i am shouting because we have some technical difficulties with the microphones so we are all going to need to just speak up tonight um they are assuring me that the video will still pick up on our voices as long as we project so if we could just speak up a
little louder when it's our turn to talk that would be wonderful um I would like to welcome all of you to the Grand Rapids Public Schools Board of Education meeting today is Monday April 14th we appreciate your presence at this meeting
and we respectfully request that you turn off your cell phones and refrain from clapping cheering or making audible comments we invite you to make formal public comment during the designated times on either agenda items non-aggenda items or if you wish on both to do so
please make sure you fill out the comment cards which are right at the entrances both entrances um and submit them to the board assistant over here Julie Anderson or one of our public safety officers and comments are limited to three minutes
and also on those cards there is um a section where you mark if it's an agenda item or a non-aggenda item and there is a spot um Um oh right up at the top that asks if you are a student because we do want
students to be able to speak at the beginning of the meeting so they can get home at a decent time i now call this meeting to order and trustee Rodriguez can you take the role please yep all right listen up
everybody uh Trusty Kilpatre Trusty Moreno present trustee Melton present trusty Rodriguez is here uh Trustee Williamson present trusty Williams is present trustee Davis present vp Wade is excused and President
Davis here we have a forum do I have a motion to approve the agenda so move all in favor i any opposed okay agenda moves
forward and we have Dr love Lady Mitchell with us tonight uh Dr roby will be here in just a moment she's on her way traveling from out of state so um Dr love Lady can you lead us into celebrations please sure good evening
President Davis and distinguished board members we have three celebrations tonight to present to you i'd like to ask Director Jennifer Brock to come down jennifer Brock will share information on Sons of American Revolution Sergeant Moses Adams
Memorial Contest so come on down please thank you Dr love Lady Mitchell and board president board members i'm also inviting Eric um Vanderly um he is um going to actually about the
celebration this awesome opportunity for scholars absolutely and I'm explain excited to speak very briefly in front of you because I have the opportunity to introduce one of our teachers and her scholars who is here this evening i want to briefly speak on behalf of our three
scholar recipients the winners of the Sons of the American Revolution Sergeant Moses Adams Memorial Brochure uh one of our distinguished teachers Mrs sarah Dryer uh is the teacher of Miss Bedoya
at Shamut Hills um Miss Dryer is a 24-year veteran of GRPS and is described as being very passionate about sharing her knowledge and her own passion for her curriculum with her scholars uh we
also have with us this evening Miss Heather Lewis miss Heather Lewis is the teacher of Miss Dean and Mr harriet Jabi at CA Frost and Miss Lewis is described as being a very dedicated veteran teacher as well who's best known for her
innovative lessons and pardon me uh providing a safe and welcoming environment for all the scholars inside of her classroom uh on behalf of Mrs drier I'd like to congratulate her scholar Beatatrice G pedoya for her
third place award uh and her recognition that she earned for being an outstanding uh applicant uh and I'd also like to invite Miss Heather Lewis uh forward so that she can speak on behalf of her scholars and if I could please Miss
Lewis would you mind [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i'm just gonna stand whatever you're comfortable with um so as Eric said my name is Heather Lewis and I had a number
of scholars this year who chose to participate in a contest um given by the Sons of the American Revolution and they had to create a brochure about how the founding documents of our country has
impacted us um so if the students won first place was $100 second place was $75 third place was $50 and then if you the first place winner got to go to states so their brochure was sent to
state and then one of my students won state as well and now it's going into nationals uh with the opportunity to win like $750 extra dollars so I mean when money is tied to things kids are all going to
hoe about doing it and I don't blame them because I'm the same so uh we had a first and second place winner at CA Frost and we were all so excited so I'm sorry but our second place winner
Dominic if you want to stand up dominic's brochure was amazing um we did not bring it because I didn't realize I should have but uh actually right now the brochure is sitting in my classroom but Dominic went as far as not only
creating the brochure but doing some background research bringing in knowledge that we had learned about in US history with the Constitution the Declaration of Independence um even went as far as creating a little like a pull
tab and you pulled it down and then words came super cute uh and Dominic won uh $75 for that and then we had a first place winner also Chloe Dean and Chloe's was also amazing so
amazing that it won first place and $100 and then it won the state of Michigan worth $250 so she's already earned $350 from this um and we're looking forward to seeing if she wins nationals
so congratulations thank you for supporting i am shouting because we have some technical difficulties with the microphones so we are all going to need to just speak up tonight um they are
assuring me that the video will still pick up on our voices as long as we project so if we could just speak up a little louder when it's our turn to talk that would be wonderful um I would like to welcome all of you to the Grand Rapids Public Schools Board of Education
meeting today is Monday April 14th we appreciate your presence at this meeting and we respectfully request that you turn off your cell phones and refrain from clapping cheering or making audible comments we invite you to make formal public comment during the designated
times on either agenda items non-aggenda items or if you wish on both to do so please make sure you fill out the comment cards which are right at the entrances both entrances um and submit them to the board assistant over here Julie Anderson or
one of our public safety officers and comments are limited to three minutes and also on those cards there is um a section where you mark if it's an agenda item or a non-aggenda item and there is a spot
um Um oh right up at the top that asks if you are a student because we do want students to be able to speak at the beginning of the meeting so they can get home at a decent time i now call this meeting to order and trustee Rodriguez can you take the role
please yep all right listen up everybody uh Trustee Kilpatre Trusty Moreno present trustee Melton present trusty Rodriguez is here uh Trustee Williamson present trusty Williams present trustee Davis present
vp Wade is excused and President Davis here we have a forum do I have a motion to approve the agenda so moved all in favor i any
opposed okay agenda moves forward and we have Dr love Lady Mitchell with us tonight uh Dr roby will be here in just a moment she's on her way traveling from out of state so um Dr
love Lady can you lead us into celebration sleep sure good evening President Davis and distinguished board members we have three celebrations tonight to present to you i'd like to ask Director Jennifer Brat to come down jennifer Brock will share information on
Sons of American Revolution Sergeant Moses Adams Memorial Bchure contest so come on down please thank you Dr love Lady Mitchell and board president board members i'm also
inviting Eric um Vanderly um he is um going to actually about the celebration this awesome opportunity for scholars absolutely and I'm excited to speak very briefly in front of you because I have the opportunity to introduce one of our
teachers and her scholars who is here this evening i want to briefly speak on behalf of our three scholar recipients the winners of the Sons of the American Revolution Sergeant Moses Adams Memorial Brochure uh one of our distinguished
teachers Mrs sarah Dryer uh is the teacher of Miss Bedoya at Shamut Hills um Miss Dryer is a 24-year veteran of GRPS and is described as being very passionate about sharing her knowledge
and her own passion for her curriculum with her scholars uh we also have with us this evening Miss Heather Lewis miss Heather Lewis is the teacher of Miss Dean and Mr harriet Jabi at CA Frost and Miss Lewis is described as being a very
dedicated veteran teacher as well who's best known for her innovative lessons and pardon me uh providing a safe and welcoming environment for all the scholars inside of her classroom uh on behalf of Mrs drier I'd like to
congratulate her scholar Beatatrice G bedoya for her third place award uh and her recognition that she earned for being an outstanding uh applicant uh and I'd also like to invite Miss Heather Lewis uh forward so that she can speak
on behalf of her scholars and if I could please Miss Lewis would you mind [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I'm just gonna stand whatever you're comfortable with um so as Eric said my
name is Heather Lewis and I had a number of scholars this year who chose to participate in a contest um given by the Sons of the American Revolution and they had to create a brochure about how the
founding documents of our country has impacted us um so if the students won first place was $100 second place was $75 third place was $50 and then if you the first place
winner got to go to states so their brochure was sent to state and then one of my students won state as well and now it's going into nationals uh with the opportunity to win like $750 extra dollars so I mean when money
is tied to things kids are all going to hoe about doing it and I don't blame them because I'm the same so uh we had a first and second place winner at CA Frost and we were all so excited so I'm sorry but our second place winner
Dominic if you want to stand up dominic's brochure was amazing um we did not bring it because I realized I should have but uh actually right now the brochure is sitting in my classroom but
Dominic went as far as not only creating the brochure but doing some background research bringing in knowledge that we have learned about in US history with the Constitution the Declaration of Independence um even went as far as creating a little
like a pull tab and you pulled it down and then words came super cute uh and Dominic won uh $75 for that and then we had a first place winner also Chloe Dean and Chloe's was also amazing so
amazing that it won first place and $100 and then it won the state of Michigan worth $250 so she's already earned $350 from this um and we're looking forward to seeing if she wins nationals
so congratulations thank you for supporting your students in that project and good job back there they're all wonderful my students and thank you for using your teacher voice so we have two additional celebrations so we're going to ask you to stay right
there actually and the next one is teeing up one book one city yes so we have Nan uh who is our ELA uh supervisor she's going to come down and she's going to talk about the excellent work that was
done around one Brooklyn city thank you thank you Dr lovely Mitch thank you board thank you thank you thank you Miss Black so I had the exciting privilege oh thank you i had the exciting privilege
of uh partnering again with the Grand Rapids Public Library in the One Book one city project um which was an amazing partnership and um I have guests here um to share with us tonight but first I'll
make a quick connection to our priority scholar outcomes of engaging um in uh literacy proficiency uh reducing the academic dispar disparencies excuse me for our black and Latino students and
increasing student empowerment belonging and agency i don't know how much time we have to the next yeah and a connection also to our strategic themes in this project and today with us we have Aaron
Hart from the Grand Rapids Public Library to share with us tonight so Aaron go ahead yeah oh I was going to lean into the mic but it's still not working all right um so yeah thank you for having me um the library has been partnering with GRPS in this program for
over a decade um and it's really really unique I would say as a program um not just you know a lot of places do these sort of one book one community things but to do it fully integrated with the schools to have every single fifth grader 62 classes reading the same book
they're all experiencing the same author talk um that's amazing and it's a reach that we would not be able to get on our own with the library uh so it's really great that we're able to partner with the schools you know bring this book bring this sort of celebration to the kids and every year it's just amazing to
see amazing to see the work the students do um on AR at the library we get to see the excitement from everyone um you know frequently we'll have kids come in in like sixth or seventh grade and they'll see a book that was a previous one book one city book and they'll be like "Oh yeah I met that author." Uh and it's a
really lovely shared experience to be able to have so we're always excited to do and love that this partnership continues oh oh yeah and so um we also have to thank of course uh all our partnerships as well our sponsors for this program so all listed up there our library foundation Michigan Arts and
Culture Council WGIE Foundation Independent Bank MSAD Foundation and Brad and Gail Castle these are all people who have donated their own money organizations that support this program um because they're so enthusiastic about it and they really see the impact of it and again this is um the library is very
excited about this always and we love that we get to continue to do it and this year we had um the book that was chosen by Barry and Johnson and the title is playing the cards that you're dealt and uh we have over
2525 students scholars reading the story and as Erin mentioned it 62 classrooms throughout the district and we had over,400 blog posts that were all related to the story and um we had an
amazing amazing connection with the students and the scholars throughout the district um hundreds of posts each day that we monitored and the connection that the students made um was amazing and
heartwarming and uh every day when I logged on to read those posts um I uh not only got a smile um but I also like I said it was just heartwarming the connections that the students not only made to their own lives but to um to
their friends lives or to to each other's lives or other books that they had read uh it was an amazing experience and I really um am thankful that we were able to make this partnership happen and uh the students not only um posted in
the blog during school hours but we noticed they were part um they were posting in the evening and on the weekend so my colleague messaged me one night and she said "Man they're posting um after hours." And I and I had to
think about it for a second and and I wondered what she was getting at i said "Oh really?" And and uh I I texted a couple question marks and and she said "That's good right?" And I said "That's really good." So they were um they were
posting on the blogs after school hours and we were really excited um so not only were they posting in the blog but they also created posters biographies diaramas um and we have one of our teachers here that's going to share a
little bit about how the project impacted her um we have some students from Buchanan there that were interviewed we have um students at Congress that created body biographies and we were able to decorate the space when the author came to visit with all
scholar created materials and uh it was welcoming and exciting for him um the scholars at Burton use technology in some new and creative ways to create things we have Burton students also trying grits for
the first time um because grits were mentioned in the story um I have a video of um of the project uh and I also want to give a teacher from CA Frost a couple of minutes or a minute to share how the
project impacted her and her students as well my students at CA Frost um really approached this book with a lot of empathy and understanding uh in that we started the story it's got a lot of tough topics and conversations and um
spoke about addictions in there and as fifth graders some might think like that's such a hard conversation to have but we started it by simply stating that we don't always know what's going on behind the closed doors of others houses even if they're our best friends and we just don't know and so we really took to
heart understanding that we don't always know what's going on and so when they approached those blog posts they really had that thought process behind them and so they made sure that as they were doing their blog post and I don't know if any of mine were the ones that were after hours but I do know that that they
definitely took to heart and really made sure that like they were being kind and considerate while they were having those conversations and when they would log back in the following week they got so excited when another scholar from a different school would answer or respond back to them and it was a really nice
conversation to be able to have with everybody across the city and I unfortunately had to miss out due to a family emergency on the author visit and one of my students came in today and said "Miss West you're not going to believe what you missed." And they were so excited to share that author visit
with me even though I was not there it was the best so I think that it's a really good book and maybe one of my favorites because it is so deep and it the author makes it so like people can understand this people
know because it has happened to them before this is This is It's like The author makes it sound like they they don't The author doesn't make it like super like sad or depressing or
anything but not all Happshes i just This book relates to me and so many others that I know really well so I think this is a magnificent book my favorite part of playing is like when
Jalone and I'll play um spades i just think that Mr johnson describes like each like each round/book of the game of space so vividly it feels like I'm inside that
game like I playing a game with them part of playing card is the vlogging because you get to like say what you think about the book and how good it is
um said playing the cards your dad as in dealing with your life and kind of just playing it out and doing your best to play fairly i think the other chosen title for adult
is because you deal with it so um I think I think the reason the author chose his title is because um I think it means like you have to deal with the things you're given or
like anything that happens and not you can either be the bigger person or somebody that doesn't I think I'm a good friend but I can sometimes not be a very good friend because I can mess up sometimes and be
mean and sometimes I'll make fun of them without realizing that I really hurt them i think I'm a good friend because I treat some of my friends differently than I treat the other ones like sometimes if I have a friend that's a girl I'm going keep them more respectful
cuz me and my friends like my best friend uh we roast each other for fun uh just like Jamal and do uh we roast each other for fun but I if I if we're like new to being friends like I just had a new friend i wouldn't roast them cuz I
don't know if they play like that so I would learn how me and my friend play and I would uh uh respect what they want me to do like uh my friend respects me roasting him cuz he roasted me back sometimes but uh if they if one of my
friends don't want me to roast them then I'd be like "Okay." So yeah I think I respect people and how they want me to treat them [Applause] [Music] [Applause]
thank you yeah and I have a I have a fifth grader this year and she I know all about this book she loves the project um but I just thought it'd be fun to highlight that card project that they made when they were all that was on the author day correct yeah can you just
share a little bit about that yeah so on the the day of the author's visit we had a little bit of downtime so we had the students create their own um playing card design and then the teachers send those back to me at the Franklin campus
here and we um were narrowing down i gave them the date of April 18th so we'll narrow down the selection and then here in Franklin campus I'm going to uh display those with a QR code and we'll vote um and then we can um make everyone
a set of playing cards here in house actually um we can print playing cards so that each classroom will get their own set of playing cards with that design we also have a video that our communications department made with author speaking i don't think we have
time for that one where are we at do you want to just um send that to our emails and we can post on the website probably okay yeah for sure thank you thank you so much for sharing and you do have a copy of the
book that Miss Ally made us yeah yeah and the book itself is is a great book so thank you thank you everyone thank you thank you our last celebration will be ushered in by um Chief Larry Johnson and I also think I see Dr ledron Roby
and so we're going to shift as Chief Johnson comes down good evening President Davis Dr mitchell Dr roby other distinguished uh board members uh today we have with you Justin Walker the athletic director at Union High School and Marcus Harris athletic
director at Ottawa Hills High School who will be going over the accomplishment from our winter sports uh to just highlight some of the accomplishments of our scholar athletes some of those athletes are here with us tonight others are either studying or at a practice somewhere but uh but they will highlight
some of the achievements of this uh past winter uh good evening uh Superintendent Dr roby board president Davis and our esteemed board members uh thank you for the opportunity for me and Mr harris to come share some of the highlights that we had from this past winter season uh
Union High School we had four student athletes that were named to the OK Gold uh first team all conference uh then we also had two student uh scholar athletes excuse me that receive okay gold honorable mention recognition as well in addition to those uh achievements we
also had a great winner where achievements and records were being set both at the building level and the state level the first uh scholar was Major Vance who took first place at the OK East diving championship and broke a long-standing record at Union High
School that had been in place since 1988 uh this is an incredible achievement and we are very proud of Major uh unfortunately he was not able to be here tonight uh the next student Sam Kick who is here Sam uh Sam made history here at Union High School performing uh in the
division 1 state wrestling tournament uh at the finals at Fort Field competing at uh 106 lbs he earned a overall fifth place which secured all state honors and he also recorded his 100th win uh career-wise which is truly a tough feat
in the wrestling world so Sam uh had a great season we're looking forward to next year and hopefully with a repeat of that next we have Vivian Ejac uh V Vivian is now a current record holder of two major records one uh being
uh both at Union and with the state of Michigan uh last season Vivian recorded 15 blocks in one game which uh was a Union record as well as secured her name on the state record board uh and then this past season uh again Vivian decided
to add her name to the record books again against Kelloggsville she recorded 27 rebounds in one game adding her name again to the record books both for Union High School in the state uh we are incredibly proud of Vivian um and her achievement uh in basketball so for two
records to at the state and the high school level we are very appreciative of her hard work so thank you we are incredibly proud of our scholar athletes in the union athletic program um but we know we could not do it without the support of our staff and our board that supports our athletic
departments and you all show to events our kids notice and they appreciate and our families notice and appreciate as well uh so thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you at some spring events and I'll turn it over to Mr harris thanks Justin good evening Superintendent Dr roby
President Davis esteemed board members thank you for having us here as I'm going to uh talk a little bit about some of the winter highlights from the Ottawa Hills Bengals athletics program uh we we compete in the OK White League and so uh during the winter season we had 10
