The non voting member at the table, Jazz Park, superintendent schools. Good evening. Thank you, president Feaster. And I believe that brings us down to our land acknowledgement statement. I will turn it over to trustee Wilkerson and ask him if he would not mind when he gets it up reading the land acknowledgement statement. I know. Alright. We acknowledge the Ann Arbor Public Schools. District occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Anishinabek, Three Fires Confederacy, the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi. The taking of this land was formalized in a process alien to native cultures by
the Treaty of Detroit in eighteen o seven. The Anambra Public Schools recognizes that many native peoples lived on this land at different times including the Fox, Sauk, Shawnee, Kickapoo, Miami, Muscatine, and Cherokee, many of whom were forcefully removed from their homelands. Acknowledgment by itself is a small gesture and does not exist in the past or solely in a historical context. Colonialism is a current ongoing process, and we understand our responsibility in educating students about our participation. We further recognize the ongoing relationship and dependence upon and respect for all living beings
of Earth, sky, and water. It is our responsibility to care for this land and we honor with our deepest gratitude the native people who have and will continue to steward it for generations. Thank you, Trustee Wilkerson. And I believe that brings us down to a few moment of silence. I believe the first moment of silence that we will start with will be in memory of Abdul Farris. And so we can press you once again anytime. Yep. Thank you, president Feaster. Abdul Farris was a tenth grader at Huron High School who also attended Pittsville Elementary School and Scarlet Middle School.
Abdul was very well liked by his fellow students. He was kind and caring and was always willing to help when needed. At this time, we will have a moment of silence. Thank you. The next, moment of silence that we'll have will be in memory of Shakila Richardson, and I'll turn it over to mister Parks to give us more background. Shakila Richardson was an eleventh grader at Pathways to Success academic campus who also attended Scarlet Middle School and Pioneer High School. Her absence is certainly being, also her her also, her absence is being felt across our community.
We'll have our moment of silence. Thank you. And our next moment of silence will be in memory of Tanya Israel. And I'll turn it over to superintendent Perks. Tanya Israel passed away on November 17 at the age of 89 and was a devoted educator, pioneer pioneering community leader, beloved wife, mother, and grandmother. Tanya's commitment to education extended far beyond the classroom. She was a dedicated public servant serving on the Ann Arbor School Board from 1974 to 1977, and again, 1984 to 1986.
She also served sixteen years on the Washtenaw County Intermediate School District Board of Education, including several years as president and vice president. Thank you. And I believe that our first moment of silence will be in memory of Sherry Sherry Sherry Sherry. And I'll turn it over to miss Janet Parks to speak about Sherry Sherry. Sari Sherry passed away on December 10, and she was a beloved wife of seven forty nine years, a mother of six, and grandmother of five. She graciously served as a member of the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education
from 1999 to 2002. We'll have our moment of silence for Sari Shifrin. Thank you. I believe that brings us down to the approval of the agenda. Trustees, you should have received the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? Trustee Baskett? President Feaster and colleagues, I'd like to add a, a break in the agenda somewhere. I know some of us have been sitting for a while and some of you have had to come in late after work. So, maybe around the 08:30, 09:00 period. No problem for me. I don't know where we'll follow the agenda, but I'll keep an eye for the time.
Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Any other changes to the agenda, trustees? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Second. By Trustee Wilkes, support by Trustee Schmidt. Any discussion? Saying none, Ms. Ozescu, please. Trustee Vazquez? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. I believe that brings it down to public commentary. The board would like to remind everyone the individuals who have signed up for public commentary will have their name called and are given an opportunity to speak.
Commenter will receive up to four minutes with a total of no more than 45 allowed for the public commentary period. When your name is called, please come forward and speak at the microphone. To help manage your time, your clock will be placed in on the screen in front of you. We would like to remind everyone that public comments generally pertain to Anapur Public School District matters. Comments about any individual or individuals are expressly prohibited. Also, please understand that the board excuse me, the board members do not respond to public comments, but we will listen carefully and we'll follow-up as appropriate. How many sign ups do we have for this evening,
Ms. Vasquez? We have nine signed up this evening. First is Megan Ewing. Next is Karen Mittel Andre. Good evening. My name is Karen Biddle, and I have two children in AAPS, one at Wines Elementary and one at Forsyth Middle School. I'm here to speak in support of all day phone free schools in AAPS. In early August, my middle school son came home and found me on the back deck where I was working. I asked him how his day had gone. He looked at me and said, mommy, why was there so much blood coming out of Charlie Kirk's neck when he was shot? I don't understand why there was so much blood gushing out.
I was surprised to hear this question out of my son because he does not have access to a device, like a smartphone, where he could have seen this video on his own. I was aware that the video of the shooting was making its rounds on the Internet, and I hadn't seen it. I would not subject myself to that, nor would I want my children to view a video of a live human death. I asked him where he had seen the video. He said, somebody showed it to me at school in between classes. My child is an even keeled child. It does not let much upset him. He's very rational, very cerebral, but the tone in his voice when he asked me about why there was so
much blood revealed that he was upset. So I did a few things. First, I explained to the best of my limited medical knowledge, not being a medical professional myself, why there was so much blood. I thought it had to do with the carotid artery. More importantly, I said, honey, I am so sorry that you saw this video. I haven't seen it, and I wouldn't have wanted you to see it. Do you want to talk about it? He shook his head and moved on to the next thing. As he walked away, I got my laptop right back out, logged into my personal Gmail account, and I emailed the principal at Forsyth Middle School about what had happened.
My son had also shared with me that this wasn't the only concern he had about kids and phones at school. Another concern he shared is that children now have video cameras in their pocket, and he knows that kids are taking videos of fights, physical fights that take place at schools like Forsyth. Those videos haven't made their way onto the Internet yet, but it's one click away. Perhaps most concerning and most saddening for me is the way his middle school lunchroom is a lot more quiet than a middle school lunchroom used to be, before kids gave up in person socializing in favor of huddling around smartphones.
When I emailed principal Newing at Forsyth, I did receive to her credit a very fast response from her and from vice principal face, sharing their heartfelt concern for my son and explaining the current cell phone policy. There is a classroom ban on phones that they report seems to be working for teachers. I am glad it's working for teachers. I don't think it's working for students, and students after all are the primary priority constituency of this district. I am one of a rapidly growing local and nationwide coalition of parents, teachers, and administrators who support all day phone free schools.
I support all day phone free schools for the good of the social development of children who now silently stare at phones during lunchtime, and for the good of students in the hallway who are seeing and sharing video content during the day that no child should have to see, And for the good of children who could find themselves and their mistakes, maybe in a physical altercation at risk of being put on the Internet where it could live forever. I think it's clear that a classroom ban on cell phones is not enough, and I am excited and optimistic about the leadership opportunity that AAPS has right now to make decisions in the best interest of students in implementing all day phone preschools.
Thank you. Tom, Neil Handelsman here. Good evening. Parent of kids who've been to Angel, Ann Arbor's team here on Green Hills. One going to here on next year. Wow. That was a really powerful, and disturbing story. I wonder how many other kids in our schools have had that experience. Yeah, I just wanted to say that I'm going to just go off script and just kind of speak to where I think we're at. So, we've been having this conversation for a couple months. A bunch of parents have been coming here. You have been very dutifully and respectfully listening to us. And I've had the privilege of meeting one on one with all of you.
And I really, really appreciate, you taking the time to take this seriously and, sharing your concerns and questions with me and, noticing that I'm writing them all down on my pad. And there's a reason why I write them out down on my pad is that we parents, this coalition that's growing and growing, and we've barely gotten started, quite frankly. We're here to challenge you, but we're also here to support you. We're here to challenge you because there are a lot of people who are really, really frustrated and angry, and you're not hearing from them yet, but you will. You will.
Mostly what we hear are concerns about the parents who will be upset if we have a stronger policy. That's most those are like that's like the hornet's nest everyone is afraid of. I don't know what metaphor you wanna use to describe what we're building here, maybe a bear. Maybe you have a choice between a hornet's nest and a bear and see which one, is gonna affect you the most. So I just wanna say that I really appreciate the time we've spent together, and, our our coalition, our team has been very diligent in getting answers to your questions. You may recall I sent you a couple weeks ago a video
of, an interview date we did with Yonder. Yonder makes the locked, pouches that the entire Los Angeles school district uses. So if any of us are wondering about a lot of the implementation challenges that would be involved in that, the Los Angeles school district is doing it. Yonder probably knows how to deal with every challenge that we have here, and that's why we did the recording. Did you see it? I know from at least one of you that you did and you said that answered all of my questions. Do you have more questions? Do you have more concerns? Whatever you've got on your minds,
we are here to listen and and we're here to help you get answers whether directly or indirectly. I had somebody email me, a parent yesterday who said, Amielle, I appreciate how collaborative you are. This is long past the time to be collaborative. It's time to, I forget the term he used, but it wasn't polite. And so I'm going to continue collaborating. I'm going to continue meeting with you. I'm going to continue listening to your concerns and our whole team will. And on the outside, part two of the strategies, we're gonna keep building this movement. So basically without lifting me lifting a finger,
we've got about 900 signatures on the petition. We haven't even started yet. We have not even started yet. I think I sent out an email to 20 people and then when people sign the petition, I send them an email that says, thank you. Please share with others. That's the strategy so far. We haven't started. That's nine almost 900 signatures. So, you can look for that coming in terms of, like, giving you a little healthy pressure on the outside. But another way to look at the healthy pressure is if you if you sign on, if you decide we've thought this through,
we've talked to our stakeholders, we want an all day policy with let's say yonder pouches, you have an entire constituency who has your back. So, yeah, we're gonna put pressure on you and we're also here to support you and if people come after you, we're gonna be right there saying, hey, We press for this and we support it. So thank you for your time tonight, and I look forward to, meeting with all of you after the holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Thank you. Anya Markovic. Good evening, members of the board, administrators, and community members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.
My name is Anya Makovic. I am an alumni of Pioneer High School, and I currently teach there. I am, I've been a teacher for about this is my eighth year teaching full time, and I am so incredibly happy to be back in the district where I grew up and learned from. I'm here to advocate for a clear, consistent, district wide phone free school policy, one where students give up access to phones during the school day entirely rather than placing the responsibility of enforcement on individual teachers. I've worked in several different school districts,
and I wanna begin by saying that Pioneer is by far the best district I've experienced when it comes to supporting teachers with phone enforcement. Providing hanging phone pockets in every classroom and having a consistent location for phones across the building is a strong step in the right direction, and I truly appreciate the support. However, even with that system in place, the reality is that phone rules still vary from t shirt to teacher. Some allow phones at certain times. Some some allow them in backpacks. Some don't. Students move from class to class all day,
and these different expectations have an impact. The inconsistency leads to conflict, arguments between students and teachers about rules, fairness, and enforcement. These conflicts take time, energy, and attention away from what teachers are actually here to do, teach and build relationships with students. Speaking personally, it has taken a lot of my teaching time to enforce the phone rule every day where I stand by my door and check every student's name with their phone slots. That's what it takes to keep the classroom truly phone free. But in many classrooms,
even with teachers doing their best, sometimes students win the fights, so they use their phones in class. And teachers do often prioritize the relationships that they have with the students over enforcing this phone rule that admittedly would is is super beneficial. In schools around the country that are phone free all day, none of this happens. If you don't have access to a phone, there's nothing to fight about. Another major issue occurs when students leave the classroom to use the restroom. When they have phones on them, those phones become an immediate distraction. They spend students spend more time in hallways or bathrooms scrolling,
texting, or watching videos. It is simply not possible for teachers to monitor phone use twenty four seven, especially outside the classroom. Even when phones are placed in designated pockets, students sneak them out and use them once they leave the room. That is not because students are bad or irresponsible. It's because they're teenagers. Their developmental stage is to test boundaries. Expecting perfect compliance requires an unreasonable amount of time and effort from teachers who already have full plates. Too much instructional time is lost to reminding, redirecting,
monitoring, and enforcing phone rules. Again, in schools that are phone free all day, none of this happens. There's also the issue of phones in pockets. Students will often say, I don't have a phone, but they do. And once it rings, it's an automatic, I'm no longer focused. I I wonder who that was from. Even with a phone in their backpack, if they have watches, then even those, you know, they automatically look at their notifications and then they wanna respond, and it creates this whole, but I'm texting my mom and all of this, all of these conflicts.
Having students give up access to their phones and smartwatches during the entire school day from first bell to last bell eliminates the issues altogether. It removes the temptation, reduces conflict, and restores learning time. It frees teachers like me from being phone police. Instead of spending energy enforcing rules, I could spend my time doing what matters most, which is building relationships with students, creating engaging lessons, and actually teaching. Thank you so much for your time. Kevin Conte. Good evening. Joint statement by the Ann Arbor Public Schools and the Ann Arbor Education Association.
The Ann Arbor Public Schools and the Ann Arbor Education Association recognize the needs for compensation to be competitive with relevant comparable districts. We acknowledge the importance of attracting and retaining high quality teachers to ensure that every child has access to the best possible education. In this spirit, we are committed to working collaboratively to enhance teacher wages and benefits, reflecting the value of their hard work and dedication. The district pledges to be fiscally responsible '25, we will start the work for the creation of this compensation model for the 02/2526
school year and beyond. Together, we will strive to ensure that Ann Arbor remains a place where great teachers are empowered to succeed and where students thrive. We believe that by working together, we can create sustainable and positive impact on the education system benefiting teachers, students, and our community as a whole. Signed on behalf of the Ann Arbor Public Schools Assistant Superintendent, 01/29/2025, and signed as a representative of the Ann Arbor Education Association, 01/29/2025.
I trust that we plan on showing our community that these words are still our truth. I sincerely hope that you all have a blessed season. Thank you. Sharon Sorkin. I know the trick. Hi, Trustee. It's nice to see you, Sharon Sorkin. As you know, I'm the cofounder of Focus on Education a two. We work a lot with you to collaborate. I'm so appreciative of the work that you guys all do and the collaboration that we've had. I'm excited for some of the things that we're working on now, literacy, and of course, phones. So I'm here to talk a little bit about phones. So much to my chagrin, my husband and I decided we would give our kids phones when they went to
middle school. If you'd ask me now, should I have done that? I kinda regret it. But here we are. We did put in as many restrictions and, you know, everything at home that we could. We have a contract. I'm a lawyer. So, you know, we wrote down a contract, and my kids thought it was really fun to sign it. We keep it in my office. And one of the things we agreed this was that when they get to school, it gets turned off and it goes in their lockers. And that's our family rule. And I'm actually really grateful that they go to Slauson and Slauson has the same rule. And so that means, you know, compliance is relatively easy.
I'm fairly certain that if I wasn't in a partnership with Slauson and they weren't, you know, implementing the same rule, that they would take their phones out as the other kids did. It's very appealing when you see another kid checking their phone. Even I, sometimes I'll be at restaurant. I see somebody check their phone and I check my phone because it's addictive. And so, really, I appreciate the work that Slauson is doing to partner with with the parents. And I know that day to day, it's not easy for the teachers, the administrators to make that happen. And I'm even hearing from from Slauson educators and administrators that while it's working,
there would be ways to make it better. And things like pouches or some way to make it effective so that they're not constantly, you know, redirecting the children when they pull it out in the hallway or carrying it in their backpack. So here's where I'm gonna get a little bit tough love on you. I was here in July, and I asked you to take this up then for this school year because I thought it was that important. And we didn't take it up in committee until last month. So I'm so grateful to Amiel's group for really, you know, like he said, healthy pressure. I'm grateful that that got us where we are today,
and I'm grateful that they've put forth a really compelling proposal that focus on education very much supports with the full day phone free with the under pouches. We think it's a great, you know, way to approach it. And, really, they're helping you do your job easier. They put something in front of you. You can evaluate it. You can decide. You can discuss back and forth. But this should be a no brainer. We're not talking about anything that's controversial. This is bipartisan, multiple states. Australia, the whole country just bans, you know, social media for kids.
