Um, I'm President Morren Christensen. Welcome. Thank you for everyone who's here in the audience and thank you for those who are tuning in later on our YouTube channel. I'm going to ask the remaining board members to introduce themselves starting to my left. >> Good evening. I'm Anupam Chuk Sudu. Thanks for being here. >> Hi, I'm Patrick Kio. Thanks for joining
us this evening. >> I'm Judy Westerro. Thank you for coming out tonight. Hi, I'm Jennifer Voss. It's nice to see you. Our student co-chairs. >> Good evening everyone. I'm Josh Patterson, Kath High School senior and student voice and action co-chair. Good
to see you all here tonight. >> Hello everyone. I'm Arjent Swami Natan. I'm a Canton High School sophomore and SA co-chair. Thank you all for being here. >> Dr. Mayor, introduce yourself and your team, please. Good evening and welcome and happy spring. Last time we were together, it was winter. So good to see everyone. Like to begin by introducing
my assistant, Miss Diane Robertson. We want to thank her for being here to capture our minutes. And also Mr. John Kger, who is taking care of our technology needs. like the remaining members of the staff to introduce themselves to you on my right. >> Thank you. Good afternoon, Cartisquitz, assistant superintendent for student
services. Welcome. >> Well, good evening. Jill Minnik, chief finance and operations officer. >> Good evening. I'm Jen Curry, chief academic officer. >> Welcome, Liz Varta Gibbs, assistant superintendent, student family engagement. >> Okay, thank you. Let's stand for the
pledge. Josh, do you mind leading us? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all. >> All right. Thank you. Okay. Up next, we have the adoption of the agenda and the approval of the consent agenda. Action item number 26-03-53. Can I have a motion? >> Madam President, I move that we adopt the agenda. Approve the consent agenda.
Action item number 26-03-53. >> Can I have a second? >> Second. >> Okay. So, it was moved by member Sidu and seconded by member Kho. Um, Dr. Merritt, can you please take us through the agenda? >> Thank you, President Christensen. Our consent agenda consists of human resources transaction since our last
time together. We have leaves and retirements for your consideration this evening. We also have the approval of the minutes from our regular meeting on March the 10th, 2026. >> Thank you. Um, since Mr. Mun is here and we don't have new hires, are we kicking it over to Dr. Liz? Yes. Good evening
everyone. I have the honor of thanking three of our incredible teachers for their years of service in our school district. They are retiring at the end of the school year. Elizabeth Adams, elementary teacher at TANDA, retiring after 30 years of service. Teresa
Durkos, elementary teacher at Halsing School, retiring after 25 years of service. And David Sutherland, who's a high school teacher at Plymouth Political Science and Practical Law, retiring after 32 years of service. So, thank you for your service and your
commitment to our school district. Congratulations. Okay, thank you. Um, at this time I'll call for the vote. Those in favor, please say yes. Yes. Those opposed say no. >> Motion carries. How many of us are here? Five. Five zero. Thank you. Okay. Up
next, we have celebrating success with member boss. Tonight, the board of education is proud to recognize eight PAP students who were honored at the recent Scholastic Art and Writing Awards as this evening's stars award recipients. Will the students
please join me at the podium? The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards were founded in 1923 with the mission of recognizing and celebrating creative teens across the nation. Each year, PAUP students participate in this prestigious competition, and their submissions
exemplify the strength of PAUP's arts curriculum and the talent fostered within our schools. The students we are honoring tonight earned a range of distinctions including gold key awards which may lead to scholarship opportunities as well as silver key
awards and honorable mention honorable mentions in this highly competitive program. Our honores tonight are Emma Reich, Maxwell Ladlaw, Ree Wallace, Jack Freeman, Anna Rolliffs, Madison
Lizeness, Meline Payne, and Scythe Ansari. Their award-winning works span a variety of mediums, including painting and photography, showcasing both creativity and technical skill. Joining us this
evening is PCCS curriculum coordinator for K12 elect electives and specials Kathy Williams. Miss Williams, will you please join us at the podium to share a few words as we celebrate these outstanding students? Thank you. Good evening. It's a pleasure
to recognize these outstanding students for their achievements in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. One of the nation's most prestigious programs celebrating creativity and student voice. Art challenges students to think critically, communicate meaning, and see
the world from new perspectives. Their accomplishments reflect not only their talent and dedication but also the strength of our K12 art programs which allow students to explore, develop and refine their skills. I also want to
recognize and dedic recognize our art teachers whose guidance and instruction inspire students to reach this level of excellence. We're very proud of these students and they have and everything they have achieved. Please join me in
congratulating them. On behalf of the Plymouth Canton Community Schools Board of Education, it is our honor to recognize these gifted students for their hard work, dedication, and success by presenting them with the PCCS Stars Award.
And we're going to pass these out to them. Thank you. Would any of the students like to say a few words? >> Okay. If not, this concludes our celebrating success. If the students could join me in the hallway for a photo a photograph in recognition of this
well-deserved honor. >> Way to go. Nice to see you. Okay, thank you. Okay, up next we have our board committee reports and action. Um, first up is the president's report. I have a few things to share. Um this past
week uh Vice President Sudu and member Ahmed attended um the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning MAC uh conference last week and I've actually asked u member Sadu to give us a little update on what that experience was like.
>> Sure. Let me quick pull out your notes. I was only able to attend one day. So this is uh going to be a quick overview of the the one day. Uh it was all about AI as you know a lot of conferences around technology they're going to be
around AI. Um so the first one was um the title of it AI literacy for tomorrow. It was really helping students and teachers work through not only understanding the pros and cons of AI but the ethics um in terms of in
validating sources. So some of the examples that they gave us were teachers having students brainstorm using AI platforms like Gemini or Notebook LM um chat GPT whatever the school has as a safe and secured program. I believe we
have access to Gemini within our Google classroom suite. Um some students use Notebook LM to review and create study materials. If you've never used Notebook LM basically you upload your documents. Let's say you have a 50page, you know,
PDF of uh something and another 10page review, five page of PowerPoint. You upload all of those and you say, "Create a 10minute review using these materials and AI will generate a 10-minute podcast for you to listen to that with the
highlights of that program." So, it's so again, it's reinforcing what students already learn in the classroom through a different modality. Um, how are teachers using it? They use it to clarify instruction. Uh, one teacher was using it to create gamified content for her classroom. So, instead
of her creating like 10 different ways of having this lesson be displayed, she puts it into some AI program and said, "Give me 10 different games of this lesson." And so, she gifies her classroom. I thought that was pretty cool. And um, differentiation, of
course. One of the interesting things was that there was a conversation about having a parent night where parents or community members learn about AI and the students teach them. So one school actually have us has a student scholars
program with Gemini. So the students are trained, they bring in community members, they actually do teacher training. And so these are the pros and they help teachers understand how to use AI in a meaningful way. I thought that was fantastic. Um so there's they're called uh Gemini scholars or some name
for it. Um the other you know they asked us to practice so I always practice and what am I doing right now for my work? So predominantly it's board work. So I use some my board documents to generate some things that I would want to know more about. And so I since we're doing
board governance workshop I and we have a couple of board governance organizations. So I uploaded those organizations with some of our documents and I said okay create a an agenda for me around this and then create some highlights around what should we cover based on our needs and I put in Plymouth
Canton um dynamic plan and so it will create all sorts of things and of course you continue to prompt it to customize it. It's not going to give you everything beautiful the first time around. The whole idea is you keep prompting and you keep getting um re refining what you want. So that was
pretty cool. Another one was actually using school AI as a platform and I think Plymouth Canton has school AI. I didn't have access to that because I'm not a teacher. So I watched some of the other people um use that and that looks like a really cool platform for students to use. So if you're using it that that
looks really cool. Um another session I attended which I thought was super cool and I don't know if we're doing it um but I would encourage us to look into it. It was a session from a researcher at Western and Wayne Rea E consultant.
They have Time Kettles X1 interpreter interpreter earbuds. So these are earbuds that students use. So you can have six students at a time take one earbud or two earbuds. the teacher speaks into a microphone and those
students can have the teacher's English instructions be translated into one of 43 languages with 96 accents. So imagine if you've got a classroom with a lot of uh multilingual learners and you just don't have the interpreters. Students
pop that in. So they also have it gets a little expensive. One device is $500. If you want multiple devices obviously it's going to be more. But you could start with one device and that the teacher has. But if you wanted the kids to actually see it and hear it, the students have a device where it actually has it in their native language and in
English. So they're learning English while they're getting instructions in their native language. And so the students that were using it were just floored that they could stay in the classroom, listen to the teacher's instructions, not be pulled out to have someone else translate that. As a math
teacher, I know how important that is because math can be hard to translate when you've got someone else translating it for you. This happens in real time. So, really cool um program. There were a couple of mini sessions I attended during lunch and those were around
uh supporting multilingual families. Michigan OEER site has some videos. They're still in the infancy. So, I said if you want to partner, I volunteered Plymouth Canton because we have a lot of multilingual support. So, they might reach out to some of you. um they have a grant so I don't know you
know look into if it's interesting another mini session was around youth solutions that help connect youths with jobs and so their goal is to provide m Michigan's youth with access to career focused education and that platform is called youth solutions and they've got a
longer name and I'll send this to Dr. mayor. It's Kexus Group. I don't know if you ever heard of that. >> So, they're pretty new. They're a nonprofit, but that's what they want to do. So, I'll send that to you. If you've got some people that you want to reach out and have youth be connected to jobs
and workforce, that's a possible lead. So, that's it. >> Thank you for sharing your learnings. Um, I also want to take this time, as I do during the president's report, to you continue to do board member shoutouts. Um, we have uh a fellow board member in
our presence who has a few accomplishments to celebrate. Uh, Michigan Association of School Boards recently held their board of directors director's elections and I'm pleased to announce that member Sadu was appointed as member at large.
>> Wait, there's more. Um, additionally, members to do will be recognized at the MASB board awards ceremony. So, it's coming up at the end of April on April 30th. We're all invited if we want to attend or are able to attend, but for achieving a level
five master diamond award. So, what that means is she successfully completed quite a few MASB board development courses. So to qualify for this level, a board member must complete 14 advanced level classes in
the MASB's leadership training program and have a minimum of 528 continuing education credits. So congratulations to you on that accomplishment as well. Thank we want to say thank you for all that you do for public education and congratulation on on these two great
accomplishments. So >> can you share the time of the um award ceremony? I believe it's I I I will it's in board notes. I believe it might be at 5:00 pm. >> Okay. >> There's a tour at 5 and dinner at 5:30. >> Okay. Thank you, Diane. Appreciate that.
>> Can I just add for members that want to join some of these, you don't have to always take MASB classes like my attendance at McCall will count as some of their continuing education hours. Anything related to public education, um teacher development. So you take those,
you upload those into the MASB website and they'll tabulate, verify, and then you can also take MASB courses. You can attend MASB workshops like our Wayne County workshops. All of those add up and so I encourage my colleagues to join. As if you can't tell, I love to
learn. So >> appreciate that. Thank you. Um and that concludes my presence report. Okay. Up next, we have student performance and achievement with uh Secretary Wester. I'm sorry. Um, we have the SP student
performance and achievement committee has not met since our last board meeting. Our next meeting is on um April 8th in this room at 5:00 PM. We love to have the community attend. So, we hope we see we see you in that room in our
next meeting. Thank you. We have a policy committee update with members. I come here again with no new policies to introduce to the board for review and I come here again with no definitive
response from the committee as to which policy provider we're going to go with. I will say that our policy committee is so thorough that we looked at every line item, debated every line item and we have three students who are fantastic.
