I'd like to call the academic committee meeting of the Detroit Community District Board of Education to order. Today is Monday, 11/24/2025, and the time is 04:37. We respect the rights of all persons to participate in this public meeting of the board and kindly request that everyone engages in behavior that supports the same. In the event anyone engages in behavior that is not in support of the good, we request that you refrain from that behavior. And may we have a moment of silence? And now we will have the approval of the agenda.
Are there any suggested changes to the agenda? Okay. Motion to approve the agenda has been presented. Is there a second? That would be odd. And it has been moved and supported and that we approve the agenda. Is there any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. And, at this time, public register comment registration closes, and the time of public comment registration has closed. And Let's see. Four 04:39. Great. And now we will move on to the shared report.
So we have a action pack report today. I first would like to start off by saying that the school board hosted its first community meeting of this 2526 school year on November 5 at BrightHawk Career and Technical Center. Board vice chair Latrice McClendon, board secretary doctor Ida Short, and myself, board member Brian, and board member Terrace were in attendance. The community members were treated to a tour of the school, culinary samples prepared by the students, and updates from around the district were given.
Special raffle prizes and free food boxes were also given to community members. On the second item, the DPSCD school board, superintendent doctor Beatty, and the board's administrative staff have begun district professional learning this month with miss Deborah Keyes, facilitator from the Right Keys two Consulting LLC. The training took place during the four special school board sessions listed on our November calendar, and we look forward to ongoing learning over the next year.
The face office hosted three Coke giveaways at Hampton, JR King, and Henderson. And I would like to thank board chair, bishop Corletta J. Vaughn, for her work in establishing HAP as a partner providing coats for the past few years. During the celebrations, students received brand new coats, hats, and gloves along with being treated to food and snacks. Chair Vaughn and I had an opportunity to represent the board with greeting and assisting students with code selection. And we have our photo to the bottom to the far right,
from Henderson. DPSCD and the Detroit Lions, presentation for eighth grader, eighth grade Emerson student, Anaya Smith. Oh, this one was a exciting one. And that is Anaya with doctor Vidhi and myself in the upper left hand corner. Students were asked to select and color a page out of the Detroit Lions coloring book that were highlights from the 2024 season. Anaya's winning entry, vibrant lion pride, a pitcher of Jamir Gibson, won first place.
And Anaya was presented with an autographed Gibbs Lions jersey, and she also shared her interest in attending, the DSA, to pursue her art. And then on so on our fifth highlight is DTSCD school board members, McClendon board members of McClendon, Bryant, Short, Blantz, and Harris. We would like to thank executive director Charice Butler for the invitation to attend the City Year Leadership Luncheon. Board members had the opportunity to engage with aspiring teachers,
working, with our students across several schools in the district. The luncheon also features a fireside chat with doctor Patina Love, renowned professor of urban education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and best selling author of Punished for Dreaming, How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal. And that is a picture on the far right side, with, myself, board member Harris, and doctor Love, and executive director Sharif Butler along with two student,
teachers. And finally, we rounded out the month with the FACE office hosting a community meeting over at Samson Weber. And that picture you will see with my self and principal Farmer, we had a great, chat with several community members, having a out outgoing support for the school and wishing to, collaborate, more with us, as a district to, support Sampson Webber's students. And I would just like to thank, Jackson, Shalanda Buckman, Alicia Merriweather, and who else? Oh,
miss Crystal Wilson. They were very instrumental, and and I will do this if I didn't mention, Carol Weaver who also supported. We had so many ongoing events, across the district, but they were gracious enough to pull their staff together and to, support the school board out. And that'll conclude the chair's report. And now we will move into, our academic update with superintendent doctor Nikolai Gee. Thank you, madam chair. I'm gonna use, my report to give the academic committee a review
of the year one of the investments for the Literacy Loan. So the committee may recall that everything listed on the slide were things that we said we would do in year one. Everything was actually done with the exception of providing staff and hard to staff schools with a bonus for being there based on literacy because we weren't able to negotiate that with DFP. But with that being the exception, everything else on this slide was done. Now when we did implement everything on the slide, we didn't always use literacy lawsuit funding,
because we were able to use other grants, either, either state categorical grants, and in one instance, general fund, and that's noted, on the far right if you're looking at the screen. So if it's in, yellow or light yellow, there are these are the things that we funded, through the literacy lawsuit funding. And if it's in white or not yellow, we still did it with the exception of the of the bonus, and it gives you the total amount that we spent. But what I wanted to do today was just go walk through, the impact that the different investments had,
mainly on student achievement and how that achievement relates to our blueprint 2027 strategic plan metrics. So the major investment in year one was obviously the academic interventionists. As you remember, these are college degree to individuals that were hired and trained. We provide one on one and small group intervention for students, in grades, kindergarten through second grade. Prior to the literacy lawsuit funding, so academic interventionists were only used in grades three to eight,
not in the early grades. And as you remember, we made this investment because we wanted to narrow the gap, in achievement as early as possible, obviously in the early grades. So our district uses a longer literacy block, as far as when we teach students at the elementary level for more time. And so these academic interventions pushed in, during that literacy block to work with students one on one, in small groups. So, one data point was when you look at students, that that had the AI versus that didn't,
