all right and call this meeting to order at 7:02 p.m. good evening this is a regular meeting of the fale School Board of Education being held on Tuesday June 18th our meeting is being video recorded
and will be posted on the ferndell schools YouTube channel all meetings in the Ferell schools are held in public in compliance with the open meetings act printed documents discussed in tonight's meeting are available to the public upon request with the exception of any information
protected by student or employee privacy rights board meeting information is posted on our website at www.schools.org if you do not have internet access and need information please contact the board offices at 248-5868 652 by Thursday of the week
prior to the meeting and the district will do their best to work with you 1.1 roll call M sheer here here here here here here thank
you item 1.2 approval of the [Music] agenda um would anyone like to make any changes to the agenda I would like to make three amendments to the agenda first I would like to add
2.1 which would be public comment for the budget hearing for the 2024 2025 year I would like to remove item 4.2 the request to approve the minutes of the regular meeting May 20th 2024 and remove item 5.7 the request to
approve the 2023 2024 budget presentation which is a redundant plan other than these changes does anyone have any additional changes to the agenda then without objection and with unanimous consent the agenda is uh agenda as amended is
approved which brings us to item two uh budget hearing for 2024 2025 good evening good evening evening um as part of tonight's budget hearing we are presenting the L
4029 which is the tax rate request form that is sent to our four municipalities this was discussed at the committee of the whole on June 4th we propos leving 18 Mills as Rec is required by the state so that we can
receive our full Foundation allowance the debt millage will be set at seven Mills that is determined by our debt repayment obligations and our assessed property values the sinking
fund will be levied at 1.0 85 it has been rolled back by hudley which is why it's no longer the 1.3 that was originally voted on with Rising taxable values we bring in a little over a million dollars into the syia
fund um as discussed at the committee of the whole we need to monitor the non-homestead millage and may need to seek voter approval in 20125 to ensure it remains at 18 MS that's it for that one unless there's any
questions that's all of your budget hearing presentations on or just the AL no then I do the 2024 2025 original budget y okay um these were our 2425 budget assumptions um this was discussed at the
committee of the whole meeting um so we have um student enrollment at 3,160 students this is a 30 FTE from the May
2024 Blended membership um our state Foundation allowance that we're using is 9,888 per FTE which is a $200 increase um this is a conservative
amount the governor's proposal included a 241 per pupil increase to 9,849 the Senate proposed 9,9 $910 which is a $32 increase in the
house proposed $982 which is a $217 increase um but we don't know what they're going to go with yet um the Mier stabilization rate is
10.58% um in the expenditures we um other special pay remains at 75,000 unemployment is at 25,000 there's an increase of 02 to the hard cap the health
insurance um retirement is budgeted at 31.360802 FES eligible plus 0% due to contract expiration um so no raises for those groups are included in this
budget the UAW in transportation is the step in 4% and cabinet and exempt employees are 0% increase um these are the um three new positions for
2425 it's a science teacher at FHS a resource room teacher at FHS and a physical therapist assistant uh the total cost that's budgeted for these positions is 309,000 um I just wanted to note that
there could be possible additional staff hired in the special education um Department depending on case loads okay yep um this next page is the 2425 budget by Revenue by function total revenue is um $50
million and this is broken out by local state and other um the federal revenue did go down and this is due to the um Esser grants the expiration of Esser grants um on the on the next
page the um total instruction is budgeted at 28 M 500,000 um total Support Services is budgeted at 21 million 947
th000 and then if you flip to the next page um total expenditures is budgeted at almost $52 million um we are projected to have excess expenditures over revenue of about $1.9
million and so this will the estimated ending fund balance is will be uh 7 M1 154,000 approximately which is
14% of our fund balance our fund balance is revenue divided by the fund balance um so then if you flip to the next
page the primary changes in um the primary changes from prior year budget Revenue are um we had increase in property
taxes we had a decrease in Mier payments we had a decrease in Esser grants um and we had a decrease in the Oakland County Mental Health Grant of
297,000 um I wanted to point out oh wait I think I missed nope I think I'm yeah I think I'm done with that page okay this is the 2425 primary changes from prior year
budget expenditures um so this we had a decrease in miers so um when Revenue decreases then expenses decrease um we had a decrease in the
retention and the enrollment bonus um we have an increase in three new staff members um they the governor Whitmer is proposing free free prek for all but
since the state it's not approved yet we do have an increase in our budget for two little Eagles classrooms that moved to the general fund that costs will change depending on if um the grant is
approved or not it will move into gsrp funding um we have an increase in three new staff of about 309,000 um there could possibly be more increase in staff special ed staff for compliance
um the budget does not have any expenditures for summer school 25 26 um and in the athletic there is um increased cost for salaries officials and a new sport and then that's it do you have any
um and yeah do you have any questions N I feel like we talked about a long time last we met for the cow I know we're all thinking about this and have a lot of worries but I don't have any questions today
like she answered all her questions I mean um do we have an answer on local tax at this time or okay she uh yeah I just um a question
that uh I field it a lot is questions about um potential exemptions um that commercial and industrial property have for local tax and how that may or may not affect revenue for the school district so and it's been one that I haven't been able to answer so hoping to
get any Clarity we have so I would have to contact the four municipalities right to to gain information about that okay Don just for my own information uh so I'm on page eight of your budget
where it's instruction and then it's instruction added needs adult education and then you go down to support services and the second line is instructional staff
services can can you just help me understand what that is versus instruction that is instruction the top section are expenses in a
classroom like so like a teacher or something in a classroom the instructional staff services is would be an aid or support so it has to do with classification too okay thank you for that my only other question is um uh an
explanate uh clarifying the difference between the 742 th000 um decrease in mier's payment in Revenue versus uh the decrease of 896 in expenditure um yeah what um yep just
clarification on that difference well this year we we received a um all the miers have like 147 and then a letter we receive some one-time funding amount I think it was e and we're not projected to get that next
year gotcha thank you so don just for clarity this Myer's amount is based on not the projected changes in meiper this is like what it is currently yes right exactly yes I just making sure like there wasn't any of the proposals that
were got you I appreciate but if there is a propos like the governor's proposal and we will see this change pretty significantly correct yes possibly depending on what is voted on at the state
yeah thank you so much for the clarification um mind just do one about Little Eagles with the expenditures the increase in Little Eagles cost for two classrooms why if we like compared to Prior year if we had four and now we're
only going to have two why do we have increase in expenditures because we decreased the revenue because there's only two classrooms so our Revenue went down um and so we had to typically the
Little Eagles is in the in like the Little Eagles budget we had to just Shuffle things around because our Revenue decreased so our expenses are going up and the and the rationale for um the
increase in the the gsrp classrooms is the free you know Universal prek the push from Oakland County increase your you know gsrp classrooms so that is also one of the ones that will significantly change once we get an approved budget
from the state and as long as that budget says what they told us it was going to say I don't know if that answered you Sarah I'm sorry what you said I understand I understand the reasoning for going from four to two totally get that m just trying to understand
why if we're seeing a decrease in the number of classes compared to Prior year why the expenditures that we have is going to be more is it just where where things are CL I understand because I know we've got
three different programs than like the school so just how it's being budgeted at the root of it it is just the the puzzle of the classifications jump in D but but it is um in short little Eagles was paying
itself right and now there's less Little Eagles which means for now we don't have anything to offset that you see what I'm saying y did I do how' I do yep thank you do we have any indication from the
state about timeline on the budget um we're pushing for July 1 okay it's it's been a lot of um this discussions yes I know but we need okay July one so that's what we're Hing just to clarify we're required to
pass a budget now but the state's not required to pass a budget yet so we're trying to base it on the best guess that we can have what's going to happen in lands thank you so much Jan I was I'm so glad I didn't have to say I'll say it thank you and then we do
have a budget amendment on the calendar is it December we do it in December instead of January yes any other question from the board thanks Don thank you Don thank you Don um that brings us to 2.1 public
comment for the budget hearing um this is a time for public participation in the budget hearing um we ask that you identify yourself and uh andless contact information on the contact sheet um to help administrators follow
up with you on a on your comment if you do not wish to do so do so in writing please identify yourself at the podium I will call on people who have completed the comment sheet first um and each person will have one opportunity to address the board up to three minutes comments or questions should be directed to the board president uh vice president
Fulmer will raise our hand when your time is within a few seconds of expiring and this period of public comment is for the budget hearing specifically um and this period of public comment will end at the close of this part of the agenda so I have one
budget hearing comment sheet um and that's Trina and Brooklyn let me just confirm three minutes yes okay you reach so I thought I'm Trina um and as a parent it's always good to make sure we
have the kids also commenting so I said to Brooklyn on the way in what's one one thing you really like about your school right so what did you say math so really likes math so the budgeting of the curriculums and such right and then
what's one thing that you would like to be different have more lunch time more lunch time right there you go only like 11 minutes yeah yeah that's that can be 11
minutes yeah okay well 11 minutes you'll have to figure it out um and so I just wanted to say thank you all for passing the resolution uh last month does it no a couple weeks ago something uh talking about fully funding our schools um and I
appreciate the comments that just happened and it is ridiculous to me that y'all as a body have to pass a budget when you don't actually know um what the income is so I just wanted to go on records say that's unfortunate that our state legislators put you all in this
position yearly right and I also want to say that my mom is a chicken okay and we talk about chickens a lot too okay um so uh but I just wanted to and unfortunately I I think I was just not looking at the board docks correctly
because I couldn't actually see the detailed budget uh before this meeting so it's possible that some of this is is in the documents that y'all have in front of you uh but so I just wanted to you know flag special education uh you know
I think that there could be a lot more transparency and Clarity to parents about how that funds how those funds are used you know if we're allocating funds and then we don't get staff um to come in um you know I was a little bit surprised to hear that there are some
records that indicate that Edison Max costs a hundred thous up to $100,000 a year per student and we've dramatically increased the number of students that we had there from zero to I'm not sure what the current one is but
I could imagine we could probably um develop some really amazing programs here at Ferndale um for a similar amount of money if that's truly what it's costing us um and and also just would say that perhaps it's cheaper to First
send students to other districts for uh self-contained programs instead of moving right away to a center base the most expensive option right um and I've noticed that we're not always doing that full Continuum with special education particularly the um emotional impairment
and behavioral kids 30 seconds okay and then so just was curious how restorative practices um is represented in the budget right if that's something that we're for Real about right then we should be able to see it and feel it in the budget um also want to say that tcec
kids right that are sent there because of behavior issues I'm curious how we're budgeting for the programs that happen in this building to make sure that those kids get the same opportunity such as the Oakland tech programs and other things like that my understanding is
they don't have access to those things um and then finally just wanted to encourage yall to think about in the future perhaps doing a forum where you could before one of these budget hearings for parents to break down some of the and maybe not just even for parents but for students for lots of
folks right because I'm sure people would be interested in learning more about how you spend the money thank you anyone and anyone and chickens thank you anyone else for a public comment on uh the
budget all right so that portion the budget hearing now is closed which brings us to item three um just regular public comment which is the same premise I'm not going to read the statement but um except for the last part that this period of public comments for both
non-agenda items and issues that are on the agenda um public comments will end at the close of this party of the agenda in the event the number of people wishing to comment requires longer than 30 minutes public comment will temporarily be postponed um complaints about staff should be made outside of board meetings
and should follow the applicable board policy please contact the superintendent's office if you have any questions regarding this item the board cannot respond to complaint complaints about employees in public uh this is meant to promote fairness to the staff person and the complainant and then the fendale public schools Community acts
with great ability toward one another um please help us to maintain that tradition during public comment and I have one comment sheet Lorie Scott good evening um my name is Lori Scott I live at 965 West Hazelhurst
across from what used to be the kulet community center the last time I was here last fall we had a different superintendent and I haven't had a chance to come back so I know you guys have been through a lot of changes um
but I'm very concerned about um the condition of the playground at the Kulik center it's in dire need of uh wood chips there's a beautiful U maple tree whose roots are rising above of the um the ground and it's it's quite a
tripping Hazard and there hasn't been any wood chips late on any of the playground equipments probably for a couple years so this is a a playground that is um heavily used by especially young families in the community it's an opportunity for now that the school
district owns this property an opportunity for um the community to know that children are valued here and that we are a community that takes care of our kids so I'm hoping that some action
can be taken to deliver wood chips and there's a dead a long a pretty heavy dead limb that's now buried in some weeds that are growing up on the west side of the uh of the Kulik Center so I
don't you know it's hard to know if this is I don't know if if the Ferndale um parks and wreck takes care of this space or if you're taking care of the space um I haven't seen any announcements I haven't read any emails and so I'm I'm
just putting it out there for you um and I I just like to say that um thank you for the great educational opportunities that you provide to your to your students thank you you thank you
go ahead Mr Scott I just want to let you know that presently the playground is still under lease with the City of Ferndale and they're maintaining the grounds the playground is a separate lease from the property from the building
itself so the playground and the Green Space are all the part of the city right now right now yes is there a time what is the time frame for that the time frame for under the city's perview for the next year two years do you have a date not
not a date so right now that lease ends the end of the month June 30th of this of this year okay yeah so I'll contact yeah but my intent was to order the wood chips when we order for the rest of the district I I no new wood
chips at the um lower elementary school were delivered this spring we order them every August finish the engineered wood fibers we'll do the same there okay okay so that will be on your delivery