allconerence athletes in one honorable mention that encompasses everything from bowling boys and girls basketball and also boys swimming our boys swim team had another uh successful season which they went uh five and one in dual meets
and so they end up finishing second in second place in the conference uh we had conference champions of Amando Huner in the 200 free and Wyatt Jack in the 500 free and then also our 400 free relay team were conference champions uh we had
six allconerence swimmers uh Wyatt Jakis Euan Jakis Amando Huner Ruben Overman Tristan Stock and Christian Ramos uh we also had three regional divers that qualified for regionals uh with Isaiah
Battle Juan Villa and Christian Ramos and also we had several state qualifiers uh in swimming as well uh that represented the 200 free 100 fly uh also the 500 free and then the 200 free relay and the 400 free relay as well that
competed at the state level also for for our boys swim team we had academic allstate and academic all-American athletes who are Amando Huner Ruben Overman and Ram Rei and Noah Stitler uh they also earned a bronze level from the
NISCA scholar scholar team uh with a GPA a team GPA of 3.9 3.293 and so that's the national intercolastic swim coaches association uh in which they won that national award as well uh girls basketball enjoyed it
most successful season in about 14 years uh a lot of that had to do with Samaj Robinson she's she's a senior you may may have heard of her she's been in a M live quite a few times uh Samaj was voted MI Live player of the week she was also nomin also on the ballot for Mive
Player of the Week five times during the winter sports season uh she was selected honorable mention for the Grand Rapids area dream team for girls basketball she'll be attending college uh for track and basketball at a college to be determined
uh SamJ Robertson and Gianna Lamato Fischer also was awarded the BCAM Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan for the outstanding student athlete award for having a 4.0 GPA in participating in basketball for four years uh the girls basketball team I
said had his most successful season in 14 years and our coach Emily Gusard uh she was a candidate for regional coach of the year through BCAM as well uh our bowling team uh made significant progress this year which we had 17 bowlers on the roster finished seventh
place in the bowling regionals and we had two allconerence teams and we got a young team and everyone will be coming back next year so our coach is very excited for the bowling team next season so uh thank you again for having us here appreciate for what all all the things
that you do to support Ottawa Hills Athletics and Union Athletics and look forward to a great spring season thank you [Applause] that will conclude their report and uh just uh just good things are going on in athletics uh elementary participation at
all-time high and we we look forward to that continuing in spring sports as well as I know school participation is increasing there and I just want to say with Vivian Ejac she had to wait a long time to get her her validations and her confirmations from the state so just
thank you for your patience and thank you for the outstanding job want to thank all the athletes but for their families as well who may be represented here today but but she had to wait and uh for that record to be confirmed and uh and she had a lot of patience and uh patience with us in trying to get confirmed so we thank you for that thank
you [Applause] okay we will move forward with the report of the student representatives can I start with Alipia please try to speak up as much as you can um hi
i go to Central and recently we had our job fair we had a couple schools attend i don't remember all of them but I know South Whip Southwest Ottawa Monastery went of course Innovation Central um some upcoming events we have we have our
um food drive coming up this third mold pantry coming up this Thursday I think or next Thursday if you have any questions about that you can um find it on our school's Facebook and you can go stop by get free food from the
GRTC um we have the JRTC cadet ball coming up and we have prom and of course graduation everything's going really fast but we have a lot of stuff coming up thank you Alia fabiola um hi I'm Fabiola
and I'm a senior at City High um we also have a couple updates one of which is that um 35 middle school senior class was able to raise a little bit over $20,000 to go over uh school events um one of which is a senior class trip uh we're going to be going to Chicago and
later Six Flags so um it took a lot of work to be able to raise that much money so that's something we're proud of um another thing is we also have prom so we're it's at uh Thousand Oaks Golf Club on Friday April 25th so we're all
waiting patiently or impatiently like me for um prom that night and then finally city seniors uh last official day of school is May 1st and then after that um it's going to be about a month of IV exams so we're also preparing for that
thank you okay we are now up to the public comment for board agenda items only um I see Miss Anderson is checking to see if there's any more cards right
now i don't believe we have any with board agenda items all right now I got to be loud all right so um we've got a couple committee meetings coming up um ad hoc facilities committee meeting is scheduled for May 12th at 5:30 in the library building
conference room 112 and then the finance committee meeting is scheduled on Tuesday May 27th um at 4:30 here in the administration building auditorium that's my report moving on to committee chair reports um
Trustee Williams can you give us the finance report please sure um so we met on March 24 and at that meeting we discussed some action items that have been brought to the board so we'll be um looking to vote on those tonight with
regards to the purchasing agenda and some donations additionally we uh talked about our um February 2025 financial statements and then we uh wrapped up with um some board So we did some school
finance 101 training any questions okay trusty Williams do you have a report for ad hoc preparing yes well we um I can give a little update from um our meeting that we had
just and we also had a meeting just um earlier today so um and it's um just a little bit of overlap with a couple of things I'll bring up so we will be talking uh there will be an Aberdine community meeting that is tomorrow so um just board members if you want to go out
and support that as well as well as the community um you can find that information on our web page of course we have been discussing um between the last meeting and this meeting um some policy changes that we needed to get cleared up i think we have some language that we
like as a committee that will come forward uh to the board and will be at president's day's discretion whether that's at a work session or at a board meeting when we will um actually do our final vote on that policy um and then we also
uh there were tours done between uh the last meeting and this meeting that uh of six weeks and so some board members wanted to tour six so we did uh have that opportunity in place as well as today we got updates that 6B is on
schedule and just as well just slightly under budget so that is great news um with regards to Cindy and then we did um get some had a chance to just chat with staff about some changes that they're
going to be making to their procedural policies that they wanted to make us aware of and um as they actually they're kind of giving us a a a preview of what that would be like before they ask the uh ask the full board to take a look at
that but um they wanted some input from the ad hoc committee and just kind of to know what um we would be open to doing and some uh different policy changes they are proposing I should say procedural changes they're proposing and
so we will uh get those as a board they will uh get the to us through Dr roles as they get that completed on their end but it was again just an early look and get some front-end feedback from board about uh the changes that they are
planning to make so look for that in the future okay thank you Trusty a couple things going on here okay um we did have two scholars in the um Oh it that that's my fault they did
check the right box so I'm going to go back to public comment to get those scholars so um Trusty Rodriguez can you read about the public comment for us absolutely thank you all right during public comment
individuals will be invited one at a time to the podium to address the board before beginning your comment please state your full name at the time we'll start the timer allowing each individual three minutes to make their comment um you will need to complete your comment time upon being notified that the three
minutes have passed again the timer is uh right behind Trusty Moreno uh board members do not respond to public comment concerns will be brought to the attention of the appropriate staff we value your input and thank you for sharing with us okay can I call forward
Devonte Taylor please um wherever you feel comfortable since the mics aren't working if There you go come on up and that isn't going to work so you don't even have a loud
my name is Devonte Taylor and I'm a fifth and I'm a fifth grader at Mick Elementary i enjoy coming to the STEM program because I can tell them what we're working on in class and receive extra help mr child's art
teacher helps me understand it more and breaks it down for me thank you and some Marley Low hello my name is Samarulo and I am a third grader at Millet Park
Elementary i love the kids count program because it it is fun and I get to learn to I get to learn after school also it helps me with the
math and silence [Applause] yes and again I apologize that I did not pay attention to that box that said you
were students i'm glad somebody caught that okay we will move forward now to the GRPS foundation report good evening everyone to use our teacher voices let's hear again okay very good well good to see everyone back after
spring break dr robie board of trustees um we've got a lot of stuff going on at the foundation and I myself just got back from a national conference um in um Knoxville Tennessee with um I think there were over 80 education foundations
from across the country so lots of learning opportunities um and lots of new things that we want to um just see you know if you've met one education foundation you've met one education foundation so many school districts are so different but there's still some really good learning opportunities um
and actually as of this morning um I am now the vice president for the Michigan Education Foundation so it's really great for us to you know be connected on the Michigan level um and just kind of sharing best practices in the state of Michigan and really how can we continue
to support um our public schools so I wanted to share just a quick synopsis of what's been happening this spring and kind of the whole school year as we're getting ready um a teacher told me recently we're six Mondays away till the last uh the end of the school year so
that's some quick perspective um we have uh given away 35 spring uh teacher and principal grants um just this last round which is over 70 grants in total um and I'm really excited that um I don't know
how many of you went to see the Mean Girls Junior at Union High School that was something that we helped to support um so there's been so many great projects like that and we look forward to we want to double that um for next year uh so it's been over $50,000 that we've granted to teachers and principles
this year stephanie was that through a teacher grant the the it was musical yeah yeah yeah it was um and we'll actually be celebrating with those students on Thursday we're going to go in and bring some treats and just tell them that they've been doing such a great job so um we are going we actually
this week we're purchasing a piano lab for the Elder Middle School which will then be transferring over to Ottawa Hills which is a brand new great program i'm very excited to fund that as well as we purchased a Tony um for Grand Rapids Monastery and Innovation Central to round out um their musical instrument
program so um we're also organizing four playground beautifification projects with community partners and we put it out to all the principles and said "Do you are you interested in us coming out and just cleaning up playgrounds and um redoing hopscotches and some of that stuff?" And um I think within an hour we
had eight principles apply so I'm like "Okay great that's we're really excited about doing that." So uh last thing to share we're six weeks away from MindShare that's the largest fundraiser that we do um we've raised over $100,000 in sponsorships so far um we expect that event to bring in about
$250,000 um which obviously goes back back into our programs so we'll be doing some strategic planning um refresh this summer uh in the past we've invited board of education members to join us um we always want to look at like what else can we be doing um and a couple of
things that we're considering is inviting one of our teachers of the year to be an adviser for our board going forward um and as well as looking at how is our student representation for the foundation board um even through our grant making as well so um that is my
report for tonight any questions board members thank you for all that okay next on our agenda is the superintendence report dr roby nope um
you have conference report out from the National Association of School Boards with um Trustee Milton and then I can kind of point to um you want me to start yeah yeah so um over spring break we had the opportunity
to attend the National um schoolboard association conference um that was held in Atlanta Georgia and this is school board members as well as um superintendent and district level leadership from across the nation coming
together around various topics um and so um some of the kind of things that were the highlights or the things that uh that we were able to see in many of the strands of our the different presentations that we went to is things around of course improved communications
between um board and constituents um between board and superintendent between board and board members also um kind of the political climate that we are currently in and how are how does governance um impact that and how our
board members kind of staying to make sure that they're staying ab breast with some of those issues that are impacting their their school systems and then also making sure there's outreach to community um other kind of topics that rose to the um the top of
the the top of the list I think included also um engagement overall like your community and how do you continue to kind of be creative in community engagement but there's also things like the special education and the laws
around that as well as um think the kind of after effects of co and and other kind items what was really interesting um at this conference we had the opportunity and I'm not going to recall her name um to meet with a
um a par Olympiad who um had gone through college and had an experience of she had given her time to the military shortly after um 911 and had gone you
know um to Baghdad and some other places and during her first maybe two months there her leg um was blown off during u just being in the in that country at
the time and just her her grit and her determination that she's run marathons and she's competed I think in four different Olympia um Olympics since that time as well as um um kind of iron woman
they call it Iron Man but I'm going to say iron woman because she clearly was that and I don't remember um Trusty Melton if you remember her her name off the top she has a book and um it was just just listening to her story and how she did not give up and it's like to
have something like that so tragically happen and how you recreate and find your purpose through tragedy and I thought that was kind of phenomenal other um yeah I didn't write down her name there yeah I took the opportunity to go to all the board governance sessions
that I could um just was really inspired one of the things that stuck out to me was this concept that we as the board together are the stewards of one of the most significant pools of public resources in our country and that the working out of democracy right here in this room is one of the most
transformative things we can do so I was just really encouraged by that and then the time and so I have lots of notes and some things I'll pass on to you guys um but the session ended I thought this was funny with Kevin Bacon who's not even an educator but he was really inspiring and talked about how when kids are making
art they're not making trouble i love that concept of just like not because I worry about the trouble but because I love tapping into who kids are and that concept was really just brought brought forth by some fun songs and things like that but um just talking about the importance of creativity and the and the
arts in our programming and um how often that's uh you know quick to get cut and in this kind of new era of education uh to make sure that we're guardians of those things so just exciting time to be part of an educational system and grateful for that opportunity
questions okay yes superintendent report all right so good evening everybody i hope that everyone has had a um opportunity to recharge over the last um week and a day
and you're ready for that last stretch it's um and I'll use kind of a marathon since we were just talking about the par Olympia it's like that we're at mile 2122 where you can see kind of the home stretch and this is probably one of the most exciting times as our um scholar
representatives were talking about the many things that are taking place at their schools um wrapping up that senior year as well as prom and all of those kind of fun celebrations and so um we are doing similar and again just wanting and hoping that our school year because
it's been a great year but it continues kind of with that energy as we want to finish strong and um to get to June um our first report actually is related to our certified enrollment from our spring count and I'm going to ask Director
Rodney Lewis to come up and to provide an overview of that student enrollment count day good evening Superintendent Roby President Davis and distinguished board of trustees i'm just going to hit
the video mute right i got it all right so I want to share with you guys the the spring enrollment data that we had uh from this past uh spring count uh strate connected to strategic theme number six creating a culture of trust
collaboration and stewardship so kind of going to outline the process that we go through and student data services to support this process with the buildings um so uh knowing that we have some new board members we went
through this process uh in the fall as well as last year but uh the week prior to account day which is February 12th this past year um we started gathering schools began gathering data on their uh synergy which is our student data
platform that we utilize uh they put various reports general collection reports uh things of that nature and then we have uh spring count again which was February 12th uh so we want to ensure on that day that all students are
in their seats uh learning um not on field trips for the most part we want to make sure everybody's there those kids that are not there we want to make sure we get everyone excused as many as possible um and then we have a process that we go through um that is called a
10-day rule and a 30-day rule and I'll explain that a little bit more shortly but on February 14th building level personnel be they began to uh look at their county absent reports which kind of highlights the kids that were out on
February 12th and then they look at the dates when they may have returned or may not have returned those students that they have some challenges with that they haven't seen the return on they begin to make phone calls and try to track these kids get them back into uh the building
a little bit more difficult with the secondary schools because we're managing classes of 1 through six or one through eight versus um all day uh buildings such as elementaryaries um and then so on February 21st um buildings received
their count day packets u from SDS and they began to uh look at their general collections again and and see who should remain on the list or who should come off the list um and then February 28th we have the 10-day rule uh so the 10-day rule applies to anyone that was uh
absent and was unexcused they have 10 days to get back into the buildings and get uh their attendance taken um and they must be present so for high schools or uh middle schools they have to be they have to come back in every class
that they miss not just that day march 14th is a 30-day rule so all kids that were um out excused um absent but excused they have to be back within 30 days um and the same as
the 10-day rule they have to make sure that they attend all courses that they have scheduled and then final call countday pack is our due back from the buildings to student data services on March 21st um and from there we start beginning the initial certification
process that process uh begins on March 19th so all data gets uploaded to uh we call it SEPY which is the center for performance and and and information and then the final uh site that we actually do the final
certification um is all SEPY but that's a week later on March 26 and so everything gets transmitted uploaded to the SEPY site and we also have to deliver um handd deliver packets to the ISD auditors as well the ISD auditors uh
begins the process of looking at our data and beginning the the desk audit process um and then there's a 45day rule that's extended for kids that may have been suspended u for some very serious violations
so our our spring count data um our number was 13,429.12 and that's full-time equivalent um which is we call it FTE so this is not actual headcount headcount is all the kids that are enrolled in the school fte are students that are
enrolled but they may not be full-time students such as a kid that may um have a class with GRCC at dual enrollment they're not going to count a full 1.0 or kid that may be uh a kindergarten kid
that may not go all day but they go half day so they get.5 versus 1.0 so that's kind of how they equate the fulltime FTE um and again what I said the next step for auditors once they get this packets uh back from us and get everything
uploaded they begin the desk audit so in the fall they do a a field audit where they actually come out to random buildings and do um all the attendance work at the building have a conversation with the building staff in the spring it's more geared towards okay we send
the data to them and they sit at their desk and they uh review the packets that we we submit to them and then they give a a final adjustment number uh that typically in the spring comes sometime in July
any questions i have a few um what is it um are all of these state mandates or there are things in there that we are doing above and beyond or separate from what state mandated uh the the process is state mandates so you get
a lot of audit different audit forms that you have to submit and they have to go back to the ISC auditor as well as SEI okay sei just needs a number i as the auditors need the full package so they can look across the board and do their audits so nothing in that timeline is us doing separate from what statement
is and then with the 10day rules um do what is the purpose of that if a student's not there on count day but they're they're recorded within that 10day rule or whatever other day rule does that then count towards our count with the state so So if they're if they're back within the 10 days we get
counted FT a full FTE for that kid if they don't come back they they don't get counted for that that day if they're elementary kid like or for a secondary kid it would be if they came back for like three classes they get credit for those three classes yeah but if they miss the other three they don't get
credit so it's like a makeup basically okay how do the FTEES affect our funding and whatnot from the state so spring count is a 10% funding uh for next year uh fall count is a 90% funding and dual enrollment students don't count for
full-time equivalency they they have a prorated percentage okay interesting okay thank you any other questions all right thank you thank you okay we can move on oh I'm sorry Dr we
we have Oh this would be No it's action item that's you okay uh we can move on to action items so owner's re recommendation are we going to have Mr johnson speak i don't
remember so um if you recall last month we had a conversation and there was a presentation around owners rep representation um Mr johnson are you able to just give an overview of the owner's rep conversation and I know that last month Mr smart um provided an