the ones that had the AI performed at a higher level with proficiency, and growth. So, that was a third party, a third party finding. That that that's at a high level, but we this breaks down what kindergarten, first, and second grade performance looks like, with the dark blue being last year. So, if you look into screen to the left is at and above grade level performance and to the right is showing at least one year of growth. And so the data point that we're referring to when we say last year is
where I had the red. This is last year, last year, last year. And so when you're looking at at and above grade level performance, you can see that based on the impact of the academic intervention, if we saw an improvement in that of grade level performance in kindergarten, first and second grade, anywhere from, six percentage points to four percentage points, to four percentage points, which is rather significant when you're looking at at and above grade level performance improvement over a course of the year. Based on our target for our strategic plan,
the kindergarten group last year exceeded what we hope to improve by 2027, but we're still not there in first grade and second grade, and that's what we hope to do, this year or next year. This is showing one year of growth. So again, you can see the improvement, based on the use of the academic interventions and the kindergartners exceeded the twenty twenty seven number for showing at least one year of growth. When we look at the impact of chronic absenteeism, which again is also one of our targeted goals in the strategic plan,
you can see the difference between K through two. These are students that are chronically absent. These are all students in k two. These are students that are not chronically absent. So one question is, you know, why do we why aren't we even seeing more improvement than we even saw? It's chronic absenteeism and continuing to try to improve in that area. This shows that in above grade level performance. This shows at least one year of growth. So basically, kindergarten through second graders that missed eighteen or fewer days of school, sixty four percent of them showed at least one year of growth,
and thirty nine percent of them are at NFL's grade level and, can in guard through second grade. So, just to better understand the impact of the literacy lawsuit, funding in the AIs, we looked at I Ready nationally, and we worked with curriculum, associates because there are multiple large urban school districts that use I Ready. So we tried to look at, well, what did performance look like as compared to districts like us throughout the country, before and after implementing these literacy lawsuit funds at the k two level.
So we looked at student enrollment, the city, the size of the district, free and reduced lunch rate, and then we looked at, schools or districts that were similar to us in performance. You can see here the comparison districts here, with one year of growth, and our improvement versus those comparison districts. You can see showing at least being at and above grade level where the gap was almost seven, eight, nine percentage points. That gap has been eliminated to two. And then when you see two or more years of growth,
our district compared to these districts have slipped being here compared to here. So at the end of the day, we can see when we compare ourselves to similar large urban school districts, K-two students because of the academic intervention not only showed more improvement in ad and above grade level performance, not only more improvement with one year growth, but even two years of growth. And you can see this visibly another way, CPSCED in blue, the other districts which cannot be named,
when we get the data, a third party evaluator has their data, not the names of the districts to keep that confidential. But you can see this is where we ranked two years ago. This is where three years ago. This is where we ranked two years ago. And then last year with the first year we moved more toward the middle with at and above grade level performance. Looking at one year of growth, we were towards the bottom, three years ago, closer two years ago and last year, the highest performing with showing at least one year of growth. When we look at two years of growth,
it's part of the middle, moved beyond the middle and then last year highest performing when showing two years of two or more years of growth. Another strategy was reducing class size. We spent 4,600,000.0, focused on K to two. This was obviously, hard to do because you have to be fully staffed at the school and you have to hire beyond that. So we work hard to get fully staffed. It's hard to find teachers beyond that. But when you look at this data here, it what you see here is the class size impact.
So this is the average number of students. And you can see here that yes, there was improvement, but the largest improvement when you try to control for the students was not linked to class size and you can see that here. So, not going to say that lower class sizes didn't have a positive impact. I wouldn't say it had a dramatic impact. The academic intervention has had a bigger impact on raising student achievement than just reducing class size. So what you see here is when the extra teachers were added in particular schools,
you might have increasing the number of classes or you just, you don't have an increase in the number of class, you just have lower class sizes, or you took a group that had no class size impact, you can see here that the improvement is largest, but the achievement is highest, you don't have a class size impact. So research already tells us this, by the way. The research tells us that class size alone does not raise student achievement. It's teacher effectiveness that raises student achievement and small group intervention and the quality of your curriculum.
Class lower class sizes help classroom management and can help the relationship between the teacher and the children, but it does not independently, lead the higher levels of student achievement. I know we don't often hear that, but that's what the research says. But we did implement and we'll continue to implement this this year and next year, but not go beyond, the current numbers for teachers. We also use the dollars where, if teachers or principals could fully release a teacher in English language arts to coach their struggling teachers or new teachers.
What we saw here is that the the teachers that, were the teacher leaders or released, with their kids that they taught because they still taught at least one class, that they did better than the non teacher leaders. And other data studies showed that they were coaching, modeling, when they were free. But again, when I when I look at greatest impact, greatest impact was certainly the academic interventionists. We gave stipends, for those in the let's read program. Students did do better if they had a let's read tutor.