They give feedback into this whole process. They look at the websites that we're looking at. They look at the providers. And so, everyone has a voice in this room. And given the um interest and debate with furthering
understanding the customization of the service we would be getting from these two providers, um Mr. Abdul is going to do more research. We're pretty much the bottom line is we have two fantastic providers. We're moving away from Niola. That's a
given. We have two fantastic providers. It we will not go bad on any any one of these. We'll have a good decision, the best decision, but I think both providers are top-notch. That's why we had a hard time because they were so close in what they provided. Pricing is
very close. What we're looking for is the more customization for Plymouth Canton and the ease of use from the end user. So, we're thinking about you as a community. what platform will allow you to navigate our policy site in an easier manner and keep track of things and be
able to print. So my hope is at the next month's meeting we will finalize and I will come to the board with a recommendation. Okay, thank you for that update. Okay, up next we have finance and operations committee update. I'm happy to provide that as member Kho was traveling. Um
okay, so we met last Thursday on March 19th at 5 pm in this room. A lot of what we discussed at at that committee meeting or is on the agenda this evening. Um we talked about uh bid pack number- six east stadium turf awards. Um we had
a 2020 bond progress update just kind of where we are at overall in um the project progression. What's what's to come? Um we did talk about the preliminary fiscal year 2026 2027 budget assumptions which is on uh this
evening's agenda. We also have uh an overview of the community budget survey results that Member Kho is going to present this evening. And um to wrap things up, we also uh reviewed the financial reports as of February 28th, 2026.
Our next meeting is April 9th at 5:00 PM in this room and we hope all you know come and join us. It's a lot of fun. President Christensen, >> uh, will the bond program progress update be on the website or is it already on the website?
>> I'll ask. We have not posted that. >> I think that would be useful for the community um to get that out in the website. So, >> thank you. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, great suggestion. I appreciate that. >> Okay, up next we have student voice and action committee with Josh and Arjun. At our last SBA meeting, we spent time
progressing further on our initiative on substance abuse awareness by creating posters and helping students speak about the initiative in the announcements. >> Additionally, we went over the co-chair application process with presentations at our next meeting, which is April 20th at 4:30 in the Pioneer Media Center. We
can't wait to see everyone there. >> Thank you everyone for their updates. Okay, up next we have the superintendent report. Dr. Merritt, >> thank you, President Christensen. As we celebrate the importance of reading to our learners as a part of our annual March is reading month. I want to thank
our teachers across the district that invited me as well as many of our uh staff and community members to come in as guest readers in the building and sharing that experience and the joy of reading with our young learners. Our teachers are outstanding and they just
find ways to find activities or create learning experiences that continue to allow our students to thrive and appreciate and enjoy the uh the uh pleasure I'm going to say of reading. This right here is a class at Ispister.
That's Miss Hersh's fifth grade class. And when I tell you they drilled me. So beyond just reading, I had a whole interview about when I started teaching, what was my favorite lesson, the most all of these things. So I'm like, well, our future is in great hands with our young students here
because they are inquisitive, they are uh community focused, and they are truly exhibiting the domains of our learner profile. So kudos to Miss Hirs as well as our many outstanding teachers who invited many people into our classrooms to enjoy reading this month. We have a few days left, right? Just three more
days and then we're going on to spring break. So if somebody has reached out to you, I highly encourage you to spend some time with our young students celebrating reading. I also want to congratulate members of the DECA chapter at Canton, Plymouth, and Salem high schools. They had an outstanding
performance at their organization state career development conference. This conference saw students demonstrating their business knowledge and professional skills to business professionals and volunteer judges, showcasing their readiness to become the next generation of workforce leaders. We
had 19 PCE students that earned state finalist honors with eight earning the right to represent Michigan at DECA's International Career Development Conference. >> That's awesome. It is that time of year um to invite and
remind our community about our mental health fair. And I just lost my report, so I'm just going to wing it. So coming, I believe this is our third annual mental health fair. This will take place on Saturday, April the 25th at Kellogg Park. This is from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00
p.m. We want to uh shout out to Dr. Dr. Vartanian gives uh Dr. Grotus really Dr. Grotus is she is the mind behind this way to bring our community together around mental health removing the stigma. So having our community, our providers all in one place. What a
beautiful place downtown uh Kellogg Park to come together so families can can get the support that they may need. We have food, we have music, we have therapy dogs, we have chair massages, we have art. U people are drawing. It's all kinds of things. So again, I invite you
to come celebrate with us. Once again, when we talk about our dynamic plan and number five, the pillar or the goal of being leaders and innovators in this space, we have had local school districts as way as well as universities reach out to us about this mental health
uh fair. Uh so it continues to grow and expand and we're really proud of that and keeping that going. So if we flip the picture, I'll tell you what we're talking about next. Oh, I'm very excited to share that our calendar has been released for next school year. If you recall, we were
talking early about uh Labor Day being very late on the calendar this year. So, as we work through our teacher negotiations, we've been able to release the calendar early. Our students will be coming back for their first day of school on August the 31st. Now, we still
have laws around Labor Day, so we'll actually have two four day weeks that week. They'll come back that Monday, the 31st. They'll go to school Monday through Thursday and then come back the Labor Day week and have a 4-day week as well. So, this is on our website, which is I know great news for our families
that you can plan early for what next school year can bring. And I believe as we wrap this up, we're going to invite everyone to uh say hello to spring. As we walk into our upcoming spring break
at the end of the day on Friday of this week, we are entering break. Our schools and our district offices will be closed to the public. This is time to really rest, recharge, have fun, whatever you love to do with your loved ones, however, whatever brings you peace. Uh
we wish you well. Um, we will miss our students and we know that our families, they will be in good hands at home with their families. So, everybody enjoy our spring break and we will resume on Monday and I don't have the date in front of me, but that I think will be April 6. And that concludes my report.
>> Great. Thank you, Dr. Merritt. Gotta love technology. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. Up next, we have our citizens comments. Um, as a reminder, this is the first segment of our citizens comments that will last to 30 minutes. If we have citizens comments that move us past that 30 minute time
limit, we will hear the remainder of the comments uh later in the agenda. Each citizen has three minutes to speak. The board will not respond. This is your time to share. The administration will follow up with each individual who participates in citizens comments. As a
reminder, please do not share any names when sharing concerns or criticisms unless you have their permission to do so. We have a pile right here and we will begin with Lori Mayors. >> Uh my name is Lori Mays. I'm president
of P Flag Plymouth Canton and a member of Capes. I'd like to talk about propaganda, the systematic dissemination of information, especially biased information in order to promote a particular cause. We are seeing this now
in the United States with the Trump administration's plans to literally whitewash American history of its racial atrocities and to erase transgender women entirely from American history. Last week, a congresswoman congresswoman from
Illinois amended a bill to fund a new Smithsonian museum, the American Women's History Museum, to ban any mention of transgender women. This would erase Stonewall activists Sylvia Rivera and
Marshia P. Johnson, computer science pioneer Lynn Conway, and Congresswoman Sarah McBride. It doesn't matter whether you like trans people or not. The fact is that they do exist and have existed for millennia.
Last week, the the Academy Awards honored Mr. Nobody versus Putin, a documentary showing how one Russian school teacher dared to fight the state propaganda machine. When Russia invaded Ukraine, teachers
were ordered to read from scripts about the necessity of war. Two years later, it had evolved to school boys practicing loading guns at school and grenade throwing contests. The teacher filmed it all and smuggled the footage out of the
country. That is not our country yet. But as filmmaker David Borenstein said in accepting the Oscar, "Mr. Nobody versus Putin is about how you lose your country. You lose it through countless
small little acts of complicity." I urge our school administration not to give in to the executive orders to whitewash our history classes and to erase trans people. Please take action to correct transphobia, homophobia, and
racism. Thank you for the work you are doing to make all students feel safe. >> Okay, thank you. Up next, we have Rachel Hayes. Hi, my name is Rachel Hayes and I'm a member of Cape's the Canton and Plymouth Education Squad. I'm here tonight to
talk about school vouchers and what they would mean for a district like Plymouth Canton. Because while vouchers are debated at the state level, the impact is felt locally right here in our classrooms, our budgets, and the supports our students rely on every day.
Vouchers take public education dollars and redirect them to private schools that are not required to serve every child and are not held to the same level of transparency, reporting, and accountability that public schools are required to meet. And that difference
matters. Public schools are required to operate in the open, reporting outcomes, finances, and student data while serving every student who walks through their doors. Private schools receiving voucher dollars are often not held to those same expectations. And let's be honest, public schools are already being asked
to do more with limited resources. We still have real gaps and real work to do to ensure every student feels safe, supported, and able to succeed. So, taking resources away from that work is not just a bad idea. It's going in the wrong direction. In PCCS, we are
responsible for every student who walks through our doors, including students with disabilities, students who need additional support, and students who rely on school as a stable, consistent place. Students who are most affected when resources are stretched thin. That responsibility doesn't shrink when
funding does. It gets harder. And we don't have to guess what that looks like. In states, they have expanded voucher programs. We've seen funding pulled from public schools without any clear evidence of improved outcomes for students overall. What we do see are increased financial pressures on public
districts and fewer resources for the students who remain. And when dollars are diverted through v voucher programs, districts like ours are left making difficult choices about staffing, class sizes, and which supports can be sustained. Those choices affect whether
students get the help they need or have to wait. And the impact isn't evenly shared. It widens the gaps we're already working to close. While public schools continue to serve every student, and private schools receiving voucher dollars can still decide who they admit
and who they don't. That's not a stronger system for all students. It's two systems, one with obligations and one without. Public schools are left carrying the weight and resources are pulled from students who need them most. Here in Plymouth Canton, we are still in the work of meeting the needs of every
student. We're not done. Now is the time to deepen our investment in our public schools to strengthen what's working and to fix what isn't. If we are serious about outcomes for kids, we have to be serious about protecting the system that serves all of them. Because right now,
our students don't need less from us. They need much more. Thank you. >> Okay, thank you for your comment. Um, up next we have Casey Brandt. Hello. Good evening. My name is Casey Brandt. I'm the recruiter at MCHS
Family of Services Senior Programs. And I came here tonight with my colleague because I wanted to share information about our senior program to see if Plymouth Canton Community Schools and parents would be interested in having
this program in your community. Senior programs is divided up into two programs, senior companion and foster grandparent. Tonight I'm going to talk about our foster grandparent program which places lowincome seniors ages 55
and older Wayne County residents in schools or daycarees and they mentor one or two youth. For instance, if a student might be autistic or maybe a student needs extra support in reading or math,
that grandparent is able to provide that extra support right there in the classroom. Our program is 100% funded, grant funded through Americanore and MDHHS. So, we are able to offer these seniors a
monthly stipen that is completely tax-free. It doesn't go against their housing, social security, income, or disability. The program is designed to help seniors that are fighting depression, loneliness to get back into
their communities and help their youth. We call our seniors legacy leaders because we believe that they still have a lot of life left to give and these seniors want to help. We currently have
over 200 seniors in our program and we do have some in Plymouth, Canton, Wayne, Westland, and Garden City. So, we are looking for more partnerships and even if you have seniors in mind, we're
looking for seniors and volunteers. Um, so this is our program and just wanted to put information out here. I do have some bookmarks about our program if anyone is interested. Thank you for your
time. Hey, thank you. Up next, we have Sarah Krosinski. >> Uh, good evening. My name is Sarah and I am a mother of two children in the district and a member of the Canton and Plymouth Education Squad. One of the
fundamental goals of the Caves group is to help students and parents learn how to advocate for themselves within the district. I'm pleased to say that the school board and the district administratives have put together some really well- definfined procedures in
place to help facilitate this self- advocacy. Because we at CAPES believe the voices and concerns of our students and their parents are so very important, I'd like to take a moment to go over some of those procedures tonight. So, if your concern involves a specific
