. I will make sure superintendent Parks has that Okay.
So she can get back to you. Alright. Great. Thank you. Mhmm. You're welcome. I will point out though comparing this year to last year, there's there are some difficulties in that because of the cuts that we did as well. So even when we look at you know, we're 13,000,000 below our expenditures. I mean, that's a significant change because of the cuts. Any more questions? Okay. So this is the second Sorry. When if we could go back again just to clarify. Right? We've Mhmm. We've creep or we brought in 65% of our revenue for the year.
Yes. Only expended 54%, so that's why we have that rich cash position as of today. Correct. Yep. At the February. Correct. You're absolutely right. Okay. This is the second slide. Let's continue with first, and it's the budget. The addition to fund balance where we were projecting was 9.7. Month to date, we're at 6.1. Year to date, we're at 40.5, which, like I said, if if the year ended as of the February, fantastic. But and we know we have a few more months to go.
So we go all the way down to the end and these are the same figures as you saw on the last slide. If at the February, our fund balance or any fund balance would have been $47,700,000 Off to the right of that, you will see that, the fund balance as percent of revenue is currently at 15.1. As of expense, it's 15.6. And just a reminder, our board policy is, fund balance as a percent of expense. The state is a percent of revenue. So we track both. Once again, end of the fiscal year,
we're going back to the close to 6% that we projected. In my slide coming up, you'll see that because it will show where the or I should say the December budget amendment is, and you will see there's not a whole lot of change with this new budget amendment. So and I can show you the comparisons on that. Alright. Thank you. And this is the one we were talking about. And today I don't know if you can see it. Okay. So this is just general fund, and it's expected versus actual. And what we are looking at here, we expected to earn in February,
but, actually, we were at 31. And so that is $3,200,000 more than expected. And then if we go down to expenditures, and this is just the month of February again, I'm gonna go to here. The expected February was 24.2. The actual is 25, point one. So we're over about $830,000 in expenditures than what we expected to be. So then if we go all the way to year to date over to the right hand column, as you see here, the same thing. We the revenue expected to be at 205,000,000.
We're at 206. Thank you, Andrew. And so that is a 19 or a $913,000 gain, which is great. Now if you go all the way down to total expenditures thank you. We expect to be at a hundred and 68,000,000. We are at a hundred and 68 or hundred and 65,000,000, which is a, reduction of 2.6 of where we and expenditures where we expect it to be. Now this is what I wanted to point out. If you go all the way to the bottom in this middle column,
this is what showed up on that last slide right here, the 15.15% fund balance and then the 15.6. The 15.6 is a percent of expenditures. So let's go all the way back over here to the left. This is the budget. This is where we expected to be in December for a budget amendment. Like I said, you're gonna see numbers very similar to this when you see our budget, amendment tonight. So it is misleading to look at this by the month, but it's really important. I feel I'll show you by the month too. So that's what I wanted to point out.
So over in this, left hand column, that is where we projected in December our fund balance to end as of June 30. As of February, we're at 15%. Any questions? Seeing none. Okay. Well, first of all, we have a couple couple other comments here. So then, going back to the 2,500,000.0 that we collected Mhmm. For the the reimbursement, We see that in the state sources up in the top revenue. You are correct. Yes. Okay. And we currently don't see the offsetting rev or offsetting expenses because those will come
out in March. Correct. K. And then can you talk a little bit about the the impact of that 2,500,000.0 that it has on our general fund from a tax perspective as well? What we were well, that's part of our, budget amendment presentation. Will that be in there? Correct. It will. Okay. Excellent. Are you talking about the cost of the district? Cost to the district and to our teachers. Correct. We do have that figure for the district, but I don't know the total for Right. Right. I I just wanna highlight that because it's, you know, it's money that's supposed to just come through to our teachers for reimbursement.
Right. Right. And, we are not the district also is not made whole because we have to pay employer taxes. So, and we cannot use any bit of that 3% reimbursement to fund the district in any way, shape, or form. It all goes back to funding the employees. So but, yes, you'll see that as part of our budget amendment. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. You're welcome. And you've seen these before. These are the graphs expected versus actual, and all this information is generated from the pie the prior, slide with all of the numbers. So you see our actual revenue is actually,
well, as we projected, we're or I'm sorry. As you saw, higher than what we expected in February. And that's just what this graph is telling you. And the next one is expense. And as you saw on the last slide, we were 803,000 more in expenses than we expected to be in February, which is very minimal, nominal. It's just it's not a lot considering our budget's over $300,000,000, but but these are the trends that we do like to watch. So this is the expected, fund balance versus actual,
and the expected is lower than what we actually were at the February. So that shows a great trend, but it's it's misleading as well because you don't have a full picture of the rest of the year. Do you see November? November was a three payroll month. Mhmm. You're gonna see this trend back in that direction because there's no more tax collections, which is a big part of our revenue. Big. It's, approximately $106,000,000 of our total revenue for the year, which is substantial. And so that was a pretty much, I hate to say, but dried up. And, you will see the expense,
especially with the three payrolls hit. So this will start trending back in the other direction. So I just don't want this to be super misleading. Then the next slide that we did is this is showing some of the percentages and, what this is is it will show that down at the bottom, the variance between expected and I'm going all the way to February. I apologize. The variance, between expected and actual is 1.17%. And you can see over in the left hand column, it shows the percentage of fund balance. And, that's where we're at for the month of February.
So this is this slide is different from the previous slide. Yes. Because showing we were asked if we could somehow add percentages. So this is our first go round it at at that. So this is showing percentages. But like I said, going forward, this is going to go in a different direction. Gotcha. Okay. Mhmm. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions for this? Seeing none. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank thank you, miss Frank Court. You're welcome. Now trustees, at this time, we have, mister Casey Zaske who is, works in the business office as a consultant with our team here.
He's gonna be coming forward and presenting the, proposed general fund second budget amendment. And miss Franckor, I'm sure, will tag team with him potentially on some of these topics here. So we'll turn it over to mister Zaskey at this time. Hi. Good evening. Good evening. I'm a little bit taller. Not by a lot. Good evening. So we did meet with the, finance committee on Monday and went over our proposed second amendment for the budget. But we'll go through that. Now I know there were some questions about the $1.47 g. When we get to those slides, feel free to stop me.
Sometimes I go really fast when I talk. So happy to pause at that point. We can talk about the different, like, that one forty seven g, which is the 3% reimbursement that was Okay. Is be is being given to employees. So stop me in the middle. Yeah. Can you explain why we do budget amendments? What what that whole concept is? Sure. Please. And a lot of the the times that we do budget amendments are obviously, we have to do the first one at the beginning of the year. We do required to do one at the end of the year to adjust out what we think it's gonna be.
We've taken an approach. Superintendent has asked us to take the approach to look at when significant items come in, that we take an approach and take a look at it and budget amend at that point. So as you'll see from our presentation, there were some major things that came in. One grant that we're not gonna spend, so we wanted to highlight that. The $1.47 g, I keep referring to that. That is the 3% that's going back to employees. So we finally got, as of February was when we received the amount that we were going to get. So we wanted to amend the budget at that point,
try and be as accurate as possible and, try and adjust at that point. So not just wait till the end, but adjust throughout the year. So how often do you anticipate having to do budget amendments? Does it just depend on as grants and funding comes in? As as stated, we do do one at the beginning of the year. We do do one at the end of the year. With Morris, we have discussed as well A lot of times when the state budget comes out, whereas this year, it came out later. Didn't really know until October, so that's why we did the December '1.