This year, they were lasted. There was 230 that signed up to be trained. A 150 end up being trained. We went from we serve 423 students with about 50 students more than we did the year before. But the data that's most important is, fifty six percent of students that had a tutor showed at least one year of growth as compared to fifty percent that did not. And these are matching students based on performance. And then 27% showed two years of growth, 27 24% that didn't have a tutor,
a let's read tutor, showed two years of growth. So bottom line here is the Let's Re program and the the incentive helped get more people to volunteer. It did impact more students, and the students that were engaged by it, Let's Re tutor did better than those that did not, and that's matching. We did hire more AIs for students that were English language learners. This is WIDA data. WIDA data is a English language acquisition test, not the same thing as iReady,
but you can see we did see more growth this year, with using the, AIs. I expect this data to be even better this year just because I think the, AIs will have another year under their belt. We have new curriculum and new intervention models, that started last year, but it's starting to mature more as we go on this year. One point of disappointment in the literacy lawsuit funding was the impact that the new program had at least on WIDA results.
Had a positive slightly a positive impact at farms. Remember, these are students that are newly arrived in shelters. So they have their own teachers. They still are exposed to the regular grade level curriculum, but they're together, which just helps for better relationships and intervention. We saw slight improvement at harms versus other k eight, but we saw that at Western where we implemented last year, no student showed improvement in growth. When I look back at this, lots of challenges with implementation of the model with teachers,
challenges with the administrators and teachers. We just didn't implement the model the way we intended to, and you can see that in the performance from a WIDA point of view. Anecdotally, the kids, seem to prefer to be in the newcomer model. The the teachers appreciated doing it, but, admittedly, we had challenges with implementation around the schedule and around the curriculum. The administration teachers were not consistently on the same page. This should improve this year based on changes that we've made there. What's also working is incentivizing teachers to get,
ESOL, or e English, as a second language certification or endorsement. Last year, 10, people 10 teachers gained their certification. Right now, we have 48 that are in the process of gaining that certification, and four have actually been certified. So we know that this will ultimately help our English language learners because their teacher will be certified, to work with them in English learning strategies. And then, we did offer online tutoring at the end of the year or after right before we entered the testing period.
This was offered to K-twelve students. They did it online and after school. The impact, was not positive at the elementary and middle school level. It was at the high school level though. We did find that high school students who participated in the online after for tutoring, did better on average on the PSAP and the SAT than those students that didn't. But, at the elementary and middle school, it was a similar level of performance, not a lower level of performance, but similar.
So not a major impact at the elementary and middle school level, with after school online tutoring. Remember, this is not what we're doing across the district. We're we're doing face to face, after school tutoring in literacy and math at every school, and we offer PSAT SAT tutoring at school through our teachers. That's not what this is. This is using literacy lawsuit money for an outside vendor after school, through the people they hire, to offer tutoring. And then, lastly, we have the parent academy. We did offer a $25 stipend for parents that attended,
up to 15 sessions. We had 900, parents attend, sessions on 21 on different topics. And so, this is the breakdown of the number of parents that attended, specifically, focused on literacy. 98% of parents that participated said that they felt it was helpful in supporting their students in the literacy process. It's very difficult to tie this directly to student achievement because there are so many factors, that can, influence student achievement, outside of just going to a class. But what we do know is more parents went because of the incentive,
and we know that they found it, favorable in attending. So the, at a high level, the academic interventionist model definitely worked at the k two level. Our kindergartners made their blueprint 2027 strategic plan goal in kindergarten and at and above grade level performance and growth. When we compare our district to similar districts, our students, have gone beyond, where similar districts are and have an ugly level performance or growth or they're almost there. And the greatest impact has been academic interventionists.
Not so much on the class size reduction, not so much on the teacher leader being released, and a positive impact with Let's Read, in the tutoring process. So, those are the findings at a high level, and that was a commitment that we made to the board that we would circle back and explain from a third party, which all this comes from a third party. This isn't the district creating these slides, and to provide you an update on where we are. So there's really as we go into the second year, the plan was approved over three years, but everything that we have here would continue to be done.
It wouldn't necessarily be, literacy loss and funding because we're trying to maximize the literacy loss and funding for the academic interventionists. So don't know if you have any questions, but that concludes my presentation. I have one question. Regarding the, k second grade, do we see a correlation from those students who also receive those, the tutoring from the Let's Read program? We separated Okay. So we could maximize the investments. So the literacy the the academic intervention is just worked at the k two level.
The Let's Read tutors work with three grade with third, fourth, and other. So we did intervene. No. Okay. Yes. In relationship to the, newcomer program again, I wasn't quite sure why Western High School didn't show any increased birth. Now let's go over it. What did you think was the possibility of the disparity there? Lack of uniformity in implementing the model. I think there was just a there was a there was tension between the teachers. There was tension between the school administration and the teachers in the model that we
wanted to implement. So in other words, the model that we designed was not implemented with school fidelity. And, I I I think it's a combination of central office and school level administration. The same people weren't administering and and everything No. It was it was there was just resistance in how the district and the school wanted to implement versus how the teachers wanted to implement. And I don't feel like we ever fully reconciled the differences between the two. So just on that point, what were the how did you what was the accountability framework?