overview but just kind of as a refresh of what the process was good evening again uh the conversation on the owner rep owners rep I think last month and um ADOT committee as well as uh I think some information have been brought forward to you where uh four u
individuals four companies have put in for um an interest in being the owner's rep and uh several projects that uh we have upcoming as to as what we're going to do with vacant uh properties uh we brought a recommendation back uh to the
board uh in terms of who we thought would be uh the best fit for this particular uh project this first round of projects and we uh we presented that information and action the board to move forward uh with uh with the recommendation that we brought forward
mr johnson if you could just highlight really quick kind of some of the priorities in selecting um the purply entity that you recommended we uh we utilized a uh a rubric uh and there was uh several individuals on the committee uh where a rubric was uh used uh we
scored uh off of a uh the provided documentations from each company after the scoring of that u uh there were uh the interviews we all interviewed uh and scored separately those uh those scores were then merged together uh where the
um we would then rank the candidates and although we did not select the top uh receiver of the points uh we we selected the uh the uh individual the company that was in number two we thought was the best fit uh looking at uh past projects uh the availability of staff to
uh work uh with the with other partners in the community uh being able to work with us the district in terms of uh reaching our community our the goals that we're trying to reach as it relates to the project as well do I have a motion to approve the
owner's recommendation i have a question okay um could you in just really brief summary um following the approval of the owner's rep whoever it is whoever we decide on what are the like immediate next steps for the district the board in
regards to working with well surely we're going to go back as a as a team uh the facilities and operations team uh to begin to meet with the uh the the company selected uh to lay out what our pri priorities are and how we want to approach these projects and uh and then
from that point uh come back um to the superintendent uh with uh with how we will approach in terms of uh best best fit now once the uh once the company is on uh on board there'll be some opportunities of some community engagement work uh where community
individuals will have uh some input as well in terms of uh what's right for the neighborhood what's right for a particular project uh again we have two projects uh that we're looking at right now and that is Alexander and Stocky and then we will uh make adjustments from
there down the road if other properties become available uh and so we'll look at uh what the recommendations are by giving them some guidelines in terms of what we want to have happen with those properties and surely the board will have some input in that and just to clarify and the owner's rep is going to
represent the district in whatever properties not just the ones you've identified any properties the district that that is correct we've expanded uh originally when we put the RFP when we talked about the RFP it was just one partic those two particular properties and then we expanded if some others come
up then they would continue to represent us in those uh properties that fit thank you thank you so along that that same kind of line of questioning is this owner rep that we choose going to be facilitating all of the work moving forward with our FMP or
just maybe a few for just the vacant properties that we're working on right now just those properties as we bring up properties uh uh as this board superintendent make recommendation to this board in terms of what properties we want to uplift and uh and move forward with and they would represent for that particular property all right
thank you mr johnson you said that uh the the contract let me say the word contract stop me if that's the wrong language uh has the two current buildings so Stocking and then Alexander but now has potential to create is there
like an evaluation to see that they're doing the things that they say they're going to do especially from like the engagement standpoint absolutely we we will evaluate as we go to make sure that again our goals and objectives being met and they're living to uh the contract that we put together to make sure that
those uh those are bullet points or practices are being followed as we would want them to follow and then I just have to add one more um can you just confirm that there has been with this that there will be a a conflict of interest clause there the
the RFP did list a conflict of interest and whatever company is selected they will have to uh uh move forward with a with a conflict of interest statement and uh bring that to us as well and those will be evaluated through our legal department as well could we just define um by conflict of
in contra conflict of interest clause could we define what we mean by that uh I think it's Thomas is here he can help me give the legal term of that but uh because I'm not a lawyer but uh if there's if there's a conflict uh with with the company uh that would have a direct impact on this particular on this
project or any projects moving forward uh it is our hope that that company will reveal what that conflict is so we as a board have an opportunity you as a board have an opportunity to evaluate to see if it's in the best interest to move forward with that particular company on that project
yep all right i got a C+ i I do have one one final question i'm so sorry um and I I apologize because I missed the the larger conversation at the last meeting we had about this but um so when we vote this is my first I'm
sure many of our first times you know choosing voting on a on a you know owner's rep is the the RFP process right they they've said "Okay you know they've seen the RFP and they are positive that they can kind
of fulfill our needs is that going to be different than from a contract that we uh get into with this uh company and then do we have to also um uh I guess vote on that as well no the is the RFP
it's all one and the same it's all one and the same we we're bringing them we have brought them on board saying that they will meet the needs that we have now and moving forward with additional projects that we so desire okay if I can add um yeah it's following our outlined
board um priorities around you know these are the things and then the commitment to with those two properties to have the community engagement and then so it's it's a real estate person that's in essence what it is and so um currently
these are buildings that were meant for schools and so we also want to make sure that we are um looking to see what are the other opportunities that are available and this goes very closely in alignment with our overall um FMP of how
do we repurpose buildings that they're also community value and community ad and so what what can we do that would be in alignment with that and then bringing those recommendations forward along with the engagement and other things to say
it can be this or you know because of the priorities around housing or the priorities around additional space um with uh community kind of space this is what we're recommending and this is what the price point might be for that to
give an I just as a suggestion but they will be doing that research and kind of project managing that to bring it forward okay does that help are I feel like you're asking are we approving the that we use this company
or the contract or is it one yeah yes that that is more what I'm asking i understand the the RFP process a little bit no it's okay um I Yeah because I'm just confused yeah are we voting on the company and then saying
"All right and now we're going to you know now JRPs is going to finalize the contract and then do that." Okay okay perfect we um again just this is after the RSC we have to decide which of these companies to go with and then once we've
done that there will be uh some fine tuning in the contract of what actual work will be done and then that is what they will and you know some legal ease like what if they're not meeting what we need and stuff like that termination of contract all that stuff will be in there and what our outcomes that we're
expecting from them as well that stuff will be in the actual contract but the RFP and What we're voting on tonight is indeed the opportunity to go with to start that conversation with the company from those from their recommendation perfect all right yep that's what I was
looking for thank you so much thank you does anyone feel comfortable to um give a motion to approve the owner's re recommendation motion support okay all in favor say I i any opposed
okay thank you thank you um next up is our purchasing agenda are there any questions do I have a motion to approve the purchasing agenda so move second
second we're going to arm in all in favor say I i any oppose okay motion carries next up on our agenda is the consent agenda grouping do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda
some move all in favor say I i any opposed motion carries okay moving on to um discussion items board president announcements just a couple of things i
tried to uh make sure all of you knew before we started the meeting but um these green sticky notes are our parking lot notes so um you can feel free to fill those out with things that aren't on the agenda that come to mind um so
that we don't deter from our conversation and um getting things done and then just bring them to me um before you leave and I'll gather those together and make sure we address those at some point um for those of you in the
audience that was uh one of our trustees ideas and I we're hoping to just kind of move our meetings forward in a more successful way and not get off track um we do have a pretty solid idea of
coffee with the board um we had talked about keeping those at uh 6 to 7:30 and they will be quarterly so we have dates of uh May 6th September
2nd and December 2nd for sure may 6th um Baxter Community Center is set for that um September 2nd uh I'm not 100% positive but I think it's going to be at Kids Food
Basket and then December 2nd um same thing we're pretty sure it'll be at Gilda's Club so both of those had offered for us to use that space for free which is wonderful and we will represent each quadrant of our city that
way um if you are not able to open the materials from Deborah Keys right we did figure out a way to navigate that craig helped us out with that so reach out to me if you cannot open those um and our
board norms are definitely going to have to be another work session topic because I'm getting a lot of mixed signals um so I mean it's all good things we all want to make sure our norms are solid and um we'll get there though just a reminder
that if you want things added to the agenda for committee meetings please bring them to the committee chair and not directly to staff um and the committee chair will work with staff to figure out what's on the agenda um same
with regular board meetings you know to come to me and um we have policy around all of that and then exciting is there is the board brief in front of you i have it up here in four different languages if you want to see the other
languages um that is also on the website i believe there were someone on the tables coming in and it will be there will be a QR code to access it in the WGR so that is coming out in a week or so and that's another way people will be
able to access it this is something our board is putting together um quarterly as well so it just our hope is that it will uh provide information on what board work is because we are a little
different than district staff and so we just want to clarify what our role is and what we've been up to um and just educate the community that way so thank you for all of you to for contributing to that and I believe that's all I
have moving forward to public comment on non-aggenda items all right again uh same as last time individuals will be invited one at a time to the podium to address the board
um whatever you feel comfortable with if it feels more comfortable at the table tonight because of the lack of the microphone feel free to do that and again you'll have three minutes to make your comments um you'll need to complete your comment time upon being notified that three minutes have passed again by
your timer um board members do not respond to public comment concerns will be brought to the attention of the appropriate staff we value your input and thank you for sharing with us wendy Winston will be up first oh did she
okay D jones followed by Betty Rosen Leecher sit down i need y'all to got a lot of guts how y'all doing i'm D jones i'm flying to the United Nations
tomorrow i had a nice article on ABC13 go out on a $ 32 billion company that educated our students directly here at Ottawa Hills High School it's going to be one of the best schools in the nation one day believe that cuz I live here and I'm going to continuously passionately develop cool initiatives i'm really
excited to be able to do that i spent a lot of cash to be able to get these resources to be able to get this kind of education to our students a $32 billion education from Epic Games and I'm finally happy I got to speak to the person who handles curriculum cuz Epic Games has educational tools that can
enhance and enrich our curriculum our community our education it can be appealing it can bring different educators and it can just do a lot and so I just connected uh the director of curriculum Jennifer Brock sorry I had to say your name like that but I just have
to say these things publicly because I'm a very bold person i'm very passionate i really want to see Epic Games educational tools because a $ 32 billion company already educated our kids and I'm connected uh to Davenport and Josiah Dunning the kid who actually won the
first thousand and Deario uh today before I just spoke to the ad hoc facility I left because those kids were uh at the food court and um I gave them the last thousand and they split it so they both got 500 bucks so I like to break bread i'm a very charitable person
i feel like if society allows you to have hundreds of billions or hundreds of trillions if you didn't know the first probably uh the first uh trillionaire will come from asteroid miners so nobody can tell me you can't be a trillionaire cuz Barack Obama in 2016 signed the uh United States Competitiveness Act but
you got to have at least a couple billion to even create an asteroid mining company but yeah so I'm just really excited to you know passionately just pioneer it just feels unreal like the Unreal Engine it feels unreal to be able to do this for my community how all
the time and energy I spend into this uh the only thing I'm would have to work on is our communication because I was grinding so hard trying to put all of this stuff together i'm one person that did all of this by myself the business side and everything i do this all alone and uh I didn't know that we had to have
the building agreement signed and then we didn't do that until Thursday 2 days before the activation so I couldn't get the info out to Luke to get it to the broader community and so it's all right though because I was able to do a lot of beautiful things for the school district for the students and you know connecting
Davenport University's coach because Josiah and some of his friends want to go to that school and they already filled out the questionnaire and I know we're going to go get those kids those scholarships at Ottawa Hills High School and I know it's because of a black person named D jones who's very passionate who had the vision for this
who's going to change society 193 i am shouting because we have some technical difficulties with the microphones so we are all going to need to just speak up tonight um they are
assuring me that the video will still pick up on our voices as long as we project so if we could just speak up a little louder when it's our turn to talk that would be wonderful um I would like to welcome all of you to the Grand Rapids Public Schools Board of Education
meeting today is Monday April 14th we appreciate your presence at this meeting and we respectfully request that you turn off your cell phones and refrain from clapping cheering or making audible comments we invite you to make formal public comment during the designated
times on either agenda items non-aggenda items or if you wish on both to do so please make sure you fill out the comment cards which are right at the entrances both entrances um and submit them to the board assistant over here Julie Anderson or
one of our public safety officers and comments are limited to three minutes and also on those cards there is um a section where you mark if it's an agenda item or a non-aggenda item and there is a spot
um Um oh right up at the top that asks if you are a student because we do want students to be able to speak at the beginning of the meeting so they can get home at a decent time i now call this meeting to order and Trusty Rodriguez can you take the
role please yep all right listen up everybody uh Trusty Kilpatre Trusty Moreno present trustee Melton present trusty Rodriguez is here uh Trustee Williamson present trusty
Williams present trustee Davis present vp Wade is excused and President Davis here we have a forum do I have a motion to approve the agenda so moved
all in favor any opposed okay agenda moves forward and we have Dr our lovely Lady Mitchell with us tonight uh Dr roby will be here in just a moment she's on her
way traveling from out of state so um Dr love Lady can you lead us into celebrations please sure good evening President Davis and distinguished board members we have three celebrations tonight to present to you i'd like to ask Director Jennifer Brock to come down
jennifer Brock will share information on Sons of American Revolution Sergeant Moses Adams Memorial Contest so come on down please thank you Dr love Lady Mitchell and board president board members i'm
also inviting Eric um Vanderly um he is um going to actually about the celebration this awesome opportunity for scholars absolutely and I'm excited to speak very briefly in front of you because I have the opportunity to
introduce one of our teachers and her scholars who is here this evening i want to briefly speak on behalf of our three scholar recipients the winners of the Sons of the American Revolution Sergeant Moses Adams Memorial Brochure uh one of
our distinguished teachers Mrs sarah Dryer uh is the teacher of Miss Bedoya at Shamut Hills um Miss Dryer is a 24-year veteran of GRPS and is described as being very passionate about sharing
her knowledge and her own passion for her curriculum with her scholars uh we also have with us this evening Miss Heather Lewis miss Heather Lewis is the teacher of Miss Dean and Mr harriet Jabi at CA Frost and Miss Lewis is described
as being a very dedicated veteran teacher as well who is best known for her innovative lessons and pardon me uh providing a safe and welcoming environment for all the scholars inside of her classroom uh on behalf of Mrs
drier I'd like to congratulate her scholar Beatatrice G bedoya for her third place award uh and her recognition that she earned for being an outstanding uh applicant uh and I'd also like to invite Miss Heather Lewis uh forward so
that she can speak on behalf of her scholars and if I could please Miss Lewis you mind [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I'm just going to stand on whatever
you're comfortable with um so as Eric said my name is Heather Lewis and I had a number of scholars this year who chose to participate in a contest um given by the Sons of the American Revolution and they had to create a brochure about how
the founding documents of our country has impacted us um so if the students won first place was $100 second place was $75 third place was
$50 and then if you the first place winner got to go to states so their brochure was sent to state and then one of my students won state as well and now it's going into nationals uh with the opportunity to win like
$750 extra dollars so I mean when money is tied to things kids are all going to go about doing it and I don't blame them because I'm the same so uh we had a first and second place winner at CA Frost and we were all so excited so I'm
sorry but our second place winner Dominic if you want to stand up dominic's brochure was amazing um we did not bring it because I realized I should have but uh actually right now the
brochure is sitting in my classroom but Dominic went as far as not only creating the brochure but doing some background research bringing in knowledge that we had learned about in US history with the Constitution the Declaration of
Independence um even went as far as creating a little like a pull tab and you pulled it down and then words came super cute uh and Dominic won uh $75 for that and then we had a first place
winner also Chloe Dean and Chloe's was also amazing so amazing that it won first place and $100 and then it won the state of Michigan worth $250 so she's already earned $350 from this um and we're looking forward to
seeing if she wins nationals so congratulations thank you for supporting your students in that project and good job back there they're all wonderful my students and thank you for using your teacher
voice oh so we have two additional celebrations so we're going to ask you to stay right there actually and the next one is teeing up one book one city yes so we have Nan
uh who is our ELA uh supervisor she's going to come down and she's going to talk about the excellent work that was done around one city thank you thank you Dr lovely Mitchell thank you board thank you thank
you thank you Miss Black so I had the exciting privilege Oh thank you i had the exciting privilege of uh partnering again with the Grand Rapids Public Library in the One Book one city project um which was an amazing
partnership and um I have guests here um to share with us tonight but first I'll make a quick connection to our priority scholar outcomes of engaging um in uh literacy proficiency uh reducing the
academic dispar disparencies excuse me for our black and Latino students and increasing student empowerment belonging and agency i don't know how much time we have to the next yeah
and a connection also to our strategic themes in this project and today with us we have Aaron Hart from the Grand Rapids Public Library to share with us tonight so Aaron go ahead yeah oh I was going to lean into the mic but it's still not
working all right um so yeah thank you for having me um the library has been partnering with GRPS in this program for over a decade um and it's really really unique I would say as a program um not just you know a lot of places do these
sort of one book one community things but to do it fully integrated with the schools to have every single fifth grader 62 classes reading the same book they're all experiencing the same author talk um that's amazing and it's a reach that we would not be able to get on our
own with the library uh so it's really great that we're able to partner with the schools you know bring this book bring this sort of celebration to the kids and every year it's just amazing to see amazing to see the work the students do um on our end at the library we get to see the excitement from everyone um
you know frequently we'll have kids come in in like sixth or seventh grade and they'll see a book that was a previous one book one city book and they'll be like "Oh yeah I met that author." Uh and it's a really lovely shared experience to be able to have so we're always excited to do and love that this partnership
continues oh yeah and so um we also have to thank of course uh all our partnerships as well our sponsors for this program so all listed up there our library foundation Michigan Arts and Culture Council WGI Foundation Independent Bank MSAD Foundation and Brad and Gail Kessle these are all people who have donated their own money
organizations that support this program um because they're so enthusiastic about it and they really see the impact of it and again this is um the library is very excited about this always that we love that we get to continue to do it yeah this year we had um the book
that was chosen by Barry and Johnson and the title is playing the cards that you're dealt and uh we have over,25 students scholars reading the story and as Erin mentioned it 62
classrooms throughout the district and we had over 1,400 blog posts that were all related to the story and um we had an amazing amazing connection with the students and the scholars throughout the
district um hundreds of posts each day that we monitored and the connection that the students made um was amazing and heartwarming and uh every day when I logged on to read those posts um I uh