classroom, the first step should be to start at the source by reaching out directly to the teacher, either by phone or email. The teacher is often the closest to the situation and best equipped to deal with the matter. For special education concerns, this may also include connecting with other
members of the students IEP team. If your conversation with the teacher or IEP team does not reach a resolution, you should reach out to the school principal. Be prepared to share the history of the issue and the steps you've already taken. If your conversation with the principal does not
produce a resolution, you should contact the appropriate district staff. To determine which district staff member you should contact, please consult the how to address a concern flowchart. This flowchart outlines the proper path for
elevating concerns and includes phone numbers for higher ranking district administrators. For special education issues, we recommend you contact the special education supervisor for your school level. And if the concern persists, you may need to contact the
district's executive director of special education. Now, if your concern involves bias or discrimination, you may want to bypass the steps I outlined above and submit a hate and bias reporting form. This form
is automatically sent to the building principal, the executive director for your school level, the director of school culture and climate, and the district superintendent. If the situation remains unresolved, affects other other students or affects the broader community, consider bringing
it to the attention of the board of education by making a citizen comment at a schoolboard meeting like I am tonight. Please note that you can visit our website at capesquad.org where we have a page called Navigating
Concerns, a step-by-step guide for PCCS families. Here you will find links to the hate and bias reporting form, the how to address a concern flowchart, the special education staff directory, plus other helpful suggestions. Again, that
website is capquad.org. Thank you guys so much. >> Thank you very much. Up next, we have Brian Jagger. BRIAN. >> HELLO. Good evening, members of the board and superintendent Merritt. My
name is Brian Jagger. I'm a Canton resident and a parent in the district with a 10th grader in the special education program and a proud member of Capes. It's been a long journey to get in front of you tonight. My 10th grade son is a bright student, but we've had challenges over the years with special education program. I decided to start
attending schoolboard meetings to see the inner workings. I didn't hear much about SE special education during these meetings until a couple months ago when there was a data presentation about the differences uh between the cohorts of students. I saw the students with the IEPs or the individual education plans
are below state average. This data showed the grade challenge is not just isolated issue for my son but a systematic one for many students receiving these services. I'm here because I want to be more than just an advocate for my son. I want to be a
partner for all of our students. The best outcomes for our kids will come from aligning our goals between parents, teachers, administrators, and most importantly, the students themselves. We all share the same goal for the success not only in school, but in life. I want
to take a moment to acknowledge the excellent support we've already received. I've had the pleasure of working closely with my son's case worker and her supervisor this year, and they've been truly great to collaborate with. The dedication is a testimony, a
testament to the talent and the focus on the students we have in PCCS. I want to ensure that the spe special education students best interests remain at the heart of every decision. This is an extremely important issue since the quality of our special education
services can either be an asset or a liability for the district since many students may move on if they are not getting the services that they need and expect. By working together to make sure make these services the absolute best they can be will ensure that PCCS not
only meets its commitments to every student but also continues to maintain the highest standards that we're known for. This would be a great way to not only retain current students and attract students from around the area but also make PCCS a leader in special education in the state. Thank you very much for
your time and I look forward to working with you all. Okay, thank you very much. Up next, we have Steve Gentilia. >> Wow. No applause. Um, first time I've been here in about six months after being here regularly
for about two two over a little over two years. Um, in June of 2025, this district is experienced an influx an influx of outside participants supported by a former Northville school board member. Regrettably, their
involvement appears to have contributed to an increased division within the community rather than meaningful progress for our schools. The volume of commentary and external influence has not consistently aligned with the district's core mission of
advancing student outcomes. Over the past nine months, I have regularly observed board meetings and noted limited public discussion focused on challenges including declining enrollment, declining test scores, and a diminishing sense of community pride in
our schools. These issues are a fund are fundamental to the district's long-term strength and the success of its students. As you approach the upcoming budget cycle, I recognize the complexity and significance of decisions before you.
This is a critical juncture for our district with a long-standing tradition of excellence. I respectfully encourage the board to remain focused on data-driven priorities and the needs of all students. It is essential that decisions be guided by
sound judgment, thoughtful analysis, and a commitment to what is best to what best serves the entire school community. Thank you. >> That's it. Wow. Thank you for your comments. Okay, last
but not least, we have Michelle Mustaka. >> I like that applause. >> Good evening. My name is Michelle Mustakis. I'm a resident of Kenton and a member of CAPES. CAPE's core belief is that every child deserves the safety, dignity, and respect at school that
allows them to thrive. Unfortunately, some students are robbed of this opportunity by circumstances beyond their control. Included in this group are the children of immigrants whose lives are being destroyed by mass deportations carried out by our
government. I recently attended a community forum in which several local immigrant aid groups told heart-wrenching stories about the impact of these demortations on the children left behind. Story after story of
teenagers, teenagers left to care for their siblings dependent for survival on donations from the community for formula, diapers, clothing, and food. When asked how we could help these children, they told us the best place we
could start are the schools. Many times, our public schools are the only connection that these children have to the community they live in. In a recent case in Pontiac, a 14-year-old boy called a local immigrant aid group to tell them his father had been detained
and he had no other family. When they asked how he knew to call the agency, he said a teacher gave him their card. This young student was taken care of. The teacher who gave him this card was a hero. But it's not only students whose
parents have been taken that are suffering. It's also those from immigrant families who know people of dis people that have disappeared and worry that their family may be next. For these families, outreach by the school can help to lessen their fear and
stress. We know and we appreciate that the district has procedures in place to help ensure that ICE cannot unlawfully detain a student, but it's not enough. All staff need to be trained on these procedures. Additionally, actions based on the examples above should be taken.
The district could provide teachers and school counselors with information packs that contain resources to help students find aid if their parents have been detained or deported. The district could also reach out to the community by partnering with the ACLU andor local
immigrant aid groups to hold a training session for families at understanding their rights and they do have rights and the resources available to them. CAPSE can help with putting the information packs together and coordinating the outreach session.
We just heard how the schools should help all students. These are the vulnerable students that need help. It is unconscionable that so many children are left living alone or in the fear of
being left alone. We have the means and we have the moral obligation to help in whatever way we can. Thank you. >> Okay, thank you very much for everyone's comments. That concludes this section of our agenda. We are now moving on to administrative reports and
recommendations. First up, we have teaching and learning with Miss Curry. >> Thank you. Tonight we have Jan Douglas, our elementary curriculum coordinator, to share some elementary ELA curriculum updates. Good evening. I'm excited to share with
you some of the updates that we've recently made over the past three years in our ELA curriculum. So when we began the journey, we knew that we had to ground ourselves within goals A and B. specifically making sure
that we are working to increase achievement for our students and close achievement gaps so that all students can feel safe at school. It became clear that anything that we did had to be grounded in the science of
reading. And so we made drastic changes to the way that we teach our students how to read. This visual called Scar Bro's rope illustrates how reading is a very
complex process and learning to read is extremely complex. Students need to have solid word recognition, but they also need to have strong language comprehension. The absence of one will result in a reader who is not skilled
and does not have what they need to be successful. So in our journey pri the year prior to um my stepping into this position, the district identified a need for structured literacy because our foundational skills scores were um
showing that we had a a curricular issue. And so they move forward with piloting UFly foundations which is from the UN University of Florida literacy institute and also Heggerty FMIC
awareness. Our teachers quickly realized that we needed UFly foundations because our students need not only phmic awareness but also phonics instruction. The next year, well let me back up a second. So over that summer, we were
able to bring in some trainers from youth foundations and provide stipens for our teachers to attend a two-day training with these experts. It was very, very exciting and the teachers were thrilled to be able to have these
materials to meet the needs of their students with the word recognition skills. That same year that we rolled out UFly, we piloted a K5 language comprehension curriculum called collaborative
classroom and we also piloted EL education. Our teachers chose collaborative classroom overwhelmingly because of the fact that our students are represented in the the curricular
materials in the books that are shown to them every single day. The engagement level was so high. Teachers said they'd never seen kids so excited and asking when they were going to have reading and writing. So that was very that was very indicative of something that that we
needed to really deeply consider. So we adopted collaborative classroom and then rolled that out in the year of 2024 2025. So now we are in year three of our UFly
implementation and year two of collaborative classroom being a reader and being a writer. So when we chose UFly, we were very clear in in looking for something that had explicit systematic
instruction and word recognition skills that follows um a a scope and sequence that is well designed to um support students as they're ready to develop more complex skills. Collaborative
classroom we chose because of the component of language comprehension where we we know that students have to build background knowledge in order to be able to access texts and also collaborative classroom
has a strong word recognition or not I'm sorry word study component which focuses on multi-elabic decoding and also expanding comprehension of vocabulary words through morphology which is
instruction that focus on focuses on the smallest unit of the word that holds meaning. So I was thrilled when I heard that MDE approved both collaborative classroom and UFly as curriculum that can be
purchased using grant funds. We had made our purchases with some prior grant funds and um recently they have vetted all of these different curricula and both of ours were on the list. One of the biggest shifts for teachers
has been process over product when it comes to comprehension. It's important to note that not many teachers had this type of training in college. I have a master's degree in reading and I did not have this type of training. So, a lot of
this training that they're having right now is through the curriculum materials that we adopted that are educative. So, as the teachers teach them, they're learning along along the way. Um, and
we're moving away from really like looking at comprehension as just a series of we need to read and then summarize or read and answer questions to really looking at what students need
to access the text because our students are all very unique and they need different things to be able to access the demands of a specific text. So, some students might need background knowledge building, some students might need vocabulary building, some students may
need help with sentence parsing so that they understand and have a higher level of sentence comprehension. So, our teachers are learning that um with the help of our instructional coaches. I'm also working with our principles and
Dr. Lily to conduct administrative learning walks. So we're in year three of UFly. So it's incredibly important that we are gathering observational data because what the research shows is that if you stick to the scope and sequence
and the methodology outlined in UFly, then 95% of students can be successful in learning to read without additional support. So it's extremely um impactful tier one curricular
resource. So the principles and Dr. Lley and I have been um visiting different classrooms. We had some teachers who were um excited to welcome us in and we went through and used um a guide that
you had provided just uh it's like an implementation checklist and we were able to identify where we saw high leverage strategies where we had strengths where we had areas of growth all keeping in mind like what do our
teachers need next to keep this um positive movement went forward. It was very interesting when um UFly came to train the teachers. Right away the teachers recognized, wait a minute, the benchmark assessment system that
gives us levels is not giving us the information that we need to make instructional decisions. So we partnered with well I surveyed the teachers and over 90% of them said we need to move forward with changing our assessment
system. So uh we partnered with you to help us understand what is the best way forward and we chose um the dibbles 8 benchmark assessment which has multiple subtests that really measure where
students are with specific skills. Once students take the dibbles 8 benchmark assessment, if they score 40th percentile or below on the dibbles, so that would be in the strategic support range or the intensive support
range, they are administered the corponics diagnostic survey which helps the teachers understand exactly what they need to do to meet that student's needs. This slide um is from last year, but I did want to highlight this again because
I don't have a full year of growth this year. This shows a decline in the number of students who are in need of intensive support and we are on track to see the same type of movement this year as well.