Like, how do we hold folks accountable? Because if we're saying that this works and and there's a I'm not gonna say people refuse, but how do you hold them accountable to follow Yeah. The program so that we can see the kids the student benefits? Well, I don't wanna I mean, I I I'd prefer to talk about that offline because there's some personnel things that are, in the process of the Okay. That I think contributed to the lack of communication and buying and understanding.
And so I I think the responsibility first always starts with administration, And I think that there were some gaps in how we were, managing problem solving and working with teachers. I in year one, I I I think it's more of an administrative downfall than a than a teacher downfall. So just so just for, to kinda pull it out a little bit more, you are holding your administration, your cabinet, responsible for ensuring that what is happening at, the framework of the good as we lost is being carried out the way it's
supposed to so that it can be effective. Yeah. A combination of of of Cabot central office staff and, school arbitration. And I and and there are there are changes in the works that I think will help implement at Western this year. It it just appears to be a huge disparity there, and I wouldn't quite choose. Well, the English language the English language, learner data is not as strong as the general ed data across the board. That that's the case as a district as a whole. It's also the case as we look at at this data as well.
It's also it's also not a good apples to apples comparison because you're looking at iReady data, which is really more appropriate for general ed students, and then we're looking at WIDA data, which is language acquisition. So it's easy in this presentation to look at higher levels of growth for I Ready versus WIDA. Anyone's naturally going to do that. But even with that said, what is disappointing is that the even in implementing the newcomer model at Western versus
high schools that didn't implement the model, the other schools still have better WIDA data. So I'm just let it's not appropriate to compare WIDA to I Ready, but even looking at the WIDA data, we should have done better at Western, and we didn't. And and, again, that's that I'm I'm holding administration, and myself accountable to that because I felt like all year we were at odds, between central office, school administration, and teachers. And there's there's there's a, there's a flow,
managerially there that that was lacking. And there are I can go into this in much greater detail. I just don't wanna do that in a call. But that but but to transparently tell you that's the cause of why we're not seeing the improvement we should be seeing at West. You still stand behind the program itself. It's just Yeah. I I think that there are some things that we can learn from last year, but there was the flow managerially was off last year with at Western in the newcomer program. Further questions? Bethany,
just for the public and for all of us, we talk about the data and the numbers moving. What is the margin of error? Like, we never talk about, like when we say something is increased 5%, which is huge, when we think about them as soon as we have or it's not huge. It could be everything could always be better. Yeah. But what what margin of error are we using when we're talking about the data? Like, is it, like, plus or minus 1%? It's like Only the only, the relevancy of plus or minus is is the predictability. So when we talk about I Ready predicting m STEP,
we usually say plus or minus one. But not but that's only predictability. So that's that's relevant in midyear. Again, after the kids take their midyear assessment, and we say let's say we say their predict twenty five percent of kids are predicted is to be at and above grade level. We should be saying one to 4%, up or down Okay. At midyear. But after that, we're really not talking about, a margin of error because then because the end of your data is the end of your data. Okay. And then my last question, you mentioned,
we talked about the online tutors. I know we're talking literacy losses. But I know these are contracts that come our way, right, as far as, like, the online tutors and so on. Yeah. Some of them. More is more of a statement than a question. I just think that if it's not working, if it's not giving us the results that we want, you know, is it the right partner? Should we be spending money and we're not seeing those numbers move? Should we focus on high schoolers? Should we do a survey to understand why the younger children are not able to
access or not act or or not showing improvement? And I'm curious how many I couldn't remember. Was it k through two or k through whatever students are actually choosing the online, either our k through two students? Yeah. And they're, so based on this data, we did not plan to make a recommendation in year two to use online tutoring Okay. For elementary students. We did plan, to use online tutoring for high school students for the PSAT and the SAT. Okay. And that dollar amount probably is lower than what would come to the board for
approval. Approval. But, no, based on this data, we would not our plan as of today, was not to come not to use these dollars for online after school tutoring for elementary and middle. And the reason for that is we feel like the after school tutoring face to face with our teachers or AI is more effective than online tutoring. Just just the age of the kids and the kind of, discipline and oversight that an elementary, middle school student would have versus a high school student. And we learned that through online learning during the pandemic.
Great. One more question. And then just, like, looking at what we've done in year one, what are some things, you know, in year two that you're looking forward to seeing? Right? Like, what are some of the things you're like, you're excited because you know we're trending in the right direction and that we're using this literacy loss of money? Is it, what, three? Does it, the AI intervention that you are, like, we need to maybe move Yeah. I'm yeah. Excited to see the improvement in that above grade level performance. I know, like, the, you know, the average person might look at this and say, I yeah. We're really that excited about it.
