##VIDEO ID:Opm7cpEfKIw## instead we were left without the direction and it's our staff and students who suffer the follow what's even more troubling is board stance and transparency time and time again we've heard board members demand transparency for our community from our staff and administration but when asked for the same level of transparency and return seems to disappear we can't claim to foster a culture of openness and accountability when we ourselves are not practicing it if we are truly committed to the values we ask of others then it's imperative that we hold ourselves to the same standard the impact of this decision is being felt at every level and I urge this board to recognize that in order to rebuild trust and bring stability back to our district it's imperative that we take the necessary steps to restore confidence in our leadership this means having a plan ensuring communication is clear and above all prioritizing the needs of those who are most affected the students and the staff who work tirelessly every day to make this District great thank you thank you and I have Monica Gregory next hi good evening uh my name is Monica Gregory and I'm the president of the HPA Hazel Park Association um Education Association when we were informed that a posting change was made for tonight's meeting or excuse me informed that a posting change was made to tonight's board meeting the h PA executive board voted unanimously this afternoon that a communication be drafted and shared with the board of our serious concern and with the action item to hire Dr Katherine cost as interim superintendent the association provided you a joint statement by three of your employee unions last night asking that the unions be involved in the selection of the interim superintendent while Dr KY is on leave at 2 o' today president Hinton emailed me in response to that statement I obviously was teaching so the email stated that the association could provide input on the selection before today's board meeting the process that we request in the joint statement should involve the parties meeting reviewing potential candidates and potentially interviewing them the very short lead time for the board meeting where the board is voting to support hiring Catherine cost Falls far short of the joint statement's intent and request the association has a number of serious concerns about the appointment of Dr Katherine cost as HP interim superintendent first was there a background completed on Dr cost is the board familiar with the reasons of the departure of Dr cost from W and do public schools and the mirative issues left in her wake the wand Education Association and their executive and provided a cursory outline of the many issues characterized Dr cost as someone who's not collaborative with the employee unions created chaos in one and do schools and created a number of serious personnel and financial issues during her tenure while the board may be tempted to hire an interim the wrong interim could do a great deal of damage during this extremely important time we want to collaborate you andure Park's best interests are being served for all stakeholders to ensure that Hazel Park schools are moving forward even in these challenging times we ask that you do not support this appointment and instead involve the employee unions on selecting an interim in the spirit of the request statement sent to you last night that it was outlined in the letter last night thank you very much for your consideration [Applause] thank you Miss Gregory anyone else wishing to speak state your name please sule 123 I'm here tonight because I have a senior in high school and um Power School is our new system that we're using and I have concerns with it it doesn't show the students class ranking and the swap from my star to the power school didn't transfer the information right some gpas are wrong there were students today questioning the grade they got by doing the calculation it wasn't coming out right and I've asked a superintendent multiple times and she doesn't have an answer for Hing that the board can investigate it and maybe get back to the parents we have scholarships you know that we're applying for I take it very seriously and uh I hope you do too and try to figure out what's going on with it thank you thank [Applause] you okay next up is the motion I think there's one oh one it's just one I think we just got stuck together go ahead Mr Harrison how's everybody joined today uh I'm a lifelong resident of the city is a park I know of name and address could I have your name and address anyway the reason I'm coming up here you know I kind of worried about you know the finances that we have right now pardon your name and address they Gary Harrison 45 Westfield is okay thanks Gary okay I'm sorry uh I'm up here because I'm wondering what's going to happen to our finances right now uh you know right now we're in pretty deep trouble because of our finances and I hoping you people could pull this out so you know the the thing between you you and the and the superintendent I don't know anything about it all I know I know her as a person you know she seems like a pretty nice person I don't know but you know it that's besides the point what I'm worried about is our kids our kids have to have a school to go to we don't need a state to come in here and take our schools over so you know we need to put our reports in properly get them into the state get our money that's what we need to do thank you thank you thank you are we all set am I missing anybody so I need a motion for the interim superintendent I move the Board of Education approve the appointment of Dr Katherine cost for interim superintendent as presented support second second okay motion by Miss Fortress second by Miss lefron boy to hire Katherine class as our interim super intendent discussion um trying to feel how I want to start this um we have had a handful two handfuls of superintendent that turned us out for this um we were also told that we were not even going to reach out to Catherine originally um and I'd like to acknowledge that our unions have come up here with major concerns I feel like we are taking someone in my opinion from the bottom of our list and putting her here because she is willing but we had asked almost 10 people and they all turned us down and I wanted to know the process of how we got back to her and did we do any of the things that our Unions would like to know any background checks I know we can Google we have Googled and read stories on her um so I'm wondering why this is our best that we can give our students so I met with Miss cost and I know her background the of the why not why dot um situation I went to every person that the board recommended I went to several people that you suggest it that people suggest it not you specifically several times and they turn it down they're afraid of retaliation they said no I I want no part of I want no part of it we have to have somebody it's the law we cannot be without a superintendent and the list ran out uh Miss cost came from open school recommendation from Mr uh superintendent Gutman I spoke to him today he said he has never heard of a union being involved in this uh it's an interim position that's a short position and our attorney Tim Gardner also said I've done this for six years I've never heard of the Union being involved in interum position because it's a short time so we have to have somebody she has extremely extremely wonderful background of experience um she's has a background in finance which you're going to be hearing next about our financial stress and she seems like a very good fit um I did background I did talk to her I did talk to Mr Gutman um and so that's how we we arrived where we're at but we do talk about financial stress and transparency and all this and we're saying we're not going to be a medical the district will only be providing benefit for cell phone allowance but then we have something that tells us her daily rate which is high when we're also paying our superintendent on leave we're going to be paying this we're paying an attorney for the board now we're paying an attorney for an investigation all of this is money and money and money and money can I make a comment to that yes um we are paying Matt Miller $75 an hour our administrator assistant superintendent currently is probably at the rate of close to $80 an hour our HR director is probably around $62 an hour I don't think that a rate for Superintendent at $100 an hour is unreasonable um if you look at her she's coming from a school that had a 24% fund balance would that not be a dream for Hazel Park to have that um she's coming from a budget of $79 million our budget's 55 million we've got less schools less student count and by all means I hear what you're saying that the unions aren't normally involved but our unions are stepping up to voice a concern and I believe that we should listen not saying you have to agree but we should listen we got the email from the union at 7:30 last night I don't know what you guys were all doing at 7:30 last night but I certainly wasn't checking my emails and for them to from Monday and till Sunday night what was going on that those six days that they can approach somebody and say hey you know what we really want to us an opinion at the table but it's probably more of their retaliation again too there's a reason that at least 10 people turned us down anybody else what's what's worrying me right this minute is that we just heard in public comment um in in the emails that the unions have addressed to us and I I'm mentioning it only because those emails came from the unions um about Dr cause pass controversy which I think is something that we could be willing to discuss with her I mean specifically because there is nobody that is without past controversy uh but it really worries me to hear somebody come in here and say loud that there were significant financial concerns when Dr cost left Y and Dot um and her past districts and the reason that that concerns me is because I don't know what they are um so I would be curious if that was part of any discussion that you had with her and given that given the nature of why we're in this situation while we're seeking an interim superintendent to hear that to hear that somebody that that seems to to have background information and it seems to have a deeper understanding of Dr ca's background than at least I do um is here saying hey the the finances give me pause um that just makes me really nervous that we are going to find ourselves in a similar situation and that we are solving a problem with a problem um I I don't I don't like that there appears to be a financial concern and that I don't know what it is and it's difficult to make an informed decision without knowing that so I I would just want if that was part of any of the conversation um or if there's any light that you can shed on what those concerns may be the concerns are next when you hear the audit I was part of the audit I mean with Dr cost I I have a she has a 24% fund balance that's all I know I I didn't have some extensive uh seems people think that I'm out there doing something I didn't have know I I know what you know from the resume May and I know the situation and how she explained wi dot to me that's what I know more than you know it just nervous when we have somebody here in public comments saying that there are past Financial concerns but without knowing what they are it that makes it difficult did you want to say something I just don't understand what the f past Financial concerns were I mean a 24% fund balance is well over the 5% required by the state of Michigan to have to me they're they're financially stable that's telling me they're financially stable is 24% their current fund balance I she's she's not their current superintendent I know that's why I'm asking is that her fund balance or is that their current fund balance she has it on her resume I would assume that would be the fund balance when she was employed there but then she also resigned from there for reasons um she was there for nine years that's that's a pretty decent amount of time superintendent stays three to five she was there for nine so if it's 3 to five and there was an issue I don't think she would have been there for nine and if the cell towers are still on the building as of today the cell towers that everybody was upset about are still on the elementary school and as far as I know are still generating income to wind out schools which also makes it together that there was more to her leaving than just cell towers and if she was there a long time our current one has been here a long time as well are we allowed um president Hinton to go into a close session to have a conversation with her so the board feels more comfortable are we allowed to do that if she's not technically an employee yet I have no idea that I have no idea I've never been through this I have no idea can we take a five minute recess and maybe you can reach out to Mr Green and see if we're allowed to do that to who Tim oh Garder Garder sorry did I say green I did yes sorry and reach out to him and what and see if we're allowed to go into close session okay I'll do that with Dr Cod call to uh then we need a 5 minute the open meetings act clearly spells out what right and that's why I'm questioning into we can read it you know but yeah because she's not a current employee and it's not a there's nothing is it a complaint no not necessarily I guess we can talk about it openly I mean she's here is she willing to speak do you want to speak Dr cost there's no obligation to but if you'd like to thank you thank you good evening board um staff uh I know that this is a difficult time it just is any change midy year is is excruciating and it does have Ripple effects it absolutely does and one of the reasons I'm here tonight is because I care about your students I do um Dr KY I I want to credit her for her time here I know that she uh worked extremely hard and um it's unfortunate for her as well um I am here before you because I have a passion for students I have a passion for school and I'm empathetic to the position you're in I'm not aware um of a fund balance that went below 24% in my 9 years there um I was the chief negotiator with our six unions it was extremely important that we treat them well and be within our fund balance guidelines and uh the fact that I was able to settle 36 contracts with them all that incurred raises and kept our fund balance above 24% um spoke to my relationships with our unions I would I would love to put you in touch with some of that leadership uh where I worked uh because I really prided myself on taking the time to get to know them know about them and see what was important to them um so I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have anyone okay thank you thank you thank you okay any other comments cuz I'm going to call for the vote president H how many what notice do we have if if we would like to terminate this contract I believe it's 14 days I don't have I gave everyone a copy but myself s like the third page 14 days 14 days we have to give 14 days if we were going to terminate the contract and the other question is do you have any other names that has come across uh that that maybe the union has provided you any of the unions uh no there's no other names they haven't really had much time either understandably that you don't normally work with the unions on doing this but I I'm going to stand with that we should listen to them and support them they're the ones with our kids every single