A lot of times when enrollment is finally stabilized, we know exactly what the the audit people count is. That's a good time to do it. So that's that's why we I don't there's no right or wrong time. It's whenever certain things come to light and we say it's probably a good time to bring it back to the board and say, hey. These are the adjustments that we have. This is a more accurate picture of what we know at that point. A lot of times change items change throughout the year. So Thank you. But so did you say we're required to do these amendments a couple of times
a year and then We are not required. We're just required to do at the end of the year to adjust to our final budget. K. That's the only required time to do, but we're trying to keep on top of stuff. Yeah. This was something that Mario suggested, before he left and for us to have a better idea, he said, of where our budget was, and how we can make sure we're staying on track based on how things change with the way money comes in and goes out. If I'm said that wrong. Yeah. It's correct. No. % accurate. I know in the past, there has just been the beginning one and the end one.
Obviously, we're taking a different approach now trying to do when we have big items come through that we know about that will, need to be adjusted. We try and take those as they come. So It it it's it's a way that we can try to make sure we don't have a an issue like we had last year. Mhmm. But it's Great. Alright. Thank you. So this first slide, it's just, it shows the total revenues, total expenses. So going, left to right there, that is our original budget. Then the December 18 amendment and then our proposed second amendment tonight. So to show the variance there.
So, right now and when we get to the next slide, it'll detail it out more. But, we're projecting about $1,300,000 more in revenue. We are anticipating about 550,000 less in expenses. So overall, about $1,800,000 increase to our fund balance projection. And as you can see at the bottom there, we're gonna project out to be about point 58% better on revenue and point 62% better on expenses. So as you can see, we're at for internal purposes,
we're at about 6.16% of fund balance for expenses. And as it relates to the state, I guess, early warning or what they look at is 5%. We're at about 5.94%. And, do I ask a quick question? And we need to be over that two consecutive years to get off of that list. Correct? That is correct. Yes. And we have asked them multiple times to get off their list. I'm gonna ask for some early. Every meeting we have with them, we have to come off their list. Which, by the way, is every month. Okay. So when are we anticipating getting off of that list?
So so it's supposed to be two years. So this would be our first year over five. Next year will be our second time year over five, hopefully, and then we'll be off the list. Okay. So we're we're close. Yeah. We're trending in the right direction. Okay. And and our understanding is so we do have a couple people that we do meet with monthly to go over our monthly reports. They will have to report back to their higher ups because we are on the list. So to get off that list. So we have started that process of bugging them saying, hey. We're over five. We're projecting over five.
Can we get off the list? Hopefully, they say yes one day, but keep asking. Thank you. You keep asking, though. I can tell you that. Yes. No harm in it. Alright. Go ahead. Alright. So here, we just try and detail some of the, changes, why we are projecting the $1,300,000, increase in revenue. So, in our local revenue, it's very similar to what we had projected back in December, slight decrease in revenue just based on projections that we have. The the big one there is the next one, the $1,600,000 increase in state revenue. Now it's made up of multiple different things.
So the first item on there is that one forty seven g that I keep referencing. We are on our state aid. We did in February, told that we're gonna get the $2,500,000. The next line item there is the $2,100,000. We have a decrease in our electric bus grant. Now we did receive those funds in in June of last year, and based on discussions with Jason's team and Bernie's team is some of the infrastructure that's needed for that and the time frame to order those buses is going to push that out to next
fiscal year. So that was in our original budget. That was in our amendment. We thought we were gonna have the expenses and the revenue. So So when we get down to expenses, you'll see that it's a revenue and an expense. So that looks like it'll be in 2526. We also did have about a $1,200,000 increase in special ed funding, that came through, in our federal grants, about a $400,000 increase in projections. A lot of that was related with our E rate funding. And then for the act 18 revenue from the ISD there, we had about a $600,000
decrease. Now that was, in our last payment, and that was we have a lot more students taking programs at ISD. So that does come out of our payments that they usually make to us. And then if we wanted to go back to the one forty seven g. Go ahead. Trustee Wilkinson and Trustee Muhammad. Well, I actually wanted to touch on the electric bus. Sure. So just because we're changing the timing of that grant Yeah. Both on the revenue and expenditure side, doesn't necessarily mean we missed out on it. It's just the time That is correct.
Okay. And there is a lot a long leg, and I I can defer to Jason if he wants. But, we did reach out to his team. I think buses were I think it's nine months. Sorry. I didn't see you, babe. We're in. Nine nine months out for buses. So and I think the other infrastructure was four or five months out from DT and whatnot. Did you guys look? Yeah. The only thing I would add to that too is so what happens is because we did receive the the funding from the state. We received the revenue. What we have to do is defer that. Mhmm. So it's just put in deferred account. And then when we get the buses in,
we pay for the buses. We will flip that ramp, and then we will recognize the revenue at that time. So just so you understand, that's and that's the process for all grants. Okay. If we can't spend a portion of the grant or all of the grant, we do defer those revenues, but they are still. K. Crystal, Muhammad, you got something? Yeah. I just wanted to because obviously with the political climate right now, and I know this is just for, like, this this, you know, fiscal year. I'm assuming are you are you predicting any because this is the the amendment that we're we're but are you predicting
any kind of changes that would happen this year just based on what we're hearing as far as budget cuts? Not for this year. Next year is obviously our new network. That's right. That's right. Hammer away at even even as, like, per pupil funding. We I think right after our meeting Monday, we got something from the house saying they were saying 417 per student. So we're constantly evaluating. Categorical. Yeah. But nothing like this. This is not gonna affect the budget this year that you can predict. It's all next it's all next year. I'm thinking of,
like, federal funds, all of that. As soon as we but was it back in February when they came out with all that? We jumped on a couple webinars that we had. And, even for, like, the food service, just try and figure out what's going on. And we did reach out as well. I know Liz reached out to our, Chartwells as well, and a lot of it was not worried about this year. Okay. The next couple of years are gonna be I know it's a big big topic of concern. So I just wanna already been appropriated? Yeah. So Yes. They really can't touch them. I I don't wanna say can't, can't,
can't, but Of course. It's very unlikely that they will. It's next year that we have to really look at. And like I said, Casey and I, we do a lot of webinars. We do our, business organization. MSBO has a lot of stuff going on even in our listserv or emails. So we're always trying and it's really hard to figure out because, like Casey said, the house just came out with their budget, and the governor's already had theirs, but we're still waiting on the senate and see where it falls. Maybe somewhere in between. Yeah. I think I don't know. The takeaway is it's just very uncertain. Very uncertain.