But when you when you see four percentage point changes, six percentage points in 4% in one year, that's significant. Those are hundreds of kids. And so we have not seen that kind of movement in one year. And so what I'm to answer your question, what I'm excited about is when these kids get in the third grade. I think what we're gonna start to see is third graders perform a whole lot better than we've seen before because they're more ready. You know, we're seeing kids know their the basic skills of literacy better because they're getting more intervention one on one in small group.
And so, excited about that. I think I think this year's third graders will obviously do better than last year's third graders. But, eventually, these kindergarteners who are now in first grade, I think they're gonna do really well because then they will have three years of this intervention model before they test in third grade, and I think we're gonna see good data. I mean, just you know, I I know people sorta get down on, well, it's only two percent and it's only three percent. But these kindergarteners, when they're in third grade, I I believe they can they might be able to show double digit improvement versus
previous cohorts. And and that, is already getting people's attention. The other thing that I'm you know, again, I'm you asked me so I get excited and I talk about it, but thinking a little differently about, you know, is there knowing that this data exists here on on this chronic absenteeism, which we know is a problem across the board, is there space to do something out of the box, which is incentivized third grade parents or second grade parents about getting their kids to school more often. And then so then you have the combination of intensive intervention model during the day
coupled with kids coming to school more, which then we could really see a sizable improvement in performance that can change the conversation about DPSCD and overall achievement. I mean, those are that's what I'm thinking about and and possibly getting philanthropic support to do something in the next, you know, this year or next year to really see a difference in second and third grade performance. Yeah. No. That's outstanding. I think the the important part is gonna we used to keep the momentum after these dollars are gone.
Yeah. We can't take our our thumb off, right, of these third graders and, you know, and and we need to figure out how to continue to help them, you know, be successful, but also continue to help our k through too. Yeah. And I know we are we have potential changes with our our budgets and federal funding issues. And I'm and, you know, I know we're scenario planning, but I think these are, like, really important topics that we're seeing that we might be in double digit numbers. We wanna keep that going, not see a debt because we don't have literacy loss of money.
So Yeah. I think we have to really think smart and creative, to keep this momentum. And I hope that the more we can talk about how we can ensure that the dollars are available to, to keep this pulled forward. Yeah. That that's, definitely going to be the case in two years. So not this year, not next year, the year after that. Yeah. Obviously, the literacy lawsuit money will be spent. So either a, we gotta think differently about title one and how we use title one, or how we think differently about at risk money at the state level, or, you know, it's also possibly losing the fund balance as well.
But the fund balance, just a a loan, if you will, not quite a loan, but it's a a one year extension without reoccurring money. But, when when we think about moving the needle in student achievement outside of being fully staffed and continuing to invest in our teachers, I think the academic intervention is just key. It is you cannot put all of that burden on the teacher to move students when they're below grade levels. And so I when I think of all the investments that we've made, I think that aside from teacher salaries and recruiting and retaining teachers,
the next best investment is DAI. Question on the stipends that you use for parents for the literary sessions. Is there sufficient budget to continue to keep that going? For at least the next two years. Okay. After that, it would like anything related to the literacy lawsuit investments, it's either a combination of, using title one, or philanthropy. So we when we built the parent academy, we relied mainly on philanthropy to do that, and then those dollars have since gone a few years ago. So we've now invested through Title One to sustain,
that work. But, yeah, if we're going to continue to offer stipend debt to the Lydays lawsuit, Title one or philanthropy. Any first question? Well, great. Thank you, doctor Vidi, for that, report, academic update. At this time, I would like to ask if you could please give us a quick overview, for each of the, action items 4.01 through 4.12. Absolutely. Just pull it up. Okay. Okay. For the first, set of items are all, recommendations for travel for student travel.
That includes 4.01 to 4.03. So as you know, the board has to approve international travel, before it actually occurs and before the fundraising occurs. So, basically, board is authorizing for the trip to occur if, the, dollars are raised. The district is not paying for this directly, but the board is authorizing for the fundraising to occur and the trip to occur, if the fundraising occurs. Madam Chair, can I move for a tie bar for 4.01 to 4.03?
Do I have a second? Yes. Support. Oh, We have, a recommendation to approve, 4.014 And, madam chair, I'd like to move to support the tie bar of four point zero. Just a direct to four point zero. To move tie bar four point zero one four point zero two five five five. Okay. So, we the I'm sorry. The approval for four point zero one four point zero three, has been moved and carried. K. Four point,
zero four is an amendment to an existing contract with, ancillary, staff providers specifically for EFC. We, since the board last approved this contract, we need to increase the contract for the positive reason that we are nearly fully staffed finally with key EFC ancillary positions, including psychologists, speech language pathologists, are the two that we've dramatically increased the numbers, which puts us in a better position to be fully compliant with federal and state
law and with evaluation. So, the district increased the, the position amount for these positions through the contract, which has led now to, increase ancillary staff. And so that's the reason for this, increase. We keep on moving. I move to support four point, zero four. Yes. Chair will entertain a motion to approve this recommendation. And all in favor, are we in discussion? I'm sorry. Support. I'm just reading. Mhmm. Motion carried, on item 4.04 for the recommendation to approve.