I did want to pull some data for you though and this is middle of the year benchmark data dibbles data from the oral reading fluency subtest which measures how accurately and automatically students decode words because when they're when they develop a
higher level of automaticity they make more cognitive space to be able to make sense of the text. So it's incredibly important that they become accurate and automatic readers. So, as you see here, I colorcoded the cohorts so you could
kind of see the decline in students in that at risk range. And we're seeing a positive trend as we as we move forward into year three. So, um students who had UFly in first grade
in the very first year, they would have had two years, two full years of UFly. And now we have um student only 5% of our students and that's taking all students into account who are scoring in that at risk
or in need of intensive support range on the Dibbles OF. Since the Dibbles OF starts at first grade, I thought it was important to highlight too the growth we're seeing with our kindergarten. So we have um this subtest which is
called se phone segmentation fluency and it measures the ability um that students have to break apart words and manipulate sounds. And again, we're seeing that midyear kindergarten, you know, there's still quite a number of students who are in
that at risk category because they've only had half a year of UFI, but by the time they get to mid year of first grade, we have like 9% 10% um that are in that category. So some of the elements of explicit
instruction that are part of that you fly curriculum include correcting errors in the moment. So we've really been working with um our coaches to support our teachers in that immediate corrective feedback before a
student would start to habitualize errors. We want to make sure that we correct that in the moment and then give them multiple opportunities to respond and practice, practice, practice so that they can become adept at those skills.
Um the purposeful practice component um is a part of our small group reading block. So there might be one group working with the teacher and then there are students who are working independent of the teacher. The teacher aligns the
practice they need with whatever skill they've acquired but need to become more fluent with. And then we do weekly progress monitoring assessments that determine skill acquis acquisition of the skills that were taught that week.
So these progress monitoring assessments help us to understand how to differentiate instruction for individual needs. So we have our whole group instruction obviously where there's a whole group lesson and then there's our small group
where this differentiation occurs. So this is the the time during the day where teachers are really helping students who are still struggling to acquire skills to acquire those skills so that they when they are working independent of the teacher they're ready
to practice them. What has been very very helpful and successful is our student centered coaching. Uh Miss Curry sent the principles and the instructional coaches
to a training at Wayne Resa where we were able to hear Miss Diane Sweeney who's the author of several student centered coaching books. And the beauty of this is it's really focused on the student data. What do students need?
what do they need next? Um instead of what is the teacher doing right or wrong, it's really what do we need to do to support students. There are seven core practices that start with really understanding what is the standard asking and what's the
learning target and what does it look like for a student to be able to master this standard and apply it. So with the student centered coaching, the why is we want to make sure that we're getting measurable student growth
and instead of like our our dibbles assessment is a benchmark assessment that happens three times a year, but there's a lot of time in between there. So teachers are working with coaches to identify areas where students may need
more support and thinking about like a datadriven partnership where they can assess student work together, collaborate on a plan, engage in a coaching cycle where the coach and the teacher are not just collaborating ahead
of the lesson but during the lesson as well and then debriefing. So, they set a goal, pull plan, and co-e and then they deliver a post assessment. This is um just a couple of data
stories. Um I did throw a math example in here too, even though this is about ELA because I did want to highlight that the coaches not only work with the teachers on ELA, but also on math. And so the first step is they determine with
the preassessment which can be very short just what what does it look like for a student to be able to meet the standard the goal and then what is emerging look like what does developing look like and also what does exceeding look like. So you can see
in both of these examples that there was a lot of growth. um the the math example especially there were several students who were exceeding by the end of the cycle but we do see
that there are students who still need additional support. So that's where the coaches meet with the teachers to figure out what do we need to do next for the student. So with the ELA example, the skill they were working on was consonant
vowel consonant silent e and they still had 25% of the students who were struggling with that. So they looked at the student data that that they had gathered the uh students post assessment and they recognized that all of the
issues were around the letter U and so then the teacher knew exactly what to do to support those students. So, it's really about continually looking at evidence of learning to support instructional decisions.
The next steps as we continue to work and improve, we are continuing to use data to support instructional decisions and there's been huge growth um in teacher assessment literacy. So, we're
continuing to work with teachers on that. um job embedded professional learning with the student centered coaching cycles. They really allow teachers a chance to kind of slow down and process what's going on. They are moving so fast during the day and it's nice that they
can have a thought partner to um meet with to determine what does the student need next and to also support teachers on their journey as we get more closely aligned with the science of reading research. Um, we're maintaining our focus on explicit instruction with
corrective feedback, opportunities to respond, purposeful practice, and progress monitoring. And we're making sure to celebrate student growth. Do you have any questions? >> Thank you. Um, we'll open up to questions and I'll start to my left with
my Amed. >> Thank you. Um maybe this is too basic, but you mentioned that um the teachers were being trained sort of on site because their the education they come in come in
with didn't have this kind of training. Could you give me or give us a small example of what you mean by that? >> Yes. So we call it job embedded professional development. And so when a coach meets with the teacher, they'll
talk about what a student needs. And so the coaches are very well trained in the science of reading. We have a district literacy coach who is funded through RISA and uh has an exceptional amount of knowledge around literacy and has
supported the coaches in developing that. And so coaches are really able to differentiate for teachers based on where they are in their journey. Um, and the other piece is we do we have these uh curricula that are um they're called
educative which means that as the teachers use them they're learning along the way because it doesn't just tell them do um x y and z it tells them the why behind. And I guess to follow up so and this
differs from their training how so um years ago I won't tell you when I got my master's degree but um it's been a while uh years ago the focus was on whole language. So the thought was that um students will naturally acquire reading
skills just like kids naturally learn to speak but that's not the way that the brain learns to read. So the shift was more towards a balanced literacy where there were supposed to be more foundational skills, but it really wasn't that balanced. And so now we're
moving towards structured literacy where we are keeping the wonderful parts of balanced literacy where the read alouds, the think alouds, and the class discussions, but also ensuring that we're um making sure kids can access the
text because every text is different. if you don't have background knowledge on text, it's not going to make a lot of sense. And then also just the the word recognition piece is really important because if you can't read the words on the page, then it's really hard to comprehend.
>> Thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain that to me. >> Yeah. >> Hi. Um, one of our MASB workshops on Friday was around literacy. So, we had people from MDE come and give us updates on literacy. Um, in terms of what
programs were accepted and approved, I'm glad to hear that UFly was approved. They mentioned letters training. Could you help me understand the overlap between UFly class collaborative collaborative classroom and letters training? Yes. So,
I am I have taken the letters for administrators and now I'm taking the letters for teachers. I'm almost completed with that. And the the difference is the letters is really about the science behind how the brain learns to read and um also
what you need to do for each strand of that rope. It's not necessarily a curriculum, but it does um highlight instructional strategies that are evidence-based for teachers. So what has been really exciting is as I'm
progressing through letters I am seeing the components of both collaborative classroom and UFly represented in there. Um we have had several teachers take letters. Um Miss Curry just wrote a grant and so we have um more teachers
who are taking letters now and as they hear about what a great training experience it is, they're talking to colleagues and then more people are taking it. >> Right. That's one of the things they mentioned was the grant money for letters training. I know it's really intensive um but it seems to be
beneficial for based on research. Uh the second question I have is this is a little bit off in terms of I'm trying to understand and they mentioned this a little bit in in the MD presentation but
I want to hear from you how we got literacy or how did we get off the path of good instruction for whatever 10 years and how do we make sure we don't make that mistake again? >> That's a great question. Um so there
there was this period of time where there were these reading wars among the experts. You know those who thought you would naturally just learn to read and um you know they call like an emergent you just emerge the student they're going to learn on their own but that
didn't work because um the brain doesn't learn to read without explicit systematic instruction. And then there's the other side that we're very focused on the phonics piece. And so what I think that we have finally settled on
now is that we need both. So um there's an equation called the simple view of reading and it's word recognition times language comprehension equals reading comprehension. So if you don't have one then you're going to have a problem. So
we are trying to be very intentional about the fact that yes students need these foundational skills but they also need the comprehens the language comprehension components as well. Okay, >> thank you for that. They shared a really
cool video that's obviously based on research. I'll I'll send it to you Dr. Merritt. These were experts obviously that were uh talking about literacy enhancements and improvements throughout the state. this this video really showed how different parts of the brain as you're talking about work together and
you need both. But to have a visual representation is really helpful. Maybe something to look at or share with parents. >> The last question I have is >> for the students who went through this this program that didn't work so well over the last 10 years and they're some
may be behind. How do we catch them up? >> Because let's say we're you know we have students in middle school who missed that really solid foundation. how do we better support them? >> So, it starts with curricular changes. Um, prior to this year, I was the K12
ELA uh curriculum coordinator. And so, I work with the middle school teachers to make some changes around um morphology. And um we had a great success story. One of the eighth grade teachers from Liberty told me that she had a student
come back from high school and say how much that helped them. So that can really help them with um science. You know, there are Greek and Latin roots that the students learn about and and then they can um use that as a decoding
strategy for larger academic vocabulary. Um so that's that is one thing and I know um at last year I worked with um a cohort of high school teachers. We took a class together through student achievement partners um called improving
reading for older students. And so what they have continued to do is to provide professional they were the early adopters and they have continued to provide professional learning for the English department at the high school so that we're kind of moving forward and
getting ready for the implementation of PA46. >> Okay. So the program that you talked about is it being systemized meaning it's going to be spread across all schools or is it just in pockets right now? >> It should be spread across all schools.
>> Thank you. >> I appreciate your presentation. I you know we've come along I think with you on this journey of UFly and our um adoption of this new curriculum. I appreciate my colleagues thoughtful questions. I have a son who's in middle school and I'm thinking the same thing
like, oh gosh, what if he missed this foundational material? So, I appreciate that. >> Um, but I really just want to focus on, you know, the the benchmark data. You know, that's really telling the story of the success of this program. So, I think that's really important for us as a board um to take a look at. And um
really no questions, but just thank you for your presentation. >> So, you couple questions. Start first with a comment. I got really concerned when I was looking at this presentation in the board packet around the oral reading fluency and this phone segment
fluency. >> Those percentages, there's nothing that says this is at risk, >> right? So, I think that because people are going to look at these presentations after the fact, please update the deck to say that this is the percentage of students that are at risk because I'm
like, there's no way that we only have 3% of students and it's going down. Um, I like the fact that it's at risk and the numbers are going down much better. You did a great job explaining it, but the slides are not reflective. Very confusing. Um, my question was really
around uh differentiation. We've done a lot of work in differentiation and we you spoke specifically about the work that we do for those that need more um individualized instruction and help. But one of the goals that that many of us have had at the board level is how do we
use differentiation to help support those students that can do more. >> Um we know that we've got our magnet program for TAG and that works well for certain students, but there's some students that don't have the qualifications to match that in both math and reading. And there's some
students that may just excel in a particular area. How are we providing differentiation for students in the elementary level um for those that that can do more that that have mastered the materials. >> So with the foundational skills, it's really important that even if kids can
read that they still go through that process and learn how to it's called orthographic mapping. Um, and it's about making meaning of the sounds and how to spell them and what the word means. So,
um, we make sure that students have access to that as part of the tier one curriculum. The differentiation piece would come for K2 during that small group instruction time where it might look a little bit different for a student who is not showing on their
weekly progress monitoring that they're struggling with the skill of the week. So the teacher might be like differentiating up a little bit for them. Like maybe they're ready for multi-elabic decoding, maybe they're ready for some morphology work. Um, one
of the best things we can do for kids too is to enhance vocabulary, build background knowledge through text sets. So there are a lot of different options um that teachers can use and built into our collaborative classroom, there are enrichment activities as well.
