meeting of the board of education for Tuesday April 22nd this meeting is now called to order dr turner may we have a roll call yes ma'am dr blau here miss Smith here mr hall present hinrich miss
I'm still Mrs present i myself present miss Williams i am here uh M walker absent we have a quorum thank you we will now stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic
for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right now we will move right into recognitions all right thank you President Williams um I would like now to call Miss Diane Bowman our director
of school community relations to the podium as she shares information on our recipients of the Judy White Aura Teaching with Heart Award recognition thank you thank you good evening evening so the Teaching with Heart and Soul Award was created in honor of former
assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction Judy White who unfortunately passed away in 2006 judy believed in investing other people in relationships during her years in education she developed a pledge for
teachers the pledge um is called the teaching with heart and soul award pledge um and what it says it reads as follows for teachers today I will respect the uniqueness of each child
today I will ignite the joy of learning today I will listen to their voices i will put human connections first i will encourage the spirit and let their light shine and I will create a caring learning
community so this year we had the most incredible nominations it was it was truly a difficult task so we had to choose two so we um have one of our award winners that could be with us tonight so I will
welcome Wendy Marik to come to the podium so this is Wendy does not like to take credit and be the the star but she certainly deserves to be the star so Wendy is um a teacher at North Farmington High School she currently works at North Farmington teaching
special education her nomination states that she is an inspiration to all who work with her she is dedicated to her students and to making North a place that accepting to all her bond with her students is so strong that they continue to reach out to her even years after
they have left the school and I've heard stories about that wendy spends hours working with her kids to make sure that they are not only achieving at their highest potential but that they feel safe and comfortable in school she understands that students
without connection will struggle with learning so connections to students is her priority we noticed that in her classroom when we surprised her too wendy is the go-to person for so many students at North she is there for all students not just the ones in her
classroom but all students her room her room is a safe place for help for comfort and for a place to belong she goes out of her way to make sure that students are seen and respected for who they are she would recognize that teaching is more than
math problems it's making sure that everyone is welcome safe and loved when they step into school so we couldn't be more happy to give you your award tonight and that and then this will hang
at the new administration building and it'll have your name right here so I just wanted to say thank you to everyone to Farmington Public Schools um I'm lucky to be with some of the best colleagues um the best students you know the 20ome years I've worked here and
tonight I'm blessed to have my mom here my husband um my three-year old granddaughter who I chase around and uh two of my sons are here and a lot of my co-workers and former co-workers so I appreciate this it's an honor and I was lucky to have Judy as a guest professor at Eastern and I still have her pledge
in my classroom um with my name before I got married so I live by that i believe in it and I hope someone does that for my students um and my kids and my grandkids someday so thank you very much thank you and while Kate cannot be here
tonight um our second winner was Kate Donnelly Harris from Gil Elementary School so maybe we can find another time to honor her with this award so thank you very much [Applause] congratulations to all the winners and
we'd love to take just a quick break maybe we got one more we got one more oh oh yeah that's right Dave that's right yeah okay uh okay i'd like to now welcome Mr john Bar our director of facilities to introduce our support person of the year and Luke
good evening board members dr coffin so as director of facilities management and representing the entire school district it's my honor and privilege to introduce Deb King who has been chosen by a district committee as Farmington Public School
support person of the year 2025 so now I'm going to embarrass Deb so Deb has been a district employee since 2003 so 22 years she excelled in many roles here in Farmington including as a noon aid a parking attendant a hall
monitor and as a custodian she has been the head custodian here at Maxville Education Center since 2022 colleagues of Deb shared that she has the most she has made outstanding contributions to custo team and has a tremendous positive impact on staff students and families she is known for
her dedication strong work ethic and ability to exceed expectations a colleague in her building shared "Beyond her outstanding work ethic Deb is known for her friendly and approachable attitude she's always courteous and helpful greeting all with a positive attitude." So looking around
this building it's obvious that Deb takes meticulous care of this facility so she's great um personally I told her this before I came up here so in my career I've supervised 400 employees directly supervised she is on top 1% i told her that i mean easily
um so I want to make sure that you know that Deb makes sure every detail is attended to every meeting is she comes 24 hours a day sometimes she's great so on a personal note I just had to change the speech because on a personal note Deb's daughters both of whom are
expecting one was this month she just had her daughter on Easter Sunday the other is expecting in June so Deb from all of us a heartfelt thank you for your outstanding contributions the farming community thank you i just wanted to say a quick thank you
to Jen for nominating me and for everyone in all my buildings and even out of my buildings for all their kind words thank you right [Applause]
now at this time we'll take a break so that we can all come out and greet you properly that's sweet this is Deb's place it's her calendar no one does anything that's not on the calendar if I ever want You're not on my
calendar oh man she had a PT appointment this is who is in here that's funny that's hilarious that's awesome yeah she does a nice job taking pictures christmas
[Music] it's like some people might I think they know okay okay [Music] [Music] from Bill thank you appreciate
you oh I know [Music] so America comes to you so um yeah why the same question hi thank you for all your support
i did the rest of us i may pull you up that's I assume Colleen's here too okay perfect oh thanks so much okay all right i think we are ready everybody i can explain
all right thank you for allowing us that recess we are now going to move on in our agenda to our agenda item four is there a motion to approve the agenda so moved support motion to approve the agenda
made by Dr turner supported by Mrs smith is there any discussion seeing none all in favor i any opposed any abstensions that motion passes we'll now move to announcements just have a few welcome
back after a short break uh wanted to acknowledge uh a few things first April is stress awareness month it is also autism acceptance month it is National Child Abuse Prevention Month ArabAmerican Heritage Month and
Financial Literacy Month and we will recognize all of those uh coming up in May May is mental health awareness month and we want to uh encourage people to promote self-care and supporting one another it is also Jewish American
Heritage Month and teacher appreciation week is the first week in May please uh be sure to recognize your teachers with uh at a minimum a simple thank you for all of the work that they do and then finally as we round out uh the last
month of our school year June is National Gun Violence Awareness Month and usually for the first Friday in June we acknowledge that by wearing orange i also wanted to acknowledge that uh Farmington High School has a musical
coming up it's called Once Upon a Mattress and the dates for that are Thursday April 24th Friday April 25th and Saturday April 26 all shows start at
7:30 uh general seating tickets are available at the door and through the box office uh at 248887274 that's 24888-7274 just so that maybe you'll remember all right uh I've said this
before but I believe that our uh uh schools have fabulous art programs and if you haven't been to a musical a show a play uh a music uh jazz fest uh you are really really missing out so I encourage you to to look into that and
then finally I wanted to uh reiterate that we will have a board vacancy coming up here soon uh and I wanted to start to describe that process i believe I described it a bit uh in our last meeting but I wanted to give you some
more concrete dates we expect that uh applications uh to um apply for that board vacancy will come out uh the first week in May we are targeting May 1st but give us a little grace we expect that we
will receive uh applications throughout the month of May we will let you know whether there's a 2 three or four week window for those applications we expect to interview in early June and we expect to make decisions regarding board board
appointment regarding a board appointment by June 17th uh if anyone is interested in more information please feel free to email me that's Terry with an i.wefsk12.net that's right all right that ends my report uh we will now move
to our first public comment as a reminder thank you for public comment uh members are welcome to address the board each person will have three minutes there will be a timer on the
screen please address your comments to the board and speak directly into the microphone please so that our uh television uh listeners can hear you and if your comment is related to a student or a staff member please use caution in stating names of individuals where a protection of privacy would be
appropriate generally the board listens respectfully to comments we hear you but generally the board does not respond to public comment in some cases it might be appropriate for someone to follow up with you to address your concerns we're going to start with uh Bill Levelway and
then uh Eugene Greenstein these are the only two public comment cards that I have at this moment if you'd like to make public comment please fill out a card and bring it to uh the bowl here at the end um next to Colleen Scriptures uh name there is another opportunity for
public comment but you may only make public comment one time during a meeting so if you don't want to do it this time you have another opportunity towards the end uh later on in the agenda welcome Mr loveway good afternoon i have two areas to talk
about one is a uh Meno Center report which they do every couple of years it's the 2022 and 20 through 24 uh Farmington uh grades 3 through 8 test scores standardized for lowincome student
scores you all have a copy of it at the board i'd put it up on the screen but I can't do that i might mention that our highest score in there is a C for the Farmington Steam Academy and the bottom
of the rack is Wood Creek Elementary School it's a D and it's 1937th in the state i'd be glad to discuss this with you at your convenience second area I was uh working
on is uh in looking at the math program that was proposed last time uh I went poking through the mass statistics to see uh what the effect of common core uh might be and as I did that in the
second package there are three pages the first one is uh uh the mathematics state snapshot report it's very comprehensive and it uh covers all the statistics uh you might
want I might want to see i'd be glad to discuss that with you at your convenience i want to point out two things one is the uh average score compared to other states and
uh the uh Michigan is or Michigan yeah Michigan is pretty much right in the middle or no below the average for the nation uh and what I was looking for was common core to see if there was any effect and I looked at that chart on the
right side of the page and about 2010 uh Obama introduced common core and spread that through the country so I was looking for an effect did it increase math performance or not and if you look
at the years uh roughly uh 13 through 19 that would be the time period that for the fourth graders which is what this covers uh did it make a difference in Michigan i don't know what made a difference but we went down while the
rest of the country kind of uh slipped a little bit uh the sec so that's Michigan in the first page page two is compared to a very good state Massachusetts and uh its scores and what
I did was I put those together in page three i overlaid Massachusetts with Michigan and you can see why Michigan's ranked 41st they're well below average and we're certainly not even close to
Massachusetts at the top the best [Music] Thank you uh next Mr greenstein good afternoon uh my little talk is a little different from what I handed out but it complements it when I worked for a living I had to make
multi-million dollar decisions to resolve problems and not jeopardize our customer within a time frame of a day or two while I appreciate the hard work put in by the staff to evaluate the pro proposed text and curriculum for the new math program there are too many open
issues from my perspective to make a decision at this point the risk is too high to bet on a multi-year multi-ubject program without more information we certainly have a month or two to firm up our information when we made the literacy decisions we knew the root cause problem was the use of whole
language the Lucy Cawkins approach instead of the science reading uh phonics approach therefore the ma the issue was picking a text not understanding the root cause we understood that there was a lot of literature on the issue which I availed
myself of as did FPS when we made that decision i don't know why our students are performing poorly in numerousy i have not seen any evidence that the proposed textcurriculum however you like to phrase it is going to make a significant
difference or fixes the root cause compared to the present texts i also um you know this also goes across multiple years math and and algebra and geometry there is debate between using common core traditional math the email I
sent you has several pages from a book called The Great Classroom Collapse which was written last year and it it highlights the difference between the two approaches and you can look at that at your leisure per the 415 presentation the new
text will need to be supplemented by other materials to address students who may have problems the collaboration process as described based on my experience creates a doer versus watcher situation to learn the new material instead of the correct method being
taught um in the classroom by the teacher and then the students doing homework and class work individually and then discussing their results and assisting each other in getting the correct answer we learn by doing especially with paper