list if if it can wait until August otherwise I'll ask the city if they can take care of they probably have some already stock by someplace okay okay thank you yes ma'am uh any other public comment all right public comment is now
closed brings us to item four consent agenda uh 4.1 request to approve uh minutes of the special meeting Committee of the whole May 6
2024 4.2 request to approve new hires resignations and transf yeah request to approve new hires resignations and transfers 4.3 request to approve bills and accounts for May 4.4 request to approve Michigan High
School Athletic Association resolution for 2425 and 4.5 request to approve masb 2425 renewal for board book Premier narrative does anyone wish to remove an item from the consent agenda for questions or discussions
later uh seeing none I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented moved by Jackie second seconded by Mary Ro
sheer yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you with seven yes votes the motion passes and the consent agenda is approved item five action
items uh please note that all the action items being voted on tonight were discussed in depth at committee whole meeting held on Tuesday June 4th um we invite and encourage community members to attend our committee of the whole meetings which are also open to the public which brings us to item 5.1
request to approve the Ferndale Association of educational secretaries uh contract for 24 2024 through 2026 effective July 1 2024 okay good evening everybody evening um
so uh Tom Shelton director of HR for the district pleasure for me to be here tonight uh and great pleasure for me to introduce this uh agreement that we came to with the fendale association of educational secretaries so um a couple I guess preliminary comments I wanted to
make before we get into the particulars and I answer any questions you might have prior to approval um as you know we uh entertained a we did entertained we adopted a new method of of negotiating uh this year uh with two of our groups
with our secretary's group and our teachers group called interest based uh negotiations and with IBB uh we had a uh probably a longer period of negotiations than usual but um a much more uh
productive and a much more collaborative process so the the contract that's presented for you for consideration this evening is definitely a result of that collaboration and hard work um I'd like to acknowledge our district team um many if not all of whom are present in the
room tonight uh uh Felicia Wright uh Tom Mays Stephanie Hayes Don Huntley uh myself did I get them all did I miss anybody I think that was it uh so we had a a team of five on the district side and we worked really hard um on uh on
this contract in particular I also want to thank our phas group um M Jee Bach is here in the room tonight uh Gan is the leader of the phase group um was instrumental in the IBB negotiation process um as we've talked about before
uh one of the Hallmarks of IBB is the importance of listening um whereas traditional negotiations focus on focuses on taking positions and drawing lines in the sand and this is my non-negotiable with IBB it's all about listening and try to understand uh the
perspective of the other party and then from there trying to identify common interests where do we have common interests um and in almost all the topics that we discussed with the secretarial group um and I don't know if Jee would agree with me because I didn't run this by her before I came here
tonight um I would identify three big ones uh three big common interests that we had and that is about attraction uh for employees attracting emplo new employees to the district to fill our positions our retention making sure that our existing employees feel valued want
to stay here in the district um and then sustainability um Financial sustainability as well as overall sustainability so those I I would identify those three as the Hallmarks of our negotiations uh few highlights of the contract in front of you for approval
tonight this is a two-year agreement um with a 4% in the first year of the agreement um and no percentage increase in the second year in the second year however um what we have done is eliminated the second tier of the
contract so the uh secretary's uh contract had two groups and then three divisions within each group 12 month 11 month and 10 month so with that change in year two and moving all those group two employees to group one uh We've
essentially eliminated three employee groups of the six um which is good for both retention as well as for um efficiency for the district um and so that was a good move for for us as well as for the
association uh another move that we made through negotiations is eliminating the bottom four steps of the salary schedule that was a move that was done uh I believe two years ago 2022 through a letter of agreement um again trying to make sure that we are making our
district attractive for new employees coming in um so eliminating those bottom four steps um will now be memorialized into the contract um we also made some changes the upper step steps 8 through 10 to keep the distances between the
steps more equal um and then are phasing in two new steps at the top of the scale uh Step 11 for next year and then step 12 for the year after that uh some additional highlights uh we uh negotiated uh modest increase in
longevity and severance pay again valuing our employees and um making them want to stay and making them feel valued um we had some discussion a number of days so the 10-month group two which is the majority of our building secretaries
have been all over the place in recent years in terms of number of work days they were at one point at 189 at one point 196 days um in the end we agreed to 193 um which seemed appropriate in terms
of the workload that they typically have to do in the buildings before school starts in August and after it's out in June we're most proud at least on the district side I think we're most proud about our agreement on professional development um where we came to some agreement on professional development
opportunities carving out for secretaries training and PD for things like myar pupil accounting um first aid safety um uh uh uh skills like you know
Excel skills um Microsoft Word um Ian the the the Poss uh Resort of practices the possibilities are Limitless and part of that is us sitting down with the secretaries before the start of the school year and designing a plan for the year um where we identify the skills
that we want to Target for our employees and that'll become even more essential we think um as we start to see more and more turnover and bring no new employees into the system we want to make sure that they're trained in the systems that we need them trained in and it's good for the employees for their professional
development as well and I think most not notably as long as we're able to manage that training during early release time during um days when students aren't in school which is Our intention um as long as we manage that during school time that's not a dollar increase to the
budget at all so that's that's really a win-win for all of us uh we had some discussion about medical um specifically uh making sure that if we are asking secretaries to do things like administer first aid uh administer medication that the appro level of training is there for
them um that we're providing them the appropriate supplies to do that um and uh part of that also is an ongoing dialogue so that we're constantly talking about issues that may come up um as for example we get some more medically CH medically fragile students
in our buildings that dialogue is there so that we can talk about issues that come up and and um strategize about them uh we talked about discipline expungement this is not been an issue for us to this point but it's something that we wanted to that that many
businesses and organizations are doing kind of setting a guideline for you know after in this case 18 months minor discipline will be expunged from the discipline file um some important notes that are in the in the document that I shared with you but I just want to make
sure I highlight that does not include major discipline or discipline that would fall um under mandatory reporting or mandatory recordkeeping and of course part of the languages that we're following State and uh local and federal laws in terms of anything that can or can't be expunged from discipline
files um and then the last thing I would highlight and I can answer any questions that you have is about dues deduction uh we did agree with the secretarial unit to um to uh manage their dues deduction for them and and uh um that's obviously
completely voluntary and uh employees will still have other options to do that as well while that was a prohibited topic um many employees got in the habit of putting them just as a recurring charge on their debit cards or credit cards and many employees may continue to do that so doing the DU seduction is
just one more option that we're able to provide employees um if they choose to do so but still completely voluntary so I can answer any questions that you have but um I believe this is a very fair agreement and one that kind of meets those standards of um our common
interest that we identifi that be in this process if I can answer any questions now I no one's going to be surprised that I have a couple of questions and Tom you answered one so I think you've seen them first thanks to you and your team for this great
work uh this might just be a copy edit I just want to make sure I know what we're agreeing to so on uh the top of page 32 um
section two number e yes ends with adjustments to steps eight nine and 10 to provide four and then it's blank yes that's my typo my apologies so uh the rest of that sent should say to provide
for more equal uh space between steps so what we call a negotiation smoothing out the steps okay and that should be reflected in the salary schedules that are a little bit later later on in that document okay um you answered the question about
discipline expungement um page 34 the third paragraph talks about the board's role in protecting staff as it relates to Medical situations and there's the sentence the
board agrees to make available reasonably necessary safety materials to help protect the secretarial staff so I want the secretarial staff to have all that they need to do their job the
specific language that the board agrees to make a make available feels lawyer is it is and just help us understand what we're agreeing to Sure yes thank you for the question so in negotiations language and contract language uh the board
refers to the district so so when it comes to the contract I am the chief negotiator for the district and I am negotiating on behalf of the board on behalf of the district so language in there that says the board will provide essentially means the district will provide um and that's done through
existing allocation channels in the buildings great that makes sense I'll entertain a motion to approve item 5.1 request to approve the Ferndale Association of educational secretaries contract for 20 24 through 2026
effective July 1 2024 I'm move moved by Jonathan second seconded by Peter any other discussion on the motion no I just wanted to thank you Tom and
your team and um the the secretary Union and I'm excited to see this new process of negotiation to take off and actually flourish in this the situation thank you thank you you're here R call Miss
shepher yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you with seven yes votes the motion passes in item 5.1 request to approve the Ferndale Association of educational secretaries contract for
2024 through 2026 effective July 1 2024 is approved thank you thank you you item 5.2 request to approve I ready proposal good evening everybody good to
see you um so as we discussed two weeks ago um district is interested in moving away from using nwaa as The Benchmark assessment administered for math uh kindergarten through 10th
grade and reading second grade through 10th grade and moving to curriculum Associates I ready benchmark assessments most of the information that I shared to week ago stands I did want to add a couple of pieces of information
one I was asked what what did we pay for nwaa uh this current year um this year we paid $275 for WEA um the the updated proposal from curriculum Associates is
32697 for the assessment part of the package um $17,600 will cover three full days of Staff professional learning throughout the year to ensure that the tests are not only administered uh correctly and
appropriately but that the teachers and principles know what to do with the data and can actually use that data to positively impact instruction everything else is as it was to I'll entertain a motion to approve item 5.2 request to approve I ready
proposal move move by Peter second second by Jackie any discussion on the motion just thank you for all the research that's gone into doing this um much
appreciated glad to have a tool that sounds like is going to be a lot more useful for all involved in the assessment process we believe it will be yes thank you call yes
yes yes yes yes thank you with seven yes votes the motion passes an item 5 point thank you request to approve I read proposal is approved you're welcome 5.3 request to
approve ctws contract renewal uh fiscal year 2024 2025 okay um so the district is seeking approval from the school board to renew the contract between Ferndale Public Schools and Chartwells to provide food
service management for 2425 school year um the current contract was signed during the 2021 school year and ends 425 um in the uh board agenda item what provided to you is some budget assumptions um for the next year's
budget as well as uh the proposed management fee and admin fee for the contract um the contract has already been reviewed and approved by mde and um tonight we're putting forth a recommendation for the board to offer
approval to provide approval I'll entertain a motion to approve item 5.3 request to approve Chartwells contract renewal for fiscal year 2024 2025 I'll move move by Jonathan second jaie any discussion on
the motion the only one I had was I know I read through like the email that was attached on there about it where it said like there were no trying to understand there were no assumptions or remember how it was worded um in the email yeah from mde
yep that it had there are no guarantees for the 24 25 school year does that mean or does that refer to like when we were talking about the number of meals or that is that what that's referring to or that's something different no it's actually no guarantees for the amount of meals that we're counting as a part of
the budget there's no base right hopefully we exceed what we've sered this year our intent is to increase participation okay that's what I just want to make sure like when we had where they had the meal counts on yep whatever page it is 51 yeah yeah that's not okay
that's based on this year's trans cool thank you yes ma'am and um I just wanted to follow up from our committee the whole to see if at this time there were any updates on the potential expansion of
opportunities with bringing on a chef there is so I included that this this budget does include the opportunity for one Chef um and then and I provided the budget for you so you can see
it I'll tell you where explicitly is so on page 55 and manager payroll and Fringe it's 149,00 of that 63,000 has been earmarked for a chef and then with that we'll have to
advertise gotcha yeah yeah and then and then with that is that potentially expanding our opportunity to do um cooking beyond the um he serve absolutely okay abely thank
you very limited but it does provide for that for sure thanks I'll entertain a motion to approve item already did that right roll call Miss
sh yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you with seven yes votes the motion passes an item 5.3 request to approve Chartwells contract renewal fiscal year 2024 2025 is
approved uh item 5.4 request to approve technology designed for Bond work contract extension get to the top of that so the district is seeking to extend its partnership with integrated design Solutions LLC and Performing uh design
and oversight of its Bond work um this extension will provide for um project management um associated with work that is intended to take place next summer at UHS with respect to classroom Renovations at
tcec um it'll be the digital clocks and at the uh new um office established at for UHS High School this contract will extend through the end of 2025 a motion to approve item 5.4 request to
approve uh technology design for Bond work contract extension move by SAR oh second second about Jonathan any discussion on the motion R
shepher yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you with seven yes votes the motion passes an item 5.4 request to approve technology designed for Bond work contract extension is
approved item 5 five request to approve technology purchases for one to one device initiative just getting to the agenda so the next initiative in also entails um technology um expansion um
the district is looking to purchase um up to 500 student Dell 3 31 10 Chrome books and Associated licenses all devices will be purchased through procedo utilizing the RMC spot
competitive State bid at a total expender of not to exceed $5,650 I'll entertain a motion to approve item 5.5 the request to approve technology purchases for the one toone device initiative so moved moved by Peter I'll
second second by Mary any discussion on the motion I just want to note um that I appreciate from the discussion uh the proactivity and the sustainability of this plan how all these were bought sound like in general with a onetime
money given to the district back in the day and that we're planning for how some of these devices are going to age out we're going to take care of it just a little bit by a little bit every year before it's an issue so thank you for that roll call
shepher yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you with seven yes votes the motion passes an item 5.5 request to approve technology purchases for the one toone device initiative is approved