Yeah. The one I'm assuming is bigger question when we're looking at next year's budget, which is absolutely correct. But for the I was just curious if there's anything that you're hearing for this year, and I'm assuming no. The the best news we heard was exactly what Darcy said where it's allocated already for this year, so this year is not our concern. Yep. Next year's gonna be our concern. Miss Brancor, can you touch on just the proactiveness around, you know, grant reimbursement, for federal grants that your team kind of took? Well, yes. When we heard the first scary message and I went down and talked to superintendent
parks about it, we heard that, all federal funding for grants was going to be Frozen. Frozen, and we weren't gonna be able to collect anymore. So we have a process, and part of our federal funds do come from the WISD. They are flow through, IDEA, Head Start, different programs like that. Plus, we do, directly go, to the state. They have a program or a I guess that's what you call it called, nexus. And what we do is we do draws, and we put in we submit, okay. We've spent this much. We wanna draw this so much down. Well, at that time, when we heard about it,
Angelita Wren, who works with me, and she's in charge of our grants, she and I got on a real fast track to pull stuff together immediately to see what we could draw down. So then what we did is we got a hold of the WISD and kind of demanded that they turn around our, reimbursements to us immediately or right away or at least process them for payment. And, so because we were told we had till 05:00 that evening to turn in our reimbursements. So, myself and Angelita, we worked really hard on that. We and that's why you don't see in in one of your slides that you'll
get in your packet. There wasn't any federal grant reimbursements for the month of February because we were asking for them early in January, at the January when this news came out. So that's what we did. And, the actually, the WIC came through. They did, come through and say, yes. Okay. Turn in your stuff, and we will get you your reimbursements. And they did. So, you know, like I said, we're always listening. We sometimes have to react that quick even though they didn't freeze the funds, but it's important to have that funding for our kids and for our district. So, that's what we did in that instance.
Yeah. Thank you. And I just wanna point out, like, that's industry best practice to just be on top of those reimbursements. With the freezing of grants today. That's what, you know, the accounting industry is recommending clientele. One thing I do want to touch on, since I know there's a lot of questions about the 3% and the 147 gs, speaking of next year funding. So for the district, we are projecting out to get about 92% of what is needed to reimburse employees, a %.
Now we have been on a lot of webinars. We have listened. They are state is supposedly proposing a fix, and they are calling it a fix to get us the remaining percentage, but that's another one that we do not have any knowledge or guarantee that we are going to give that additional funding for that. So Trustee Schmidt. Could you, explain a little bit more how what that fund is? Because as I understand it, teachers have paid into that fund, and then now they're being given back that money.
And, of course, the state says, here you go. Give it back, but we're not gonna give you all of it back. I mean, just explain how it came to be, and then they're not all teachers get it. It's only certain ones that are in certain parts of the retirement. Yeah. And it it will be all employees as well. So it is not just teachers. It's anyone that's in the retirement plan. So it's a 3% that was contributed to the health care. I'm not a % sure if it was deemed that it was they couldn't take anymore. So what the state decided to do was instead of allowing us to just not
take the deduction from October through September 2025, we still had to take it, and then they were going to reimburse us for that with the caveat that their reimbursement was not a % of what they had gotten. So come October 1 this year coming up, that will be shut off, and we will not be taking that deduction anymore. That is and the frequently asked questions, that's what we're supposed to do. So that's kinda what the fund is. We've been collecting it. We still have to paychecks that are going out this Friday.
Still have the 3% on it. We have to remit that to the state, and then we will get money back to reimburse back to employees. So our plan is to reimburse employees on the first pay of every month and get back up to about 92%. I was about to say, but it's still only that 92%. So they're not giving us back 100%. It's just 90%. Will say this. Other districts, we are higher than most. Even the ISD, I think, calculation we saw for them was, like, 85% they're calculating. We're calculating about 92%.
There's Wayne County. I've heard they're 65% is what they're telling people. So there are we are on the high end on that. I do wanna say that, but it's still not a %. And we don't know if a fix their word, not mine, what they're calling it, if it's gonna And then because it wasn't a direct reimbursement or an exact reimbursement to employees, it now becomes taxable for our employees and for the district. Well, it becomes taxable because when it was deducted from employees, it was pretax, so they were not taxed on it.
So Oh. That is also in their frequently asked questions. They employees are taxed on now because it is taxable earning, and the district does have to pay taxes on it as well because now it's taxable earnings. And, again, I believe miss Franckhor said earlier, but because all of the monies have to go back to the employees, the district absorbs the the taxes. That is correct. So when we get to my, expense slide, we can we did a quick calc to kinda see how much that would be for, for the district. Alright. So the so district absorbs the taxes that the employee would have to pay as
well? No. Could you clarify that for me? Yeah. Sure. So, so because it's taxable, it's taxable to the employee to pay their amount of taxes, whatever tax bracket they're on, whatever it is that affects them. But for the FICA for the district are 7.65%, we will be paying that. So whereas before, it was not taxable to us or the employee. So k. We didn't pay tax on it. They didn't pay tax on it. Now that it's taxable, it's an additional expense to this year that we have to pay taxes on it. So until there's this fix,
the teachers are getting 8% less of what they should be getting, plus they're getting taxed on what they got. Yes. And it is all employees that had this deduction. Now it's not every single employee in the district. It's just if you were enrolled in this h c f 3%. So I think it was, well, 1,158 people, I believe, is what it was when we did the calculation. So and those could be people that worked one paycheck. They had $5 deducted. It was remitted off to the state,
and we have to refund them 92% of that. The other one twist on this was the office of retirement systems, ORS, said, we're not gonna tell you who we took it from. That's your responsibility as a district to figure out who should get the money back. So And this is all I mean, this isn't about the district not paying back the teachers. This is about the state not giving us some money to return that to the teachers. Yeah. So that's that's really what the rub is. Because it's an allocated percentage based on what what was in the budget for them
to pay back under this one forty seven g. So whatever our allocation was based on total payroll cost and total payroll cost across the whole state, that's the amount we got. So that's how they calculated our $2,550,000 on that, whereas we probably needed around 2.8, two point nine. So for the amount of deductions that employees are gonna have. I have more questions. Why you said different other districts. It's different percentages. Why is that?
So it's different percentages on what they're calculating they're gonna get back. So they they also got an allocation. So let's use where I live in Dexter. So they'll get an allocation. Whatever their percentage of this budget amount is, they'll get that. But maybe they increase their payroll cost, and they've deducted way more than that. So that could why they could have a different percentage. So each district has to kinda self calculate and say, we're getting this amount of money. We know the amount of deductions we've had. It might be 60% of deduction.
It might be 65. The 65% probably is conservative to say, hey. Let's protect ourselves. That's just my Okay. But since they're not telling you who they deducted it for and who they didn't they're at. Found the districts to figure out. And like I said, we did some Big o population problem. We were at 92%. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. You didn't even get to get very far. I know. Questions, didn't we? It's the hot topic. Feel like the more I know about it, the less I know about it. Yeah.