day so then my my ask is what do we do tomorrow when we don't have an inin superintendent I hear you I just still feel that it's sad that so many people have already turned us down because of what is going [Music] on so I feel like we're just settling that's my question too is if we don't have an interim superintendent tomorrow I know legally we're obligated to what where do we start falling into you know potential issues that putting someone in there without properly vetting them can be Troublesome you know cuz then if we had to come back and and do it all over again I have concerns that we're just going to be doing the same thing over and over again where if we just take the extra time go through the process properly vet I know it's difficult I understand that we own this as a board right this this transition from uh having to find an interim superintendent is has been you you heard the public speak it's been ugly at best so I understand that but I also want to make sure that we get the right person in there and if it takes a couple extra days couple extra meetings whatever it takes you know and I I know we're limited on it's a stressful situation we're trying to get through uh I just those are my concerns um cuz you know I hear the it's not just the teachers union it's the other unions too it's our our largest staff that have concerns that they've heard and they seem pretty vocal about it uh and then yes you can do a simp simple Google search and a couple things come up that I I don't know if they've been vetted or or researched or not but I just have these are my concerns about going forward uh with hiring Dr cost right now and I'm not saying that Dr cost can't potentially be that wouldn't be the right person if we do a thorough you know dig into it when Mr Myer left maybe Darren and um president Pon can speak about this Oakland schools just came in right and Oakland schools appointed the superintendent is that how it went so Oakland schools is recommending Dr cost correct correct they also recommended nine others that said no how many like nine others they recommended two people um uh Paul d'angeles and Katherine cost were from what we were told at first eight said no what from what we were told the first eight of them said no who we oh he never recommended them he didn't give me names dubie and I went to work on Tuesday morning we were here at 8:00 7:30 8:00 we started calling we called him and he said I can get you somebody uh give me a day or two and then by the afternoon he said Mrs Hinton I've called eight people I'm I'm getting nowhere called eight people can you get somebody I said we'll keep trying and we got Mrs mcken because it's against the law not to have somebody so we work very hard to get somebody and Tammy is fantastic and and she did it she did a good job so then I C talked to him the next day he says look I've called 60 people and he laughed now I know I don't think he called 60 he might have called 20 I know never got any other names no names at all so I met with Paul d'angeles on Wednesday the day after when he gave me the name met with him thought he was going to do it he was he was very eager but it wasn't going to work out with him so uh I met with him called Tammy and said look it's more than two days will you stay on because it's not working out with this person um so he didn't give me an any other names Paul d'angelus says you're not going to get anyone they're all in Florida and Tim Gardner kept saying don't you have a principal don't you have a principal somebody steps up this never happened before somebody steps up I said look I have principles that don't have certification I have principles that have been here for one year I said can we move to the next subject because there's nobody within this in our principles there's that can do this and Tammy doesn't want to do it anymore she's respons I for that big school and U but Mr uh Gutman did not give me any other names but two and he said today I highly recommend Catherine I wouldn't uh do that if I didn't think this was okay fit I wouldn't recommend her I also have concerns that we ask someone internally as well and then Catherine popped back up and then we just told the other person never mind there any other discussion I I don't know that I necessarily have discussion but it and and I want to make it very clear that Dr CA does appear to have an impressive background and I do trust the opinion of Oakland schools I don't think that they would have purposely recommended somebody but it I I struggle with the words because I I don't want to give an impression that this is background related or that you know Dr C came up here and she said something that was incorrect or or than anything like that but it makes me really really uncomfortable to know that we have staff who are concerned um about past Financial issues and that that has been alluded to in a comment and that that that isn't expounded on and and we don't necessarily know what it is and I this this is really difficult um it's really difficult and I think for our staff for our kids for our community um I'm I'm just really struggling because I think that we backed into a very hasty decision that has now left us with a confusing process um really poor Optics in our community and I mean I even directly to Dr cost I I think that there is the potential that she's great um but it it's I'm just feeling very badly regarding the issues of transparency um the the concerns that are coming from the community and I am I will admit that I am very very nervous that alienating the community alienating the staff and and having another non-transparent issue come before us I I don't even know if that's the word that I was looking for because I'm struggling to find the word only because this is so so difficult um it just seems like we've been making so many reactive decisions without a wealth of information that comes behind them and I I just feel so badly for for our community and our staff and our students that that this is so difficult um I don't think there's any other information that we're going to glean today but this is this is hard um it was hard back in 2015 also I I don't doubt it you know I I genuinely I don't doubt it but much harder but we have to talk about now that that we're having these last minute concerns pop up with no time to look into them um no ability to research them and and I fully understand that they could come out to be nothing I mean it could be that you know everything is great it I just but the union coming to the board at 7:30 and a Sunday night this is I I want to be clear that it's not necessarily specifically about the union this is the the concerns over the lack of transparency and sort of what are we going to do next have they're they're coming from the union last night an email they're coming in public comment here today but um I don't think any of us can deny that this has been a real be of an issue all week long um and I have it's just difficult that you know we we have a lot of we have a lot of concerns about lack of transparency in some sometimes for a good reason sometimes because there are just issues that that we may not be aware of but I I am just really struggling that once again we're making a very important very big decision with very little information behind it um and there is but Oakland schools recommended her Oakland schools recommended you and you've been a great board member so I trust Oakland schools frankly Dr C came up here I trust her as well but we're we're also just say there there's a lot of opinions that are coming up say you don't trust the president CU you keep saying transparency transp no that's absolutely not it I want to be very clear that is not it I was in touch with all of you all week between Debbie and I were calling you giving you names I sent the resume last night so everybody could review her resume I don't I think I've been pretty transparent keeping in touch that this Chang that changed Tammy's doing it t i mean I don't know what you keep saying that there's no transparency if I may um I I understand where Mrs Beaton is coming from because reading Facebook which I do not read because of it but I've had to read this past couple of days you know they're talking about transpar but even Mr Becker and I we attended that um that beginning meeting there's things you can't talk about you can't even talk about it with your wife or your mom so I mean they wanted they want us to be transparent but we can't only be so much transparent without us getting sued we were told that you know many times in that in that uh first session that we had so unfortunately there's things they they they voted for us they need to trust us to get through this process and to be able to make the right decisions I I am I want to make the right decision that's what we're up here for all of us are we you guys have kids at the school I have I mean I used to have I always said I used to have 1,200 kids at the school because I thought they were all my kids um you know because I worked here um but the question I have is another question we just the new uh we have an assistant superintendent um and then we have one that just started I believe this month this week yeah can the assistant superintendent fill in for being superintendent while we're going through some of this process or is that you have to have you have to make one of them an interim superintendent what assistant superintendent are you speaking we have Dr Dage who's an assistant superintendent then we have one that was just hired uh that you guys hired before I don't think her title's assistant Jason's title was assistant superintendent I don't think her title I don't know I thought if we went back to the minutes I bet it is assistant superintendent of director assistant yeah I'm pretty sure it was so now we have two assistant superintendent so my question is you know to help be more transparent to help the process maybe to do a background check like everybody's worried about um but I feel confident with Oakland schools recommending this person and looking at her resume she's going to be right there that but that we need right now and we can dismiss her in 14 days so I don't understand what I mean if we don't like her I'm sure she'll be fine and it's only until the end of the school year you know and I hope maybe even before that because maybe you know things might be okay I don't know but instead of pounding this and pounding this should we table this item should we ask uh Miss Dr D should we ask the other I can't remember up uh I can't remember the other person's name should we ask them I I don't know I'm just throwing the question out there that's all for discussion I asked Dr damage I asked Dr damage on Friday and I needed to answer Saturday because this came up and she was she had a personal situation and wrote that she couldn't answer until later but she had time to answer me to tell me she had a personal situation and then I asked for an answer by 3:00 or 5:00 and then she said I told her Monday morning I may have told her Monday morning cuz I was stressing I was terribly panicked that we would not have somebody I was panicked I had insulted her first of all by asking two other people so it was very hard to go in and ask her and swallow that that I had not asked her in the first place and then she told me I said Monday morning I couldn't wait till Monday morning for her to say no when I asked other people they told me within a half an hour some of them told me like right immediately somebody else said give me 10 minutes she had from Friday afternoon until Monday morning I could not leave this District without a superintendent till Monday morning what if she would have said no so that's a Dr Dage situation I did go to her it was very hard to go to her I couldn't wait I I need this I need somebody in this District that's ahead that will jump in and start doing this and I wasn't getting that all the people you done I know that you've done your due diligence and you've been very transparent to us on the board of what you could be and I'm going to say that right here in the public thank you so that you know people know that you have communicated with all of us individually you've kept us informed you sent out the letter right away not even uh 2 24 hours you sent the letter out saying what was going on in the district um so I don't know how much more transparency that we can provide without breaking the law again these are words that are being put in my mouth and at no point did I say that the president was not transparent we absolutely have the resume we absolutely had the letter and I was not alluding in any way to that again and the and and I trust Oakland schools as well I mean all of these points are excellent they I I don't I don't think that Oakland schools would come forward and they would provide the name of a candidate that was detrimental but it is still it is still concerning that what we are is having to make a hasty decision because our backs are against the wall and we continue to make hasty decisions in response to hasty decisions um what do you suggest that we do I I I don't know that's the problem I I I feel like I again I'm even struggling with the words because we are we are currently in a chaotic situation that we are going to respond to with what could potentially be another chaotic situation I just I I I don't know that it influen inuence the the decision I feel terrible for our students I feel terrible for our staff I feel terrible for our community that um they have concerns that we were unaware of and I I hate that we don't have the time to look into those I also feel that um if Dr doich had the time that she said she had or that you said she had um we were talking about Hy decisions I think it it's appropriate for her to want to take the time because she also runs this school in a different way than Dr poopy did or an interm superintendent would as well so she has to think about all aspects of that what she currently does what she would be doing um and I'm sure that had to be a lot to think of so um I think we've had good discussion I think that our schools have been running on target fast fantastically all week I think our students are okay I think our our people in charge in the buildings are excellent um I I don't think there's a problem there and um I want to call for the vote if I may just very quickly before you call for the vote I do want to say that we we do all owe a debt of gratitude to Tammy McHenry and I hope that everybody that is in the audience or watching or that is in the district understands that I have one more question um in this like I said earlier it says that um she would service inter arm P without medical benefits the district will only be providing benefit for cell phone allowance but it does not State what we would be paying her should that be in this saying it's not contract because it's not in here because currently it says basically we would only be providing a benefit for cell phone allowance I didn't know if what we are paying her should be in this where are we looking I'm sorry number three oh cell phone bills are usually about $100 a month I would assume maybe it should have an amount I I don't know I also didn't know if the amount that we are paying her should be in it or if that does not need to be in this it isn't in here it is in here number three number three is compensation number five reur it's in here I didn't know if it should be on our board vote for our community well we discussed it we've said it out loud oh read it out loud we can put this online the contract