item 5.6 request to approve UHS Audi visual standard and TCC clocks all right so we'll uh continue with respect to District bond work that's planned for um UHS we're looking
at classroom audio visual systems and clocks um throughout the district as part of our bond work and we're at that point where we're looking at upgrading the um techn that's uh supportive of UHS um so clocks and what I call to be
interactive boards because we're doing it this summer at fbcc as well as at upper so we're looking to do the same work with install of the technology and classrooms at UHS um this board agenda agenda item
will afford the district to continue that work and providing digital clocks for the main office and support classro a visual purchases up to $368,500 tcec would also receive those digital
clocks um configurations and installations up to 8,686 and um we're also asking for a little bit of contingency up to 25,000 as a part of this budget Bard line item board agenda item the total contract
amount um is $449,450 it through the bond I'll entertain a motion to approve item 5.6 the request to approve UHS audio visual standard and TCC clocks moved by
Jackie seconded by Jen any discussion on the motion um I just wanted to point out a couple things that we were Shar was shared with us in the commit of the whole is that um the tcec funding for the audio visual it was through rant
money so that's savings for us and I just want to commend the technology team for um being proactive and putting out the bid for this in 2022 so that we can lock in the price then so that we would
pay that price roll call and sheer yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you with seven yes votes the motion passes an item 5.6 request to
approve UHS audio visual standard in TCC clock is approved uh item 5.7 request to approve the final 2023 2024 budget amendment Second Amendment hello again
hello um this is the Second Amendment of the 2324 budget um this was discussed at the committee of the whole the First Column is actual 2223 and that's there for comparison
purposes the next column is the First Amendment of the 2324 budget and then the third column is the um second amended budget um and then the difference column is the difference between the first and the
Second Amendment um the estimated revenue for oh y wait where are you oh I was going over the revenue sorry you want to go back one y right there okay so the estimated
total revenue for 2324 is is um projected to be 51,470 it's an increase and then the next page is the um budget by function by
expenditures and if we look at the third column the total instruction is projected to be 28 million 9 159,000 the um total Support
Services is 22,8 th000 and then if you flip to the next page the total ending fund balance is projected to be 52 milon 568
th000 uh we are projecting to or estimating or ex we have excess expenditures over revenue of $1.1 million our beginning fund balance was 10.2 million so our estimating ending
fund balance is 99,100 3,000 so if you go to the next um page this is the primary changes from budget amendment to revenue uh we received an out of school time grant for $556,000 in a summer Discovery
Grant um revenues decreased a bit and in the state revenue section we um we received a back on track grant for 42,000 and we had a prior year
adjustment for 325,000 so then the the um primary changes on the expenditures were um there was a staff retention bonus that amounted to about 975,000 and an enrollment bonus of $399,000 I think that's it do you have
any questions okay um I'm requesting to approve the 2324 budget amendment two I'll entertain a motion to approve item 5.7 request to approve the final uh 20 23 2024 budget amendment
second amendment moveed by Jackie I'll second seconded by Jonathan any discussion on the motion roll call M sheer yes yes yes yes yes yes
yes thank you with seven yes votes the motion passes an item 5.7 request to approve the final 2023 2024 budget amendment Second Amendment is approved item 5.8 request to approve 2024 2025
original budget yes this is what we discussed in the budget hearing um I'm requesting to approve the 2024 2025 original budget I'll entertain a motion to approve
item 5.8 request to approve the 2024 2025 original budget moved moved by Peter I'll second seconded by Jonathan any discussion on the motion I want to thank those advocating
for more funding for 2425 um shout out to Trina in the room shout out to Camille shout out to all the associations that I represent in the collaborative effort right now um to advocate for
more um yeah July roll call M sheer yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank
you with seven yes votes the motion passes an item 5.8 the request to approve 2024 2025 original budget is approved item 5.9 request to approve the cafeteria 24 25 budget chart Wells okay
um it is discussed at the committee of the whole um this is the 2425 cafeteria budget um this was the second year of C which is community eligibility provision with with c every student at fero was
able to get a free breakfast and a lunch this program has been well received by students we are estimating 1,742 in revenue and 1,715 th000 in expenditures the
estimated ending funding fund balance will be 3 5,783 I'm requesting to approve the 2425 cafeteria budget I'll entertain a motion to approve item 5.9 request to approve the
cafeteria 2425 budget for CH Wells I'll move move by Jonathan second second by Peter any discussion on the motion bro
shepher yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you with seven yes votes the motion passes an item 5.9 the request to approve the cafeteria 20 24 2025 budget chart weld is
approved um item 5.10 request to approve the resolution millage uh 2024 um this has to do with the taxes and we discussed this at the budget hearing this is the form we send to each of the four municipalities so they will collect
our taxes request to approve the l429 um I'll entertain a motion to approve item 5.10 the request to approve the resolution for millage 2024 so moved moved by Jackie second seconded by Jen any
discussion on the motion R caller yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you with seven yes votes the motion passes and item 5.10 the
request to approve the resolution from M 2024 is approved um 5.11 request to approve 2024 2025 student school activity fund resolution um we are seeking approval
for this budget which we discussed at the committee of the whole um this is the fourth year that this budget needs to be approved there was an accounting change um this budget covers various expenses including um like National Honor Society
activities principal activ activity funds Sports Programming supported by donations they those type of funds go into this activity fund so um the revenues are
$197,000 the expenses are 260,000 and the fund balance is projected to be 161,000 um we request your approval to approve this budget I'll entertain a motion to approve item
5.11 the request to approve the 2024 2025 student school activity fund resolution so move move by Peter second seconded by Jackie any discussion on the motion
caller yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you with seven yes votes the motion passes and item 5.11 the request to approve the 2024 2025 student school activity fund resolution is
approved thank you brings us to item six superintendent update good evening um so as discussed at a committee of the hall I'm very excited to have a present ation um for
the board and the public here today about um a proposal that was received from imma city um to be our potential Dynamic plan facilitator as we go into our Dynamic planning process for the
2425 school year so it's my pleasure to introduce Carl Schmidt who is president of M City who will be presenting a brief overview of The Proposal I do
have have USB I do look that you don't have to hold on let me good evening board even good evening um if you had a chance to look at our original proposal you'll see that in
addition to my day job I'm president of the Board of Education over in Troy so it's very interesting to me to be able to sit and watch your meeting progress and I do have news from the capital if you're curious before we get into this which is my um my daughter is actually the chief of staff for Senator Sarah
Anthony who is State Senate Appropriations chair so she called me on the way over here because she's asking me all kinds of questions about it so I can't tell you most of the details because she told me she would kill me if I did so um but but I will tell you that um they are working extremely hard on
the proposal they're trying to figure out how much of the money they were asking for that they can get uh and I I will tell you they are still pushing towards the July 1 deadline um and I can attested that because she she came home on Sunday night at 8:30 and was excited
because that was an early evening for her they're they're working she's literally working about 80 hours a week and has been for the last month and a half in negotiations so at least I'm happy to share that with you uh on the side as we go through but that's not what I'm here to talk about today I'm here to talk about um a way that we can
potentially partner with you on development of a new strategic uh Dynamic plan for you here Carl the clicker is giving me some trouble so I have no problem okay beep there we go um so uh that I hope you have had a chance to kind of go through the full detail and I in The
Proposal because I promised I didn't want to just read the proposal back to you but um the four people that would be associated with this project with you would be me would be uh Rich macheski um who is actually a superintendent in Troy and and has been working with um hings
and Associates uh on the side um as a consultant for strategy development um Ben lakowski who is actually more on the training side and so so the two Primary people on this project are going to be me and going to be rich and then Ben is
going to t along and and explore and then if in in the process of developing this plan you see that you need training then that's where he would take over if ideas there and then uh David hings I think I put him down there as Sage so essentially he and I have talked at the
at the beginning of this project and and I like to have a person in the project who isn't in the weeds with us and it's nice as we kind of go through particular points to say look at this is this making sense do to have any questions are there any things you think we should think about so in in this particular um
process he will be engaged when I feel like we need to to run something by him to have him look at that um so and in terms of the the way we've structured our our um cost to you is everything is set on an hourly basis all the hourly
costs are the same and um I tried to be very conservative in terms of the number of hours that I think I'm anticipating will need for each step because what I don't want to do is sit down with you and get started and the halfway through say oh running out of hours so um I anticipate will actually be lower than
the the projected cost that we showed you but I wanted to kind of start with more of a worst case scenario okay beep here we go so let's talk about the the first step the first step is really your community conversations uh and this this is the first step that I will be guiding
I'll be the primary person here um and that's because um emity is primarily a market research and strategy firm over in Troy so this is something that we do um all the time for different districts and we also do for industry we do for other nonprofits uh and the first step
to doing a good strategic plan is really getting some very solid Community conversations going so um we identified five different stakeholder groups that we think you should talk to and these are typically the groups that we speak to when we go into a a district to do
this so staff is critical we can handle that with a a web based survey we can program the survey you'll do the blast out with an invitation uh and we'll collect the data and and summarize it for you parents um the nice thing about the uh parent survey is uh we don't need
a sample we present that as a census so it allows if anyone says to you I never had a chance to weigh in on this particular project the idea here is every parent will have an ability to weigh in at some level in terms of the development of the plan so we want to explore reactions from parents from prek
through 12 um we're anticipating 600 800 completes it's really a guess depends on the Comm and how engaged they are could be more could be less um we we will then uh coordinate with local preschools and support agencies to recruiting got two
web-based 75 minute focus groups so essentially what I'd like to do is I want to talk to parents whose kids have not touch the district yet so kids who are from birth to age parents with kids age birth to age three to understand what are they anticipating in terms of that experience within the educational
system what are the things that are going to be important to them and that allows to get just a new voice in there to understand is there are there any emerging issues that maybe we're not hearing from our current parents that may become more important to the next generation of parents coming in um from the student perspective um this is this
is probably the part I love to do the most which is uh going into classrooms and running 30 minute discussions uh and talking to kids about what do they value in their education what do they hope to gain before they leave the district what are some of the highlights of
experiences they've had up until this and you may think that a small Elementary a lower elementary student for instance won't have a lot to share and the answer is they're amazing these conversations are absolutely amazing the kids can talk about what matters to them they can talk about what they hope to
gain before they leave they can talk about what they want to be prepared for and that allows us then to actually understand um two things one is checking to see if the you typically I get very consistent goals as we move up they're just a little bit more directed the
other thing though is to explore where are we doing a good job now one of the things I see um uh repeatedly is that when you ask kids to talk about tell me about a a seminal moment where you feel like you really learned something or stepped stepped up tell me about a
project that really got your brain juice flowing right um it's fascinating to me and a little bit sad that the older the student is the less lik they are to be able to mention a recent project that's done that for them and typically by the time you get to high school school they're looking at you going I'm just
burned out I don't know but when you challenge them to say well give me you can go k through 12 it doesn't matter they will move to a middle school project or elementary school project so uh they will talk about when you talk about what why is that seminal why do you get excited about it the fascinating
thing to me is that it doesn't matter if you're eight or 18 that you're going to hear very common themes around what they want and and I want to be able to to collect that systematically and then bring that back to you so that you're sitting here thinking about where where can we grow as a district where are our
strengths as a district what are the challenges that we're facing you have that voice of the student in that process as you go through and develop the plan so that that is one of my favorite aspects of doing a plan like this and then the other thing is um I would love to we have to look and see how strong your databases are for recent
graduates but um any graduates that are one to five years out it's very helpful if we can do a web survey with them because they've taken what you've provided and now they've tried to apply it either to uh to college or to the work world and it's uh it's valuable to
understand from their perspective in retrospect where did Ferndale really help you and where could Ferndale have done a better job to prepare you for to get to where you are now or where you want to be as you go so um that one is really going to be dependent on the the quality of the of the database um but
it's worth trying every time and and what I find is that even if you don't have a huge sample there it is a unique perspective that you want to pull in and and capture okay fourth column up there no kid households particularly in Ferndale if you think about your population you know you got a a
relatively small proportion of the population that has a student in the district um you have a lot of young professionals that are pre-kid a lot of of young and middle-aged professionals who are just no kid right and then you have um you know your your empty nesters that are here as well and and I know
within Troy and with every District I've I've worked with so far oftentimes those populations are the hardest ones for us to understand we usually get a pretty good handle on our on our parent populations but then we we say okay we need to understand the broader Community because if we're going to ask for a millage or a bond we have
to make sure that they see the value in what we're providing so it's very important before you start building your plan to understand what it is the general Community is looking for you to provide um as a district so um we what I'm suggesting that we do there is that um I'm going to explore and I'll work
with your team here to kind of identify what are some of the community groups where we think we could tap in and go talk to them so if you have like for instance in Troy we have a senior group and and we have a leason from the board that goes to the senior group to talk to the senior citizens about things and I
if you have a group similar to that then you'd send me there and then at one of their General gatherings I would run a whole conversation and understand from their perspective what what's important to them from the educational system so that that we have budget in there to do