Okay. Imagine putting that communication together. Right? Yeah. So this is just that's fine. That was that was just this is just the numeric representation of what we talked about where the revenue sources are going up and down. So there you can see the $1,300,000 overall increase in revenue. Expenses. So on expenses, a lot of our expense changes are just because the revenues went down. There are corresponding expenses that need to go up or down. So the $2,500,000 increase is that one forty seven g,
and the 7.65% of that is about a hundred and $91,000 of FICA expense for the district. As for how much employees will pay, that'll depend on, obviously, their FICA, their tax bracket on those. As you can see, we're also decreasing expenses by 2.1, which is the electric bus grant. We have also district has done a great job. We are still projecting down in our EDU staff cost from last year. And then one last decrease that we do have there is about $800,000 decrease in, changes in insurance and benefits.
That's a lot to do with the the changing health plans and the number of employees that are enrolled in each plan and or cash in lieu. Trustee Wood. Real real quick question. And this was asked during our finance committee meeting. But can you just briefly explain the decrease in EDU staff, in the staff staffing? Superintendent Park, I don't know if you could probably address that. Thank you. So this as a result of our budget reductions, we eliminated the dedicated substitutes that each school had every day regardless of the number
of absent staff. So our student or I'm sorry. Our schools absolutely do still have substitute teachers, but they just don't have those dedicated, substitute teachers at every school every day. Okay. Thank you. I think that's worked fine. Thank you. What what's what you're saying is that based on how many people are absent, you call in the number of substitutes based on that instead of just having one or two there Just in case or three or two or three there. Or four. Just in case someone's absent. Correct. And if no one's absent,
you have two, three, or four people there without a not a necessary necessarily having a need. Correct. Okay. But still getting paid. Right. Right. Okay. They would always do. Still I'm sure they contribute. Yeah. I mean, they're probably We have to make cuts, and that would seem like a reasonable approach. Mhmm. Trustee Schmidt, do you have something else? No. No. Okay. Alright. Seeing that. John Hill. I do. Just to talk a little bit on the 800 k decrease in health insurance, that was partially in due to our educators and staff selecting cash in lieu or
selecting other plans that were also more cost effective for educators than staff. Correct. That is correct. Yes. The next slide is just the numeric of the same thing we talked about now. On each of that, I just wanna point out real quick, a lot of those are red. The reason is because that 2.5, wherever an employee is charged to, if they're charged to the business office, then that's the line item they're gonna hit. So it's not as easy to see that one line item there, but that's why they're all in that direction. And then obviously the transportation there is,
a large majority of that is the decrease in the bus grant that we're gonna be spending next year. And then the next slide is, just an overall we're increasing of about 1.9 in our fund balance. And then so that will be a total increase for the year of about $11,600,000. And as, we talked about, the estimating end fund balance would be about $18,700,000, which is 5.94% of revenue and 6.16% of expenditures.
And then I know there's been some statistics that we've put in past, presentations, so we wanted to bring that as well. So by us increasing this, we're up to projected fund balance of about $1,121 per student, and that's up from our December projection of about, $1,009. And then our projected ending fund balance would cover now about sixteen days of operations up from fourteen point four days of operations. So all good directions, all good news. So and then the next slide is up there,
but it's just the same slide as the first slide, just kinda showing where we're going to land in the totals. So. Trustee Wilkins. I notice the the variance is against the First Amendment rather than against the original budget. Correct. Why is that? Does that seem to be a is that best practices, or why do we do that? It is because we're showing what we're amending from right now. Because we showed the original kinda as a, kinda like a note to look at it where we started. Mhmm. But, realistically, where we had the amendment in December is what what our start starting point was.
So Okay. Always happy to look at suggestions too if that's just too many numbers on there. Like, you said, like, the original, like, that's another way to look at it as well. This is clear. I just wanted to make sure why Yeah. Why we did it that way. Yeah. So the amount of the reason another reason we do it that way is it's just adjusting from our latest and greatest point, which was December. Okay. There's nothing else? Actually, I had a quick question regarding the projected ending fund balance. So you just said that it would cover sixteen days of operation, and we're actually aiming for,
what, forty five days? What what what is the Yeah. It's forty five. The goal. Forty five. Is is the is the goal. Forty five days. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Alright. Thank you all so much. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yep. I believe that brings us down to to first briefing, NXAN, two two zero one, Clay Middle School, doors and window replacement. Thank you very much, president Feaster. We have, members of our capital program team, coming forward, and they will bring forward these first briefing items which were shared with, the bond committee, committee of the whole,
during that particular meeting earlier today. So we'll start off with the Clay Middle School doors and window replacement, and we have, Jason coming forward with that. Good evening, trustees. Thanks again for the opportunity to present these, these items, which will help, the district stabilize existing infrastructure and support our efforts to, increase our, facilities condition assessment response improvements, and to walk us through these items, which were shared, earlier this evening at the bond committee, I'm going to ask,
Jason Steinhebel, our senior pro project manager from Gilbane Building Company, our owner's representative, to walk us through these. And, one thing that we, maybe need to clarify too is that, our Gilbane, owners representatives take all of the feedback and information that's gathered from our various construction managers that are helping us facilitate the procurement process. They're doing, all of the post bid interviews, all of the Gilbane folks. But so all of these are are vetted first,
alongside our construction managers, and supported by our Gilbane team. Good evening. So the first, item is the Clegg Middle School exterior door and window replacement. Excuse me. It's the replacement of a majority of the, doors at Clegg. Middle School, with the exception of the front door, that front door was just replaced under the KCNL project. So the two big categories, the general trades, that includes the, I'll say, the the standard doors. I said the doors mostly don't aren't part of a window system, and that that's the general trades package.
The glass and glazing is for the what would be the curtain wall systems. Those are at our at our stairwells. Are there any questions? Any questions? Trustee Wilkerson? Yeah. One item on the the glass and glazing bid. You know, we saw the the larger variance between the lowest bidder, the next item there. Can you just talk a little bit about the process to validate that bid and also, clarify that the quality of the product is the same? Yes. We we meet with multiple we have post bid review with multiple bidders,
so we would have met with both the, the apparent low and the next bidder as well. So, we use that to assist us in validate if they have it, and we did through that process confirmed that both had, met the specified materials. Okay. Thank you. Seeing nothing else? Thank you. I guess we're moving down to Annex A N 2198 Clay, Scholar Foresight, and I will open community in Pittsfield Loading Dock and paving improvements. Yeah. This proposal is for the loading dock and paving improvement at those those schools.
The loading dock improvements is at Clegg, Scarlet, and Forsyth, with the majority of the paving being at, in our open community in Pittsfield. We had, three bid categories in this, concrete, which accounts for a majority of the loading docks. The metals division is for the handrails, associated with the handrails and guardrails associated with the loading dock. And the, the paving is for the, that's the, paving at, open community and, Pittsville. Any questions, trustees?