Like, this is not really a debate we need to have. This isn't, should we do it? It's a, how do we do it? And as Anabra public schools, you know, I think we just saw a thing that said that student achievement is at the center of what you do. There's evidence that when phones are out of the way, student achievement goes up. And so I really feel like it's our job to give them every chance to succeed. So I also came here not for you to just hear what I what I have to say, but a couple of comments from the petition that is growing rapidly, but, I think it's 900 so far. So the theme of this these comments,
I'm probably not gonna get through all of them, is that when their smartphones are there, you don't see socializing. You see kids during lunch and passing periods sort of down at their phone not even talking to each other. So one person said, I was recently a high school student teacher and witnessed how much phones affect our kids' learning and mental health. Yes. That's at schools that have pockets. Students don't talk to each other as much between classes because they're preoccupied with checking phones. I witnessed students who needed to pay attention the most sneakily using phones in class. Just keeping them out of class is not enough.
Another person said oh, I've got four seconds. Sorry. I'll stop there then. We'll send you some other ones. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Edith Donald. Alright. Thank you guys so much. There's a fancy thing that she did. Oh, that's cool. Alright. Very helpful. Hi. I'm Edith Donald. I'm a teaching assistant at Ann Arbor Open, and I'm so happy to be here talking to you guys. And I want to share how proud I am to be a teaching assistant for the Ann Arbor schools. This is a school district that I grew up in,
that I was excited to have my children join. I have a student with an IEP, and so I understand from the outset how hard it is to help students to achieve who have a variety of needs. And I joined the district as a teaching assistant because I recognized the need and the need for additional support so that all students in my school, specifically, Ann Arbor open, could be supported. I'm proud of the work that we do,
and our school has been wonderful at supporting teaching assistants and making sure that we are included and a component of, the organization. I don't think that's the case in some other parts of the district. When I joined the teaching assistants for our, meetings at the beginning of the school year, there's just a lot of distress, upset. There was demoralized feelings on a variety of, subjects, and it's hard to see your coworkers so stressed.
Certainly, pay is a huge part of it. We are definitely not paid very much in comparison to other staff members that we work with. It's challenge. We have Chromebooks, which we didn't realize was gonna happen. I think that was really hard on TAs that had computers, before real computers. So I think there's many reasons why people feel the way they feel. And I just want to emphasize that, like, as a parent, I'm proud of what this school district does for students,
and I want to continue supporting that. And I hope that you recognize that TAs want to do the work, want to help students recognize how important it is. Our work helps the achievement of all students. You see it in your work when you're helping an individual who has additional needs. You're making sure that every other student in that class has more access and more support as well. So it's a big part of what we do. We we're working hard.
I'm worried about the plan for using EDGIS staff to support the TA work. I'm not sure that they're providing the additional training that was indicated in a recent m live article on the subject. I'm just not seeing it. And I am not trying to say that EduStaffers, people who are working from EduStaff are not doing the work, but I don't know if there's additional education that's happening there like they're supposed to. And so I'm hoping that you recognize that TAs who work for the district directly
are real team players and very willing to collaborate. We want to have more education. We want to do the work. So thank you so much for your time. Elijah Morrow? Hello, everyone. I'm a junior at Huron High School, and I'm here today on the topic of school start times. Since freshman year, I've had to wake up every day at 06:30 in the morning to catch the bus that comes at 07:15. Most people, including myself at the time, don't think twice about this. It's just one of the facts of everyday life, waking up early for school.
Complaining about this usually gets an eye roll from adults and teachers and administrators. If you're tired, then maybe you should have gone to bed earlier, is what they'll say. Get used to it. Stop being lazy. But if you do just five minutes of research, you'll learn that teen circadian rhythm is wired to make them sleep later than adults. I spoke with Kathy Goldstein, a sleep expert at U of M, who explained that the natural sleep time for teens is around twelve to 1AM, which positions the natural wake up time at about eight to 10AM. Teens often can't just go to bed earlier, and even if they do,
they'll still be tired in the morning. And as I did more research, I learned I'm not the only one that's realized how unreasonable the current system really is. The CDC and American Pediatrics Association both state that high school should have should start no earlier than 08:30, and yet AAPS high school start at eight. There have been numerous studies that have unanimously proved that pushing school start times later increases attendance, increases GPAs, increases graduation rates, and increases test scores. It decreases accidents on the road and has positive effects on mental health including depression
and suicide, which, as you all know, a student at Huron recently fell victim to. As I said, I'm not the only one. There are groups and campaigns nationwide to start school later. California and Florida have both recently made it illegal to start school earlier than 08:30AM, and there's pending legislation in 28 other states. Clearly, there's no debate that pushing school start times is somehow bad or not effective. That's not the question. The science and the research is crystal clear. The question is how are we going to get this accomplished and when? I'm a junior, so I don't have much time left in high school and I'll probably never get
to see the start times pushed. But that's not the point. The point is that every day of school that the start time stay the way they are. This system is forcing our teens to wake up hours earlier than they naturally should. It's making our kids perform worse in school or not even go to school. It's putting them at higher risk for depression, anxiety, and suicide. It's forcing these overtired teens who just learned how to drive onto dark wintery roads, which should be no surprise where they get into accidents. This system needs to change. That is clear to me. It's clear to students.
It's clear to teachers, to experts and researchers. It's even clear to lawmakers and politicians, and I hope it's clear to you. So the question becomes not should we change the system, but how do we change the system and what do we have the capacity to accomplish as a district. I've been emailing some administrators on the best way to evaluate this, but that process has been painfully slow. So though I have not gotten concrete answers on how the system works, I'm here today because I believe we need a public transparent evaluation of alternative scheduling options. That way, as a community, we can have informed discussion about what our options are,
what resources they will require, and the effects they will have. I look forward to working with you all as we move forward to get the system changed. Thank you. Kath Weider. Kath Weider. Hello. My name is Catherine Weider and thank you for hearing my remarks. I'm a parent of a teenage boy who's now a sophomore at Skyline High School. And I've been part of this process watching a collection of parents and teachers and experts come before you for the last, couple months here, producing mountains of evidence,
both personal, anecdotal, scientific, about the negative impacts of phones on our children. Everything from executive functioning to the rise of suicidality and depression and to its effects on our teachers' ability to effectively manage teaching in their classrooms. And, it just seems so utterly clear, that our children, our teachers, and our schools would be a 100% better without cell phones during school hours. All hours, not just forty, fifty minutes during class.
And all of the schools not just this school or that school all of the schools. So what's happening? Right? Why is this so hard? And I really feel like why should you take this on? Why should you have to deal with a problem that it seems to be parents caused? Right? Why shouldn't it be the parents who deal with this? And why should you take on the expense and the trouble and the time to figure this out and to impose a district wide policy on cell phones and even why should we expect you to withstand
the potentially harrowing and unpleasant blowback from parents who have gotten really used to contacting their children all throughout the day or parents who are in constant contact with the child for mental health reasons that are paradoxically being caused by cell phones. Safety concerns. So here we are. Yet here we're here. We're asking for you to act. Despite all of that, we're saying, we're a group of parents and teachers who have been really struggling alone in our homes and alone in the classrooms. And I wish I didn't have to ask you to do this.
I wish the US government would regulate it like Australia. And just say we didn't have to decide. You didn't have to decide. Government did. Or, like Texas, the state would just say you gotta do this. But you know what? It's not happening. So someone's gotta act. Someone's gotta do something about it. It's not happening. So here we are in a local level. We're saying, please, let's have political courage. Let's work as a community. Let's make this happen. Let's be leaders. And we can all pass the buck. I can pass the buck as a parent to you, the school board. Or the school board can say, you, principals, you deal with it on your own.
And then the principals can say, you teach shirts, you you're in your classroom, you deal with it. Or then the parent the principals will say, pass it back to us. It's the parents. So as parents, yeah, we need to organize ourselves, and we need we need to make parent packs and form reading groups and educate each other. And right now, we are realizing that we can do that, and we are also ready, and we're organizing, and we're ready to march, and we're advocate and educate and speak out to support you. If you are willing to be decisive and take action,
we want to work together with you and we will work on your behalf. I, as a parent, I need your help. Teachers need your help. Principles need your help. Seven hours every day without phones. Teachers get their classrooms back, the halls back, kids get their mental health break and their minds back. Parents have support for policies they may want to impose at home. We need to be a community. Together, we can do this. Thank you. That concludes public commentary.
We appreciate hearing from our community. The board would like to thank everyone who spoke and shared their comments tonight. Miss Parks, are there any points of clarification? Just a couple, regarding the cell phones that work continues to move through the committee process as was referenced and so we'll continue discussing that. I'm sure trustees will continue discussing that through the committee structure to bring some recommendations back to the full board. The school start time for a little bit of background there, around 2018, the district actually moved to high school start times after a year prior's worth of
work, with an advisory group of parents, students, experts, district staff, school based staff to explore the issue of high school start times. Before 2018, high school started significantly early earlier than they do right now. And pickups for students at high school were, like our our students said, quite early, beyond even our level of desire at at that time. So after a year's worth of work, for med advisory, high school start times were moved to the current time of of approximately 08:00,
which was about as late as we could get for a high school start time based on multiple factors including, the ripple down of, effect of impact to middle and elementary start start times, our transportation tiered structure, and the constraints with that. And so, I'm pleased that we were ahead of the curve, in in the adjustment to high school start time. And so we will get our our students, commenter some information on what that process entailed, the work that was done, and things that went into the decision so that there are some additional information that
he has, for his his, interest in the the high school start time. But, again, we did go through that process, and we implemented new high school start times in 2018 that were later, than they had previously been. And that change eliminated, student high school student pickups, for the most part before 07:00 in the morning. So we were proud to be able to do that, and make that change at the time. Thank you, superintendent Parks. Trustees, I'd like to call to your attention the committee's feedback for this meeting. And I believe that brings it down to number six,
item from review for review. I don't believe there's anything there. Miss O'Sensei? Okay. So that brings it down to number seven, reports of association. And I believe we have mister Klein here from AAAEA, to to speak and also miss Claire Alters is also here. Amended. Good evening, and happy holidays, trustees, superintendent Parks, Anheville Public Schools community, and all the talented and fierce AAAEA members and parapros and office professionals. My name is Fred Klein, and I am the president of the AAAEA,
which is the union that represents the professional instructional staff of the Antelope Public Schools. Tonight, I want to begin by recognizing AAEA member, Danielle Capitan, a German teacher at Pioneer and Huron High Schools and a member of the AAEA bargaining team. Danielle was recently honored with the Michigan World Language Association's Distinguished Service Award, a statewide recognition for her leadership, advocacy and unwavering commitment to world language education. Danielle's work goes far beyond teaching German.
She is a tireless advocate for language programs as essential, not optional components for a complete education. At a time when world language programs across Michigan are being cut or marginalized, Danielle has been outspoken about the academic, cultural, and economic value of multilingualism. She has lifted up Ann Arbor's multilingual history, emphasized the career and cognitive benefits of learning German, and fought to preserve access to language education for all students. Through innovative classroom practice and state level advocacy, such as the Invest in My Kids initiative,
Danielle exemplifies what it means to be an educator leader. She is precisely the kind of educator this district should be fighting to retain and support. Congratulations on your distinguished service award, Danielle. I also want to highlight a development elsewhere in Michigan that deserves this Board's attention. This month, the Grand Rapids Education Association reached a tentative two year contract agreement with the Grand Rapids Public Schools. That agreement represents an estimated 11.8% increase, totaling $10,400,000
in new investment in teachers. It also includes increased overage payments for oversized classes, expanded elementary planning time and provides additional stipends for their educators. Grand Rapids made a clear choice to support students by meaningfully investing in educators. Here in Ann Arbor, the AAEA and the district continued financial bargaining this past Monday. We engaged fully in the interest based bargaining or IBB process, adding options, developing straw designs, which are combinations of options that become sort of a proposal
and we worked in good faith to move toward agreement. Despite these efforts, we did not reach a tentative agreement. As a result, our contract will expire during winter break and educators will return in January without a contract. During bargaining, the district made the Board's position unmistakably clear, no raises without concessions. In plain terms, educators are being told that in order to receive any pay increase, they must surrender hard won contractual protections, protections secured through decades of advocacy,
sacrifice and struggle. That position is unacceptable. As an aside, I found it very interesting to read in MLive today that the district is not claiming a financial crisis, yet you are still seeking concessions from teachers in order to get any increases in compensation. You are asking outstanding educators like Danielle, like the award winning teachers repeatedly highlighted in my reports, and like every AAAEA member serving Ann Arbor students to weaken their own working conditions just to be paid fairly.
That is not collaboration, it is not partnership, it is coercion, and it is wrong. Let me be clear, this approach harms students. There's a fundamental truth that cannot be negotiated away. Contracts that are good for educators are good for students. For example, contractually protected planning time ensures thoughtful high quality instruction. Class size limits allow teachers to know their students and meet individual needs. Fair pay and benefits ensure educators are not forced to take second or third jobs just to survive.
Jobs that steal time from lesson planning, providing students feedback, and the countless unpaid hours teachers already devote to their students. AAEA members invest their love, energy, creativity and often their own money into creating classrooms where students feel safe, challenged and inspired. Yet, Anabur Public Schools has a long and troubling history of failing to invest adequately in us. For nearly two decades, educator compensation in Ann Arbor has not kept pace with the cost of living,
particularly in this community. As housing, childcare, healthcare and basic expenses have soared, educators have endured wage freezes, step freezes and permanent salary cuts. Between 2010 and 2014 alone, teachers absorbed more than 5% in permanent salary reductions, losses that were never fully restored. Just as salaries began to stabilize, additional freezes were imposed in twenty eighteen-twenty nineteen and in twenty nineteen-twenty, pushing educators even further behind. This shows a history of neglecting educators and failing to invest in those essential to
making this district successful. Recent improvements, step restoration, modest raises, one time payments are acknowledged, but they are insufficient. One time payments do not compound. They do not repair long term erosion. They do not allow educators to plan for their futures or afford to live in the community they serve. Over time this pattern has dramatically reduced purchasing power and undermine stability. This is not just an issue of fairness to educators, it is an issue of educational quality and district sustainability. Compensation affects who applies,
who stays, and who leaves. If the Anabra Public Schools wants to attract and retain excellent educators, salaries must become competitive with our comparable districts and after that keep pace with the cost of living. Continuing to lag behind is a deliberate choice and one that carries real consequences for students. We are asking this Board to acknowledge the full history of under compensation in this district and to commit to sustained structural salary increases, not temporary fixes or raises conditioned on concessions.
Our educators deserve stability. We deserve respect. We deserve compensation that reflects the critical role we play in our student success. In your budget process, you must start allocating money for educators before allocating it anywhere else. Start investing in us. The AAAA stands ready to continue bargaining in good faith. Invest in us. Thank you. Claire Arthurs, AAEAP. So when you're five two and you go after Fred Klein, it's okay. It's all good. It's all good.
Greetings. Board of trustees, superintendent parks, and the greater Ann Arbor community, thank you again for this opportunity to address you. First, I just wanna single out, we stand united with AEA as well as AEA OP. We all heard the same information about not being even considered for raises without giving up concessions. And we agree that it's just completely unacceptable and not sustainable. It's not a sustainable system, and it's not a way to teach students that you value them or students that you value their staff. I'm Claire Arthurs.
I have the honor of being the president of AEAP. Our union first of all, many of our members are here tonight, and I'm so grateful for them joining us. We are sort of like the Avengers. There's a lot of different roles within AEAP, and we all have different ways that we are superheroes for our students. AEAP is comprised of community assistants, career tech staff, theater technicians, register behavior technicians, preschool staff, head start teachers, before and after school care. And the majority of the individuals in AEAP are teaching assistants who work in different positions supporting special education supporting students who have special education goals.
Bargaining was this week, and we are we are discouraged. I don't have another way to say it. We are very discouraged. It is baffling to be told that our entry level is $22,000 and we won't be considered for raises. It is baffling to have that information mirroring knowing that non unionized staff, some of whom in this district have been given five, six, nineteen percent raises over the last two years during this period of financial instability. We are we are not even asking for that much.