three focus groups so what I would do is really look at what my alternatives are and then sit down with the with the crew here and say all right these are six different places we could go I'm thinking maybe we do one four and five those are the three that make sense to me and but we'll get an agreement and
then we'll head out and do that then the last thing is employers i' I've heard you have a good relationship with your chamber of commerce uh and so what we're uh recommending there is that we coordinate with the Chamber of Commerce to basically take over one of their meetings so to come in as a as a outside
spokesperson and run a conversation with the people are at the meeting the one of the things that um Camille and I talked about uh last week when we were talking about this particular piece is I would work with your chamber to make sure that we had some Advanced publicity around hey if you don't normally come to a
chamber meeting come to this meeting because this is a chance for you as a chamber member as a a member of the the Commerce area of of Ferndale to really have your voice heard so that would be the The Fifth Fifth piece so once we have all those conversations and surveys
completed we would put together a full analysis for you and sit down and walk through what are kind of the my goal is always to Bubble it up to say all right I'm not going to give you 300 charts I'm going to talk to you about what what commonalities we saw across the groups
and what are the things that what are the the key desires and needs of your general community that you want to then think about before you sit down as a group and start building your Strate strategic plan so it's really a nice Foundation to start your own internal conversations uh and as you build an
internal um strategic plan group um the idea is that you know when when you sit down even the first meeting to start walking through what are some of the central tenants of that plan going to look like to start with the summary of this so that everybody is sitting there going okay I get it it's not what I want
it's what does the community need let's make sure we build a plan around that so that's the the first step after that then beep oh sorry you're gon to have to go through my animation that was so clever yeah sorry it would have been really good if the clicker worked so okay okay
so after you've done that then we move into step two with the synthesis adoption and dissemination so I want to establish there's there's a very specific operating premise that I want you to really think about here um and that is we're going to assist you but
we're not going to build this plan right you're going to build this plan we're going to help you build the plan because if the if if we build it as Outsiders it's not your plan uh and and then when you turn to try to gain um buyin from
the rest of the organization they're going to also see that as not your plan and therefore they're it's going to be much harder to get somebody to buy in so our goal is to really to guide you along if you get stuck some place to unstick you and and move you forward um to
facilitate meetings so that you have an ability to participate yourself so you're not trying to facilitate and participate uh and then to answer questions to be able to share um um ideas that we've heard from other districts that may be similar to something you're asking about um and
that's really our our Focus as we go through here is to make sure that you're moving along making progress the other thing that and I know from being in your seat um sometimes it's hard because you don't have a bandwidth to get some things done so when you talk about things like summarizing a a discussion
or you know uh taking all the notes that are on a thousand chart pads and Distilling it down and bringing it back to you that's where I can help because that's I can take all that clean it up and then push it back to you so that doesn't fall on any of you and then it gives you an ability to look at that summary and react to it it's much easier
to play editor than Creator when you're when you're doing this kind of stuff okay beep we'll go to the next one um our goals and outcomes so basically once we've shared all the conversations with you about what we learned in the community we'll H we will put them together in to a SWAT style uh analysis
um so you understand strengths weaknesses opportunities uh threats uh and coordinate with your Dynamic planning committee internally that you create to really develop and prioritize the key elements of your Five-Year Plan um so you kind of start with your central tenants and then you start
distilling down from there um something that I want you to think about is uh and no you know what I'll talk about that in the next slide as we go through um I will tell you the conversations are going to be Lively they are we just finished coming from a a district down in Ohio two weeks ago
and we went for six straight hours with a team that was just on it we I I I walked out of there energized after six hours which is amazing uh we did take a break for lunch but um but I will tell you that once people realize that this is our plan and we're going to build it
together um you're going to get a lot of buying and a lot of enthusiasm okay last one on this one um so one of the things that that as a facilitator and this is I'm a professional Focus Group moderator as well so this is something I have to do for any client any company that hires
me is that um we want to make sure that we hear from all the voices in the room right so my goal as an outside person coming into this is to make sure that all the voices in the room are being heard and to identify people who may be quiet or maybe hesitant to speak up because they may be looking at the power
structure in the room and decide I'm not at the top of this power structure and and I disagree with someone who I see is higher up in the power hierarchy than me so it's it's our job as facilitators to be to be challenging people to speak up to be able to make sure we're capturing those
ideas if we have conflicting ideas to work those out as a team to say okay we we can either go this way or this way let's kind of talk about what are the pros and cons of doing either of those and then getting agreement from the group in terms of what to do and I will tell you that that there is Magic in that that planning committee it just is
um what happens is the planning committee becomes unified once they're unified and they like I was call it is your baby beautiful right when they look at the baby and say this is a beautiful baby they're going to turn around then and sell that to the broader organization and one of the keys to
being successful with a strategic plan is making sure that you have broad Buy in if the Strategic plan is working anybody anybody in your organization should be able to speak to the central tenants of that plan at any given point and that's the goal I and I will tell you um we're we're on our second Dynamic
strategic plan in Troy and it guided us through Co it it has allowed us to stay on track in times of of Crisis it's it it it also allows us in an environment where we're always struggling for finances to be able to say we're going
to have to do a few things really well and that means we're not we're going to have to give up some things and when you're trying to figure out how to balance that budget game having a dynamic plan allows you to say is this purchase or this expense in line with
our fiveyear goal and if it's not not then it becomes an argument for saying then we need to let go of that even though it might be good because these these other things over here are in alignment with that with a strategic plan okay so we'll go to the next one so
a a few questions um that Camille said might come up tonight so what makes a strategic plan Dynamic um there's there's a couple of things that are really key to it the first thing is that it is a limited focus by limited Focus I mean you should have be able to put your central tenants on what one piece of
paper because if you have a thousand things in your strategic plan if everything's a priority nothing's a priority and you're not going to be able the other thing is that it's going to become a very thick Dusty binder that goes onto a shelf and doesn't get access you need to be able to have something
that people can speak to so that's the first thing the other thing is that it's adjustable it's living you're going to continually go back to it and for instance in Troy we have quarterly updates um on strategic plan Advan so we go through all of our Central
tenants and we talk about what have we done what are the Glide paths in the last um quarter what are where are we getting challenged what are our roadblocks what can we do sometimes that means you're going to look at that plan and you're going to say I need to make some adjustments right so it's the what you establish at the very beginning Rich
meski likes to say don't fall in love with your plan you have to recognize the plan as a working document and and if you fall in your love if you fall in love with your plan and then you find you're not able to achieve something it starts falling apart the goal is to be able to look and say all right we
need to tweak this a little bit or we're not going to get to where we want to go or we need to maybe we need to to resolve it so that's what that's the dynamic part of the plan is that because you're looking at it you're making decisions against it all the time you're you're you're going to set key metrics
that you're going to use to measure progress against the plan and you're going to look at those metrics on a regular basis and adjust if you need to it becomes a living document it becomes a really valuable guidepost for you um and then the other thing is is I will
tell you you know you could go I'll give you an example in Troy um if you go to any of our 24 buildings when you walk into the building there are placards on the wall with the four Central tenants of our strategic plan parents know what they are the every building sees what
they are we have flags at central office as you drive in you don't go into DET Troy without knowing what those pillars are um and and the value in that is that in conversations at your table here you will begin to speak about things you're talking about in terms of the way those
things relate to your strategic pillars and in doing that it allows you as a as a group to be able to focus to say are we on track or are we losing track are we in the weeds are we thinking strategically as a board okay that was a really long answer I'm sorry okay so question next question why do we need to
use an outside facilitator the answer is you don't you don't have to but there are some advantages to doing that okay the first one is and I think it's a key advantage and you know I'll talking about myself here but having a professional Market researcher do all your research is really valuable you
know uh we have the analytical tools we have the experience we know how to structure surveys we have the software so we can design Dynamic surveys that are interesting for people to take that have branching and advanced logic in it so you can ask people questions based on
how they answered previous questions um we have have SPSS in our office so we'll run statistical analysis on it you know so things like that are extremely valuable we have the tools is what we do every day um if you try to do a Microsoft form and do a survey with your CL your parents that way you're going to
have a low response rate and you're probably not going to be able to have as a dynamic uh Dynamic conversation with them is what we can provide okay so that's the first Advantage the second one is um we have experience in creating these documents and working with other districts and have identified things
that work right so if we see something that we think might be problematic in terms of as you start building that out and talking about your goals are we have an ability to to hold a mirror up for you and say are you sure that's what you want to do here's something that you might want to think about you know before you take that route um the other
thing is um is objective moderation objective moderation really reduces that I talked about that already about organizational or hierarchical friction um if if we have Camille running these groups she's in a bad position right because now it's like suddenly okay the
boss is is asking me what I should do I'm going to do whatever the boss tells me she she wants me to do um the other thing is um and I think this is as valuable is that I would like you to participate I would like you to be a participant in this process and I you
know um Sandra you can probably uh you probably recognize this when you're running the board meeting sometimes you're not being a trustee you're kind of you're coordinating the meeting meeting what I want is I want to be able to coordinate the meetings so that all of you can participate or um some subset
of you will be able to participate in those conversations so that's another advantage of of bringing an outside firment okay and the last thing is um there was a question posed um do we understand Ferndale Community Dynamics I think Ferndale is a a fascinating City
my daughter lives literally two blocks from here in Ferndale uh and um and but I I want to go back and say as as the market researcher in the room there's a better question that I want you to ask and that is does the research component incorporate Ferndale Community Dynamics
right it doesn't matter whether I understand Community Dynamics here what matters is we collect the data in a way that represents your community Dynamics because I'm going to lean on the data not my own opinions about Ferndale I'm going to tell you what your your city is telling me that that's important to them
right and that's the most important thing and that's why I think the research stage is really critical it really creates a good foundation for you to go through but to answer the original question yes um you know hings and Associates has worked with Salan Willow Run Warren Woods uh Wayne Westland
Orchard View and oakd are both near Urban um Suburban districts outside of mosan so when uh David and I talked and and I said yeah all of these are really great examples of of of school districts that I think probably encounter a lot of
the Dynamics that you encounter based on where you are geographically okay all right beep okay so timetable um we've laid out a timetable based on on what we were asked to do we think we can go probably a month faster than this if things move along but essentially um I I won't read
everything out here but but in July and August what we're going to do is we'll we're going to queue up for September so so the first thing we'll do is any Community conversations that I can get done during the summer months I'll get get those done for you anything that
doesn't rely on everybody being in seat back here so the the like the Commerce and you know the the the daycare groups things like that anything that's not dependent on the school schedule I want to get out of the way just so that we we've captured that then the other thing we want to do is we want to build all of
our topic guides all of our questionnaires we'll build over the summer we'll get them programmed and ready to go so that when then we'll just figure out which date we want to launch so you get the kids back in seat you got all your employees back in seat and then we start setting a Cadence to launching
all this research as we go through so probably the the qualitative discussions with the kids I'd probably want to wait two or three weeks uh past the start of school and then come into the classrooms and and talk to kids that way so that's really collection of data and and creation of those instruments is July
August September um um end of September through early October it's going to be pulling all the data down analyzing all the data putting it all together and and being able to take it back to your Planning Group and being able to show your planning group this is these are the key things that we found give the Planning Group a chance to ask us
questions to clarify to make sure that we've we've expressed what we need um if there's gaps they they want to understand that we didn't include in the summer we'll go back and clean that up get it ready and then by November we want to share that out with the Board of Education uh and then at that point if
the Board of Education says thumbs up we got a good handle on the community let's get going then right after that approval then we'll U we'll start meeting with the dynamic planning committee to actually start building the plan so um we would anticipate getting the plan
built by um December really uh have that cleaned up before you break for winter break uh and then finalize everything in early January present the first draft to the board by the end of January um and and this is a chance for you as a board to be able to say thumbs up thumbs down
tweak it this way or that way we'll get it all cleaned up and then bring it back to you in February for formal approval and then after that it's time to disseminate and then then the real fund begins right um thinking about how do we make sure that the community understands strategically what Ferndale Public
Schools is all about I think that's it yep there we go if anyone's still awake any I told you I understand where you're at where you're coming from okay so um are there any questions for
me yes Felicia looked at me I feel typ cast no no no go ahead go ahead it's F me like I I saw the not Carl thank you so much you're welcome I really appreciate your presentation just a couple of questions
one the feedback from the various stakeholders feels very uh web based no it's about half qualitative and half quantitative some cases in in person some cases it's going to be Zoom based
qualitative um so I'll be running the conversation it'll be in person but it'll just be remote so it's more convenient and then for your larger populations where I think having it to be able to demonstrate that you offered a census opportunity for certain populations your staff one of the things