>> Okay, great. So it's not just about acceleration. We're also talking about enrichment as part of that process because you acceleration sometimes is part of it. Sometimes they just need to go at the pace that they need to go, but they >> can do more enrichment on that. >> Yeah. And thank you for pointing that
out about the slides. I realize that like as I was reviewing them on the way over here. So I put those last slides in a little bit. Yeah. >> They're alarming. Okay. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> I'll fix that. Thank you. I want to e echo member Kho's uh comments on slide
10 and 11. The charts were >> I I had an idea since we had gone through this in in in Spa, but yeah, they're a little bit concerning without an explanation about how to read the chart. Um, first of all, I did hear this in in SPA
and I think you know, member Curry can or Miss Curry can back me up that I was smiling through the entire thing as a parent that um had students that struggled with reading, both students in this district and in another school that
struggled with reading and had to go outside of the schools for private tutoring that was similar to EUI. seeing the success is just phenomenal. This is this is what we need. This is what our our community needs. Um one
question, we had a long discussion in SPA about um um the assessments. There's there's a number of places where you mentioned weekly assessments and all of that. And I know that um that some in our community are um concerned about the
amount of testing and the time that it takes to test students. Can you um give us a little bit of understanding about what it means to assess a student and like you know what what does that mean in terms of time and >> so the progress monitoring assessments
are encoding or spelling assessments that happen at the end of the week and it's like five words so the teacher can pick up you know if the student did not pick up that skill so it doesn't take a long time weekly the teacher also
gathers data observation ational data beyond just that. Um during the week the the dibbles benchmarks that are um administered three times a year. I believe each subtest is no more than three minutes a piece. So um the like
the or the oral reading fluency that takes one minute. The um the maze which measures the comprehension pieces that takes three or yeah they have three minutes to complete that. So they are very short. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. and thank you for the
excellent work here to everybody in the district. >> Thank you. >> Um I'm wondering how um how are achievement gaps looking under this new program? Like for the past
three years if it's been fully implemented, how have they have we closed achievement gaps? >> Yeah. So, what is really exciting is when I look at the all students data and then I look at um the data from some of
our demographic groups like um our economically disadvantaged, our African-American students, there are the same patterns and about the same percentages that you would see with all students. Um we still have some work to do with special education and so that's
where we're going to focus next. Would it be possible for us to get that data? >> You'll have it at the end of the year spring date of uh is that May that you have that presentation? Yeah. With demographic groups. >> Okay, great. And um
do are we keeping like data on like are some schools um succeeding more or you know is there data based on each individual building? So the more fidelity there is to the
program, the better the data is going to be. Um I would say there's not a lot of variance um among the schools. Um there's just some fine tuning that we need to do just to make sure that you know we're implementing with equity.
>> Okay. Thank you Arjun. >> Um I just want to start off by saying that you know this it was a really good presentation. And I think something like this is really important especially with you know kids of that age being in their critical periods and needing to have
that education. Um so I want to start off by asking you if you've you know considered implementing this further into the middle and high school level and obviously different forms because in you know need for education there will be different but >> yeah so um I am working closely with the
middle school and the high school coordinators um and as I mentioned um morphology instruction is now part of the middle school curriculum and the high school teachers um there's a leadership team that has been working with them on what
it looks like to improve reading for older students. Um, you know, really thinking about how do we decode multi-selabic words? Um, what does fluency look like? How can we help our students become more fluent readers? Um, how do we build background knowledge?
All of those types of things. So, they are they're on that journey. And then um so you showed that in our district overall the achievement gap has been closing but I'm curious if you have any data you know comparing this to the state and national level. So like if we
were you know beginning below or way below the state level and have we you know come up to the average or have we gone beyond the average now? So, it's it's kind of early to tell, but I will tell you um that um Wayne Rea is
regularly referring other districts to us because we seem to be ahead of the curve. They invited our literacy coach to um present at their last uh coach on special assignment meeting where all the district coaches come together. And so,
um I think we're we're doing well. We have seen a little bit of an uptick in uh MSTEP scores as well. And then uh finally, I guess it's more of a suggestion than a question, but you know um having these early, you know, uh improvements in reading can be you know
really transferable to more important standardized tests like you know PSAT, SAT, that kind of stuff. And if you said it started three years ago, right? >> Mhm. So um you know maybe comparing I think then by now the fifth graders who had it would have been taking PSAT in
this um upcoming in April. So being able to see their PSAT scores and later on as this program continues in years um following comparing SAT scores and that to previous years without this program to see how does this impact later down the line. >> Yeah, thank you for sharing that. It is
important to note though that our fifth graders this year did not have the youth flag curriculum. Um so they did they did not have that piece. So our first um I think it's our third graders now will be
the no our second graders will be the first group to have the entire scope and sequence. >> Yeah. Thanks. >> A lot of my questions were um already answered. I echo the um slide 10 and 11 concerns. I was very I was looking at the slide before you started talking. I
was like, "Oh my god." Um um with that said, uh from all my experience at the high school level, there's definitely a gap in reading um and writing skills, uh I have a lot of um different experiences working with other kids. So, I'm in mentoring and mediation
>> um where I work and mentor freshmen um across all different levels um of ability and I can say pretty much blanket across all of them. Um reading comprehension is a struggle and then also reading out loud is another big problem um even into senior year. I know
a lot of kids still struggle with that. So I would encourage you over the next as well I mean as soon as possible to try and also work on a way to assist those kids because I mean I don't want to we're basically screwed um through this.
So I I would try and work out a solution to at least try and remediate that or I mean whether it's like a summer packet or something like that to try and um teach phonics. I was very lucky. My mom taught me phonics um as another necessary skills that I missed out um on
in school, but that sort of a thing I know a lot of students are missing um as well as just generalized reading skills. So trying to >> not just clear the gap in the elementary and middle school level, but even through high school level I would say is very necessary. >> Yes, thank you. Um that is why I wanted
to um develop a cohort last year of teachers who were interested in taking this course improving reading for older students. Um and I did go to their first uh professional learning last August and they were very impressed with what their
colleagues were presenting. Um and I continue to work with the high school curriculum coordinator um to support with that work as well. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you and it was a great presentation and I'm glad we're moving this shift back. Um I've done a lot of research into the science of reading. So
we're definitely on the right path now. Thank you. >> And my apologies for those slides. They were an addition. I thought well I want to show you something for this year but >> with the data is really good. >> Yeah the data is good but you have to know what it what it means.
>> Thank you. Thank you very much. I do feel the need to just uh restate a couple of things that have heard just as we I think one of our citizens comments was about propaganda and how we can hear a piece of data and that carries on as a message. So I do want to clarify a couple of things that we heard in terms of overall performance. I heard one
comment that we're below the state and by far across our aggregate we have exceeded the state the county and actually are in the quadrant of high performing high achieving um consideration in the state. although we still have a lot of work to do and we
have work to do in our um demographic groups. So I do want to make sure that we state that piece as well when we talk about uh the areas of of how do we prevent ourselves from going back there when we use the word we that's not a Plymouth Canton we that's a state we when we're looking at the direction that
of teaching and balanced literacy moving to the science of reading and we actually were early adopters of this uh science of reading um to the point that you said we were applauded with the the county as saying to people hey how are you doing this why are you making that change so I want to make sure that we're
saying um as we're hearing the things that we're saying, we're emphasizing the work that we're doing and um that we're still accelerated in many spaces and so we have a lot of work to do to get better till all of our students achieve at 100%. That is always going to be the goal. Um and want to just clarify some
of the things that we have. So, thank you for all the work that you >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Up next, we have finance and operations with Miss Minnik. Good evening. Uh it's my pleasure this evening to share with you just a brief progress update on our developments of
the 2627 general fund budget and within that some of our preliminary assumptions. We always start our work with a connection to our dynamic plan. Uh here we have our strategic goal. A PCCS will increase achievement for all students and close achievement gaps. And our
goal, our strategic objective of finance and operations one and two is to align our financial resources including state and federal resources to areas of greatest need as support for individual students as identified through academic achievement data and also through
strategic goal B. All PCCS students and staff will report that they feel physically, psychologically, and emotionally safe and represented at school. And with our strategic objective FO4, aligning financial resources to the areas of greatest need to support the
social emotional needs of all staff and students. So with that as a foundation for our work, uh uh this evening, we will cover our 2627 general fund budget progress. Uh and within that we have our budget development timeline that we'll share with you as well as just a a
couple of brief highlights and overviews from the January consensus revenue estimating conference and the executive or the governor's budget proposal highlights and then we will look at our 2627 preliminary budget assumptions on which we are building our budget and our
next steps. So our budget development timeline is very similar to prior years. Uh it typically will kick off our next school year's budget will typically kick off in January of the current year uh with the January consensus revenue estimating conference. Sometimes people call that
the Cre or the CRE uh but this state has two of those every year January and May. Uh and at this cere if you will uh there are econom economists from across the state the nation uh even locally at U of M. uh they come together with the state
budget office, the house fiscal agency and the senate fiscal agency and share their predictions and projections for revenue collections at the state level. And the state has both a school aid fund as well as a general fund general purpose. Uh and then once that is issued
and there's consensus then on those revenue estimates, uh the governor will release uh the state's budget proposal. And so with that, we start to see some of those initial uh budget priorities, if you will, or some of the initiatives that uh may be uh the state is
interested in. And so then we can kind of start to gather some information around where schools might land in terms of revenue resources the following year. And then in February uh just beyond that then we will develop our public budget survey preparation which we accomplished
that at the February February 19th finance and operations committee meeting. And then I have a big blue arrow there by March 19 and March 24 uh at Thursday's finance and operations committee meeting. And tonight's board of ed meeting is the time that we'll take a look at the January CREC and the executive budget proposal and our
assumptions. We'll also be taking a look at our community budget survey results next on our agenda as well. And then I have a blue arrow next to February through May. We are in that timeline when the district, the administration, and all voices are heard through our 2627 budget development process. And
then in May, we will look forward to that May consensus revenue estimating conference along with the House and Senate budget proposals. Uh if those are released by them, we are hopeful that they are. And then we will craft our final 2627 budget assumptions on which
we are basing our 2627 bud general fund budget. Then in June at the FNO committee meeting on June 4th, we will present a proposed overview of the budget and then we will bring that forward to the board of on June 9 for that first reading and a public hearing
on that budget as well as uh we look forward to budget adoption on June 23rd at the board meeting at that time. Uh so with that kind of as an overview of our work, we take a quick look at this overview of the January uh consensus
revenue estimates. Uh so with that then on the far left we see the two funds at the state level, general fund, general purpose and the school a fund. And then we see those um forecasts of revenue for each of those funds that the uh that the
three groups reached consensus on. Uh so for FY25 uh keep in mind the state has a fiscal year running from October through September and so uh they are uh still I believe they're still wrapping up their books. They may be issuing them soon uh
issuing an an audit report soon. Uh however, those original predictions for FY25 uh is that there would be a bit of a revenue decline in the general fund general purpose, yet a robust increase in school aid of about 3.5% in revenues.
FY26, another decline in general fund general purpose and a moderate increase in school aid fund. And then once again we see that same pattern for next year uh projected to be just a slight decline though in general fund uh but still that moderate but continued growth in school
aid fund revenues. Then that longerterm projection for 28 29 and 30 we do see that moderate growth in both funds of about 2 and a half 2.3% uh hovering right around there for both funds. So again, uh, at least it's it's a
projection in the school aid fund of continued growth. Nothing robust yet, just some moderate continued growth. So that is good news for schools. And then with some highlights from the executive budget proposal uh around the
general fund, we saw a proposal for an increase in the foundation allowance per pupil. Our current foundation allowance is $10,50 per pupil. The proposal in the governor's budget is 10,300 per pupil. So that's a 2.5% increase and that
aligns then with those projections that we're seeing around the school a fund revenue. Uh we saw some uh information around declining student enrollment. We saw that uh statewide they're estimating another half a percent if you will in
decline in pupils in public schools next year. Uh and we know that statewide, we've talked about this before, that statewide, uh Michigan has seen a decline in pupils uh to the tune of 7% since FY19.