and pencil there's been lots of studies that says that writing puts it into your head and whoever has the pencil learns so this curriculum collaboration approach up front somebody's learning
but not everybody and I'm concerned about the poor performers why was the material picked over the other solution we didn't hear why and then of course the question is what are we doing for K through five one needs to start with a solid foundation
there are performance issues there too so I my view is the decision needs further study a million dollars is a lot of money and there are a lot of questions to answer thank you very much thank you is there any further public comment for our first public comment
period any further public comment seeing none we will now move to our next agenda item which is items from the secretary dr turner thank you uh the board has received communications regarding uh one a letter from the University of Maryland's Department of African-American Studies concerning the
book Smart Discipline: How Effective Districts Tackle Misbehavior and Keep Students Learning we also received questions submitted for consideration at the May 13th 2025 community dialogue on Student Achievement we received communications regarding concerns about the lack of public discussion on public
comments correspondence and the structure of community dialogue practices we also received four White House e education executive orders and related board discussions uh the board acknowledges communication and response when appropriate a list of correspondences can be found in the
board packet accessible on the Farmington Public Schools website thank you thank you we'll now move to legislative update dr blau yes uh I'd like to um point out that uh the common
core state standards uh were developed in the early 2000s this is pertaining to the four um uh bills that were passed by the house regarding K12 curriculum and assessment so our our common core state
standards were developed in the early 2000s and they were generally implemented around 2010 although prior to that some uh states and some school districts did experiment with them and many textbook companies started putting
out materials uh aligned with the common core state standards in advance of 2010 uh when many states adopted the common core state standards uh we currently in the state of Michigan have what are called the state of Michigan common core state standards but they're very very
similar and many states have done uh done the same uh the um decision about what is required in terms of our curriculum is not a decision that can be made at the federal level so no
president has the uh legislative power to uh to set curriculum that uh is a state level decision but individual school districts also do not have the power to just decide to abandon the
common core state standards so I just wanted to clarify that uh the um the power to determine curricula uh for public education has always legislatively rested with each state uh
and has not been uh has been prohibited by law uh from being dictated at the federal level uh however in our state we have what I think is some very good news regarding that there are four uh four
bills that have uh passed in the um house our state house one is an updated Michigan merit curriculum that expands elective options in math science and the arts adds a two credit future skills block a half credit of personal finance
a half credit of workplace development plus one flexible credit and raises science to four credits beginning with the class of 2029 it also allows up to 15 specialty high schools to wave certain English social studies credits in creative ways there is a state
assessment pilot also uh and again this is only passed the house so far uh this authorizes in the 2025-26 school year pilots in up to 60 school districts evenly split between rural suburban and urban districts to test two interim plus
summitive models um of assessment of student learning with a cap of 1 hour per interim and 3 hours total for summitive assessments results will be returned to teachers within 14 days and data must be incorporated into educator evaluations so um I don't know if we are
able to get involved in the pilot project but that's something we can explore there's also um uh the MDE mission department of education uh is to contract with assessment vendors and distribute the pilot funds and finally the science of reading and
elementary math standards um uh this uh Rick would require K through6 reading curricula to align with science of reading principles by the 202627 school year so we are way ahead of that curve and establishes the state
panel to rewrite K5 math standards problem based learning disalculia interventions for adoption in 20278 so that is also very good news so this is a movement not necessarily away from the common core state standards but
an updating uh of them based upon the new science of reading and what we know about the science of learning with regards to uh math uh teaching and learning so these are these are good good things in our state thank you thank
you very much we'll now move to district updates dr coffin thank you President Williams uh this month has really been filled with uh significant events and achievements across our district reflecting our commitment to innovation student development and engagement with our community a group of our
administrators recently had the chance to attend the ASUG GSB conference where they engaged with leaders in education and technology this conference allowed them to visit innovative school campuses interact with edtech companies supporting K12 education and explore the
impact of AI in our schools the insights gained will help us enhance our practices and integrate new technologies as appropriate into our curriculum we are proud to announce that Farmington High School Longacre Elementary and Forest Elementary have all been awarded
grants as part of our partnership with the Michigan Education Workforce Initiative or MUI and Arizona State University these grants will enable our schools to implement staffing models that embrace a teaming approach and also provide funding to redesign some
learning spaces this initiative aims to create a more collaborative and effective learning environment for all of our students opportunities for our students to uh engagement continue to flourish at Farmington High School had
the opportunity to meet with Miss Jen Michaels and her teacher cadet program that have been really inspiring our to our future educators all of whom are uh enrolled in postsecary or in their uh high in their college uh at a a teacher
college to to continue to be become educators additionally our Warner's girls only leadership development or gold event i was asked to be the keynote speaker for 8th and 9th grade young ladies um and where we really provide
valuable insights and challenges and the rewards of women in leadership roles fostering again a supportive community for our aspiring leaders early this month earlier this month we celebrated our middle school and high school students during our Rise and Thrive
event this year we were honored to have a former recipient of the Rise and Thrive Award to be our guest speaker and she shared uh her inspiring journey from graduating from Harrison High School to current currently pursuing her PhD motivating our current recipients to
strive for excellence in their own pursuits uh congratulations to all of our students who continue to have amazing successes in our CTE programs this includes our DECA BPA HOSA and
Skills USA state qualifiers in addition our Hackbots again made it to worlds for the fourth consecutive year and were awarded the prestigious quality award recognizing their exceptional engineering and attention to detail we
also will have three students being recognized as out outstanding CTE students of the year uh at Oakland schools um that's happening uh Monday May April 28th they are Destiny Powell uh she's being recognized in finance
Ariana Wolf in health science and Kinsey Whitefield also in health science we are so proud of these and many more accomplishments that really highlight the dedication and talent of our FPS students finally I'd like to invite
everyone to our inaugural business and community showcase which will take place Wednesday May 7th from 5 to 7:30 p.m at Farmington High School this is a free event thanks in part to our wonderful sponsors the Greater Farmington Area
Chamber of Commerce T-Mobile GLP Financial Group Farmington Family YMCA and Beztec if you are interested in serving as an additional sponsor or anyone would like to have a table as a vendor representing
your organ organization be businesses or nonprofits uh please go to our website uh there's a box there you can see it's going to say focus business and community showcase and there's additional information and as we move forward I'm really excited about the opportunities
that lie ahead for our students and our innovative initiatives we are imple implementing across the schools and just thank the board and the community for their continued support thank you thank you very much do you want to move on to the I sure
will yes uh next I'd like to uh welcome Mr paul Wills uh from Plant Moran Real Point to the podium to share information on the 2020 bond quarterly update uh thank you Dr coffman President Williams and board members um up on your screen you're going to see our quarterly
dashboard report so again uh the last one that was presented was actually in January and so we're going to kind of take a walk through the four slides talk about some of the great work that the district's done both at the board level as well as administration level so the first slide what you have is really a breakdown of the $109 million um from
the 2020 bond so you can see majority of that 71% is roughly construction and districtwide uh the next next darker blue is technology and security uh after that we've got buses and then furniture fixtures and equipment from that perspective on the next slide one of the
things you'll see is a breakdown of that $109 million and so for those that remember 2020 we're in COVID um the district actually made the right decision to actually decrease the millage rate a little bit to create the $98 million which was well supported by
the community but more importantly being good stewards of the 2018 U bond proceeds that was a second series from the 205 bond if you will so where does that money come from it comes from unused contingencies it comes from um escalation or I'll call it avoidance of
cost escalation but more importantly the board changing their policy for capital allowing to do a review and approval at a single board meeting because if you remember it was very hard to have materials being held for more than 15 to 20 days so again I commend the board to be able to actually be ahead of that
curve if you will going forward um there's some insurance refund checks uh for some uh damages that was done previously um -ate funds so again as a district improves technology throughout the district uh they do qualify for -ate refunding which then gets put back in the capital bonds um at the end of the
day um because again quick decisions by the board um quick decisions by the administration team and really focusing on the programs we'll be able to generate about $3.5 million of additional interest earnings from this current bond that's currently unallocated for the good packs that we'll talk about but we're going to talk
a bit about that in strategic planning so right now we've got about $16.6 $6 million remaining um a lot of that's being spoken for with transportation uh some of the work that was approved in December uh also some of the scoreboards and lights um going forward and more importantly bid pack 17 which is some of
the site work that you'll see tonight um from a funding standpoint you have complied with your spending requirements from the Department of Treasury so the 85% expenditure rate was uh exceeded which is awesome on the next slide is the wheels that kind of show you the v variety of different spends so again the
71% or roughly $77.5 million of construction you're about 95% expended through there next line item would be the $3.9 million of furniture of which you're roughly 95% also expenditured and then again with buses so again that was something previous to the two bonds used
to come out of general funds so the district made a very conscious decision to not buy all buses at one time you do that in a series uh so they don't all come due in the next 10 to 12 years going forward and very similar to technology and security again working on the infrastructure there's a replacement schedule that's going to come out to the
bond that helps you um you know save the general fund for programming specifically so the good news is we're well on task to have those expenditures going forward and on the last slide is really just a chart that kind of shows bid packs 14 and 15 which again were the scoreboards and lights um both middle school and high school the
transportation renovations and more importantly if approved tonight bidpack 17 which are some uh site improvements at Visions uh Farmington Central High School and at East Middle School site improvements so with that I'll turn back over to President Williams Dr coff from the board for any questions on the
quarterly dashboard report thank you uh Mrs smith um I don't have any questions um but I want to thank you as always for all the work that you have done um I have had the opportunity to go over to
Farmington Visions um a couple of weeks ago and um as a former employee there that building is wow i mean you guys did a great job in that building you put a lot of thought into it
um you thought of every student that um has a disability um the work is just simply beautiful um if any board member would like to go over and see um I'm
sure that Dorene would be happy to see you um and also Farmington Central um I actually got to paint the other day over there um but it was that building is still beautiful as well so
thank you for everything that you've done our buildings are state-of-the-art they're gorgeous they're beautiful um but I encourage this board to go and take a look at visions they would be shocked um mainly Miss Williams and Dr
turner because they know what it looked like prior to but to go and take a visit now they would be shocked um and it's a good shock it's not anything bad so thank you Paul no Trusty Smith honestly it is a team approach i mean again from the board level from the community
support administration team um and obviously with John Bar and Jennifer Kaminsky who are kind of the core um you know really kind of like from a financial fin um and operations it is truly a team uh team support and I think you see the great team work and the results of that so appreciate being part of that conversation
mrs hinrich yeah just a quick question um as far as the scoreboards for the middle schools and the high schools you have the close out September through November um is it the goal to have them ready to go when school starts in September yeah actually would be completed in the end of August we go through punch list then you've got
financial closeouts of warranties and things of that nature but Okay um training of the staff and things of that nature all take place um prior to the start of the school year so Okay thank you thank you um I'm also really pleased with all of the work that's been done um and how really these dollars have been
