Over here. This is Rhodes' classroom from Longacre. These are all second graders, and we have a voice down with us as well who are going to lead us in the pledge of Alright. So here's how this works. Very important job. When we all stand, you're gonna wait and you get to tell us when to start. As soon as you start saying the pledge of allegiance, all of us will follow you. Are we ready? Alright. Let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. That was great. Thank you.
That was the best rendition of the pledge of allegiance we have had in the entire 2026. So I wanna thank you for that. It is. Alright. Now we will move to our next agenda item, which is the approval of the agenda. Yes. I move that the board of education approve the 01/20/2026 regular meeting agenda as presented. Support. Motion made by trustee Walker and supported by trustee Smith to approve the agenda. Any comments, discussion? Seeing none, all in favor?
Aye. Any opposed? Seeing no opposition that, motion passes. We will now move to announcements. A few announcements. First, we had our second parent engagement meeting, maybe last week it was. Very good, discussion. Mister O'Brien was there to, provide an overview of student supports. What we learned from that second parent group was that there's a lot of great stuff going on in the district, and it's really hard for parents and community members
to really fully appreciate all that is available from the school district. So, we've engaged those parents, in in getting their support and finding, more ways to get the message out. Some, of the suggestions were to and or board members at meetings that already exist across the district, already, as opposed to separate sort of town halls, maybe communicating to
the super to the, principals across each of our schools what information might be helpful to parents because most of our principals issue regular communications to their parents and most parents read those, regularly. So we'll continue to noodle on that, but it was really, really great feedback. East, teaming visit. We had a visit. Most of us were able to make that visit to East Middle School where we were able to observe, we meaning the board of education, were able to observe the teaming, phenomenon, if you will, ourselves.
And what we I was most impressed with was, the enthusiasm that I saw from the teachers, on how this approach is really making a difference in terms of learning the students, noticing the students, and really developing that cohort feel. And it feels like it's a really great transition from elementary school to middle school because they have this, less of a bell effect and more of a community. So that was really, really great to see in practice. I know that some board members were also able to go to some of the
lunch and learns at Central High School. I heard great positive feedback from that one. And also, I think Beach View was, last week as well. Thanks to those who were able to attend the Martin Luther King event at, East Middle School last Friday. I also saw pictures of that event and wanna thank everybody who was in attendance there. The, national African American parent involvement day is February 9. I just learned of this and I wanna thank a very special principal for making that announcement. This was developed to strengthen the partnership amongst parents and the school and I think
that's really really important and we've been talking a lot about, parent involvement and how important that is, for purposes of student success. So I wanna thank, the, district and especially our principals who are observing that day and and really centering some activity around that day to generate more parent engagement. So thank you for that. We are getting, some feedback and some concerns and some regular public comment, from some folks around sex education. And I kinda wanted to just provide some information. The Michigan, sex education standards were updated in November 2025 to reflect more inclusive sex
education guidance, on topics including gender identity, sexual orientation, and other matters related to health. These changes are officially optional for districts, And they also provide, as do our current policies, provide for parent opt opt out options. I wanna make clear that Farmington Public Schools has made no updates to our sex ed policies. There have been no updates to our sex education, curriculum.
So, if there were, we would make that announcement. We'd be very state, provided for optional updates to the curriculum and that Farmington Public Schools have yet to make any updates to our sex education, curriculum. That said, parents are still welcome to come in on their own and view the
sex ed curriculum, should they choose and have the option to opt out of that again, should they choose. So I wanted to be clear, there's there seemed to me to be a little bit of, a concern there, and I I wanted to make sure that that folks know knew that we've made no changes. The board of education and the cities of both Farmington and Farmington Hills met last week. Phenomenal meeting. This was our, joint cities meeting. We try to do these at least once annually. We did this last year.
It was a great discussion. And what I was most pleased about this year was that almost all of the things that we talked about last year had been advanced. So kudos to, Kelly Coffin and the rest of the administration for making such great advances on those. I've heard nothing but great feedback and just super positive feedback from, both mayors and, protems and all of city council. So, I'm really proud of the relationship that we're developing with our cities and, identifying
areas of collaboration, moving forward. That's all very, very positive. The board of education spent half a day, in a retreat. We spent, all day Saturday from nine to three. This is our first of this year of four retreats that we will have. I appreciate the board of education investing that time. This is over and above the regularly scheduled board of education meetings we have. It's an opportunity for us to get to know each other better, to learn what moves and motivates us, as we all, learn to appreciate that it makes us more
effective as a board. We also spend a lot of time digging into data and specific topics of interest, to get a better understanding of what's going on across the district. For this past retreat, we discussed, acceleration opportunities for all. We discussed, a really great opportunity for some of our eighth graders to start getting high school credit, which I'm really pleased about. We talked about tutoring, school improvement plans, data for k through five, and also the cadence for reporting.
And I'm not sure if we had that slide up for everyone, but it it it occurs to me that, folks don't necessarily appreciate the volume of data that we get and the time frame for when we get it. But, there was a really great simple slide that helped to illustrate when the district receives data, what types of data it collects from January through December, and when that information becomes available to the board and when we will review it. So that was really, really helpful. It's up on the screen, for those who are in the room or I believe
it's also being shared, if you're watching, televised. That brings me now to board appreciation. I want to, say thank you to the board of education for all of their hard work and really for going above and beyond. I know that, our our our meetings are one thing, but you guys are also showing up and being very vocal and active on committees. You're attending events. You're going to training. You're spending your entire Saturday with us four times a year. There's a lot of work involved in being a board member.
I want to acknowledge all of the gifts in front of each of us, and I'm gonna put these down in a minute so that I can work a little bit, but I was kinda rushing here. January, I'm I'm just gonna say it. January generally sucks to me. I mean, it's dark. It's cold. As an accountant, for me, it's, you know, been busy season, you know, for taxes and all of the things, 10 q's and 10 k's. But this part of January is, like, the best part of the month, because, first
of all, you know, no one came here expecting gifts, but receiving gift is kinda nice, we'll say. So thank you, to all of the schools that, drew something for us, that made something for us, that that, you know, created some, you know, really thoughtful, sweets and and and treats for us. It it really brought a smile to all of our faces. And, every year this is really special, and it feels like every year it just gets better and better.
I I appreciate the notes from individual second graders. I appreciate the banners and and and all of it. I wanted to take, just a quick minute to express my personal gratitude to each board member here for their support, for their leaning in, for their listening. This is a well functioning board, and I I'm really proud to be a part of it, and I appreciate your confidence in me and each other. Trustee Smith, I appreciate your community feedback.
I appreciate that you're constantly sharing information. I appreciate that you're one of the more visible members of our board, and I appreciate how often you're in attendance to community events and how you hold us all accountable. Trustee, Recinto, I appreciate you most of all for being the newest board member here. I cannot think of a better addition to this board than you. You have just been phenomenal. Hit the ground running. You're a wealth of information. I love how you share.
I love that you're thoughtful in your sharing. I'm learning a lot from you, and I think each board member is. I greatly appreciate how fast you became a certified board member having gone through all nine. Yeah. All nine of the courses in almost record time. And as a result, this board continues to be a certified board of education, which is, not common in the state of Michigan. So that's an incredible achievement. I'm very proud that several years ago, we became a certified board and that, Thomas
Hall helped us maintain that status and that you have done it again. Trustee Hall, I appreciate how you came to this board and just really became open to learning. I think that, I'm really pleasantly surprised at how you dug in. It feels like you've been here a long time even though you just got here. So I I really appreciate you leaning in. I appreciate the perspectives that you bring. I I appreciate your voice. Trustee, Blau, I appreciate your positive outlook on almost everything.
That that says a lot. It really is, important to stay positive because all of us have, not had the best days, especially, you know, being in service. So we appreciate the positive outlook that you bring to this board. I appreciate your efforts in leading us and, especially around community engagement. And, to that end, thank you and trustee Heinrich for starting our next coffee and conversation with the community on Saturday, February 28, from nine to ten at Blue Hat.