So, it is frustrating and hard. Okay. I hope to draw the community's attention to a recent article called APS is reducing its teaching and overall staff. Here's why. My hope is that all of you have seen this article. If not, I'm happy to send you a copy. I don't I wouldn't wanna be in any of your positions. I wanna be clear. Many of you started at a time when we were already in the middle of a fiscal crisis. Thank you for stepping up and thank you for staying, working tireless tirelessly for very little money just for the greater good of students. I'm genuinely grateful for the steps the district is taking to correct and regain our
financial stability. I firmly applaud the district in its transparency to share both about staffing reductions and about staffing shortages, specifically in special education. The last information I had was that there were 46 open teaching assistant positions and approximately 25 open special education teacher positions. I thank you for looking to reduce your staffing through attrition rather than layoffs. I truly appreciate the humanity of this choice. I am concerned regarding the idea of reducing teaching assistance at all and paraprofessional paraeducators
of any kind. I'm concerning I'm concerned regarding your retention efforts for TAs. I appreciate the 15 people that you've interviewed on why they've stayed as well as the exit interviews of those who have left. I wanna shout out the many times that HR has been flexible outside of the contract. There are many things HR does that people don't realize they do, and we are grateful for that. We are grateful when members are allowed to use sick time for bereavement. We've had at least two TAs that have resigned and then later chosen to take their jobs back, and HR has been supportive in this process and flexible.
We're grateful for that. I receive about two or three texts a week from someone in AEAP. They are either telling me that they are quitting or retiring, or they are reporting some sort of latest, injury that they have sustained while at work. I don't have the numbers with me, but we've had over 30 incident reports filed for our unit in the last two months. I've had three people contact me asking if they know of any financial support for TAs. We, unlike the teachers, did ask for an extension of contract. So our members are safe with the contractual privileges,
and we thank the district for signing that with us. However, any notion of raises that members had sort of hoped was coming, they're now they're now struggling. They're already struggling. I've already regaled this board with the tales of how many of our members are on food stamps. They are living out of cars. They are looking for housing vouchers. The article that I heard, Specifically highlighted that the district is training EduStaff substitutes to be paraeducators. In many ways, this is truly fantastic news. All of our students and staff are safer with more in-depth training and supervision that
substitutes have. I admit the article was the first I'd heard of the program, and I'm not sure what the training is for these substitutes, but I would imagine it's a combination of the paraeducator boot camp and NVCI training. My reasoning is that during this summer's paraeducator boot camp, I was networking to drum up support for the education support bill of rights I mentioned to you guys last meeting. As I was doing so, I met at least six EduStaff subs who were working long term assignments in APS. I asked if they were interested in becoming a paraeducator. They quite literally laughed in my face, remarking,
I can't do that for that little money. I'm so sorry you have to. I don't know how you do it. Some of these in individuals shared that they have been subbing long term as a sub teaching assistant for three years. I have heard repeatedly that HR can't find anyone for AEAP positions. Recently, when this was mentioned, I shared that I was certain of several individuals who are working as long term substitute teaching assistants through EduStaff that they could offer these positions to. I was told those individuals might want flexibility and not wanna commit. After clarifying, I was speaking about individuals who show up at the same school every day for
the last one to three years. I was told the district can't folk can't force folks to work for us. I just want to be crystal clear so everyone knows. I recently found out in the State of Michigan, it's illegal to privatize any educational staff. Paraeducators are included as educational staff and therefore cannot be privatized. In continuing to post positions on EduStaff earning $200 a day if the individual agrees to work three to five more days per week, this is on the district's website posting for EduStaff, dollars 200 a day. The district is actively competing its EDUStaff subs against individuals who could potentially apply to
BTAs earning $17 an hour. TAs have direct supervision and a specific evaluation rubric that we are held to. We also are required to attend several professional learnings throughout the year. Many of us have built cumulative knowledge. Over the years that we've been here long enough, we're part of the district's year long anti discrimination initiative. We had virtual book clubs unpacking Cornelius Minor's We Got This during the pandemic. We completed seemingly endless modules models of ParaSMART, ParaSharp one two three, as well as this year, the modules for the Council of Exceptional Children.
We've also had many professional developments put on by the staff of OSE. We've been evaluated by our administrators. We work on goals for growth. We also have years of hands on experience in our roles and strong relationships with students, teachers, and administrators in our buildings. EduStaff subs have none of those things WISD pays $7 more per hour for entry level positions They have smaller class sizes and significantly stronger communication and safety procedures amongst their staff WISD and EDU staff are the two jobs I hear most often that
our unit leave for. The research has told us again and again that the best way to get through to a student is through relationship building. At the heart of education is understanding the humanity within each of our students. What might seem like an out of place outburst to some might actually be that student can't read at the same level as their peers. A student seeming to blow their top doesn't necessarily share outwardly what their parents are fighting at home or that they're hungry and they're struggling. When I think of our unit, the very first thing I think of are these relationships. With many of our assignments being one on one support following up through grade levels,
many of us have known entire classes for many years. We saw them grow as kindergartners. We saw them evolve. We're seeing them squeal over dates and all sorts of other craziness. There's a combination of us being paid so abysmally low as well as many individuals in education understandably wanting to have their summers off. And many of our most at risk and highest needs students still needing specialized services through the summer. The result is that a lot of the different summer school programs are sustained, almost not entirely, but sustained very strongly by AEAP members.
This means our staff is able to interact with students through all these different lenses. At Tappan, when we have fifth grade transition day, I can't under emphasize how thrilled fifth graders come running up to TAs who worked with them at the feeder elementary schools. It's like they saw a celebrity. They're so excited to see these individuals that they knew for four or five years. Grins from ear to ear. We are often the adult that students turn to when something is wrong. We are their confidants, their mentors, their educators, their cheerleaders. We are mandatory reporters who look out for them, and we are professionals who work cohesively with the rest of the education team to
challenge our students to become their best selves. It's because of these relationships that the district should want to invest in us. Some of the district schools I've, sorry. Some of the I I've heard concerns about, looking at the link and the causality between students who are disproportionately suspended, the students who have special needs, students who have IEPs. These are fires that many of us put out 12 times a day. And I wonder how many student suspensions don't happen because of our members being able to diffuse the situation quickly and calmly.
And usually, if we're doing our jobs, you don't really notice. I again urge the board to look at data for the students who are suspended and ask if they were suspended on days they were working with a full time member of AEAP or on a day they were working with an EduStaff substitute. We love our students. We love our coworkers. We love doing what we do. Many of us would be happy to do this for years to come if properly treated and compensated. Please help us continue to serve AAPS students with dignity and respect and the compassion that they deserve. It's a regular site to see a paraeducator, even one who is struggling to feed their own family and struggling to pay rent,
spend their own money out of their own pocket to buy a fidget for a student or to give a student some of their pencils or their snack from home. We give and we give selfless selflessly. We give at the cost of being stressed out and tired for our families that we come home to after working two to three jobs. We smile and we keep everybody swimming when there's a new substitute leading the classroom and they're not seeing a student with ADHD or emotional impairment for the amazing brilliant individual that they are. That student's just trying to learn, but they're having a little bit of trouble with disruption. Many of an art many in our unit have been inspired that they're parts of
different cohorts for the grow your own program. We have several individuals currently studying to be special education teachers or social workers. The district has an opportunity to grow their workforce. If you invest in your staff, your staff will repay you. If instead we routinely see promises broken and a lack of respect, it is easy to see why folks go to other districts. A lot of this is just depressing. I will I I want to share it all with you, but I also it depresses me as well. Some highlights, we're grateful for the collaborative council where we've been learning more about the incident reports,
and we've been having increased communication in that area as well as ways to increase safety. Anecdotally, since I saw you last, I've had many members report to me being threatened with scissors, having chairs thrown at them, being head bit head butt and bitten. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with the district to try and reduce these frequent instances of TAs injury injured on the job. We thank the many principals that take the time to urge their staff to fill out forms as well as to go to urgent care to get checked out. There's this book that came out. I wanted to say the nineties, but it's apparently 2000 something. The book was called They're Just Not That Into You.
The premise of the book, regardless of the words used, an act an individual's actions speak volumes over pure lip service. If those actions repeatedly tell you that someone is not that into you, listen to those actions over overtures. When veteran TAs ask not to be transferred and are anyways, despite your apparent small army of substitutes, you aren't that into us. When veteran TAs ask to remain at their school to work part time to finish their internship and you deny the request because part time doesn't work for you, you just aren't that into us.
When veteran TAs ask to remain at their school to work until eight to be on leave through April and you instead force them to stay on unpaid leave till June, you aren't that into us. When TAs are using their bodies to physically use their bodies to support another student's body as they walk, are toileted, and are provided with food and medication through GI tubes, but you tell us that they do not qualify for additional pay as a medical TA, you just aren't that into us. When TAs have family emergencies and need to miss work and the response is not that one of grace, but rather of discipline,
you just aren't that into us. When we tell you we want safer working conditions and better communication and the response is that these systems are already in place, you just aren't that into us. When you tell us that you won't give us raises without concessions on a contract that already offers us so very little, you just aren't that into us. But you should be because you know who is? The students. Our students look to us as the trusted adult to help them with assignments, band aids, fidgets, life crises, and many other things. And we show up for them. We keep showing up for them.
Please help us keep showing up to them. Because so many members are here, I wanna close with the last two paragraphs of this first speech that I gave you so that everybody has it in their minds. Being the president of the union, I now see the numbers that I've been feeling in my gut for seven years. We see a sharp drop off in staffing immediately following the choice to not continue the higher pay rate for one on one TAs and self contained TAs. We lost over one third of those individuals that has now grown to two thirds of those individuals. You see another sharp decline right after health care costs. We've gone down approximately 80 people from two years ago after holding steady at around
400 for a very long time. We were recently told that 400 may have been too high and that there were possibly too many TAs in the past. That's almost a fourth of our unit. Staff members are expressing being stretched too thin. When you have a case management, when you have a class that you're supporting two students, you can give those students the caseload so high due to the combined push in model as well as the lack of TAs, we are often with about six to 10 students in our care who we then all leave as a small group setting, which is the opposite of inclusivity. It is the opposite of least restrictive environment.
But we sort of have to do it because there's so many students that need attention. The significant thing is we come back to work every day. We do this because we love helping our students. We love our jobs most of the time. We love the students at APS and we love the staff that we get to work with. Our members show up every day and they do a phenomenal job at what they do. I'm grateful for the communications that have already started, and I hope that they continue to improve. It's it's a moment where we can make a choice. We can make a choice of as to what collaboration means. Right now, it's starting to feel like collaboration means that we collaborate,
and we hear a lot of no. I would love to collaborate with the district. That would be amazing. We know that every child deserves a champion and often AEP members are your child's champion. Please, as you go into your winter break and the board as you go into your retreat, please keep us in mind. Please keep teachers and OP staff in your mind as we think about the idea of not allowing any raises without concessions. I thank you for your time. I hope you have a prosperous New Year. I believe miss Parks have a clarification. Yeah. I I I typically don't, after reports, but I do think it's important to to,
clarify a a couple of things. First of all, we we absolutely care deeply about our educators, our teachers, our leaders, our staff, and do not take them for granted. We have been very, open about wanting to ensure that we can provide our staff with, the the adequate proper compensation. And we have to do that, though, while also ensuring that the district continues the process of stabilizing its financial health. From the report, I do wanna just clarify, the district central leadership team has not, sustained those raises that were referenced.
The staff do not take, steps, or have not taken steps in the past couple of years. And, also, they do not get raises when our educators and leaders do not get raises. And when they do get raises, all staff, the central leadership team, only gets the equivalent raise that our educators do. They don't get a higher percentage of a raise. So I do feel like it is important to clarify that detail. Thank you, President Feaster. Thank you, Ms. Parks. I believe that brings us down to number eight, community group reports. Ms. Ozinski, how many groups do we have signed up for this evening? We have no group signed up this evening.
K. We can try to get through the board committee reports. I think we could take a break after that, as we discussed. So we're we're at board committee reports, and I will turn it over to Trustee Basquiat for the Bond Committee of the Whole Report. Thank you, President Feaster. The Bond Committee met, this afternoon. You will see the items, under first briefing that the Committee reviewed at that time. Yeah. The executive committee also met, briefly just to set the agenda for this meeting and discuss the agenda for the next meeting. That's essentially all that we cover.
Any questions about the executive committee's meeting? Then I believe I'll turn over to trustee Wilkerson for the finance committee. The finance committee met on Monday, December 15 at 9AM. We covered a number of topics that will come before the board tonight. We'll look at budget amendments and where the district currently stands with finances. Yeah. I know that the governance committee did meet. I don't believe I was present at that meeting. I don't know if trustee Vasquez or Wilkerson have anything to add from the governance
committee meeting. Sure. I may. So the governance committee did meet, and, we reviewed policy that you will see today for first briefing. And I believe that brings us down to the performance committee. Yeah. I've been a little out of out of town here for a while. I believe I don't know the date that we met, but I know the information we covered was supposed to be covered at our last board meeting, so it's been a while. It's the student enrollment, I believe, information. That's correct. Is that right? Sorry. Enrollment. Enrollment.
That's right. And staffing. Yes. Staffing report. Staffing report. I have my fellow committee members, my wingman. Thank you. I believe that brings it down through all the, board committee reports. I think we can take a brief, ten minute recess here, per our discussion. Let's come back at 08:55. We are adjourned. That adjourned. Great. I recall this meeting at 09:02PM. I believe we are at number 10, the information section, and I will turn it over to superintendent Park for the superintendent update. Thank you, president Feaster.
Just a few updates this, evening. Rick and Ed received several honors in the Ann Arbor Family Press' annual family favorites community vote. What's even better is that we weren't aware of the voting that the voting was happening, so this happened without ReckonHead staff voting and tell or telling others to vote for them. Alright. The enrichment activities category, took second place and place for crafting. And in the get active category, ReckonEd got first place in the soccer program, second place in the summer day camp, and also second place in sports camp.
So congratulations to ReckonEd for those honors. Pioneer High School advanced placement English and acting instructor, Sean Sabo, has received a state level excellence in education award for work related to developing students' writing and critical thinking skills. The excellence in education award awards were established in 2014 by the Michigan Lottery and recognize outstanding public school educators for excellence, dedication, inspiration, leadership, and effectiveness in advancing student achievement. Mister Sabo was recognized for his ability to bring literature to life and teach acting
by transforming real stories and experiences into productions. He was nominated by a parent citing his commitment to provide an extensive feedback on student work. As part of the award award, mister Sabo will receive a $2,000 cash prize and be featured in news segments across the state. So congratulations to Sean Sabo on the excellence in education award. Right. Good job. Community High School has been a loyal contributor to the Food Gatherer's food bank, consistently raising more annual funds than any other school in the Ann Arbor Public Schools.
Each fall, the students and staff launch a friendly competition with every forum setting individual goals and racing to raise money in creative ways. This year, they collected over $127,000, the most money that community high school students and staff have ever managed to raise, which beats their 2024 record setting performance by over $40,000. Every dollar raise equates to two meals. So that's nearly 250,000 meals. Wow. This is a great example of the power of our Ann Arbor Public School students
and staff and showcases how much we are able to do for the community when we all work together. Great. Good job. Alright. Good job. And lastly, as we head into winter break and prepare to end 2025, it's a moment to acknowledge and thank all of you for your hard work, commitment, and creativity that you each bring to our schools every day to make them vibrant vibrant places to learn and grow. I'm genuinely excited for the new year ahead, and we will continue to learn and grow and achieve great things together. And I wish everyone a restful and joy filled winter break.
Thank you very much, superintendent Parks. I believe that brings us down to fiscal year twenty six, first general fund budget amendment. Thank you. As mister Zaskey makes his way to the microphone and adjust that podium there, we are bringing forward this evening, a a planned budget amendment, which is typical once we have our accurate student count numbers and have had a chance to analyze the impact of the state aid k a 12 education budget that we receive each school year. Our recently audited, released audit confirmed that our fund balance at the end of the twenty twenty four,
twenty five fiscal year stood at 7.16%. This budget amendment reflects the district's fund balance as projected when the 2526 budget was publicly presented back in June 2025. There you will see that there's no significant variation from what was presented at that time. Although we do continue to remain in a period of careful rebuilding after the significant budget challenges we have had the past couple of years. So as the district continues to manage the effects of the unusually delayed state budget
this year, that was due June 30, but it was not finalized until October 7. We've been able to now, analyze that as well as get our final student enrollment counts and special education funding determinations. Therefore, we are bringing this update forward now that we have a more complete picture in place. And so at this time, I will turn it over to mister Zast. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Sure if we're gonna so we can actually start on, slide three since superintendent did a great job with slide one already.