stretched frankly to do uh a lot more with um the business office and the interest earned and and and um the accountant in me though you know thinks through like okay what's next and and uh I'm also pleased that the business
office and the district has been saving uh in the sense of including regular amounts for building and maintenance in its uh budget on an annual basis but I am also aware that we spend more in this
area than we have funding for out of the general fund so uh we'll certainly be looking to understand what our long-term uh plans are to ensure that not only our our buildings are maintained which is what this this bond was for we've gotten
to do a lot of really creative and unique things with it but it was meant to fix roofs and parking lots and boilers and HVAC and all of the kind of um my opinion unsexy stuff but we've been able to do some really great things with it i am very much looking forward
to um providing a really welcoming environment for our students and aligning our programming needs with our building needs and I know that that's our next step and as a board we'll have to be giving thought to what we want our uh school district to look like you know
5 to 10 years from now thank you for that and I know that that might segue into our next conversation absolutely how we're going to um uh what we're going to consider for the remaining uh bond dollars so uh I would also I would
like to uh ask Mr bill Winrock from TMP Architecture to join Mr wills at the podium and talk just about about that the FPS long-term facility planning absolutely so as uh President Williams mentioned the main focus of the 2020 bond was truly critical infrastructure
is warm safe dry yes there are some great interior spaces for that but when you take a look at that $3.5 million it's really time to take a look at future focusing in terms of um what does the community want what do the students the parents the teachers want so I know the district's gone out for a survey that really talked about extending
expanding programmatic spaces for the students um from that sport um from that standpoint so um Bill Winrack myself um Bill is with TMP architecture uh he was actually the architect on Alma uh expansion at the early childhood center so again that future forward thinking we started at the early elementary and uh
education now we're going to be focusing at the high school um from one standpoint so part of the long-term strategy is about but every 5 years a district will update its uh capital plan and this is really a 10-year vision of what does our $2.2 million or 2.2
million square ft of space or 400 acres really truly need um I know you did participate in the school finance research foundation project conducted by the state um so we do have what that independent lens looks like from a critical infrastructure but that's just one building block the other is what do
you want to do programmatically so again with Dr coffin's lens working with her administration team you as the board what's happening on a national level what's happening at the local level what have other districts done you know from that perspective and so what we look at is taking a look at enrollment we take a
look at building utilization and capacities those are the foundation blocks and then working with Bill Winerrock of what do those spaces potentially could be but it's a funding effect so you're going to talk about programs collaboratively and collectively with that that uh assessment if you will so the first
couple months is more data driven and really the last four to six months is really the conversations of the academic lens like what does STEM and steam opportunities look like at the high school level do the students stay in the building or are they potentially partnering with local businesses and they're going to their sites we see some of those trends from with various
districts so again you're going to have a lot of um interactions with different committees and different uh community members so think of this as a 10-year capital strategic plan but really implementing and focusing on programs specifically with STEM and steam so at the end of the day you really can't go
wrong with creating these collaborative spaces because programs will change um I remember you know working on a CT building like we need this well guess what small engines are now all battery but those lab spaces were designed to actually now incorporate some EV technology without having to redo the
walls the infrastructure etc that's why I always uh appreciate Bill Winrocks and his team's expertise because they work with a plethora of districts around Southeast Michigan actually around the Midwest of how to create those really open collaborative spaces um so it's really two parts to it and I'll tell I'll let Bill talk a little bit about
what's proposed for the 3.5 million some of the timelines uh so with that Bill want to talk about the CT uh STEM scene first of all I want to thank you for inviting us here tonight um I am Bill Winrock with TMP Architects the last time I got to work with the district was with Alama Early Childhood Center as he
said so I'm I'm grateful to be back in the district um we started out John and Luke had had contacted our firm and and contacted me about coming and taking a look at Farmington and North Farmington you have a lot of great programs at both buildings and wanted to see what could
be done in this future thinking we've got CTE in the building we've got classrooms around the space how do we cohesively bring that program together so we're talking about steam STEM in the facilities um we did take a look at both
North Farmington and Farmington and what we found uh North Farmington has a lot of great space um but at the time we're looking at all of the directions or all of the possible potential avenues um there was a lot of shifting around at
North Farmington that would have to be done to create a space up front what we found is Farmington High School actually has a great space out back at the northeast corner that would allow for a
multi-purpose room large enough to house a steam STEM program multi-purpose while also accommodating your uh uh robotics program what we find in most schools and what we
find here in this district is robotics is working with all of your CTIE program spaces but they're in the hallway doing a lot of their programming a lot of their testing a lot of their work uh we are working with a number of districts creating these multi-purpose spaces uh
what we find is is robotics has a great space to work at night but during the day we've got a lot of square footage that could be a space where multiple programs can come together uh steam is is a a program philosophy where all of
these different CTE programs come together and and work together within within the schools so your science technology engineering arts they've got a space to bring multiple classrooms together and and work doing
projects um a nice floor plan to lay out nor uh Farmington High School's got great uh architecture programs engineering programs those spaces are great but it's hard to bring classes in move furniture around and and do programbased learning project based
learning um this program is roughly or the proposal is to create roughly a 5,000 square foot uh building at your current what we want to call the CTE wing of North Farmington
and we've got land in the back to be able to do that um Farmington farmington yes sorry farmington High School um there is land there to be able to do that work um we presented some ballpark figures to the district and it fits
within budgets uh we're just going through the programs now to figure out you know talking to teachers and and everyone to figure out what is best for that program so moving forward that that's uh part of that future think and and
bringing new programming to the school so kind of next steps again is um with based on the board uh dashboard update is again verifying a full picture not just what is construction but what is the furniture what is the equipment the technology are there any um useful life things that should be considered so for
instance um you have a piece of machiner that supports the stem or steam is that a 5-year investment or a 10-year investment or is it a two-year investment uh so giving the board a full picture of what this potentially be making an informed decision for that so again um our next uh walkthrough will probably be with the facilities and
finance committee here uh next month or two to show hey here's where the layout's at here's a couple potential exterior renderings i think it's great cuz if you're familiar with where the northeast quadrant is it's kind of by the the football field and the track and the and so people will be able to see it and again we've seen a lot of great examples of connectivity between the
interior and the exterior of what's going on so if you've got things that are happening in the evening with the STEM and there's an athletic event they're actually seeing this interaction um going on and so that'll be kind of the next steps is what's the floor plan some of the elevations again reconfirming that budget and schedule but just very exciting that again the
district has that forward thinking of STEM and steam and again using the current finances you have by just being great stewards and fiscally responsible as a board so with that I'll turn back to President Williams and the board for any questions any questions or comments on that yes i just wanted to make sure
that Mr drexel and maybe some of our uh Hatbox uh parents and students might be involved at some point to make sure that the space that we're creating that they will also be able to use is top priority right
sufficient for their Mr trex and Mr scodak were part of giving us the specs of what would be required awesome yeah and sometimes again work with a lot of different robotics teams like they are seven days a week from January through competition
day so again looking at accessibility um securing that space what are the hours of that going forward so again that'll be part of that operational lens as well as part of that conversation but appreciate the inquiry and it's always great to have that vision so yeah and one of the things I wanted to highlight too was the finance committee we really
wanted to make sure that the space was something that would be utilized by all the students throughout the school day not just something set aside for one particular um activity so um creating this multi- multi- use multi-purpose
space aligns with our our forward um vision and um you know our profile and the things that we're trying to do to be innovative and leading along around the um country really thank you for bringing that up um I just
wanted to also give some context for um people who are interested for transparency sake we had a really good conversation at the finance and facilities committee meeting and uh and and I forget what other meeting it was
there yes at our retreat um it it is I I think the board's goal to be more forwardthinking with respect to use of our space and I don't think any of us are interested in um addressing and
tackling requests or issues in a vacuum or one-on-one what we really need and what you're going to help us with is understanding comprehensively what our space could be um and the only way we'd be sort of supportive of moving forward in this
direction is if this fits into that vision no one wants to do something in isolation what we really want to do is develop a comprehensive understanding of what our programming needs are what our building needs are and how we can support all of our students um clearly
there's been a a huge interest in steam and STEM and so this is feels like the right approach but we definitely want to make sure that uh we're being um thoughtful about what we're doing going forward and how we can best use this
space um versatily yeah it's interesting i know a lot of districts when they start this process they may also reach out to some of their business partners that are looking for those you know the STEM steam uh type positions i know in Southfield they'd rather grab a junior senior in high school cuz they can't wait four years for this individual to
join their robotics um slash you know steam programs um they are actually paying for associates degree so again it's that how do you collaborate with the whole community but again also providing that space right on site uh for those particular students and staff so yeah I appreciate the forward
thinking comment thank you okay I think we're ready to move on to reports from board committees mrs hinrich uh yes the um finance and facilities committee met on Thursday April 17th
um with myself and um Mr thomas Holland um President Terry Williams are on the committee along with various people from the district and we um reviewed bid pack number 17 recommendation and that is
actually the last formal bid pack out of the 2002 and 2020 bond bunny um and so there's going to be um site renovations to Visions Unlimited Farmington Central High School and East Middle School and
um I think also that's going to be a um discussion item yeah so I don't want to uh steal the thunder on that but um it's just kind of exciting that um during the discussion we'll be able to share um part of the bid pack is going to put in
a basketball court at East Middle School and under the discussion we'll share how that came about which was kind of exciting um we also talked about the um uh fiscal year 2026 Oakland schools budget resolution and that is a
discussion item and so Jennifer Kaminsky is going to um prepare some highlights from that she attended that and we um all have a copy of the Oakland schools budget for us to peruse and if there's any questions we can get those
um submitted and uh we'll have a um board resolution that will be due by June 1st and so we will be actually voting on that um and then we had a long-term facility planning update and part of that is Paul W just shared this
um $3.5 million um bond money that we really um were able to save by reviewing and approving purchases um so thank you for being forward thinking um for that and so um we had information on the um
addition at Farmington High School that they're going to be researching um and we also were talking about highle district plans for future facilities and prioritizing um instructional vision for future educational needs um and making
sure that everything fits in with our strategic plan and long-term planning um future agendum items um we have a budget review scheduled for May and if needed um there was discussion on there's a
possibility of a electrical bus grant the district is looking at whether or not they want to apply for that and so if needed that will be a future agenda item and that was it thank you thank you very much i think if there are no questions we'll move on to discussion
items dr coffin all right so uh Mr wills you get to join us again along with uh John Bar and uh Jennifer Kaminsky when she gets back um as well as Kathy I don't know if Kathy's here uh from McCarthy and Smith talk about bid pack
17 so uh Miss Heinrich or Trusty Hinrich gave a little tease to what you're going to talk about so good evening again board members Dr coffin um again this isn't a real sexy part of the the bond projects however something very much needed so what it amounts to just in a