We'll make sure to get a communication out. But, you are seriously just all about community engagement and reaching out to folks with differing opinions and views and perspectives and trying to get them together. Trustee Heinrich, I appreciate your attention to detail. You ask a lot of great, great questions. I especially appreciate how you lead the, finance and facilities meetings. I appreciate that you share information with the public and make sure that people understand that you are being thoughtful and thorough and and vetting information as it gets present,
presented to you. And you're sharing with the public, not just, you know, doing the work and then, you know, coming to approve it at the board meeting, but really making sure that voices are heard and that questions are being asked and that you're you're really paying attention to detail, and I appreciate that. Trustee Walker, I appreciate the great questions you have. I appreciate your zest for learning. It's very, very obvious that you are a learner and that you have really high expectations for all of our students. All of us really do. Appreciate your love and enthusiasm for CTE and your desire to have, a pathway for
all of our students. Doctor Coffin, we had a lot of great conversation about you just a few minutes ago when we were going through your evaluation. You've been a great addition to this district. I've been pleasantly surprised at how you've won over our cities. All of the great feedback that we get. I love how accessible you are to us, every one of us, and to our parents and to our community members. I think, I'm I'm really happy where you acknowledge where we have room to grow, and you're doing the work.
And it's not just about talk for you. Missus Scripture, you are just a blessing. Yes. I think, you know, we've said this before with previous executive assistants, and we thought that there were gonna be some really large shoes to fill, but you must have big feet. You're just sweet and kind and everything that we need. I I really appreciate you on behalf of the entire board. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everything that you do. It does not go unnoticed. Thank you. Who's gonna acknowledge what great work you've been doing?
There's no acknowledgment needed. I know I'm fabulous. That's me. I do have something for each of you though. I know that, board service is tough, so I've made a coloring book for our board of education Yes. For your mental health. I hope that you appreciate this coloring book. I hope it provides you stress relief and, anxiety reduction. Does everyone have a copy? Yes. Yes. Does everyone have a copy?
Colleen. Yeah. Because Colleen is page one here, so everybody knows. So This is so cute. And you also have coloring books, coloring markers I wanna share with you. President Williams. Colleen, yours is coming soon. President Williams, while you're doing that, I wanna say it feels like Christmas here. I wanna say, thank you for, many of people that are new here don't realize that, president Weems and I are the long lasting board members.
You could just call us suckers. But anyway, we have been here the longest. Miss Weems has been here eleven years. I'm going into my twelfth I mean, tenth. It feels like twelfth. But, we have had four presidents that really didn't know how to hold the glue together. And I wanna thank her, not only as our president, but also as a personal friend, although many people don't think that we like each other. But Terry and I are very good friends.
But I wanna thank each and every one of you. You really don't know who you who's in your corner till you have someone in your family that's sick or that is suffering with something without going into detail. I wanna thank each and every one of you for the personal conversations, for the prayers, calling me to make sure I'm okay. Because when a loved one is suffering, you're suffering as well.
So I wanna thank doctor Coffin that I call KC. Everybody knows I've been hard on superintendents, but this one has been a ride or die. And I thank you. And I thank you, Terry, for everything that you have done for me. Thank you. Thank you. And I thank all of you for the love and the support and the phone calls and prayers. Thank you, trustee Smith. With that said, I will move on to our next agenda item, which is, as a reminder, just a discussion on the superintendent evaluation.
Just for purposes of this meeting, we had a meeting prior to this one where we discussed the superintendent, we met at 05:00, we discussed the superintendent's performance, and we left that meeting with a rating of effective. There are that is the highest rating that a superintendent can be rated, because of the changes in the, in the way that the state of Michigan recognizes, performance. Well, I'm really pleased with that rating. I think it was pretty unanimous. We are very pleased with how the superintendent is moving us forward and, we want
to see that continue. So with that, we will move now to public comment. This is oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. So because, because members oh, yeah. I really appreciate you guys. Can can I pause you just for a second? People who are watching from home cannot hear you. If you wouldn't mind coming to the podium, and so this is our this is our time. We're moving into public comment, and it sounds like we've got some folks who would like to have something to say.
If you would like to say something, please come to the podium so that folks in the audience can hear you. And when you come up, please say your name. Oh, we've got some students too. That's great. That's fantastic. Oh, hi. Can everybody hear me? Yes. Hi, Avery Schwartz. Hi. I have some friends I see and some familiar faces. I just wanna say thank you from the bottom of our hearts. I'm a mommy here and we're real active in the community in different, different pockets. But I have to say this group has been phenomenal. You have, you have really blossomed.
It's been fabulous to watch all the connections And I think we feel it trickling down into the schools. So from the bottom of my heart, this is Evie second grader. She's headed to Mrs. Rhodes. Phenomenal second grade at Longacre. And, our crew, do you guys wanna come on up for a picture? I feel like we should do a picture. Can we do a picture? I feel like we should do a picture. Yeah. Come come stand in the middle. That's great. Come stand in the middle, everybody. That's awesome. I'm really excited to be here. Come right in the middle. Thank you guys for coming. This is our Pledge of Allegiance crew. Yeah. Right in the middle.
And this is the balance here. I'm making you principal. Hi. You wanna need a picture? Hey. Why don't we just come out? Yeah. Let's We'll stand behind. This is awesome. Oh my god. These kids are going all out of their wishes. All the things that's You gotta hang up from school. It's our names, my dad, a couple of people getting hot.
Alright. I know. I am feeling really great. I am on a diet, so I will save this for February 15. No. You may not have it. I'm gonna save it. It's gonna yeah. Thank you. No. No. No. Okay. Just a good chocolate. At this time, we will call Bill Lovellway, and then we will call Sariram Carniti. I'm sorry. It's Sai. Sai? Yes. We'll call Sai. He will be second. Thank you. And these are the only other two public comment forms that I have.
If anyone else wants to make public comment, please let me know and we will call you next. Mister Lebleway. Okay. Farmington Schools board and superintendent met with our two cities last week. They covered a lot of interesting and useful information that should be shared with our communities routinely. Tonight, they will speak on three topics. Home rule, which allows us to shape public schools that meet our needs. Our loss of 25% of students over a dozen years. Comparison of two schools and how they dealt with impoverished students.
And I'm gonna be looking at pages two, three, four. Home rule. Our community owns this school district. The board represents us and is accountable to us. This place is a premium on excellent open dialogue. The superintendent is responsible for running a district and is responsible for achieving student growth in benchmarks set in collaboration with the board. Where goes enrollment? Student enrollment declined by 2,500 students over the last dozen years.
Even as the city's population increased by 5%. The district faces increasing competition from its neighbors. Is our academic achievement plan aggressive enough to meet or better yet beat the competition? Last topic, teach impoverished students. We found a couple of schools that will be of interest to you. They are nine miles from here. Pembroke Academy is a charter school. It's ranked second among the top 100 public K through eight schools. And that's according to the Mackinac Center.
And, its poverty rate is ninety two percent compared to Farmington's thirty two percent. Despite this sixty percent handicap, sixty two percent of Pembroke's students read at grade level compared to fifty six percent for Farmington. They beat us. Across the street and drawn from the same population is Bow Elementary, a Detroit public school. Bow Elementary's poverty rate is 91%, which is the same as Pembroke's 12%, percent.
12% of Bose elementary students read at grade level, which is 50% below Pembroke. This significant difference leads me to believe there is a major difference between these two schools that is most likely attributable to the charter, school contract with its, authorizing body as embodied in the management philosophy. Given that this is the start of our budget season, I suggest that Farmington Schools contract with our communities.
Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Syshram Kranati. I'm here representing the Hackbots. Just to give you some quick updates, we started our kickoff last week on Saturday on January seventh, and we hit the road with QFD quality function deployment. We talked about our attributes that our robot must have and the scoring things that our robot must be able to do. And now since we're in build season, we've committed our first week, and our schedule changed from Monday to Thursday to Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
And throughout this week, we've done lots of prototyping to help us throughout our, game season and keep us going forward. From a mechanical perspective, we've done various amounts of prototyping from the intake to our shooter and our hopper, trying to create a a very good robot towards our season. And from a programming perspective, we've done various things, but the two main things that we've, done are try to figure out our camera angles or optimal angles to see, our field and and be able to align with over where we're trying to shoot
and try to figure out where we can go in our autonomous functions, as the first twenty seconds is our time, and there's no human control over it. Last but not least, I would like to thank you all for, for the STEM facility that's about to be done at the end of the calendar year. Thank you very much for the STEM facility as it'll help us with our future goals and making it a better place. And on behalf of our team, I would love for all of you to join us on our two competitions in Michigan at on at Jackson on March 21 and
on in April 4 at Livonia. Thank you. Thank you for that. Just wanna make sure I have that right. I have March 21 in Brooklyn, Michigan. In Jackson. Is that right? In Jackson. Okay. Thank you for that. At Columbia Central High School. Correct? Yes. Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for that update. Next, we have principal Crystal Ballard. Good evening. Good evening. I am here to, just express gratitude on behalf of myself and the staff at North Farmington High School.
You cannot have a strong school district or strong schools without a strong school board. In my short time of being here, I've just been impressed with your leadership, the way that you have shown up at events at North Farmington and community events. It's very remarkable to see an engaged and involved board. I ask our staff to share some words. As it is, school board appreciation month and the buckets that those words fell into were dedicated essential visionaries and community. And two quotes I would like to share that came from the staff at North
Farmington High School was your leadership and dedication to North Farmington High School shows up in the small moments in my classroom when students feel safe, supported, and inspired. Thank you for making that possible. We are grateful for all of your hard work and dedication to our students, staff, and parents. A strong board builds a strong community. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I'm feeling uplifted. This is, one of our better board meetings. Alright. Okay. Is there any further public comment?
There is another opportunity for public comment after, after, discussion items, but if anyone wants to speak now, you're more than welcome. Okay. Seeing none. We're now going to move into sort of the meat of our, board meeting. And so at this time, if there's anyone who wishes to, dismiss themselves, feel free. Some of them are still gonna stay for us. Oh, okay. Okay. Then okay. Then I'll wait. I'm sorry. I'll wait till after the, district updates. Let's move on to items from the secretary. Yes.
The board received communications regarding the Farmington High School IB Castle newsletter, the January edition. The board goal around strengthening community trust and stakeholder engagement, as well as this your protocols related to ICE presence at school. The board acknowledges all communications and response as appropriate. A list of correspondence is included in the board packet, which is available on the Farfetch Department of Schools website. Alright. Thank you. And then legislative update? Just, two quick things. House Bill forty one forty one has, passed through the house.
That does, according to the bill, prohibit cell phone use, at districts. By the 2627 school year, expected to go to the Senate. And then, I guess, seeks swift of approval before the, state of the state address, from the governor. On the federal side, again, just a reminder that they're still waiting on federal funding, working out things to try to avert the January 30 federal government shutdown. And that's it. Thank you, trustee Recinto. I know the cell phone thing is a huge one, so we'll be monitoring that
one. Doctor Coffin, we'll now move to district updates. Alright. Thank you, president Weems. Tonight, my district update is really all about you guys, so we'll just keep it going. As we recognize you for your service to our students, to our families, our staff, and the entire Farmington Public Schools community. As we celebrate school board recognition month, I wanna take a moment to publicly and personally recognize the extraordinary leadership that each of you provide to the district. As superintendent, I have a unique vantage point from which to observe the countless hours
of preparation, the difficult deliberations, and the unwavering commitment that you all bring to this table. I'm incredibly proud to serve alongside a board that prioritizes the following. An unwavering focus on our learners and student achievement. You have maintained laser focus on improving outcomes for every student. The goals set by the board for the twenty five twenty six school year, specifically the first goal committed to strengthening student achievement oversight and accountability, communicates clearly your collective
commitment to our students and student achievement. A mindset that supports and drives our entire administrative team towards excellence. Honor board standard. President Weems had referred to this. Even with recent shifts in the membership, the board has remained committed to high standards of the of an honor board. Your ability to embrace new perspectives while maintaining a culture of collaborative governments is a testament to your professionalism. Visibility and connection.
I see you. I see you in our hallways, at our games, and in our theaters. Your high level of visibility sends a powerful message to our staff and to our families that you are not just policy makers, but you are active champions for Farmington Public Schools. Your advocacy at every level. Your leadership doesn't stop at the district line. By representing Farmington Public Schools at the county, the state, and at the national levels, you ensure our community voice is heard, advocating for the resources and policies you know
that our students deserve. Your sacrifice of service, the sheer time commitment required to govern a district of this caliber is immense. I am deeply grateful for the late evenings and the weekends that you choose to spend away from your own families to serve the families of FPS. The partnership between a superintendent and a board is a foundation of a healthy district. Thank you. Thank you for your trust and your challenge, your tireless commitment to the children of
FPS. It is an honor and a privilege to lead this district alongside you. So I wanna we're gonna go on now to some of the goodies. Each of the board members has a a white flower bag. If you wanna grab that out, in there you'll see, some, well, I think fun stuff from our cabinet. You'll recognize one thing for sure. So, yes, a book. Oh, most recent book, Brene Brown, Strong Ground. It talks about the importance of the people, importance of the people that we lead.
And then, yes, you have a t shirt that I think you also will remember. Almost a year ago, our IB student's name had shared that it was important that we communicate to enjoy the difficulty. So you all now have your own Cool. IB inspired teacher. Oh, nice. This is pretty. So, yeah, some good some fun stuff. I'll look at this. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. So now we're gonna continue to take make some time to continue to recognize not
only your service, but the impact that you've had on our school community, and I think you see this out here. Tonight, each of our buildings, every single building, has shared some sort of, token of gratitude for your dedication and your service. Some have shared notes, gifts, banners, video tributes. Some delivered their gifts earlier, and others are here, to share their gifts in person. So we'll go ahead and start.
Miss Dibella, if we wanna start with, miss Rhodes' class. Come on up. You know there's more. Yeah. You can stand right next to me. Awesome. Hi. My name is Eliza Rhodes and I'm a first year second grade teacher at Longacre Elementary. And with me I have a few of my students, Rekab, CJ and Ava. And when asked to create a project to thank our Board of Education, I felt the most meaningful way was to do so by helping my students learn about your role within our community. So as a class we read informational texts about the board of education, learn important
details about your responsibilities, and wrote informative paragraphs to share our understanding. We also connected skills that you guys use in your work each day to a habit that we learn about at Longacre. We culminated our learning by creating self portrait, projects that highlight what we learned and reflect our appreciation. We hope you enjoy our projects, and we sincerely thank you for your service and dedication to our schools and students. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, miss Rose.
Thank you. Next, miss Doreen for Forster's here. She has a few words to say. Gifts to share. Good evening. I'm Doreen Forrester, and I'm here from Visions Unlimited. You all have bags from Visions. I want you to know that all of those items in the bags are student generated. Everything we do at Visions focuses around our students, being able to share what they can do. It has a little vision sticker on it. Mic there you go. Yes. Yes. Thank you. So those are all from the students.
We also have a poster over here for our students so that everybody could write you notes. We fit as many as possible on the, board for you. So we really just appreciate you. We appreciate the support that you give to visions and our students. We know that our program would not be as successful without all of the care and dedication that the school board has shared with us. So thank you so much. It means the world to us to have your support. Thank you so much, miss Forrester. Thank you. Alright. So now, let's take a moment, sit back and relax, and we'll be able to
view a few a handful of videos that were created specifically to celebrate you. Oh, I think I'm gonna see you on. Forest Lobby. It's Kyle's favorite part of the week. Forest rock star spied. Students who rock kindness, responsibility, and respect. But this week, something very strange is happening. Strange like wearing your shoes on the wrong feet? No. Not that. Strange like putting ketchup on pancakes? Ew. That is strange, but not bad. It's strange because this week's forest rock stars are not in kindergarten, not in first
grade, not even not even in fifth grade. What? This week, all forest rock stars are, drum roll please, grown ups. This week's forest rock star spotted is our very own Farmington Public Schools Board of Education. Wait. Do they wear capes? No. Maybe not, but they are school superheroes. So what does the the Board of Education do, you might ask? They're a team of help to make big choices so our schools are safe, fun, and ready for learning.