So it's great. Sorry. No, that's fine. That's perfect. Okay. So going on to slide three here. So, I wanted to also just reiterate our when we do bring the budget to you in June, that is our best guess at the moment in time that we have the information that we have at that time. So as updated information comes to us, which is about this time of year. Last year I looked, we did the first budget amendment December 18 last year. So we're doing it a day earlier this year. So with that we wanted to bring this items to your attention and go through our new budget.
So, our revenue, we anticipate it to decrease from $314,000,000 to around $3.00 $7,000,000 and our expenses that go from 314,000,000 down to about 311. So as you can see on the one line there, it does that superintendent parks, did state our audit came in about $3,600,000 better than we had anticipated. But the bottom percentages as you can see our original budget we had anticipated about an ending fund balance of about 5.8% and we are anticipating now about a 5.72%
fund balance. So, our our major things that came through on our revenue assumptions were, in total for state revenue, about a $2,300,000 increase. That was, based mainly on, a foundation allowance increase of in our original budget, we had budgeted a $400 per pupil increase. The state budget came in at $442 we did get an increase in our at risk funding allocation. And the next two items are related to MPSR's healthcare offset. We did receive about $2,000,000
more in twenty seven L four. MPSR's healthcare offset but we did lose about 1.6 in January one, MIPSR's cost offset. Our federal grants, we are still we do anticipate with our our next amendment, we will have more information on those. We are still, with our consolidated app and our IDA grants. This is where we are at right now with the information we have, where our allocations are. As you know, with the federal government, there are still allocation and unstable funding.
So this is where we're at now. We do anticipate that to change with our next budget amendment. And then that brings us down to our last one, our, original budget. We had anticipated more in our, act 18 revenue from the ISD of about $7,700,000 So go to the next slide. So this is just we the previous slide was, this kinda shows in the numbers where we're at. So as we talked about our, original budget revenue, we thought was gonna be about 314,000,000, with all the, items that we know as of today,
we think it's gonna be more around $307,000,000 so a decrease of about $7,000,000 Alright. So the other one is for our expenditures. Same thing on the expenditure side. We go through and we try and anticipate where, all of our expenses are gonna be. And as we new information comes to us, we do go through and amend the budget. So, we are anticipating a decrease of about $2,800,000 in expenses, which is a good thing. That's mainly made up of, obviously revised since the beginning of school year,
our wage and benefits based on, where our true attrition is and, obviously, we have updated retirement rates that we put in there as well. That represents about 5,900,000.0 savings. But then in our other line items, as you can see there, we do have a $2,100,000 electric bus grant. We do anticipate, I believe, it's receiving two electric buses this year, and so that's why that expense is in there. And then, obviously, we put in also about a million dollars more in some, additional services just where trends are going right now with custodial coaches,
technology agreements, utilities. Slide. So this is just the, functional where it where it lands on the actual budget line items. And if you look there, the total expenses at the bottom, as we talked about, was about 314,000,000 in the original budget, and we're proposing an amended budget of $311,000,000. So in that, our actual audit fund balance, as we discussed, was about $3,600,000 higher when Plan Maran came in to came to present that. Our estimated revenue is less expenses resolved in a decrease of fund balance of about
$3,800,000. Our estimated fund balance is going to be around 5.79 of revenue and 5.72 of expenditures. And the couple of data points that we provide in a lot of the the budget presentations that we've done in the past is our projecting on ending fund balance now is projecting now it's about a hun 1,000,077 per student whereas the original budget budget was $1,111 and our projected ending fund balance would cover about fifteen days,
which is very similar to our original budget of fifteen days. Could I just I I just wanna make sure if you misspoke there or I didn't understand. The fourth bullet projected ending fund balance is 1077%, right? You said million. You did not Did not mean million, I'm sorry. It's getting late at night. Sorry about that. Dollars $10.77. Thank you for the clarification. Okay. Alright. Question, trustees? Trustee Wilks? Yeah. If we could go back to slide number four and I know we talked about
this a little bit in finance committee, but the $7,100,000 decrease in Act 18 revenue from WISD, can you expound on that a little bit more? What exactly Yeah. Is that? And it looks like a hefty sum, and I think superintendent Park said this was, like, roughly 2% of the overall operating the overall revenue. Correct. So, that is the special ed revenue that we do receive from the WISD. That is, some of that is based on our expenses from a year ago.
So it's a trailing expenses. So we had less expenses last year than we had two years ago. So that reduces the amount that we're gonna get from them. And on top of that, it is also part of it is an allocated method. So it's the county wide, each school district, Ypsilanti, Desk Dexter, Chelsea. Everyone submits their forty ninety six expenses, which is your special ed expenses. Those are due by September 30 each year. And then the ISD, figures out how much is in their budget to disperse the districts,
and then it is done on an allocated basis as well. So if we spent less and others spent more, our allocation percentage can drop. So at the time, that was our best guess estimate that we had used based on prior trends of the last, five years. We had anticipated a small increase of about 1.6 from where we had landed at the end of last year, which was in our audit. It was about 44,000,000, so we had anticipated about 45,000,000. Yeah. And this year, when we got our final allocation, it's gonna be about 38,000,000
is what's causing that decrease. Alright. Thank you for explaining that because I think it it a lot of people don't understand that and it's school finances are very complex. And even after explaining it, I'm sure some folks are probably still scratching their heads a little bit. But, but thank you for sharing that and for clarifying. Trust me, Mohammed. So just to and thank you for clarifying that, because I had a similar question. So what is the best strategy? Do you just, like, for the next budget, do we just estimate less? Because then you at least I don't know.
I mean, what is the best strategy? Because we estimated more Yeah. And then we ended up getting significant. I mean, it's not a significant, but it's still $7,000,000. I'll start and you correct what I get get incorrect. So a a part of it is making sure that we are factoring in the reduced any reduced expenses that we have for special education staffing and for special education services. The part that is difficult to estimate is what other districts will spend.
That's always going to be hard to know and have a very finite, number for this particular budget assumption because what we get is based on what every county or I'm sorry, every district spends and vice versa. And so that's the part that's hard to know. But the part that we we do know is what our expenses are, during the school year. Have they gone up or gone down and factoring that into, the the budgeting process that that following spring.
Okay. So you're really trying to predict a trend a year in advance? Yes. And predict a trend not just for us, but the other districts in the county also. Because if you spend less, you You get Yep. Yep. You get less. But if you sent spend over what if you spend over the budget? What happens? Mister Vasquez So it like I said, it is a trailing year. So if this year, we spend more than we we spent last year, then we'll see that about this time next year when we're talking about the budget, ma'am. The other thing I'll say is as for your original question, we are consistently looking at all of our assumption methods.
Because I know even if we look at last year, a year ago, we had anticipated, $250 increase in per people. It came back to zero. So we had adjusted. I was taking a look at that earlier today. I think we had, like, a $7,000,000 decrease in state aid last year. Point $7,000,000 last year that we didn't receive from that, per pupil foundation allowance that we didn't receive. So we did it was the same thing last year that we did, just a different funding source. It's it's so it's common. It's continual to keep looking at our assumption methods.
The other thing I will point out is I feel like this year especially, even the state aid piece of it got later and later and later was October. It wasn't signed until October 7. So I think the first budget presentation we did, we, I think, probably did it early June, which means late May, really trying to figure out the calculations. And, obviously, by June 25, that's already been through twice, I believe. So we're just trying to use our best guess, our educated guess, and So do we sorry. One more thought. Yeah. Do we just assume that we're gonna lose this much every,
like It's it it will vary based yeah. It'll vary based on, our staff, our special education staff Yeah. As well as the number of students who have IEPs in addition to, the amount of, of services those students who have IEPs received and the cost of those services. So it's gonna fluctuate from year to year, as it has, you know, in in the past years that we've been trending this this this data. Yeah.
They're complex thing. I'll add to that. One last thing is that because it is a trailing year, like like I said, if we whatever we spend this year, it'll go into next year's budget. So on top of everything else, the special ed is because everything's not due to the county to compile all their data until September 30. So even at that point, we're talking four or five months past when we've already tried to project out where the budget's gonna be for next year. Russell Lopersmith? Yeah. So on that topic,
I know in the, finance committee meeting for the benefit of the rest of the trustees, we did look at this number quite heavily and asked for some increased due diligence to determine the root cause of that decrease. I I assume we might still be in progress Yes. With, you know, considering Yeah. Been pretty tied up. Yep. One other thing I'll add is we are also still looking at the percentage. I know I came up in the finance committee trying to figure out the full percentage of I know in the past there's been 96%. There's been a number that's been out there about how much has been how much
we get reimbursed on special ed. So we're still in the evaluation process of that trying to get data in the last couple years. They even help us with another data point to project out in at this point, what, five months from now, trying to project for next year what it looks like. Right. And then and then another topic we covered as well as compensatory services, Sparks, if you want to touch on that. So cons compensatory services are reimbursable also. So if we don't, if we have a staffing shortage, for example, in social workers and students don't some students don't receive their social work service and
those compensatory services roll into the next year, past September 30, that creates an additional layer of trying to estimate kind of those costs because the services that we provide, for the prior school year happened after the reporting date. And so we still have to try to figure out how to factor in those, compensatory service the cost of those compensatory services too that may be reimbursable. So it's it's a it's a tricky formula to figure out. Mhmm. But we again, we're reviewing all of the data points that mister Zaske,
referenced there and really trying to come up with a a bit tighter mechanism if we can for for being a little bit more precise there. Again, knowing that, we'll get to a point where we don't we can't estimate because, again, it will be contingent upon what other some of the other the districts in the county do also. Right. So so I think, you know, what what we're looking at is this is there just a shift in timing? So our expenses lower last year will be actually higher this year because,
you know, we're making up for some of those services. You know, we always get compensated a year in arrears for the services provided last year. So there there's a lot of factors So that go into it. Well, in short, school funding is ridiculous. Yes. It is so 100%. And we have to have some wiggle room because our budget is going to jump around depending on the reimbursements and whatnot. So that's why our board policy fund balance is important. So Well, if I may This is the best way to Sorry. I mean,
and we have to be careful too in how we estimate these numbers because unlike our personal finance where we may say, well, let's anticipate getting less next year, We are very, with a visual, transparent in that if we underestimate our revenue, then we're accused of hiring hiding or misleading anything. So it's it's always a guessing game. And, you know, remember, school finance is not like your own checkbook at home. We have so little control, and yet we have a lot of responsibilities.
And the other piece that I I don't think, mister that I mentioned was every year will depend on the amount that the county has to disperse anyway. Right? So they have their finite amount for all of the districts, and that amount changes from year to year two. So that will be another factor. That's another factor to your to your question, trustee Mohammed, to take into account when building out this this particular, budget assumption. Right. Yeah. Could you pull up slide four again?
So I just want to reiterate, as we hear statements about, look, we got this increase per pupil funding allowance increase. The decreases are wiping that out. So, you know, you can't it's disingenuous to speak and or to tell parents in our community or who whoever's passing this information to just take one piece of this and say, yeah. But you got this funding, increase with this per pupil. It's just disingenuous all the way. You've gotta look at the whole picture. So, I just hope that our community will watch this presentation
and we'll communicate to them so they can see what's going on in the total. That's the best tip. And I hope the community watches every month as we go through our budgets. I mean, I I when the call for transparency, I'm not quite sure what more we can do. But I I'm not sure if you're prepared or the superintendent's prepared to talk about this incorrect information, quote, unquote, information, going out there about a $5,000,000 deficit. Can anyone help me understand or us understand where this number could possibly have come
from? I don't see that anywhere. You're referencing the 600 emails we just received this evening? Email campaign. Yes. Okay. It's just I think it was 700. 700 emails we just received 700. Since 04:00 today. Alright. Since 04:00. It was since six, I think. 06:00. Okay. Seriously, where where is this? I I I I don't know. But what I can what I can say is that despite, you know, some of the rhetoric that you mentioned, to the contrary to that, This this December amendment here does not constitute, any an additional crisis on top of,
you know, the careful rebuilding that we are already doing from the financial, crunch that we experienced a couple of years ago. This budget amendment here reflects a fund balance that's point 18% less than what we projected in June in public publicly presented. Our fund balance is a we it's often referred to as a rainy day fund that helps the district adjust to the fluctuations in revenues and expenditures. Trustee Baskett, you referenced, you know, being more transparent every year or I'm sorry.
Every month, we do the monthly monitoring report, and we have a slide in there that shows the fluctuation in fund balance from month to month. As an example, there are some months where there are three payer pay periods instead of two, and that increases expenditures for those months and the fund balance goes down. Other months, there are, an there's an influx of local tax collections, and that increases our revenue, and the fund balance on that chart goes up for that month. So, up and down for the fund balance is typical.
And having the the money in there to be able to cover those fluctuations is really what our goal is. And so when we hear about, things being said, social media and kind of calls to action around a a crisis or deficit, it that is not accurate for what is what is occurring here. Again, last year, when we did not receive per pupil funding to the tune of $7,700,000, a call to action to legislators for that would have would have been appreciated.
Right? That was, a failure to students, at that particular time. And we brought forward an amendment that, allow for us to be able to, make the adjustments needed and the amendment needed to cover, that failure to students that we did not receive with that per pupil foundation allowance last school year. So it happens. It, the fluctuations happen. That is why it is important that we have a fund balance, number one, that's above the state minimum of 5%, but also stays in line with the board policy,
which for us this year is 8%. Trustee Wilkerson has something, then trustee Wilks. Yeah. Can we bring the slides back up and go to slide three real quick? I just want to reiterate a couple of things. If we remember back two years ago, we were at a fund balance of 2.2%. And since then in the last year, the districts implemented additional financial controls over budgeting. We basically updated the policy to at least do three amendments per year. So one in the fall, once the state budget comes out, our student count is set,
one in the spring, and then, of course, one at year end. So, you know, we are putting a lot of due diligence into this process. The finance team is looking at this constantly and trying to reassess assumptions. You know, we've been very transparent as as indicated with our monthly reporting. And, you know, we truly take governance of the district extremely important, as a top priority of this board as well. But if you look back at the bottom of this slide, you know, if we look at our projections from June when we're basically making the best educated
guess we can, and now we look at this amendment that's being brought forward, if you compare the variance in revenues, we have a 0.08 difference from where we projected in June. Now there there was pluses and minuses that are always going to occur based on those educated guess guesses. But to come in that close to where we projected, you know, five months ago is extremely, impressive. That is. So I think that's important to note. Mhmm. I think it's also important to note that the state average fund balance is 22%,
and we are nowhere close to that type of situation at this point. And we're nowhere close to the recommended days of operation for your rainy day fund or your fund balance. Right? We've we at this board table, we've heard forty five days. We're at fifteen. So if there's a cash flow issue, we need those funds to be able to pay the you know, continue to make our payroll, use those funds on a monthly basis without having to borrow cash to make up for it. So I think that's in it's extremely important to recognize that and call up the
finance team for that as well. And then I do wanna mention that we were taken off the state. You wanna cover that real quick? Yeah. No. I I was gonna close with that if that's okay. Yeah. We can So, you know, we're proud to to share, that just a couple of weeks ago, early in early December, the Michigan Department of Treasury released, Ann Arbor Public Schools from its early warning potential financial distress reporting process earlier than anticipated. This this decision followed the Michigan Department of Treasury's comprehensive review of the district's budget,
our budgetary assumptions as we're talking about now, our audit, our enrollment, and our multiyear financial trends. The district, for the past year and a half has been required to some month submit monthly financial reports after being placed on the early warning list, in the 2023 when our fund balance as was referenced fell, to near 2%. So treasury cited as reasons for our removal from the reporting process improved fiscal responsibility, avoidance of deficit status,
and strengthen financial controls as reasons, that they, again, released us from that monthly financial oversight. However, they do also indicate that they will continue to monitor the district to ensure that we do not fall back into that prior status. And so, again, continuing to do our due diligence to ensure that as difficult as the decisions are to, be financially responsible, we do have to continue to to do that because we cannot go back. So we're proud to be off the list,
in particular earlier than anticipated, But we have, done this through some very difficult decision making that we have had to do over the past couple of years and, honestly, continued decision difficult decision making that we will have to do going forward, to ensure that we are on a long term trajectory for financial health and not just a a temporary one. Thank you, superintendent. I do have one other thing that I wanna mention. Sorry. If we can bring the slides back up, go to slide six real really quick.