nutshell is we're doing some asphalt work we're doing the east lot which a lot of staff park over at Central so that's the east lot we're also doing the west lot again staff parking over at Visions and we're actually recommending some alternates oh I forgot to mention
we are doing East Middle School and Jennifer will talk more about that whole process with the students involved but we're also going to be recommending I'll let uh I'll let Paul talk more about this we're going to recommend because we're under budget the two alternates which in a nutshell are adding a walking
path for visions that Dorian has asked for for the last couple years and also taking out the the south parking lot of visions which is deteriorated to such a point that it's no longer sustainable and really not needed we're going to turn that into grass space green space um so we're looking to approve
alternates and we'll discuss more about the whole bid process paul will but really we see this as a win-win to finish up some of the big asphalt projects we couldn't do before and the reason we couldn't do them before because Eagle doesn't allow us to do more than one acre of disturbance in any particular site and if we go back like
we could back in 24 visions they would have questioned well you should have done this before you should have asked for a waiver or whatever so we decided to postpone it now they can't say a thing and we can finally do the staff lot over visions that's in desperate need of repair there's also a sidewalk that goes to the school that floods every year so they're going to regrade
added so that'll be done perfectly for staff to get into the building facilities has since put down an orange mat which is sort of perforated whatever you want to call it so there's they can walk in it they can run wheelchairs over it but it's not ideal obviously so that's all coming with your approval hopefully this summer and get that all
straightened out finally but I'll turn over to Paul to talk about the whole bid process and and the great results we got thank you Mr bar and that's another item that when you take a look at the number of bid packages so as trusting uh trusty Henrik mentioned this is bid pack 17 um I do want to commend McCarthy Smith
again who is uh the construction manager they've been repeatedly been able to get multiple bid packages for multiple bids going out so we had over um 12 bids for just this particular uh projects as Mr bar mentioned best part is is TMN TNM
Asphalt and Concrete has actually worked on previous bid packs successfully they were the lowest responsible bidder and more importantly you're able to incorporate um you know the two different voluntary alternates which keep keeps you under that budget from that perspective um so really the best news is you got great bid coverage it's
a little bit under budget which is always great to hear um you're able to do some alternative work um from that perspective and if you go back to the dashboard um we got we're looking at completing this work before the start of school um that's why again it's important to be able to present to the board and have you take consideration for that work to take place going
forwardly but more importantly it's always exciting when you can get some students involved in the process uh so with that I'm going to turn to Mrs kaminsky who's going to talk a little bit about the student involvement at East so Jennifer all right good evening uh we wanted to
share uh the impact the students presentation um for their outdoor space you know had on this project in particular so seventh grade math classes under Deb Kanchi as well as Jennifer Franklin um did a
survey I guess last year I think it was on outdoor space what do kids what are kids looking for what would they like to see outside so if you're familiar with East um really all of their facilities other than the baseball diamond are
across the bridge so the track the football field uh any of the fields for use and so the students invited um Mr uh Kadau and myself to their class in early March um and presented us with a
proposal and some ideas as to what they'd like to see um uh in their outdoor space so they used a lot of math skills science skills um and then also provided us with some information on how
East was different from all of the other middle schools if you will um so if you recall we used to have four middle schools uh Power and Warner are uh turned into five six buildings back in the day they received playground as well
as other updates during that time um Dunle turned into K8 Steam they received playground upgrades as well as other updates so East was the only building that was a middle school went to a 78
went back to a 678 and we found that they did not have the same sort of facilities they didn't have playground equipment nor did they have access to basketball and so the students um through a uh various scenarios showed us
what they thought they could do they did calculations they had measurements um and did a really good job uh you know informing us as to why they felt they needed this space as well the benefits
um phenomenal and we told them that we would bring this back um and look to see if there was anything we could do uh so knowing we were doing these two paving projects uh we quickly turned it over to the construction team and said "Is there
any way we can do the basketball court?" That was really the only thing that could quickly be incorporated um and so they were able to make it happen and we were able to include it in the bid so this morning uh Luke and John and I went
to East Middle School and uh we really just told the teachers that we wanted to um you know have a little presentation for the students talk about the process that we followed um and just get back to them uh as we had said uh so we you know
kind of talked through what we did on our end and then shared with him we're gonna put it in a basketball court and it was really funny because the kids um Drew said they were all trying to be like really calm and but you could tell they were like they just wanted to
scream out and um and uh and yell so it was really exciting uh John also brought in a rack of balls that were donated by U mccarthy Smith our construction manager for use on on this new uh basketball court so um we you know we
talked about the importance of them bringing their ideas forward um that we maybe wouldn't always be able to incorporate it or make it happen but we would definitely put it on a list for f for future consideration so just wanted
to share that as part of their learning and and how we participated in that as well and uh so this summer they will be putting in a basketball court and a picture of all of us uh this morning so great thank
you any questions then on on this bedpack just thank you thank you for hearing their voices if I can just add one thing there was um so they they did not know we we literally surprised them and uh the
teacher uh Deb Cloni said you know we had them prepare so that we may not get the answer that that you wanted and and one of the young ladies said "Isn't it just awesome that we're even here having getting to have this conversation?" So either way how it ended up they were
ready and so just the just the experience for the students and how valuable it was was amazing mrs henry and I just want to I I mean I think this is awesome and I just want to go back to the visions and the walking path also just because you know I mean this
basketball court is an is a example of making outdoor spaces accessible to our students and then we sitting here we don't think a a paved walking path is that big of a deal but Visions has a lot of students that are you know handicapped or flexible and
so being able to have a space for all students to get outdoors and be able to navigate around in the outdoor space is really important and so I'm glad that we're making that a priority and doing it and and just to add to that this was on Dorine's wish list when we first did
visions but we couldn't we were just just under the oneacre limit we did that the bus area where the buses park on that other end the east end so that all being said when we decided this has got to go forward at some point obviously either we pay for it or bond dollars pay for it it's a wide sidewalk so it's
within the fences but it can also accommodate wheelchairs so a lot of thought was put into Dorian's help to see what we could do for a longer walk path around the It's basically behind the building it's on the south side but she's happy with that i know she wants a little bit more walkway we'll try to address internally but this got us to
that one acre that we needed to do this year so she's pretty happy with that new wider walk path can Can I just Okay Mrs smith and then Mrs hinrich um over at Visions you have the swings for the wheelchairs could you also think of
putting those in over at East as well i'm putting you on the spot huh yeah we're we're actually looking over at Visions there were some there's some minor issues going on with those wheelchair accessible swings and the swings themselves right so we're addressing that with Sinclair Recreation
dorian's aware of it um but to your point is funding available but we always want to address any ADA issues out there so that that always comes first in terms of getting what's needed in the building thank you Mrs hinley yeah and and this is just kind of an aside but I want to
throw it in while I'm thinking of it and it's isn't to blindside you or anything but um during the committee meeting um Mr hall mentioned that the walking path that the students walk to from school or to school from the neighborhoods that when it rains out it becomes flooded and
stuff and so maybe districtwide thinking um you know for somebody from the district I'm looking at John Bar and you have a boot on so you might not want to do the walking but to have somebody from the district actually walk the access that the students have i remember when
my students went to Flander school we always approached the school from the back of the the building and they didn't realize they you know I asked them about it and they put a path in to make it accessible so as far as all of our buildings for future planning to actually walk the routes for students
and look and make sure that there's um no problems that need to be addressed yeah we're trying to address that Claudia at each building when we do bond but again dollars are dollars right so we can only do so much and sidewalks is not as cheap as you think they are so we did that over steam there were a couple areas over steam including right along
the the main road there to reduce some of that tripage hazards that's the big thing um we will be addressing a lot of that this coming year talked to Luke about doing that inhouse some of the more dangerous areas it's very hard when you got flooded sidewalks because then you're lifting the ground or doing something more significant right so but
we are looking at that it's on our right okay all right and and it was just uh something that popped in my mind not to I know I'm not supposed to No thank you for raising it yeah maybe that's some place where students could get involved also the students at each building could
identify some of those areas and maybe do some problem solving too yeah absolutely uh just a few things so uh I'm normally not a fan of alternates i don't believe that we need to spend the money because it's there but uh in most instances uh
I'm just being honest okay uh in most instances uh I've agreed with what you've done with alternates and these are two really really good examples um I am thrilled that the East students got to advocate for themselves i want all
students to know that we love that i get emails from students all the time uh with classes that have projects and they you know share what they want uh and I we love to hear student voice i do want to let students know that you know as
cute as you are it doesn't mean that you're going to get everything that you want but you can ask and you should be advocating for yourself what I love about this though is how they identified and shared with us how they are not um
able to enjoy at the same rate as other schools are and for that reason alone uh I want to make sure that we have equity across our school buildings and so they're right and I didn't realize it before that they don't have the same type of facility or equipment outside
that our other middle schools do and so I I'm I'm fully supportive and I think I'm seeing nods of heads from the rest of my board members that they are as well um I do appreciate the comments around um things that are a little bit more necessary you know the needs versus
the wants and so addressing some of the walkways I think is a really important thing for us to be doing and I know that you said that you'll take a look at it and so I trust that you'll do that um I think that's all I had thank you for your presentation
appreciate that thank you and uh Miss Jennifer Kaminsky will stay at the podium to uh discuss the Oakland schools uh 2026 budget resolution all right well and just on another note today we received um an update on the scoreboard
package I think bid pack 14 and so all of the middle schools their new scoreboards have been installed so they are on the field they gave us a picture of the old uh scoreboard as well as the new and uh so that was exciting to see
so work is happening now as um you know it can take place so uh now on to probably a more boring topic the Oakland schools budget review not as exciting so on April 11th
um Oakland uh county school business officials um Michelle Saunders presented Oakland school's budget and their focus is really on their general education fund budget uh but they do talk about um also their career focused education as
well as special education funds um and then they have many others that they really just highlight um so the board is required prior to June 1st to approve a resolution either approving
or disapproving Oakland school's budget and so uh as I mentioned April 11th we received that overview of Oakland Schools budget there is an opportunity for the board designate to go to a meeting tomorrow evening uh to hear that
same presentation ask questions um if there are any and so this was a requirement put into place I think about 15 years ago um so that local education uh agencies knew what was included in uh
the ISD's budget so just to highlight a couple of things on their general education uh fund is they do um have an increase in property taxes of about 3.7% that is how they receive the
majority of their funding um as well as uh money from the state that's also how the special education fund as well as the career focused education fund receives its money um there is a countywide millage that is levied on all
districts or all homeowners all taxpayers within Oakland County that money comes to Oakland schools and then it is dispersed to local uh districts through certain formulas so we do receive our PA18 dollars you've heard me
talk about that in our budget um as well as uh CF dollars um to help pro uh support our career uh and teched programs so again there is a requirement