Trustee Wilkins? It's not a question, but do we have access to the slides? That you showed during the bond committee. I just think, like, showing the loading dock and situation, especially with Scarlet, really paints the picture of how much this stuff needs to be done. Yep. Andrew's gonna get he'll he'll get those out for us. Thank you. And while we're waiting for that, mister Bing, could you touch a little bit on, like, the concrete bid? We sell those significant variances as well. And we talked a little bit in the bond committee meeting about how maybe the
scope of work might be different. You know, bidders might not do as detailed of a job putting together their bids. Can you touch on that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, I I so I can't, comment on the specifics of this particular item. I would have to go back to Stephanie and her team and just make sure I got that those details correct. But, what can happen in a discrepancy like this is when we go through, in a post bid qualification interview, we will walk through the basis of design with each of our bidders,
make sure that all of the specifications that have been outlined by our engineers and architects are actually represented and accounted for, and they will walk through, you know, basically, walking each vendor through, did you think about this? Did you think about this? Are you sure you included this? Do you have any exceptions, did that you did not include in your bid? And and we'll make sure that each one of the vendors understands the specific scope of work and have accounted for everything before they before we we qualify them as
the actual low bidder. So in the case of where someone, has a bid that is nearly twice as much as another company, it could be, again, that they, wanted some wanted to consider wanted to be considered for work, but maybe didn't look very closely at this the overall specification and and gave us a number so that they were part of the part of the process. And, Jason, I I have no idea if that was actually the case with these guys, so I don't wanna suggest that. Yeah. But I but that's something that happens,
in our bid process. Okay. I have one other quick question. Folks? Yeah. Go ahead. Thank you, president Feaster. Regarding the Clegg doors and the, loading dock jobs, when exactly is the work expected to begin, and when when will it be completed? It'll begin, as soon as school gets out, and it'll be finished before, during the summer months. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Anything else, trustees? K. Then that brings it down to letter c, Annex A And 2196, Garland And Community Flooring and Painting Trace contract part two.
Okay. This is for, some additional work associated with the flooring and painting projects that were have previously been approved. So this is for the general trades and plaster. Trades this work included some, plaster repair, select doors, select doors and frames at both the community and scarlet, some miscellaneous handrail repairs. The other package, the aluminum glazing, and the fiber that's FRP panels is and that's additional doors that are a bet, that, that curtain wall variety.
And then the lockers is for, relocation of existing lockers. Any questions for us, please? Seeing none. Please that brings us down to letter d, and it's AN2199 New Thurston Elementary School trade contract recommendation part one. Alright. This is for the this is for, part one of the trades for the new Thurston School. It includes the earthwork and site utilities, that is that includes, underground storm detention, underground utilities, water lines, sewer drains, additional other just leveling out the site.
The geothermal is the next package. That that is the vertical, drilling of the geothermal wells. Site concrete, that's the package associated with any exterior concrete on the project. The ornamental fencing package, which is the fencing for the the preschool playground. Interior concrete flatware, that's for the, as it states, the interior, concrete work, masonry, structural steel, miscellaneous steel, the roofing, glass glazing, and aluminum storefronts, rough and finished carpentry, our timber framing and CLT panels,
metal framing and drywall, fire protection, plumbing, HVAC, and the elevators. Any questions for us, please? Seeing none. Thank you all very much. President Feaster Oh. I just wanna say for, for the community, you know, if we seem a little, you know, not asking enough questions, it's because we asked a lot of questions in the bond committee. So, thank you for that clarity then. And, again, trustees, thank you for your patience of having to hear all of this again so quickly, so soon, but we wanted to keep things moving forward. So thank you, team, for the good work. Thank you.
I will ask a quick one, which one's asked earlier. But, regarding the geothermal bid for, from Midwest Geothermal, I believe. Yeah. So, 4,700,000 bid, only one bid. Can you sort of tell us a little bit about that? So this is the only contractor available to do this? So the one of the challenges that we have with this work is that there are there are sort of vendors that have distributed themselves, regionally throughout The United States to and provide these services, and often they kind of stake out territory.
And, and because there's so few collectively, they hold these, regions. And Midwest is a very qualified, great provider, and they serve, our region and territory. So when the, University of Michigan and City of Ann Arbor are looking for someone to provide vertical bores, it's Midwest Geothermal who's often the only responder to, public bids at this point. We are talking I can say, we we have talked often about ways that,
we could potentially work together to attract other folks, either, you know, either convince, an outfit like Midwest Geothermal to expand operations, and provide more and better services or potentially recruit vendors from other areas in the country who could come and provide, services because we can, you know, we can show that we have a larger pool of municipalities and institutions who are interested in making these investments over a long period of time,
to sort of help folks get settled. So I know that's a it's a conversation that we're we wanna continue to have and and we are having. But right now, they're the only responder, and they are qualified bidder. Got it. Okay. Thank you. I do wanna call out Trustee Wilkinson? Well, thank you. You know, while they might be the sole provider in this case, you know, one thing that we mentioned earlier at our bond committee meeting was just the the number of local providers that we see across these quotes is really nice to see,
whether it's, you know, Livonia, Mylan, right, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti. I'm seeing that mix of local vendors is really nice. Alright. Thank you, trustee, and thank you all for the first briefing. Thank you very much. Then that moves us down to our second briefing. Alright. Thank you. Trustees, at this time you know what? Do do you know do you wanna have them just do their second week? Sure. Okay. Okay. Why don't you guys go ahead and do the second briefing items that you have here, and then we'll bring miss Linden up afterwards. So we have the new Dickin Elementary Trade Contracts part two and the new Logan
Elementary Trade Contracts, Logan Elementary trade contracts part two. Are there any changes from the first briefing for either of those items? No changes. Okay. Any questions, trustees? Thank you. Alright. Seeing none, thank you again. Okay. Thank you. Alright. Now we'll have miss Linden come on up because I know we have some, updates here, for this particular item. So there have been some changes since the first briefing that miss Linden will talk us through now. Go ahead. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be back and speaking about my favorite topic. Following our presentation for first briefing last week,
a question was raised about the invoice, really good question. And, I'm happy to say that our our great minds representatives were also watching the board meeting and listening to that question. And so, we were eager to connect. The very next day, we were able to speak about it. So for for reference in the community and to remind us all, there was an invoice, there that looked as though it was a single year invoice. Our understanding on on our team was that that invoice represented two years, for a total over those two years, which would be the year 2829 and 2930,
at a maximum of $225,000. When I spoke with our representative, she confirmed that their understanding was different. Oh. So we spoke and said, what can we do about that? Understanding, you know, where we are and what we're trying to be frugal about and yet serving our children to the best of our abilities for literacy. And it is a very rare moment. Again, I think that we are being graced, but this new partnership that we are forging with great minds, I have high hopes for because the response from them is very positive. They said,
let us go back to the drawing board and see what we can do. And in a very rare and deeply appreciated response, they brought the cost down to what we can afford to do, and what we promised the board. So you will now see the updated invoices for year 2829 and 2930 for a total over those two years of, each being a hundred and 9,000, so the total being $2.18. So we're still under the $2.25 for both years. They were able to accomplish that by, separating the bundle of digital licenses and student workbooks,
which are called learn books, and giving us the digital licenses free of charge for both years. The workbooks, as you know, in the quotes that you see in the first three years and reflected in the new invoices, are also being offered a very deep discount to us, which are just over cost. So it's it's pretty significant. So I'd just like to thank our our future partners. Should this be approved, our great minds representatives. I I would add to that. Thank you. And looking at the invoice, that says corrected, on the so that's reflected on page three where it has a discount of 758
hundred thousand? Correct. Thank you. So I trust the best that you're looking You'll see two invoices now, one for $28.29 and one for $29.30 for the same amount. Okay. I do see one that says corrected as opposed. Mhmm. The original remains. Nothing has changed there. That's the first three years, and that's grant funded. It was the remaining two years, the 2829 and 2930, that we had a question about. So So under the list of documents, it would be the third one that It's it's there are three invoices.