absolutely that's yeah it's a contract it can go online is it un it's probably not so should we put uh fringe benefits uh if it's okay with the motion maker if we accept this to add not to exceed $10000 for a cell phone number five says reimbursement for monthly cost I don't know why it needs to I think that's okay yeah I don't see an issue with that I don't think they're going to write us over the cols about it okay any other discussion I'm good miss miss Buco take the vote please Fortress yes the FR Bo yes the no Becker no I didn't was that a no no Fox yes r no yes 4 to three vote motion carries we have a new inim superintendant Dr Kathleen cost Catherine um need a motion to uh take a look at this audit for the audit please I move the Board of Education approve the 2425 audit as presented support motion to approve the audit and supported by Miss Beaton uh any discussion and presentation first are you Amber yes hi everyone I'm Amber stter I'm the um the engagement partner on the school district audit this year so everybody has um the audit communication letter the fincial statement packet along with the um the single audit I will go through very similar to to um what we've already kind of gone through um please tell me to slow down speed up if I'm going too slow or too fast or stop me if you have any questions at all we'll start with the audit communication letter this letter basically is just the has all the items that we are required to communicate to you we audited the financial statements for the June 30th 2024 year end the um the selection of the accounting policies did not change during the year with the exception of the gasby Number 96 which was the subscription based Information Technology Arrangements the impact of this adoption adoption was only a intangible asset that was capitalized onto the books along with the uh speeda is what they call it a liability on the books as well no other transactions were entered into during the year that lack any authoritative guidance all transactions have been reported in the financial statements in the proper period accounting estimates are integral part of our financial statements the most significant sensitive estimates that we had in our financial statement related to depreciation along with the net pension liability and the opab asset you flip to the next page goes on to talk about the most sensitive disclosures in our financial statements which are our net pension liability and our net opab assets going down to the middle of the page it summarizes the difficulties that we encountered in performing the audit this year the completion of the audit was delayed due to the key client contact not providing schedules and information requested timely to meet the set fieldwork dates fieldwork was pushed back multiple times and we were unable to make up that lost time and provide the audit before the deadline the corrected and uncorrected miss statements are attached to the this letter which are both listed in attachment B and C you'll see that there are are uncorrected which is our proposed entries that are deemed to be immaterial to the financial statement that were not recorded and then we had our audit entries that were reported and reflected in the the financial statements we're happy to report that there were no disagreements with Management on any topics we did not have to consult with any other independent accountants on anything our audit findings um and issues that we we encounter related to on the financial statement um we ended up with having a material weakness which we'll talk about in a moment we also had several recommendations that are not um a compliance finding or an issue with the financial statement just general recommendations that we we thought we should note on the audit for the single audit we ended up with one significant deficiency which we'll talk about in in a little bit the next page just goes through some of the um required Communications and I'm sorry the required supplementary information and then our supplementary information and what our audit procedures were on those if you flip to attachment a you'll see here's a listing of our recommendations I'll briefly go through each of them for you um one is that we should have a sp sorry attachment a attachment a yes okay so these are just recommendations that we had um the first one is just that the district should follow a spend down plan for food services this the Food Service fund the district should evaluate some of their yearend closing processes to determine payables so that certain pieces of a payable batch are going into the different periods that they belong the school district should perform an assessment on the capital asset schedules the school district should perform or provide all capital asset purchases to board for approval it was only the case for a couple that we identified that that was not the case the school district should monitor budgets more closely throughout the year and amend as necessary the school district should Implement controls surrounding submission of reports and retain supports in relation to the single audit the school district should ensure that all all draw Downs are completed within 60 days of year end they should review the books for activity and cash B balances that are for separate organizations um that being said what what that related to was the junior Vikings we noted that that is a separate non for-profit organization and there are activity that has ran through the school district um we think it just would make sense to take a look at all of that activity and determine if there are any reimbursements necessary if the school district you know to make sure that they get made whole I guess at the end of the day for any of those transactions that have taken place the school district should Implement various it environment controls so there's a various couple items that are listed there um in related to our it risk assessment that we completed does anyone have any questions on those items no okay the next um packet in your um packet I guess is the financial statement so if you want to take a look at that open that up the second page just has our table of contents of everything that's included if you flip to the next page you'll have is I there's no presentation for the audience to see no there was not okay I'm sorry yeah that's okay I was just wondering I keep looking up yeah um the independent auditor report is on this page um this basically just goes on to tell what the report is we ended up issuing an unqualified opinion and the financial statement a basis for our opinion was um to you know apply our our generally accepted auditing stand standards and make sure that the financial statements followed the Gap along with making sure that the financial statements were not materially misstated in any way Amber is are we on the page with the $5 million general fund negative impact no I'm sorry we are on the the independent auditor report we pass we are actually in the financial statement now yes oh the financial statement packet sorry I I'll go a little slow and make sure that we're all on the same I thought we were on the letter nope you were done with the letter and what what page are we on so we are on this page the independent auditor report right after the table contents it's the uhy letterhead at the top there got it right yeah got it okay cool so this is again just the the auditor report we ended up uh issuing an unqualified opinion our um responsibilities were to make sure that the financial statement were not materially misstated and that the was in accordance with Gaz along with the gap which it was correct yes correct yep the rest goes on to talk about your responsibilities in regards to the audit a little bit more details in our responsibility in regards to the audit if you keep if you go to page five this is the management discussion and Analysis I'm going to skip through this section this is really just a summarized version of the governmental activities we're going to go through to it in a little bit different or a little bit more detail if we go to page [Music] [Applause] 13 you will have the statement of net position everyone there um so this is basically the full acral basis so this is all the funds and then we've adjusted it for all of our full acral adjustments you'll see that we have total assets of $80 million our most significant assets are made up of our Capital assets we have deferred outflows of resources of 34 million which relates to our deferred pension costs and our opv costs I'm sorry what our deferred opv and pension I'm sorry um the liabilities we have 100 about 130 million our most significant liabilities relate to our net pension liability at 80 million and we have a about $38 Million worth of non-current liabilities which is our our our bond debt deferred inflows of resources are made up of 20 $25 million which is mainly made up of our deferred pension costs and our opep costs coming down to the governmental activities you'll see the different pieces that make up the net position SL deficit we end up with a total deficit of 39 million what exactly do does that mean so that is really the net position of our all of our governmental activities so when we look at our next page we'll look at the the all the different um funds so when when you guys are looking at things you're more concerned with the fund level right the reason why there's such a large deficit is that unrestricted amount is really made up of the net opab I'm sorry the net pension liability so that's really what's pulling you into that deficit position so when you're looking at your budgeting and you're looking at the um the you know financial performance of the school district you're really looking at the general fund everyone's kind of looking at that fund Bal right the only reason why I asked is because if you go on to page 14 the net position of the beginning of the year is 45 million and then we dropped it down to 39 so you know you're looking at a deficit of 39 million but we actually reduce that deficit and what what is that reduction do to from that would been it would have been a makeup of all so if you flip to that next page so on page 14 all of our governmental activities come together here and you'll see that we have 70 million in expenses we' have our program revenues in the next two columns for our charges for service and are operating grants and contributions of 6.5 million and then 20 million then down on the next down below that you'll see there's General revenues which is broken up by our property tax revenue so we had $12 million of property tax revenue that came in came in we had state aid of 31 million and then we had other revenue of 6 million so our total change in our net position is that 5.7 million so that really just means that our expenses were less than all of the revenues that we brought in so that 5.7 million ended up reducing that deficit from the 45 last year down to the 39 this year does that ever hit zero or will it ever hit zero because of the tension it you know it's a hard one you know it it definitely as long as you have that large liability out there it's that's really the biggest impact that's putting you into that position because if you think about it um if you actually show if you go to page 16 this kind of explains it a little bit more we can go back to the fund level but that fund balance at the top that you're seeing there that's 6.6 million that's our fund balance for the governmental funds so that's all of the general fund all of our special Revenue funds our major funds all of that we all we add all these different things to it getting us to that $39 million so the biggest difference that you're seeing is we're adding to we're adding $59 Million worth of capital assets to it we have a couple of um grant receivables that aren't available there's a couple other less material items but then we have our bond paybl so bond payables is another negative that we add to it um and then if you look down closer to the bottom you'll see all the employee fringe benefits right we have $1.1 million sitting there for the um compensated absences and then we have 60 61 million for our net pension liability and then our opab assets 3.3 million so really between the 36 million and then the the employee Fringe benefit liabilities that's what's really kind of swinging us into that position but that that schedule is really kind of showing how we get from the fund balance at the government at the fund level to the governmental activities I was curious and I'm not familiar with the fund balance and how it works with st but I was fund balance is usually a liability and then I see it on here as an asset of 1.4 and it kind of threw me off can you kind of explain why the pension or it is a pension fund right the 1.4 I'm sorry is that page 13 yeah where it says net opv asset oh just because it flipped this year so our investments we ended up having it for the opv we actually are in a better position right we're we we have more assets than we owe essentially is that part of the pension fund that is opep so that's going to be your post-employment benefits pension is at the liability which is at the 8 million that you see on the books so this is benefits yes so that is our net benefits all of our investments that we have in our benefits so we've paid in enough and event like the OPB I've seen switch to an asset um because we've paid in we have we're sitting in an ass that's good we've we've paid in what we need to we're sitting in an asset asset position I just I if it's I don't know I guess I just I'll dig into it a little bit I just it was odd to me that it went from a liability to an asset I was like what is this yes no it it it does that does happen and we're in the good basically at the end of the day um okay so if we go back to page 15 you'll see that we have all of our governmental funds sitting here the general fund is listed in the First Column and then we have our special education Center Program fund and then the next column we have the qualified debt fund that's new this year that last year was actually a non- major fund this year it deter it changed to a major fund so that one you'll see broken out which one was that the qualified debt fund the Gen we'll focus mainly on the general fund um but the total assets of the general fund are 12 million we have total liability of 9.6 we have unavailable revenues of 1.8 our total fund balance in the general fund is N9 about about a million doll so that 1.84 if I go back to this letter where you said on the recommendation to make sure that we've so is that the on page C1 the unrecorded revenue yes so that was Revenue that ended up getting submitted after the 60-day mark okay so if if that was if that was never found we would be in worse a worse position that well it would have been found because we it's part of the audit right you know work that we do and and honestly Jason knew that we he didn't you know okay get those items in in the 60 days so it just wasn't recorded in the books when we had gotten the the schule yes all the trial balances and then all obviously the schedule of the federal perfect thank you [Applause] yep if if that all of those grants were submitted before the 60 day marks that $1.8 million would have been sitting in revenues so please note that so that instead of it sitting in the liability we would have been it would have been available to us and we would have recorded at that Revenue in this is shown as a liability because we didn't it's it's outside of our availability window if you look at the total