They help make sure we have great teachers, buses, learning supplies, lunches, and buildings that don't fall down. That's very important. We like buildings that stay up. They work even when you're asleep, even when you're at recess, even when you're deciding what snack to eat. And they do it because they care about you. Because of them, our school community continues to grow, learn, and of course, we rock. So this week, we're giving a big floor shout out to the FBS Board of
Education, our very own Forest Rock Stars. Let's give them a huge Forest Elementary round of applause. Thank you for all you do for our schools. You really do rock. Alright. What was that from? Beach. Beach. Oh, Beach. Okay. So this is a what I mean, you know, go back to the, North Farmington. Yeah. You want me to So, these are from North Farmington. Yes. So this was created, by the North Farmington staff as a way to, what exemplifies
your leadership. And so miss Ballard spoke a little bit, but just to know you have a copy of that. And, they really they appreciate you, Commander. Thank you. Alright. That that concludes my update. Well, that was great. Thank you. We appreciate all of that. It yeah. This this is, it's nice to to be appreciated. And, we obviously, are very passionate about the work that we do. And, we, appreciate all of the staff that work here at Farmington Public Schools.
So, from us to you, thank you. And clearly, students make it all happen. So, we we also really love and appreciate every student, as well. So with that, we can move on to the budget update. Yep. Yep. Thank you. I'd like to welcome Miss Jennifer Kaminski, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services, to the podium, to present the first budget amendment for the twenty twenty five-twenty six school year. Alright. Good evening. So again, this is the first budget amendment for twenty five-twenty six.
And I would like to start off looking at our blueprint, for the district. So this design blueprint, shows how all of the pieces of our educational system work together to support students. So it starts with our goals and guiding concepts. We have community context at the bottom, school system and elements, which all, form to provide those student experiences. And so you'll notice budget and operations, highlighted in, orange there.
And really just to show that the budget, as well as the operations really support every other element within the system. So even though you may not see where that money is being spent, it is behind the scenes supporting technology and, infrastructure, our, student, curriculum instruction and assessment, as well as those student learning experiences. So just wanted to start off with that to connect how we fit into the
system. So looking at what's happened since 07/01/2025. So when we started our fiscal year, there was no budget approved by the state. And this year it took all the way until October 7 for a budget to be approved. So three months into our fiscal year, a budget was finally approved and the state had to do a continuation budget to keep things moving at that point. So what they released at that time was a foundation allowance increase of $400 per
pupil. So we had included originally a $200 per pupil increase. There were some new 27 L one time funds allocated, one for to increase educator compensation and the other to help offset some of the costs associated with retiree health benefits. They significantly increase that MPSR's U a L categorical revenue, and that's used to, essentially fund that fund, the unfunded portion of the retirement system.
And then our enrollment, decreased slightly instead of remaining flat as we had projected in the original budget. So looking at the dollar amounts for some of the items, and their impact on our News. So on the local revenue side, our tuition revenue decreased about $71,000 and that's mainly due to, less tuition paid preschool programs and more of those classrooms being qualified under, the great start readiness program and so funded through the state.
We did decrease our interest revenue, about $300,000 Now that rates have started to come down slightly, that interest revenue will also decline And we had an increase in local grant funds of about $285,000 projects and Minton, that are supporting some of our schools. So some of those dollars have been included. On the state revenue side, so we had that increase in state aid revenue of
about 1,200,000.0. And again, that's, the difference, 2,000,000. And again, that's, the difference really between the $400 that we received and 200,000. And then because we did decline, there was some enrollment stabilization revenue, that we are receiving in the current year. That's about 391,000. As I mentioned, we had a significant increase in that, UAL revenue. So about $3,900,000 And those revenues, we also have to record as an expense.
So that drives up our overall retirement costs as well. And then we did lose the MPSR is $1.47 8 offset dollars and those were essentially monies that we received to help offset other portions of the retirement cost. And so we, we lost $1,400,000 So, as I mentioned, we received, 22 L there
were two parts to that funding. The l two educator compensation was about $1,300,000 and that we have been working collaboratively with our, bargaining unit groups, talking about how to disperse those funds. And so, that should be settled, in the near future. And the other, the 22 l four retiree healthcare costs of $1,200,000 So if you recall, I'll, employees, not all employees, but there were a lot of employees who continue
to pay that 3% healthcare fund cost When that was eliminated, for employees, the state had indicated that if they did need additional funding on the health side, that the districts would be responsible for paying that. And so there was an increase due to on the healthcare side. And so this is one time funding, dollars 1,200,000.0 to help offset that increase in the current year only. So we had an increase in Great Start Readiness, program funds of 571,000.
Again, that's the free preschool for all, program that the state has in place. In order to qualify for GSRP funding, it is a five day program for at least, four year olds. So we also had an increase in our 31 a at risk funding of about $676,000 And again, 31 a dollars have been supporting, instructional coaches, math specialists, literacy paras.
We're gonna be looking at a pilot program to help, support reading at grades two through four, an intensive reading program, and other things that we're currently working on, together. We did have a decrease in 22 I transportation funds a few years ago. The state started funding us with general ed, dollars or funds to help support the general ed side of transportation. And we did see a decrease this year.
We had a decrease in special education funds, just under 500,000. And that's really, in the current year we have less of our section 53 students. So a decline overall. And then we also had a decrease in other state categorical payments and state grants of about 650,000 federal revenue overall decrease in federal, grant funds, of about $1,100,000 So
we did have a decrease in title funds and that's, title one, two, three, and four of about 700,000. Although we did find out today that our title one funding increased significantly. So, that number will change in our second amendment, which will occur in June. We will have a decrease in head start funds as this will be the last fiscal year that we run a head start program. And so we do have things in place to continue to help support those families.
We're looking at using Title one funds, to making sure to make sure that we can still support those three year olds that may need, additional services. We had an increase in our idea flow through funds of about 124,000 on the inner district revenue side. We saw an increase in our PA 18 funding from Oakland Schools of about 250,000. And again, that's really to, disbursement of one time funds based on their, fund balance
protocols. And then we saw a decrease in the indirect cost transfer from the nutrition services fund of about $55,000 And again, that's based on, the costs in that fund. So just looking at, some of the largest revenue items within the general fund, you can see the state makes up 59%, of the revenues. So our foundation allowance, those state categoricals, as well as other grant funds on the
local side, there's 29% of our revenue property taxes make up the majority, of that amount. And that's also interest, Medicaid funding, as well as preschool tuition. And then we receive about 8% through those PA 18 special education dollars received through Oakland schools, general fund expenditure side. So these are some of the increases and decreases, that are contained within the budget.
So we have revised all of our salary and benefit numbers based on actual staffing in place. We did see that significant increase in retirement, expense of 3,900,000.0. That's the amount I mentioned in the revenue side as well. We had that decrease in federal grant expenditures of approximately 1,100,000.0. So again, federal revenues are budgeted to equal federal expenditures, so they do not have an impact on the bottom line. We had an increase in state grant expenditures of approximately 1,250,000.00
again due to the GSRP and 31 a at risk funds. We have an increase in instructional materials for some of our, textbook adoptions in the current year, an increase in maintenance and operations, as well as transportation for capital purchases. So we have purchased several vehicles this year and we have, four of those additional vans on order. Currently we saw an increase in intergovernmental payments due to higher tuition costs for those
special ed students attending other center programs. And then we've revised any other lines, based on current known factors. So overall our expenditures are greater than our revenues. So 181,500,000.0 in revenues, 184,900,000.0 in expenditures. So we are using about 3,400,000 of fund balance in the current year. Again, that brings us to about a 21.1% fund balance, so still way above the, board's targeted fund rate, fund balance range.