that staff get really worked up up about is well who got to weigh in on this plan right I did no one ask me anything about this and the idea is say oh no every single staff member in the district has an ability to weigh in so that's why that's quantitative parents same thing um if you feel that you would want some
more qualitative with the parents you can you know I can incorporate that in but the idea is to offer an opportunity to weigh in for all the parents the other thing I should tell you is that the parent surveys that I've done um are typically uh um I do provide a number of open-ended questions for people to
actually write paragraphs and tell me what they think and then uh we won't we won't hand code them because your costs are going to go up but I'll use I've got several AI programs that will do a really good job of summarizing the key themes in the comments that people gave and then can actually pull example
verbatims so we can kind of see you know what do they mean by that so there's a lot of qualitative and then the students is all qualitative yeah I I should have I'm should have been more clear I was looking for the qualitative for the staff and the parents so thank you for
that clarification and then with the surveys uh is there a phone interface like this is something somebody can do on a mobile device um it is set up it's not um yes they're optimized for mobile devices it's a visual survey yeah um but
but we know just in general in market research now about 55% of all surveys are done on mobile devices so we always optimize our surveys for mobile but but someone can click on the link from a tablet from a phone or from a computer and it takes you to the same survey and
then just how me understand the timeline of your plan the timeline felt very aggressive and is that because that's what the RS he asked you to do no no we could even move faster than this it's really the appetite it's your appetite to move quickly one of the things that
that we find with with uh um building strategic plans is the longer you the more time you give the group the more the group gets bogged down the reality is we're not going to create a 2in thick binder on this we're going to create something that's more mobile and more
more Visual and more Dynamic uh and and you will quickly get get to the central tenants and then you can start building action plans underneath each of those tenants as you go but um when I I I laid out this timetable with Rich and he looked at it and he said yeah I agree
with you we could probably shave a month off if we wanted to but um what I did like about that is I I I know again being on a board that there's a the agendas in the fall are usually pretty heavy um and so I I was trying to figure out you know that's why I had it in in
January for if you look at the touch point I was basically projecting when I felt like if if you did this to me and Troy we probably have a better shot at getting this done so what I could tell you is we can probably go a little bit faster but I I think actually Camille I
think your RFP had us done by March and I think I said we don't need to go to March let let's try to but what I wanted to do is be able to have this I want to be able to be out of your hair by the end of February so that you can spend the rest of the year really laying out your Advanced plans and then thought
would be you may want to launch this if you have a huge kickoff in the fall that may be a time to really launch it to the whole Community um or or just figure out other ways of disseminating it more broadly but it gives you a couple months there to go from your planning team your
planning committee to a broader group of people who start actually building the pieces and then you can it gives you the spring to kind of work that out before you break for summer and if we did if we were to shave off February would align with our state of the district so just
thinking about like when if we were done earlier it could be an opportunity at state of the district to roll out some of the the the sque the I wasn't suggesting a shorter time no I know I was I was trying to figure out
especially for a plan that as you have talked about your facilitators and guides but not authors so the group that is representative of the district becomes the authors so I'm
trying to figure out who is that group and then how do you how do you work out a calendar with them that fits into a quite aggressive calendar here so just trying to get clarity on um what the
expectations would be uh typically uh for your initial for your initial document you should be able to the internal team should be able to pull this together with I would say typically four meetings like you you
don't want to meet 42 times it's you're just going to burn everybody out um uh and and you know that's enough to to lay out the the key structure like we'll literally your central tenants three to five central tenants will be laid out in the first meeting by the time the
planning uh group leaves the first meeting they'll have a draft of those five things because because you'll you begin to start understanding as we start talking about um what are the demands and desires of the community you'll start L those will naturally start lading into buckets you know and and and
it it it it usually those buckets start appearing pretty quickly and I'll just add to that I would just say that being without a um strategic Dynamic plan is um not an ideal state so
I will say that from educator perspective we're like please can we get one um so we would Pro it it is the priority um with me as um you know facilitating the the team here for
the district that it it's a priority so that's one point I wanted to make also um looking at our newly adopted calendar we were very intentional about building in um dayto days and opportunities for us to take a pause review data um and
make informed adjustments so without um what those days could be used for our could they could be days with the dynamic plan committee okay which is what um we would we would use those days leading up to if we were to go with this
timeline um we would use those days for that also we can adjust as well but it would be very ideal I just would double down on what um Carl is mentioning about about the utilization of the summer
months as um being a an an asset to to us yeah we um Warren County which is the place in Ohio we were at um I put together an aggressive Tim table to get started with them last spring and they
could not approve it until the fall and it pushed us six weeks behind um because I want the summer months because the summer months will give me a chance to to in in a when I have availability of your people here when they're not crazy trying to get the start of the Year
going um it's a chance for them to be able to think about the questionnaires read them through make tweaks it it it's a nice quiet time for for that that setup so yeah it would it would help us immensely if you were to make a decision that allowed us to work during the summer on
it who on the development committee planning team whatever who is that from the district team or for from overall who is the dynamic planning committee we uh we are awaiting
the approval of the Board of Education to begin that solicitation I guess yeah I think it's like who would we solicit from so I think what the part that has not been mentioned I we got new folks in the room
new right like our strategic plan is typically um a lot lot of community involvement a ton like outside of the staff and I think this planning sounds like it's a different shift of who's actually carrying the
brunt of the work right you seek input from everyone at the beginning but then you have a limited group of people that actually build the plan that's right so everybody the voice that people and it was interesting Warren count of use an example because we just came from there when I went through the results and
explained everything I had a couple of staffers that said a couple um instructors that said well I feel like um we should let our the other teachers weigh in on this conversation we're having and I said that was that survey of all staff you know that they did weigh in like the idea is to point to
the research and say everybody had a voice in this and now you have a limited group that can think about and go through but to that end you do want to carefully think about the types of people who are represented there um and I would I would suggest that you um
invite people who maybe are invite people you know that are powerhouses right in this kind of stuff but Identify some folks that typically aren't engaged uh in this kind of thing to make sure that you've got an interesting mix of people who are sitting at that table and starting to weigh in on this because the
you will get interesting perspectives as you as you carefully look at the positions but what I would do is I would if you build the committee I would suggest you identify the the members by position type first right and as opposed to to the people you want it's like okay
what are the what positions should be represented in this conversation and then within each position then you talk about okay who would be a good person from that group but make sure that you have a a really a very representative group that's helping
you so I have a question um sorry is yours mine's related piggy bagging off of this immediately right go ahead go ahead so like typical group because again like I was on the prior one and we had what a parent and a staff member at
least from every single school I think at that point and so it was a bigger group how many people are you thinking are involved yeah I would not put a parent in the group the parents the the the role of the parents is to provide input at the beginning in the research
phase this is a chance then for you as a as an internal group to sit down and say what do we want to accomplish based on and how are we going to accomplish it based on what the community told us they wanted right so the difference is you don't start with the group doesn't Bubble Up the priorities of the
community the community already gave you the priorities so now you think about how can we actualize against those priorities so to the short answer to your question is I would say 20 or less it's not a huge group and so you're saying those people
would be employees employees within the District employees and I would say if you want to have I would say no more than no more than two trustees if if and typically the trustees are not part of
this conversation um it's it's a chance for although it's fine if you want to be part of it I mean you you've got uh you obviously you can't have more than three so on it but but if you want to have a couple but I wouldn't overweight it with trustees um the idea is that that that
you will see the research you'll understand the goals you then act as Master editors against the plan right so you will have seen me come in and talk you through all the research now the with the first time that the the draft of the report that comes or the draft of the plan that comes in front of you
guess how you're going to evaluate the quality of that plan you've seen the research so then you're looking and say does this plan addressed the needs that the the community research told us that we needed to have so you play editor you're Master editor on that and make sure that in the end you feel it's
providing what you want that's why I have in the timetable the assumption here is that there's going to be editing after a review with you every time because you're going to have your priorities and you're going to be able to speak to it but the idea is to keep you out of the weeds to allow the group to to get together and build this and
then come back to you and give you a chance to edit so may I um so yeah this amplifies my original question okay um if we are having a smaller committee with no
parent representation I I know we can talk about all this ultimately we get to decide right parent student representation and such but I'm I'm extra curious then why you don't do focus groups with the staff in addition to the survey or with in District
parents in addition to surveys and no surveys for the students it feels like we're missing out on money just you know I'm trying to trying to provide this in a cost-effective way for you I mean but but here's what I will tell you uh the the conversation that the the parent
surveys that we've had have been very effective at showing and quantifying what's critical so we will we will lay out priorities for parents and have them we'll do a card sort within the survey where they have to prioritize the things that matter to them and what they want their kids to get out of it I come out
of here and I can actually project what parents are asking for if I just do qualitative that's bubbling up ideas but it doesn't give you the the sense of what's the bulk of my parent population asking for so the value of the qu quantitative is projectable that's the
value um if we do the I always offer this up if we do the quantitative and we see I'll call it unresolved conclusions we see things going on in the data and we're not sure what it means we can easily add some focus groups for you
right it's not factored into this budget but I can add a focus group or two if we want to dig a little further into some of that um the other thing by starting with quantitative we have an ability and we always do at the end of our quanti ative surveys when we do this with the community is we say um sometimes we
follow up with people uh with their questions is it okay if we follow up with you yes or no if yes give me your email address and I'll follow up with you and so it allows us to very quickly we could actually build focus groups among parents who answered with a particular pattern in the quantitative
survey so you can sort of a priority group people together who have similar concerns or similar similar priorities to be able to talk to them and then have another group over here with a set of parents that has a different set of priorities right so you can and then we can compare and contrast the two groups as we look at it right so we can do that
with parents we can also do that with staff if we do sta typically what happens is um my administrators look at the results from the staff and it's usually no surprise it just sort of confirms what they already thought so but if but if you look and go uh this is
hit me Suddenly It's like I have high distrust in the administration and you think I thought I had really good employee relationship we can identify people who say I don't trust you and say okay let's Carl go talk to those people and find out what they're really upset about so we can always add these little components if we
need to do it but what I don't want to do is I didn't want to bake that into the budget because typically we don't need it but it's a but it's absolutely available if we think we need to do it I guess a followup to that would if knowing that we are a community that has done this a few times now where people
are very used to being part of that whole process right um what additional supports are you helping with the facilitation in that beginning to make sure it's um communicated very clearly as you know as a board member so then
when this is coming up in our meetings we're not then getting that common and and that legitimate concern about people who feel like they miss the boat yeah you know one of the things that we do and what like I will give you some statistics to speak to um for instance
uh you know in in the case of of uh um VI Community Schools that we did last year um they came back and we I added up all of the the community members that that weighed in and so we say we're starting to build a as you begin to present the Strategic plan for instance
you can say this the foundation of this plan was input from 2,600 members of our community right the the the value of doing formal research is you really are better representing the community than if you grab a couple of parents who always participate in PTO
and do everything and bring them in for this conversation you're handpicking those people you're not actually reaching out to the broader Community by starting with the research as a foundation that's the way you you explain to everybody else it's like we have our marching orders now it's our
job to go figure out a plan that's going to deliver against those marching orders but the community gave me the marching orders 3,000 people from the community told me what I need to do and that puts you in a much stronger position than to say I had four parents on the the planning committee
I I hear you and I would not I just want to put this a little plug and then let some of my colleagues weigh in but for a community that's used to giving the marching orders and being part of the March as well knowing how we would address that well I mean ultimately who
who's on that planning committee is is up to you I I think because you're trying to oper the planning committee is trying to operate sort of it's trying to prioritize and then operationalize the the priorities of the of the community and I think that that should be in the
hands of educational experts yeah oh yeah not disagreeing yeah I I but I but I you know I hear what you're saying I think there's an Optics thing that we need to be be careful of especially because if in the past this is how you've done it we then we can start from the very beginning and say you know we
want it to take a much more systematic uh um view of our community before we got started this time and so we're we're doing this a little bit differently but the but the the advantage of it is that we're able to get a much broader uh view of of the
community's perspective by doing it this way I just want to highlight something from the last time we did this it's not very different than what we did the last time because the last time all of the stuff that you're proposing to do like research based is the stuff that we did in person the admin actually built the
plan we just did all of that other get the priority set the goal like set the high the tenants we did all that stuff stuff in person and I think this is taking out that piece because the part of the committee where the parents were involved was really like setting the the