fund balance line all the way over under the total governmental fund column you'll see the 6.6 million that's the fund level net position that was on the next page that we walked from to get from the 6.6 million to the 39 million one other thing I just want to point out if you flip to page 53 you'll see all the non major funds that consolidate into that non- major fund column so that has um you know our food service the child care student activi is unqualified debt and then our Capital project fund yeah where I'm still 15 Yep this general fund balance it's 99287 is that the fund balance we're supposed to have the 5% correct that is correct so we don't even have a million dollars that is cor okay what percentage is that 1% 1.8 1.8% thank you how much more no go ahead no no go ahead I don't know what I'm going to ask that's just like yes that's trouble okay um if we putp to the next page we already went through on page 16 that reconciliation on page 17 you'll see our all of our governmental funds listed all for for our statement of um revenues and expenditures so we'll see in our general fund we had total revenues of 40 almost $50 million we had total expenditure es of $56 million we had some transfers of 1.8 in N transfers I should say um which got us to a net change in our fund balance of about $5 million decrease so you can see that we previously reported almost 6 million that added to the 4.9 gets us to that 992 that you were just so excessive revenues we overspent by $6,800 yeah yes if you if you flip to not overspent it mostly had to do a lot with the revenues so if you flip to page 47 this is the schedule of Revenue and expenditures for the general fund alone and it takes our original budget the final budget and it Compares it to the actual so our final budget had total revenues of 55 million our actual revenues were 49 million so that was the biggest piece was our revenues were down considerably our total expenditures at the end of the day were only um $155,000 higher than we had budgeted so our expenditures were okay it's really those revenues is where we should pay a little bit more attention and focus on are those unrecorded revenues that we just talked about accounted for in this number or no no you would not see those in that number okay they very well could have been in the budget but they're not obviously in the actual numbers okay if we flip back to the statement of Revenue um in expenditures one thing I just wanted to point out that is a little bit different um because we had that change in the non- major qualified debt you'll see in the fund balance section at the bottom it shows as previous fund balance as previously shown and then there's that change in reporting entity and that literally is just moving the One Fund out of our non- major and into this column here so looks a little different but that is what that it's just a reporting requirement um mostly at the bottom of the page there's that nut nut change in fund balance if you go scroll all the way over in the total governmental fund column there's a $3.8 million loss when we add up all of the fund balances or a change in fund balances if you flip to the next page what's the next page the next page would be page 18 if you flip to that page that's really that that walk that we just did for fund balance except this is just walking our change in the fund balance in the governmental funds I'm sorry the the um government funds to our governmental activities so you'll see that 3.8 million we added we took out our assets we capitalized them out of expense we recorded depreciation expense of about 2 million we had a c capital investment proceeds of 250,000 for a new note that we had and then we have some revenue and the statement of activities that we had some adjustments for along with our pension contributions then we had our repayment of bond princip of 5.7 million which really there's a couple other items there which gets us down to our 5.7 million and that was the number that we had on our governmental activities for a change in fund balance does have anyone have any questions thus far it's I'll get in English yeah right I know it's a lot the next um a couple Pages really are all just the notes to the financial statement so I'm not going to spend a ton of time on these items because there's not a whole lot really that changed the um note two really is just all of our significant account accounting policies that just talks about the policies that we do have that relate back to the to the numbers in the financial statements um one thing I will point out is on page 33 you can see all of the capital asset activity I'm sorry you said page what 33 33 so you'll see our net governmental activities Capital assets is that that was that 59 million that we did briefly mention earlier that we were adding back to our governmental we ended up having 1.3 $1.4 million worth of capital asset additions this year which then is reduced by the 1.9 million of depreciation that we recorded if we flip to the next page you'll see on page 35 there's a schedule of our long-term debt so you can see that we added that cafeteria Capital improvement loan of 250,000 we have our reductions to our bond payable and all the other items that are listed there as well getting us to the net amount of 38 million in or Bond payable and notes so you saying 38 million is what we owe out yes that is correct and that's all your bonds that's all the notes that you have and and that includes the compensated absences as well what what was that as well the compensated absences so that's just like the vacation and you know time off so so the amount of bonds we owe is is 34330 that is correct does that includ the 12 million that we just borrowed no that is not that is not included in these numbers because that happened after the fact so you'll see in the subsequent event footnote that that is listed but it's not in the numbers as of 630 okay so nothing pertain to that loan is in your ad all because it came out later yes that is correct we just in our subsequent event footnote we mentioned that you entered into that agreement you know for and what the terms are which is since we scrolling through there it is on page 46 it's in note 14 page 47 46 at the very bottom it's in note 14 it's before blank it's not a page number got you [Applause] yep do we have to pay that by August 29 I believe that sounds from let me see the August 29th 2025 is the due date on that Lo so since this is not in there if you were to redo this now and put it in there what would that make our fund balance do you have it it wouldn't change your um general fund balance it would only increase the governmental activities fund balance by that 12 million because you're putting those liabilities on the book so when we had 6 million to the good and that now we're going to have 6 million to the negative in there that would be yes but there's also a lot they Happ from June 2024 until now right I'm just trying to get it wouldn't be yes that it definitely would not be that black and white there was there might have been payments you know I'm not sure if there was payments made you know throughout that period or whatnot too but okay I'd also assume we've received state aid we did I think yeah as Matt can probably speak on that yeah I mean we can get a sort of a supplemental presentation that brings us up to current day that would be great what do you what you well I'm just saying at at the end of this it would be great if we could kind of get a supplemental presentation that brings us up to current day since this is sort of a we're looking at the audit as of June 30th right and we're looking at doing a budget next week yeah that's perfect I can have that to you guys uh tonight yeah that would be perfect because I think it would be um helpful it would be beneficial for us and all to sort of know where we currently stand as opposed to just where we stood into right and if you guys have any other questions outside of that you can always feel free to email me or work through that or whatever thanks does anyone have any other questions on the financial statements themselves you know it's a lot of information so just for transparency so because I thought it was going to be a presentation that the audience would see um if we're looking at just a general fund our fund balance prior to this audit was what percent the fund balance was 11.8% we went down to 1.8% so that's our fund balance Curr 11 what 11.3% last year which was approximately 5.9 million and now we're at 900,000 the fund balance is based on the expenditures which is what about 56 million so 900,000 is just short of 2% so how much should it be how much do we have to catch up here we got the treasury warning letter uh for the 5% so it needs to be 5% if uh 5.6 million should be about $3 million right so we already got the warning letter yeah the minute we submitted the the fed and everything we did get the warning I guess and how does that work how long do they give us to get to that 5% well we're not supposed to go that so we have to put a correction plan place and and project out the next 3 years what we're going to be so there's a lot of work to be done so are we currently trending more positive than that in the work that has been done between June 30th and now there's a lot there's a lot going on um when we talk about the $12 million that we borrow that's $500,000 of interest that we have to pay on it and if we can pay a portion of it back between now and when we get State a uh we're hoping for state on Friday normally the state uh issues those payments or initiates them so that they'll be delivered on Friday um it it's looking more positive uh but we do have a carryover that we talked about about $2.5 million of Revenue that we should have had this last year and so now we have it this year which is throwing off the books so even if I was to tell you that we're going to add about 500,000 the fund balance it really should be about $2 million negative because we're carrying over over 2 million avue got so those are things that we can have a discussion next week then when the budget if you thank you so much Matt is it 2.5 is it two or is it 1.8 there's a lot of different numbers there yeah that's why I'm asking but you talk about re 180 um which was 300,000 we did not receive we did not receive Ida of a million doll we did not receive Title One of a million so that's 2.3 million right there um that we did not receive and there's some other smaller that we did not receive as either and that's why I just said approximately 2.5 okay because it's 1.8 in here there are but there are um is there more midle it's just it's it's unavailable to US during that period of time so when when she reports of B she's she she's looking at the title stuff uh Ida title and that's really the two 1.8 million um the rest of it is not available to us to be able to receive it so like 3 180 we have not received that $300,000 check yet so there's some some items that aren't shown there as as re Revenue that we have so the school district doesn't record Revenue until it's received that's correct and we have 60 days after we have to get it by uh August 31st in order to include it us audit we did receive title on September 17th which is disallowable so they're aware of these funds coming in but it was just after thank you can you you say Ida title in the read 180 money is disallowable it's not recorded is it gone forever no or we we are we are benefiting from it this year okay so the all the costs were last year all the revenues this year so it's really going to hurt our budget when we're taking a look at it because we are forwarding the Revenue over into this year while all the expenses sit last year we won't have matching expenses for this year on that Revenue that million dollar we talked about you know for Ida and for title okay so is that a but it is but we we will that's not money that's lost to us it's lost sort of in the books but the money will be provided to this delay get near to us okay I just wanted to make sure I wasn't misunder understanding and that it wasn't um that it was sort of unavailable in the books not unavailable in the bank account so to speak yeah okay so I do have a question what happens when your fund balance dips below 5% what are the consequences if we don't submit a three-year plan what happens well we have we have to submit a three-year plan that's what we do they give us a time we will look at the letter and that letter is sort of automated in response to the FED it pretty much is it is well we submitted the audit that's really when the letter came up okay but we submitted the fit and the audit to the state so we can get state aid so we can begin paying that $12 million back so we don't have to incur that $500,000 um cost of Interest we're not growing the interest yeah so right now the budget that we're going to submit next week does include 500,000 actually 400 ,000 because 100,000 is for next year because we have to pay it back by July or August which means July and August is next year so um if we can save some of those money uh we better be in a better position okay I have one more question Ma so let's do a hypothetical let's say are all of this between 1.8 and 2.3 million were added to this as it should have been right okay it would have made our fund balance still under the 5% wouldn't it or just we would have been about what 3.4 billion so we we would have been getting close to the 5% but I believe we'd be over that we would be over the 5% I believe so cuz 5% of 56 I would say is what 2.8 so we'd be right that ball right is that trending in the r Direction so we would have been just barely over the 5% yes and we would not be on the watch list we would not have to do this extra leg work that we're going to have to do now so we're on a watch list yes yes anything under 5% puts us on the watch list but we uh we were in this position but before you know back in 2018 when I started um so we we have all we've been through this we've done this so we can get that ex over to what is our general goal to maintain our fund balance well we did talk about having step a step plan 7 and 1 12 10% 12% that's what we talked about uh but the I think minimum is 5% so minimum you want to be at 5% um ideally we're at 24% but you know take it our our job is not to save a bunch of money right we don't want to stock bile 50% of fund balance that's not what we're here for so but strategically we can put uh somebody in the sav it's for rainy days um in today's rain um to answer your question Nate um back when I started we were very focused on the fund balance and our bylaws stated that by we would have liked to maintain it like a minimum of 50% as of last year how much what perc 15% okay I thought you said 50 did I say 15% as of last year I don't know if they're in our current bylaws we probably should look at that and make sure that we add that in there so there's some expectation on where we should be for sure yeah cuz you you're looking at how many days can you operate right if you are having a dip into your fund balance right right and I can't imagine that less than 5% you can operate very long right so okay which is the main reason we borrowed the 12 million to begin with we knew this was going to be a slow elongated process so we kind of forecasted it out um we probably still retain some of that money but PID majority of it back now I did ask Mark at Huntington you know what would be our interest rate if we paying that back he has not gotten back with me yet so I'm trying to to see what we could say on because the sooner we pay that