We did start off the year. The original budget was, projected to use about 4,700,000.0. So we are in a better spot, than we originally thought. Then other funds that were also amended, nutrition services, that accounts for all of the activities associated with providing meals are building insight twenty twenty three capital projects fund for those bond projects. And then our benefit stabilization fund, which pays for all of the costs for health,
dental, vision, life, and L, long term disability benefits. So just some of the future unknowns that, we are currently facing. So state funding again, as we think about, next year's budget, you know, what will that foundation allowance be, mental health, safety and security funds, will those continue into the future? Again, I mentioned a lot of one time funds that we're receiving this year, so those are not, budgeted to move forward and then whether those funds will be restricted
or unrestricted. So the state economy last Friday, the, revenue estimating conference was held. And it did reveal that overall the state as a whole budget, is will be down about 1,100,000,000 if you look at the two separately, the, the, the decline is really on that general fund side state aid, fund is still increasing slightly.
However, we know that when the state looks to, balance their general fund, a lot of times they come to the school aid fund or change funding structures, to accomplish that balancing. So we'll have to pay attention to that. On the federal economy side, as I mentioned, headstart, you know, has a lot of changes. We will not be running that program moving forward, idea funds. And then the title one, two, three, and four, there has been some talk about
eliminating some of those, title monies. So we'll just have to pay attention and make sure we we factor that in. National school lunch and breakfast. As those dollars decline at the federal level, that will put more pressure on the state to have to pay more. And then enrollment projections. We're currently reviewing that student enrollment data this year, looking to see where, those declines occurred, as well as we'll be working with a demographer to to protect project, future
enrollment, for the next five years. So next steps. Again, we can continue to focus on our instructional priorities, making sure we're funding, to support that innovation and student learning. We'll develop, an initial 2627 budget. So we'll develop those budget parameters and assumptions that will be presented to the board in March. We'll also generate forecasts for the following two years, to make sure that we are
remaining fiscally stable. And then we'll look forward to the governor's budget, which will be released and presented in early February. And that is it for the first budget amendment. I can answer any questions. Trustee Blau. I just wanted to clarify for the community about why we're not having a head start program next next year. Oh, not because we don't want to correct. Correct. So on the headstart side, the, the, I, I'm not sure if it's the federal government made the changes or, if that was something within the state, but in order
to qualify to run a head start program, as we have run-in the past twenty years, we have our own employees. We provide, all of those services to the students. You had to service 60 or greater students. And currently we don't have that number of students, in headstart again, that's for three year olds, who are at risk. And so, we decided based on the model that we would have to follow that
we wouldn't be able to, necessarily pick our staff to run those classrooms and support the children. And so that's why we're looking to use title $1, which will work in the same manner to help support one or two classrooms that we currently run. So we can still support the students of that age who have the need Correct. For that kind of program at that age. We just won't be, taking the head start dollars because we won't be able to
satisfy the requirement that we have at least 60 students. That's correct. Yep. Trustee Heimer? Yeah. Yeah. The longer I'm on the board, the more I appreciate the work that you do. So I just wanna thank you for that. You went over this on on the finance committee and asked a lot of questions. But, just one thing that I wanna point out is as a board, we're we're really focused on student achievement and how our initiatives and things are tied to student achievement. Every time we ask to see how funds are tied instead of saying, yeah, we
can't really do that, you you say we're thinking about it and we're trying to figure out ways in order to, you know, report on that because we know that money is being spent. And so I really just wanna appreciate your willingness to look at, providing that information to the board in the future along with all the other work that you're doing. Thank you. Trustee Smith? Miss Kaminski, thank you for all the work that you do. It's not easy, looking at the dollars and the cents and figuring out where we
need to spend, how we should spend if we make these cuts. I'm glad that you were able to share that with the community about the Head Start program as miss doc well, doctor Blau brought up. That's important for the community to know that we are not removing anything, and this is not something that this board wants to do and take lightly. But I wanna thank you and for I appreciate everything that you have done and how you have I mean, you and president Weems that that CPA stuff is amazing.
I mean, that you lead the other the visiting community stuff to me. But that that part right there is you're spot on with what you're doing. And thank you for breaking it down in layman's terms so people won't be intimidated by, your report. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah. And just to piggyback off of that, I I appreciate everything that you said, Trustee Smith, and acknowledge that I also appreciate the way you break it down for all of us because we are all certainly more than qualified to review the finances of our, district.
So thank you. Thank you. K. Thank you. Seeing no further questions, I think we can move on to our next agenda topic. Before we go there, I think we have one more video. Oh. So Oh. You're welcome. A little bit overwhelmed, so we gave you a break. Okay. Here we go. Hillside. Thank you, miss Smith, for all you've done for us. Thank you, vice president Walker for making our school great. Thank you, president Lee. We appreciate you. Thank you, secretary Blau.
Thank you, treasurer Heinrich. Thank you, Mr. Rizanta. Thank you, Mr. Hall. We appreciate you. Thank you, school board. Here's a song for you. Thank you. What a wonderful end to your presentation. Thank you. With that, we will now move to reports from board committees. Finance and facilities committee met on January 16, in order to review the first budget amendment that, miss Kaminski just, presented to the school district, and that was our only
topic. Okay. Alright. Thank you for that report. We can now move on to discussion items. We have one discussion item for today, and it is around prioritization of board policy topics. I wanna thank, trustee Walker in advance, for the work that he's done to develop this, sort of review for us as we have talked about, a few times and what we didn't have time to get to in our retreat was we have a number of topics that have come to this board this year, and over past years.
And, there is no way for us to address, you know, 20 plus, policy related items in a year's time. So what we wanted to do was talk through some of the things that have come to our attention through various, members of the board, and from the public and try to figure out, some sort of consensus on what we would recommend to the, policy committee we focus on, over the next year or two.
That said, that doesn't mean that other topics aren't important. It's just, trying to prioritize what we wanna get done this year. And then over the next few years, we'll continue to tackle. As you know, there is a load of work involved in, school district operations and in policy, and it's impossible to do everything. But, we can continue to prioritize. And as new things come up, the, policy committee will need to determine how it reprioritizes.
Right? As, we identify things that maybe surface is more important. With that said, the policy committee is already busy in terms of responding to and being attentive to, rule changes that are required by law and those that are recommended to us by our attorney. And so that's what's been coming to the board over the past couple of months. But we also wanna be very proactive and think through, how we might, one, support the district in its innovations. Are there policies that we need to address in order to facilitate innovate, innovation?
Are there policies that we want to address that support academic achievement, that support equity, those sorts of things. And so with that, I will turn it over to, trustee Walker. Thank you. Thank you, president Williams. And, mentioned before, what I wanted to do as the chair as we think about policy both in the immediate and for tomorrow is put together something of a framework. We've talked on numerous occasions about how do we leave systems here for persons who
come behind us, and how do we create the best systems that we possibly can for people to make decisions. And as it relates to policy, this is a very critical area where we create the guide rails, as it were, for the district, and we wanna make sure that we have something of a framework that we can all agree upon to be able to do this work in a way that best sets up the district as a whole, thinking about students and working our way back through. So when we talk about the purpose of this framework, as you can see here, we're looking for a consistent approach.