tenants of the plan the admin actually built the plan so it it's going to feel different but it's actually the same thing yeah it's it's going to feel different it's going to look different people are going to think it's different so just incumbent on us and our
facilitator I would argue to make clear how we are still prioritizing inut and I'm legitimately getting it there's one flip that we could do um and and we've done it before
and it it really depends on the board um in Warren County was one that we flipped this we we presented to the board all of the research findings first and then we had an offsite with the board and we and the board then based on everything they
heard in the conversations and the and the the surveys uh generated all of the key things that they think should they thought should be incorporated into the Strategic plan we took all of their comments and then Rich and I sat down and distilled that down and identified
organized it and identified pillars sent it back to the board the board looked at it and made a couple tweaks and said okay it's good that looks like us it looks like you've captured what we want and then when we when the planning committee met for the first time we've started that with an overview of the
research and then showed them what the Board of Education said was important to them and allowed them to to sort of build from those pillars so if you want but that's more timec consuming for you if you want to do that and start that
way it's absolutely a good way to work and and it it one of the things that I noticed when with Warren County is that um the employees were like wow the board's actually thinking about this you know like like oh this is kind of cool they're they're kind of laying the the P paway for us and now we're going to sit
down and and it was it was fascinating to watch them because they're they that district is a more rural district and there were words that were very I'm going to call it Troy like because it's where I live but it was you know Suburban Detroit words and they're like yeah we don't talk like that so we start
changing language and and it was a couple minor tweaks as you went through but when you were done you're like oh yeah it feels like the place I'm at it feels like the community that I had been surveying um so it's it's so if you want to be involved in that we can rearrange
this timetable and basically you would get it before the Comm the committee does and then the committee would work from there this is absolutely a legitimate way to do this you know I've got more probably do um mine is I think going up as as someone who was on it before I can
totally understand the reason for doing only staff on that committee I can understand it because I think like part of the reason why you're saying go what this is you need the staff to be the ones that fully agree with what this is
strategic plan is in order to push it forward and make sure that we do everything we said yeah it's really that they they're the ones who going to operationalize it right right when we made our strategic Plan before we there was so many things that were in it and
it was very hard to take all of those different items and then break them out to like every school and how do they Implement them so I can understand us better from it I think what mine is more a concern is we I feel like we tend to have issues with when we do web based
surveys of not necessarily touching everyone within the community like we're Ferndale School District but we're not the City of Ferndale right and I'm not talking so I so I'm just mind is like when we do the survey is there a way for us when you say like we talk to we got you know 600 surveys back from our
community to know that we got x amount from fern X out from oy Oak Township x amount from the different areas so we know we might need to yes we that we yes there an area that we are not getting feedback from to know that we are encompassing our
entire District are you talking parents because the parents is the survey the the I'm talking whether it's parents or Community well if we go back to the research page we're not doing a survey with with we don't have easy access to do a survey with non parents we do have
an ability if you want wanted to uh we would have to do I'm going to call it an unscientific survey but we could post through the public library we could post a link we could put it on the the the social media uh Pages for the district with a a link to the survey but you
can't prevent ballot stuffing you can't prevent you can't predict who's going onto that survey but if if that's something you feel like we want to be able to provide an Avenue for anyone in the in the community to be able to answer a basic question about priorities
um we can build that for you the main concern I think is going to be parents within the community right but see parents we have an email list so we'll go after we will send a census uh survey to every parent in the district so no matter where they are in the communities if they have a kid in here they're going
to get a survey invitation y we do that already and we don't get that that's what I'm saying like we already do that and we don't get the feedback necessarily so it's wanting to make that's mind of like part thing is making sure we're representing everybody and
not just the loudest people that always do because they will respond it's how do we get the rest of our district that we don't and I I'm G to say this because I see it happen in Troy all the time and that is the surveys that typically go out of the district are not professional
surveys they're the introductions are not good the the you you we don't motivate people to complete the survey the questionnaire the questions are not written well this is my profession so I'm just going to speak to it and and again even as a member of the board in Troy sometimes I'm like oh can't believe
we sent that to our parents that's terrible right or and it's typically a Microsoft form like when you do a survey what software are you using is it Survey Monkey or is it a form like what is it you what is it it's it's probably not a professional Sur it's like we use Vox Co
survey software it's Canadian software it it's a fantastic thing that makes everything pretty and and and and my S I write questions that are engaging you know that kind of stuff so um we we know what our subject line needs to be we know what we have to say within the
first three lines of the email invitation if you're going to turn it on or turn it off right away so those are things I do this for a living so it's it's not it's not the same it's not the same as an internal survey so um the other thing is when the results come
back we will be analyzing that survey in statistical software so I'll be looking at repres presentation through your communities based on the I I'll know based on the list how many parents live in each of those communities you'll be able to sh share that with me in the database if the the database that comes
back doesn't match that we can turn around and heavy up or even figure out maybe offer a potential incentive for parents in a given area to respond who haven't responded already the other thing is that when we do a survey we always do the primary blast then we do a secondary reminder and then we have a
third one and the language differs and the second one and the third one based on things we know are more likely to get people to comply so we know for instance that typically you will get 50 if if you send out your initial blast and you get 200 people in the second blast you will
get another hundred people probably not more than that you buy 50% of that the third blast then will buy you another 50 another half of that again so every time you do a reminder you're going to get half of what you got in the in the previous blast as you go through but we also know the timing how many days do
you go before you send that second one when do you send the third one so so I you know I don't want to say trust me but it is a my biggest one was one I you you said it yeah you're going to link emails to where they live to be able to tell us
that's my biggest thing I want to know that we're well you know I just want to know where we're we're and the other thing is that when we do our analysis we will be looking at the different communities if we see priorities are different depending on where you are we'll we'll talk about that so that you begin to understand what those
differences are I mean one of the things anything that we have with quantitative data I'm going to chart it out for you so you can look at where are the patterns where are the where do we feel we're underperforming where are we potentially overperforming against what the needs are of the community so a lot of that that quantitative survey is
looking at what do you want and what are you getting right and then matching those up to say and and we do that so you can look and say what are you might ask 20 different things and you'll find that the same four or five come up with every
group like oh look everybody's talking about uh like like uh in in Warren County it was uh creative problem solving creative problem solving it that's what the that's what the um employers wanted it's what the parents wanted it's what the the staff wanted it's what the kids wanted they wanted
opportunities to learn how to do creative problem solving and that showed up no matter who we were talking to so we came back and said whatever you do in your in your strategic plan where is creative problem solving in there because that is a priority for your community right so that that's the kind of stuff where I can't predict where
it's going to go yet but we'll build a a good enough battery of attributes that we'll be able to look at this and you'll be able to say all right they've covered us from Soup To Nuts here and from that we can identify these are the four things that you know came up Mar
but I mean these are great questions that you're asking I know I don't mean to I sometimes I come across this bossing and it's not I don't at all I mean the it it's I'm happy you're asking the questions because you should be thinking about those things and I guess and again I don't want to say trust me but it's that's what I think about for a
living like that that to me is looking at the differences you know I drive my Administration crazy because I'm database right so I'm always like okay I want to look at that subpopulation what's going on with that okay that's all fine and dandy the general number looks good but show me the subpopulation that isn't working what are we not doing
how do we change our our delivery to that subpopulation so that that sub population is making it so um so so I absolutely I'm right there with you I know what you're what you're think I'm very much the same so I appre fully appreciate it like I said this is a you
know these conversations get really fun because the other thing is I may come to you and present the present the data and then you'll ask me three questions about subgroups I didn't think about and you know what I'm going to say I don't know I'll get back to you on that I'll go back to the data and I'll come back and give you a sense of what's going on there that that's why it's important
that we present a draft first and then come back to you and revise based on what you're asking asking for um the other nice thing is that the database that we have here even after the plan is is written um the database is still there so you can always call me later on if there's something that comes up that you say you know what we ask a question
about that in our community survey I can pull the number for you and tell you what it is so that's what we do with all our clients once the main project is done we're there as a resource for you as you're trying to you know bring it to life and make it work so no no no please I was about to i
y so my one last higher level I promise um it goes off of that okay is um you mentioned you have a person on your team Ben who you described as a trainer as needed and I was wondering from a sustainability standpoint um what
training is done knowing this is a dynamic plan we're going to like the purpose is to be adjusting it as we go right I would think from a sustainability standpoint we'd want to see us be more and more autonomous with those adjustments as we go how's that
big and that and and I mean so basically we we will you know you you'll develop the plan with us um at some point we're going to say fly you know good job go fly make it work and then then but but what you're going to need to do and this is where I think Camille is is going to
have to look is you'll probably have I'm going to tell you right now because it almost always happens there's going to be something in there about developing your people in your strategic plan right and so that's where the training can come involv because if you sit down and say we need to develop our people in these
three directions then the question is do we have the internal expertise to do that if we don't then Ben and other folks from from hings and associates they have very experienced people that can help you develop your people that's that's their primary focus so it it's
funny because uh David hings is always like okay he sees the the friend and work that rich and I do as sort of laying the ground for he may get calls from you later on because once you identify what you need to improve on then you're going to say I need I need
help doing that as well and he's got a a full list of professional he can identify that are good at whatever you need to do right that's one of the things he's very good at that's why I love him so um but but that's a really good question so so uh you know
Ben because that's where he comes from and he hasn't done much in strategic planning he's literally kind of tagging along so um when we need him and he's doing something autonomous with Rich and me we will be billing his hours if he's tagging along and learning we're only billing for Rich and me so and we only
we only Bill for who's working for how many hours they're working um so that was something I wanted to give Camille some Assurance on is that I think in my proposal I said we're going to monitor this we know about how I've got it laid out by month how many hours I think we're going to take to get this stuff done if I I'm going to check in
periodically and I'm going to and if I look and go woo we're way over then we will have a conversation about how do we do this do we adjust the number of hours to keep the budget where it is do we think we need to increase the budget in order to get what we need done you know we'll work that out together but there'll be no surprises okay thank
you I'm sorry go ahead no no I'm happy you're engaged everybody's awake that's good talk about the four for Troy or like post it all over what because I'm just on the site on Troy's what are the four for Troy then is like you call your pillars pillars four pill that's I thought you said tentacles and so I was
tenants tenants tenants are different than tentacles yeah I was like I don't think that's right what are the four that you are calling your pillars so we have we we have a gold red green and blue pillar we actually put colors on them because it lot people will say so if we look at um the green pillar it's
it's looking at uh early early childhood to Career so it's looking at Readiness from early childood career and then underneath that pillar there's you want to have no more than typically three key things things you're going to focus on in the next five years so that's one of the issues when you talked about it's so
hard to keep all that's in your head the reality is is a human being can only keep maybe five things in their head so if you go beyond that you're going to lose them anyway so that's one of them another one is our red pillar red pillar is social emotional health and well-being so so it's so we have a whole
Focus around that as we go through uh the gold pillar is uh deep learning so we have focus on on deep learning and then the blue pillar is oh see I'm I'm blanking I live and breathe this and I'm like uh uh developing our people so
yeah it's it's really F it's we call it building capacity actually building capacity uh and we the first fiveyear plan we called it developing our people and then we were like uh we said really it's about capacity because it's building capacity within the students it's building capacity within within our
people in order to execute and So within each of those then you'll have two or three key areas and then where the where the planning goes is you still have to say so if I want to accomplish these three things underneath this pillar what are the limited number of things that we're going to have to do and that's where the resources come in right what
are the programs that reinforce this you just changed from nwaa right so you want to look at that and say did you do that because the uh what did you I what's it I I ready is I
ready more um consistent with our strategic plan so we literally all of our like our anything we track any of our standardized testing we are changing things we've we we are very good about eliminating there's so much noise in standardized testing that we have
distilled ourselves down to there's only a couple of key things that we even monitor because we're not a firm believer in strategic planning anyway or in in U that's wrong we're not a firm believer in in uh um standardized testing because it's kind of antithetical to deep learning so um but
but there are some key measures we know we want to look at and so we tell the community we're only going to look at these seven things so you can look at mstep here here and here and here and you can come and yell at us about it but we don't care because we know that it's not valid it does it doesn't matter to us but these things we're going to live and die on these things we're going to
make sure those things work so so that's what I mean about when you when you get this going and everybody knows you know um like uh someone uh asked at the microphone earlier asked about restorative practices so it's very interesting because I've been hounding