that the board approve or disapprove of Oakland school's budget by June 1st um and a requirement that we provide you with this overview by uh May 31st again they provide a 5-year forecast on all of
their funds as well um and they're in the same boat that we are and they have to do their budget a little bit earlier to meet this requirement so there are a lot of unknowns as they're putting together their information um so if you do have any questions um as that
information was included in this board packet their their actual budget document there's a um an overview memo um from the superintendent as well as um a presentation that really highlights
the big items in their budget if you have any questions you can send them to Dr coffin and we can get those sent on to Oakland schools uh for their response and I can answer any questions
um could you share with the community uh you shared with us about um how our district also benefits from the Oakland schools and ways with the business office residency program i just have notes on that and the the numer the
numerousy project that is being supporting the districts and I think we have um I think there's reading programs also that the districts get supported and I'm not quite sure about that and AI I have a note on that too just maybe so our public just hears a little bit about
how we benefit yep so Oakland schools does provide sub uh subsidies to districts whether it be for software we participate in my pupil accounting software um they have provided us with
literacy funding in the past we did participate in their um program uh they are funding a numerousy initiative this year to help districts uh support districts across the county um and yes
we were able to take advantage of the business office residency program we had an intern essentially with us for about eight months and so the idea is those individuals do uh three rotations so
they spend eight months with three different districts to get them different opportunities different experience to try and um address some of the um need on the business manager side
um as people are retiring it's very hard to find people that are qualified to go into um a school district it's governmental accounting um there are a lot of nuances in school funding and so
we don't see people coming out of um public accounting anymore and heading for a school district like we used to um so this is a way for Oakland schools to try and help address that shortage that we're seeing um on the business side of
things thank you so much don't see any further questions we appreciate the report and this will come back to us at uh the next meeting for approval yes thank you thank you okay we will now move to our second opportunity for public comment if you
wish to make public comment and you did not make public comment earlier you are now invited to make public comment is there any further public comment seeing none we will move on to our next agenda topic which are action
items the first action item is uh secondary math adoption and I know there were a number of questions the last time that we talked through this i saw several board members who had some additional questions uh I believe most of those questions got answered but I
will ask that someone from uh administration come up and give us a summary of this matter before we uh consider an action item and then we can move on to discussion good evening Board of Education and Dr
kelly Coffan uh sorry for my voice today just recovering from a little chess call so um I I there were a number of questions that did come in from the board of education and I appreciated the opportunity to respond to all of your in-depth questions over the last two
weeks i'm wondering what specific areas you might want me to connect with maybe I'll start about the process um I think we're all clear on the process okay i think folks would really like to understand what is um what uh why is the
district considering a new math program what led to that and why do you believe this math program is going to address the uh the issues that you raised which required you to look at it in the first place i know that we've all received the
uh data related to uh math assessment and we've all seen over the past several years what's happening at the 11th grade level particularly a decline in recent years what we're seeing at the seventh grade level and I believe the sixth grade level was also eighth grade was
also shared y so maybe you can speak to that i'm assuming that's part of the reason why you're considering another math program exactly and um I I believe that is the primary question here i think folks based off of what I heard were also interested in understanding uh
how the district is comfortable uh that this is what in fact will move the needle on math and so any data that you have related to that would be helpful i know we all received also testimonials from teachers who uh were um involved in
the process who actually saw it in practice and gave us their information and testimonials about what they saw in the classroom that was very helpful as well but I think it it would be all it would be nice to level set us in the Y wonderful and if uh uh Colleen Stam were
she's right behind if you could just did we bring up to the board the copy of the student the teacher so you have one copy of a teacher guide as well as one copy of a student workbook we have others at the back so thank you very much i do want to commend uh Colleen Stam our K12
math math and science coordinator along with Dr carrie Heeney who is our um PhD I'm excited to to supervise the PhD uh uh in mathematics who is our math coach and so they have worked long hard since
last spring to engage in this extensive previewing process and coming to a place of recommendation to the board of education um over the last few years um you have been on a journey with us in looking at data in terms of where our students achievement is and where their
growth is and we know that K12 we've seen certain literacy ups and downs and maintainings and mathematics ups and downs and maintainings and over the last few years we've been doing work in the area of mathematics at the elementary and secondary through that work
continuing to look at the data seeing urgency in that data we have done had opportunities to visit our classrooms and see what kids are doing in the classrooms as part of some of the professional development we've offered what we're noticing is in the there's an
there's a instructional equity that we need to look at when we see some classrooms focusing heavily on procedural understandings of mathematics when I say procedural I'm thinking algorithms steps of solving a problem numbers operations procedural step by
step what students are missing is the conceptual understanding which is how the math works which is behind those procedures so in observations of classrooms we're noticing there are classrooms that are heavily focused on procedure and not the concepts connected
to those procedures which as students move higher and higher in the grade levels and get to more rigorous and complex mathematics is their mathematics performance starts to fall apart and you see that very commonly when we go from K2 to 35 the shift in content from 35 to
68 and then into the high school level so in classroom observations observing what teachers are doing we're seeing a disconnect in student understanding of procedural and conceptual and we know that sto all of our state assessments focus on both of those the other piece
we're noticing and teachers are reporting to us is mathematical language is pretty complex it's a it's a world language in and it of itself and it can often become a barrier for students as they excuse me as they progress in their math learning because there's a
disconnect between the word plane and what it actually means and then how to apply the concept or linear or uh linear equation there's a lot of vocabulary that students have to connect to con concepts and procedures and we're finding that students are struggling
with that vocabulary and making meaning of that in addition as we watch classrooms we have very gifted teachers that are working within the resources that they have been provided and we're noticing that there's some variability in teacher practice in light of what their prior
professional development learning was their or their content knowledge or the resources they've had and so we feel that we need a resource that will one excuse me allow us to build conceptual and procedure a resource that
will also help kids build language of mathematics and a resource that will support our teachers in the instructional shifts thank you and a resource that will also provide students equitable access to the learning so we found a lot of urgency in student
empathy data teacher empathy data and our state assessment data and walking our classrooms so when we started to look at a resource we started with one initial premise and that was a problem focused mathematics program which can often be called as a taskbased program
that means we start student learning by putting them in a an exploratory phase a meaning making phase where they watch for patterns they look for concepts and how numbers and things work they work collaboratively and then what you do is
you take those experiences in those small groupoup collaborative opportunities and the teacher works by coaching individual groups and the whole class during synthesis and consolidation opportunities full class to name what the kids just saw we're not putting
students into tasks having them explore and then move on to now go solve problems we're putting them in an opportunity to look at some mathematical problems make some discoveries share their thinking synthesize that thinking name the mathematics and then help them
connect the concepts to the procedures so they can do those practice problems so research says if you put meaning before acquisition you have deeper learning and you have longer retention so we wanted a resource that started with meaning making followed by
acquisition followed by some more acquisition followed by some more meaning-making followed by some more acquisition and when you sequence all those meaning-m acquisitions together you get deeper mathematical learning so we screened for that first and then we
looked at a number of other elements for each of the programs we looked at illust illustrative mathematics meets that first requirement that screening requirement I just me mentioned excuse me i feel like I'm tripping over my own
vocal cords um there's a couple other things that we were were very compelling about illustrative mathematics which we have not had before which are preassessments for each unit that allows the teacher to know and students to know where they are in their learning prior
to the start of the unit that pre-assessment actually helps teachers understand if there's prior gaps that students might have and actually provides suggestions on either in small group or full class how to fill those gaps and then daily there are formative
assessments for the teachers and the students to know where they are in their learning and this is one of the first instructional resources we've seen that values small group full class and independent practice while also providing an opportunity for teachers to
pull kids in small groups that is not common in a secondary program to help accelerate accelerate learners so we were very excited by the type of assessments and the data it gave students and teachers in addition to having that meaning making and acquisition sometimes you can get into
these resources and these meaning-making tasks are really long and elaborate and there's not enough time for kids to have their meaning consolidated before misconceptions brew or misconceptions brew for too long what we found in illustrative mathematics is the lessons
in a given lesson and across lessons there's so much chunking the teacher is always present helping consolidate their learning naming the math to move kids to procedure and algorithms we need students to move to procedures and algorithms but not without conceptual
understanding so some of the research resources I gave you gave you more information about additional differences between what we're doing now what this resource provides and how this resource stood against some of the other resources we looked at that assessment
was one of them and the chunking was another piece that stood out the other thing that we liked was every day there's daily practice connected to the work of the day 10 to 15 problems in addition there's additional problems in the online platform we can assign
students problems and give them immediate feedback in the system the teacher doesn't have to score the system scores it so they get immediate feedback we know from best research the quicker the feedback the better the movement in learning and progress in
learning the other thing we always hear from teachers is there's never enough practice i'm sure Claudia you can contest to that that math teachers love practice they like practice because they want to provide students opportunities to get some more rigorous problems than
where they might have in the resource more problems that might speak to lower uh some concepts that we're having to intervene in or additional grade level uh problems it's very common i see with every resource adoption I've ever seen in mathematics actually sometimes we have to pull away those practice
problems from teachers because they'll move into that traditional wrote procedure replicate wrote procedure replicate so what we were lucky is that this year we've been already previewing a tool called Magma Math that has additional practice in it actually by
coincidence has illustrative mathematic problems in it so we are integrating that alongside the resource we were always going to use that alongside any resource we adopted um integrating more practice based on the needs of who's in front of you is always something that
teachers have at their fingertips what they don't have is meaning making task followed by quality acquisition kids need to transfer their knowledge on these state assessments we're taking and they're stuck at the procedural and they're not moving into a place of
transfer so all of this work is aligned to acquisition meaning a man acquisition meaning making a transfer founded by Grant Wiggins who's the leader in learning and positioning authenticity and noticing which is based in significant research um in the so I will
pause there cuz I know I got on a little bit of my excitement zone and don't get any time and everyone can be upset with me that I'm keeping you later but it's it's exciting we really need a restart and a reboot for our middle school and high schools and to have all of them on the same resource for the dollar value
we're investing it's about $40 a kid every year um are there any questions Mrs smith you just took me to an all you can eat buffet and expected me to eat this in like 20 minutes yes I did but you also
had it in writing ahead of time so I'm going to say um with all seriousness um a few years ago cuz I've been on the board nine years we've had this same conversation over and over and over
again that this is the best thing coming um I think that what we do need to do um after hearing your presentation we need to go back to have a curriculum committee with the board we