Uh so therein then the governor has proposed an increase then in the categorical funding for enrollment stabilization uh for school districts. And interesting uh new this year uh is a new weighted fund a new weighted student
funding approach that's been proposed for at risk and English learners categorical grant funds. And so we'll walk through that because it may have general fund implications. Currently at risk monies and English learning uh bilingual monies are considered grant
funds as categoricals in through state aid. uh but we'll see here that uh that may shift uh it's just a proposal at the executive level. We have yet to see the house and senate proposals and of course then we have the state has to come to consensus on all that. However, in this
proposal um this is a slide uh from citizens research council of Michigan to understand how weighted student funding might work through the executive budget proposal. So currently there are separate funding streams for each of those categorical grants each with its
own formulaic allocation allowable uses and such. So the proposal is to create a a single funding stream for both of those categoricals waiting using a a weighted pupil count. Uh and so it just walks us through an example. If we have a student
that qualifies both for at risk monies and English learning monies, there's weights associated with each of those types of um added cost programs, if you will. And so then with that, it would take the weighted student funding of
that $10,300 foundation level and it would add a weight whether a student is just at risk or just an English learner or both. um it would take the appropriate weights to add then a percentage of that foundation to the base foundation. So in this case, a
certain student uh would garner 10,300 on the foundation allowance plus another $2,943 for at risk and English learning programs for a for an allocation of $13,243
per pupil. They indicate here that it's a shift. This shift to that structure then would tie funding to the foundation allowance rather than just the state lump allocation in the school aid act and it would provide districts with a bit more spending discretion and reduces some
state requirements. So the question with all of this uh in in in all the different types of things whether it's um at the state level on the um the governor's budget release um even within Michigan school business officials groups uh chitchat and things. It's
still unclear and maybe even in other groups around the state. It's still unclear whether these categoricals would be eliminated and those monies would become general fund dollars um or if they would or if this is a funding mechanism for allocating the categorical
monies in some of the districtby district projection documents that have been released. It indicates that perhaps at risk and multilingual categoricals would be eliminated and the funds could become general fund dollars. Uh so if if that occurs then we would still seek to
understand if there's still the same type of reporting requirements if there's still the same eligible expenditures. Um but the citizens re research council indicates here that perhaps it would allow a little bit more spending discretion which would allow districts to tailor those dollars more
equitably to the specific students that they serve in their community. So we'll keep our eyes on that. if it would were to become general fund dollars, we would be careful to be sure we're comparing apples to apples across the years because that's not currently a general fund dollar in our district. So, just
something to keep an eye on. Um, but it does align with some of the work we saw from the from the Michigan School Finance Research Collaborative around the need to give added weight and added dollars for certain populations of of students or programs that that uh add
costs to the education program. So our preliminary budget assumptions then how are we going to use all this information and incorporate it into our general fund budget development process. So on our ledger we have revenues and we have expenditures. And so on the revenue
side of the ledger if you will uh we have state aid that is the largest uh source of operating revenue for our district. And in a general way that formula is uh multiplying the number of full-time equivalent pupils by that foundation allowance dollar amount. So
on the number of pupils then our enrollment uh that is calculated uh 90% of that weight of the count is the current year's fall and 10% is the prior year's spring. So as we go into this budget development cycle uh we have the
fall count. Well we don't have the fall count. We'll know that in the fall of 26. We know that the spring count is underway and it was just recently submitted I believe. Uh yet we don't know what our enrollment will be. Uh so at this point in time uh we know from
when we adopted our amended budget and our audit and other types of reports that our district has seen a loss in enrollment each year, but that is tapering. Uh it's not as steep of a loss as in prior years. So in this point in time, we are going to be assuming a loss
of 75 pupils. Uh so that is a loss of foundation allowance or a cost of about $753,000. Um but as we move through these next couple of months, we'll continue to refine that as we look at other uh projections and we come to know the students that are enrolling in our
district and those types of things. Now on the foundation allowance uh side, we're going to in this moment assume the $10,300 that was proposed in the governor's budget. uh and that would uh provide an increase of about $4 million
based on uh that new enrollment amount. So then the net projected state aid increase is about $3.2 million. The uh next source of of revenue for our district is the enhancement millage and we're grateful for the voters to approve
that millillage. Uh we anticipate each year about an increase of about 2% based on taxable values. So that would equate to about $128,000 for next year. So those two buckets, if you will, the state aid and the enhancement mill are our primary sources of revenue. Even
though the state aid includes some portion of a local dollar and then the state makes us whole on that, but all in all that state aid and then that enhancement mill are the our primary general fund revenue drivers. When we take a look at the expenditure
side of the level ledger rather uh we have a number of expenditures to start um projecting if you will. So we're assuming that our staffing is going to be based on board adopted class size guidelines and that we will align that staffing with our enrollment.
Uh each year we in fact we had some this evening some staff retirements and sometimes on the expenditure side of the ledger that might mean some savings only because oftentimes we heard like tonight uh 30-year teachers 25-y year teachers uh who will be retiring and we might
hire in new teachers that may be a lesser salary rate um on the salary schedule. So we estimate about 20 retirements this year for about a million dollar savings. And then of course we are currently negotiating some collective bargaining agreements and uh
those employment contracts will be based on that work. Uh MIPERS uh we see a decrease I'm sorry Mipser stands for the Michigan public schools employees retirement system. And so for the retirement rates in the uh published retirement rates uh we see a decrease in
that base rate as well as the unfunded actuarial accounting liability rates. So, I indicate that a we potentially have a $4 million savings question mark question mark. Um, it it feels a little bit unreasonable. So, we're keeping an eye on that and we're learning more
about that as we apply those new rates to uh salaries for next year. Um, and to see if there might be other types of categoricals that might offset that savings or reductions of other categoricals perhaps. The picture is not fully clear yet. Uh but on the employer
healthc care side uh we are anticipating an increase in those costs of nearly 8%. Uh for next year uh custodial and transportation services are significant cost drive significant cost drivers on our expense side. Uh so those will be based on contracts that we're currently
renegotiating for some savings there. And then on the utility side, natural gas, electric bills, fuel for buses and security vehicles and and maintenance vehicles and such. Uh we are assuming a 5% increase there this year. That's
about $250,000 for next year. Uh and that's based on the fact that we have additional square footage and uh we see it in our own household bills those costs continuing uh to rise. So what are some other overarching considerations? Well, when we have
revenue and expenditures, then the excess of revenues over expenditures creates fund balance. And fund balance is not cash. However, it is that accumulation uh since the beginning of the school district of those amounts that uh of that excess revenue amount.
Uh it's comprised of cash, but it is also comprised of inventories and other types of of set aides and just that balance of the difference between assets and our liabilities. But our fund balance levels call for a couple different thresholds. Best practice as
established by the Michigan School of Business officials or our auditors, others in the business, if you will, suggests a 15% fund balance. That's 15% of our expenditures is a best practice so that if we have
any um unforeseen circumstances that we need to maybe liquidate some assets or have the cash available um then that fund balance allows for that. Our board policy calls for a 10% a minimum of 10% of our expenditures and state statute
requires 5% of our revenues and so our current fund balance is well within those ranges but we just keep an eye on that as we build our budget. Uh we always want to align our staffing and our resources with our student enrollment and we want to evaluate our current programs for effectiveness as
well. Uh we want to leverage our bond program uh to preserve our general fund and we want to be sure we're making strategic use of all of our grant funds. And we talked about this at finance and operations on Thursday evening. And that means taking our most restrictive
grants, the grants that have the most narrowest allowabilities and be sure we are fulfilling those with our expenditures there first. And then we and then when as we as we get into grant funds that have more broad allowable uses then we can um fill those with
other types of expenditures. Uh so in that way we can maximize every dollar of those grant funds. So with all of that in mind then uh we look at our fund balance and we can see over the past couple of years that at June 30th of 23 our fund balance was about 20% of our
expenditures. In 24 it was about 23% and at the end of 25 18%. This fiscal year our amended budget is projecting that our fund balance uh will land right at 15%. So as we look forward to these next
handful of years uh we will need to see some budget reductions over the next three years to maintain that best practice that 15% of fund balance. And that is as I mentioned on our budget timeline, that's the work that our district is undertaking at this time.
So after we account for state aid funding, enrollment decline, staff salaries, benefit projections, and all those other revenue and expenditure impacts we've uh we've discussed here. Uh we need an overall general fund budget alignment of about $10 million,
whether it's on the revenue side or expense side. Uh but we always assume there's a portion of our budget that doesn't get spent down. Uh perhaps we didn't spend all of our supply budgets or we um had some vacancies that um maybe someone retired in the middle of the year. All different kinds of reasons
why. Um but with that then if we assume some level of unspent budget, we're looking for uh alignments of expenditures or reductions of about $8 million. Uh so that's quite a bit more than we have seen, but we have been talking about this for a couple of
years. Uh so we're not surprised by it and we're taking action to get there for sure and we will get there. So what are our next steps then in that work? Uh we will continue our budget process. Um we will attend and listen into that consensus
revenue conference to be held in May for refreshed and more final uh projections of revenues in the school aid fund. And we also want to keep our eye on that general fund general purpose because if there are continued um revenue reductions or forecasts that are calling
for lesser revenues there that could put pressure on the general or rather on the state aid fund. Uh sometimes there are transfers between those funds. So we're just going to keep an eye on that. We're not worried about that currently. Um yet we always keep our eyes and ears open for that. uh when the House and Senate
budget proposals uh are released, we'll take a look at those and understand do those align with the governor's budget or are they all dispirit? When they all when all three of those align, we can anticipate maybe the state coming to consensus sooner and then having that
state aid bill sooner as well. And that also helps us validate whether our budget projections might align with what may occur, what will transpire. So with that, then we will take all that information and present some final budget updates at the May 21st Finance
and Operations Committee meeting. And then we will review the budget for the public hearing at the June 4th FNO meeting. We will present then that first reading of all the budgets and that public hearing on June 9th with recommended approval on June 23rd.
So we have a lot of things ahead of us. This is really just the beginning of our budget process. there's a lot yet to learn. A lot of information that will still be coming from the state level. Uh and so we're just watching and learning and taking all of our notes, but at the same time, it's imperative that we start
to take steps to develop next year's budget. And we will be spry. We will realign as we learn these new factors that come out. Uh and we will certainly have our budget prepared. Uh which will be a properly aligned budget to serve the students in front of us next year.
So with that that completes our pres my presentation for the evening but if you have any questions I'm happy to take uh whatever you may have and provide clarity. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. I'll start to remember I don't have any questions. Thank you for the presentation.
>> Quick question about the new changes in the categorical that are being built in. Do you see any pros and cons to this new way of having that money be tied to school aid fund rather than separate pots? >> I have a couple initial thoughts. Um,
one of them as I as the citizens research council in Michigan mentioned that it does provide maybe some uh flexibility for districts to tailor the use of those funds for the students they serve in that year in front of us in front of us and in front of other
districts that um might in the past have maybe been too restricted in terms of those allowable uses and maybe the best benefit for those students is something other than what the state has identified. Um maybe a drawback is just maybe that accountability piece. Are we
really directing those dollars then to those students that that require and will benefit from those at risk dollars or those English learning dollars? So um I wonder about those accountability measures and reporting um and how we might track that and those kinds of things.
>> Thank you. The accountability piece was the one that I was wondering about. So thanks for mentioning that. And if I could add to that, I think help as board members would be the advocacy around if this is something that goes forward, which of course as the school finance research collaborative really guided us
towards this weighted formula. So we want to embrace that, but that concern and accountability is one that we would say right now everybody knows like for 31A you have to have these parameters for our EL funding. This would really eliminate that become a new category
2022 I believe it is but the advocacy would come in statute to say make sure that it is defined in a manner somewhere so that we don't get into creep where we say all right well we have this money as a part of our state aid and we need it to fill this budget gap and not truly
aligning the resources to support the needs of the students in which it was intended. >> Exactly. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. So, uh, two questions. One is to follow up on that categoricals. Um, it'd be useful for us as these potential
proposals come out to compare and contrast that against the money that we're currently receiving in those categoricals because what I worry about is is that, you know, they may look like, oh, we're getting this much more money in our foundation allowance, but actually it's a cut in the the process.