Slide six. And and I wanna call this out because I wanted to be very clear for the public. A $5,900,000 decrease in wages is not because we cut wages. It's because of staff and things that have happened through attrition. So our total cost may have went down by 5,900,000.0, but this year, we continue to provide steps to our educators. And I think it's also important to remember and recognize that on November 19 when
we represented the audit, 96% of our costs from the budget go directly to staff and salaries. Yeah. So, you know, there there's a lot of money, you know, all all of the money basically that we bring in the door is pretty much allocated staff and salaries, and I think that's important to a lot as well. If you're clarifying steps, what are steps and how much is it? That's a great that's a great question. So, all of our employee groups, except for the central office staff, receive steps annually.
And, this year, the steps were about to the tune of about $5,000,000, and that's recurring. So because steps, are required to occur every year, so it's $5,000,000 recurring, for our employee groups. Again, all except for the central office staff who do not, they have not taken steps in the past couple of years And super out of consideration for the the district's budget. I'm sorry, superintendent. There are still some laypeople out there. I was one of them that didn't know what his step was. Mhmm. This is an increase in pay. In pay. Yes. Not due to merit.
Correct. Not due to anything but Correct. Being here. That's correct. Just being in the district. Some way. Being here. And central administration, they do not get steps. Correct. So while the rest of the bargaining groups that are set up in a, you know, the step diagram Yeah. They move. Not everybody does. I mean, central men doesn't. So salary. Yeah. But you do get an increase. By darn, it's maybe not big as as big as we would like Yeah. Or meeting the cost of living, but neither are the monies that we're getting from the state.
That's the thing we're running into. Right. Oh, right. That's the wall that we're hitting. I see what So, again, for clarification, so do the steps apply to TAs or not? Who are you could you clarify who all received steps? It is paraprofessionals. It is our administrators. It is our teachers, ASCSA, and AFSCME, TSP, and our office professionals. So all of those groups received increases this year via their steps. So while our income, our revenues may not have increased,
our obligations Have increased. Correct. That's exactly right. All right. Thank you all very much for clarification. I believe that brings us down to 9.3 and that is the staffing and recruitment for the 2025 annual report. Alright. We have our dynamic human resources team coming forward to, present this evening the annual staffing and recruitment report. And I will turn it over to assistant superintendent Langford at this time to to kick us off. Alright. Good evening, trustees, superintendent parks, community,
staff, everyone here. We are HR and we are rule followers. So we were told that we gotta do this in twelve, fifteen minutes, and we're done with it. So you all, I know have this presentation available to you and I know that we did it also in performance committee so you have it there. So we're gonna rush through this a little bit, just a little bit. And that is the first slide that I am going to bypass. The one thing before we start, I did wanna introduce everyone. Sorry. I'm Shante Langford, assistant Sue, Holly Shearer and Kia Hagen, who are both directors, and Kenya Glover,
who is an HR coordinator in our department. Okay. So this is just a quick slide. I'm not going to go over it much, but just to again reemphasize that our diversity core values, our sense of belonging and inclusiveness are all still, at the top of our our list. And these are, things that we like to follow and make sure that we're adhering to in everything that we do, not just in HR, but across the district. Go past this one, please. Next. Alright. I wanted to talk about our staff FTE totals by group, and I'm not going to read all of them.
But just to say, these are all employees, so this would also include central office as you see there at the bottom. And right now, our total FTE, and I just wanna give a quick explanation of what that is, not head count. So for example, if trustee Wilkerson and trustee worked point six, trustee Schmidt worked point four, that's one FTE. So they would be two head count, but one FTE. So just so we understand what we're looking at in numbers. So to date, our FTE is at eighteen seventy eight point seven three.
This is a five year look back of where we've been with our FTE. So I'm going to focus a little bit just on that teacher blue area there. If you look back in 2021, we're at about 1494.28 FTE, went to 1,494.3 the next year and then one thousand five hundred and sixteen point nine three and two thousand three hundred and twenty four and then you see that 2425 drop where we went to 1,388.63. So I know that most of you were here and those of you who are
not recall that back in 2024, we began to have to look at making some reductions and rightsizing staff, doing some layoffs, things of that nature. So that fifteen, sixteen point nine three drop to 13.88 is a reflection, of what you see there. And I want to reemphasize a few things that I've heard this evening. I think trustee Wilkerson talked about some of the things that we were doing to make sure, that we are right sizing our staff. So when right sizing staff, part of that is just through attrition. So when we get letters of,
reservation or retirements that come in, we are going through a very strenuous process that starts with a a team looking at each position and making a determination on whether or not that position needs to be filled. So we're looking at things like enrollment, you know, students who are electing those classes. Do we need to fill that position? So that we're we're making sure we're staying in alignment, with our numbers. So from last year, 2425, we were at thirteen eighty eight. This year and this was as of October 10 year when we first start putting
this together. We're down 13 down to thirteen seventy three. So we're, about 15 staff less at that time in October. And I'm sure if we check that number now, because these numbers are fluid, you would see, a further reduction. And we anticipate as we go through the year that we'll probably have a total of about 50 or so reductions, as we continue to look at right sizing our staff. Mister Schmidt? Yeah. So when I see that drop from 20 to 24 to 24 to 25, if I remember correctly, over a four year period, we lost 1,100 students,
and we had to make those changes. I mean, you don't and, of course, the pandemic, you know, was happening, and then we came out of it. Kids had more needs, and there were decisions made to hold the staff, but we had to do that. When you lose those kind of students, you can't keep your staff up at those numbers. Correct? Yes. That is correct. Absolutely agree. Yeah. Our our finance is per pupil. So she lose that many students and you have to get corrections. Alright. Next slide please. And I think I am going to skip we're gonna skip a couple of slides here, Andrew, and Kia is going to come up to do teacher retention and recruitment.
Good evening. Next slide, please. We're gonna skip a few more. Couple more. Couple more. Yeah. We're getting there. There we go. Going public. We we got this this report early. So support early. Report will will be posted. Absolutely. And we've had the chance to review every slide that you sent it. So I'm just gonna highlight a couple exciting things that we've been doing. We've had virtual job fairs out of, the human resources and employer relations department, and we were able to, not only have a we had about 50 people that signed up. About 45 actually showed up for the virtual job fair.
We have new hire weekly orientation, and we pass out these really cool bags that you will receive one of. Uh-huh. Alright. For our orientation, this year, we have had a 146 employees since July 1. That's right. 87 of these have been from the AAEA group. And if somebody could open up one of the bags to see the the the best part. Okay. The best part of the bag. Every employee that enters the district to see Yeah. A candy bar. A personalized candy bar. Not any orange candy bar. That's right. A little personalized candy bar.
Eat this ever. And so that's that's really cool and exciting, and they get other Ann Arbor swag that you have in your bag. Nurses are handy. So we typically have, six to eight participants each week. Of course, our numbers are higher during the, during the beginning of the school year. We've had annual job fairs. We're working with different, groups in recruiting, and we are lucky this year to have over a 100 student teachers on-site. And we that's for this semester. We have to have the same for next semester. And last Thursday, the Grow Your Own graduation graduated nine students,
which is a collaboration with EMU and the WISD. Alright. Nine more. Alright. So one. May I ask, what what are they certified in? Oh, but this group we have a TESOL group, and we might have that slide jumping out. Teachers of But it's special ed. Yes. Right. TESOL. Do you guys have to say what TESOL is? It's English to speakers of other languages. Thank you. Alright. Okay. With special ed, though? Specifically yeah. That's what I thought. Okay. Slide 20. Next slide, please. And in the human resources and employee relations department,
we've reimagined the HR roadshow. We go out each Friday to buildings, and there are preselected buildings that we talk to all staff, sometimes even students. We've had administrator drop in, new administrator training just recently. And on the screen, you'll see the resourceful, which is our newsletter that goes out every month. It highlights staff, and it highlights, things that are going on within the HR department. I think Claire actually mentioned exit interviews and stay interviews. We've been continuing those since last year, and there's some data on that. And then we will go quickly to the grow your own program.
This is the program that we just I just spoke of. We just had a graduation for the grow your own program. We are working with EMU and the WISD. You can go to the next slide, please, Andrea. Those are the cohorts that are listed, And we started this all the way back in 2023, and we hope to have the next cohort, is quickly approaching. And I think that's on the slide that we have We have the data for you all, but we are cutting that slide. But we have the cohorts that are continuously going with the both TESOL and the glomerone. And I'm gonna turn it over to.
Hello, everyone. Hello. I'm here this evening to report a partnership that we have with the University of Michigan. It's the Sparks program, Sparks professional learning community. SPARKS stands for stepping up against racism and xenophobia. The PLC participants from last year had a lot of positive feedback. One person that we had, sent out an expert, his name is Chris Erickson. He's an English teacher at Huron. Chris says that his biggest takeaway from Sparks was the importance of the opportunity to listen to others and to be heard. Sparks allows for vulnerability, for sharing, and he says that the work at Huron is focused on equity as it is
the core of what they do. Thank you. All right. Good evening. And the final piece of our report tonight is on our substitute status with EduStaff. So you heard a little bit about this tonight. On the slide in front of you, you see the data. We continue to partner with EduStaff, as you heard a few times. We are working with them both to continuously provide our substitute teachers and substitute paras. A new program they instituted last year was a pilot that we started with them, the training for paraeducators. So it's intended to get those paraeducators who aren't currently qualified to be paraeducators
up to speed and trained to either take the, parapro assessment test or to get the college credit. So they're helping them get those credits to move on to be a paraeducator. So I think there was a little bit of miscommunication on that earlier tonight, but that's what the pilot entails. We have five people working under that pilot right now. We're also expanding our pilot into speech and social work as they know and we know that those are areas we need assistance in bringing on more people. So they're helping us to try to bridge that gap. They work with us not only to recruit for subs,
but they also help us with our recruiting and our advertising for actual teaching positions too. I think that covers the highlights of this slide. All right, final next steps. All right, so some of our next steps as we look to continue to strengthen our pipelines is obviously we want to increase our partnerships. Kenya is doing an amazing job with reaching out to the various universities and finding different programs and different ways that we can partner that are helpful to our staff and things that they can participate in. We're gonna continue to recruit and retain,
our minority staff, you know, through having equity teams and affinity groups. And then we'll continue to do all of our job fairs because those have really been successful for us. We're able to interview candidates on the spot. We put them all on the spreadsheet, send them out to principals, and then they're able from those lists to go, you know, directly and hire individuals. It's it's really worked out well. So with that round of speed dating, we'll open it up for questions. Vice president Schmidt. One thing, and I don't know if we've looked at this, but I know that,
for instance, the special ed programs at MSU, for instance, they're really starting to drill down into the science of reading training. And I would think that people that are being trained a certain way, I've talked to some of the students there that are placed for student teaching in schools that are using ways that are not effective and how frustrated they are. They wanna find a district that has moved towards what the science teaches us about literacy. That, you know, we need to make a concerted effort to find those schools that are doing doing
that correct teaching and bringing those people here and letting them know we're a district that's moving forward. So just for us to be aware of that because it's happening in some universities and some it is not still in Michigan. Thank you for that bit of information. We do work with MSU, but I was not aware that that was one of the universities that offers that. Trustee Wilkes? Okay. Thank you, president Feaster. I think it's worth repeating, the information that you shared about EduStaff and as it relates to parapros and t TA's parapros, because, again, the information that we received today suggested that EduStaff,
staffers are actually taking pair pro positions without being trained. So could you, I'm sorry. I can't remember your name. And It it was Holly, but I can speak to I can speak to the program. Yes. I can speak to the program, actually. You could address that, please. So there are a few different things going on. So as, Holly alluded to, this, pilot program just started last year. So we have about five people who are in that pilot program right now. And what they're doing is giving them specific training, to being what a pair pro has to experience every day.
So some of the NCBI, training, but they're but they couldn't qualify as a pair pro to work in the district at this time because they either don't have the, associates degree or the number of credit hours to do so. So that's separate from the parapros that we have who EDGIS staff just kind of hire, to come in who meet just the minimum that they need to have there and are working in our building. So, I think I I signed when when we get those individuals into this pilot program, they actually send us kind of a contract. We go over the contract. So we know specifically who those individuals are as opposed to,
the individuals who are just who just signed up to become Aegistaff trained. However, I would say EDGIS staff does have a training program for everyone, teachers and, TAs. They have to do several things before they they're able to just sign on with EDGIS staff and go work for districts. So no one is coming in with absolutely no training at all. The other thing, if I could clarify, that was said earlier as well is that, there was something about the the TAs who are working long periods of time or
or that it's not allowed or something of that nature. There is a limitation to what teacher sub how how long teacher subs can work, and that's a ninety day limitation. That does not apply to to TA subs. So I just wanted to make that clarification as well. Thank you, miss Langford, for making those clarifications because I think a lot of folks were maybe a little confused. I mean, I including myself. So the clarification really helps me too. Thank and I would Thank you. I I would also add that we have, subs in the role while we continue to look to fill the positions.
Absolutely. So they're not outsourced, positions. We have them in there as we continue to look for, folks to hire. Okay. Thank you. Let's see. In the past years, we've often heard about the plight of finding substitute features. Haven't heard anything recently and I probably shouldn't say that too loudly. But can you speak to how we've been resolving the issue as well as understanding clarify the role of a long term sub versus a day to day sub? I'm sorry to get into the details, but we're getting more and more emails,
which, again, inaccurate information. Yeah. And the one thing that I would say is every morning at 07:00, my wake up call is is miss Shear's text message, where she sends the superintendent, our EDs, and others, the numb the our sub percentages for that day. So we know if a building is on fire and, you know, doesn't have enough subs, we know how we can dispatch individuals out to those buildings. So I'll let her speak to some of your other questions about subs. So the question about long term subs, generally, those are filling behind either vacant positions that we're trying to fill behind as with
regular, but we have this gap between, where we have holes, they fill those. We also use them for leave of absences. So we have teachers that go on maternity leave or surgeries or whatnot. We have long term subs that come in and fill those roles. By the state of Michigan rules, a long term sub can work under a sub permit for ninety calendar days, not school days, calendar days. And then after ninety calendar days, we can no longer keep them in that assignment unless we try to get an extension on a permit or do some special things to do that or we have to find a new sub.
So but ideally, most surgeries, maternity leave, things like that fall in that ninety day parameter, so we get our regular teachers back. So does that answer your question? Yeah. It does. It have how would you resolve the or have you I'm assuming you've resolved the shortage of substitute teacher. I don't know that we've resolved it, but we are having better fill rates this year. So I think it's a little combination of they've been able to recruit more subs. We've done a better job of trying to curb some absenteeism. So between both efforts, we are seeing a little bit higher fill rates this year,
than we have in past years. So to answer or address the question from a parent who says, you know, we love miss Shear. She's been our long term sub. You know, why can't we keep her? Generally, we have to rely on the state of Michigan to determine whether or not we can extend that person beyond ninety days. And we have no control there. It's up to someone's approval from both? It is up to the state superintendent who will determine if they will approve a long term sub permit. Thank you. Trustee Mohammed? So I know I asked this be you know,
at the committee meeting, but, and I appreciate like, I know this is how the presentation was presented about, like, you know, looking at the different groups and, the student groups and the ratios. And there's some detail as far as, you know, the number of just looking at the slide where there's, like, teacher, professional school staff. It's broken down to peri ed peri educators and other support staff, building leaders, central leaders. But, you know, a request that I had was, if we can get a little bit more detail,
especially, like, how many subs or how many are within special ed, or how many are actually are we seeing gaps in in different staffing, areas? It would just be very helpful to have that, especially if we're trying to look at, like, if we need to right size or do anything or see just as a board to be informed of where are the gaps, especially? I'm sorry. I'm not sure of what you're asking. So just like how it's broken down, for example, in slide five What's broken down? Staff by groups. Slide five.
By groups. So Do a slide be able to further break it down to see where we're seeing areas where we're, you know, having shortages, staffing shortages, or we're having more staff in some areas. Like, for example, in special ed or the number of subs or because right now, it's broken down in bigger groups, so it's hard to tell where the shortages are or if there is any issues. So the numbers that you're looking at include staff plus vacancies. So and I think we talked about I know you talked about this.
So I I can tell you, or one thing that I did wanna clarify while I was here is that what was said earlier, we know that can you go to the next slide actually? So if you look at, our current number of 1,373.63 for our teachers there, for example, We know that at the time of this October 10, there were 26 teacher openings. I've checked with Holly today, and there are 21 teacher openings. Of those, 15 of them are special education. So I know that, and we could most certainly work on a way to display that.