Approach to policy shouldn't be something that's willy nilly back and forth based on a lot of emotion. Emotion. We need to think about it in terms of equity and accountability. We need to think about it in terms of strengthening governance, but not for the purposes of having a, an iron hand, but for, again, creating guardrails where they are needed. Doctor King once said that laws are for the for the lawless or for the heartless. And when we think about policy and the rules that we put into place, we wanna think about it also from that perspective. For the individuals who may get into our district in some way, shape, or form,
who don't mean our district well. And so we wanna think about that too as a part of the framework getting back to a consistent approach. And, of course, excuse me, as mentioned, continuous improvement. We want to build systematic review cycles into this on a regular basis so that there's a cadence for looking at it and we don't become overwhelmed. And so why it matters? We've talked about this on a number of occasions, and I'll move to this as quickly as possible. It's a governance tool. It's there for protection, as I mentioned. Direction and guardrails, but also transparency. If our rules are there, if we thought our rules through, if our framework is
solid, people can look at it and they can anticipate where we're gonna go, or they'll know where we're going before we even get there. And then when we arrive there, that builds the trust that we're so always so desperately looking to build with our district. In thinking about it, and as trustee William or Williams mentioned earlier, I have a CTE lens to me, and I think about that. So when I think about policy, I also think about why grades six to 12 require a little special attention around it because those are the grades that are moving
a child or a student towards that next phase of life, whether it's employment, whether it's post secondary education. So there are different things impacting that group of of student that isn't necessarily impacting k through five. So again, we can't think about our student population homogeneously. We really gotta think about it in terms of this what is going to happen to that particular group when we're thinking about a governance model? So we identify the need when we talk about, creation. If we're gonna come up with policy, what's the need? Is it a legal compliance or requirement?
Do we have data trends or gaps in our data along the way? What is really going to be helpful to the work that we're doing and will do is all of the data information that we received from doctor Coffin and her staff. Those dashboards are critical, as you'll see in another slide, to helping us understand where and how we shape our policy, in terms of creation or refinement, programmatic expansion, and certainly, as mentioned by president president Williams, community and or student concern. So it's ground now this is an area that I'd like to see us be
able to do more effectively. And as chair, that's that's gonna be my commitment to, to the policy committee that we ground our decisions in district data. We're making sure that we go back and reflect on that as we're thinking about modifications, improvements, recommendations from our attorneys. We also are looking at state and federal requirements. Like, we we have a cell phone policy in play, but we just received new information about that cell phone policy, what, within the last week, I think it was. And so now we have to go back and reflect on that as it relates
to what our district is capable of doing or what we're required to do. What are the best practices? There's nothing wrong with looking to other districts to see what they're doing and how they're doing it. And if it works for them, could it possibly work for us as well? And, of course, in all things, equity, access, those considerations. This is very much this is very important to me, very simply, that we have to have stakeholder engagement. I think we get into trouble when I say we, meaning leadership in general, gets into trouble when it starts to make rules, regulations, policy, and it doesn't take into
consideration the people who are impacted by those rules, regulation, and or policy. So I started this about a year or so ago. I want to figure out a way to more formalize this, but when we have policy that's coming up, figure out a way to get administrators involved and hear their voice as it relates to it if the policy specifically impacts them especially. Educators, our teachers, staff, they're the ones who have to enforce the policy. What good is policy if we can't enforce it? Then it becomes a rule that just gets broken on a regular basis, and our
credibility diminishes over time. Students, we've talked about that. I'm very excited to be able to meet up with student roundtable. I believe it's on February 6, that they're going to be meeting at, here, if I'm not mistaken, to start getting their voice involved in policy as well. And I know this can be a tender area, but I do believe that we should figure out a way to bring our community and families in on policy because, again, they're the ones that are impacted by it as well. And if we can do all of this in a way that works and there
are other districts that are actually doing this kind of work, then I think we build ourselves a greater system of trust with our community. So, again, draft with clarity, purpose and scope, proper language, avoid operational detail. We do not and I wanna say this publicly. I do not want the job of the superintendent. That's all yours, doctor Coffin. Okay? What we wanna do is set you up for the best situation to be able to do your job and to know how to do your job effectively. And then clear roles and expectation. So when we talk about review and assessment, these are questions I want us to
start asking as it relates to policy. Is it aligned to our district goals? I don't know that we've ever really asked that question when we talked about revisions and updates. We certainly have asked, is it legally compliant, but that would respond to new policy that we would create. Is it clear and enforceable? That's a big one. Again, I I I think we've created some policy at times that isn't always enforceable or we didn't think through how are the teachers, the administrators, whomever, supposed to put the policy in play. Is it equitable in its impact?
That has always been the bane of a lot of institutions where a policy has been put in place and a certain group felt the brunt of it more than others. We want to always be mindful of that. And is the implementation going back to enforcement consistent? So these are tools, as I mentioned before, that I think are very, very important that we can begin to figure out how to utilize. That is a part of my my commitment to the committee, bringing in the dashboards as it, relates to the policy, equity impact reviews, again, staff and administrator feedback, and
community and student voice, where and how we can bring this in, over time, not just looking to flip a switch and all of a sudden it comes flying in. Want to do it intentionally with some direction, and with care. This is a suggested improvement cycle that we can begin to implement. It lends itself as more visual representation, I believe, of the diagram, president Williams, you put together for us with marking policy off as we go along. We can bring those two tools together to make sure that we see what we've
covered, we look at what we're going to cover, and we get into a cycle of doing it every three to five years, going back and checking policy that we've already checked. And that takes us to the deliberation or discussion, I should say, around the prioritization. When we think about that, as we have our discussion today, I want us to do our best to think about the things that I just shared as we think about what would be those priorities that you would like for the policy committee to take a look at, throughout the rest of this year. I'd I'd like to see, if I am allowed to be the chair for the
upcoming school year, create a little a little more intense cadence when it comes to policy, meet a little bit more frequently because of the amount of work that's involved with that. I would definitely be committed to that if, certainly as a member and or chair. But we these were the policies that were given to us, from president Williams, a little while ago. And what I decided to do just for the take sake of conversation today is I went through our policy handbooklet, and I wanted to see where we have policy
that already spoke to some of these items. That's what you see in terms of the numbers, at the end of each one of these items. That doesn't mean we can't go back and look at it again to see if based on conversation this is something we need to review. But it it was nice to see that in every instance, we either have policy or and here's how we wanna stay out of the day to day. Some of these things are already underneath, administrative regulations. So we don't even need to according to our policy, that's at the purview now of the superintendent.
So we we can back up off of that and focus our attention in areas where it would be most, you know, specific for us to do so. So with that, there's a closing slide after this. We can begin to have discussion right now. As you look through this list, you've had this, available to you for a little while. Is there something in the list of potential policy agenda that immediately grabs your attention that we might want to begin to prioritize? And, again, thinking about the framework, equitable, you know, based on data we already know.
What's the angle? What's the concern? We'll get those things recorded. I'll check back with you, and we'll compile that list, and then the, policy committee will go to work, in that regard. I'll pause. Trustee Blau? This might be premature because I know we're still in the process of reimagining what we want our high schools to look like. But I'm wondering, what we might need to modify in our policies around graduation requirements and, what satisfies what.