4.05, is a contract to amendment for Newark, related to Flix and and Coleman Young. We were this is a, body of work that the board has seen. Different body of work, but for the same two schools, where the district receives separate categorical funding, for facility upgrades at Coleman Young, and at Flix. This work, is related to restroom, renovations, upgrading concrete doors and window replacements. And then I'm sure I think the motion to appointment 4 Okay.
I'll just keep on going for me too. Okay. Okay. 4.06. A, purchasing, agreement, with Cone Elevator Company. This is to upgrade, the elevators at Flick and at Cone Aon. 4.07, is a contract for the con architectural and engineering, work that begins the process of creating an athletic complex at Cooley High School. This is funded out of a state appropriation. 4.08, is a, contract through a cooperative agreement, with the Chi International Corporation.
This provides us with renewal from Microsoft Microsoft software licensing, and cybersecurity. Four one zero nine is a conference for mobile communications of America. This provides us with a video monitoring equipment, that we use, throughout the district. And four point or four ten, is a contract for new networking and, for technology infrastructure at the new Davis Aerospace High School at the city airport. 4.11, is a contract with NERDS Express, also,
specifically for David Zarrow Place High School at the city airport. This is for, security, systems and infrastructure, at that school along with, upgrades, for alarm systems and for other schools throughout the district. Four twelve is a contract with learning consultants. This provides this will provide the phone and PA system at Davis Aerospace High School at the City Airport, through FMP. That concludes the actual item. Okay. Thank you. Chair, we'll entertain a motion
to tie bar 4.05 through 4.12? Support. I mean, support. K. And is there no further discussion? Yes. Entertain a motion. I'm There's no further discussion. If there's no further discussion entertain a motion. Chair will Tie bar. Okay. The the chair will entertain a motion to tie bar To approve to approve. To approve the tie bar for me. Mhmm. I'm on. And, motion's been carried. And we will now, move into our public comment.
Members of the public are welcome to address the board during public comment. Individuals wishing to address the board must raise your hand to be acknowledged. Virtual public comment will be facilitated through a Zoom webinar. To register, you must use the raise your hand feature to indicate that you wish to participate in virtual public comment. Via the computer, select the raise your hand option on the screen. Via the telephone, select star nine to raise your hand. The meeting administrator will select the individual in order to speak. You remain muted until it is your time to speak.
All comments will be limited to three three minutes. The two three seven will reply to questions or concerns raised today that do not violate ethical or legal standards, confidentiality, privacy of others, or requires additional information to respond. If you would like a direct response to your question and or concern, please forward an email to the secretary of the board, Bania Moore at Bania.Moore@Detroitk12.org. Mister James Ford? Mister Ford. Yes. Okay. Miss Ruth Jordan? Present. K.
Just gonna shut up. Will I stay right here? Good evening, everyone. Good evening, miss Ruth Jordan. That's the for the fourth time, doctor Beebe And the board member. Okay. Yes. And I saw you on the member thing. But, anyway, I was we were speaking to this gentleman briefly because we cannot hear you guys talking over there. Her back is to me. Only person I can hear is doctor V. So that was kinda like a buzz for me and a couple of other people because I hear you. My support my story today is about, I mentioned it to the board member.
Well, I called you guys. Nobody returned my call with missus Bryant regarding, the policy on how you handle suspension of the staff. I think your email, doctor Vee, a little bit. I don't know if you read it because you didn't respond. And yeah. So we are, like, officer Warren at Cody High School who was suspended. And, my husband has been taught for thirty five years. I never heard the word teacher Jill in my life. I left and took a leave of absence from my job in the nineties to work for the board. Never heard of that before. But as I am speaking about it now, miss officer Lauren has been suspended.
And my question for you is he does a wonderful job. I wasn't there. I know the story. I'm in Cody all the time, and he's been suspended. And, we had our other teacher six months ago that was suspended and sent to the location where they go for their punishment or jail time or whatever you wanna call it. So my thing to you is, like, I think that policy need to be updated because there is a student story, there is the person story, and there's the truth. And I know as being in the office, the woman has kept her status back,
let's say, at least five or six years, Cody had a gang bang problem. We had a lot of problems in the school, and we haven't had any in the last three years. We even had it so bad we had death of a teacher. So I'm concerned about Officer Lawrence mental state. I'm a concern about our school's safety, and we're about to have a new school. Thank you to you guys. But I don't want to call you to be the throwaway school. I don't want the students need to take it to come in there and the story when we share a few young ladies with smoking marijuana in the bathroom. And I heard that from the housekeeping department way before he addressed the situation.