not only got a smile um but I also like I said it was just heartwarming the connections that the students not only made to their own lives but to um to their friends lives or to to each other's lives or other books that they had read uh it was an amazing experience
and I really um am thankful that we were able to make this partnership happen and uh the students not only um posted in the blog during school hours but we noticed they were part um they were posting in the evening and on the
weekend so my colleague messaged me one night and she said "Man they're posting um after hours." And I and I had to think about it for a second and and I wondered what she was getting at i said "Oh really?" And and uh I I texted a
couple question marks and and she said "That's good right?" And I said "That's really good." So they were um they were posting on the blogs after school hours and we were really excited um so not only were they posting in the blog but they also created posters biographies
diaramas um and we have one of our teachers here that's going to share a little bit about how the project impacted her um we have some students from Buchanan there that were interviewed we have um students at Congress that created body biographies
and we were able to decorate the space when the author came to visit with all scholar created materials and uh it was welcoming and exciting for him um the scholars at
Burton use technology in some new and creative ways to create things we have Burton students also trying grits for the first time um because grits were mentioned in the story um I have a video of um of the project uh and I also want
to give a teacher from CA Frost a couple of minutes or a minute to share how the project impacted her and her students as well my students at CA Frost um really approached this book with a lot of empathy and understanding uh in that we started the story it's got a lot of
tough topics and conversations and um spoke about addictions in there and as fifth graders some might think like that's such a hard conversation to have but we started it by simply stating that we don't always know what's going on behind the closed doors of others houses even if they're our best friends and we
just don't know and so we really took to heart understanding that we don't always know what's going on and so when they approached those blog posts they really had that thought process behind them and so they made sure that as they were doing their blog post and I don't know if any of mine were the ones that were
after hours but I do know that that they definitely took to heart and really made sure that like they were being kind and considerate while they were having those conversations and when they would log back in the following week they got so excited when another scholar from a different school would answer or respond
back to them and it was a really nice conversation to be able to have with everybody across the city and I unfortunately had to miss out due to a family emergency on the author visit and one of my students came in today and said "Miss West you're not going to believe what you missed." And they were
so excited to share that author visit with me even though I was not there it was the best so I think that it's a really good book and maybe one of my favorites because it is so deep and it the author makes it so
like people can understand this people know because it has happened to them before this is This is It's like The author makes it sound like they they don't The author doesn't make it
like super like sad or depressing or anything but not all Happshes i just This book relates to me and so many others that I know really well so I think this is a magnificent book
my favorite part of playing card is like when Terrence Jalone and I'll play um spades i just think that Mr johnson describes like each like each round slashbook of the game of space so
vividly it feels like I'm inside that game like I playing the game with them part of playing card is the vlogging because you get to like say what you think about the book and how good it is
um said playing cards or death as in dealing with your life and kind of just playing it out and doing your best to play fairly i think the other chosen title for adult
because you got to deal with it so um I think I think the reason the author chose his title is because um I think it means like you have to deal with the things you're given or
like anything that happens and not you can either be the bigger person or somebody that doesn't want to get involved i think I'm a good friend but can sometimes not be a very good friend because I can mess up sometimes and be
mean and sometimes I make fun of them without realizing that I've really hurt them i think I'm a good friend because I treat some of my friends differently than I treat the other ones like sometimes if I have a friend that's a girl I'm going treat them more
respectful cuz me and my friends like my best friend uh we roast each other for fun uh just like Jamal and And uh we roast each other for fun but I if I if we're like new to being friends like I just had a new friend I wouldn't roast
them cuz I don't know if they play like that so I would learn how me and my friend play and I would uh uh respect what they want me to do like uh my friend respects me roasting him because he roasted me back sometimes but uh if
they if one of my friends don't want me to roast them then I'd be like "Okay." So yeah I think I respect people and how they want me to treat them [Applause] [Music] [Applause]
thank you yeah and I have a I have a fifth grader this year and she I know all about this book she loves the project um but I just thought it'd be fun to highlight that card project that they made when they were all that was on the author day correct can you just
share a little bit about that yeah so on the the day of the author's visit we had a little bit of downtime so we had the students create their own um playing card design and then the teachers send those back to me at the Franklin campus
here and we um we're narrowing down i gave them the date of April 18th so we'll narrow down the selection and then here in Franklin campus I'm going to uh display those with a QR code and we'll vote um and then we can um make everyone
a set of playing cards here in house actually um we can print playing cards so that each classroom will get their own set of playing cards with that design fun yeah we also have a video that our communications department made with the
author speaking i don't know if we have time for that one do you want to just um send that to our emails and we can post on the website probably okay yeah for sure thank you thank you so much for sharing and you do have a copy of the book that Miss Ally
made for us and Yeah and the book itself is is a great book so thank you thank you everyone thank you our last celebration will be ushered in by um Chief Larry Johnson and I also think I see Dr ledron
Roby and so we're going to shift as Chief Johnson comes down good evening President Davis Dr mitchell Dr roby other distinguished uh board members uh today we have with you Justin Walker the athletic director at Union
High School and Marcus Harris athletic director at Ottawa Hills High School who will be going over the accomplishments from our winter sports uh to just highlight some of the accomplishments of our scholar athletes some of those athletes are here with us tonight others are either studying or in a practice
somewhere but uh but they will highlight some of the achievements of this uh past winter uh good evening uh Superintendent Dr roby board president Davis and our esteemed board members uh thank you for the opportunity for me and Mr harris to come share some of the highlights that
we had from this past winter season uh Union High School we had four student athletes that were named to the OK Gold uh first team all conference uh then we also had two student uh scholar athletes excuse me that receive okay gold honorable mention recognition as well in
addition to those uh achievements we also had a great winner where achievements and records were being set both at the building level and the state level the first uh scholar was Major Vance who took first place at the OK East diving championship and broke a
long-standing record at Union High School that had been in place since 1988 uh this is an incredible achievement and we are very proud of Major uh unfortunately he was not able to be here tonight uh the next student Sam Kit who is here Sam uh Sam made history here at
Union High School performing uh in the division one state wrestling tournament uh at the finals at Fort Field competing at 106 lbs he earned a overall fifth place which secured all state honors and he also recorded his 100th win uh
career-wise which is truly a tough feat in the wrestling world so Sam uh had a great season we're looking forward to next year and hopefully with a repeat of that next we have Vivian [Applause] Ejac uh Vivian is now a current record
holder of two major records one uh being uh both at Union and with the state of Michigan uh last season Vivian recorded 15 blocks in one game which uh was a union record as well as secured her name on the state record board uh and then
this past season uh again Vivian decided to add her name to the record books again against Kelloggsville she recorded 27 rebounds in one game adding her name again to the record books both for Union High School in the state uh we are incredibly proud of Vivian um in her
achievement uh in basketball also for two records two at the state and the high school level we are very appreciative of her hard work so thank you we are incredibly proud of our scholar athletes in the union athletic program um but we know that we could not do it without the support of our staff
and our board that supports our athletic departments when you all show up to events our kids notice and they appreciate it our families notice and appreciate it as well um so thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you at some spring events and I'll turn it over to Mr harris thanks
Justin good evening Superintendent Dr roby President Davis esteemed board members thank you for having us here as I'm going to uh talk a little bit about some of the winter highlights from the Ottawa Hills Bengals athletics program uh we we compete in the OK White League
and so uh during the winter season we had 10 allconerence athletes and one honorable mention that encompasses everything from bowling boys and girls basketball and also boys swimming our boys swim team had another uh successful season which they went uh
five and one in dual meets and so they end up finishing second in second place in the conference uh we had conference champions of Amando Huner in the 200 free and Wyatt Jack in the 500 free and then also our 400 free relay team uh
were conference champions uh we had six allconerence swimmers uh Wyatt Jakis Euan Jakis Amando Huner Ruben Overman Tristan Stock and Christian Ramos uh we also had three regional divers that
qualified for regionals uh with Isaiah Battle Juan Villa and Christian Ramos and also we had several state qualifiers uh in swimming as well uh that represented the 200 free 100 fly uh also the 500 free and then the 200 free relay
and the 400 free relay as well that competed at the state level also for for our boys swim team we had academic all state and academic all-American athletes who were Amando Huner Ruben Overman and Ram Rei and Noah Stitler uh they also
earned a bronze level from the NISCA scholar scholar team uh with a GPA a team GPA of 3.9 3.293 and so that's the national intercolastic swim coaches association uh in which they won that national award
as well uh girls basketball enjoyed it most successful season in about 14 years uh a lot of that had to do with Samaj Robinson she's she's a senior you may may have heard of her she's been in a M live quite a few times uh Sam was voted
Mive Player of the Week she was also nomin Player of the Week five times during the winter sports season uh she was selected honorable mention for the Grand Rapids area dream team for girls basketball she'll be attending college uh for track and basketball at a college
to be determined uh Sam Robertson and Gianna Lamato Fischer also was awarded the BCAM Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan for the outstanding student athlete award for having a 4.0 GPA and
participating in basketball for four years uh the girls basketball team I said had his most successful season in 14 years and our coach Emily Gussert uh she was a candidate for regional coach of the year through BCAM as well uh our
bowling team uh made significant progress this year which we had 17 bowlers on the roster finished seventh place in the bowling regionals and we had two allconerence teams and we got a young team and everyone will be coming back next year so our coach is very excited for the bowling team next season
so uh thank you again for having us here appreciate for what all all the things that you do to support Ottawa Hills Athletics and Union Athletics and look forward to a great spring season thank you [Applause]
that will conclude their report and uh just uh just good things are going on in athletics uh elementary participation at all-time high and we we look forward to that continuing in spring sports as well as I know school participation is increasing there and I just want to say
with Vivian Ejac she had to wait a long time to get her her validations and her confirmations from the state so just thank you for your patience and thank you for the outstanding job want to thank all the athletes but for their families as well who may be represented here today but but she had to wait and
uh for that record to be confirmed and uh and she had a lot of patience and uh patience with us in trying to get confirmed so we thank you for that thank you [Applause] okay we will move forward with the report of the student representatives
can I start with Alipia please try to speak up as much as you can um hi i go to Central and recently we had our job fair we had a couple schools attend i don't remember all of them but I know Southwest Southwest Ottawa Monastery
went of course Innovation Central um some upcoming events we have we have our um food drive coming up this third mobile pantry coming up this Thursday I think or next Thursday if you have any questions about that you can um
find it on our school's Facebook and you can go stop by get free food from the GRTC um we have the JRTC cadet ball coming up and we have prom and of course graduation everything's going really fast but we have a lot of stuff coming
up thank you Alia fabiola um hi I'm Fabola and I'm a senior at City High um we also have a couple updates one of which is that um 25 million senior class which raised a little bit over $20,000 to go
over uh school events um one of which is the senior class trip uh we're going to be going to Chicago and later Six Flags so um it took a lot of work to be able to raise that much money so that's something we're proud of um another thing is we also have prom so we're it's
at uh Thousand Oaks Golf Club on Friday April 25th so we're all waiting patiently or impatiently like me for um prom that night and then finally city seniors uh last official day of school is May 1st and then after that um it's
going to be about a month of IB exams so we're also preparing for that thank you okay we are now up to the public comment for board agenda items only
um I see Miss Anderson is checking to see if there's any more cards right now i don't believe we have any with board agenda items all right now I got to be loud all right so um we've got a couple committee meetings coming up um ad hoc facilities
committee meeting is scheduled for May 12th at 5:30 in the library building conference room 112 and then the finance committee meeting is scheduled on Tuesday May 27th um at 4:30 here in the administration building auditorium
that's my report moving on to committee chair reports um Trustee Williams can you give us the finance report please sure um so we met on March 24 and at that meeting we discussed some action items that have
been brought to the board but we'll be um looking to vote on those tonight with regards to the purchasing agenda and some donations additionally we uh talked about our um February 2025 financial statements and then we uh wrapped up
with um training so we did some school finance 101 training any questions okay trusty Williams do you have a report for ad hoc preparing yes well we um I can give a little update
from um our meeting that we had March and then we also had a meeting just um earlier today so um and it's um just a little bit of overlap with a couple of things I'll bring up so we will be talking uh there will be an
Aberdine community meeting that is tomorrow so um just board members if you want to go out and support that as well as well as community um you can find that information on our web page of course we have been discussing um between the last meeting and this
meeting um some policy changes that we needed to get cleared up i think we have some language that we like as a committee that will come forward uh to the board and will be at President's Day discretion whether that's at a work session or at a board meeting when we
will um actually do our final vote on that policy um and then we also um there were tours done between uh the last meeting and this meeting that uh of six weeks and so some board members wanted to tour six weeks so we did uh
have that opportunity in place as well as today we got updates that 6B is on schedule and just as well just slightly under budget so that is great news um with regards to Cindy and then we did um
get some had a chance to just chat with staff about some changes that they're going to be making to their procedural policies that they wanted to make us aware of and um as they actually they're kind of giving us a a a preview of what
that would be like before they ask the uh ask the full board to take a look at that but um they wanted some input from the ad hoc committee and just kind of to know what um we would be open to doing and some uh different policy changes that are proposing I should say
procedural changes they're proposing and so we will uh get those as a board they will uh get that to us through Dr roles as they get that completed on their end but it was again just an early look and get some frontend feedback from board
about uh the changes that they are planning to make so look for that in the future okay thank you Trusty Lyn a couple things going on here okay um we did have two scholars in the um Oh it that that's
my fault they did check the right box so I'm gonna go back to public comment to get those scholars so um Trusty Rodriguez can you read about the public comment for us absolutely thank you all right during public comment
individuals will be invited one at a time to the podium to address the board before beginning your comment please state your full name at the time we'll start the timer allowing each individual three minutes to make their comment um you will need to complete your comment time upon being notified that the three
minutes have passed again the timer is uh right behind Trustee Moreno uh board members do not respond to public comment concerns will be brought to the attention of the appropriate staff we value your input and thank you for sharing with us okay can I call forward
Devonte Taylor please um wherever you feel comfortable since the mics aren't working if There you go come on up and that isn't going to work so you don't even have to speak a while
my name is Devonte Taylor and I'm a fifth and I'm a fifth grader at Mick Elementary i enjoy coming to the STEM program because I can tell them what we're working on in class and receive extra help mr child's
teacher helps me understand it more and breaks it down for me thank you and some Marley Low hello my name is Samarlo and I am a third grader at Mullet Park Elementary
i love the kids count program because it it is fun and I get to learn to I get to learn after school also it helps me with the math and
science yes [Applause] and again I apologize that I did not pay attention to that box that said you were students i'm glad somebody caught that
okay we will move forward now to the GRPS foundation report good evening everyone to use our teacher voices is that what's here i'm not okay very good good to see everyone back after spring break dr roby board of
trustees um we've got a lot of stuff going on at the foundation i myself just got back from a national conference um in um Knoxville Tennessee with um I think there were over 80 education foundations from across the country so
lots of learning opportunities um and lots of new things that we want to um just see you know if you've met one education foundation you've met one education foundation so many school districts are so different but there's still some really good learning opportunities um and actually as of this
morning um I am now the vice president for the Michigan Education Foundation so it's really great for us to you know be connected on the Michigan level um and just kind of sharing best practices in the state of Michigan and really how can we continue to support um our public
schools so I wanted to share just a quick synopsis of what's been happening this spring and kind of the whole school year as we're getting ready um a teacher told me recently we're six Mondays away till the last uh the end of the school year so that's some quick perspective um
we have uh given away 35 spring uh teacher and principal grants um just this last round which is over 70 grants in total um and I'm really excited that um I don't know how many of you went to see the Mean Girls Junior at Union High School that was
something that we helped to support um so there's been so many great projects like that and we look forward to we want to double that um for next year uh so it's been over $50,000 that we've granted to teachers and principles this year stephanie was that through a teacher grant the the it was musical
yeah yeah yeah it was um and we'll actually be celebrating with those students on Thursday we're going to go in and bring some treats and just tell them that they did such a great job so um we are going we actually this week we're purchasing a piano lab for the Elder Middle School which will then be
transferring over to Ottawa Hills which is a brand new great program i'm very excited to fund that as well as we purchased a timony um for Grand Rapids Monastery and Innovation Central to round out um their musical instrument program so um we're also organizing four
playground beautifification projects with community partners and we put it out to all the principles and said "Do you are you interested in us coming out and just cleaning up playgrounds and um redoing hopscotches and some of that stuff?" And um I think within an hour we had eight principles apply so I'm like
"Okay great that's we're really excited about doing that." So uh last thing to share we're six weeks away from MindShare that's the largest fundraiser that we do um we've raised over $100,000 in sponsorship so far uh we expect that event to bring in about $250,000 um which obviously goes back
back into our programs so we'll be doing some strategic planning um refresh this summer uh in the past we've invited board of education members to join us um we always want to look at like what else can we be doing um and a couple of things that we're considering is
inviting one of our teachers of the year to be an adviser for our board going forward um and as well as looking at how is our student representation for the foundation board um even through our grant making as well so um that is my report for tonight
any questions board members thank you for all that okay next on our agenda is the superintendence report dr roby nope um you have conference report out from the National Association of School Boards
with um Trustee Milton and then I can kind of point to Oh um do you want me to start yeah yeah so um over spring break we had the opportunity to attend the national um
schoolboard association conference um that was held in Atlanta Georgia and this is school board members as well as um superintendent and district level leadership from across the nation coming together around various topics um and so
um some of the kind of things that were the highlights or the things that uh that we were able to see in many of the strands of our the different presentations that we went to is things around of course improved communications
between um board and constituents um between board and superintendent between board and board members also um kind of the political climate that we are currently in and how are how does governance um impact that and how our