I know it's confusing because we had to break this up in order to pay for grant dollars. So I see it now. I'll I'll review that. The first invoice, which is the Mac daddy of invoices there, it's for 1,289,000.000. Mhmm. That is grant funded. It takes us through the very first three years of implementation. So that will take us through the 2728 school year. The '28, '20 '9, and 2930, which are years four and five of the agreement were the changes. So it should be the final two invoices. If you're looking at all three, it's the last two that are brand new for us.
Those were the 12 Of both of those, they say 109,000 for each of those years. Okay. Thank you for doing that negotiating and working with our partners to come up with a I'm happy to say it worked out. And, again, I'm very grateful to our vendors. If I may, I would also just like to, again, recognize and thank the 100 teachers who participated in this pilot. They volunteered to do so. In addition to that, the representative teams that came together to arrive at these decisions for the recommendation, came together twice,
first to decide between bookworms and wit and wisdom, and second, to decide between the first edition and second edition, which would be best. And I do just want to I I don't think I emphasized this last week, and I think it's important for the community to know that, while administrators were present for the conversations and to be part of the learning, we didn't have a vote. The vote to recommend this came solely from our teachers. So, just a reminder that the wit and wisdom, the early decision was 50 to 10, bookworms, wit and wisdom. And when we came back to do the review of the second edition,
which solved a lot of the problems, in terms of complex implementation for teachers, that was 99 to six. Oh. So it was it was a very clear teacher preference that we move forward with this, and that's one of the reasons I'm so confident standing here that I know we'll we're we're making the right decision because our educators led that. Miss Linding, this question came up. Can you talk a little bit about what that communication loop was from the selection committee back to all of the staff who piloted? What was how did they get informed of the decision of the selection committee?
Absolutely. So in both cases, the first review committee that came together to look at the data between bookworms and wit and wisdom, which was the bulk of the presentation last week and all the data we collected. That team met for two days, to sift through it and come to that decision. That ended on a Friday. That following Monday, we prepared the communication for all the pilot teachers, even before we brought any inkling of this to all of you. And that was because they all worked so hard through the pilot, and they were waiting to hear, what the recommendation went was going to be. We were very careful not to promise because we operate at the will of the
board, but we did want them to know what that recommendation was. And immediately following that announcement that that it was overwhelming that we should move toward the wit and wisdom, the great minds version of this, we did offer two opportunities for pilot teachers to come and have their questions answered knowing that it was probably the bookworms teachers who were gonna have most of the questions. So we opened that up and invited teachers to come and have their questions answered. You know, why did the review committee choose this? Why did it appear this way? We've made the data transparent as much as we possibly can,
and I just want to extend that, opportunity again if if folks would like to discuss it and they have questions about it. It's really important. Thank you. You bet. Can can you talk a little bit about the process of, Winton Wisdom was the thing that was piloted, but Correct. The arts and the great minds is the company. Right? It was Winton Wisdom announced arts and letters and what what transpired there that that was an, a better choice? Yeah. Even though it wasn't available to pilot. Right? Because it's a second edition. It it was not available to pilot.
We started the pilot, as you know, identifying the curriculum last spring, so it was not available then. Our grant dollars would have expired before we would have been able to pilot that curriculum. So we went in with eyes wide open knowing that we're gonna pilot the best thing on the market, but that addition two was gonna be coming hot on the heels of this. So what we were really piloting is, the routines, the layout of the program, the the diversity that is reflected in the program. And you can see all of that, and I'm happy to share more of that data. We worked very hard to categorize the pros and cons of both.
And the reason we went with wit and wisdom was the richness and the depth of of the knowledge building of that program. So the arts and letters, which is addition two, came on the heels of all of the feedback they've been collecting from the previous four or five years of implementation from our teachers. Not our teachers, but teachers across the nation. And, they made improvements to addition two by taking out a lot of the complexity that made implementation difficult. It was a little too long for most of our school days, so they they worked really hard to condense in ways that kept the depth of
knowledge. So we did have educators who knew the wit and wisdom program also pilot the first unit, what was available of that to test it out and see what the changes were. And, you saw you heard from two of them who came to speak to us last week. It was Ally Cadavecchio and Julie Cooper, but others can also speak. Trustee Ma? So I just wanted maybe I missed it in the presentation, because I always think about, like, what's the impact on teachers, like, the teachers and the time and the commitment. Yes.
I'm assuming this all was probably also asked in the surveys, but did you get a sense of how because we're implementing a an a new curriculum on top of current. So do you have an idea of how the impact is on teachers and staff involved with this? Yeah. It was, a significant part of the review process, because whatever we adopt has to be doable. Yeah. And the feedback that we heard from both the bookworms and the Witten Wisdom pilot teachers was that initially, it's a whole new way of doing it.
We've we've not taught in this way before. So the hurdle to to learn and and begin that process of, you know, teaching in-depth, the building knowledge process, the really scripted, you know, components of this, but also the Socratic discussions and and the pedagogy that that we hadn't implemented before. All of that is it's new. So, I will say that the simplicity of bookworms was one of the strengths of that program. It did not outweigh the depth of knowledge and the knowledge building aspects of the other curriculum.
And so when we heard that the update had also achieved the simplification of the implementation also and then experienced that through that second review process, it also made that a much easier choice for us. But in any adoption, I will just share with you the support of teachers is really critical. Yeah. And, of course, like, something hopefully will be measured because it's like a five year commitment. But to be measured because, yeah, you want something sustainable, obviously. Absolutely. And if it's not enough support, we need to be ready immediately Yeah.
To provide it. Yeah. Not later. It's great. I mean but just something I just wanted I assumed it was looked at. Have we talked to other schools that have this, and what has been their experience? Like, I have no this is not my area of expertise. So what are what are other schools? One of the hidden slides in that deck, and I don't know if if we can bring it up, Andrew. It's from last week, so probably not quickly. But, one of the slides that that we can show, has a list of all the school districts in the state of Michigan that are currently using it, and we were in pretty close contact with them.
As wit and wisdom was was the program of choice for so many. And arts and letters is brand new. Okay. Some of what we were asking is, hey. Are you looking at this? Are you are you thinking about moving and adopting the new? And so many of them were. So, you know, I think I mentioned Novi. I know Birmingham. I know several others who are looking at arts and letters and moving in that direction. And do they have data to share about because, of course, like, I know they're not comparable, but I'm saying, like, have they shared any success, any, like Thank you, Andrew.