For example, we've had some conversations around finding additional ways in which students could earn credits toward graduation, like, and maybe maybe band already counts as PE, but maybe, if you participate in one of the musicals, that could count toward a fine arts credit. Or if you do community service every Sunday at your congregation, that could count as some kind of work study credit. All of those things. Are there places in our policy where we need to change the languaging to allow
for that, or am I putting the horse before the cart? Do we need to make our changes first and then change policy? I'm not sure, but that's one area that, you know, that comes up from if I might I don't know the answer to that, but that is certainly, like, top of mind for me. There may not be a need to make changes to the policy, but I think if we're really serious about reimagining high school, I would think that, this discussion along with likely many others ought to be sort of prioritized in our thinking around, board
policy. Personally, it's been on my list for a while to con give some some consideration to where courses or activities might count towards graduation requirements. The one I proposed a number of times is, sports And whether that can count for, physical education as as an example. I would love to explore those types of things in order to free up a student's schedule, frankly. I'm learning, especially with having, three in high school recently, including now, how important it
is and advantageous it is really to get a lot of those graduation requirements completed early or alternatively in order to free up a student schedule to allow them to explore more, in the CTE space and figure out what they wanna do when they graduate. I think that will also free them up as we start thinking about this senior year, second semester alternative. You know, if they have the ability to free up their schedule earlier on in their high school, that will afford them the opportunity and make reimagining high school a
lot easier. So I'm all for that, in in terms of, like, of this list Mhmm. Taking that one and throwing in in the list of things that would prioritize. Another area for me I'm sorry. Go ahead before you finish it on. This is I I really like the fact that we took the time to do this and and put me in a position to do this as well. Because with those kinds of things and those conversations in mind, if you see, about one, two, three bullets from the bottom in the middle column, physical education requirement, IE band, we have some general policy already around just such things as well as an
administrative regulation, as it relates to students and curriculum and instruction. The nice thing about it is we don't have any policy that's that will keep us from being able to do that. It's nice general guardrail ish to create a whole new word, and will allow us some flexibility. Now we would just need to look at what are the state laws and requirements around something like that, and we we can get off and get going with it. So this is this is the kind of exercise, so we can green light that one if that is the board's choice. Miss Heinrich and I are going to Washington DC for the, NSBA, National School Board
Association equity and advocacy advocacy advocacy conference. I swear this is just tea. And we might meet some others there from other parts of the country who are already doing these kinds of things. So we'll bring back information. That would be all for me. The other area that I would prioritize just based off of what I see and from what I hear from other parents is, the behavior culture handbook. And we've talked about that one already. I think that in order to facilitate a good learning environment, we already know that,
you know, distractions aren't helpful. And I personally want to, make sure that, you know, we understand how we address those kinds of things properly. I'm not saying that we don't address them properly, but I do think that, particularly since COVID, you know, we've noticed an increase sometimes in, young people in how they react to certain things. Frankly, adults have increased their reactions, as well. And so I think that there's an opportunity personal priorities.
I think, missus Heinrich, did you have something? Yeah. No. I I just wanna I'm just, like, looking at this list. I appreciate first of all, I appreciate the the framework and the work you're doing. Thank you. I appreciate having this this list to choose from. And I'm hearing, graduation requirements, phys ed requirements, or, getting credit, not necessarily phys ed, but, different types of credit through different activities. So, I don't know if we wanna say alternative forms of credit or just looking
at as far as how credit is assigned, and looking at, you know, some of the things that they're doing over at Farmington Central High School right now as far as combining courses and, looking at the, common core standards and how credit is applied through multiple disciplinary courses. And so if there's policy needed to support that as we're reimagining high school, I think that should be a real big priority.
You have on here the drug search policy, middle school, high school, but I think drugs, tobacco, alcohol, vaping, all of those schools should be free of those. And I think it's really important to have policies and have that stand out so that, we make sure that those things are not brought into our schools, are not available, to our students at school and, supporting whatever it takes in order to make sure that our schools really are drug free, alcohol free, tobacco free zones.
And so put that in there. So those are just kind of priorities that stand out for me. And, also, you know, this one, I really like the fact the notification prior to a student receiving a d or f grade. I mean, this is something that this goes back to when my kids were in high school. You know, one of my daughters was getting an a at, progress reports and the report card came out. And you know, the grade changed drastically. And talked to the teacher, talked to the principal, and there was there was no
there was no guidelines, no no, you know, policies or whatever. So, you know, I think having a a lens and holding, just making sure that the schools are involved as far as the administrators and the teachers and the culture just to have, standards in place so that those things don't happen. You know, because that that's kind of a, for parents that monitor what's going on with their kids and to have those kind of surprises, especially their senior year when
scholarship money and other things are tied into grade points. You know, it's like the no surprises. So I think that should be something that should be prioritized and looked at, you know, as as far as we're picking some. So those are kind of my top Yeah. That's an important one too. The food allergy too. I mean, I I think that's really a big deal. I mean, and it is just, it can be a matter of life or death for some parents on whether or not they, you know, if their child is supposed
is exposed to things at school. So I think having, guidelines, I know some buildings are are, you know, have more strict guidelines than others. But as far as district wide, I think that should be a a a top asterisk one in my mind. Thank you. Missus Smith and then mister Hall. Thank you for all the hard work that you put into this. As a board member that's been here for a while, I have been on policy for a long time. And, miss Weems and I were able to condense it from being the tablets to
down to, pretty much just little minute things. We have talked in the past about having students sit in as state as reps for our school board. Mhmm. I, at one time, thought that was a great idea because as a traveling board member going throughout and holding the position as Oakland, I used to be on the Oakland, Oakland, school board of directors, and I would go visit different schools.
And I do see parent well, students that did sit on boards, but it also it has a negative input as well. The negative is just like we get attacked, those students would get attacked when and I've had those conversations with students. So I want you to understand, you know, I'm not against that, because we do need to hear what the students have to say. We don't need the helicopter parents that'll tell them you're sitting on the board, and
we need you to do this, that, and third. But we also need to pay attention to what can happen to our students. We already have bullying. Mhmm. We are elected. We are not a entity that is a private or parochial, where people just go and put just because you paid a huge amount to your alumni that you're sitting here. We worked hard to get these positions. So at the end of the day, I would love to see a student here,
but I don't want the student that has a parent that feels that they would be running. But I don't want that student to be bullied, that they sit and hold a seat here, which they do not get to vote Mhmm. Because we are government. Mhmm. I don't wanna see a student that sits here, and if they need a snow day, their friends pressure them, or they talk about having open campus, which I'm not against that. But I want I don't want a child, because they are children, to be put
in a position that they are bullied or pressured, not only by their peers, by parents too that are not allowing their students to be students. So at the end of the day and I don't want any parent to think because we just had hack box here. Great group of kids. But we explained to them that that room, myself and mister Hall, made sure we said that that was going to be a multipurpose room. Mhmm. It is not a STEM or STEAM.
And I've heard that in the community, and I heard it yesterday. We built a building just we're building a building for them, and we are not. So at the end of the day, let's be very careful. Let's think this through about adding a student to our board because we all worked hard to get elected to hold these seats. That's my only comment. Mister Hall. So we're concentrating on, like, a are we more or less start concentrating on a
student, how they're following the rules, or are we looking at personnel as in how the staff, how the teachers, how they how they supposed to conduct themselves in which that they can put in the best position for our young people to learn from. Because we we always harp on the the kids Mhmm. You know, and everything like that. But sometimes I I don't know if I should say this, but sometimes parents need
need more work than the kids. Mhmm. You know? And and and with that in mind, the adults, some teachers, some staff members. Mhmm. You know, when you come into a a building, you know, are we greeted? You know, like, you know, coming into a nice environment or, you know, do I have a safe adult to go to? Mhmm. Or or are my kids are or when a kid comes in out of whatever situation that they have at home, are they coming into a welcoming environment? Are they or are they coming in just getting yelled at again? So I think that a level of expectation and professionalism and culture that needs to
be put in place for the adults so we can permeate it throughout the school, and then it'll it'll just thrive throughout the whole system. So I don't know if that's part of the policies and agenda. I mean, I don't know if you could say every person must be caring, full of blossoms, and everything like that. But what type of standards in which that thing be taken, you know, to be welcomed just like a culture? So everybody's comment, and I thank you for all of them. And we can go back now and at least have a a starting point for some discussion at our next policy meeting, which I believe is next month on the
nineteenth, if I'm not mistaken. That would give us a jump off point for that. But everybody's comment in and I'm feeling very good about this, supports the reason for the framework. Because all of your concerns, if we factor your thinking and your concerns and your questions through the framework, we have to examine it in the ways in which you brought up those concerns across the board. So if it was whether or not we consider adding a student rep to the board of education, well, do we wanna make that decision in a vacuum? We need to maybe have some conversation with students. Do we need to have some conversation with parents around that before we enact something
like that? For all the reasons, Trustee Smith, that you mentioned, along the way. When we talk about the graduation requirements, is that anything that we need to do at a board level or is that something that is done specifically at the superintendent level and it becomes maybe a goal that we put together for the superintendent in an upcoming year? Because remember, when we put policy together when we put something into policy, we now increase the difficulty and maneuverability around it. So that means, for example, if we put in the policy that a student was
on the on the school board and for whatever reason the student is absent or something along those lines and wants to decline or we wanna get rid of that position, now we have to have a vote on it. Whereas, maybe that's something that goes in as a protocol or maybe that's just something that we figure out another way in which to do it. Everything doesn't need to have a policy. Some things need to have a protocol. Some things are already being handled in terms of administrative regulation. Again, we do not wanna get in the way of the superintendent and what she's doing with her team. All we wanna do is create the best, to your point earlier, Trustee Hall, we
wanna create the best possible environment for her, her team, the parents, the teachers, the students to flourish. And so I thank you for all of your concerns, your thoughts around this. We can now I would like to see us continue to, as a committee, trustee Williams, trustee Recinto, let's start going back through this. We'll set up, I'll work with Colleen, I'll have some framework put together, and we can get start thinking about a couple of those items through that lens and our
discussions can be formed around that. Might take a little longer for something to come into place and the decision to be made, but I'd rather take a little bit longer to make the best decision possible, assuming it's not some crisis event situation and we should never make policy out of crisis. It's probably the worst time in which to do it. But it may take a minute longer to get something put into place, but we can feel real comfortable about it. And then if we are in agreement upon the framework, when all of us have moved on to other endeavors in life and new members have come on, this will be something that they can begin to pick up and use, and we can keep
that consistency going in all the areas. So that was basically the conclusion slide, but I can back up. Thank you. And before we get to your point, I just wanted to, mention two other things. One, would love to understand and maybe the policy committee can think through this, a mechanism for how we get things onto that list. So that is the list as it stands right now. I will be honest. I failed to put one more thing on there, and it's, related to standards based grading. Okay. So, several years ago oh, I wanna say, like, seven years ago maybe.