board members kind of staying to make sure that they're staying ab breast with some of those issues that are impacting their their school systems and then also making sure there's outreach to community um other kind of topics that rose to the um the top of
the the top of the list I think included also um engagement overall like your community and how do you continue to kind of be creative in community engagement but there's also things like special education and the laws around
that as well as um think the kind of after effects of co and and other kind kind of items what was really interesting um at this conference we had the opportunity and I'm not going to recall her name um to meet with a
um a par Olympiad who um had gone through college and had an experience of she had given her time to the military shortly after um 911 and had gone you
know um to Baghdad and some other places and during her first maybe two months there her leg um was blown off during um just being in the in that country at
the time and just her her grit and her determination that she's run marathons and she's competed I think in four different Olympia um Olympics since that time as well as um um kind of iron woman
they call it Iron Man but I'm going to say Iron Woman because she clearly was that and I don't remember um Trusty Melton if you remember her her name off the top she has a book and um it was just just listening to her story and how she did not give up and it's like to
have something like that so tragically happen and how you recreate and find your purpose through tragedy and I thought that was kind of phenomenal other um yeah I didn't write down maybe yeah I took the opportunity to go to all the board governance sessions that I could
um just was really inspired one of the things that stuck out to me was this concept that we as the board together are the stewards of one of the most significant pools of public resources in our country and that the working out of democracy right here in this room is one
of the most transformative things we can do so I was just really encouraged by that and then the time and so I have lots of notes and some things I'll pass on to you guys um but the session ended I thought this was funny with Kevin Bacon who's not even an educator but he was really inspiring and talked about how when kids are making art they're not
making trouble i love that concept of just like not because I worry about the trouble but because I love tapping into who kids are and that concept was really just brought brought forth by some fun songs and things like that but um just talking about the importance of creativity and the and the arts in our
programming and um how often that's uh you know quick to get cut and in this kind of new era of education uh to make sure that we're guardians of those things so just exciting time to be part of an educational system and grateful for that opportunity questions
okay yes superintendent report all right so good evening everybody i hope that everyone has had a um opportunity to recharge over the last um week and a day and you're ready for that last stretch
it's um I'll use kind of a marathon since we were just talking about the par Olympia it's like that we're at mile 2122 where you can see kind of the home stretch and this is probably one of the most exciting times as our um scholar representatives were talking about the many things that are taking place at
their schools um wrapping up that senior year as well as prom and all of those kind of fun celebrations and so um we are doing similar and again just wanting and hoping that our school year because it's been a great year but it continues
kind of with that energy as we want to finish strong and um to get to June um our first report actually is related to our certified enrollment from our spring count and I'm going to ask Director Rodney Lewis to come up and to provide
an overview of that student enrollment count day good evening Superintendent Roby President Davis and distinguished board of trustees think I'm just going to hit the video mute right i got it all
right so I want to share with you guys the the spring enrollment data that we had uh from this past uh spring count uh strate connected to strategic theme number six creating a culture of trust collaboration and
stewardship so kind of going to outline the process that we go through in student data services to support this process with the buildings um so uh knowing that we have some new board members we went through this process uh
in the fall as well as last year but uh the week prior to account day which is February 12th this past year um we started gathering schools began gathering data on their on synergy which is our student data platform that we
utilize uh they put various reports general collection reports uh things of that nature and then we have uh spring count again which was February 12th uh so we want to ensure on that day that all students are
in their seats uh learning um not on field trips for the most part we want to make sure everybody's there those kids that are not there we want to make sure we get everyone excused as many as possible um and then we have a process that we go through um that is called a
10-day rule and a 30-day rule and I'll explain that a little bit more shortly but on February 14th building level personnel be they begin to uh look at their count absent reports which kind of highlights the kids that were out on
February 12th and then they look at the dates when they may have returned or may not have returned those students that they have some challenges with that they haven't seen the return on they begin to make phone calls and try to track these kids get them back into uh the building
a little bit more difficult with the secondary schools because we're managing classes of one through six or one through eight versus um all day uh buildings such as elementarymentaries um and then so on February 21st um
buildings received their count day packets u from SDS and they began to uh look at their general collections again and and see who should remain on the list or who should come off the list um and then February 28th we have the 10-day rule uh so the 10-day rule
applies to anyone that was uh absent and was unexcused they have 10 days to get back into the buildings and get uh their attendance taken um and they must be present so for high schools or uh middle
schools they have to be they have to come back in every class that they miss not just that day march 14th is the 30-day rule so all kids that were um out excused um absent but excused they have to be
back within 30 days um and the same as the 10-day rule they have to make sure that they attend all courses that they have scheduled and then final call countday pack is due back from the buildings to student data services on March 21st um and from there we start
beginning the initial certification process that process uh begins on March 19th so all data gets uploaded to uh we call it SEPY which is the center for performance and and and information and then the final uh site
that we actually do the final certification um is all SEPY but that's a week later on March 26 and so everything gets transmitted uploaded to the SEPY site and we also have to deliver um hand deliver package to the ISD auditors as well the obviously
auditors uh begins the process of looking at our data and beginning the the desk audit process um and then there's a 45day rule that's extended for kids that may have been suspended u for some very serious violations
so our our spring count data um our number was 13,429.12 and that's fulltime equivalent um which is we call it FTE so this is not actual headcount headcount is all the kids that are enrolled in the school fte are students that are enrolled but
they may not be full-time students such as a kid that may um have a class with GRCC and dual enrollment they're not going to count a full 1.0 or kid that may be uh a kindergarten kid that may not go
all day but they go half day so they get 0.5 versus 1.0 so that's kind of how they equate the fulltime FTE um and again what I said next step for auditors once they get this packets back from us and get everything uploaded they begin
the desk audit so in the fall they do a a field audit where they actually come out to random buildings and do um all the attendance work at the building have a conversation with the building staff in the spring it's more geared towards okay we send the data to them and they
sit at their desk and they uh review the packets that we we submit to them and then they give a a final adjustment number uh that typically in the spring it comes sometime in July any questions
i have a few um what is it um are all of these state mandates or there are things in there that we are doing above and beyond or separate from what state mandated uh the the process is state mandates so you get a lot of audit different audit forms
that you have to submit and they have to go back to the ISC auditor as well as SEI okay se just needs a number i ask the auditors needs a full package so they can look across the board and do their audits so nothing in that timeline is us doing separate from what statement
is and then with the 10day rules um do what is the purpose of that if a student's not there on count day but they're they're recorded within that 10day rule or whatever other day rule does that then count towards our count with the state so So if they're if they're back within the 10 days we get
counted FT a full FTE for that kid if they don't come back they they don't get counted for that that day if they're elementary kid like or for a secondary kid it would be if they came back for like three classes they get credit for those three classes yeah but if they miss the other three they don't correct
so it's like a makeup basically okay how do the FTEES affect our funding and whatnot from the state so spring count is a 10% funding uh for next year uh fall count is a 90% funding and dual enrollment students don't count for
full-time equivalency they they have a prorated percentage okay interesting okay thank you any other questions all right thank you thank you yep okay we can move on oh I'm sorry Dr we
have Oh this would be No it's action item that's you okay uh we can move on to action items so owner's re recommendation are we going to have Mr johnson's i don't remember
so um if you recall last month we had a conversation and there was a presentation around owners representation um Mr johnson are you able to just give an overview of the owner's rep conversation i know that last month Mr smt um provided an
overview but just kind of as a refresh of what the process was good evening again uh the conversation on the owner rep owners rep I think last month and um ad hoc committee as well as uh I think some information have been brought forward to you where uh four u
individuals four companies have put in for um an interest in being the owner's rep and uh several projects that uh we have upcoming as to as what we're going to do with vacant uh properties um we brought a recommendation back uh to the
board uh in terms of who we thought would be uh the best fit for this particular uh project this first round of projects and we uh we presented that information and action the board to uh move forward uh with uh with the recommendation that we brought forward
mr johnson if you could just highlight really quick kind of some of the priorities in selecting um the entity that you recommended we uh we utilized a uh a rubric uh and there was uh several individuals on the committee uh where a rubric was uh used uh we
scored uh off of a uh the provided documentations from each company after the scoring of that u uh there were uh interviews we all interviewed uh and scored separately those uh those scores would then merge together uh where the
um we would then rank the candidates and although we did not select the top uh receiver of the points uh we we selected the uh the individual the company that was in number two we thought was the best fit uh looking at uh past projects
uh the availability of staff to uh work uh with the with other partners in the community uh being able to work with us the district in terms of uh reaching our community our the goals that we're trying to reach as it relates to the project as well
do I have a motion to approve the owners recommendation i have a question okay um could you in just really brief summary um following the approval of the owner's rep whoever it is whoever we decide on what are the like immediate next steps
for the district the board in regards to working with well surely we going to go back as a as a team uh the facilities and operations team uh to begin to meet with the uh the the company selected uh to lay out what our pri priorities are and how we want to approach these
projects and uh and then from that point uh come back um to the superintendent uh with uh with how we will approach in terms of uh best best fit now once the uh once the company is on uh on board there'll be some opportunities of some
community engagement work uh where community individuals will have uh some input as well in terms of uh what's right for the neighborhood what's right for a particular project uh again we have two projects uh that we're looking at right now and that is Alexander and
Stocky and then we will uh make adjustments from there down the road if other properties become available u and so we'll look at uh what the recommendations are by giving them some guidelines in terms of what we want to have happen with those properties and surely the board would have some input
in that and just to clarify and the owner's rep is going to represent the district in whatever properties not just the ones you've identified any properties the district that that is correct we've expanded uh originally when we put the RFP we talked about the RFP it was just one partic those two
particular properties and then we expanded if some others come up then they would continue to represent us in those uh properties that fit thank you thank you so along that that same kind of line of questioning is this owner rep that we
choose going to be facilitating all of the work moving forward with our FMP or just maybe a few just the vacant properties that we're working on right now just those properties as we bring up properties uh uh as this board superintendent make recommendations to this board in terms of what properties
we want to uplift and uh and move forward with and they would represent for that particular property all right thank you u Mr johnson you said that uh the the contract I mean the word contract doesn't stop me if that's the wrong language uh has the two current
buildings so Stocking and then Alexander but now has potential to operate is there like an evaluation to see that they're doing the things that they say they're going to do especially from like the engagement standpoint absolutely we we will evaluate as we go to make sure that again our goals and objectives are
being met and they're living to uh the contract that we put together to make sure that those uh those are bullet points or practices are being followed as we would want them to follow and then I just have to add one more um can you just confirm that there has been
uh well with this that there will be a a conflict of interest clause there the the RFP did list a conflict of interest and whatever company is selected they will have to uh uh move forward with a with a conflict of interest statement and uh bring that to us as well and
those will be evaluated through our legal department as well could we just define um by contract of in contra conflict of interest clause could we define what we mean by that uh I think Thomas is here he can help me give you the legal term of that but uh
because I'm not a lawyer but uh if there's if there's a conflict uh with with the company uh that would have a direct impact on this particular on this project or any projects moving forward uh it is our hope that that company will reveal what that conflict is so we as a board have an opportunity you as a board
have an opportunity to evaluate to see if it's in the best interest to move forward with that particular company on that project yep all right i got a C+ I I do have one one final question i'm so sorry um and I I apologize because I
missed the the larger conversation at the last meeting we had about this but um so when we vote this is my first time I'm sure many of our first times you know choosing voting on a on a you know owner's rep is
the the RFP process right they they've said okay you know they've seen the RFP and they are positive that they can kind of fulfill our needs is that going to be different then from a contract that we uh get into with this uh company and
then do we have to also um uh I guess vote on that as well no the is the RFP it's all one and the same it's all one and the same we we're bringing them we have brought them on board saying that they will meet the needs that we have now and moving forward with additional
projects that we so desire okay if I can add um it's following our outlined board um priorities around you know these are the things and then the commitment to with those two properties to have the
community engagement and then so it's it's a real estate person that's in essence what it is and so um currently these are buildings that were meant for schools and so we also want to make sure that we are um looking to see what are the other opportunities that are
available and this goes very closely in our alignment with our overall um FMP of how do we repurpose buildings that they're also community values the community ad and so what what can we do that would be in alignment with that and
then bringing those recommendations forward along with the engagement and other things to say it can be this or you know because of the priorities around housing or the priorities around additional space um with uh community
kind of space this is what we're recommending and this is what the price point might be for that to give an I just as a suggestion but they would be doing that research and kind of project managing that to bring it forward okay does that help are I feel like you're asking are we
approving the that we use this company or the contract or is it one in no yeah yes that that is more what I'm asking i understand the the RFP process a little bit no it's okay um I Yeah because I'm just confused
yeah are we voting on the company and then saying all right and now we're going to you know now GRPS is going to finalize the contract and then do that okay perfect we um again just this is after the RSP we have to decide which of these
companies to go with and then once we've done that there will be uh some fine tuning in the contract of what actual work will be done and then that is what they will and you know some legal ease like what if they're not meeting what we need and stuff like that um termination
of contract all that stuff will be in there and what our outcomes that we're expecting from them as well that stuff will be in the actual contract but the RFP and What we're voting on tonight is indeed the opportunity to go with to start that conversation with the company
from those from their recommendation perfect all right yep that's what I was looking for thank you so much thank you everyone does anyone feel comfortable to um give a motion to approve the owner's re recommendation motion support okay
all in favor say I i any opposed okay thank you Mr um next up is our purchasing agenda are there any questions do I have a motion to approve
the purchasing agenda so moved second second we're going to arm us all in favor say I i any oppose okay motion carries next up on our agenda is the
consent agenda grouping do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda some move all in favor say I i any opposed motion carries okay moving on to um discussion items
board president announcements just a couple of things i tried to uh make sure all of you knew before we started the meeting but um these green sticky notes are our parking lot notes so um you can feel free to
fill those out with things that aren't on the agenda that come to mind um so that we don't deter from our conversation and um getting things done and then just bring them to me uh before you leave and I'll gather those together and make sure we address those at some
point um for those of you in the audience that was uh one of our trustees ideas and I we're hoping to just kind of move our meetings forward in a more successful way and not get off track um we do have a pretty solid idea of
coffee with the board um we had talked about keeping those at uh 6:00 to 7:30 and they will be quarterly so we have dates of uh May 6th
September 2nd and December 2nd for sure may 6th um Baxter Community Center is set for that um September 2nd uh not 100% positive but I think it's going to be at Kids Food
Basket and then December 2nd um same thing we're pretty sure it'll be at Gilda's Club so both of those had offered for us to use that space for free which is wonderful and we will represent each quadrant of our city that way
um if you are not able to open the materials from Deborah Keys right we did figure out a way to navigate that craig helped us out with that so reach out to me if you cannot open those um and our
board norms are definitely going to have to be another work session topic because I'm getting a lot of mixed signals um so I mean it's all good things we all want to make sure our norms are solid and um we'll get there though just a reminder
that if you want things added to the agenda for committee meetings please bring them to the committee chair and not directly to staff um and the committee chair will work with staff to figure out what's on the agenda um same
with regular board meetings you know to come to me and um we have policy around all of that and then exciting is there is the board brief in front of you i have it up here in four different languages if you want to see the other
languages um that is also on the website i believe there were some on the tables coming in and it will be there will be a QR code to access it in the RGR so that is coming out in a week or so and that's another way people will be
able to access it this is something our board is putting together um quarterly as well so it just our hope is that it will uh provide information on what board work is because we are a little
different than district staff and so we just want to clarify what our role is and what we've been up to um and just educate the community that way so thank you for all of you to for contributing to that and I believe that's all I
have moving forward to public comment on non-aggenda items all right again uh same as last time individuals will be invited one at a time to the podium to address the board
um or whatever you feel comfortable with if it feels more comfortable at the table tonight because of the lack of the microphone feel free to do that and again you'll have three minutes to make your comments um you'll need to complete your comment time upon being notified the three minutes have passed again by
your timer um board members do not respond to public comment concerns will be brought to the attention of the appropriate staff we value your input and thank you for sharing with us wendy Winston will be up first oh did
she okay d jones followed by Betty Rosen Leachcher let me sit down i need y'all to Got a lot of guts how y'all doing i'm D Jones i'm flying to the United Nations
tomorrow i had a nice article on ABC13 go out on a $ 32 billion company that educated our students directly here Ottawa Hills High School it's going to be one of the best schools in the nation one day i believe that cuz I live here and I'm going to continuously passionately develop cool initiatives
i'm really excited to be able to do that uh I spent a lot of cash to be able to get these resources to be able to get this kind of education to our students a $32 billion education from Epic Games and I'm finally happy I got to speak to the person who handles curriculum because Epic Games has educational tools
that can enhance and enrich our curriculum our community our education it can be appealing can bring different educators and it can just do a lot and so I just connected uh the director of curriculum Jennifer Brock sorry I had to say your name like that but I just have
to say these things publicly because I'm a very bold person i'm very passionate i really want to see Epic Games educational tools because a $ 32 billion company already educated our kids and I'm connected uh to Davenport and Josiah Dunning the kid who actually won the
first styles and Deario uh today before I just spoke to the ad hoc facility I left because those kids were uh at the food court and um I gave them the last thousand and they split it so they both got 500 bucks so I like to break bread
i'm a very charitable person i feel like if society allows you to have hundreds of billions or hundreds of trillions if you didn't know the first probably the first uh trillionaire will come from asteroid mining so nobody can tell me you can't be a trillionaire because Barack Obama in 2016 signed the uh