I I understand your question. Yes. Yeah. It would just be helpful to see where the gaps are. But it's also a moving target. Oh, yeah. I know it's a moving target. Every day that we check this. Yes. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Alright. If there's nothing else, thank you all very much. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you. And I believe that brings us down to 9.4 student enrollment for fall twenty twenty five annual report. Alright. We have our, after the dynamic HR team, we have our dynamic duo, assistant superintendent Lynn Linden and doctor Berger.
And we also have with us this evening, I'm sure miss Linden will introduce miss Billings, who, does just incredible work for us in our people accounting department. So I'll turn it over to miss Linden at this time. Thank you so much, superintendent Park, president Feaster Trustees. It's our pleasure to bring to you this evening the enrollment report. And before we do that, it is not often that we get to thank the woman behind the scenes who does much, if not all, of these the district level work of putting this together.
And as you know, student enrollment is where much of our funding comes from. So this job requires a whole lot of attention to detail, knowledge of the systems, and the changing requirements, and awareness of audit procedures. So I'm very pleased to introduce to you, if you've not met, Colleen Billings. She is our student slash pupil accounting, coordinator for our district. She carries the highest level of pupil accounting certification. She also has,
many years of experience, both in other districts and here in the Ann Arbor Public Schools for the past many years. I will not say how many. And, Colleen and our entire office professional team in our buildings, work extremely hard along with teachers who take attendance daily and our administrators who are carefully monitoring. Colleen leads all of that training for our office professionals to be able to do the count process. And, you may recall that earlier this year, we received the resignation of our director of pupil accounting.
And when I called the, county auditors to let them know we had a change of personnel, they said we're not worried at all. Colleen's got it. And I hung up that phone just feeling really reassured. I knew Colleen was amazing, but, they obviously see a lot more of the behind the scenes work that Colleen does every day. So I didn't wanna miss a chance to recognize her here this evening. Thank you. Staying up with us. Wow. She submits, she submits our, count day information to the state, in both the fall and the winter, and make sure that every FTE we can get for the district,
we do. And she supports our buildings in doing the same. So it is no small no small job that she has. Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you. And, it is my pleasure to, bring doctor Dan Berger forward who is going to share with you the highlights, very, very brief highlights. But there are many more slides, for the community to see. They will be posted as well. Doctor. Berger. Thank you. Good evening, trustees. Good evening. I am going to try to let it hurt my feelings that I was given ten minutes while the HR team was given twelve minutes. Keeps telling you twice.
I'm gonna work on that. So it's that enrollment report time of year again. So today, I'm gonna bring you the annual, 2025 enrollment report. Our first data slide, which you can see in front of you, presents the top line numbers. As of fall count, we have 16,625 students in grades y five through 12 across all of our buildings and our county programs. And if we added in if we added in the 380 preschool students who we serve, then the AAPS is currently serving as of Fall County 17,005 students. If we go to the next slide,
this represents a 1.17% decrease from, our y five to 12 enrollment from last year which is a 196 less students. This is a slightly larger decrease than the last couple of years but not as big as you can see on the slide the couple of years that we had the really big drops, a few years ago. We fall nineteen twenty and fall twenty twenty one. So to put that into context, we have seen student enrollment decrease across the state and county as well as over the APS. This plot in front of you looks at the change in student counts,
as a proportion of 2,002 enrollment so that we can compare the state with the county and Ann Arbor public schools. And so you can see the the green line is the state of Michigan, proportion of 2,002 enrollments. The purple line is the Washington ISD, and the blue line is the Ann Arbor public schools. So while enrollment decreases have begun to catch up with us and we're, you know, as the state trend, we can't totally buck the state trend of the number of students that are in Michigan. It's begin to catch up to us since 2019. But if we look over these past two plus decades,
enrollment across the state of Michigan has dropped by 16.7%, and in the county, it's dropped by 7.4%. During that same timeline, we've actually gained slightly 1.2%. So we are kind of bucking the overall trend of both the state and the county here. Turn Turn to something completely different, but looking the next couple of slides, we're gonna look at our student demographics. This display shows our race ethnicity breakdown district wide over the last three years. As you can see, we haven't had any really big changes. We have, pretty steady across the different race ethnicity groups,
over the last three years. If you go to the next slide, this shows other demographic groups. Students with IEPs make up about one in eight of our population or 12.8%. Students from homes impacted by poverty as measured by free or reduced price lunch status, make up a little over one fourth or 26.4% of our population. And English learners make up between one and nine and one and ten or about 10.5% of our overall student population. So the next thing we wanna talk a little bit about is student mobility. This table shows the number of students that have entered the Ann Arbor public schools
in grades one through 12 between the end of last year, the the '24, '25 and fall count day of 2025. We had a total of 862 new students entering. This is not including kindergarteners. This is just grades, you know, one through 12. 862 new students entering from various places, which actually is a little bit less mobility than we've had in some prior years. I don't know if people are just moving less. Yeah. And you can read where they're coming from on the table. The peach colored pull out is showing, from other public schools within the county and that's broken down here.
You can see we have, a fairly large number coming from Ypsilanti. It looks like that's gone up, but that actually may just be a fact that, we had a lot of unknowns in some prior years. So we I think we're just doing a better job of keeping records of where the students are coming from. My guess is that we always had a a fairly large number coming in, from our neighbors next door. So, taken together, SOC students make up 10.9% of our overall student count, with five times more of those coming from, within and out of the county sources. And I don't know what's wrong with this slide,
but it has more information. It is correct on the actual PowerPoint presentation that was uploaded, for you all. Mhmm. There were 414 new schools of choice students that came in this year. Of those, about 30% were already existing Ann Arbor students who applied to schools of choice to stay with us because they moved out of the county. So so roughly a third of the new SoCs this year were students who were already our students last year. Moving on to the next slide, to finish our discussion of mobility, we look at the students who left Ann Arbor Public Schools between the end of
last year and fall count of 2025. We had 868 total departures, which is quite close to the number of entries. If you recall, that was eight sixty two. So pretty similar in and out, numbers here. And, about half of those we know for sure, based on the information that we were given, moved away. They moved out of the county. They moved out of the state. They moved out of the country. And a quick note based on how the state reporting works, we don't actually know whether students who left for charter, private, or homeschool are local or not. So up here you can see we have charter school, we have homeschool,
we have private schools. The the private school for example, it could be that they moved to a private school down the street in our neighborhood and they actually didn't move or it could be that they moved to Idaho and enrolled in a private school there. We actually just don't know because of the way that the state reporting works. It just says they went to a private school. So so when we read this, sometimes we think, oh, that's a lot of students who, like, left chose to leave Ann Arbor public schools and went to a local private or charter, but that's actually not what this says. We don't actually know exactly where they went here. So so it could be it it could be in our area,
some of these, and and it could be anywhere in the country or the state. Can somebody fit in two categories or you're you're in one category? One category only. Okay. Yep. One category only. The way that the state reporting works, they yeah. There's there's no overlap here. Good question. Thank you. So finally, our last slide, just kinda gives an overview of the takeaways that we have, from actually, these takeaways are from the entire presentation, not just what we talked about tonight. But while the overall headcount is still decreasing, for the fourth year in a row, we have less than a 1.2% change in overall enrollment.
Despite and this this is a slide that we didn't see tonight, but it is in the large slideshow. But despite birth rate drops in the county, we're still seeing growth over the same time frame in our young five and kindergarten enrollments, with participation in the young five program remaining quite robust. Taking a longer view, our enrollment numbers have increased over the last two decades, while trends in the state and county have shown decreases during that same time frame. We continue to serve a diverse student population, and we've seen growth in our populations of both English learners and students with IEPs, individual education plans, over time.
And we continue to demonstrate fairly high mobility rates. Students come in, students come out every year, and that some of that's just the nature of our community with the universities and and whatnot. And then finally, overall, APS residency is 89.1 and strong and consistent with prior years. And that is the enrollment report. So I'm happy to take any questions that any of you have. Vasquez? Yeah. Can you speak to the increasing lack of affordable housing in Ann Arbor? Our district, are we being impacted folks thinking out? I cannot personally speak to that.
I have not studied housing in Ann Arbor. I don't know if anybody else has anything to say about that. Are we losing more people of students who are impacted by poverty than past? That is checkable, but I do not have that Okay. Off on my fingertips. But that is definitely something that we can do because we have, you know, we know the student numbers of the students who exited and we can pull demographics. Okay. Thank you. I'd be interested in that. Trustee Mohammed and Wilkes and Schmidt. Well, I was gonna ask because I I saw, like, the exit,
surveys that were done, and that gives a lot of information of why. Of course, the response rate, if I can if I read it Very low this year. What was because I'm seeing It was close to 5% this year. Last year, we had close to 20% response rate. So it's lower. Have, like, a 5% response rate. So you can't really So yeah. Because I was wondering I was wondering if you can add because I see some of the reasons, but I don't see anything about, like, affordability or housing or other factors. I don't know if that is on the exit survey. So the way that the survey was set up,
and and I didn't set up the survey. I just, have been, working with the data. Yeah. But currently, it's ask it asks where they are going. And then it is just open ended responses, like, why did you choose to leave? So so when I'm giving you those, so when you're looking at those results, that's a result of me going through, sort of like qualitative research methods and coding based on reasons and then finding codes that kind of match and putting things together. Interestingly, if I remember correctly, and I don't have that in front of me, but the the top two reasons were the same this year as they were last
year. Okay. So so we actually did see some some similar results from the from last year's excess survey with a higher rate to this year's. Okay. But it's qualitative. You're pretty much just coding It is. Yes. Rather than so is there any way to have some quantitative I I mean But I don't know who set up the survey. So so, you know, we could certainly revamp the survey if we wanted to do that and ask different questions if there are different questions that we wanted the answers to. Because that would capture a little bit of the affordability. I don't know. Let's see what Yeah.
I would love to see the, thank you, president Feaster. I would love to see the the questions that were asked in the in the exit interview as well. But I also wanted to ask about, on slide number nine. So the line with the charter schools, so do we have any idea if those are local charters or the or if that's a charter school in another state? We we don't have that information either. We don't know that. We have that is a charter school. That's the exit code that the state has an exit code that is a charter school, but we don't know where that charter school is.
Yeah. Same with the private schools. Same with the home school, actually. Okay. We do know we we do know in the exit survey, we ask, you know, if they moved away or if they are, you know, staying but making another choice. But again, we had pretty low response rate this year. So but we do have the reasons why people who made those other choices, sort of like summarized in a couple of slides. I think there are three slides that I added after the performance committee, that you all saw that are in the in the hosted version that you can look at. Okay. Very good. Thank you.
Yeah. Of course. Let's put it in a split. So the 30% of schools of choice are people that were our students. And then they became schools of choice because they moved out of district, but they wanted to stay in our district. That's it. So that that is 30% of this year's new school of choice. I can't speak for the overall school of choice. Okay. Because I was thinking if that number goes up year to year Mhmm. That could tell us more students are leaving because, you know, they might end up Yeah. Here when there's just one kid in the family, they're in a little house, they wanna get a bigger house, they can't afford it, they move out, but they wanna stay.
Alright. Trustee Wilkins. Are we tracking in district transfers for each school? Are they included in this? Are they just I'm I'm not sure what you're asking. So do we know how many students are not not attending their school that they're zoned for, but they're Ann Arbor students? That is that is not here. That is a thing that is knowable, based on, you know, it that that is something that we can pull from our student information system, but that's not reflected in this report. It could be useful to see those trends,
not to if we had it for a number of years. Good. Thank you so very much for your time. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you all. Thanks for your questions. Yes. Alright. And I believe that brings us down to first briefings at 11 0.1 A N 2243 Skyline elevator improvements. Thank you very much, president Feaster. At this time, we have, mister Bing and mister Steinheepo coming forward, regarding the elevator, excuse me, the elevator improvements and repairs at both Skyline and Pioneer High School. Oh, and looks like miss Corona also.
Oh, no. She's just moving closer. Sorry. Oral support. All right. Good evening, trustees. Good evening. And thank you, Superintendent Parks. I appreciate the opportunity to bring these items forward with some timely and critical infrastructure items for consideration. The first item as mentioned is Skyline, elevator, and I will turn it over to Jason to walk through that. Good evening. First proposals for the Skyline elevator improvement. I mentioned it is really, the only thing that's being kept on this elevator is the existing shaft,
pretty much all the mechanicals, the it's it's really a almost a complete replacement. We solicited bid. We sent a bid invitation to 43 companies. We did, only end up with one reply. We had a had a good showing at the at the walk through, but we did only end up with one one response. This is kinda a specialty, specialty trade, so it's it's not that, uncommon that we did it. So this is for the elevator that, is near the commons that serves all floors. The work is scheduled to, take place during the summer and the slash 2026.
Seeing no questions? All questions? Trustee Wilkins? You brought up during the bond committee that, partly because there was only this one bidder, you actually brought in another I don't want to put words in your mouth, but brought in another elevator expert to make sure that this was a good bid and that it was competitive pricing. And can you speak to that for a little bit please? Yes, thank you for the question. Yes, because we're not seeing the kind of turnout that we're looking for in some of our elevator requests for proposals and and invitations for bids.
We've, reached out to, some different elevator consultants. We landed on, I think, a a really quality consultant here to help assist with the process. They're not only assisting with the review, peer review of bids and specifications, but also with developing an assessment across the district so that we have a good baseline to work with moving forward. So they they helped, in this particular review, make sure that our we're hitting our, the typical expected pricing that we should see on a project like this.
And I just want to say this for the public. You also mentioned that new construction are projects that a lot of these companies would rather do. Then it's kind of like the renovation of a house is a pain versus building a brand new house. So that's why. Okay. Did you say bond dollars? Yes. Bond dollars. Thank you. Alright. Seeing those questions? Thank you very much. I think that brings it down to a N oh, where did that one? A N 2245 Huron Natatorium AV upgrade. I need Pioneer. Pioneer. Pioneer. Pioneer Skyline.
I'm sorry. Two elevators. A N 2244 Pioneer elevator improvements? Yeah. It's it's pretty much the same scope as the, the Skyline. This is for the elevator near the, media center, that serves all the floors at at Pioneer. Very similar timeline as to, as Skyline would probably lag. It is the same company, so it probably lag slightly as as, Skyline is the the current priority. On Dallas? On Dallas. Thank you. Alright. Seeing nothing else, it brings it down to a N 2245 Huron Auditorium AV upgrade.
This is a, upgrade to the, a v electronics and speakers, all new infrastructure, conduit, raceway, and, new speakers. Thank you. Seeing no questions, brings us down to AN247 solar array upgrade at Huron, Pioneer Skyler and Forestsight. Yes. Thank you. I'll introduce this item. This work covers the expansion of four of our schools with large rooftops, that can handle additional capacity, in the district. This would include Foresight Middle School, Scarlet Middle School,
Huron High School, and Pioneer High School. We're bringing these expansion and upgraded, solar arrays, for, your review tonight because it offers an opportunity for us to not only, increase the overall capacity of generation in the school district, save, save money on operating costs, but also allows us to capture incentives that are available through an expiring, inflation reduction act, through direct pay. This year, we were able to receive our first, direct pay check from treasury for $572,000
This was for, arrays installed in 2023. So if we can, install these install these systems prior to the expiration date of 07/04/2026, we can still capture these incentives and make our dollars go farther for the district. So that's why we're bringing forward these additional arrays, and we're excited at the overall anticipated electrical production of these systems, which will equate to 20% or greater of AAPS's current electrical consumption,
which will equal savings annually of about $750,000 or greater. Mr. Wilkerson? Quick question. The incentive, how much is that? What's the value of the incentive? So the full incentive value is 30%. So it it covers not only this, the install cost, but, additionally, the soft costs associated with engineering and permitting. So that would be rolled into the overall submittal to, to the IRS. Okay. Great. And then one other question.
I know I think it was earlier in the year, we were holding off on certain items related to roofing until we completed roofing projects. Are any of these on the slate to have roofing work done prior to or after these installations? Yes. Thankfully, you all have reviewed and approved, the roofing improvements that that were necessary in order to bring these these forward. So I think we have some, roofing improvement scheduled at Forsyth, as well as,
which other I think Forsyth is the one that comes to mind, but I think maybe Huron as well. Yes. Most of the prior to bringing these forward, we made sure that we either have a plan to improve the roofs or they have already been recently updated. Okay. Those are working package currently being dead right now. So it's they're due mid January. Okay. Thank you. And so on top of the 30% incentive, this is coming out of bond funds?