You're good. We did not ask them to share data, but we do have publicly available data for them that that we absolutely can look at. One of those pieces is the ranking of of Michigan school districts, top performing districts. And, I think one of the most compelling things is that Novi Public Schools was ranked number one, and they use this curriculum. Okay. I was just I was just curious. No. It's great. It's great questions. Pairs. Yeah. I I wish that we had a better data sharing I know. In the moment system of that. We used to connect,
with peer districts. We used to have a group of five or six districts together, and we would share our data. And and we haven't rejoined after COVID. We haven't reinvigorated that system, but it's something we should really look at. I saw Trustee Schmidt. Thank you, Amy. And just to reiterate, so bookworms had a component that was very foundational and phonological. Mhmm. Witten Wisdom doesn't. Correct. And so it's in tandem with the end game with UFLY, which is University of Florida Literacy Institute,
and they're very I mean, they're valid, reliable. They're Yes. They've got great, inform data to prove their efficacy. Not all of the schools currently do uFLY. For those teachers that already do uFLY, this will be a little bit, I'd say, easier because they already know those routines, and now they're adding this. For the other teachers, I think, as you said, they're maybe using foundations and Haggerty, which do that type of thing. Mhmm. Over time, the hope is to try to get us to be consistent at every school with, %, you fly in this.
Because, and I don't know if all of you follow this. I do just because I have students that go to different elementaries in our district, and, you know, different schools are using different things because, first, when there was title money, we were like, oh, and we bought fund or foundations. Fundations. And maybe this grant money allowed us to buy this. So it was kinda like you were trying to be ahead of the curve. Yes. You can't just throw that out. And, I mean, you can at some point, but we have to ease into it because you're already asking teachers to learn this new Yes. They are both wonderful, foundational, skill building programs. So so no one is,
you know, getting a better program than another. But it is important that we have a common one so that teachers can collaborate and can. And parents that are watching this that this reading thing has been a real challenge for some of their children. They have to know that our district is really being very cutting edge on these changes that we're making and we've been making. And I'm just thrilled Thank you. And we are gonna be so ready by 2027 when this is required by law. Yes. We will. So I'm I'm just thrilled.
Thank you. We are as well. Trustee Wilkins? That was one of my questions. This legislation that's coming up Mhmm. This curriculum is in full compliance with that. We're not gonna have to do It is a science of reading alliance curriculum. No. That that's Yes. Indeed. So currently, the Michigan Department of Ed has put together, in the legislation, they require valid and reliable screening, and that has to be in by 2027. Mhmm. We will see a list come from MDE that's required. You have to go from the list. The list of curriculum materials is a list that if you wanna take advantage of
some of their, grant dollars, 30 5 m Correct. Yeah. You would have to choose from that. So right now, they've put together a team. The end, like, the deal, I think, was March 15 was the last day that companies could send their materials to this panel at the Michigan Department of Ed. And they're using, for people that follow this, the reading league tool. They're using ed reports. These are really good things that look at the criteria of materials, and then they have to actually give evidence. Once they come up with that list, I can tell you, I know you fly, and they're really looking at structured literacy in the early grades,
the k two space. And so you fly, which is what's gonna go in tandem with with, arts and letters. They'll be on that list because they're just excellent. And then Winton Wisdom is so great because when we look at our total student body, some kids catch right on to the foundational stuff. And, you know, we have parents saying, why don't you have a gifted program? Witten Wisdom will be able to fill in and make things rich and deep. So to me, it's just a great marriage. I agree completely. And I I just will add that the the 35 m, grant, the window for curriculum providers to apply for that to be on the list was
really short. Oh. It it was announced, and then they had a very short period of time to complete every single step and get it in. So it is by no means a complete list. And I can say in response to what you said, trustee Schmidt, about being positioned very well to be cutting edge and ahead, I am very glad we are in this spot because I would hate to be in a place where you have to make a rapid decision based on an incomplete list because the the providers could not submit on time to make the list. That doesn't mean those are the best programs.
Those are the people who made the cutoff and met the criteria. And we were able to do a very thoughtful year long, very nearly pilot to get to this decision. But I worry that others are gonna be forced to make a quick decision because of the grants, you know, in order to take advantage of those monies and grab one off the list that that maybe isn't a fit for their district, but but meets the criteria for the grant. It'll be good. So we'll see. Yeah. And you what's so great is that schools that wanna flip the script, they have they don't have time to do a pilot, and that really was crucial that you were a hella important.
I I can't I mean, I'm thinking, wow. Even if they come up with the list, which will have some really good programs on it. And these are the last single boss decisions, right, that we're making here. 10 orders. Try it. I mean, you've gotta hear it, what your teachers think. Right? So important. So I'm really, really proud of Kristen Smith and and the pilot itself and us getting to this point with teacher voices, you know, leading all of it. It's just really powerful. So thank you for letting me go on in the second briefing. Trustee Wilkins. I someone made a comment online about accessibility standards
and that Wit and Wisdom was partially conformant to the accessibility standards. I'd have to look at the specifics of that one. I will tell you that the second edition has a much richer set of components. One of them is called the prologue, which has been a full and complete addition to each and every unit, which involves the pre teaching and the, visuals and all the things that help build background where students may not have it in order to access the units. It's really designed for English learners,
but it's good for everybody. Okay. So that's a new component that wit and wisdom did not have. Okay. But I will definitely look back on that, and I'd be happy to send you, an email response to those. Great. And my last question was the learn books. Mhmm. We call them workbooks. Correct. How much does this does the cost of it assume how many of these learn books for per classroom? Is every kid Every kid Every kid their own and it's for each unit or
I mean, you gave us whatever was in the tote bag. That Correct. That's not like a whole year's curriculum. Right? No. That was just one sample units materials. Size. Is it assuming a certain classroom size? Like, how many of these learning books? Numbers we give them. Okay. So in the quotes, we've rounded up a little for each grade so that we have a bit of a surplus Okay. That will help us. And it also helps us when new students enroll who weren't there, you know, at the time we counted. So kids aren't gonna have to share these books. They it's their own books, and they get to write all of them. And they get to write in them and own them.
And, yeah, it's it's it's wonderful. Okay. One other thing that came up during first briefing was, making available some walk throughs for you to come and see some of this in action. Mhmm. So, we will have some dates that we'll share with superintendent parks, and we would welcome each and every one of you to come along and see it, ask questions of the teachers and the students, and just experience it. It's really joyful. Yeah. I just had a quick comment. I had a chance to go through, the bags that you let us borrow of materials of,
of the curriculum that you're proposing that we adopt. And I was really impressed with the writing samples, even, you know, the questions that were asked to the students. I mean, a lot of deep critical thinking involved. And, yeah, I'm really impressed with with what I saw that the books, the different, you know, materials. Yeah. It was it it was just enjoyable just to go through it. So Thank you. So thank you. I'm glad to hear that. Thank you. Alright. So no other questions? Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you, miss Linden.
Thank you. I believe that brings us down to the consent agenda. I would ask miss Olsenski if she would read through that, please. Approve annex a n dash two two zero three, elementary English language arts curriculum recommendation. Approve annex a n dash two two zero two, New Deacon Elementary trades contracts part two. Approve annex A n dash 2197. New Logan Elementary trades contracts part two. Approve the minutes of the March. Approve minutes of the 02/26/2025 closed session.