United States Competitiveness Act but you got to have at least a couple billion to even create an asteroid mining company but yeah so I'm just really excited to be you know passionately just pioneer it just feels unreal like the Unreal Engine and it feels unreal to be able to do this for
my community how all the time and energy I spend into this uh the only thing I'm would have to work on is our communication because I was grinding so hard trying to put all of this stuff together i'm one person that did all of this by myself the business side and everything i do this all alone and uh I
didn't know that we had to have the building agreement signed and then we didn't do that until Thursday 2 days before the activation so I couldn't get the info out to Luke to get it to the broader community and so it's all right though because I was able to do a lot of beautiful things for the school district for the students and you know connecting
Davenport University's coach because Josiah and some of his friends want to go to that school and they already filled out the questionnaire and I know we're going to go get those kids those scholarships at Ottawa Hills High School and I know it's because of a black person named D jones who's very passionate who had the vision for this who's going to change
society 193 countries the United Nations i'm going to be a billionaire one day potentially a trillionaire thank you y'all betty Rosen Leecher hi i'm going to use my teacher voice so I'm Betty Rosen Leecher and I am representing Opportunity Thrive here
this evening a nonprofit that's focused on building healthier staff cultures um and more resilient educators across the state of Michigan i'm a retired central office and building school administrator a former schoolboard member and above all else an educator i currently serve
as the program manager for our educator wellness coaching program which we've been excited to offer to Grand Rapids public school staff this year tonight I want to offer a few items of clarification to the staff of GRPS and the context for involvement with the district first we recognize that
educators are being asked to do more with less across the education sector we recognize that there are broken systems in our schools and we recognize that there are systematic stressors that are weighing too heavily on our educators as an organization we seek to heal many
system issues through data collection training and advocacy still we understand why educators feel cynical about any resource seemingly suggesting that the answer to their stress lies in them and not in fixing not in fixing the system we believe though that it's not
an eitheror issue we need to fix systems and help educators not feel so lonely in the profession educators deserve to be seen heard and supported we believe they deserve to focus on their own well-being every educator has the right to choose emotional physical and social well-being
and our coaches are trained to support educators on that journey when we were asked to partner with DRPS in the spring of 24 the district wrote a proposal for grant funds through the school aid budget section 31A the district identified funding for approximately
$75,000 in that proposal to deliver our confidential personal wellness inventory and coaching for 54 staff members initially when asked to consider this work we planned on rolling it out in a few pilot schools within the district over however over months of communication we were told that the
district would like to deliver the PWI to everyone we started communication and planning um for the project in May of 2024 we planned our rollout date for February of this year and provided a rollout video to be shown to staff
during their staff meetings the video describes the program's purpose intent and confidentiality and we hoped that every staff member would receive a standard message on a typical day and be provided some time to take the assessment during their staff meeting this is a this is best practice because
we know our educators are often trained not to open emails from unfamiliar sources and we know how busy they are with their schedules i want to close by reiterating a few key points first this program is funded through state dollars that can only be used for this specific
purpose the state has identified the funding solely to support well-being in our schools the district will return any unused funds to the state second our program is completely confidential we do not share personal data from the inventory or coaching with the district we are here as an outside organization
solely to support staff lastly we believe that while educators may feel powerless in the face of many system systematic issues in education we still have the power to choose to invest in ourselves and our coaching program is one of those investments in oneself thank you so much for your time this
evening thank you okay superintendent's comments just a reminder to all um part of our spring kind of activities we are starting our school art fair um it will be opening up
April 25th next I want to say that's the 25thish so um and it is such a phenomenal experience to see our young people um just express their talents and feelings
and all sorts of things and so I invite the um broader community to check us out downtown at um Western Michigan University um uh campus satellite campus and it you will not be disappointed just
to see the artwork of our young people thank you board member comments no this is there's been a couple mis mishaps because the agenda that's public is slightly off from the
one online I think no it's just out of order that's why I've had some mishaps okay okay does that make sense so um we'll move into board member comments y So um I do not have my um
yeah thank you the order because we agreed to go in the order of voting so Trustee Kilpatrick no comments okay trusty Moreno no trusty Melton i know how
trusty Rodriguez no comments trusty Williams yes well I will be brief but I want to just say congratulations to the scholar athletes as well as to those uh scholars who created those brochures um for their awards in that
area um congratulations to uh Stephanie Andrews for being appointed at the state level um to do this great foundation work and then lastly just um let everyone know that uh if you have a young person a scholar that's in the
district and then the um uh looks like now it's countywide that's between the ages of 15 and 24 the world 1000 programs application closes today so if you know anybody or if you can share and you know there's a young person that
opportunity will close today and that will uh I think they start their first assignment in June so they uh it is a great opportunity for the students to start off making at least $13 an hour um and they are paired in a professional
setting thank you trusty Williamson no coming trusty Davis um I'm not sure if this is the right place to share this so just tell me to stop if it isn't but um really briefly I was at lunch a few days ago and some guy
just like walked up to me and he was like "You're on a school board right?" And I was like "Yes." And then um he was just telling me that he had basically a kid move into his house recently due to some family situations they started over at Muick they've had a great experience they didn't know how it was going to go
the principal has been extremely supportive and the teachers have been and they didn't know how the process was going to go but he just really felt called to share that he was impressed with how the school was handling it thanks for sharing that
all right I have no additional comments so if I could have Trusty Rodriguez read our motion to move into close session [Applause] yep so I move that the board go into
close session for the purpose of a strate strategy and negotiation session i am shouting because we have some technical difficulties with the microphones so we are all going to need to just speak up tonight um they are
assuring me that the video will still pick up on our voices as long as we project so if we could just speak up a little louder when it's our turn to talk that would be wonderful um I would like to welcome all of you to the Grand Rapids Public Schools Board of Education
meeting today is Monday April 14th we appreciate your presence at this meeting and we respectfully request that you turn off your cell phones and refrain from clapping cheering or making audible comments we invite you to make formal public comment during the designated
times on either agenda items non-aggenda items or if you wish on both to do so please make sure you fill out the comment cards which are right at the entrances both entrances um and submit them to the board assistant over here Julie Anderson or
one of our public safety officers and comments are limited to three minutes and also on those cards there is um a section where you mark if it's an agenda item or a non-aggenda item and there is a spot
um Um oh right up at the top that asks if you are a student because we do want students to be able to speak at the beginning of the meeting so they can get home in a decent time i now call this meeting to order and trustee Rodriguez can you take the
role please yep all right listen up everybody uh Trusty Kilpatre Trusty Moreno present trustee Melton present trusty Rodriguez is here uh Trustee Williamson present trusty
Williams present trustee Davis present vp Wade is excused and President Davis here we have a forum do I have a motion to approve the agenda so moved
all in favor any opposed okay agenda moves forward and we have Dr her love Lady Mitchell with us tonight uh Dr roby will be here in just a moment she's on her
way traveling from out of state so um Dr love Lady can you lead us into celebration sleep sure good evening President Davis and distinguished board members we have three celebrations tonight to present to you i'd like to ask Director Jennifer Brock to come down
jennifer Brock will share information on Sons of American Revolution Sergeant Moses Adams Memorial Contest so come on down please thank you Dr love Lady Mitchell and board president board members i'm
also inviting Eric um Vanderly um he is um going to actually about the celebration this awesome opportunity for scholars absolutely and I'm excited to speak very briefly in front of you because I have the opportunity to
introduce one of our teachers and her scholars who is here this evening i want to briefly speak on behalf of our three scholar recipients the winners of the Sons of the American Revolution Sergeant Moses Adams Memorial Brochure uh one of
our distinguished teachers Mrs sarah Dryer uh is the teacher of Miss Bedoya at Shamut Hills um Miss Dryer is a 24-year veteran of GRPS and is described as being very passionate about sharing
her knowledge and her own passion for her curriculum with her scholars uh we also have with us this evening Miss Heather Lewis miss Heather Lewis is the teacher of Miss Dean and Mr harriet Jabi at CA Frost and Miss Lewis is described
as being a very dedicated veteran teacher as well who is best known for her innovative lessons and pardon me uh providing a safe and welcoming environment for all the scholars inside of her classroom uh on behalf of Mrs
drier I'd like to congratulate her scholar Beatatrice G pedoya for her third place award uh and her recognition that she earned for being an outstanding uh applicant uh and I'd also like to invite Miss Heather Lewis uh forward so
that she can speak on behalf of her scholars if I could please Miss Lewis you mind [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I'm just going to stand whatever you're
comfortable with um so as Eric said my name is Heather Lewis and I had a number of scholars this year who chose to participate in a contest um given by the Sons of the American Revolution and they had to create a brochure about how the
founding documents of our country has impacted us um so if the students won first place was $100 second place was $75 third place was $50 and then if you the first place
winner got to go to states so their brochure was sent to state and then one of my students won state as well and now it's going into nationals uh with the opportunity to win like $750 extra dollars
so I mean when money is tied to things kids are all going to go about doing it and I don't blame them because I'm the same so um we had a first and second place winner at CA Frost and we were all so excited so I'm sorry but our second
place winner Dominic if you want to stand up dominic's brochure was amazing um we did not bring it because I didn't realize I should have but uh actually right now the brochure is sitting in my classroom
but Dominic went as far as not only creating the brochure but doing some background research bringing in knowledge that we had learned about in US history with the Constitution the Declaration of Independence um even went
as far as creating a little like a pull tab and you pulled it down and then words came super cute uh and Dominic won uh $75 for that and then we had a first place winner also Chloe
Dean and Chloe's was also amazing so amazing that it won first place and $100 and then it won the state of Michigan worth $250 so she's already earned $350 from this um and we're looking forward to seeing if she wins
nationals so congratulations thank you for supporting your students in that project and good job they're they're all wonderful my students and thank you for using your teacher voice so we have two additional celebrations
so we're going to ask you to stay right there actually and the next one is teeing up one book one city yes so we have Nan uh who is our ELA uh supervisor she's going to come down and she's going to talk about the excellent work that was
done around one Brooklyn city thank you thank you Dr lovely Mitchell thank you board thank you thank you thank you Miss Black so I had the exciting privilege oh thank you i had the exciting privilege
of uh partnering again with the Grand Rapids Public Library in the One Book One City Project um which was an amazing partnership and um I have guests here um to share with us tonight but first I'll
make a quick connection to our priority scholar outcomes of engaging um in uh literacy proficiency uh reducing the academic dispar disparencies excuse me for our black and Latino students and
increasing student empowerment belonging and agency i don't know how much time we have to the next yeah and a connection also to our strategic themes in this
project and today with us we have Aaron Hart from the Grand Rapids Public Library to share with us tonight so Erin go ahead yeah I was going to lean into the mic but it's still not working all right um so yeah thank you for having me um the library has been partnering with
GRPS in this program for over a decade um and it's really really unique I would say as a program um not just you know a lot of places do these sort of one book one community things but to do it fully integrated with the schools to have every single fifth grader 62 classes
reading the same book they're all experiencing the same author talk um that's amazing and it's a reach that we would not be able to get on our own with the library uh so it's really great that we're able to partner with the schools you know bring this book bring this sort of celebration to the kids and every
year it's just amazing to see amazing to see the work the students do um on our end at the library we get to see the excitement from everyone um you know frequently we'll have kids come in in like sixth or seventh grade and they'll see a book that was a previous one book one city book and they'll be like "Oh
yeah I met that author." Uh and it's a really lovely shared experience to be able to have so we're always excited to do and love that this partnership continues oh yeah and so um we also have to thank of course uh all our partnerships as well our sponsors for this program so all listed up there our
library foundation Michigan Arts and Culture Council WGI Foundation Independent Bank MSAD Foundation and Brad and Gail Kessle these are all people who have donated their own money organizations that support this program um because they're so enthusiastic about it and they really see the impact of it
and again this is um the library is very excited about this always that we love that we get to continue to do it and this year we had um the book that was chosen by Barry and Johnson and the title is playing the cards that you're
dealt and uh we have over 1,25 students scholars reading the story and as Erin mentioned it's 62 classrooms throughout the district and we had over 1,400 blog posts that were all related
to the story and um we had an amazing amazing connection with the students and the scholars throughout the district um hundreds of posts each day that we monitored and the connection that the
students made um was amazing and heartwarming and uh every day when I logged on to read those posts um I uh not only got a smile um but I also like I said it was just heartwarming the connections that the students not only
made to their own lives but to um to their friends lives or to to each other's lives or other books that they had read uh it was an amazing experience and I really um am thankful that we were able to make this partnership happen and
uh the students not only um posted in the blog during school hours but we noticed they were part um they were posting in the evening and on the weekend so my colleague messaged me one night and she said "Man they're posting
um after hours." And I and I had to think about it for a second and and I wondered what she was getting at i said "Oh really?" And and uh I I texted a couple question marks and and she said "That's good right?" And I said "That's
really good." So they were um they were posting on the blogs after school hours and we were really excited um so not only were they posting in the blog but they also created posters biographies diaramas um and we have one of our
teachers here that's going to share a little bit about how the project impacted her um we have some students from Buchanan there that were interviewed we have um students at Congress that created body biographies and we were able to decorate the space
when the author came to visit with all scholar created materials and uh it was welcoming and exciting for him um the scholars at Burton use technology in some new and
creative ways to create things we have Burton students also trying grits for the first time um because grits were mentioned in the story um I have a video of um of the project uh and I also want
to give a teacher from CA Frost a couple of minutes or a minute to share how the project impacted her and her students as well my students at CA Frost um really approached this book with a lot of empathy and understanding uh in that we started the story it's got a lot of
tough topics and conversations and um spoke about addictions in there and as fifth graders some might think like that's such a hard conversation to have but we started it by simply stating that we don't always know what's going on behind the closed doors of others houses even if they're our best friends and we
just don't know and so we really took to heart understanding that we don't always know what's going on and so when they approached those blog posts they really had that thought process behind them and so they made sure that as they were doing their blog post and I don't know if any of mine were the ones that were
after hours but I do know that that they definitely took to heart and really made sure that like they were being kind and considerate while they were having those conversations and when they would log back in the following week they got so excited when another scholar from a different school would answer or respond
back to them and it was a really nice conversation to be able to have with everybody across the city and I unfortunately had to miss out due to a family emergency on the author visit and one of my students came in today and said "Miss West you're not going to believe what you missed." And they were
so excited to share that author visit with me even though I was not there it was the best i think that it's a really good book and maybe one of my favorites because it is so deep and it the author makes it so like people can understand this people
know because it has happened to them before this is This is It's like The author makes it sound like they they don't The author doesn't make it like super like sad or depressing or
anything but not all Happshes i just This book relates to me and so many others that I know really well so I think this is a magnificent book my favorite part of playing is like when
terone and I'll play um spades i just think that Mr johnson describes like each like each round slook of the game of space so vividly it feels like I'm
inside that game like I am playing a game with them part of playing card is the vlogging because you get to like say what you think about the book and how good it is um he said
playing cards or death as in dealing with your life and kind of just playing it out and doing your best to play fairly i think the other chosen for adult
because deal with it so um I think I think the reason the author chose his title is because um I think it means like you have to deal with the things you're given or
like anything that happens and that you can rather be the bigger person or somebody that doesn't involved i think I'm a good friend but I can sometimes not be a very good friend because I can mess up sometimes and be
mean and sometimes I'll make fun of them without realizing that I really hurt them i think I'm a good friend because I treat some of my friends differently than I treat the other ones like sometimes if I have a friend that's a girl I'm going to treat them more
respectful cuz me and my friends like my best friend uh we roast each other for fun uh just like Jamal and do we roast each other for fun but I if I if we're like new to being friends like I just had a new friend i wouldn't roast them
cuz I don't know if they play like that so I would learn how me and my friend play and I would uh uh respect what they want me to do like uh my friend respects me roasting him cuz he roasted me back sometimes but uh if they if one of my
friends don't want me to roast them then I'd be like "Okay." So yeah I think I respect people and how they want me to treat them [Applause] [Music] [Applause]
thank you yeah and I have a I have a fifth grader this year and she I know all about this book she loves the project um but I just thought it'd be fun to highlight that card project that they made when they were all that was on the author day correct can you just
share a little bit about that yeah so on the the day of the author's visit we had a little bit of downtime so we had the students create their own um playing card design and then the teachers send those back to me at the Franklin campus
here and we um were narrowing down i gave them the date of April 18th so we'll narrow down the selection and then here in Franklin campus I'm going to uh display those with a QR code and we'll vote um and then we can um make everyone
a set of playing cards here in house actually um we can print playing cards so that each classroom will get their own set of playing cards with that design we also have a video that our communications department made with the author speaking i don't know if we have
time for that one do you want to just um send that to our emails and we can post on the website probably okay yeah for sure thank you thank you so much for sharing and you do have a copy of the book that Miss Ally made for us yeah yeah and the book
itself is is a great book so thank you thank you everyone thank you our last celebration will be ushered in by um Chief Larry Johnson and I also think I see Dr ledron Roby and so we're going to shift as Chief Johnson comes down
good evening President Davis Dr mitchell Dr roby other distinguished uh board members uh today we have with you Justin Walker the athletic director at Union High School and Marcus Harris athletic director at Ottawa Hills High School who will be going over the accomplishments
from our winter sports uh to just highlight some of the accomplishments of our scholar athletes some of those athletes are here with us tonight others are either studying or at a practice somewhere but uh but they will highlight some of the achievements of this uh past
winter uh good evening uh Superintendent Dr roby board president Davis and our esteemed board members uh thank you for the opportunity for me and Mr harris to come share some of the highlights that we had from this past winter season uh Union High School we had four student
athletes that were named to the OK Gold uh first team all conference uh then we also had two student uh scholar athletes excuse me that receive okay gold honorable mention recognition as well in addition to those uh achievements we also had a great winner where