This is coming out of bond or sinking fund. Okay. Great. All right. But I would like to point out one more time that this is an annual general fund savings of $750,000 That's outstanding. When all the systems are energized in 2026, that's what we'd be looking at. Yeah. That's great. Very helpful. It is. Yes. Thank you. Seeing nothing else, that brings us down to a n two two four six high school marching band equipment replacement. Miss Linden here for this item. You indeed.
Good evening. Thank you very much. I am pleased to bring forward a recommendation for replacement of marching band equipment at Huron, Pioneer and Skyline. Much of this equipment has not been replaced for more than thirty years. And I have to thank our band directors and Kim Colson Mobley for completing an assessment of the current instruments and the equipment needed to use those instruments in marching band. This evening, we are bringing forward a recommendation to replace snare drums,
bass drums, tenor drums, and crash cymbals, including the equipment needed to carry those in marching band. I have to also thank Kim Colson Mobley and the team for making so many repairs over the past thirty years to try to keep the equipment and the instruments working. They worked very hard to be frugal, and we thank them very much for their work to be fiscally responsible. This evening, we're bringing a recommendation to allow 35,688
per building to be spent on replacement of this equipment. The total request is for $107,065. There is no charge for shipping and handling, and this, request and recommendation comes to us through a cooperative national bid called the tips or the interlocal purchasing system. So there was not a formal bid process required because of that. We are also pleased to be working with our longtime vendor, Sweetwater Music, a highly reputable and local company, who have really worked with the Ann Arbor Public Schools for many years.
The funding would come from capital, program funds, specifically the bond. And so we are happy to take any questions you may have. Thank you. Betsy Wilkes. Thank you, trust or, President Feaster. We covered this in committee, but I just wanted to ask it again. So does this cost take into account, future maintenance and repairs of the instruments and or are repair costs not covered under this particular funding source? And I did a little research Okay. Between 05:00 and now. So these instruments are covered on a two year warranty.
Mhmm. So repairs are done at Sweetwater's in house for the next two years, but the bond does not cover repairs. So that answers hopefully both parts of your question. So then that would have to come out of our general fund for repairs? Miss McLean? We Kim Colson Mobley, I wish she were here. She is away at a conference right now, and she's trusting me to do a good job in her behalf. But I will tell you this, much like our IT department, we maintain and keep all usable parts. So when something does get broken,
we try to repair it in house as much as we can. And anything that is more cost efficient to repair as opposed to replace, that we can't do, we do send out to be repaired. Okay. Good to know. Alright. Thank you. These are the great questions. On that. Thanks for checking. Is this a situation where the used instruments get refurbished? So, like, before I think we talked about this in the previous okay. They do. Pads get replaced. Valves break. Those get repaired. That's happening quite a lot. Many times, the band directors and orchestra directors are doing that, the quick fixes. And I know Kim has spent many hours repairing instruments herself.
So Thank you. Welcome. Trustee Wilkins. I have a question about timing. Yes. So if this goes through its normal process and is approved, will there be enough time to get these in time for, like, interlock and marching band camp this summer? That kind of thing. Most definitely. Yes. That's another great question. I appreciate you thinking about that. Alright. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. Well, that brings us down to a n two two four eight, district patrol and events, security contract recommendation. Thank you,
president Feaster. We have, excuse me, mister Rice and miss Margolis coming forward this for the with this item, which is, for our after hours patrol and event security, vendor. We found out that our, existing vendor went out of business, a few weeks ago, so we had to do a quick turnaround and and find a new company. So miss Margolis, and mister Rice will will talk us through that. Go ahead, miss Margolis. Yes. We did not expect to have to put out an RFP for that. But, we have, then put out an RFP for both the after hours patrol and event security.
And you can see all the different areas, that it covers. It covers our, district buildings, non school hours. They do alarm response. They also do weekly reports for us. They interact with law enforcement if it's necessary. And then we also use them for our events, our high school football, basketball games, as well as University of Michigan home games. They are on-site just sort of monitoring Pioneer itself during those home games. And so we have through our RFP process, we received eight proposals from qualified vendors.
And after an evaluation, we are recommending, this is first reading, that MCK Security, which does business as signal of West Michigan Western Michigan, be awarded this contract. This is to approve a three year contract with the option to extend for two years annually with signal in the amount of, $1.95282920000.00 for security patrols and $293.00 92.52 for event security. And you're gonna ask that magic question, but this is general fund.
So mister Rice, you're on the same thing. Guess we still gotta have it. Wasn't there something, I think at finance we talked about that this was a lot of the workers that were with the other company we were with who have been hired, so they're familiar with our buildings, etcetera. Yes. That is that is true. Yes. That's good. Just to clarify this $1,900,000 is for three years or each year? For three and you can see the breakdown on the bottom we have the year one, two, '3 with a 3% contingency. Trustee Wilks? Yeah. In our committee meeting,
we also, addressed whether or not these guards were armed or not. Can you, talk about that? They are not. They are unarmed for every instance that we use them. Okay. Good to know. Miss Watkins. Is this three years or five years? It's well, the price for five, but, we can after the three years, we can opt to extend it for another two additional if we're happy with their service. Okay. So right now, we're just approving the three year. We're actually approving the five year. Approving the five year. At the third year interval, we'll do an assessment.
Okay. Thank you. We actually assess it every year, but yeah. Thank you both very much. Thank you. Good. And I believe that brings us down to draft update to policy eleven thirty, vacancies and officer positions. I believe I missed the last governance committee meeting. So I will turn it over to trustee Basquiat, if she would not mind walking us through, the proposal, for the officer position, updates. Thank you, president Feaster. So trustees, you have this in our pack on Diligent, the diligent website.
And I know I've spoken with each of you regarding this proposed change. This change is in keeping with the process for the other vacancies of the other positions. If I'm assuming everybody will have it pulled up. So in the event so I'll but I'll read it anyway for the public. In the event of a vacancy in the office of presidency of the president. The vice president shall serve as acting president and hence handle all those responsibilities until the election of a new board president at the next regular or special meeting of
the board if there is no vacancy on the board. And my fellow committee members brought up the concern about ties. So we added the the next sentence. If there is a vacancy on the board, the election of a president shall occur following the seating of the newly appointed trustee. Are there any questions, concerns that someone wants to raise at this point? Missus Mohammed. So, my question is is what I know that we're trying to be consistent with the how the other officers are being elected or when there is a vacancy.
I looked at several other policies from other schools and usually just because usually the president and vice president work closely together and they're usually informed regularly by the superintendent of what's happening. You know, obviously, when we elect the vice president, we assume that if something happened, you would you would finish the term, and it's only a one year term. There could be disagreements. Maybe I didn't vote, you know, vote for this person, whatever. So I guess I'm trying to understand what is the problem that we're trying to fix.
The problem we are trying to fix. First of all, there there shouldn't be an assumption that when someone is elected vice president that your vote was to ultimately put that person in as president without having additional consideration. So that's number one. Number two, again, we other all of us, especially if we add a new member, should have a voice into that new president. And three, I mean, I can go county, is if I choose to be vice president and I know the roles of the
vice president, that's what I'm choosing. That's what I put my hat in the ring for. I may not have put my hat in the ring to assume the presidency. As we know, the presidency carries a lot of responsibilities, and I may not have wanted that. So, you know, putting it affects you when it wasn't your decision to resign. It was the president's decision to resign. But is there another concern you want to raise, trustee? Just wanna clarify. So I thought in the policy for the officers when you list all the officers, I mean, it lists specifically that I I can't I can't pull up policies for some reason,
but I thought it lists that if the president if the the vice president under that that role is like the superintendent eval, to if the president like, just today, you were you you know, vice president Schmidt was running the meeting. And development. Professional development. And then it also says that in the case of the pres or the president stepping or resigning in from the office, that they would assume the role of the president just to finish the term. So I I always assume that,
you know, I mean, you don't I don't think it happens frequently enough. I don't know when I mean, I guess I wanna understand. I know it happened in my situation, so I understand. I only fulfilled, like, I think it was four months or five months of that term, but I don't know how frequently this happens. It has happened before. But how frequently? But is that relevant? It has happened at least once before, not twice before. I just think that we were like, I don't know. I when I vote for the vice president, I assume that they're gonna be very close to the president.
They're gonna always be more in touch. Most likely, they're on the executive board. Not necessarily, trustee. I mean, there are a lot of assumptions, and and I'm I excuse me. I'm just sharing how I that's how I feel. I'm just sharing. And I appreciate that, and I appreciate you sharing that. But I don't know if every one of us have those same assumption. So, again, what is proposed here is to give us all a voice in choosing the next president. And I would not also assume that the superintendent is more in line or communication
with the the vice president and the president as opposed to any one of us. I mean, I I can't speak to that, but I would not want the community to assume that. I think one of the advantages, to this is that, if there's a vacancy because if that person leaves, now there's a vacancy. Right? And we bring a new person on, I think it's good for not only the people that are currently on to choose, but that person also gets to choose so that the whole body had a voice to choose who's the president. And it could happen a year I mean,
a year a month into your service as president, and then you the whole year is somebody so so I like that idea that it's that person also gets a voice. What I'll say is, thank you, Trustee Vasquez and Trustee Wilkerson for, noodling through and creating the an update for us to consider. Obviously, you addressed my my concern when you brought it up at the initial meeting about ties and why it might not be a good idea. I don't know where I stand on it yet, but I appreciate you all doing the work.
And, obviously, trustees will have some time to consider it before our next, second briefing, I would think. We can make some decisions as to whether or not we want to adopt the update or we decide we don't want to adopt the update. Trustee Wilkins? Sounds like if, at the same time, we would need to be updating the job description, so to speak, of the vice president if it says something contrary to that. So I can't pull it up, so I'm not even sure what it says right now. So I need to click that. Yeah. Yes. That is true.
I did some checking on that. We'd have to update policy 11/1130 as well. Okay. Because it references the vice president filling those vacancies. Would you repeat the at policy number? 111130. And you have to go to board docs to review the policies. Or oh, our old board doc? Oh, that's why we did. Okay. Thank you. That's why we can't find it. Okay. We thought we were just enough. Oh, wow. 1100 So can we do that all at the same time? Is that or, like,
do we have to have first briefing to change those policy and then bring it all to Yeah. You would have to Does it make sense to do one to vote on one and then vote on the others, I don't think. This is up for first briefing now. So Right. Traditionally, it will go to second briefing. And I don't know that the other policy will have a chance to catch up in time unless we take this off of the agenda for second briefing at our next meeting. We'll look into the the process when we come back. And, again, I'm open to all conversations with any of the trustees, but Okay.
So did touch base once at least. Fair enough. Alright. If there's nothing else, we'll move down to, 10.8 draft, policy, excuse me, draft proposed new policy 11.8, board member professional development. Again, I think I missed that second, governance committee meeting where this was discussed further. So I will turn it over to one of my colleagues, Trustee Baskett or Trustee Wilkerson, who attended that meeting for them to present what you all, were able to create in my absence. I think well, if I'll start and Trustee Wilkerson, I believe this was your proposal.
This came out of our conversations regarding expectations and professional development of each of us. As we are familiar, nearly everybody, I can't think of any position in this district that does not require additional professional development. But there was it was the expectation was not set upon ourselves. So this was proposed that we as trustees, again you can read it here trustees, are expected to complete all CVA level 100 series offered by the Michigan Association of School Board as soon as possible or within the first year of service.
Of course we'll be expected to complete all mandated training as required by law. And if you choose to, serve as an officer, there's an additional expectation that you'll complete three additional MASP courses or workshops relative to the position as soon as possible but within six months of assuming the position. And we've added that all trustees should continue professional development each year of their tenure on the board by completing two additional MESB courses annually. A list of courses slash workshops attended will be shared annually at the board's organizational
meeting. Well, that was a suggestion of the organizational meeting. Yes. Trustee Baskett? Trustee Schmidt? Just a question. So if we do a training as a board at a retreat, that would count for certain amounts of training. Because as you are aware, when we sign the attendance sheet, that gives us credit. And then those are the because I know I went back and looked at what my my, transcript my transcript is and thought, oh, yeah. That's right. That was that retreat and that was that retreat. So okay. Yeah. And trustee Wilkerson, did you wanna add anything? I I'll add either I I think we trimmed back some of the original language
that was more specific to calling out what what classes would be appropriate for each, each of the board office officer positions just to kind of streamline that and obviously account for changes annually based on course offerings and things to that nature. One other thing I'll add is I think, you know, there's there's a commitment that the idea behind this is a commitment to continuing professional education for each of us as board members. I think it just shows a level of effort and consideration of us,
you know, putting into service. Based on some additional discussions, maybe the specific call out to MASB might might not be appropriate. I also thought about some some of our team went to the National School Board Association for training. So we might wanna, you know Well update that language a little bit, for consideration again, but just wanted to put that out there as well. Just to clarify, when you attend the national or e or even the equity slash advocacy institute, MESB does give you credit for that. Oh, okay.
So it's still through that. Noted on that. I guess I would also like to get feedback. Is the organizational meeting the appropriate annual or could because it could also be a summer. You know, that but we thought we put in organizational because as I believe we're going to do for January is we'd have a discussion about the roles and responsibilities, and this would be a nice way to check to see, you know, if we've met the criteria of, completing all the CBA level 100 series. Trustee Wilkins had first.
Okay. Did you just have something? Yeah. I just, and we talked about this a little bit. I the CBA 100 levels, it's nine classes. Right. And, like, the first one is four hours. So this is a big time commitment. And I was, like the I've only been able to go to one school board conference so far this year. And I wasn't really thinking about I didn't want to take CBA level classes when I was there. I wanted to take stuff that I was interested in. I wanted to hear about how Kalamazoo schools fix their enrollment or whatever it is,
right? So I do think it's a big time commitment for all of those I get that it's showing a commitment, but I'm not sure if I would support all of those specific CBA level courses or if we're just showing a commitment to learning, you know, certainly the the ones that are required, the superintendent review and the finance and the that first level course and things like that. One other thing to say, but I forgot. Oh,
so if it if we come to the organizational meeting or whatever meeting it is where we, like, what happens if we haven't done these code right? Is it like a public shaming in front of everyone? Or what's the I'm sure it'd be a What are the consequences? Use whatever, message they have to address those issues, whether it be a verbal reprimand, written reprimand. We're not gonna reprimand. I mean, well, I we're all adults in a sense. Right. We're all adults. So you I'm not I'm not trying to be facetious. I'm just asking,
like, if we're because this is a new policy. So It's new. And I think we should account for all the Trustee Wilson's had her hand up, so I'll wait. Yeah. Well, let me just address, the time commitment. I mean, some of these classes are available virtually. So that's that that's also an option. Let's see. What else? I just believe so as a former, Ann Arbor Public School teacher, I know that we were required to to do professional development. I mean, we had certain certain number of hours where we had to be committed to professional development. And, if we're expecting our our teachers and our staff members to be lifelong learners,
I believe that the board should be able to to model that as well. And I don't believe that it's an expectation that's, just out of this world. I just think that that if we're expecting this from our teachers and our staff, surely we can, put that same expectation on ourselves. So, I but again, some of the classes are virtual. It may be some wiggle room if you can't finish the classes within a year, but you have made every effort to do so. I think that that should come into play and that we should take that under consideration. But I don't think this is
something that isn't feasible. That's why trustee will have it first and then trustee best there. So I do appreciate you all working and set I think it's important for us to have some kind of professional development. I personally have gone to some of the MASV courses. I honestly feel like the on the ground training and some of the local workshops were more beneficial than some of these these courses. Like, for example, finance or the strategic plan, I did not find them very helpful. But it I also come with a different background.