We went through a process to move towards standards based grading. And I'll be honest with you, I think we got maybe 50% of the way there. So the first step was to make sure that everyone was on the same page with respect to what is an a. Is it 90 to a 100% or is it 92 to a 100%? Do we offer a pluses or b minuses and that sort of thing? Like, make sure that we're all on the same page within the same district and
across elementary, across middle school, and within the building, you know, classroom to classroom because there were some differences. The second step was to make sure that within a group like English, alright, we're all going to consider, grading in this way. So, you can't be in, trustee Blau's class and she provides that 50% of her grade is based on the homework and, you know, same class and mister Hall says
20% is based on homework. Right? So within the English department, we wanted to make sure that we've got consistency across so that, you know, your grades not based on homework whereas mine is more based on, assessments. Right? So I think we did a little bit of that. And then the next step is, I think, making sure that, you know, all classes are, giving some consideration to alternative assignments where appropriate. Like, I think there's more work to do is my point around grading.
Like, it shouldn't matter whose classroom you're in, or which school you're in. We wanna make sure that the education is the same, and I think we are all, of the same mind that we wanna give, young people the the most opportunity to, demonstrate that they've met proficiency, that they've met, the the that they have opportunities to demonstrate that they can pass assessments. And and so, like, understanding again in mister Holt's class, I have to finish all my homework before I can take another assessment. And in missus Williams' class, I can't take assessments after a week.
I'm done. You you know, I think we need to just make sure that that's happening across the board. I'm not sure if that's policy or protocol or admin regulations, but I do think that it's important enough for us to have a conversation around. And if it were me, it would be one of the things that I would sort of prioritize. So that would that's my, last thought. And then, you wanna respond and then, missus Blau. I was just going to offer for for the time being, the mechanism to lift up any of your thoughts and concerns around policy would be to simply just email me, and then what we can begin to do is we can start a running
list of future policy, agenda items that can be a part of the minutes. And then based on a discussion that we can very easily put into the agenda, we can especially if somebody's feeling really, really fired up about a particular aspect of policy, we can then have at one of our board meetings an opportunity to have some discussion around moving that up, and replacing something that we're currently working on at that time. So I think that's probably the easiest way to do it and effective. Just email me. I'll work with Colleen. We'll get in on the agenda for the policy committee to to take a look
at, and then you'll see the agenda grow based on meeting minutes. Trustee Brown? Two things. One is that my my thinking is that it's likely something that's probably more administrative regulations because as we're making these changes in our how we're imagining school And the the way that we're providing, learning opportunities to our students that the that the ways that we're assessing and reporting student learning progress is probably changing anyway as
a result of that we're doing things differently in our classrooms. And so, again, we wanna be careful not to be too, too specific. Yes. Prescriptular specific in our in our policies in ways that would interfere with the growing and changing that we're doing, you know, as a district. But that could also be a goal that we set for our superintendent. Well, that's again why I'm sorry if I interrupted. No. It's okay. Again, that's why it's very helpful and and wonderful. Doctor Coffin is on the the policy committee.
Mhmm. So there's an opportunity to speak there. But, again, if we go back to the framework, which we're kinda proud of, it it it will force us to ask these questions. Exactly. Is what we're talking about something that is enforceable? Right. Is it something that is equitable along the way? What's the data behind it, if any, that suggests we should do it or we shouldn't do it? Right. Or to whatever level we should do it. We bring those things into the conversation. I think we're in a much better position to avoid missteps. Not that we've had any that I'm aware of, but I would like to not have any, at least not on my watch, as we go into the future.
Right. And as as miss Weems, president Weems pointed out, you know, allowing for alternative assessments too and all those pieces too. So how do we maybe maybe we don't have to put in policy because we can leave it over there. But that's a discussion for, you know, the policy committee. But, I also I wanted to just, shine a light on the, the fact that as a policy committee, you have, begun to develop a cadence for ongoing review of
our policies because, some some boards think that, well, we review our policies and then we're done with that. But it's it's ongoing work because things are always changing for us and at the state level and federally. And and so it's it's it's, I think, healthy for us to be on top of it and develop that ongoing cadence so that then those who follow us already have that structure and that pattern in place to carry forward. So thank you to the policy committee for developing that.
Any further feedback? Okay. Thank you for that presentation. I trust that, the policy committee will, consider everything that we talked about at the right governance level. So I don't think anyone wants us to, put our administration in a square box. We we want to, set policy at the appropriate governance levels. So we'll never be too prescriptive, but I think that framing, to give the, district
some guidance and some direction is is kinda where we wanna move directionally. With that said, thank you again for that presentation. I look forward to the next policy committee meeting. With that, we are moving to our second public comment, area. If anyone who, is interested in making public comment who did not have an opportunity to do it at our first public comment, this is your opportunity now. Is there anyone who wants to make public comment? I am not seeing anyone in the audience who wants to make public comment, so we will close that second public comment and move on to action items.
As there are no action items, we'll move on to items from the treasurer. Trustee? Yes. I move that the Board of Education approve the expenditures as outlined in the expenditure printout dated 01/20/2026 as follows. General Fund, dollars 16,828,000. General fund athletics, dollars 169,430 capital projects, dollars $20.23 bond fund, dollars 139,177 nutrition services fund $439,942 Benefits Stabilization Fund, dollars 1,402,379.
Total, dollars 18,978,928. Support. Motion made by trustee Heinrich, supported by trustee Smith, to approve the expenditure report. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That motion passes. Next, we have the consent agenda. Mister Walker? I move that the Board of Education approve the 01/20/2026 consent agenda as follows. Item a, approval of minutes. Number one, 01/06/2026 regular meeting. Number two, 01/10/2026 board retreat.
Number three, 01/15/2026 joint meeting. Number four, 01/16/2026 finance and facility committee meeting. Item b, the head start director's monthly report. And item c, personnel items. Support. Motion made by trustee Walker, supported by trustee Smith to approve the consent agenda. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That motion passes. Are there any reports from board representatives? Seeing none, we will move on to adjournment. Thank you board and happy board appreciation month.
I appreciate again all of your service and thank you for your engagement today. This meeting is adjourned. We have a truck to the back. Right. Thank you very much.