had that under Dr turner we had it under um President Williams and I know I'm going to have somebody tell me "Well stay out the weeds." Well I use Miracle Grow at the end of the day this is about our kids
we have heard this time and time and time again that this is going to be the best thing smoking and we have heard each time that people have come to this podium this is going to help our children
i love your presentation but at the end of the day it's nothing against our teachers but if you get a parent like me 62 years old and I have a kid come home and tell me
"I don't know what I'm doing i was told you could YouTube it or you can do a video." So what if that parent still can't get it i got a box right now in my living room that I'm supposed to YouTube to put something together that's why it's been sitting
there two weeks but at the end of the day group work does not work i have three daughters and they have done group work with groups and there's always been somebody in the group that either didn't
get it or lack of knowledge or just flat out lazy and that student got the same credit as those that worked hard so I'm not against it but it's
I'm you haven't sold me on it i'm not against what the teachers are doing but I need more knowledge other than you bring me those books and have me go through them and glance through them now if you
brought me a book on how to dissect the eye or a frog or find a corateed artery I can do that with my eyes closed but this here I don't get it and if I can't get it how many other parents are not going to be able to get it so I would
like to take a step back and see more and then I could come back with an answer but right now I I mean because everything that we have tried we have
failed and we have help failed these students and so at the end of the day I want something that's going to help i know that we're moving the needle but I want to see something that actually moves the needle and I need
more education on this that's just me thank you thank Thank you Miss Smith mrs hinrich you know Mrs smith Miss Smith I really appreciate your comments and your perspective on that because I'm sitting here from a different perspective and I'm just I'm thinking you know armchair coaches our all of our professional
teams would do better if they just asked the people watching on their TV how to coach the the teams um so as a board member collectively um we're not really expected to be curriculum experts and that's why we um hire the superintendent who hires the
curriculum but I I will I do want to share my experience because I have a 40-year career in teaching mathematics and I not only taught um high school but I taught college level mathematics and so I know what students need or are lacking when they get to high college
because I taught at the community college level um but I was fortunate to work for a big school district and um I was on numerous textbook adoption committees and so I've looked at a lot of textbooks um I was on um curriculum
alignment committees when we aligned our curriculum to the high school content expectations and then when the common core came out I was on the committee where we aligned our curriculum to the common core standards and one thing that I noticed on whenever we would do a a
textbook adoption is textbooks really haven't changed over the years um when the standards change or the flavor of the month comes out they might add a investigation at the beginning or applications at the end but the basic
content is always the same historically if you look at textbooks and so after the last presentation I had some concerns um and so I asked Dr coffin could I come over and look at the books in more detail and sit down and um
perhaps talk to Margaret and I talked to Margaret and Colleen and really based on my experience as a teacher and the things that were we're asked to do because you know the um Michigan um council or the national council of
teachers of mathematics um is researchbased um it has effective mathematic teaching practices and looking at the the resources and the things that we're doing in our district um some of the things is when you talk
about group explorations i mean I've as a teacher I've had those experiences where I take the activity that's added in the beginning and go to my class and you know it's a disaster it's a trademark sort of thing so um and looking at these resources
these aren't these aren't group explorations where the kids are supposed to learn what they're supposed to learn and then the teacher has to explain them to them um they're really smaller chunked in investigations and the common core curriculum and the the national council
of teachers and mathematics effective practices is for teachers to really make or for students to make sense and have understanding of what they're doing and um this is a confession you know as a teacher I would experiment with my classes sometimes you know I would give
them because they wanted they wanted the recipe to follow and so I would give them the recipe to follow which I didn't really believe was good instruction um but then I would they didn't do real well with that you know knowing as a
teacher how to get kids to understand how to experience how to work in groups um back when Jennifer Granholm was uh governor um she uh had Algebra for all and I mean I
remember going to Algebra for all and saying I like my students sitting in their assigned seats doing their assigned work and I went out of my comfort zone and actually learned how to make groups work and group projects and things like that so one of the things
that I observed in talking to um Colleen and talking to Margaret and looking at the resources that we're not just purchasing the flavor of the month that's going to rescue mathematics with something added at the beginning something added at the end but it's the
same old same old but it's actually um they're actually good resources combined with the professional development piece with the teacher professional development the collaboration the teacher coaching the teachers learning
how to use the resources how to engage the students and um some of my questions that I had after that I kind of want to ask you to share was um I had a question about the opportunities for acceleration
and remediation and you kind of addressed that um but just so that because that's a really big thing and so maybe you can just share with our community how how the kids that need the extra help that they don't get it and
they go home because believe me I sit down with my grandkids and I help them do their math homework and I'm thinking "What about the parents that don't know how to do this how are they helping their kids?" Um sort of thing so maybe to address that and I'm always concerned
about the kids that are getting it you know they're just not going on to the next level and so how is this resource going to help in that along with how are you supporting the teachers in learning how to do that in their classrooms i
appreciate both comments um the uh the the meaning making in Farmington Public Schools is at one of the heart of our learning framework acquisition meaning making and transfer so everything we look at will be looking at how is that
designed for literacy math science or social studies um and I do appreciate the the the statement about this isn't like a maybe exploration is the wrong word but it's strategic use of small group around small groups around really specific problems for kids to discover
see collaborate make meaning together which is a social endeavor that we want our college students to do and we want our college and career ready students to do as part of the profile of a lifelong learner so we have to think about how do we strongly support small group work collaborative work K12 one of the key
pieces I will always say is that there is no silver bullet to any program or any resource there is not but I will tell you we've been living in the same resources for a number of years supporting with professional development and supplementals and we're not seeing
the movement so to reset our resources that it's backed by resource but backed by research the national science teaching of ma teachers of mathematic and some of the other research I shared with you we're looking for something that's credible in the resource just like we did for literacy in the lower
grade levels and we will always look for that what our teachers haven't had with CPM or big ideas are the assessment pieces that are built into illustrative mathematics which is very intriguing for our teachers it's a lot of work to identify where students are and how to
support them so the preassessment for every unit gives the teacher understanding of where the students are sitting with that unit before starting and if you see at the back there is like a guide where it says if students are
struggling with this on the assessment here's a suggestion if students are excelling in this area here's a suggestion so it gives some suggestions for unit pacing like what lessons to add or maybe subtract for the full group what everyone experiences but also
provides options for teachers to do in small group whether that's giving them to a a a deeper level of that concept the same con uh same grade level concept or prior grade level concept and the other piece is when you have formative
assessment every day some kind of exit opportunity where kids have to show their learning for that day gives the kids and the teacher understanding of where they are and then the teachers have that information to adjust the um instruction for the students and this
will be um a shift for students and teachers but what we've seen in classrooms already are the early indicators of what we want to see in classrooms with this resource um do you have
So I'm I'm a big adopter of something that's you know that's new and that's innovative however I want to make sure that the people who the professors or whoever the the experts are not just writing
information just to pressing colleagues and so uh what I what I'm very interested in that what was the results of on the focus groups of you know with the kids you know what was the what was the um the matrix that you guys followed
and if they met the with Every kid learns different right so and and I do recognize that um however is this have a results that we're looking for or is this another um you know another like they say flavor of the month type of thing that gives you the same results
but you know we're trying to move the you know Tom and and I can uh adjust that a little bit we did look in at what other districts have adopted this resource and Troy schools have adopted this i had a conversation directly with the superintendent there and they've made some structural changes with the
adoption of this resource and they are seeing significant improvements he's very happy with what he's seeing very similar to what we have you have resources there you're relying on individuals to be able to make this work and he has found that this resource really was what moved started to move
the needle for them at Troy dr turner thank you um I'm a bit more pragmatic when I consider things and so I know this investment is just shy of a million dollars um and I know you said we're not seeing the gains or the outcomes that we want to see under the
current system now so when um with the supporting efforts that are in place when will we uh assess this investment in these educational uh instructional resources to determine if our investment
bears out so similar to our EL skills block and our wit and wisdom implementations we have ongoing progress monitoring where we are doing classroom observations teacher surveys we're looking at the different data points around literacy including NWA and
MSTEP similarly for mathematics at middle school and high school we will be taking a look at and following our NWA scores on mathematics will be following our MSTEP SAT PSAT in mathematics we will also be doing classroom walkthroughs we will continue to do
surveys with teachers to have an understanding engage their confidence and their reaction and their perceptions we will continue to do focus groups with students and get surveys of students um similar to what we're doing in our K5 program each year we don't start to program a VAL in the fifth year of the
use of a resource you start doing it year one for a couple reasons one you learn a lot about a resource once it's in practice with teachers and students so you understand what supports do students and teachers need with that resource to deepen its impact in general
if you look at the research you'll see 3 to five years to get full implementation of a resource at its peak but year one similar to what we're seeing in literacy right now we're seeing some early gains so we make sure we use multiple data points to see early gains what's early
indicators and then if we're not seeing them let let's look further and and look deeper and so uh Colleen Stam Carrie Heeney will be leading that work of progress monitoring and similar to what we've been doing with K5 literacy we'll provide updates to the board of
education yes uh there is an example from one of these resources that you shared with us last time i can't find it it might not be even in one of these two that we're looking at today that I
wanted to share and I apologize for my very poor drawing but there was an illustration in one of the one of the new resources that showed lines going this way lines going this way and lines
going on an angle and one of the group activities it's not a group project in the way that we you know might have experienced it's more of just a short um small group interaction and so for
example the students would be given this image and be asked "What do you notice?" And some students might notice that "Oh the lines that go this way are parallel." Some of the students might notice the lines that go up and down are parallel some of the students might
notice that the horizontal lines are parallel some of the students might notice that oh it the all the intersecting lines form triangles somebody else might notice that they're equilateral triangles or that the angles seem to be equal in in uh in size so
it's a short um curiosity builder a s a short um to kind of wet the appetite of the students and get them wondering to kind of engage them in the thinking about this as the
starter make them hungry for the meal and then serve them the meal mhm so uh and what I have found is that when I try and do something like this with my whole class I get the same four students who always raise their hand and participate
when I have the students work together U3 U3 U3 U3 U3 then many more of the students engage in the looking and the noticing and the conversation because there I'm walking around and there are only three kids at each table and so
more students engage in that and that's the kind of group uh group work that this set of resources is so rich with it's these smaller you know in the- moment in the classroom group collaboration pieces not so much the you
know big projects where yeah you have somebody who does all the work and somebody has the you know none of the work the other thing I wanted to mention is that I'm reading a book right now um by a cognitive neuroscientist whose name is Daniel Willingham and uh all actually the title of the book is