So we're all coming from different backgrounds. So I would recommend I agree. We need some kind of professional development. But, like, I wouldn't wanna put it all in one bucket because, yeah, I can do it. But am I gonna if if it's, like, something that's not helping me, I would rather take another course. Like, maybe there's a local workshop. Like, for example, I went to the WISD special ed workshop, and it was amazing. I learned so much more than if I went through, like, you know, something virtually. So I would recommend having a little bit more flexibility but requiring,
like, certain courses right at the beginning that they have to take, which some of it is already outlined. So whatever we're gonna do, some of it is already outlined. We would have to change policy eleven seventy because that is outlined when they're newly elected. There's some key courses that were pulled out. So, like, there's, like, the CBA one zero one, the CBA, the open meetings act, the fundamentals of school board service. We can include finance in there, you know, but I would I and I do think that it is a lot of hours.
I mean, I sat into the four hour one. I mean, I got some things out of it, but I think that I could've I could've gotten it at a, you know, workshop too because we do we do professional develop internally as well, and that could count too. And we don't always use, MASV. So I would recommend including, like, obviously, if we're gonna update it for new board members, we would have to update the current policy eleven seventy. And then I would recommend for continuing training to be a little bit have it more open where it's like if you go to a local workshop.
Some I looked at it. Plymouth Canton had a policy about continued training, and I thought it was I mean, it said there has to be professional development and then needs are the options that you have to do, and we can say, like, you have to do two hours of it every year or something like that. But I don't I think I would rather do professional development that I actually would benefit from it. And so that's that's my thoughts. So if I may? Yeah. So first of all, let me read the 100 series.
And the 100 series was based on us being new to school board service period. And as we have learned, school board service is a lot of time. It is a lot more time than people acknowledge. And what would be important, another benefit, if you will, of making our our expectations known is so that people who may be considering running for the board know the again, understand the commitment that they are making. It's more than two meetings a month. Okay.
And you do have to have a basic level of understanding. CBA one hundred one hundred and one is fundamentals of school board training. Okay. CBA one hundred and two is governing through policy. Number three, just lost number. Three basic school thank you, sir. Basic school finance. Number four, and maybe you can find that for me. Basic school law. Number five, curriculum and instruction. Number six, community relations. Number seven, trustee, help me find that, labor relations. Number eight, help me with that. Navigating the legislative process.
And do you wanna finish the number nine? Data informed data informed decision making. You may not know whether this is helpful or not until you're in it. But, basically because, again, as you mentioned, we all come with a different background. I would have never thought about taking a class in curriculum and instruction as, you know, a marketer at General Motors. But once I got to the board, there you learn that there's a whole lot that you don't know in your average life. So that's why the CBA one hundred is created.
Sometimes the local workshops that you've mentioned like with the WISD is sponsored or supported by MASV, and you could also get MASV credit. But nothing prevents you from taking additional courses in a you know, to the CVA 100 level. And regarding changing any other policies, that's fine. We gotta start somewhere before we can make changes elsewhere. So, again, this is and for the public shaming, it's, please understand we are not intending to shame anybody, but to hold ourselves accountable,
transparency, as the community would say, so that people understand the commitment that we have made and taking the responsibility to get better at the job. What is that saying? When you know better, you do better? So but if, you know, ignorance is not bliss, especially when it comes to, the governance of our school district. So that's why this proposal is here. Again, it's not meant to be a punishment. It's not meant to be a time drain. But, again, hopefully, if we are better trained and understand the role of school board service, we will be more efficient in our time and in our relationship and with one
another as well as working with the superintendent. Yeah. So, you know, serving on I've before I got on the school board, I've served on a lot of boards. It's not the same as serving on a school board, and it's an elected position. It's, it just, you know, person can serve on a church board or this board or that board. This has its its unique things. I think as, for our superintendent, it's important we do this training. I think we come in. It's not her job to try to educate us, and that's what happens.
It it dumps on your, you know, your CEO to try to bring everybody along and teach them everything. And it's like, look. We have to we have to make sure we understand as much as we can. There'll be things unique to our district, but she'll want us to have some general knowledge. And, of course, as a board, you can always say, hey. This year, let's do these two together as a group, and you knock it out as a group. Maybe the finance one you do together or you do this. But, I I mean, if somebody I think it's really important for people that are thinking of running for
the board, but they have to understand there are some there are some things that you're expected to know and bring to the board. It's not just, oh, I've been on all these things and I no. It's it's unique, and our community deserves it. Our students deserve it. So, yeah, that that's my take on it at this point. That's a mom. Yeah. So I'm not I'm not disagreeing that we need training. You know, that's why I think it's important, like, when we have orientation, there's that outline of, like again, I can't pull up the policy. But for eleven seventy,
it outlines every single area that you're supposed to to touch on. Then you're gonna add this on top, which, again, I don't have a problem with adding things. I just think that it's important for us to look at the material and see if it's gonna help us. Because I can tell you, I did the whatever the fundamentals of school board service. I would say maybe, like, for me, like, it was helpful to get an overview, but, like, I didn't I didn't need to sit into a four hour understand that. But I mean, if there's a or it could be,
like, during our first, you know, the organizational meeting we have at a retreat and we go over some of this stuff. But I just I just feel like I mean, I don't I think training's important. I just don't understand why does it have to be specific to MASV. Can I respond to that real quick? I mean, we're doing Yeah. You know, I I've heard that criticism from previous former board members didn't take a class unless it was required. Plumbers don't go to the American Medical Association to learn to be plumbers.
We don't go to the plumbers association to learn to be school board members. This is it this is our trade organization, the Michigan Association of School Boards. Again, we're we're not saying this this proposal is not saying you can't go to the University of Michigan and take a course there. What we're saying is at minimum, we expect you to understand the fundamentals of serving on a school board and all the things that could possibly be related to. As we've discussed, school finance is so different from any course I took in business school.
And understanding how to deal with the conflict with the community is probably different than any social work class I've taken, serving as a school board member. So this is just a basic fundamental, the nine courses. And, yes, it is a time commitment. I grant you that. But serving on the board is a time commitment. And, again, people who want to, you know, ascend to this position should know not only that it's a time commitment, but there's help there. K? Because there are some people out there who want to serve who say, but I don't know how to do it. I know nothing about school finance.
We can assure them that there is a trade organization, our Michigan associate school boards, that will help you understand school finance. And, yes, there's always a change every year, and so it's not gonna be perfect. But there are other courses as well, advanced school finance. And as we took together, I think we did the anatomy of a school budget, whatever. So again, this is more to aid somebody versus to punish anyone. I'll let you go and then I'll say something. Okay. President, well, I was going to recommend that we, table this discussion, on if you wanted to continue,
but This is just for first briefing. So I just let me give my perspective. I think that we can move on a little. I think everyone's had a chance to speak on it. So my my perspective is, first, thank you all for the great work you did in creating a policy. I am not dead set against the policy. I think it is a a a great idea, and the spirit of it is is perfect for what a board should be. But I also think that people who are elected to this board are elected because the community chose them to be on this board whether or not they had training or not.
That's true. And so the community has the responsibility of electing the leaders that they want to have in this community. Whether they're qualified or not qualified, we see it at every level of office from here all the way up. So I'm not against the policy. At the same time, I I think that, you know, the people who the community elects should be people who want to get this type of training and not people who have to be legislated to get this kind of training. And so I have some thinking to do about it in terms of where I land on it. But I thank you all for the great work.
If there's nothing else, that brings us to second briefing. And that brings us to a n two two four two integrated pest management service. There are no changes. Thank you. And that brings us down to the consent agenda. Let me read it correctly. We are now at the consent agenda. Miss Ozinski, will you please read the consent agenda? Approve AN-two two two four two integrated pest management services. Approve minutes of the 11/19/2025 regular meeting. Approve a closed session on 01/07/2026 at 5PM for the purpose of attorney client privilege,
and approve a donation from Donald Pierce, a $100 donated to the Huron class of 1975 cafeteria project. Thank you, miss Ozinski. Would anyone like to remove an item from the consent agenda? Seeing none, do I have a motion for the consent agenda? So moved. Moved by Trustee Schmidt. Support. Support by Trustee Vasquez. Sorry. Any discussion? Saying none, Ms. Ocinski, please. Trustee Vasquez? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Mohamad? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson?
Yes. Trustee Wilks? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. I believe that brings us down to number 13, which is forward action. Looks like 13.1 is 2019 bond sale series V. I'm sorry. I trust you, Mohammed. So for some reason, I can't pull this one up. I Is there any I don't know. Did you send that one? Does it open? Yeah. I don't know. I just I check. So it's in the mail? I mean, it's in the email? Conditions. No. I'm not gonna take care. I didn't know if we can just pull it up there. Wait. Okay. I don't need I don't need it.
No. It's okay, really. I just I just I don't know why I can't pull it up. I was having trouble. Oh, it just been Your mind's spinning also. Who knows? Yeah. It I'm sorry. Which one is it? It doesn't like us. I don't know why that's happening. I thought it was just Oh. Oh, why why it's fitting. So tonight, we're looking for your approval for, series five of the 2019, bond. So this is just the next series to be issued in, upcoming in May. And it's a not to exceed of a $150,000,000. And what happens if we don't pass this?
If we do not issue it, then all the capital people that just left will be back here, telling you which projects would not be able to continue with, of the next series in the bond being issued. I apologize, I said Series V, Series V. Series V sounds way cooler than Series V. I understand. All right. The question is about approving the Series five of the twenty nineteen bond sale. No change from before. Alright. Seeing nothing. Seeing no questions or comments. Do I need a motion?
Mhmm. Is there a motion So moved. Moved by Trustee Schmidt. Second. Or by trustee, miss Wilkes. That's trustee Wilkes, I believe. Yep. Okay. Any discussion? Seeing none. Miss Olzinski, please. Trustee Basquiat? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilks? Yes. Motion carries. Alright. That brings us down to just the motion to adopt the resolution authorizing the sale of school buildings and school no. That's not that's it. General fund. Sorry. Thirteen point two. Here it is.
Fiscal year twenty six, first general fund, budget amendment. Any changes? No changes. Just looking for your approval for the resolution to approve the, First Amendment of the, General Fund budget. So moved. Moved by Trustee Schmoyer. Second. Supported by Trustee Wilkerson. Any discussion? Saying none, Ms. Ozinski, please. Trustee Basquiat? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilks? Yes. Motion carries. And I believe that brings us down to '16,
approved board calendar, January through June 2026. So can we pull that Hold on. It opens for me. It's not opening. I don't know what's going on. And I'd like to see it. Is it opening for anyone? It opens for me. It's not opening for me. Just a quick. So my only question is for the calendar, did we check, like, religious holidays? Yes. We do. All of that? We do. Okay. Just to make sure. I just wanna make sure. And if you notice any errors, let us know so we can check. I can't. I mean, it's the first time I'm seeing, so I'm sorry. You can let us know later.
We can still move the dates if Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But we do. Miss Ozeninski, checks thoroughly. She actually reviewed it again yesterday just to make sure nothing, nothing came up on the the religious calendar that conflicted with this year. So we checked and double checked. But there's still a possibility. So if something comes up And always codified. Mhmm. Question That's what What's the reason we can't project this out through the end of the next calendar year? Past June, you mean? Yes. It just started as a practice Yeah.
About four years ago. I didn't think it was We would do six months at a time. I don't think there's a specific reason why. Yeah. I think it was personal preference. Board members didn't know their calendars, the time, etcetera, etcetera. But Yeah. I mean, for those of us that work, I think it's hard for, like, January and February. You know, we already have meetings that are starting to come on to That's a good point. Our work work calendars or travel requirements. So just if we could project out further, even if we have to make edits to it, personally, I think it's better for everyone.
That's fair. I agree with that. Yeah. I agree. No. I can't afford to hear. Do these six months work for you, though? I can do that. Yeah. Then we can come back maybe in January. January and February? Okay. Or January through June. And then the next meeting, I could bring July through December. December. Would Joe, oh, never mind. Alright. If there's no other questions. I'd like to move that we vote to approve the board calendar. Thank you, Trustee Schmidt. I support. Second. Support by Trustee Wilkinson. Any discussion? Seeing none, Ms. Ozinski,
please. Trustee Baskett? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Mohammed? Yes. Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Wilkerson? Yes. Trustee Wilks? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. That brings us down to number 14, items for agenda planning. Trustees, are there any new items for agenda planning? I think we're we already have governance working on a potential phone policy idea. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. Thank you. And I guess I can say this now. Even though everyone's gone, I I should've said it when they were here. I don't think we're intending on having the policy prepared to go into place until
the fall. Yeah. I understand. Yeah. Well, yeah, that makes sense. And I think from at least the one, maybe two parents that have spoken with me, you know, they understand that. They just, you know, they have they feel very strongly about how the bell, of course. Fair enough. Yeah. But this is for clarity. Don't don't expect it to come and be ready to do this. Will say that they they've also talked about, hey. Why not do a pilot in January? Although here we are. It's our last meeting Yeah. Of the year. So it is what it is.
Trust mom? Yeah. And just to add to that, I mean, I agree definitely to kind of do our due diligence, but, like, I would love to see more, like to make sure that we're hearing from everyone too before we we put together. So if there's a mechanism while you're doing that, that we make sure that our well well, also, like, our black and brown students, our, you know, students, teachers. Point of order. We we did bring everybody's suggestions to the committee meeting, and that was discussed publicly.
So you confirmed that. But we're on items for agenda planning. No. No. That's part of it. I'm trying to say on top of that if we can also I I got you. I I point You understand. Point taken. I think we can move forward. Anything else for agenda plan? Anything else for agenda plan? Okay, saying that. We'll have to bring this to number 15, items from the board. Do trustees have anything they would like to share? Trustee Wilkes. I would. Thank you, President Feaster. So a few months ago, Superintendent Parks and three board trustees, including myself, had the opportunity to attend the Michigan Association of School Boards annual leadership conference right
here in Michigan. The conference included general sessions and classes related to school finances, basic school law, other classes for school board members in Michigan to help hone and sharpen our skills as board members. So I think it's important for the public to know that we as a board are committed to holding ourselves accountable when it comes to our own professional development. And I just explained that we just we just attended a conference where we attended several classes. And if we require our teachers in the district to maintain a certain amount of
professional development hours, in turn, I believe the board should hold itself to the same standards. I also believe it's important for trustees to continue to enhance our skills to best serve our students, our teachers, our parents, our district and our community. And this is just sort of emphasizing what we were speaking about earlier about why we believe that taking these CBA completing the CBA level one classes is so important and why professional development is. Thanks,
Trustee Wilkerson. Yes, I wanted to take a moment to share, earlier this week, we were notified that Superintendent Parks and members of our cabinet received holiday cards that contain negative messages, and superintendent Parks also was targeted with a glitter bomb. And I just want I just wanted to be very clear because You know, our our district, and this board, you know, really wants to have integrity in our relationships and the way we approach things. So I wanna,
you know, I wanna note that this behavior is unacceptable and has no place in our district. Agree. Disagreements must be expressed through respectful and lawful means. Our district offers several appropriate avenues for sharing concerns and viewpoints, including public comment, written correspondence to the board and union representation. And so I just wanna, again, make it very clear we're committed to ensuring that the super superintendent and all of our district employees are able to work in a safe and respectful environment.
And, you know, again, I think integrity matters a lot in how we interact as a community and how we move forward as a district. That's for disagreements. Thank you so much. Don. I I strongly agree with everything you just said. I appreciate you making that public statement. Let's see. Thank you, trustee for bringing that to our attention. I was not aware of that and that is very concerning considering it's been a heck of a year. Mhmm. It's been a heck of a year for all of us in public service. And so I just kinda wanna end. This is our last meeting of this this calendar year.
Yes. It is. So please, everyone, celebrate carefully, but with a lot of fun because you deserve it. This has been hard, uncompensated work, basically. So Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, whatever you celebrate. Do us safely and with joy. Thank you. So treat each other with respect. Amen. Yeah. Trustee Wilkerson, I also wanna thank you for, saying what you just said. And, superintendent Parks, you did mention that, and I am deeply sorry that you had to experience that. We we are we should be better than that, and there are avenues to express.
If you're not happy with something, you know, there are ways to do it. Correct. And a glitter bomb is not the way to do it. Right. So, yeah. So I just need to say that. And, again, everyone have a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and just, and and happy New Year. Enjoy your families. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, trustees, for your your genuine and sincere support. The team and I really appreciate it. Thank you. Alright. If there's nothing else, do I have a motion to adjourn by voice vote? So moved. Moved by Trustee Wilkes, support by trustee Schmidt.
Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor to adjourn, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. We are adjourned at 11:15. Enjoy your apple chips, everybody.