back the less money and the better off we're going to be so our our F report had been submitted and we're anticipating to get some state aid on Friday yeah 11.3 million 11.3 and is there a goal on how much to pay down that loan with the 11.3 um well there's not really a goal per say I would I I would probably feel comfortable retaining a little bit maybe a third of it you know pay back about $8 million Worth to get that off off the boxs hopefully and then we we would have a better you know budget after that so paying the loan down by a third or paying paying about 8 million of of the 12 million pay we're paying 2/3 I I that would be my recommendation so it looks like it's du in 8 months the balance of that so it would be 4 million due in8 months are we cash positive cuz we don't really see a well at that point are we in the cash position to be able to pay that at you know uh every every April we'll take a look at it and we'll be able to put in the correct forms to borrow for State a of me um so if we need to borrow money in August we will plan for it in May June time to to borrow for off um but we we can determine that down the road so there's a potential that we're going to be B ing money to pay back the money that we borrowed already that's what happens when we're in in in this financial crisis thank you we need to have fund balance in order to sustain non borrow and when we get closed you get under the 5% you start getting into this problem of borrowing money to make bills and payments well thank you Matt I would like to say thank you for all your hard work on this I know that you and Crystal have worked your um self to the Bone and especially yourself with this being a part-time job for you and I do appreciate all the hard work you've done and you stuck with Hazel Park as as much as you have thank you well I appreciate Mr P now you know I'm here because I love it right I love this District I worked here 5 years you know put in about probably over 15,000 hours that's the only person that really beat me here to work would be Amy but uh you know I worked at 4:00 from 6:00 to 4: every day I I did enjoy this place thank you so much Matt thank you [Applause] Amber the if everyone's good with the financial statement we can move to the single audit for sure that sounds good that's the other yep that's the other packet so this is the single audit so this is the the schedule of federal Awards listing that we had to audit and what we do is we pick two programs based off of a certain certain threshold um and we audit it based off of the requirements and the uniform guidance so if you scroll to page two you'll see that this is the what we call the sea I might I might refer to it as that but it's the schedule of expenditures of federal Awards all of them are listed there and they continue on to page three so our total federal expenditures amounted to 5.6 million it's a second column over from the right that 2.3 million that you're seeing in that acred Revenue that's the revenue that we were talking about that's either not received or unavailable to us you scroll to the flip to the next page um these are the notes to the the fed the schedule of federal Awards um and it basically just talks about the basis of the presentation is in accordance with the uniform guidance it has the same basis of accounting as our basic financial statements that we just talk talked about if you flip to the next page there's a Reconciliation that walks the total revenue from federal sources of 4.1 million down to the 5.6 million which we just saw on our previous page the governmental funds that 4.1 million you'll see on page 17 of the audit and this basically just does that walk that hey here's our revenue for our financial statement and here's the expenditures that we taken against that there's obviously some reconciling items there you'll see that those receivables that are unavailable for use that's that 1.8 million that we saw a couple times prior those are the unavailable for use so that will be you will receive those monies in the next period the next part of the single audit we have to do a report on our internal control and our compliance over the programs that we tested to make sure that you guys are in compliance with those um the there's three different levels of of findings in internal control that we can have have one is just a deficiency and that's when a we have a design of our or operation of control does not allow Management in the normal course of Performing assigned functions to detect or prevent misstatements so a material weakness is a deficiency where there could be a possibility that there's a material misstatement in the financial statements a significant deficiency is less sever than a material weakness but it's important enough to Merit in regards to the financial statements we did find a material weakness and then if we I can we can flip to our findings if you'd like we can talk about what that was um if you go to page 13 you'll see the financial statement audit finding listed there and it related to the internal control over financial reporting because there were material adjusting entries that related to really not having the books reconciled us having some audit entries and US receiving multiple entries or finally a new trial balance later after a lot of field work this was a repeat finding um a little bit different circumstances in the prior year but the overall main focus of the finding was the same they have come up with a corre Ive action plan to address this as well when you say they who does that refer to the I'm sorry the who when you say they who do oh that would be um Crystal and Matthew okay so it says C corrective action plan yep and the corrective action plan is in the back okay on page 16 so it'll have our finding number with the condition was who's responsible for it you know their views and the corrective action plan so the anticipated completion is that you know the corrective action will take place and it will not be a repeat finding for the next period under audit if you flip back to the the next compliance report this is the auditor's report on the actual compliance itself for the programs that we tested so we are required to um make sure that obviously all the compliance requirements were the program major programs that we determined to have a direct IM material effect on the program that they were in fact in compliance with them all they were we didn't have any significant issues that were noted we did have um just one significant deficiency that we noted if you go back to page 14 the page after the financial statement finding there was a significant deficiency noted for um the under the program they were required to spend 1% allocation of parents parental involvement for the title one Grant award and they were under that allocation where they didn't spend that allocation so it wasn't significant it wasn't material at all to the um the program or the compliance so therefore it was just a significant [Applause] deficiency there also in there is the the find the corrective action plan for that particular finding as well if it says that the question costs are none is that just because there's not like a specific expenditure that is correct it's over yes so if it was a material if there was um if they overspent or something like that you kind of put a dollar value and then then obviously when you submit this they would question it and see whether or not it did actually apply to that Grant and if you would have to get that back okay that is definitely not the case here okay does anyone have any questions on the single audit themselves you said you you you single audit two items is that what you said oh yes we did we did do two audits or you talking about two findings we audited two major programs one was the um the idea and then one was the title one so those these are the findings from each of those two audits we don't we don't yes that is that's only the findings that we had noted and really one kind of relates just to the financial statement but you have to report it with your single audit as well so only finding that we had that related to the single audit itself was that 1% spending on the title one so I'm just so then I understand it when you do a single audit you take a piece of a piece of the main audit and and dig a Little Deeper so the the main audit is really just on the financial statements and what we're required to report on is just whether or not it's in accordance with gap and if it's if we find anything that's not we want it to be material not Material misstated is what our opinion is on the financial statement what happens with the single audit is we take that schedule of federal award so that's all the federal money that you guys have received and we determine based off of various different factors which programs we're going to test and we test that for the compliance so every year there's a a uniform guidance um compliance supplement that gets issued by the government and with in there are specific items that we have to to make sure that you guys are in compliance with so it can be allowable costs it could be um there's a lot of special tests like that one 1% um was was a specific thing to to that title one so we go through all the direct and material compliance areas and we make sure that they are in fact in compliance but only for like one or two correct yes only for not everything no so you'll see in there just Title One and ideas what you were require because those are those are they're considered your your material programs and every year you kind of have to do a certain calculation and and it takes into consideration what programs you've tested in the prior year as well um so this year we just ended up having to test those too and next year may be it could be something completely different yes mhm I can't remember off the top of my head which ones we did last year I'm not sure but or not us but the previous aitor does anyone else have any questions on the single audit themselves um I was part of that conversation Thursday and it was said that purchases were made not brought to the board yes I is that in here somewhere it is not in here and I need to get with Matthew on that so Scott misspoke um we were so in the it's a governmental unit but governmental units outside of school districts have to file a an APR is what it's called and that's a box that you have to check that the dispersements are actually presented to the board prior to being spent that is not the case with school district so um Scott did misspoke in in that meeting so that has been removed um from from the recommendations that we had listed in the first letter that we went through okay thank you sorry for the confusion on that any other questions anybody yeah I do but I think it's more towards Matt so our other fund balances like um our food service and um special a or special ed fund are those those do those have to maintain a minimum balance in them the special life fund needs to have 7% we just got written up for the Food Service one because we have too much money in it we did do a spend down plan this year we fixed you know the high school cafeteria right we've been investing a lot of money there uh we just spent 750,000 of that 752 th000 fund balance so so what has to be in the Food Service fund it can be zero um it can be zero we we don't want it to go to zero because then the general fund has to pay for the cafeteria fund so we want to have some cushion there we're making about 150 200,000 a year uh utilizing CH well so we're doing fine there uh the community service fund which is the latchy fund there's no regulation there either um there is significant money in in that and how much is in that 4 I'm sorry 385,000 385,000 is there a maximum that we're allowed to have food service if you say that the issue is too much yes we got you're allowed to have up to three months of expenditures okay so I believe that was about $848,000 this year we um no maybe I have backwards how much is the food service the Food Service had 752 752 all right 752 th000 mhm yeah which was just thought I believe just over uh our our limit of the 3mon expenditures so what they do is they take the 2.4 divide it by 9 multiply it by three um and tired I can't do that so special Le has to be maintained at what 7% 7% and we're at that 7% we are at about 494 th000 call that for food service she was talking were you talking about food service or special Adry special ad oh 4 494 49 all right good and we should and we're we're good then we're we are audited by the ISD so they will make sure that we are good there so all of our other fund balances other than other than our general fund yes is good yes cuz our common debt uh we Levy uh the appropriate amount of mills in order to pay off those bills um so the fund balance doesn't matter there either the seeking fund um we we Levy the Mills that's approved and uh whatever the fund balance is there we can save up year over-year are we levied at our Max Mills currently we're levied at the approved Mills we do every year around uh May June time we we do the 429 um and that's approved by the board we take it before the board so was that a yes or a no or Levy at the appropriate amount of of mills in order to pay our bills and then we go for the sen fund we go out and get that voted on by the community and we we Levy that and there's the whole heavy roll back and all that stuff so how much do you know how much longer how long we have on our syy fund before we have to well usually it's 10 years is it 10 I'm I'm not sure what's remaining of that 10 years we can look at the 4029 and get back with you on that okay thank you anyone else that looks like that's it thank you very much I know it's a struggle these are so pretty I don't know if we got these last year we get these no they're so pretty thank you yes no problem um there was other there was a couple of those concerns that were bought up do you want me to got to go through what those were and what work we did around them okay would that be one more little added thing um so I had a couple conversations with a couple board members throughout um the audit and they brought up a couple of different things that were were um concerns of there so while our audit obviously does not detect fraud that's not what our audit's for our audits for to make sure that we are you know our our statements are not materially misstated we're going through and we're detailed testing we're confirming those balance sheet accounts and then obviously we're testing the revenue and the expenditures through other procedures um but when concerns are brought up it's something that we have to address as part of the audit so one of the things was just the district's use and of uh the P cards purchasing card program along with payroll expense um reimbursements just a concern of maybe there was things that shouldn't be in there and um so what we did for those particular two items um we ended up performing testings we took all of our PE card transactions we took all of the payroll transactions under audit and we did a sample of the transactions and we tested it through whatever the controls were so we received a control memo that kind of went through the process and how it worked um and we didn't find any issues with those with those items the proper um support was attached to all of them those are the types of of work that we did around those particular transactions they were approved um and then obviously looking at what kind of the transactions or expense reimbursements they actually were and making sure that they were