why don't kids like school and he talks all about the the science of learning and how making our children curious first is a very important piece of the puzzle to helping
them engage in a meaningful way in their own learning and research shows that their learning is much deeper and more permanent if they come to it from a state of wonder and curiosity as their entryway into the new material the new
content and the new skills so this fits with what I'm reading currently via cognitive neuroscience about how the brain learns best and what conditions to create in our classrooms to help students really engage in a meaningful
and deep and permanent way with their own learning just want to comment back to use your analogy of meal this meal costs a meal mhm so I want to make sure that it fortifies the individuals that it's intended for and if not in 3 to four
years when we assess this and we come back did we spend and were we good stewards with the resources that we were obligated to have charge over we're not Troy similar in some regards but we're different and we see gains early and we'll see gains hopefully later but if
we don't we still have a charge for the teaching and learning for the students in this district in 3 to four years that's a high school cycle so that's four years that students will endure this and if it's not fruitful it doesn't bear out then it's like junk food right and I
don't want to purchase junk food if you have an opportunity for a substantial meal to use your analogy and that's my concern and and all of the research that's went in all of the feedback that we received obviously we've got expert on the table we've got doctors here that have an understanding of pedigogy and
learning and teaching but we've got to consider our population and hopefully the outcomes are what we want because the meal costs a meal and we have that responsibility from from what from my review of the materials and from what I know in my experiences 39 years in the
classroom working with with kids this is worth the price find out uh just just one pointed question what results did did the district see and find in the classrooms that piloted
this so um just as we did with EL skills block and and Whiten Wisdom because we use a very similar process across all of our um adoptions um that are this significant and this potential impact um there were um the teachers used the
resources from September to December teachers September through February got through one or two units of study to three to four units of study so we saw teachers and students engage in three to four units of study which means
this teachers got to analyze how the content was built from lesson to lesson and unit to unit which is a big important point when looking at a quality math resource is how are the standards sequenced scoped and sequenced so that was one analysis that they did
they also pulled out individual tasks connected to specific high priority standards and compared the tasks across multiple uh of the programs that we were previewing and seeing how each resource used that they also analyzed the
assessment types and compared and contrast the type of assessment tasks whether those were daily formative or larger summitive assess um assessments to make sure the task types were aligned to what we want to our curriculum and what we want students to know and be
able to do so we did analysis that's one part of the data collection is taking analysis of the resource and the other piece was we did classroom observations to see the teacher practice with the resource and to see the student response
to the resource so we did multiple classroom observations one of which Oakland schools as part of their initiatives at Oakland schools came out and has been working with us on our mathematics work and they saw these classrooms in action i have personally
seen a a Warner Warner Middle School sixth grade classroom that was amazing and around area perimeter or some combination surface area and volume and so what we're looking and what the teachers reported is when they watch
students talk listen to students talk watch what they produce they are hearing conversations with mathematical language and mathematical reasoning that they weren't seeing in their current resources and that the resources supported students so what you were talking about Claudia is is every kid
they able to access that task and so these these particular tasks allow more than one kid to start to enter the conversation even if they don't have all the mathematical background they don't have the strong math identity or they don't know all the procedures so it provides access so those are the types
of things that we look at there was no common assessment tool i'll be visible about that because each each resource does the content in a different order and there was no common tool from assessment but we did look at how students performed on the ABET
assessments in the in the resources to see if they gained the understanding that was intended on the assessment um Mrs hinrich and then Mrs smith yeah I I just I I think this is important that we we take the time to discuss it so we're
talking about adopting this 6 through 12 and so maybe you can share a little bit about you know the kids are jumping at different grade levels you know it's one thing um you know middle school mathematics is six seven and eight or and then but then you have high school you have algebra 1 geometry algebra 2 i
mean some students will be starting in at the algebra 2 level some at the algebra 1 level some will be jumping in at the geometry level so as far as transitioning um what are your plans for that or or how are you going to make that type of transition and then I think
I had another question too but let me just um because our current resources and the new resources are both um aligned to the common core standards the Michigan standards the standards just provide us what we want students to know and be able to do we determine the instructional approaches to get students
there common core does not define the instructional approaches so the content fundamental content at each grade level is the same or course what we're doing is shifting about how that content is treated and how we in we instruct we
always expect there'll be some transition so generally what happens is the first or second unit tends to take a little bit longer than they would in a normal year to get teachers and students used to the routines some of the new behaviors to collaborate to share their
thinking those types of pieces but remember those are also things we've been working on over the last three years with all staff on discourse participation structures our profile of a lifelong learner so it's not going to be like all of a sudden everything's completely flipped um there will be some
bridging from the past to this future the first two units in every course has community building built into all of the lessons to teach our kids how to talk how to learn from each other it's all
built in within the lessons and we have found our algebra 2 students who are using this right now are talking way more than they were talking before and they started this year with this resource they didn't have anything similar in algebra 1 and algebra and
geometry and they are successful so we are seeing results just jumping right in okay and then you had some I think last year we had a presentation you had some teachers that were doing the um vertical classroom where it was discussion based and and it's I think it's expanded
throughout the district since then y and so just um it seems like this resource is going to really support those teachers and make the work they're doing easier i mean can you just address how it's going to align with that particular project so as uh shared in some of my
prior communication um one we've been aligning to the national NCT National Council for Teaching of Mathematics and the research embedded there we've also been over the last few years working with building thinking classrooms and that is also
supported by Oakland schools now we were starting it they followed suit i'm going to take that credit no um and it's also aligned with our math recovery work on how do we support rich deep number sense all the math recovery investment so the building thinking classrooms work we've
been doing over the last uh three years in K8 the building thinking classroom work we're doing all the types of um professional development we're doing is all in line with this resource it's not like a brand new thing it's what we've been driving towards but we need a shift in resource in order to continue to
drive the work forward and several of our preview teachers are building thinking classroom teachers so they were using it in conjunction with that so it does support building classroom so it actually makes their job easier because they don't have to go out and look for supplements but just can you just our community members that are concerned
about the direct instruction this isn't going to replace teaching kids how to do long multiplication or replace teaching kids how to solve equations i mean they're still going to get instruction in mathematical practices um it's just an opportunity to build understanding
and approach it from different levels and different different angles and different different perspectives quadratic equations which I still don't know how to do but my daughter's doing it now but I love those mrs smith um I
respect and appreciate um my colleagues that are former teachers I mean two former teachers up here and a CPA and Mr hall and Dr turner
thank you for the clarification but this is not a speech class and teaching kids how to speak this is a math class my concern is if these kids I've had parents call me i
don't take phone calls the day before a school board meeting parents are concerned um they don't want their children to be the guinea pig they don't want their kid to be not able to know how to do math they
want them to know how to do math and get them ready for whatever field they want to go into i appreciate Miss Hinrich breaking it down but she's a math teacher but some of our parents are not math teachers i
appreciate you know she's a former math teacher uh Dr blau former teacher with a school in her home i appreciate that but we're talking about the general population and a parent and that's my concern i'm
concerned about those parents that don't have the skills that either of these women have or even myself so I'm not going to take up too much time you know with this cuz I know we have to move on
um but I appreciate everything i just still need some more i I there are parent specific resources that come along with each unit that we did share with the board of education to help that meet that need that all parents tend to have regardless of the instructional
resource in front of their students one thing Thank you thank you Margaret one thing I do want to share is well I want to share a couple of things one of the things that we've been working on over the last five years is to bring quality resources to our teacher and that's what we are doing so please know this has
been vetted and this has been with our teachers and our teachers are the ones who are right at the center of making these selections i am a math teacher so I do have a different perspective when I came here 5 years ago I knew that our middle school resource and Colleen knows this i couldn't believe we were still
using it cuz what I taught back in the '9s and it wasn't it didn't feel like it was working then and and when I saw this here we had evidence that it wasn't working there so we know for sure that our 68 needed to change and for me it I wanted it sooner but it was part of this
this bigger conversation the other thing that I think we have to remember is when we talk about some of these uh these classrooms and these thinkings we used to call them story problems and so the story problems are no longer done in isolation they are done collaboratively
i had the opportunity to go and listen to middle school students talk about how they solved I'll say these story problems with multi-steps and they had to think about a lot of different u mathematical calculations within answering one question so they went
through they had done it they had to present their evidence and share how they got the answer and I said to them what is it about your classroom that allowed this to happen to a student they said the whiteboards the whiteboards the whiteboards because they were able to
put their thinking up there now they can do that with any program but I think as we think about some of these different techniques that they're talking about the the students are saying "This is how I understand math better." Again as a former math teacher teaching one of the
resources we had I can look at 30 kids cuz that's what I had in my classroom and know there was no way that I was going to be able to get to them all we are now in 2025 we have uh technology that can support this we have teachers
who need a resource like this because that helps them see and think about diff learning differently we saw this when we adopted Witten Wisdom not everybody that was not something everybody was ready to do it was a little bit of a stretch our
teachers recognized in themselves that there were some areas of growth for them in their instruction and that is what we saw in this pilot that there were teachers that realized they had gaps in their own ability to instruct so again I
just wanted to say that all to say that we have been struggling with our math resources at least for 5 years so we can continue or you know what is it what is additional information we need to need to make the best decision but I think
having teachers pilot something from September to February and work through that is probably one of the longest pilots I've ever seen whiten Wisdom we just did one unit one you know one and a half two months so I just wanted to put that out there for the board to consider
um as you as you make your determinations as a point of order is there a motion on the floor already there's not a motion oh okay we're going to entertain uh in a minute so I I want to say I really appreciate the rich discussion this is very important i mean this is
how our kids are going to learn so I'm really happy that we're having the conversation i want to say thank you to uh the district staff who pulled this information together for us who answered lots of questions over the past couple of weeks um in my own review of the math
materials I had similar questions to all of my board members and similar observations actually to everyone um so I appreciate everybody's thoughts on this i had some concerns some thoughts some questions i got them all answered and when I looked at the books
um I'm not a math teacher but I'm a math lover um I really appreciated the um the the thinking that's required and I haven't seen that before in a math textbook um there were a lot of
questions that said find the value mentally like what what kind of question is that find find the but but when I dug deeper and noticed some of the examples I thought that was a little rudimentary and I was a little concerned when you pulled up the piece of paper at first but I appreciated what you were saying
and there are lots of examples like that where they're asking the students to think how many boxes of tissue does it take to get to 5 ft kinds of questions that make them sort of ponder and think about the question as opposed to the