And I don't know that that'll be the case, but I think it'll be super important to be able to to measure that and be able to as you bring forward these budget presentations to say we're getting this much now. This is what the proposal will get going forward so that we can actually uh advocate with our
state legislators on that front. >> Thank you. I appreciate that because I alluded to that district by district analys that analysis that uh different groups will put out and one of the the ones that I saw indicated that the dollar value for at risk uh was greater
under this new weighted student funding approach. Um and that there was more money in fact in the executive budget proposal was more money allocated toward at risk in English learners um and then weighed it through this allocation process. But >> your point is well taken. We need to
ascertain if if if it's more or less >> especially as board members and in our advocacy with the legislators that would be an important part of the process. >> My second question was around um I'm sorry my first I want to thank you for all the hard work that goes into this
process. I know that there's a lot of messy pieces and getting all this information together. You guys do a great job of presenting this really clearly. My question was on the uh overall FY27 overall budget uh fund reductions. You mentioned it's about $10
million with some uh unspent budget which we typically have and I think it's a fair categorization. You also mentioned that there's a potential savings of uh up to $4 million on theers. Is that included in that 10 million? Is there any included in that 10 million?
>> No. >> Okay. That's just um if that starting point if that does come >> then we have to save $6 million not $10 million. >> Uh that's true along with all other kinds of factors that may increase or decrease as well. >> Understand? So it's just it I just
wanted to make sure whether it was factored or not because most the other items that you called out were very much factored but I assumed that because this was very questionable it was not factored. So thank you for clarifying that >> and I appreciate that clarification. I might update that slide just to indicate that.
>> Okay great. And the the other thing I would point out to everybody in the audience and those listening at home, um this is a a very difficult situation for public education. We don't have enough money to support the things that we need to do uh in the schools and we have got
a lot of um things that we would like to do to make investments, but cutting $8 million out of our budget is not trivial and there will be impacts to the classrooms. There will be impacts to every area of the district as part of this process, but it's necessary for us
to do this. So, um, as we talk about investments, which will be some of the things will be coming up next, we'll do that in the backdrop against uh, the need to save $8 million in this process. And thank you and I appreciate the efforts of everybody in this district to
lend a hand toward those types of reductions and uh the staff in the finance department uh for their work as we to gather together all this information at the state level coming at us and our work within the district too. Thank you. >> Just thank you for all the hard work on
this. Um appreciate it. Um just could you remind me on slide seven with the new waiting of the of the >> the new the new way of of allocating um at risk and ELLL funds. Can you remind
me what um what is the definition of at risk? What kinds of students are >> would be listed as at risk? >> Sure. Um, some examples include uh students that are in foster care, students who have a a parent or a
guardian um in uh incarcerated. Um, it includes students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. Uh, it includes um I'm probably missing some really obvious basic ones that aren't coming to mind in the moment. Um, but students
that are at risk of perhaps not achieving at their grade level work. >> Okay. So, it's not students that have like an IEP, that's that would still be a separate that would still be separate. Okay. And the idea behind this is it
might actually um increase the eligibility for that weighted formula. Um, and so that's where the the blessing and the curse would be where we say you want to ensure that you're still taking care of the needs that are originally defined and it gives a little bit more flexibility to say added needs that
students may bring because students come with diverse needs that may impact their ability to achieve. >> Does this include our Mckin Vento onhome students as well? >> That was my next question. Yeah. Yes. Our I believe our Mckin Vento students are considered at risk even though we do
receive federal grants for that. uh they still would qualif students would still qualify for at risk support. >> Okay, thank you. >> I'm just wondering what would happen if we lose more than 75 students.
>> Thank you for that question. Right. So, if I may, I'll answer your question in in in tandem with all of those other assumptions. Right. What if what if our assumption assumptions just don't pan out and they're very different from what the state aid bill comes to be or our enrollment is different. Uh so with that
then um a couple of things I might offer. One is that um it's rare if our assumptions are always are always spoton. Sometimes in the foundation allowance that's often spot on, but in terms of of
our enrollment, it could be 74, it could be 76, it could be 100, it could be 52. Um, and so a lot of those variables depend on um our kindergarten enrollment, depends on families that move in and out of the district during the year. It depends on schools of
choice. Um, a number of different factors. Same with our um foundation allowance. Um same with um other types of categoricals that come into the general fund such as the enrollment stabilization money, the district transportation cost offsets and all of
those six or nine different MIPers cost offsets and UAL offsets and all those different factors, all those line items in our budget are always going to be somewhat different than our assumptions. And some of those are high, some of those are low.
When those assumptions become known, we start taking action even before we bring that amended budget to see where can we find some offsets, where might we tailor back on something, how might we utilize this additional revenue differently, especially if we have budget reductions,
if we know in October or as soon as the state a bill is passed and what our enrollment is, we might start making some adjustments depending on what those reductions are that we make. Um, so I guess my answer to my answer to you in this moment is that um, we have a number
of assumptions throughout our budget and as they become known, we are spry. We will begin to say, well, if we're off here, how are we over here and how are we over here? We're always watching. It's always budget season. I indicate that next year's budget kicks off in January, but it's always budget season. Um, at the same time, we're bringing
we're working on an amended uh, final edition of this year's budget to bring forward in June, too. Um so um we re we will always respond to those assumptions that don't pan out but we don't react.
We typically have other mechanisms in place uh so that we're we have our priorities in order so that we can move um in response accordingly. >> Is that is that too muddy of an answer? >> That's good. I was going to just add um just specific to that answer. So this
year, this current budget, we projected that we would be 100 students down and we actually were not 100 students down. We were how many students down? 30. >> Okay. 38 is what I'm going to say. So what happens is when we get to when you
had the amendment uh in February, we accounted for because we didn't lose as many students. So that's when we say, "All right, we're projecting this." It's always good to say, "Hey, we got a little have an extra $40 in our pocket, right?" But we try to do a process that really gets very close while remaining conservative. So this year as we started
our conversations, we said, should we go for 100 again? That's what we've been doing for the last three years. And to u uh Miss Minn's conversation earlier, each year we're actually seeing that taper where we're not losing 100 plus. So we said realistically this year we
lost significantly less. So we started off should we say 50 like that's not conservative enough. We use a third party to give us projections based on what's going on with builds. We use our own internal rollup numbers, our schools of choice and make a calculation and
that's how we landed here at 75 and however it shakes out will adjust midy year. Well, and if I may add to just another qualification perhaps is that uh perhaps if we were not in a budget reduction mode, maybe we would have uh still
considered a 100red uh loss of students because we we don't ever want to we want to avoid being over budget on our expenditures and we don't want to be short on revenues either. Uh however, when we're in a budget reduction cycle,
we are we want those numbers to be as close to reality as possible because we don't want to reduce programs or reduce jobs and then find oh my goodness all look at all this extra money we have. It's really important that we have really good numbers on which to make our
decisions to move forward with data um to uh employ our work uh and to move our programs forward and teach students. So um as we as we come into these years where we're we're we are making budget adjustments um there may be more variance from our assumptions but we and
there's no fluff in these budgets. These are real projections uh that we make as a as a team and particularly in the finance department that we bring these forward so that they are real and we anticipate being um really close to our projections at the end of the year.
Arjun, >> thank you for the presentation. Um I was just curious um because I don't know much about this but >> in terms of um expenditure on gas prices and I know propane prices for buses
considering the state of that right now >> um you know do we do like um a hedge I don't know if that's the right word where we buy it all at the start of the year because we know about how much we're going to use or do we like buy it throughout the year with the prices going up or we you know taking that to account.
>> Thank you for that question. Uh so I'll answer it in a couple different ways. One is you saw that we have an increase in our utility uh expenditure projection for next year. Um we don't know what will happen with the fuel component of that, but we do anticipate electricity
and things um increasing. Um but there's a smidge of an increase in there for fuel just to as you may say hedge those costs. Um but right now we are we are seeing increases in that cost of fuel. uh we can't buy much in advance because
our storage tanks are only so large. Uh so we have seen an an uptick in our fuel expenditures. Uh and so in this year's amended budget, we budgeted for um a projection in those fuel a projection of those fuel costs that over the course of
the year we we think it will align, but it may not. We might run a little bit over budget depending on how extensive and how long and protra protracted these fuel costs may be. >> Thank you. >> Uh I just have two questions. Um one on
slide nine um it you went through all the different um changes in um the budget. Uh and there was like a percentage 7.89% I believe with the um >> Oh my goodness. I'm sorry. >> Okay.
I'm trying to remember uh the yes the 7.9% and the increase in employer healthcare but the others you kind of gave like a cash value. I was just curious if how that kind of converts into actual cap. >> That's a great question. Thank you for that. Uh so with that um I'll dive into healthcare just a little bit. Uh at the
state the state requires that public schools cannot pay any more than 80% of health care costs or negotiate uh something different with uh their staff. And so with that we know that that we call that a hard cap 80% as being a hard
cap. And so with that we know that the hard cap uh amount has increased by that amount. Uh and so we we take our current value of of the number of of staff that have different varieties of healthcare
plans and we don't know exactly what our we can base our enrollment and then our staffing accordingly to understand what choices folks may make in their healthcare next year. Um but at this time we
um we could parlay that into a a dollar value for the employer piece. Um yet we have other elements at work around uh we have not just healthcare plans but we also offer cash in loo for uh employees that might have healthcare otherwise through a spouse or something. Uh so as
those costs increase we may actually see a decline in staff that enroll in healthcare at all. Um so as we come to know the number of enrollments of uh people that are going to be retiring and as we go through healthcare open enrollment and as we move through new staffing for next year we might have a
better idea of the dollar value of that in the moment uh we know that those those caps have changed. That's what we know at this time. >> Great. Thank you. And then my other question >> question though. Thank you. >> My other question is a little more general. So we've been talking about like the fiscal cliff that we're approaching. Would you say that we've
like approached and are standing there or would you say we're still approaching the fiscal cliff? >> Uh we are uh we have a few more steps to take to be before we get to that bottom of that cliff before we get into the ravine.
>> Still repelling down. Okay, thank you. >> But we but we're taking active steps to be sure that we are avoiding that, right? We're rather than a steep slope, we're just taking those steps each year. Uh we know that in FY24 and FY25 respectively, we had about $1.3 million
in reductions and $3.65 million in reductions. And here we are in FY uh 27. And we'll just keep moving forward as we need to. >> Yep. >> Thank you. >> Intentional stuff. >> Great. Thank you very much. >> Thank you.
>> Okay. Um, up next we have our community budget survey results. Uh, Treasurer Kiho is going to run us through this presentation. >> So, if somebody can advance the slides for me as we go through this. Um, this is a little bit different uh how we do this presentation. So, if we go to the
next slide, the idea behind this is we ask the community to submit their feedback as to what goes into the into the budget process. We solicit ideas and suggestions on how we can save money, how we can enhance revenue, um how we can improve the services that we provide
to the community um as part of the the the school um operating budget. oftentimes we get requests that come in that are capital related and we'll talk about those things as we go through them but they're really we're doing this to try to provide input into the uh the
operational budget that we have that we're going through that process right now. Um the intention around this is to look for those things that can feed into the budget making process that the administration goes through. Uh Miss Minnik described what we call the
transformation process. That's really the process that starts now where the all the leaders talk about the investments, the reductions, the other things that they're doing that go into the budget process and how these ideas may impact that that uh effort. This is
the community's input to us as the board in a formal way to get those suggestions, excuse me, and then to incorporate those into the budget process. So, as we go through this, we'll do this presentation a little differently than we do most board presentations because there's a
lot of content. And we'll pause after each section and ask if there's cl clarification, feedback, input from the board member or from the administration on those specific topics as we go through the uh the the feedback.