reasonable um with with what the the um processes were so happy to to pass that along um the other item that they were just concerned there might have been um contracts or bills that maybe had gone unpaid so we kind of looked through our We performed our subsequent um dispersement search which is where we look at our dispersements after year end and we extended that out a little bit further than we did just within our normal procedures um to take a look at anything that was unusual or maybe something that related to the period under audit that should have been recorded and there was no other additional items needed there the other item we looked into was just the um various foundations or groups um within the district that may have been running through the books of the the the school districts so one of them in particular was brought up with the junior Vikings Foundation um that it appears that the activity was originally in the city then it was in the school district um and now it has s into December moved back to the city so there was there there was a um a schedule that listed the activity out the expenditures that are in one of the GL accounts we noted agreed to what that schedule actually showed um but obviously we didn't do any more specific audit procedures in relation to that I think it would just be important and there is a recommendation in our audit communication letter that really if it is a separate um non for-profit organization it really should be on its own should have its own bank account and kind of be not comingled with the school district and obviously if there's any funds owed back and forth to whoever they should be looked at and and whoever needs to be made whole in the end as far as any other any other um programs or anything there was nothing specific that we found there was like another you know 501c3 that you should be separated there's the dance team there was the Coalition but those were recorded into the um in the general fund and the Student Activities fund um not very uncommon to have obviously those types of activities running through there so maybe you know if there's additional concerns it may not be a bad idea to take a look at it um but as far as we were aware you know of what were brought to our attention the junior Vikings was the only separate 501c3 that we noted that should really kind of be broken up which it's no longer in the school district so that's one piece in the positive right we just want to make sure you guys are true up um what else here we did just kind of go back through because there was turnover through the year and Jason leaving mid audit um we definitely went back through to make sure that there were necessary controls in in place throughout the year so that there were to check signers that there were on the EFT transactions there were two there's one initiator and one approver and those things really did happen and we wanted to make sure that all of our internal control procedures that we did which really are just to get an understanding of the accounting processes so that we can develop our audit procedures we wanted to make sure that those matched what we had so we did go back through all that kind of got a timeline of everything and it was all of the different levels and processes were covered by two people during that period of time um let's see I think that was all of the items that I have so hopefully that you know I'm just happy to report that there were no issues or anything that we found um so I I thought that was important to bring that to your attention and hopefully will you know make you feel a little bit better about about your concerns all right thank you I appreciate that you're looking into our concerns thank you for having tonight yes thank you m and um I'd like to recognize Crystal too Crystal's been working and learning as she goes and doing a great job so I recognize Crystal thank you yes thank you both so much for helping give this to the Finish Line because without them it would have been a longer road so I I I appreciate the sensitivity of the information and obviously you know getting State funding and everything so I appreciate it thank you thank you very much so um we need to vote to accept the audit yes it's an action item so I think so foress yes Le fron boys yes Beaton yes Becker yes Fox yes re yes yes motion carries 70 uh we have our student achievement and growth data presentation by Dr domage good evening good evening so I'm going to make this quick because you have just listened to about two hours of different things so I'll try to go through this quickly as always you will get this presentation and you can follow up with any questions you may have so I wanted to spend a few minutes starting by talking about the frame for this data discussion I was uh uh in discussion with uh president Hinton to let her know that we just finished and there are actually some students that are still testing so while I'm going to share this information I'm going to say it's preliminary information it does talk about some good positive Trends but we do still have some things that we need to do that being said I often come to you with a little bit more data a little bit more data that's disaggregated by different student groups so we can really look into uh the question is what we're doing having an impact so those things will come um at the time the board would like to hear those but I just wanted to make sure that that was clear another thing that I will be focusing on is really on uh growth when you do a midyear assessment the focus really is to inform what you're doing and help you make good decisions about what you're going to be doing as relates to instruction interventions professional development and any other supports our teachers and billing principles will need so our Focus tonight is really again high level it's going to talk about some progress It's going to talk about some great things that we're seeing after our three-year focus on literacy and uh the final thing that I would say and you'll see this when I'm speaking about students is it's really important that we are speaking in an assets based way versus deficits based way because your words matter and I think whether you're doing any kind of a presentation or a data presentation what you say you're messaging both internal and external makes a difference and so this does definitely have an impact when we talk about how we message and talk about students and what they're doing in our schools so I'm not going to go through this in detail but I do like to always nest what what we do and why we do a midyear assessment it's really about helping the stakeholders closest to the students make good decisions again you know we start with that teacher level this data allows a teacher to really dig in start to make some good decisions about students understand what they need instructionally and then make an action plan to support that also then moves up to a grade level and just like we would do with anything up here you know once our teachers get this data done they will sit in grade level meetings and they will look at Trends across the grade level analyze the data try to understand what's working who is it working for and what we need to do to support students that it may not be working for in the best way and then always our bilding principles at the heart are at the heart of this as well so we've got that teacher level we've got that grade level and then we have the building level where the principle again is at the pulse of what's going on in their building and doing the same thing but at a larger a larger look so making sure that they are clear that our system of intervention in place that students that need that support are getting that support and asking that same question what are we doing instructionally what's working and what do we need to do differently and then of course we do a lot of work up here this is the beginning of that work where we look at data across the district I have the opportunity of course to look at data across all schools and across all grade levels and we do the same thing here what's working what do we need to do differently but ours is more at a high level because because then my work is working with our instructional coaches working with our principles and talking about what we're going to do again to make sure good things are going on in the classroom and kids are having a positive experience so just to go over our goals again we're not really going to dig into where we are specifically on most of these goals high level because this is midterm inome data it's formative in nature it guides work moving forward but the goals that we are working for up here I'll just go over the you don't have to read the whole thing uh I'll go over the the main points and these are part of our strategic plan and they are part of our district Improvement plan as always uh from leadership at the top it was always an expectation that we are systemic we have processes and procedures in place and then we keep things aligned and streamlined so I think the board knows us we always come and share th those goals with you and again they are district Improvement goals as well as nested in our strategic plan so the reading goals that we are going for are based on proficiency most of what I'm going to talk about is grow growth toward that tonight but are based on proficiency 3 four years ago when we came out of the pandemic you were used to seeing a lot of data around growth the growth is important but we also have to make sure we're looking at are we making incremental increases in our proficiency so so essentially our reading goal K5 is to increase by 4% from the score from Spring 2024 to Spring 2025 and you'll see what that is a little bit later in the presentation we also hope to have at least 50% and I'm going to say notice that word minimum of course we want our students more of our students to be at tier one and we work toward that but our minimum is 50% and again I'd like to to really to frame what tier one means in I ready language so in I ready there are five tiers starts with three or more grade levels below two grade levels below one grade level below early and mid or above tier one captures students that are early on in a grade level mid or above and essentially if the students are at tier one they are where they need to be because uh you know ENT I ready is really focused on grade level standards and depending on the time of year or whe that standard has been introduced you might see students have that or might not have it depending on the level and the time that that's given with our uh students in grade 6 through eight once again we would like a 4% increase from last spring uh tier one or mid mid and above to this spring and we are looking for a minimum of 25% at Tier 1 at the junior high one of the things that I think is really important to understand is when we make these set these targets it's based on historical data it's important that we know that you know of course we want to say we want that to be 100% but you have to look at what your history shows and look at those Trends to set a Target that makes sense in math our K5 goal is to increase by 3% from Spring to Spring and have at least 36 % of our students at Tier 1 in grades 6 through 8 we would like that 3% increase and have an expectation that at least 20% or at tier one because we are also closely monitoring whether or not our students are moving out of tier three we also have a goal that really focuses on reducing the percentage of students at tier three at both K5 and 68 is a reduction of 5% while we are not really going to spend too much time on our grades 9 through 11 data because it's based on PSAT and we have to wait until we give the PSAT and sat in the spring to really use definitive data while the high school does take PSAT in the fall and we use that to drive instruction and make decisions we usually don't use that as the benchmarking we use spring to Spring to spring so essentially we are hoping to see and both reading and math 5% increase in the percent of students that are meeting the benchmarks in what they call evidence-based reading and writing and math so we are going to start uh with the K8 data and what I'm first going to do is go over some of the highlights and once again you're only going to see maybe three or four graphs and maybe after that long conversation three or four graphs on each might be helpful and we will do more deeper dive data again when the board would like to see that and when we are done with that work so one of the things that we noticed uh and this is a positive coming out of Webster and really speaks to the fact that we are 3ish four years out of the pandem pandemic learning we know that there was a significant impact on our little ones and so it's been a number of years that our incoming kindergarteners have really been struggling because they missed so much that early early early learning so what we noticed this time while our kindergarteners always have good growth what we noticed in the midterm and that's good because it's only the middle of school year it's not the end of the school year we are seeing both high growth and high proficiency it is not unusual for us to see high growth in kindergarten but now we're seeing that paired with the high proficiency the next thing that I think is really important is that the median progress toward typical growth and I'm going to stop there there I want to make sure everybody again understands how I ready works when a student takes the I ready assessment in the fall based on their score and norming of students across the country they're given a growth score and that is called their typical growth score and that score represents a Year's worth of growth for that particular student I ready has both typical growth scores and stretch growth we are not reporting on the stretch growth goal but essentially what that is saying is that if a student is hitting that Mark or when they hit it they're making more than a Year's worth of growth so we Nest our work in typical but we're always focusing on that stretch goal and what you'll see is that all grades other than third grade are where they should be or above which you'll see in a few minutes at the midpoint in January there's not a hard and fast percent of progress toward that typical goal but I usually says anything that lands between 55 and 60% of that is about where students need to be so in all grades other than third grade we are there or beyond that another um really important Trend and we saw this last year too but it is really important is that among our students that enter three or more grade levels below because remember we need to close those those areas of need among that group of students they're they've made about 82% toward their progress or typical growth goal that's exactly what we want to see we need those closing and the next piece is really important because as you know uh uh again led by Dr KY and supported by this board we went into the purchase of American reading company our core and with that we dedicated some really targeted focused work on literacy this is year three change takes 3 to 5 years to happen we are starting to see the impact of that and the way in which I was able to go about that is by looking at students who have been in our school district for 3 years and specifically looking at 2223 2324 and 2425 because those are the students that have had almost three years of this the big biggest celebration and one of the main celebrations is what happened at our Junior High in sixth grade