achievements and records were being set both at the building level and the state level the first uh scholar was Major Vance who took first place at the OK East diving championship and broke a long-standing record at Union High School that had been in place since 1988
uh this is an incredible achievement and we are very proud of Major uh unfortunately he was not able to be here tonight uh the next student Sam Kit who is here Sam uh Sam made history here at Union High School performing uh in the division one state wrestling tournament
uh at the finals at Fort Field competing at 106 lbs he earned a overall fifth place which secured all state honors and he also recorded his 100th win uh career-wise which is truly a tough feat in the wrestling world so Sam uh had a
great season we're looking forward to next year and hopefully with a repeat of that next we have Vivian [Applause] Ejac uh Viv Vivian is now a current record holder of two major records one uh being uh both at Union and with the
state of Michigan uh last season Vivian recorded 15 blocks in one game which uh was a union record as well as secured her name on the state record board uh and then this past season uh again Vivian decided to add her name to the
record books again against Kelloggsville where she recorded 27 rebounds in one game adding her name again to the record books both for Union High School in the state uh we are incredibly proud of Vivian um in her achievement uh in basketball so for two records two at the
state and the high school level we are very appreciative of her hard work so thank you we are incredibly proud of our scholar athletes in the union athletic program um but we know we could not do it without the support of our staff and our board that supports our athletic departments and you all show up to
events our kids notice and they appreciate and our families notice and appreciate it as well um so thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you at some spring events and I'll turn it over to Mr harris thanks Justin good evening Superintendent Dr roby President Davis esteemed board
members thank you for having us here as I'm going to uh talk a little bit about some of the winter highlights from the Ottawa Hills Bengals athletics program uh we we compete in the OK White League and so uh during the winter season we had 10 allconerence athletes and one
honorable mention that encompasses everything from bowling boys and girls basketball and also boys swimming our boys swim team had another uh successful season which they went uh five and one in dual meets and so they end up finishing second in second place
in the conference uh we had conference champions of Amando Huner in the 200 free and Wyatt Jack in the 500 free and then also our 400 free relay team were conference champions uh we had six allconerence swimmers uh Wyatt Jakis
Euan Jakis Amando Huner Ruben Overman Tristan Stock and Christian Ramos uh we also had three regional divers that qualified for regionals uh with Isaiah Battle Juan Villa and Christian Ramos and also we had several state qualifiers
uh in swimming as well uh that represented the 200 free 100 fly uh also the 500 free and then the 200 free relay and the 400 free relay as well that competed at the state level also of course for our boys swim team we had
academic all state and academic all-American athletes who were Amando Huner Ruben Overman and Ram Rei and Noah Stitler uh they also earned a bronze level from the Nisca scholar scholar
team uh with a GPA a team GPA of 3.9 3.293 and so that's the national intercolastic swim coaches association uh in which they won that national award as well uh girls basketball enjoyed it most successful season in about 14 years
uh a lot of that had to do with Samaj Robinson she's she's a senior you may may have heard of her she's been in a M live quite a few times uh Samaj was voted MI player of the week she was also nomin also on the ballot for M live player of the week five times during the
winter sports season uh she was selected honorable mention for the Grand Rapids area dream team for girls basketball she'll be attending college uh for track and basketball at a college to be determined uh Sam Robertson and Gianna Lamato
Fischer also was awarded the BCAM Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan for the outstanding student athlete award for having a 4.0 GPA and participating in basketball for four years uh the girls basketball team like I said had his most successful season in
14 years and our coach Emily Gussert uh she was a candidate for regional coach of the year through BCAM as well uh our bowling team uh made significant progress this year which we had 17 bowlers on the roster finished seventh place in the bowling regionals and we
had two allconerence teams and we got a young team and everyone will be coming back next year so our coach is very excited for the bowling team next season so uh thank you again for having us here appreciate for what all all the things that you do to support Ottawa Hills Athletics and Union Athletics and look
forward to a great spring season thank you [Applause] that will conclude their report and uh just uh just good things are going on in athletics uh elementary participation at all-time high and we we look forward to
that continuing in spring sports as well as I know school participation is increasing there and I just want to say with Vivian Ejac she had to wait a long time to get her her validations and her confirmations from the state so just thank you for your patience and thank you for the outstanding job i want to
thank all the athletes but for their families as well who may be represented here today but but she had to wait and uh for that record to be confirmed and uh and she had a lot of patience and uh patience with us and trying to get confirmed so we thank you for that thank you [Applause]
okay we will move forward with the report of the student representatives can I start with Althia please try to speak up as much as you can um hi i go in Central and recently we had our job fair we had a couple schools attend
i don't remember all of them but I know South Lift Southwest Ottawa Monastery went of course Innovation Central um some upcoming events we have we have our um food drive coming up this th pantry coming up this Thursday I
think or next Thursday if you have any questions about that you can um find it on our school's Facebook and you can go stop by get free food from the GRTC um we have the JTC cadet ball coming up and we have prom and of course
graduation everything's going really fast but we have a lot of stuff coming up thank you Alia fabiola um hi I'm Fabola and I'm a senior at City High um we also have a couple updates one of which is that um middle school senior class was
able to raise a little bit over $20,000 to go over uh school events um one of which is the senior class trip uh we're going to be going to Chicago and later Six Flags so um it took a lot of work to be able to raise that much money so that's something we're proud of um
another thing is we also have prom so we're it's at uh Thousand Oaks Golf Club on Friday April 25th so we're all waiting patiently or impatiently that means for um prom that night and then finally city seniors uh last official
day of school is May 1st and then after that um it's going to be about a month of IV exams so we're also preparing for that thank you okay we are now up to the public
comment for board agenda items only um I see Miss Anderson is checking to see if there's any more cards right now i don't believe we have any with board agenda items okay so we will move
forward secretar's report all right now I got to be loud all right so um we've got a couple committee meetings coming up um ad hoc facilities committee meeting is scheduled for May 12th at 5:30 in the library building conference room 112 and
then the finance committee meeting is scheduled on Tuesday May 27th um at 4:30 here in the administration building auditorium that's my report moving on to committee chair reports um Trustee Williams can you give us the
finance report please sure um so we met on March 4 and at that meeting we discussed some action items that have been brought to the board so we'll be um looking to vote on those tonight with regards to the purchasing agenda and some donations additionally we uh talked
about our um February 2025 financial statements and then we uh wrapped up with um some board training so we did some school finance 101 training any questions okay Trusty Williams do you have a
report for ad hoc prepared yes well we um I can give a little update from um our meeting that we had i know and then we also had a meeting just um earlier today so um and it's um just a little
bit of overlap with a couple of things I worry about so we will be talking uh there will be a Aberdine community meeting that is tomorrow so um just board members if you want to go out and support that as well as well as community um you can find that information on our web page of course we
have been discussing um between the last meeting and this meeting um some policy changes that we needed to get cleared up and I think we have some language that we like as a committee that will come forward uh to the board and will be at president's date discretion whether
that's at a work session or at a board meeting when we will um actually do our final vote on that policy um and then we also uh there were tours done between uh the last meeting and this meeting that uh of 6B and so some board members wanted to
tour six so we did uh have that opportunity in place as well as today we got updates that 6B is on schedule and just as well just slightly under budget so that is great news um with regards to
6B and then we did um get some had a chance to just chat with staff about some changes that they're going to be making to their procedural policies that they wanted to make us aware of and um as they actually they're
kind of giving us a a a preview of what that would be like before they ask the uh ask the full board to take a look at that but um they wanted some input from the ad hoc committee and just kind of to know what um we would be open to doing
and some uh different policy changes they are proposing I should say procedural changes they're proposing and so we will uh get those as a board they will uh get that to us through Dr roles as they get that completed on their end
but it was again just an early look and get some front-end feedback from board about uh the changes that they are planning to make so look for that in the future okay thank you Trusty Lyns a couple
things going on here okay um we did have two scholars in the um Oh it that that's my fault they did check the right box so I'm gonna go back to public comment to get those scholars so um Trusty
Rodriguez can you read about the public comment for us absolutely thank you all right during public comment individuals will be invited one at a time to the podium to address the board before beginning your comment please state your full name at the time we'll start the timer allowing each individual
three minutes to make their comment um you will need to complete your comment time upon being notified that the three minutes have passed again the timer is uh right behind Trustee Moreno uh board members do not respond to public comment concerns will be brought to the attention of the appropriate staff we
value your input and thank you for sharing with us okay can I call forward Devonte Taylor please um wherever you feel comfortable since the mics aren't working if There you go come on
up and that isn't going to work so you don't even have to stick a while my name is Devonte Taylor and I'm a fifth and I'm a fifth grader at Mick Elementary i enjoy coming to the STEM
program because I can tell them what we're working on in class and receive extra help mr children's teacher helps me understand it more and breaks it down for me
thank you and some Marley Low hello my name is Samarlo and I am a third grader at Millet Park Elementary i love the kids count program because it
it is fun and I get to learn to I get to learn after school also it helps me with the math and science yes
[Applause] then again I apologize that I did not pay attention to that box that said you were students i'm glad somebody caught that okay we will move forward now to
the GRPS foundation report good evening everyone to use our teacher voices let's say you very good well good to see everyone back after spring break dr roby board of trustees um we've got a lot of stuff going on at the foundation
i myself just got back from a national conference um in um Knoxville Tennessee with um I think there were over 80 education foundations from across the country so lots of learning opportunities um and lots of new things
that we want to um just see you know if you've met one education foundation you've met one education foundation so many school districts are so different but there's still some really good learning opportunities um and actually as of this morning um I am now the vice president for the Michigan Education
Foundation so it's really great for us to you know be connected on the Michigan level um and just kind of sharing best practices in the state of Michigan and really how can we continue to support um our public schools so I wanted to share just a quick synopsis of what's been
happening this spring and kind of the whole school year as we're getting ready um a teacher told me recently we're six Mondays away till the last uh the end of the school year so that's some quick perspective um we have uh given away
35 spring uh teacher and principal grants um just this last round which is over 70 grants in total um and I'm really excited that um I don't know how many of you went to see the Mean Girls Junior at Union High School that was something that we helped to support um so there's been so many great projects
like that and we look forward to we want to double that um for next year uh so it's been over $50,000 that we've granted to teachers and principles this year stephanie was that through a teacher grant the the It was musical yeah yeah yeah it was um and we'll
actually be celebrating with those students on Thursday we're going to go in and bring some treats and just tell them that they did such a great job so um we are going we actually this week we're purchasing a piano lab for the Elder Middle School which will then be transferring over to Ottawa Hills which
is a brand new great program we're very excited to fund that as well as we purchased a timony um for Grand Rapids Monastery and Innovation Central to round out um their musical instrument program so um we're also organizing four playground beautifification projects
with community partners and we put it out to all the principles and said "Do you are you interested in us coming out and just cleaning up playgrounds and um redoing hopscotches and some of that stuff?" And um I think within an hour we had eight principles reply so I'm like "Okay great." That's we're really
excited about doing that so uh last thing to share we're six weeks away from Mind Share that's the largest fundraiser that we do um we've raised over $100,000 in sponsorship so far um we expect that event to bring in about $250,000 um which obviously goes back
back into our programs so we'll be doing some strategic planning um refresh this summer uh in the past we've invited board of education members to join us um we always want to look at like what else can we be doing um and a couple of things that we're considering is
inviting one of our teachers of the year to be an adviser for our board going forward um and as well as looking at how is our student representation for the foundation board um even through our grant making as well so um that is my report for tonight
any questions board members thank you for all that okay next on our agenda is the superintendence report dr ruby nope um you have conference report out from the National Association of School Boards
with um Trustee Milton and then I can kind of do too oh do you want me to start yeah yeah so um over spring break we had the opportunity to attend the national um
schoolboard association conference um that was held in Atlanta Georgia and this is school board members as well as um superintendent and district level leadership from across the nation coming together around various topics um and so
um some of the kind of things that were the highlights or the things that uh that we were able to see in many of the strands of our the different presentations that we went to is things around of course improved communications
between um board and constituents um between board and superintendent between board and board members also um kind of the political climate that we are currently in and how are how does governance um impact that and how our
board members kind of staying to make sure that they're staying ab breast with some of those issues that are impacting their their school systems and then also making sure there's outreach to community um other kind of topics that rose to the um the top of
the the top of the list I think included also um engagement overall like your community and how do you continue to kind of be creative in community engagement but there's also things like special education and the laws around
that as well as um think the kind of after effects of co and and other kind items what was really interesting um at this conference we had the opportunity and I'm not going to recall her name um to meet with a
um a par Olympiad who um had gone through college and had an experience of she had given her time to the military shortly after um 911 and had gone you
know um to Baghdad and some other places and during her first maybe two months there her leg um was blown off during um just being in the c in that country
at the time and just her her grit and her determination that she's run marathons and she's competed I think in four different Olympia um Olympics since that time as well as um um kind of iron
woman they call it Iron Man but I'm going to say Iron Woman because she clearly was that and I don't remember um Trusty Melton if you remember her her name off the top she has a book and um it was just just listening to her story and how she did not give up and it's
like to have something like that so tragically happened and how you recreate and find your purpose through tragedy and I thought that was kind of phenomenal other um yeah I didn't write down her name maybe yeah I took the opportunity to go to all the board governance sessions
that I could um just was really inspired one of the things that stuck out to me was this concept that we as the board together are the stewards of one of the most significant pools of public resources in our country and that the working out of democracy right here in this room is one of the most
transformative things we can do so I was just really encouraged by that and then the time and so I have lots of notes and some things I'll pass on to you guys um but the session ended I thought this was funny with Kevin Bacon who's not even an educator but he was really inspiring and talked about how when kids are making
art they're not making trouble i love that concept of just like not because I worry about the trouble but because I love tapping into who kids are and that concept was really just brought brought forth by some fun songs and things like that but um just talking about the importance of creativity and the and the
arts in our programming and um how often that's uh you know quick to get cut and in this kind of new era of education uh to make sure that we're guardians of those things so just exciting time to be part of an educational system and grateful for that opportunity
questions okay yes superintendent report all right so good evening everybody i hope that everyone has had a um opportunity to recharge over the last um week and a day
and you're ready for that last stretch it's um I'll use kind of a marathon since we were just talking about the par Olympia it's like that we're at mile 2122 where you can see kind of the home stretch and this is probably one of the most exciting times as our um scholar
representatives were talking about the many things that are taking place at their schools um wrapping up that senior year as well as prom and all of those kind of fun celebrations and so um we are doing similar and again just wanting and hoping that our school year because
it's been a great year but it continues kind of with that energy as we want to finish strong and um to get to June um our first report actually is related to our certified enrollment from our spring count and I'm going to ask Director
Rodney Lewis to come up and to provide an overview of that student enrollment counting good evening Superintendent Roby President Davis and distinguished board of trustees think I'm just going to hit the video mute right i got it all
right so I want to share with you guys the the spring enrollment data that we had uh from this past uh spring count uh strate connected to strategic theme number six creating a culture of trust collaboration and
stewardship so kind of going to outline the process that we go through in student data services to support this process with the buildings um so uh knowing that we have some new board members we went through this process uh
in the fall as well as last year but uh the week prior to account day which is February 12th this past year um we started gathering schools began gathering data on their on synergy which is our student data platform that we
utilize uh they put various reports general collection reports uh things of that nature and then we have uh spring count again which was February 12th uh so we want to ensure on that day that all students are
in their seats uh learning um not on field trips for the most part we want to make sure everybody's there those kids that are not there we want to make sure we get everyone excused as many as possible um and then we have a process that we go through um that is called a
10-day rule and a 30-day rule and I'll explain that a little bit more shortly but on February 14th building level personnel be they began to uh look at their count absent reports which kind of highlights the kids that were out on
February 12th and then they look at the dates when they may have returned or may not have returned those students that they have some challenges with that they haven't seen the return on they begin to make phone calls and try to track these kids get them back into uh the building
a little bit more difficult with the secondary schools because we're managing classes of one through six or one through eight versus um all day uh buildings such as elementarymentaries um and then so on February 21st um
buildings received their count day packets u from SDS and they began to uh look at their general collections again and and see who should remain on list or who should come off the list um and then February 28th we have the 10-day rule uh so the 10-day rule applies to anyone
that was uh absent and was unexcused they have 10 days to get back into the buildings and get uh their attendance taken um and they must be present so for high schools or uh middle schools they have to be they have to come back in
every class that they miss not just that day march 14th is a 30-day rule so all kids that were um out excused um absent but excused they have to be back within 30 days um and the same as
the 10-day rule they have to make sure that they attend all courses that they have scheduled and then final call countday pack is due back from the buildings to student data services on March 21st um and from there we start beginning the initial certification
process that process uh begins on March 19th so all data gets uploaded to uh we call it SEPY which is the center for performance and and and information and then the final uh site that we actually do the final
certification um is all SEPY but that's a week later on March 26 and so everything gets transmitted uploaded to the SEPY site and we also have to deliver um hand deliver packets to the ISD auditors as well and the ISD
auditors uh begins the process of looking at our data and beginning the the desk audit process um and then there's a 45day rule that's extended for kids that may have been suspended u for some very serious violations
so our our spring count data um our number was 13,429.12 and that's full-time equivalent um which is we call it FTE so this is not actual headcount headcount is all the kids that are enrolled in the school fte are students that are
enrolled but they may not be full-time students such as a kid that may um have a class with GRCC and dual enrollment they're not going to count a full 1.0 or kid that may be uh a kindergarten kid that may not go