our secondary um assistance superintendent because it's clear to me that we are inconsistent in our delivery of restorative practices and it really makes me mad because they pretend they know what they're doing but they really not they're not trained you know and so I can keep pointing to the red pillar
you're violating the red pillar we've got to do this because we said this is one of the four things that we wanted to make sure that we did we've got to take care the social emotional health of our kids so um so the the pillar allows me at a governance level to make sure the
organization is moving in the direction that we've agreed we're going to move I does that help in terms I mean it no that does I was extremely powerful once you got everybody understanding the pillars it's so powerful at a I was on the website and I couldn't find the
Strategic that's I was like you can't be talking about the goals of literacy math science and social studies so thank you that makes me feel much better about it not necessarily to you more sorry to here my only concern with timeline is three of the seven
will not be here like in the middle of this timeline and so how does that affect I'm thinking about three new coming in and where do they fall in this process and how overwhelming this that or the other
is at coming in and having to all of a sudden approve not I 100% say yes we need to get this done mind Z like how do we do that with yeah so so I can speak to that a little bit because um we had a change of two board seats um uh um kind
of in the middle of of our from moving from our first plan to our second plan and in fact we had some people come in year four into our Five-Year Plan and started asking you know why can't I change this and and the answer is is that the the plan supersedes an individual and that that the
organization has agreed to what this is so if so that's the first thing is say okay you will have a say in the next go around but your job as a trustee is to is to reinforce the plan that's already established right so so that's that's
the first thing but but you've got three potential so you have three that are retiring in yes between December and January we're going to have a flp so yeah so that's like I'm not going go like J yeah if the plan is in place is one thing right but the plan is not
going to be in place according to this time no but I I here's what I would say I would say I would if they were new on my board I would want I would want to have them there when we present um the findings and build the so
right now I have it set up so we would be November see I I don't want to hamper Camille either though that's what I'm like Camille saying I need the plan know in July who's running who's running correct which Mak and we'll know by November for sure who it is but if there are not that many running you just bring
them all in yeah I mean there's SE yeah I was going to say the other thing is that well there's two ways we can handle this one one is we stick with this plan and when those new people come in Rich and I will sit down with them and we'll we'll sort of give them a uh we'll give them a
catch-up session where we walk them through the research we tell them where you know what here's where your board settled this is what we the process of building right now and you essentially it's you know the scaffolding is up this is the building you're going to be able to influence final wording and everything but but you're not going to
be able to tear the scaffolding down you know so so I think that I think if we handle that well that we could do it that way the alternative is that instead of going to the board in November sharing out the community conversation I would say you stall uh and share that
out in the first Workshop in January with your new people well but if we know in November so that's okay that's one thing I'm forgetting January I'm sorry I wasn't tracking you yes so yeah that'll be if that's when the biggest thing of like to the board I think that should be fine it' be like kind of like similar to
Peter of like except they won't be able I would I would also argue that that's really incumbent upon us to do a I just to be frank a better job with this new um round of incumbents of us making clear here's the oath of office um so
what's expected of Schoolboard trustees in general because it's not just going through and nitpicking everything and here's also our expectation in our district and um you know because then then this can we can we can set it up in a way where we're not approaching from a
we we got to protect this before other people but more so which I know is not the intention but that may be how it comes off um but more it's it's we've laid the foundation and now we invite you in to help see it through to the end
and this is going to help this to me that's a great learning opportunity of here's how the role is you're taking that input yes synthesizing up to the highest level and seeing out the governance of it right yeah they can be involved there I that makes me feel much more
comfortable I was I'm thinking of a as a new person coming in that's going to be super overwhelming to be like catch up and figure this out so and that's a I think that's a um if if for some reason we feel like we need to sort of catch them up on why we did what we did
anything like that rich and I be happy to come in and sit down with them and take them through that so that they feel comfortable with with us and with the process of T yeah that's a challenge I think you're right I me these are good ways of overcoming it but yeah that is your your Ching horses Midstream so it's
a good call so I heard um just from questions and um from the board um five areas around feedback um ensuring that they're you know understanding the remote in person
surveys all of that um we also heard um ensuring that we are clear on who the committee members are and ensuring that all the community is served a training piece came up and then ensuring that we're very clear on
the timeline considerate of um new board members coming in but I would like to propose is um Carl and I can have like a follow-up discussion just kind of synthesize a bit what we heard from today's discussion and um maybe prepare
a revised proposal okay based on some of those things I could share with the board in detail um just based off of some of the feedback that we heard this evening if that will be okay appreciate sorry JZ one more this
will lead approval then so if we need to start are we going have to do a special meeting then at some point we we got we have a we're going to have a special meeting because of contract so hopefully just want to make sure was if this is July we need to
we're y are we good all right thank you thank you nice meet all I hope work with you you can tell I get excited about it don't leave your your um the thing that thank
you thank Youk shoot you an email this evening that brings us to item seven informational items uh budget to actual report again hello um this is the budget to actual report for
May and um the First Column is first amended budget but uh I just want to point out that next month in June it'll say second amend budget because that was just
approved um we are spending more money in the percent remaining column in may we are spending more money than last year but we did have three payrolls in May this year and we only had two last
year I want to point that out and we did pay the retention bonus out so um so do you have any questions thanks Don thank you thanks Don thank you uh
7.2 student code of conduct policy review good night everybody I'm gonna be concise um I'm Juan Rickman I'm the director of climate and culture and Athletics of the school district uh back in March we created our student
code of conduct revision committee uh we established it uh our first order of business was to create our completed SWAT analysis which we did um as determined by the committee our strengths of the code of conduct currently was that the current policy is
fairly restorative there is communication both horizontally and vertically that allows for collaborative efforts between all stakeholders and potential access to various resources both with within district and external to the district to further enhance studentet I mean student successes
present as determined by the committee the weaknesses of our current code of conduct Cod of conduct is ambiguous and does not highlight specific intervention supports or Consequences for our students when kodaka is violated uh kodaka does not utilize a coordinate
enough resources to provide students with life skills strategies and techniques to improve decision- making at all levels lastly code of conduct lacks detail regarding how the district utilizes restorative practices PBIS and mtss at different
levels opportunities there are students and school officials working collaboratively to draft a more closely aligned policy that addresses student needs as we're doing now trying to make sure that our code of conduct is more preventative and proactive and full of strategies to
support student development uh openness to including more student and parent voices Avenues of various supportive resources development of student Rewards program with focus on social emotional learning character Education and Leadership threats to our code of
conduct District administration School administration and staff turnover which obviously we've incurred over this year most of our students are not prepared to manage and handle stressful emotions in situations which it's not an anomaly we know that cuz they're kids policy is
ambiguous and does not guide or support School administration firmly which potentially puts pressure on administrators to use their own discretion too often and lastly students do not see correlation between decision- making in school versus within society
and consequences of their decision making after our SWAT analysis was completed we issued a survey out to various uh stakeholders uh we uh focused on the four components which was intervention support processes infractions and
language and ask for their feedback with the questions um listed common responses low level of accountability for stakeholders that fail to adhere to code of conduct code of conduct is treated as a suggestion rather than a standard or
expectation Pacific policy interventions and support for Pacific offenses uh namely attendance fighting physically hitting other students in a cell phone third clear and comprehensive expectations consequences are plan of
action for the district addressing misbehavior or supporting students behavior Matrix to hold teachers and administrators accountable also a behavior M Matrix could potentially uh make it more predictable for our parents whenever they they they
come increase in parent communication more training for our staff particularly in restorative practices and classroom management after our meetings uh student code of conduct revision committee has agreed to the following revisions addition of
attendance policy we do have one in our board doc our board policy however it's not in actual policy is not actually in the student code of conduct we also want to expand on that and put expectations for attendance highlight chronic absenteeism insury what that actually
entails or means and also interventions support for kids that suffer from chronic absenteeism and how we are going to tear down barriers to ensure our kids are in school updated infractions making sure that we have infractions that's
applicable to various behaviors also classifications of infractions minor moderate major and severe four Behavior Matrix emphasis on interventions and support with options for consequences when administrators and team deem
restorative practice and interventions alone would not properly address the behavior we want to focus more on uh maximums instead of minimums okay uh language for discipline of students with disabilities essentially just putting state law actually into the code of
conduct okay and policy for student and Locker searches which has been big at the high school as well which is again state law um right right now again we're building it we should have it ready for
for our next board meeting for approval after our superintendent approves uh the revisions for code of conduct our uh revision committee will be a standing committee something that we do every year to you know keep up and make modifications when applicable or when
necessary anybody got any questions just curious yes ma'am the stakeholder survey who were the body of stakeholders was so stakeholders it was it was parents community
Partners um staff support staff School administrators so it was over 140 went went to over 140 people so just to um U just go back a little bit one of the commitments that
was made early I want to say probably in January was that we would have have by now a updated code of conduct so um what was realized in these iners stakeholder conversations was that we need to look a
little bit more closely once they got into the weeds it was like oh we're 100% not ready to do that have a formal code of conduct revised top to bottom um so the guidance was to not rush this this
is too important um um but it was important to provide our community as well as the board an update of where we are um and the work of uh Mr Rickman as well as the entire committee Miss Wright um everyone that was um I see Mr
crumrine here who's also on the committee um their work has been excellent and the findings as you can see were worthy of still being discussed um wanted to to see that there have been has been significant mov movement and
that we will still be prepared unfortunately there not here in June and I think that the rationale behind why we're not ready I believe is legitimate um we didn't want to rush something so important um and something um some
things that we found we had to dig in a lot deeper than what we originally anticipated so again want to hold a commitment to to June um but we do not have a completed um um code of conduct to bring to the board for approval at
this time um so that's why Mr rman is here again want to appreciate Mr Ritman um for facilitating this work but also we thought that this might be a good touch point to see if there were any any other points um anything else you heard
um that might need to be continued to think about as we're um finalizing here over the summer I think it was important for us to maintain the Integrity of a collaborative process so you know when you you have a committee and obviously a
school district that's moving in so many parts you want to make sure that you hear the voices and that it's really collaborative and not just coming from the school administrators so I I really appreciate that I appreciate your work here I also
appreciate the comment you made at the end about this being a standing committee oh for for me the conversation is about the code but also the implementation of the code yes what we found this year was the confusion that
there was no code because we were missing on the implementation and there was a code fully agree that the more stakeholders who are involved in this re this revision the more stakeholders who
are aware there is a code but also there's the communication piece looking at you Robert the the parent education piece the student education piece because for me I'll always go back
to how was there such a shared misunderstanding uh across a number of stakeholders and how do we make sure that once there is a revised code it it goes back to the previous
conversation about the Strategic plan that there's buyin that there is whatever training I love the Matrix idea I use it in um my own work in a number of ways but I think it any any time you
roll out something like this with maybe whatever is going to be new and if we're trying to course correct and a also being aware that we have new people in the district
so um taking more time to make sure that it's more than just we checked a box and now there's a revised code but how do we actualize that in the district I think and and that's those are great questions
uh obviously you know in any code of conduct the threat is always going to be turnover too as well we've had significant turnover like when I first got here I was trying to figure out what do we have in place what don't we have in place what do we have in place that we don't use and when you don't have
that connection with people with institutional knowledge to help you and when we're not being Guided by policy you know instead of our discretion it's it's tough it's tough um in addition to that I know we've been having
discussions in our committee in our revision committee about acknowledgement of the form like when kids come get their IDs at the beginning of the school ensuring that everybody has access to it parents acknowledging student acknowledging they become familiar with
it as well obviously that's important because whenever you do have situations where student violate the code of conduct as a parent it should be predictable on what's going to happen you know if my kid gets caught for Vaping I should know already that when I
get to the school I'm going to have a parent conference uh Macy Mental Health specialist um Southeast Coalition may may be supporting them and possibly depending on they could be suspended no more than these particular days you know
where everything is predictable I think that eases everybody where we're not functioning in you know an ambiguous area right so what parents don't think you're picking on my kid or whatnot because you're using your own discretion there's nothing like relying on policy yep and I also love um the way you
framed it makes me think of building on it as a social contract too because in in its most ideal form that's what a code of conduct is right um and the more that can be explicitly stated and expected to going back to the point of this being a standard expectation I
think is really beneficial you know um I've got as you said like is there anything that to touch on COD of conduct will it flow over into like extracurricular activities whether it be band choir robotics Sports all that Ty of stuff for
it so ironically I'm currently working on uh our student athlete kodaka as well so uh haven't thought about extracurricular as well I know me and uh Mrs Wright been having conversation about that but we are going to do a