And approved donations, which we received an anonymous donation of a thousand dollars to the Anabra Open Theater Club. From Gretchen Michael and Aiden Wheeler, we received a BA soloist trumpet, which was donated to Forsyth Middle School. And from Jean Butman Ford, we received shop parts donated to the CTE auto program at Huron High School. Trustees, would anyone like anything removed on the consent agenda? Seeing none saying no hands, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?
So moved. Second. Moved by trustee Wilkerson, supported by trustee Schmidt. Any discussion? Saying none, this is. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. Trustee Wilkes? Yes. Trustee Basquiat? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. I believe that brings us down to number 10, board action. Adopt fiscal year twenty five general fund second budget amendment. Is there a motion? Motion. So moved. Moved by trustee Wilkerson, supported by trustee Wilks. Any discussion,
trustees? Saying none, this is also. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. Trustee Wilkes? Yes. Trustee Basquiat? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Motion carries. That brings it down to number 11, item for agenda plan. And trustees, are there any items for agenda plan? Trustee Baskett. Thank you, president Feaster. Trustees, I'm getting concerned regarding the use of our time and all of the topics that we need to address, in my humble opinion. I know for the bond work,
for example, there's some programmatic decisions that we have to make before we can get to phase three, and we haven't started even planning. I'm concerned that we have a planning committee and a performance committee, and I don't know of any meeting dates, and we need to work on that. One of the topics that we had mentioned earlier in addressing as part of our focus on student achievement is the absenteeism, for example. Getting Superintendent Parks has shared with us, at least some of us, you know, the the situation we have in our district.
I'm not sure if that was shared with the new trustees because, forgive me, I forgot the timeline, miss Parks, of when you shared that with us. But okay. So we need to brief the new ones, the new board members. And, again, that's a topic that breaches, you know, both committees in terms of, excuse me, performance and planning, but we can't teach students if we don't see the students in our buildings. So I'm concerned that we have spent a lot of time talking about buildings and old business, and the policy changes is part of old business,
and we have not yet addressed visibly to the public about the student achievement issues, so I'm very concerned about that. I know, Vice President Schmidt has been working on getting the superintendent evaluation scheduled, but we also have to get professional development, I think, scheduled. And I know I I received the email, and I appreciate that, and I'm just putting a bug in everybody's ear to look at their schedules and to get that done. But, again, someone brought up a comment today, and it was very legitimate. When are you gonna talk about the kids and the student achievement issues?
We spent a lot of time talking about buildings, and we spent a lot of phone time and email time about other things other than student achievement. So please, let's refocus ourselves on that. Last but not least is the budget development for this year. In the past, we've had open meetings with the community regarding our budget. If the finance team or whomever would just please advise us, you know, with, of course, leading being led by the superintendent, what that looks like,
what that could potentially look like, for this year. As as everyone knows, we have to pass a budget in June. It is all for practical purposes, April April again, and here we go. So at least get those scheduled. There's a lot of dates and time outside of the, the boardroom that board members will want to be participating in, so we need to get those dates scheduled, understanding the process so that we can choose to participate or not, but at least the community can see that we're doing some real visible work in
addition to buildings and talking about policy changes. So thank you. Ditto to you what your comments were. Thank you. If if I may Lisa Schmidt. As chair of performance, or let me talk about the retreat for a minute. So we're in the process of, nailing down a facilitator, and we wanna see their availability. I would like to hand a date out to this group. Just I wanna see what we've got with April 12. That's a Saturday. Can you if you know, is this are you able to look at your calendars? Is that an easy thing to do?
So Depends on what time. Well Like, ten It would be a more I don't know. Whatever what everybody can do on Saturday. If it's you could do mornings, we'd do a mornings if I can get everybody. But does that look like a day that people could give me at least half? I mean, I think we need to do a full day, actually. We've got a lot of work to do, and I think trying to do two separate days. So anybody absolutely can't do the twelfth? I can do the twelfth if it's, like, late, like, later morning. Until how late? I think, like, eleven five, ten to six.
Okay. Maybe ten. Yeah. 10:10 to five. Okay. Anybody else have any That works for me. That works for me. I wouldn't wanna go much later than five or even four. I Ten Okay. Ten to four? Ten to four, ten to five. Okay. Alright. But alright. So that might work. We're I mean, we're we're trying to work with the facilitator, and I I wanna meet with her prior to us landing that with at least one other board member, so we're sure that this is the person. She's coming highly recommended like the email I sent to you.
So okay. That's good. And I'll report to, to the committee. We've got, potential Monday dates, I think, for performance. We're just trying to make sure that, you know, what the focus is and the superintendent schedules and things like that. So those are underway. And I'm glad you brought those up, Trustee Baskett. One quick question on the superintendent update. Is there a certain time frame for the midyear update that we have to have that done by? Because I I believe,
if I'm remembering correctly, which I may not be, I'm I apologize. It was February, I believe. But I'll double check Okay. Because I don't wanna misspeak. But it's been the request to the superintendent that she would really appreciate that we would have our retreat first. So that's what we're trying to get back in. So this was in conversation with her, which she which she would like that to happen first. Okay? I don't know. Anything else, trustees? Trustee Wilkerson? Yeah. I would like to just add on the the planning committee. You know, as the chair of that, I did talk to, miss Parks this evening,
actually, to, let her know we're looking to schedule some meetings for that. So that will be in the works, and we'll start to talk about, you know, strategic planning and things of that nature. So looking forward to having those discussions as well. Anything else, trustees? Thank you. K. Please let me bring this down to items from the board. Do trustees have anything they would like to share? Same. Oh, Trustee Wilkes? Couple quick items. Again, just echoing the engagement with the AAAEA Elementary Caucus. That was a great discussion.
Trustee Wilkes, trustee Schmidt, and I had the opportunity to sit down with them, hear some of their concerns, and kind of begin the collaboration process. You know, we hope it's the first of many. We wanna hear from teachers. I know we're those of us that were intended or in attendance express the, you know, the desire to continue to meet with them and engage with teachers. And then I do also want to give a shout out to Josh Jocelyn Hunter Young and Jared, Aumann? Aumann. Aumann? Mhmm.
Aumann. Thank you. No problem. For that, they were working with a grant from MDE to bring in, information about different cultures as part of, you know, the the learning and expansion in the district. And, they brought in the Assiganak Singers, sort of a Native American group, and hosted them at the ARC. There was about 350 people in attendance. There was a traditional round dance that they they sang and, you know, a lot of people to participate in. And so that was a really great event last Saturday. So give a shout out to them for that.
Awesome. Professor Schmidt. Yes. You know, I would love to have, Jared, mister Almond come in and talk to us about this grant Well and all of them. It's interesting that you mentioned that because miss Linden and I have, been talking about this, and, they will be coming to one of the April meetings. Oh, that'd be good. Yeah. Yeah. I know I talked to him on the phone about it, and I was like, oh, the rest of the board has to hear this. Okay. Great. Unfortunately, we weren't aware of this event. No idea. Arc. We would have tried to make it. Wow. Been a nice Okay. You, Trustee Wilson. If there is nothing else, then I will entertain a oh,
no. Yes. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn by So moved. So moved. Moved by trustee Wilkes. Second. Supported by trustee Schmidt. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say no. The motion carries. And Meeting good at 11:29PM.