all day but they go half day so they get.5 versus 1.0 so that's kind of how they equate the fulltime FTE um and again what I said next step for auditors once they get this packets back from us and get everything uploaded they begin
the desk audit so in the fall they do a a field audit where they actually come out to random buildings and do um all the attendance work at the building have a conversation with the building staff in the spring it's more geared towards
okay we send a data to them and they sit at their desk and they uh review the packets that we we submit to them and then they give a a final adjustment number uh that typically in the spring it comes sometime in July
any questions i have a few um what is it um are all of these state mandates or there things in there that we are doing above and beyond or separate from what state mandated uh the the process is state mandates so you get
a lot of audit different audit forms that you have to submit and they have to go back to the ISC auditor as well as SE okay se just needs a number i ask the auditors needs a full package so they can look across the board and do their audits so nothing in that timeline is us
doing separate from what state is and then with the 10day rules um do what is the purpose of that if the student's not there on count day but they're they're recorded within that 10day rule or whatever other day rule does that then count towards our count with the state so So if they're if
they're back within the 10 days we get counted FT a full FTE for that kid if they don't come back they they don't get counted for that that day if they're elementary kid like or for a secondary kid it would be if they came back for like three classes they get credit for
those three classes yeah but if they miss the other three they don't correct so it's like a makeup basically okay how do the FTEES affect our funding and whatnot from the state so spring count is a 10% funding uh for next year uh
fall count is a 90% funding and dual enrollment students don't count for full-time equivalency they they have appropriated percentage okay interesting okay thank you any other questions all right thank you thank you
okay we can move on oh I'm sorry Dr we we have Oh this would be No it's action item that's you okay uh we can move on to action items so owner's re recommendation are we going to have Mr
johnson's i don't know so um if you recall last month we had a conversation and there was a presentation around owners rep representation um Mr johnson are you
able to just give an overview of the owner's rep conversation and I know that last month Mr sm um provided an overview but just kind of as a refresh of what the process was good evening again uh the conversation on the owner rep owners rep I think last
month and um ad hoc committee as well as uh I think some information have been brought forward to you where uh four uh individuals four companies have put in for um an interest in being the owner's rep and uh several projects that uh we have upcoming as to as what we're going
to do with vacant uh properties um we brought a recommendation back uh to the board uh in terms of who we thought would be uh the best fit for this particular uh project this first round of projects and we uh we presented that information and action the board to uh
move forward uh with uh with the recommendation that we brought forward mr johnson if you could just highlight really quick kind of some of the priorities in selecting um the purply entity that you recommended we uh we
utilized a uh a rubric uh and there was uh several individuals on the committee uh where a rubric was uh used uh we scored uh off of a uh the provided documentations from each company after the scoring of that u uh there were uh
interviews we all interviewed uh and scored separately those uh those scores were then merged together uh where the um we would then rank the candidates although we did not select the top uh receiver of the points uh we we selected the uh the uh individual the company
that was in number two we thought was the best fit uh looking at uh past projects uh the availability of staff to uh work uh with the with other partners in the community uh being able to work with us the district in terms of uh reaching our community are the goals
that we're trying to reach as it relates to the project as well do I have a motion to approve the owner's rep recommendation i have a question okay um could you in just really brief summary um following the
approval of the owner's rep whoever it is whoever we decide on what are the like immediate next steps for the district the board in regards to working with well surely we're going to go back as a as a team uh the facilities and operations team uh to begin to meet with
the uh the the company selected uh to lay out what our pri priorities are and how we want to approach these projects and uh and then from that point uh come back um to the superintendent uh with uh with how we will approach in terms of uh
best best fit now once the uh once the company is on uh on board there'll be some opportunities of some community engagement work uh where community individuals will have uh some input as well in terms of uh what's right for the neighborhood what's right for a particular project uh again we have two
projects uh that we're looking at right now and that is Alexander and Stocky and then we will uh make adjustments from there down the road if other properties become available um and so we'll look at uh what the recommendations are by giving them some guidelines in terms of
what we want to have happen with those properties and surely the board would have some input in that and just to clarify and the owner's rep is going to represent the district in whatever properties not just the ones you've identified any properties the district that that is correct we've expanded uh
originally when we put the uh RFP we talked about the RFP it was just one partic those two particular properties and then we expanded if some others come up then they would continue to represent us in those uh properties as fit thank you thank you so along that that same kind of line of
questioning is this owner's rep that we choose going to be facilitating all of the work moving forward with our FMP or just maybe a few just the vacant properties that we're working on right now just those properties as we bring up properties uh uh as this board
superintendent make recommendations to this board in terms of what properties we want to uplift and uh and move forward with and they would represent for that particular property all right thank you mr johnson you said that uh the the contract I may say the word
contract doesn't stop me if that's the wrong language uh has the two current buildings so Stocking and then Alexander but now has potential to operate is there like an evaluation to see that they're doing the things that they said they're going to do especially from like the engagement standpoint absolutely we
we will evaluate as we go to make sure that again our goals and objectives are being met and they're living to uh the contract that we put together to make sure that those uh those are bullet points and practices are being followed as we would want them to follow
and then I just have to add one more um can you just confirm that there has been well with this that there will be a a conflict of interest clause there the the RFP did list a conflict of interest and whatever company is selected they will have to uh uh move forward with a
with a conflict of interest statement and uh bring that to us as well and those will be evaluated through our legal department as well could we just define um by contract of in contra conflict of interest clause could we define what we mean by that uh I think
Thomas is here he can help me give you the legal term of that but uh because I'm not a lawyer but uh if there's if there's a conflict uh with the company uh that would have a direct impact on this particular on this project or any projects moving forward uh it is our hope that that company will reveal what
that conflict is so we as a board have an opportunity you as a board have an opportunity to evaluate to see if it's in the best interest to move forward with that particular company on that project yep all right i got a C+ I I do have one one final question i'm
so sorry um and I I apologize because I missed the the larger conversation at the last meeting we had about this but um so when we vote this is my first I'm sure many of our first times you know choosing voting on a on a you know
owner's rep is the the RFP process right they they've said "Okay you know they've seen the RFP and they are positive that they can kind of fulfill our needs is that going to be different than from a contract that we
uh get into with this uh company and then do we have to also um uh I guess vote on that as well no the is the RFP it's all one and the same it's all one and the same we we're bringing them we have brought them on board saying that
they will meet the needs that we have now and moving forward with additional projects that we so desire okay if I can add um it's following our outlined board um priorities around you know these are
the things and then the commitment to with those two properties to have the community engagement and then so it's it's a real estate person that's in essence what it is and so um currently these are buildings that were meant for schools and so we also want to make sure
that we are um looking to see what are the other opportunities that are available and this goes very closely in our alignment with our overall um FMP of how do we repurpose buildings that they're also community value and
community ad and so what what can we do that would be in alignment with that and then bringing those recommendations forward along with the engagement and other things to say it can be this or you know because of the priorities around housing or the priorities around
additional space um with uh community kind of space this is what we're recommending and this is what the price point might be for that to give an I just as a suggestion but they will be doing that research and kind of project managing that to bring it
forward okay does that help are I feel like you're asking are we approving the that we use this company or the contract or is it one in no yeah yes that that is more what I'm asking i understand the
the RFP process a little bit no it's okay um I Yeah because I'm just confused yeah are we voting on the company and then saying "All right and now we're going to you know now GRPS is going to finalize the contract and then do that." Okay okay perfect we um again just this
is after the RSC we have to decide which of these companies to go with and then once we've done that there will be uh some fine tuning in the contract of what actual work will be done and then that is what they will and you know some legal ease like what if they're not
meeting what we need and stuff like that termination of contract all that stuff will be in there and what are outcomes that we're expecting from them as well that stuff will be in the actual contract but the RFP and What we're voting on tonight is indeed the opportunity to go with to start that
conversation with the company from those from their recommendation perfect all right yep that's what I was looking for thank you so much thank you does anyone feel comfortable to um give a motion to approve the owner's
re recommendation motion support okay all in favor say I i any opposed okay thank you thank you um next up is our purchasing agenda
are there any questions do I have a motion to approve the purchasing agenda so move second second we're going to arm our All in favor say I i any oppose
okay motion carries next up on our agenda is the consent agenda grouping do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda some move all in favor say I i any
opposed motion carries okay moving on to um discussion items board president announcements just a couple of things i tried to uh make sure all of you knew before we started the meeting but um these green sticky notes are our parking
lot notes so um you can feel free to fill those out with things that aren't on the agenda that come to mind um so that we don't deter from our conversation and um getting things done and then just bring them to me uh before
you leave and I'll gather those together and make sure we address those at some point um for those of you in the audience that was uh one of our trustees ideas and I we're hoping to just kind of move our meetings forward in a more
successful way and not get off track um we do have a pretty solid idea of coffee with the board um we had talked about keeping those at
uh 6 to 7:30 and they will be quarterly so we have dates of uh May 6th September 2nd and December 2nd for sure may 6th um Baxter Community Center is set for that
um September 2nd uh not 100% positive but I think it's going to be at Kids Food Basket and then December 2nd um same thing we're pretty sure it'll be at Gilda's Club so both of those had offered for us to use that space for
free which is wonderful and we will represent each quadrant of our city that way um if you are not able to open the materials from Deborah Keys right we did figure out a way to navigate that craig
helped us out with that so reach out to me if you cannot open those um and our board norms are definitely going to have to be another work session topic because I'm getting a lot of mixed signals um so I mean it's all good things we all want
to make sure our norms are solid and um we'll get there though just a reminder that if you want things added to the agenda for committee meetings please bring them to the committee chair and not directly to staff um and the
committee chair will work with staff to figure out what's on the agenda um same with regular board meetings you know to come to me and um we have policy around all of that and then exciting is there is the board brief in front of you i
have it up here in four different languages if you want to see the other languages um that is also on the website i believe there were someone on the tables coming in and it will be there will be a QR code to access it in the
RGR so that is coming out in a week or so and that's another way people will be able to access it this is something our board is putting together um quarterly as well so it just our hope is that it
will uh provide information on what board work is because we are a little different than district staff and so we just want to clarify what our role is and what we've been up to um and just educate the community that way so thank
you for all of you to for contributing to that and I believe that's all I have moving forward to public comment on non-aggenda items all right again uh same as last time
individuals will be invited one at a time to the podium to address the board um or whatever you feel comfortable with if it feels more comfortable at the table tonight because of the lack of the microphone feel free to do that and again you'll have three minutes to make
your comments um you'll need to complete your comment time upon being notified that three minutes have passed again by your timer um board members do not respond to public comment concerns will be brought to the attention of the appropriate staff we value your input and thank you for sharing with us
wendy Winston will be up first oh did she okay d jones followed by Betty Rosen Leachcher let me sit
down i need y'all to got a lot of guts how y'all doing i'm D jones i'm flying to the United Nations tomorrow i had a nice article on ABC13 go out on a $ 32 billion company that educated our students directly here at
Ottawa Hills High School it's going to be one of the best schools in the nation one day i believe that cuz I live here and I'm going to continuously passionately develop cool initiatives i'm really excited to be able to do that uh I spent a lot of cash to be able to get these resources to be able to get
this kind of education to our students a $ 32 billion education from Epic Games and I'm finally happy I got to speak to the person who handles curriculum because Epic Games has educational tools that can enhance and enrich our curriculum our community our education
it can be appealing it can bring different educators and it can just do a lot and so I just connected uh the director of curriculum Jennifer Brock sorry I had to say your name like that but I just have to say these things publicly because I'm a very bold person i'm very passionate and I really want to
see Epic Games educational tools because a $32 billion company already educated our kids and I'm connected uh to Davenport and Josiah Dunning the kid who actually won the first thousand and Dear Mario uh today before I just spoke to
the ad hoc facility i left because those kids were uh at the food court and um I gave them the last thousand and they split it so they both got 500 bucks so I like to break bread i'm a very charitable person i feel like if society allows you to have hundreds of billions
or hundreds of trillions if you didn't know the first probably the first uh trillionaire will come from asteroid mining so nobody can tell me you can't be a trillionaire because Barack Obama in 2016 signed the uh United States Competitiveness Act you got to have at least a couple billion to even create an
asteroid mining company but yeah so I'm just really excited to you know passionately just pioneer it just feels unreal like the Unreal Engine it feels unreal to be able to do this for my community how all the time and energy I spend into this uh the only thing I'm
would have to work on is our communication because I was grinding so hard trying to put all of this stuff together i'm one person that did all of this by myself the business side and everything i do this all alone and uh I didn't know that we had to have the building agreement signed and then we didn't do that until Thursday 2 days
before the activation so I couldn't get the info out to Luke to get it to the broader community and so it's all right though because I was able to do a lot of beautiful things for the school district for the students and you know connecting Davenport University's coach because Josiah and some of his friends want to go to that school and they already
filled out the questionnaire and I know we're going to go get those kids those scholarships at Ottawa Hills High School and I know it's because of a black person named D jones who's very passionate who had the vision for this who's going to change society 193 countries the United Nations i'm going
to be a billionaire one day potentially a trillionaire thank you y'all betty Rosen Leecher hi i'm going to use my teacher voice i'm Betty Rosen Leecher and I am representing Opportunity Thrive here this evening a nonprofit that's focused
on building healthier staff cultures um and more resilient educators across the state of Michigan i'm a retired central office and building school administrator a former schoolboard member and above all else an educator i currently serve as the program manager for our educator
wellness coaching program which we've been excited to offer to Grand Rapids public school staff this year tonight I want to offer a few items of clarification to the staff of GRPS and the context for involvement with the district first we recognize that educators are being asked to do more
with less across the education sector we recognize that there are broken systems in our schools and we recognize that there are systematic stressors that are weighing too heavily on our educators as an organization we seek to heal many system issues through data collection training and advocacy still we
understand why educators feel cynical about any resource seemingly suggesting that the answer to their stress lies in them and not in fixing not in fixing the system we believe though that it's not an eitheror issue we need to fix systems and help educators not feel so lonely in
the profession educators deserve to be seen heard and supported we believe they deserve to focus on their own well-being every educator has the right to choose emotional physical and social well-being and our coaches are trained to support educators on that journey when we were
asked to partner with DRPS in the spring of 24 the district wrote a proposal for grant funds through the school aid budget section 31A the district identified funding for approximately $75,000 in that proposal to deliver our confidential personal wellness inventory
and coaching for 54 staff members initially when asked to consider this work we planned on rolling it out in a few pilot schools within the district over however over months of communication we were told that the district would like to deliver the PWI to everyone we started communication and
planning um for the project in May of 2024 we planned our rollout date for February of this year and provided a rollout video to be shown to staff during their staff meetings the video describes the program's purpose intent and confidentiality and we hoped that
every staff member would receive a standard message on a typical day and be provided some time to take the assessment during their staff meeting this is a this is best practice because we know our educators are often trained not to open emails from unfamiliar sources and we know how busy they are
with their schedules i want to close by reiterating a few key points first this program is funded through state dollars that can only be used for this specific purpose the state has identified the funding solely to support well-being in our schools the district will return any unused funds to the state second our
program is completely confidential we do not share personal data from the inventory or coaching with the district we are here as an outside organization solely to support staff lastly we believe that while educators may feel powerless in the face of many system systematic issues in education we still
have the power to choose to invest in ourselves and our coaching program is one of those investments in oneself thank you so much for your time this evening thank you okay superintendent comments just a reminder to all um part of our spring
kind of activities we are starting our school art fair um it will be opening up April 25th next Tuesday next I want to say that's the 25thish
so um and it is such a phenomenal experience to see our young people um just express their talents and feelings and all sorts of things and so I invite the um broader community to check us out
downtown at um Western Michigan University um uh campus satellite campus and it you will not be disappointed just to see the artwork of our young people thank you board member
comments no this is there's been a couple mis mishaps because the agenda that's public is slightly off from the one online I think no it's just out of order that's why we've had some mishaps okay okay does
that make sense so um we'll move into board member comments y So um I do not have my um yeah thank you the order because we
agreed to go in the order of voting so Trustee Kalpatrick no comments okay trusty Moreno no comments trusty Melton no comments trusty Rodriguez no comments
trusty Williams yes well I will be brief but I wanted to say congratulations to the scholar athletes as well as to those uh scholars who created those brochures um for their awards in that area um
congratulations to uh Stephanie Andrews for being appointed at the state level um to do this great foundation work and then lastly just um let everyone know that uh if you have a young person a scholar that's in the district and in
the um uh looks like now it's countywide that's between the ages of 15 and 24 the world 1000 programs application closes today so if you know anybody or if you can share and you know there's a young
person that opportunity will close today and that will uh I think they start their first assignment in June so they uh it is a great opportunity for the students to start off making at least $13 an hour um and they are paired in a
professional setting thank you trustee Williamson no comment trusty Davis um I'm not sure if this is the right place to share this so just tell me to stop if it isn't but um really briefly I was at lunch a few days ago
and some guy just like walked up to me and he was like "You're on a school board right?" And I was like "Yes." And then um he was just telling me that he had basically a kid move into his house recently due to some family situations they started over at Muick they've had a great experience they didn't know how it
was going to go the principal has been extremely supportive and the teachers have been supportive and they didn't know how the process was going to go but he just really felt called to share that he was impressed with how a school was handling it thanks for sharing that
all right I have no additional comments so if I could have Trusty Rodriguez read our motion to move into close session yep so I move that the board go into close session for the purpose of a
strateg strategy and negotiations