So I feel bad for him. And I know about justice in Detroit Public School, and you know I know that personally from my son's business experience. But, however, mister Warren, I don't think he should be in there that long. I don't know why it takes so long to settle a situation. My payment is up. Oh, man. Cut that. Anyway, I think that probably needs to be revisited. I don't know why it takes so long to find out the story of somebody a student in here smoking marijuana. Before that, we had another lady student, her child, and they're acting up. And they do that behavior performance scheme that go in their record. They send their schools there so they think,
oh, we're gonna send them to the hood. No. Mister Solomon is doing a good job, and we wanna keep our schools safe. Thank you. Hi. Aliyah Moore. Please go ahead with your public comment. Yes. Good evening, board and doctor Vidi. I just I try to say this as much as I most humbly can with all due sincerity. This is not personal work. This is for the betterment for our staff to be able to give it to our students. You all as a board have created a mission statement, your core values. You know,
we don't ask for perfection in this city because there's no such thing. But in the system in which we were educated, because we all are not too far with the exception of maybe one of you, around the same age. So we were educated in the same system in which well, it's not the same because it's DPSCD with a different curriculum, different everything for the most part. But you all were educated, I'm assuming, in this system. And, you know, great pride, integrity, dignity, communication, you know,
all of those things are expected, not perfection. Because as parents, we are expected to do certain things. And as a board, you are expected to do certain things, not perfection. I have to stress that. But I'm looking at this agenda. I emailed you all on November 20 with the exception of board member Brian. Nobody responded. And I'm looking at this agenda. There is nothing that says public comment registration is closed. So is Iris Taylor the president now?
Is she the vice president? Because I'm not understanding when our president got, what, a couple of meetings, meeting many meetings ago. She said the community was heard. We will cut you know, keep our regular cutoff at our regular board meetings, which is totally understandable. But why change meetings from morning to evening? Right? And and then you disregard your president's request. And now we're listening to Iris Taylor? Why did you even say public comment registration was closed when it's not even on
the agenda? But then we are expected, you know, to follow rules, to to be, you know, what we are supposed to be as stakeholders. But it seems as a stakeholder on the outside looking in that you all are doing basically whatever you wanna do. We are not asking for perfection, but the basics of communication. If a teacher is supposed to respond or a staff member in this building are supposed to respond to us in what? Three days? Two days? Why is no board members responding with the exception of Monique Bryant?
But then you want us to respect you. We want you you want us to respect your position and and play this kumbaya, but y'all not kumbayaing. Hi. Theresa Cray. Please go ahead with your public comment. Good evening, everyone. I'm doctor Teresa Cray, and I am a DPS graduate as well as the coordinator for the universal FAFSA challenge funding, that is sponsored through the state. I'm here To ensure that the district and the board is aware of the funding that is available, and the purpose of the funding.
Last year, 75 districts were awarded $10,000,000 to increase FAFSA completion rates, thereby increasing our post secondary enrollment, which is in direct alignment with what our governor has tasked us all with, which is to get 60% of our population with some type of post secondary credential by 2030. So right now with our first cohort, we have districts that got almost $1,300,000, and that was Dearborn.
Ann Arbor was right behind them with about 1,240,000.00. We have some charters in Detroit that did apply and receive funding, and we are falling in line with 10 other states including Illinois, if we wanna do a comparison that have a universal FAFSA policy. And in Chicago, they saw increases of up to 83% at some of their school districts. And so we really want to make sure that you all are aware. Right now, we have the application open.
It closes on Monday. We've been in communication. We've sent out emails. We've been pounding the pavement, trying to make sure that everyone is aware. We want to make sure that DPS is included so that we help our students. It's this type of funding so that they get all the resources. So this is a district wide program. So already, Grand Rapids is on board, Jackson is on board. And the things that some of the districts have been able to do, they've been able to hire. They've been able to use the money for stipends,
IT, all kinds of things to make sure that these students are getting what they need so that they can go to the next level. We understand that there will be some students who won't want to do it or some families who won't want to complete the FAFSA for various reasons. So we already have a waiver on our website that schools can use to have the student or the family sign off saying they're not gonna complete the FAFSA, and it's that simple. They don't have to do anything else except sign off saying they're not going to
do it. So I just wanted to bring that to the district's attention. Thank you. Madam chair, at this time, public comment has concluded. It's not, that's a good idea for your comment. Yes. I can. But it's unfortunate that people call it teacher jail. It's really called the transition center. I'm sorry. It's called the employee transition center, but I do know people call the teacher jail. Yeah. The schools is it'll terrify that with me because I have never heard that expression before to this year.
Yeah. I prior to this administration, and I'm not sure what happened prior to emergency management, but, basically, when there was a administrative leave situation, when an employee was accused of, harming another employee, threatening another employee, threatening or harming a a child in any way, they would just go home and be paid to be at home. And we changed that to say, well, you certainly can't be paid unless you're gonna use your days, but you still have to report to work, not at the site that you're at. And the reason why an employee doesn't report at the site that they're at is
because we don't want to have a another incident until that incident is properly investigated. We do have an expectation that we are expeditious in in the investigation. There are timelines that are set. Ninety business days, I believe, by memory is what we've negotiated with DFT, and we apply that to all employees. I I would never talk publicly about a particular incident because it's not fair to the employee. But any employee that's placed at the transition center is there because there's been a
a legitimate allegation of, some kind of wrongdoing between that employee, a student, or another employee. And and we believe the separation helps prevent something from happening, again, or exacerbating any tension that's there. There's always due process in every situation, So the employee always has an opportunity to be interviewed to provide her or his, version of the story in the incident, and that's considered, with obviously the victim. And then we reach a conclusion, and then a disciplinary action is taken if necessary.