so in sixth grade the median progress toward their typical growth goal was 121% which essentially means not all but a good portion of our students that are well beyond where they need to be I have to be honest in the four or five years I've been monitoring I ready data I do not believe that I've seen that uh it was uh super exciting I happened to be at the junior high uh giving a presentation to the staff on the upcoming Title One onsite review and I walked in the door and one of our sixth grade teachers walked right up to me with the computer just over herself at the growth that the sixth grade students had made and really based on the impact of her instruction so we know it's having a difference we know what we're doing is making an impact in most grades and again this is really focused on students in for three years in our district in most grades when I look at the extremes whether it's tier one on that upper level or tier three on that lower level for students that have been in the district long term versus those students who have been in our district for a shorter period of time the difference is anywhere between 5 to 20% meaning I'm just going to throw this out because I don't have a specific data so I might see in a particular subdomain let's just take vocabulary I might see that 40% of the students that have been in the district for 3 years 40 to 45% are in tier one when I compare that with students that have been in the district for much shorter periods it can be 5 10 15% less we know that what're we're doing is making a difference is that what you mean up here by not data okay y y oh the sixth grade I I think I was just making sure that people understood that that wasn't sixth to seventh grade because I know that we I know that there's often a a conversation about that we will do cohort data but it takes much longer period of time because we certainly do um have students moving in into our district a lot so you know the number and percent of students from year to year changes a lot so I don't take I don't just take what the graphs say I actually pull the students out compare students and make sure I'm really looking at only the students that would be in that cohort got it okay thank you so you're welcome so then one of the things that I think is really important too because it really speaks to the laser like Focus that we took as we uh you know went into this three-year Focus now on literacy is that we we're really seeing those real big impacts in our students that have been here three years informational text while it's not quite where we want it we're seeing a big change for the students that have had the impact of that curriculum instruction for and professional development for our students for our teachers and our billing principles and our coaches laser-like systemic Focus we are also seeing that in literature which is a positive and the last two phic awareness and vocabulary one of the reasons why we selected that tool was because it was one of the few that really had a super strong focus on informational test there is a unit that's really that's only focused on informational reading and writing there's a last unit called argumentative reading and writing that also pairs that nicely and then of course we are always looking at building foundational skills and we have had a real significant focus on vocabulary and it's starting to make a difference so we're going to go through these quickly um this is the median progress again median I'm not sure that I said that you know when you look at a median progress number that means there can be a lot of kids much above that and we can also have kids that are below that when you have a pretty high number like these the majority of kids are making the progress that they need to so you can see incrementally it's starting to go up uh when we went into this that was prear 2122 and that was just coming out of the pandemic 2223 we went up a little bit we keep going up by 2% I know you might be thinking H 2% that's not much but I want to Nest this in the fact that this is K8 when while it makes it easy to display data because you don't have to have slide after slide after slide it really doesn't tell the whole story because we have some grades that are significantly above that number so that's just kind of that that middle number and it's an easy way to kind of capture some of the growth notice over to the side though when we look at our students that have been here for 3 years it's significantly above where we would expect them to be at this time uh I did pull out some of the progress toward the proficiency for reading because the vast majority of our students have been assessed I just talked I'll we'll talk about math later I just talked about trends for math because I don't feel comfortable making that kind of a statement when I don't have all the data so as we said earlier K5 the goal is 4% more that 29% represents 4% more than what we had last spring and so you can see the percentage of students that are U mid or above grade level right now are kind of hitting right about the 50% Mark you know we're right where we need to be over on the tier one side you can see we're much Beyond about 50% now we don't necessarily measure it like that but you can see that we're making good progress so on both of those goals while we can't say anything definitively they are making good progress and it is assumed or suggested that we might may me that this is for our sixth through e8th grade and you can see some really nice progress this is again after those three years of doing this and this is different than I've ever seen that data so you can see students that have been here 3 years receiving that you know especially at sixth graders they had it in fourth grade they had it fifth grade and they have it again in sixth grade it's making a difference you can see uh even among all of our students that we are well on our way to meeting the goal for students that are mid or above grade level by the end of the year and thanks Brad uh we among our students that are have been in the District 3 years we have already achieved the tier one goal just a few more quick ones we're not going to go through this whole thing I'll let you digest it and then of course you will get this presentation what the information on this slide represents is by grade level the median progress toward their typical goal and you can see all grades other than third and fifth grade and fifth grades close um not quite there are where they need to be but in most cases above where they need to be making good progress toward that end of year grades 9 through 10 we do not have that data available and the reason that we do not have that data available is it I already requires three assessments to get that information in K8 you have the ability to take something um called a growth check so we had the fall assessment we had a growth check in December and then we had the most recent one so now we get those growth scores the growth checks are not available to grades 9 and 10 so we will get that information but not until they take the spring assessment so I just wanted to be clear about why that was not available another important data point is something called improved placement levels as I mentioned earlier the placement levels in I ready are three or more grade levels below two grade levels below one grade level below early or m above so IR always captures the percentage of students that have changed a placement level and I can tell you because I look at all the data in sixth grade we had a number of students going from making two grade levels change one grade level three grade levels even so again significant growth and that's from Fall which really by the you know that's really October to January that's a pretty short amount of time to see that much change this is really just um uh kind of a a important thing to talk about in terms of our work around our multi-tiered system of support as well as the work in our student services department Dr maazi and I work very closely to ensure that curriculum instruction and the system of student support for all of our students is a line it's systemic and it's making a difference and you can see that so basically what this is saying is when we look at students at the beginning of the year that were either one grade level below two grade levels below or three or more this is the medium progress they're making you can see every year that we've done this increasingly students are getting closer to their typical growth earlier in the school year now the last one didn't change much but honestly students when you're meeting at this time of the year and you're hitting 82% 84% that's a pretty high percentage I wouldn't expect that to continue to go up but you can see a big significant difference when I show you the graph for math you're going to even see a higher number so that is the reading data we're going to quickly go through math data what questions might you have for me would you turn back one slide please one slide can you okay so in 2223 what per 51% of our students were below grade level or they so what that is saying thank you for asking that question is these are all looking at the median progress so basically your goal let's just take the year goal is 100% so they track what percentage progress you've made toward that year goal so that means the median progress toward their end ofe goal was at 51% okay so the progress is so it's positive because it's going up every time that more kids are heading to their correct okay correct I know it's a little bit hard to you know when you're talking about median and progress toward the typical and stretch growth goal it's a little confusing so we're going to talk quickly about math uh we're going to go through the same type thing again once again our kindergarten students and I think it's important always to adest that this includes our early five students and so you know many of our early five students are going to spend two years you know they're going to get that early five it's wonderful experience and then they're going to go go to kindergarten so even with our students that might need a little bit more time academically or social emotionally we are still in high proficiency and high growth both in reading and math why that's important is because if we have a strong foundation in early literacy and early math that's going to help position our students to be successful throughout the rest of their schooling so that's a real positive piece and again typically our our kindergarteners have a lot of high growth what I'm seeing now is the high growth and high proficiency uh once again the medium progress to our typical growth for all grades was right where it needed to be we did not meet it in third fourth and seventh uh again we are you know continuing to move forward in math and you know I mean study after study after study is kids are still struggling after that interrupted learning during the pandemic to recoup and recover with math um our Trend data though looks pretty good you will not see the same graphs that I shared for reading because we're not fully done with math and I want to reiterate that again I'm I'm sharing this information the majority of students are done but we still have enough where I'm not comfortable saying it's this or that but once again some real good progress the median progress toward the typical growth goal for students who started the school year significantly below grade level is approximately 70% you'll see that graph in a minute I have never seen that and you'll see the graph I have never seen those numbers so not only are we making that difference in Reading we're seeing that some of that recovery from math is starting to happen in our environments and just like we saw with reading but maybe not quite as much students that have been in our district long term the value of an HP education it's having impact because over and over and over if kiddos are here for three years or more they're doing well good things are going on in Hazel Park instruction is well we've got high quality teachers and they're having an impact so again I'm just going to give you some Trends our grades C through five spring Targets in terms of the percentage toward mid or above right now with the available data it looks like there's good progress toward it for our tier one goal we're on track to meet the goal in math that's a real positive because we know that math has kind of been that piece that we're we're working along and pushing all the time and that same pattern happened ac across gr 68 and we think of that that's a real positive because again you know that pandemic impact for students at that level that's a significant amount of information when you're being hit during the pandemic is a third fourth fifth grader that is so much information that's foundational to be successful at a middle school level um this is our median progress toward typical growth goal again across grades K through 8 you see we were there in 2122 we had some dips and and look I checked those numbers about 1,000 times because I didn't understand how we could have that pattern but I assure you it's not a mistake that is what they were so you can see that we're we had that dip uh I can't say why we had that dip but again study after study still comes out even now about the impact that we had you know the pandemic had on math pieces and it just didn't recover when kiddos came back so we are um making that progress towards the typical growth goal again that's across across grades K8 so there's some grades where kids are making more progress toward the typical growth goal and some where they're making a little bit less essentially again um this this is what I already told you about um the the typical growth goal we've got a few grades where we're going to have to investigate and dig in and try to understand why we're not right where we need to be and that's the action and the work that we do both at the district level the building level the grade level and down into um our classrooms and some really good improved placement levels too so we're moving along here was the exciting slide this is this is really significant and why it's significant is this is the group of students that started the year not where they needed to be that had some missed learning opportunities that we needed to make sure that we support it and you can see a significant change this year while Dr papasian is not here um I would uh want to shout out because she's put some really strong systems and structures in place uh supporting students that uh may have an IEP or 504 and also works with me collaboratively on mtss so big jumps more kids getting to where they need to be earlier in the school year and then um you know so actually before I go onto this slide are there any questions about any of that information again this is just a snapshot it is a snapshot one day in time our teachers use multiple sources of information as well as everyone through the system to understand what a student is doing where a student is and what we need to do to move them forward so my question is how many kids are in the medium like I understand that you're using the middle of the pack but that could be like two or three kids oh no when I mean I'd rather see the data with everybody and then maybe break out the median to get a better analysis of what is that sure I'd be happy to do that if the board would like me to come back and pull that that more detailed data so essentially when you're looking at this one uhuh uh let's just go back to like this