student athlete code of conduct and it should flow but kodaka is going to cover everyone obviously with Athletics and extracurricular activities you have to have more detail in particular instances so like if I don't come to practice or I
haven't been here in a week what happens you know so mine's thinking that like will the coaches if a kid gets caught say you're dle vaping and they're at robotics I'm G take that one at robotics they're vaping
does the robotics coach know and have they been trained or gone over what the code of conduct is they need to contact and what needs to happen to know like do kids and do kids don't and understand whatever is in their extra EXT extra
curricular activity also applies or falls under code of conduct or I guess I ask part of my question is does it fall under the code of conduct for that that's standard but I don't think we have any language you know that again that we rely on I know as the athletic director usually if somebody is you know
they gets in trouble usually I let that coach know if they're not a if they're not in the district or in the school and we bring the parent in we end up talking about it if they have a consequence we talk about that if they have a suspension obviously they may end up missing a game because they're not able
to play so we usually don't put more on that plate but more so like I said we start talking about restor practices it's about building those relationships and I think just our overarching goal that needs to be our approach building relationships building positive
relationships being proactive being preventive so that we can do get the best out of our Cav and kind of to your point I think it I I hear it's like not in the conduct exactly it is in our general policies on students that any anything that they are
a student in all our rules apply right but then to your point I don't think especially you know we're talking about lack of specificity for when they're in the classroom I would imagine it's not there at all for beyond that right yeah I just want to make sure when we
take the when we look at the the training and how do we spread it out of like knowing that we do have coaches we do have people that work with us and do other activities of like how do we make sure they're aware of what they need to do to communicate it back to be be at the principal be at Restort of practice
whoever it is to make sure it's all kids know that just that what they do in school it falls out into extra see overall I think that's just a great Point anyway I'm not even focused on that part the fact that we get kids in extracurricular activities that's more
leverage for support that's more person to holding kid accountable and that's more that's that's a component or variable that helps that kid have a sense of belonging so overall that's that's our focus and I'm always say that
so I would just add that when I started here I asked about the code of conduct for student transportation and it it doesn't exist right so when a student misbehaves on the bus how does that behavior translate to you know what's happening in the school and holding them accountable
whereby uh I would ask the bus driver what happened oh I told the principal and that would be it so there needs to be a report there needs to be ramifications for that behavior because obviously has huge impact potentially on safety on the bus right um so we're
looking at including a component with respect to transportation in and I guess my only thing would be that just said of like I was trying to look and see when our August meeting is as to whether or not like will that be before will that be before like all of
our I thinking like myar like stuff will it be before like myar stuff goes out to parents to recheck all that stuff in to be able to have like you're saying like how do we get everybody to do that buy off to know this is what it is to have but I don't know if that's going to be after that or not I would say that if if
it would be tight because even if we do get it it would be tight if we still are with the same um Cadence for our meetings that will bring us likely very close to the first day of school and likely most students would they they're
registered by then so we will I think that Felicia um Juan and um us will need to think about what that might look like that roll out like are there other opportunities to um to still pull that
in and get that info out in the way that it needs to be so got to stay I I honestly I think it would be in place just not formally because you guys have to vote in on it that it would be done we have subcommittees right now uh tan Robinson is is is heading attendance
right now because she's over mtss well all right I'm doing the behavior Matrix at least leading that you know subcommittees uh Katie is doing infractions right now because when she looked at it the most especially at up in in Diana as well some of the
infraction doesn't fit doesn't fit the the behavior so a kid does need something they're trying to address it or you know classify it and it's not anything there to fit so we want to make sure that that's that's covered that we're always covered so yeah Y no I
appreciate everybody you've gotten involved with it like covering all those bases to make sure yeah we trying our best it was a few parents that were here that you know been involved too so um anybody has any questions uh reach out to me via email or on my phone you know
I'm always accessible uh always willing to hear you guys' perspective too so I ain't the smartest person in the room I just want to have the smartest room so thank you Mr thank thank you uh item eight we didn't have any
full consent agenda items our next Committee of the home meeting and regular board meeting we need to get that schedule out um so those dates are to be determined uh item 11 Eagles points of Pride I would like to go first go for it
have a little bit of a different kind of point of Pride um so first off I want to say I'm proud um that we had participation in this meeting not just actually in person but knowing that there were a lot of people interested in being part of the budget hearing talk
hearing about code of conduct um so I want to encourage a continued growth in that participation um clarifying to people uh that this annual budget hearing is and vote is a state mandated checkpoint that in
reality the functional budget is crafted and managed in an iterative process so attend the committee of the whole meetings listen to our ongoing budget talks make public comments via email or at meetings following that um and participate in the dynamic planning
process because really that is the community whole District community in formed document board adopted um that guides all our policy bylaw budgetary um as well as evaluation and oversight um
processes and decisions um also again highlight U my pride for I think this represents a lot of at least all the Educators and board members in this room the collective effort that's being made across the state to ask for more funding for
schools um 42425 and I want to encourage community members to get in on that advocacy effort um because they are still in committee conference there's still time to sway um uh what happens um three easy
asks that are no cost no cost to the state right now um eliminate the mandated 3% employee contribution um that employee uh School Employees are paying into the uh school health care retirement fund um that's an
effective 3% raise for all staff um reinvest the savings by reducing the district's contribution to that same fund by 7% That's estimated to give schools at least $450 more per student
per year and that's savings that will continue um as well as encourage the legislators to um reduce the TR transfer the historic transfer of money from the school aid fund to cover general fund obligations um there's currently an ask
out there right now by associations that we're all parts of um To Cut That by at least 25% for this next year that would free up another $270 per student um per year to schools just for what it's worth the collective
transfers equate to about 1.2 billion every year out of school aid into General fund that's over $900 per student per year for every school so um mejc Michigan Education Justice Coalition has letter templates
mea has a template Masa um so superintendent Association as a template we passed a resolution folks can um use as a jumping off point or you can contact I won't say everyone but but I'd
like to thank everyone um uh and know that these three asks won't fix everything but they will give us time to advocate for the heavier lifts that need to be done um including two years out Constitutional Convention reforming how
we finance and govern um thank you yes I um I have two but I'm just going to do one in that it was a Fant graduation season and the ceremonies and seeing the excitement The Joy the Wonder Adventure in everyone's faces it was particularly special for me this year
but again all three commencement ceremonies were wonderful they went off without a hitch and it it's the Highlight I think of being a a board member and a part of the community to see the the excitement and the graduation and the futures of all these kids so that was my highlight but the
second one doesn't happen I'm going to go again I'll jump in I have two mine was also Al just a big shout out to us finishing out our graduation season I want to uh give a big shout out to the teachers the students for finally flying
out of the nest and the parents who helped get them there and then my second shout out I know we've been doing it a few times this year but I want to shout out Camille and Felicia again um I know it's been somewhat of a
tough year somewhat of a tough year but I just want to commend you guys on the work that you did is just help helping our district halfway through our school year and just carrying that workload um also with the support of your Stellar
team that supports you guys and just from my heart I just want to say thank you for all that you did for our district this year that is it I'm gonna jump in here and uh first one for me is the ribbon cutting at the
new lower last um Monday fabulous job to the team for organizing it I was amazed at all the community participation uh Felicia great job
getting us to this point um super it it was just awesome to be in the building and hear people's excitement and enthusiasm for that learning space um a couple others the Maring band
is playing the national anthem at the Tigers game this Tuesday the 25th if anyone wants an excuse to hang out at the Ballpark and support the marching band kids um also just want to shout out all the people who were right back in
the building this week for the kids who are in summer school and Credit Recovery feels like their break was a blink uh and they're back at it uh as the wife of an educator I I find it very amusing
that people talk about education as a nin Monon job um we all know that that is uh if that was ever true there's no truth to it anymore so just really appreciate the commitment of the folks
who are assisting with all of the um summer school opportunities in our buildings God yeah go ahead yeah um I want to shout out our superintendent hibler last week June 12th um she was
featured as a panelist on a webinar with Handover research along with another superintendent talking about um strategies for transitioning um superintendent in the district and so it was really um
impactful to hear you speak about your experiences and know that um you've had um some positive experiences that you could share and share with others and I also along with Jonathan want to shout out uh Deputy superintendent Wright I
know logistically all of the planning that you've had to do this summer with the planning for the moves and all of the you know the ribbon cutting and all of that you and your team have done a fantastic job and I know how stressful it can be especially just moving a household I can't imagine soos to you and your team for
that like everybody took all the stuffs um mine is first to yeah all of the staff um all the teachers all the parents all the students that finished out the year and um it was a it felt
long and it felt very quick at the same time um but that everybody got there and finished it um to the schools like was at multiple of the move UPS from one school to another um and just how great of a job I think the district does at
making each of those moves important but also highlighting that like our graduation from high school is the goal for what we want to get to um so appreciate all that for um and want to just I guess yeah same as everybody I
feel like is hit on and just thank you guys for it was a challenging year um and that you stepped up and took it on even though it may not have been what you wanted to do with meetti um but
appreciate just that it is it's been a breath of fresh air I would say um to the district and just appreciate what you've been able to do yourself your entire team um and it's just it's been fun the last six months so as much as
they were crazy it's been a a good so thank you you okay I you took a number of mine as well so I'll try to say something that was not stated which is I would like to talk about um the staff kickball
game did I take yours okay um which um I will say was absolutely a the idea was to engage the district um we wanted to just just have some good oldfashioned fun um and I will
just say that there was a number of things I wasn't sure about first of all the weather second of all it's the last day of school our staff really going to show up and I just need to give a shout out to um Mr Rickman for making sure we
had the Kickball field the lines all it was very official it was very official um Mr Tolbert for all of the Service Awards and combining some of our tradition um activities at the end of the year with a new fund way to engage staff um
and just the staff I just my My Hope Is that they feel appreciated they feel like the district wants to engage with them wants to hear from them um which was what the kickball game honestly was rooted in um so I hope that they feel
appreciated even if they weren't there they wanted to go and take their last day that's great too um but it's official summer um for those that do get a summer U I hope it is restful um I would just like to just say thank you like I think
that um thank you to the board thank you to the team um thank you to the parents it just it has been honestly I don't even fully have all the words to articulate the support and like the rallying around me I couldn't do any of
it any of it without all of the support and I'm humbled I'm appreciative um and I think that um you all are the epitome of Eagle EXC excellence and I'm grateful that's it okay I'm gonna say
ditto but the the kickball game was really a highlight for me although I didn't get a chance to play back because I had a a bond meeting but I was there enough just to see the faces like there were teams that really took it seriously practice they were ready for the game it
was just a lot of fun um another highlight obviously being the ribbon cutting for a new lower right and Robert I want to thank him publicly because he really worked hard on it also but to see the children's faces right I almost
cried I was like don't lose it but to see their faces and their anticipation just to get inside the building and then the endless time they wanted to stay on the playground um it it was just it's worth it everything that we've gone through continue to go through it's worth it um
and the teachers are completely moved in which is really really nice and many of them have already um begun unpacking their RS and staging them um and then the other overall highlight for me is just another year of growth and change
it's my first year in Ferndale and uh full year in Ferndale and although it's been um es and flows right it's been a really really big learning opportunity and I'm so appreciative of the opportunity and I also want to talk about just thank you thank you all for
your support uh I I have not felt this before and I've been doing this a really long time and so it is refreshing and it also is um motivating to do the absolute best to make certain that this District shines um for what it is it really is a
diamond and I'm appreciative for the community and the support um so I'm going to say d as well um I was going to bring up I'm going to bring it up anyway the kickball game because I've been around a lot of years and I've gone to the last day like lunch in
barbecue I mean it's gone through a lot of iterations um I think this year's last day was probably the first time that everyone in attendance was smiling like there weren't like grumbly faces I mean so um I was The Unofficial
scorekeeper I'll have to admit that I stopped Counting after a while it was just like FMS is out here to annihilate everyone um UHS though did come dressed the best I'm just gonna say um and I it's been one heck of a year I mean I
don't think it's been nine months it feels like it's been nine years like we've had one heck of a year this year um with a lot of ups and downs and I too just want to extend immense appreciation to the cabinet to um superintendent and the deputy
superintendent because what we have gone through even though it seemed like a decade um it wasn't all torture I mean there were a few torturous moments um so I'm looking forward to next year where I'm hoping it's we're just riding the away
new building people are settled um those of you who work over the summer remember to take a break um because you're going to need it yeah got work to do uh 12 requests to go into close
session to disc negotiations uh with no okay so with superintendent Deputy superintendent and director of HR so I'll make a motion to go into close session to discuss discuss
negotiations with the board superintendent Deputy superintendent and HR second okay mooved by Sarah seconded by Mary roll call Mr
sheer yes yes yes yes yep yes yes thank you excuse me board if you don't mind I would love to get a photo of us today in our colors it's like a little in our what
it's like a little photo at at yes at 9:50