Disciplinary action doesn't always lead to the individual being transferred to another location. It all depends on what happened, how it happened, who was the victim, and, if we believe that the person can go back to where they were and the issue can be reconciled, then that's what we tend to do. But it's on an individual, case basis. Okay. But I will respond to your email, but So you're saying, okay, ninety days. Correct? Is the long is should be the longest. Ninety days. Yeah. It's a lot. No. Unfortunately, we have a lot of incidents that we have sent us. Station, principal,
who's ever owned the principal, then you story. The student suspended immediately, I hear. I told him that she was. I I I don't wanna say too much either, but I know. But this brings, mental health to a person as well. Do you know that? I know that. I mean, this can really be serious. When I feel like somebody's gonna do this just do I undo justice? And you don't? Miss miss Jordan, at this time No. That's it. Because I will finish my I will end my card. Okay. Thank you. So he's going to the superintendent will reply because we're gonna refrain from
going back and forth and or bringing, an employee's name into Oh, sorry. I do apologize. No problem. I'm very compassionate about that, but I do apologize to everyone that shouldn't say that name. Okay. I I I in general, I would just say wait till the investigation is over. See see see see the see the what the finding is, and then I I would then reengage after that. And if if there's things that we did wrong, then then we should talk about it. But I would I would wait for judgment until the final if if that the
final investigation and conclusions are made at a high level. The only other comment is about the FAFSA and the grant. So we are aware of the grant. The challenge with the grant, as we see it, it would require a policy change, that would require students to complete the FAFSA to graduate from high school. This issue came up about two years ago when the legislature was considering this change. Certainly, pros and cons to it. The pro is making sure that, money is not left on the table for students to gain when they go to
college on financial aid. The negative is that there were, quite a few, leaders in the community that were opposed to the requirement. So they felt they would put an undue burden on students, on families, privacy issues, knowing family's financial background, especially in light of the federal administrative changes. There are waivers that can be put in place, but the fear was it could lead to more students not graduating in four years. Administratively, we're willing to look at it again if the board wants to revisit the issue. The makeup of a previous board did not want to move forward with that kind
of policy change. That concludes response from the phone. So, to, Leonor's comment Mhmm. Regarding, public comment. So I think one of one of the things, we are going to revisit the policy. And, again, there is one in place, and forgive me. I'm not giving you the, policy number. But I think it's 0151, but I'll confirm public participation, at public meetings. Is that with public records? So, the discussion or the question is about the close the closing of Registration.
Registration or committee. Yes. I can look at it. I have to answer. Her question is So we were, well, I believe she's saying the public comment registration closes. We're using that, and then it should not be done at the premium. That's correct. Yes. Okay. Madam chair? Yes. I think, we could I mean, you responded to her. Right? And what is your response? Well, no. It what it wasn't a response regarding the closures. It it was just a a, you know, you know, it wasn't a specific topic, which she mentioned just not.
Yeah. And we'll have our we'll have chair Vonn. She addressed the email to myself and chair Vonn. And I think the chair was trying to put something together to send her send her the policy that might have caused the delay. And so we will ensure that our chair is our spokesperson, and because we do try to follow that protocol that we're all not overwhelming her with emails. I know you sent her emails, but I don't think most people know what our protocol is, which is allow our chair to, have a chance to do the research, and I know she's been doing the research. So I think, we're gonna be we need to ensure that our chair responds to all of us
on there to give her the policy and maybe a you know, just make sure we're, and and also, to make sure that we're following process and procedure and policy. And also the policy number is 0167.3. 0167.3. Okay. Participation at board. And I'll be able to share too to ensure that she has everything she needs from a policy perspective to, get back with our constituent, miss Aaliyah Moore. And, doctor Blaine, you were gonna Yes. And in regards to the protocol, let me just also reiterate with respect to responses to persons inquire whether the committee
or general board that we do give a respect to our chair to respond so that there's not also response. So if you get a response from our chair, that is representative of the of the board as well as our board president. So if you don't get a response from every board member, do understand that's with respect to our protocol and how we respond. Yeah. We have, taken care of all of us. So at this time, I will take a motion to adjourn. What? And we have this, brief announcement, for the library library commission appointment.
Detroit Public Schools Community District is responsible for appointing the members of the Detroit Library Commission for six year term. If you are interested in applying to become a Detroit Library Commissioner for the term 01/01/2026 through December 20 I'm sorry. 12/31/2031. Please submit your resume to the secretary of the school board, Vania Moore, at vania.moore@atdetroitk12.org.
Resumes must be submitted by 12/12/2025 to be considered. Interviews will be scheduled for interested candidates. And we had a motion to adjourn? Yes. It's for a reason. Move. Meeting is adjourned.