traditional approaches which here's your formula here's your math do the work and and I think that having the opportunity to have some of our kids understand the question like at a high level and think about conceptually should my answer be
you know five or should my answer be a thousand helps them frankly on a standardized test weed out some of the responses and that's what I'm actually looking for is some thinking as opposed to just wrote memorization
um and so that's what I saw um as I looked in it a little bit deeper so I think we're in a position uh now to either entertain an emotion or not uh and so I'll I will leave it to the board to decide whether they want to make a motion to uh suggest that we consider
approval of this mrs hinrich I move that the board of education approved the adoption of the recommended secondary mathematics instructional resources as presented the instructional materials will be purchased from Imagine Learning at a total cost of $975,618
second there's been a motion on the table uh to approve the adoption of the recommended secondary mathematics instructional resources in the amount of 975,618 is there any further discussion seeing none I'll ask for a roll call vote please dr turner thank
you trusty Noah yes trusty Smith no trusty Hinrich yes trusty Blau yes i myself
yes President Williams yes thank you that motion passes again I appreciate all of the thoughtful dialogue this was a really good discussion and a very important conversation uh we will now move to the next item which
is sorry marching band marching band purchase is there a motion this matter was identified or presented to us at the last meeting mrs hinrich I move that the board of education approved the purchase of new rain jackets for the marching bands at Farmington High School and
North Farmington High School as presented jackets will be purchased from Francis Enterprises at a total cost of $40,73 for both schools excluding shipping and handling support there's a motion to approve the
purchase of new rain jackets uh in the amount of $40,173 uh for both schools supported by Dr turner is there any discussion yes did we get uh ever get an estimate on the um shipping and handling yep i
remember you had that question i don't recall if we got an answer to that okay is there someone who can answer that nope i don't think they have an answer to that she's getting it right now
oh I bet so it's usually 5 to 8% of the total value of the material so we have to I think they're talking about the math books and we're talking about the uniforms [Music]
they're local so there's no shipping they just deliver them here they're near so there's no shipping does that answer your question uh no the the motion reads that it excludes shipping and handling does that mean the
shipping handling they exclude shipping and handling uh the purchase from Francis Enterprise at a total cost of $40,173 uh for both schools excluding shipping and handling as if those shipping and handling were follow got it yeah sorry i'm missing some things so yes that's
pos that is a but the ship and handling is not part of required purchase the board for you know they are in Michigan though i know
so do we know whether they're delivering the jackets they they are delivering to us yes i can get that information i did not okay uh do you want to this this doesn't come to us
until this is for the fall correct the intention was to purchase and have it given to the students in this this year because we do have summer training etc out of this year what's the impact of delaying this until we can find the answer to that question
none no we can't okay they can get it to us by the end of the calendar year for this year yeah that's fine then I think we should get that question answered okay it's been probably moved in second so do you can you withdraw your motion
can I can I move to table the motion further yeah we'll withdraw the motion and we'll put it back on the agenda once we get the qu answer to the question okay so I need to move to withdraw the motion rather than table it yes okay so I move to withdraw the motion as
presented i withdraw my second okay thank you thank you so the motion has been withdrawn we will um add that to a future action item once we get those questions answered thank you for that Dr turner we'll now move to the approval of the recommended policy updates we have I
believe three of them dr turner thank you i move that the board of education adopt the policy/board governance committee recommendations as noted in the comments section of the Miller Johnson's policy manual update memo dated March 5th 2025 as presented for the following policies
only three policies policy update 19.04 which is policy 63 firearms and weapons second is policy update 19.05 which is policy 6004 school crisis response and closure and the last was the update to 19.06 06 which is policy
802 Americans with Disability Act and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act section 504 support motion has been made to approve the policies as outlined in our packet uh supported by Mrs smith any
discussion seeing none can we have a roll call vote dr turner thank you trusty Hinrich yes trusty Smith yes trusty Hall yes trusty Blau yes yes i myself yes trusty Wings yes thank you that motion passes we'll now move to items from the treasurer
okay i move that the board of education approve the expenditures as outlined in the expenditure printout dated April 22nd 2025 as follows general fund uh let's see looks
like $24,398,654 general fund athletics $264,710 debt fund 144,193 capital Projects 2020 bond fund 1,731,231 nutrition services fund $816,534 uh benefit stabilization fund
$2,63,575 for a total of $29,958,897 support motion made by Mrs hierrick supported by Dr turner to approve the expenditure report any discussion seeing none all in favor any opposed any abstensions that motion passes next is
there a motion for the consent agenda miss Cyrus I move to present to approve the consent agenda a approval of minutes um number one April 8th 2025 regular meeting number two April 17th 2025
finance facilities committee meeting b Head Start director's monthly report c personnel items support motion made by Mrs hinrich supported by Mrs smith to approve the consent agenda is there any discussion seeing none all in favor i any opposed
any abstensions that motion passes are there any reports from board representatives this is uh Dr blau um I'm not the the student roundt representative but I am going to be um having a table at their career fair this
uh Friday um from 9 to 11:00 is the first shift and 1 to 3 is the second shift at North Farmington so if you're able to stop by and bear witness to the wonderful career fair that the student roundt has organized this year I'm sure they would really appreciate the support
thank you very much Mrs smith um I was able I was a little late well I was late um April 17th um the FAPEN organization had uh our SRO's come um
here to this building um to discuss and talk about what we what the SRO's do in um the community um and in our schools um I think that the Farmington Hills Police Department and
Farmington uh both do a phenomenal job not only do they have a relationship with the students um but they are very very well received and loved by not only the staff
um but through the community um they work very well with our students um they have done some things um they're very active they're at all our football games basketball games everything that you can name we even have a police officer in
the back of this building that comes and spends her time here with us to make sure that we are safe so um I appreciate the Farmington Hills Police Department and the Farmington Police Department and coming out taking time off of the road
cuz not only do they work in our schools but they work they are still police officers so I want to thank them for all the work that they have done um but I also want to say um on another note um President
Williams has done a phenomenal job over the past few years um with her monetary donation from the Williams family um they give a scholarship every year which has totaled over the past few years up
to $10,000 um Miss Heinrich also has uh donated for um a scholarship in the past and um I want to thank Miss Williams not only
does she donate this for this scholarship um she also feeds 100 families over Thanksgiving and if those families don't have ways of cooking that food her
family actually cooks and makes everything and delivers i also have donated in the past i don't like people knowing what I do because I want you calling me asking me to give anything that I shouldn't be cuz
I don't know how to say no but um under the leadership of Dr turner and Miss Williams over the years before CO uh we would donate to 21 families at one school for 2 and 1/2 months um we also
Miss Fox and myself Miss Williams and Dr turner we've also donated to Farmington uh Central for cap and gowns we have also taken care of the um golden apple
which I will be talking to um Dr moore to do that um in the near future but I want people to know we only make $30 a meeting $30 other school districts they
make some have $200 some have $150 but we take out of our own pockets and I want to thank Miss Williams for all the work that she has done with doing this donation and and giving to this
scholarship because so many students h are not fortunate to go to college without having um the financial help um she also has purchased a tent for North
Farmington for the track team so you know we just don't sit here and not give back we were elected to give back and to serve and so I want to thank her Dr turner and Miss Heinrich for their
monetary or their donations whether it was for the food drive or whatever it has been at least these are the ones that I know that have donated so not to slight anyone else but um I appreciate that
scholarship and um the money that you have raised to give back to FAPEN or whichever student and same with Miss Hinrich for jumping in and taking that responsibility to give a scholarship to
a student i thank you both thank you uh Mrs smith um do you have something yeah so on um April 11th um I've met with the Farmington's men's network we're still
trying to fish out what's the you know our our name is going to be but it was it's basically a collaboration of Farmington men that are in the community that have either school age kids or was part Oh I'm talking to you guys okay
uh either people who are um have like school uh school age kids or who've been through the district or who's just a concerned um community member and uh we all sat down it was uh it was a good good amount of us for our first uh meeting and uh
basically you know we talked about various subjects about how can men be part more integral into the school system um as as a uh father in the district I know I there's certain ways I sometimes kind of fit in with the all
moms group and everything you kind of like the the loner out there that just get told what to do and you know we just do it and and I would like to actually have the voice sometimes so what's good but um and a lot of fathers you know kind of like feel hey we can contribute more or the the uh the wives say hey can
we have the fathers kind of like feel like they're part of it you know so we got a we got some um good ideas uh such as just being um exposed more the kids more exposed more to college classes or or college careers um government getting
more involved into how government affairs work uh there was some discussions about you know mentoring you know because sometimes you just have kids that just need that other parent to talk to not saying that you know their parents are not doing a good job but you
know that's the reason why you have like uncles and and neighbors that you can like hey I got to you know I got some thoughts and stuff that I I don't really want to talk to my parents about but you still going to give them that good advice as a parent because you can actually give them the same advice as a parent and they said "Wow you're the greatest wisest person in the world and
your your parents have been saying the same thing." So with that you know we're trying to uh establish some type of you know just um presence in the actual um district and also the community and
you know we're we're looking to do like uh you know probably like a a picnic or something like that us come out and hang out so thank you Mrs heinrich um yeah can we report on the anxious generation um they
had their last meeting and I actually had to leave the meeting early i I wasn't there for the last half hour but I mean it was uh it was facilitated through the idea committee and we read the book and met three times and so the
third one was really um talking about what what schools can do what parents can do what um it was schools parents and something else and so did did the group come up with any action items or any goals to do as a result of this okay
there's a a Google doc that went out to the people who participated in the discussion i didn't get that okay I'll make sure you get that okay um and uh because there was talk toward the end of the of the third book talk around
um you know what can we do what actions can we actually make happen in our district and so we're forming a committee okay to to take ideas from the book and uh come together as parents and community members to see what what we
can make happen oh thank you yeah tell us if you can turn it on right gosh anyway so yes so there are going to be some action steps that are are going to grow forth from this uh discussion it was really really well organized and Mr
smith did a phenomenal job structuring the discussion and the the breakout groups it was really really terrific very good to hear um I just want to take a moment to thank all of the board members i know that uh your time is precious i appreciate the time that you
spend with us and the work that you do i know that each of you is doing a lot of great work in the community that um you know goes noticed or unnoticed and I just wanted to take a minute to say I notice you and I appreciate you uh one
last comment before we leave the PTSA at North Farmington hosted a dialogue on the future of high school i think it was last night uh really really well done very good uh discussion i know that Farmington High School piloted some
things last year now we're piloting some things uh in the next school year for North Farmington but it's all around um exploring a more flexible kind of competencybased uh programming for our our high
schoolers and you know even considering some sort of capstone project for them or internship programs for them and making sure that they're really ready and prepared to uh enter the next phase of their lives either workforce or college or military or whatever that
might be i'm really excited about what I was hearing was this at North this was at North Farmington it was It was great so at some point when this gets fleshed out a bit more I think it would be really great for us to hear from the folks that are organizing this about you know the direction that we're moving in
which is all consistent with the conversations that we've been having so exciting um if there is nothing further I think that we're ready for a German thank you