one that's all students kindergarten through 8th grade so let's just say we've got about 300 students at our elementary buildings give or take I mean some are a little bit higher so that's about maybe about a thousand students plus all the students at the junior high so this would represent about 1,500 students give or take so it depends you know certainly on a grade level that's going to be different so let's take a second grade you know if we've got two second grade classes at every building so we probably let's say 25 so we're talking about 150 students so it depends on whether it's a grade level or whether it's multiple grade levels there's so many ways to look at and analyze the data right there is and I will tell you that I have done presentations in the past that have 40 or 50 slides and and sometimes I get a little joke about how long they go a little glassy eyed but you know uh the board can request uh whatever the board would like so certainly if I need to come back with some more detail data um as I always do I would respond to that so um some Trends and patterns and opportunities uh certainly we need to continue to work on our foundational math skills and proficiency and algebraic thinking we've put a lot of measures in place this year we're going to be focused on doing even more the rest of the school year or next year um that also includes rewriting all of our K12 math curriculum and our instructional Frameworks that work is happening right now and it's a real positive work that's moving forward uh one of the big things that I really didn't break out yet because again I do not feel that I have um adequate data is our students with chronic absenteeism uh you know I mean certainly we understand if you're not here you can't learn but it's important for us to continue to work on that because all the actions we put in place to make sure kids get here make a difference and Miss Gresley who is not here right now you know her role as director of community schools and she has done some pretty amazing very close in work about really reaching out to families going to families homes and trying to get the kids here and she's starting to make a difference with that so I will come back with that and then um we certainly have some proficiency areas with specific student groups that we need to focus on and once again I don't have a closen analysis of that because I do not have the data right now and do not have time to go in deeply to get accurate data for this group um and I would like to kind of close with a little a few highlights around uh the reason why I think this is making a difference you know put together a little bit of a story of focused growth I don't expect anyone to read that but I really wanted to highlight a few important things because it's the reason why we're starting to see some of these things and I will reiterate that change takes 3 to 5 years to happen our focus on literacy and it's not just that we purchased American reading company that that's that's the little that's the tip of the iceberg it is the work that our teachers are doing it is the work of our principles are doing it is the work of our instructional coaches when they support people it is the work of the board when they approve having professional learning for our teachers and our coaches and our building principles so it's a systemic approach I think this board knows we talk about it a lot that there is an always was an expectation that we operated as a system and that we had strong processes procedures in place at this core of this work was strong instructional leadership at the top and this leadership expected us to do that and from that expectation you're seeing the change it is a tight system that we continue to grow and improve another really important piece is leading with Focus I mentioned earlier our focus on vocabulary if you go into any building right now you will hear our students talking about vocabulary you will hear our teachers talking about it you will hear our principes talking about it because that's what you need to do to make change laser-like focus and strong goals makes a difference for students and really I think I mentioned this another really um important piece is certainly not that we we weren't always doing that but um Dr py and I have really even dug in deeper to make sure our work is hand inand we meet continuously we talk about what we need to be doing whether it's general education special education mtss to make sure we're operating for from a systemic focus and then I'd like to close with I think I probably reiterated this is that this is not the work of one it is the work of many and I am proud to stand with my colleagues and every educator in this District recognizing the dedication inspiration and impactful work happening every day what questions might you have for me no questions I have none I thought I think your presentation was very thorough thank you um and and I I do want to touch base on uh the conversation that happened earlier about uh the question as to whether or not I would step into that role and I usually tend to handle myself in a pretty professional manner and would not address that here but if any board fers would like to understand how that occurred and my response or lack of I'd be happy to do that thank you Dr Dage it's awesome to see the growth that's the most growth out I think so very nice very nice to know I think it would be Dr dolage when you when we have additional information when you came back um given that reducing chronic absenteeism is one of our strategic goals I think it would be really amazing if um we were able to see because I suspect that there is um kind of a correlation between the work done at the community schools level and reducing chronic absenteeism and the not only the growth this year but the Improvement in levels of growth from you know the past few years I think if if there's a way to sort of parse that out and bring it um I think it would be really great to see there's also an opportunity there um to really impact what attendance can do and and how that can um move our students forward well that definitely will be something that's a lot could happen because I just had a conversation with Miss grer this morning and I talked to her about giving me the information about the students that she is specifically impacting and talking to uh you know Mrs gr she'll just go right to the house and say you need to get to school and um she's gotten a couple of kids to school you know a couple of kids are coming more so I think that would be appropriate I'd be happy to do that and I know she'd be happy to I think I mean this time next year when we sit in the same spots um I again it will also be interesting to see and I suspect it will come to fruition um through the bomber grant that was received and the sort of expansion of the Community Schools model into those other two elementary schools and the junior high if that only continues to progress uh one of the things that I can say is that you know United o has been a communed school for many years and as part of that we uh have always been required to do some pretty deep reporting and have been recognized by um United Way and Balmer for the level of reporting and I do know that they saw a significant difference we were required to submit data and then United Way did some deeper analysis so we certainly could bring that information back as well awesome thank you okay thank you uh I need a motion for the inms superintendent uh stien I make a motion to approve the interim superintendent stien as presented support motion made by uh Mrs Fortress supported by Mrs R any discussion I'm just I'd like to know how we came up with the $175 per day was there discussion with Miss M Henry on that um she wasn't expecting anything okay at all and I took it from I made an error because that that's that isn't enough in my opinion I did it by six days it was only supposed to be five and I used the amount that we use for uh Mr xeres to help Crystal he got $1,000 a week so that's what was my guide okay that makes sense yeah so is everybody okay with yeah just ,000 for the week are we going is it 1,000 or 875 oh I was making it the, the memo says 875 so if it is may we amend the motion make great question is is everybody okay with making it a flat thousand I think she took on a lot of extra work and we definitely owe her a debt of gratitude if not additional compensation so I would certainly support it if you amended the motion okay I make a motion to amend and pay tmy McKenry $1,000 for the interim superintendent for for a 5day period of time support okay a motion has made to amend the agenda to pay Mrs McKenry $1,000 for the week as inum superintendent could you do roll call please Fortress yes rtin yes Beaton yes Becker yes Fox yes Bo yes attention yes I'm assuming that's going to be on our next paycheck I don't know I'll figure that out I don't know um public comment any further public comment it's one minute uh board member comments any comments I know there's some upcoming good events um I did I know some of you saw but I did bring in our basket that's going to go for the resource Fair um I know we talked about a little bit but I did do a sled and it's got hot chocolate and hot tea and marshmallows and movies and popcorn and coffee mugs and a blanket and hand warmers and anything you can think of I think that they kind of need for a sling days is in there so I hope that whoever wins it enjoys it um I do also want to I know we have more meetings but also remind people that the promis on dinner is February 24th and we are also taking donations for that that's all I got right thank you anybody else um I want to thank um Miss cost for coming here today I want to thank Stephanie for all of her hard work and and and personal for all of their hard work I know it's can be overwhelming sometimes um I Got a Car Wash coupon thank you for that from the high school for that um I think that's it this is what democracy is all about we had great discussion here tonight I think you know it's it's a bad subject we're but we're trying to work together as a board so for people to go out there and say we're not I think that just this open discussion I've never seen this in the past I've attended a lot of board meetings and we're having a lot of great discussion and I appreciate that because the only way you can get better is by discussing and you know kind of uh picking brains the ideas from everybody else and and I do appreciate that from this board thank you next first of all I'd like to thank the staff I know this is a trying time and it was maybe up in the air on what was going on but I I TR truly feel like President Hinton did her due diligence and was working a massive amount of time to find us uh and Trum superintendent to get us through this investigation um I appreciate Matt and Crystal and Amber and Dr KY and everybody that was involved in the audit and finally getting that out and presented to the board we have some challenging times ahead I look forward to seeing the budget Matt said he would get that to us as soon as possible so I hope we have some time to review it um between the committee of the whole I I think we'll get through this I hope everybody welcomes Dr Coston tomorrow with open arms and gives her an opportunity and and um to move forward we don't know the outcome of what the investigation is so um just you know we don't know what we don't know um just uh maybe if we can put this on the agenda for to talk or discussion about at the community of the whole on next Monday um we approved a job jobs on Monday um there has been no posting on them yet someone has started in a position already and I just want to I guess I guess would like a better understanding in the process of that how that happens with no posting um yeah I look forward to the budget discussion on one Monday thank you thanks y Nate uh I just appreciate public comment um you know I know it's tough times like Heidi said um appreciate the work that you know Matt and Crystal put in and and the auditor and uh what everyone else is putting in uh look forward to working with Dr cost welcome to board we got a lot of work to do here um thank you Dr dolman for the presentation and and the information and I appreciate the work that you guys all put in that's it um do want to say thank you to Tammy McKenry for her week and um stepping in and helping us get through that and a warm welcome to Dr cost to I understand we'll start the morning um I wanted to say thank you to uh Foundation local Foundation be like Jacob um who donated a uh collection of books and rotating bookshelves to the library at web LM elentary school um be like Jacob is a foundation uh that was founded by an and Mike aers and their son Chris um in memorium of their son Jacob who was tragically killed in a car accident in 2018 uh Jacob was a graduate of Hazel Park High School his foundation um most recently supported the library was also provided scholarships to Hazel Park High School graduates um basic needs assistance to students that live in the district um also some work in some um cancer focused organizations that are in the area and beake Jacob is having a bowling fundraiser on the 15th of February I think the last time that I saw they still had room for maybe like two dozen couple more Bowlers um so if anybody is moved to um either donate in his memory or Bowl in his memory in order to help the foundation and then help the future of Hazel Park students as well um I know that an Mike and Chris would be exceptionally grateful for that do you know where can find information on that um if you Google be like Jacob all one word it usually pops up um I believe that she also has a Facebook page that's set up that has um some things and the most of the schools have put the flyer in their newsletters as well if you do like the big sroll all the way to the bottom yeah they're very kind they do a scholarship to the students every year so um I thank you for that April because Jacob was a really nice young man and um his mom was a PTA volunteer for years and an employee and um very dedicated to uh kids I believe he was the eagle scout wasn't he he did some very special projects So yeah thank you for mentioning that um I think that was a good point Darren about democracy this whole month has been a series of some difficult meetings and uh everybody's pretty out there and and we are having a discussion that we've lacked for quite a long time even though it's tough we're getting through it and we're going to have a lot of tough decisions ahead of us uh with lots of meetings ahead uh so I look forward that we'll keep the same momentum and be able to say what we need to say uh here at the table um welcome to Dr cost and thank you for people who came out and that spoke for the the great presentation with our improved student uh growth was really great to see so I think that's it just motion to adjourn can I have one more two seconds can um for transparency because we're getting so bashed on it can you tell us when the audit will be posted on the face online and when Dr cost contract will be up there for the public to see I have no idea when the audit will be posted and do you have it you post that right away we post it tomorrow we approved it so it should be be posted tomorrow it's got to be approved first yes oh yeah okay so it'll be up there tomorrow thank you so much oh and I don't have a copy not yeah I was going to make sure that uh one of you give her the contract and I have one at home so it can be posted I think that's it anything else and make support