The there were 35 responses this year. It's a little less than we've seen in the past, but there's some really great feedback uh points as part of this process. You'll see after each of the questions a number in parentheses. That number is not the number of people that suggested that thing. That's the
specific survey question number that corresponds to that. When someone had two when two people were asked or suggesting the same item, we would put you'll see two numbers in parentheses that represent their responses. So just as you're looking through the presentation and you're seeing those
numbers, that's what that means. We have divided this up into uh different areas. We'll start with athletics and activities and then we'll go in through the other areas as part of the process. So if we can go to the next slide and so if we start here, the first one
is um really on around athletics and activities and reducing the cost of the families in the football program which may result in increased enrollment. Uh the And and the third suggestion here is reducing the pay-to-play costs. This is something we very much have been focused
on as a board and trying to look at this uh this thing because as we looked at our district and surrounding districts, we have higher costs for paytoplay and then outside of the paytoplay uh fees, there's higher costs from the booster clubs and the other things that are necessary to participate in a lot of
those athletic programs. So, we're looking at ways that we can address that from an equity standpoint against the backdrop of an $8 million budget um uh reduction that we need to make. The second item that's here is around um one
way that we might be able to increase the competitiveness of our program and really to um attract top athletes uh to our district, especially from a school of choice perspective was to move away from uh a separate school, a separate team for each high school for all the
major sports that was there. instead have a one Plymouth Canton uh high school teams uh process is something we'd have to get approval from the uh the governing bodies that we have that we participate in to do something like
that and I think it might uh result in some lower participation for people that are part of those programs. So it is certainly a topic that has come up before in discussions but it's one of those ones that uh has got some pluses and minuses that would that would make
that difficult to do. We do do this in some teams where we don't have enough participation um where we don't have enough uh students as part of that. We'll have a whole uh team program as or a whole park program as part of that. But increasingly what we're seeing is is our athletics and activities teams have
done a better job of getting people to be in there. So those programs have actually grown and we're looking at splitting some whole park programs into programs that would be separate for each school. So I'll pause on that section before I go to the next and see if
there's any feedback or questions on these areas. Looks like >> the park team model. Is it possible or or would we still have like a park team that is that is all
schools plus individual schools? >> So it is it would be a very extensive process in that each of our schools have their own code with the state. So this would be the creation. So for graduation, all of those things, it would be just piece up high school. We
would eliminate all three schools. Um the I'll say the negative side, if you have one team, although we might be a powerhouse, we would only have like one football team or one basketball. So out of all 6,000 kids, only 12 kids could be on the basketball team for that one, you know.
So you would eliminate the ability for students to have that that crap going forward. I also heard the piece about we currently have a few part programs that we've combined. That's not just us that can do that. If we have a new program, we would have to uh apply to MHSAA and
get a waiver in order and there's criteria that would say if you have this amount of students, but it would have to be something that is approved. So that >> so that would affect more than just the athletics. >> That's right. It was right now it's based on our schools and how you know how we're coded for the state. So it
would be we would get rid of our three high schools to become one school in order for athletics to become a part one. >> So as we go on Okay, so we go on to the next section. Uh it's really around the facilities and facilities to a great degree end up
being uh capital improvements. In other words, things that come from the bond program, but some of the items listed here are are part of the the maintenance of the facilities in that process. The first two ones here of hiring an athletic facility operator to
oversee all athletic facilities and the second improving the equipment and facilities and adding a maintenance person. That maintenance person is really very similar as part of that uh that process. Um for both of those I believe there has been some discussion on uh on on doing that topic but I'll
I'll defer after we get done to to the administration to give us some feedback on that particular thing. um investing in the baseball fields and bathrooms for players to increase interest and pride. Uh there is a new bathroom that's being built right now or that will be built
starting this summer and going through till next April uh April of 2027 at the uh at the near the excuse me it's the East Turf East Turf. Yeah.
the quote unquote old varsity field, uh the east turf field and the the there'll be a new uh bathroom facility that will be built closer to the baseball fields that's there. We talked about that in the January board meeting and that's one of the things that's coming in as part of that process. The next one is uh
around improving the athletic facilities districtwide to boost and retain enrollment. We have a lot of things that are being done in our bond program that are very much related to that. And we talked earlier about at the FNO meeting that there was a bond presentation that was shared in FNO that will be posted to
the uh to the main district site to give people kind of some awareness of what we're doing in those programs. But it's also an indication of the additional needs that we have throughout the district. As much money as we got and the support that we had from the community, we still need more. And so
we'll be having conversations about things like a syncing fund, which would be an additional way for us to support uh capital projects and uh and uh repairs uh in in the work as well as potentially a bond that would be coming up in the future around uh that ability
to make those additional investments. Uh improving uh the uh the baseball and softball fields to match those of the surrounding districts. That is on the schedule right now for uh 2027. uh baseball and softball field field
improvements. It had been something that we'd considered happening earlier in this work, but we had some problems with the soils there. And so they're doing a lot of soil borings and testing to understand whether they can support things like putting a turf field in there or what is the best way for us to support that with some of the persistent
drainage problems that we've had in our baseball and softball fields. Uh upgrading the three PAP weight rooms to improve the level and improve the level of cleaning in them. Those are two different t topics. With respect to the PAP weight rooms, the wait room at Salem
is actually subject to a renovation that'll be going on uh this summer. Um and that's a complete redo of that weight room as part of that process. I wasn't aware of any problems or challenges with the other wait room. So that might be something that we need
some feedback on on that front uh as we get through this. And then with respect to cleaning, uh I'll ask some questions uh of the um of Miss Minnik on on that front in that process. >> I'm not I I am aware that there are
certain uh restrooms in need of additional attention in some of our high schools and we're working with ABM to be sure that that is addressed. >> Okay. Restrooms or or wait rooms? >> Um I'm sorry I mentioned restrooms. I misread. I apologize. >> Okay.
>> Mr. T had some updates on the way. >> Yeah. We just did some work looking at Canton's weight room and we're looking at a couple different options to uh either um update all the equipment, refresh the current one or look at an alternative site for a larger one. So,
we're working through that right now. >> Okay. And then anybody know anything about Plymouth? >> Plymouth? I'm not sure what the scope is when we get to Plymouth. I haven't been part of that. >> So, just for reference for people, uh, Canton and Plymouth High School, their
major interior and exterior renovations also happen next year. So, those will be some of the topics. They'll be on the the docket for, uh, consideration and conclusion as part of that process next year. >> Plymouth does have the largest of the three. >> Okay. >> White rooms. >> And then, Miss Minnick, we can look at
the cleaning of their Yeah. Can >> I jump? >> Okay. Thanks. Um, any other questions from the board members? >> I'll keep this informal. We don't have to go around. If you have one, please like Josh, yourself included, please chime in. >> Hearing none, you may continue.
>> Okay, sorry. See, got myself lost for a second. Okay, the next page here, uh, diversity, equity, and inclusion. um a request to provide motor and sensory uh rooms uh at all buildings for students with sensory uh regulation needs and
then to provide additional training for staff uh for bullying, inclusion, LGBT and safety issues. Um Miss Bertini, Dr. Bkini gives are there anything particular going on on those fronts? I know that we do have sensory rooms at
some of the schools. We do have sensory ribbons throughout our whole entire district and there is always consistent training on all of those topics as well as um things we are trying to do between for our family academy program to address every topic
there and more. Okay, great. Um okay, other feedback from the board on those fronts? Okay. Uh, human resources, uh, having staff
pay for conferences that they attend. And I will, uh, have somebody weigh in on that because it's above my or not part of my area of responsibility. Uh, reducing the number of administrative positions. Uh this was specifically looking at some of the functions that we
have um uh in in administrative processes and I think that as we've already talked about there will be consideration from that as we look to make reductions in cost uh across the district. Um reducing instructional crocious curriculum staffing and
district level costs um you know all around the idea of how can we reduce the cost that's part of there. There's oftentimes a lot of conversations around whether instructional coaches are better than the old model that we used. Uh you know, we see this topic come up often
times and I think that it just illustrates that we maybe need to articulate how those coaches uh support our our our staff as part of this process. uh creating a full-time training coordinator to lead dis staff training on student safety, civil
rights, anti-bullying, inclusive practices, uh consistent things. So, it's aligned similar to the issue that we had on diversity, equity, and inclusion for additional uh training for those topics. And then the last one here was uh
considering relocating the staff from our curriculum center at Pilot Drive into the district buildings to provide additional support and supervision of the elementary, middle, and high schools. So this was specifically saying that uh the people that we have that kind of move throughout the district
that they should be housed inside of the the school buildings. >> Go ahead. >> Can I add it, >> please? >> Yeah, please. So I'm looking at the second bullet for the first um category and the third bullet fourth bullet
around safety, security, anti-bullying. I have heard from quite a few parents about the bullying challenges and issues that we are facing. Uh we are hearing we've seen ourselves um have seen stories in our emails about the increase in um some of the the challenges that
we're experiencing. So that is one area where I think we we do need to make more investments. U but I just wanted to share that I have parents uh over the last couple months approached me about the um challenges that they're seeing with their kids in particular.
>> I have a question which might not be exactly aligned but um my question is I understand that um Dr. Ratanian Gibbs stated that training was provided for everything that was noted, but I'm curious what happens if for instance
someone for whatever reason opts out of that PD or happens to be sick that day like what how are how do we catch up and how do we make sure that everyone has actually received the training or do we have goals around percentages like >> so that is actually um for that kind of
accountability process. Mr. Majun is not here today but that is something that we're working to implement this year. For many of these things we use like uh the we train the administrators and that's then the responsibility for the administrator to train the staff. Um but
now using a chart that will say once they have done said training then they indicate that and so that we're able to account for either new staff and get that on a rotation or if somebody missed through absence. There could also be a situation where we have a particular person that is responsible for the
training such as our security manager who does Alice training. So we have that cycle of when uh our staff gets trained, when our transportation gets trained, when people that are absent or new. So that's kind of a rotation. So there's different uh systems that either were already in place are now are currently
to to be implemented because of the fact that we were experiencing those gaps. >> Thank you. So if we move on to the next section under maintenance, custodial and facilities. Um
the first one here that we see is around improving the school spirit, the cleanliness and the groundskeeping. It's definitely one of the areas that we've discussed and and and socialized in uh the FNO committee. We've also had a lot of conversations around uh specific
school level beautifification and how those can be supported and coordinated through the PTO's and uh uh other organizations there that want to plant flowers or do whatever else they're doing as part of that process. So I think that's definitely something that
uh we're looking at how we can provide more collaboration on that front to improve that process. Um it speaks very much to the next one here around uh planting uh native plant gardens and removing invasive species. There was the the
a recommendation that uh we could engage some of the local community groups such as Plymouth Pollinators that help support uh those in schools that have been uh in the district and that they would be willing to help coordinate this process on a broader basis. And again, one of those opportunities for our
community to get involved and provide some uh collaboration as part of that work that we do on improving uh that process throughout the schools. Uh improving the parking lot for Salem that's used at the sporting events. We've had a lot of conversations here
and at FNO about Salem's parking lot and we know it's bad. Um it is probably one of the worst parking lots in the uh at at the park right now. And so there's some work that's being done to remediate the the the egregious problems that are there and make sure that it's not a
safety hazard, but that with the construction that's going on at Salem through the next two years, I believe, um that's we we can't be having construction equipment in there and redo the parking lot at the same time. So it's unfortunate that this will be the
last parking lot at the at the high school that'll be redone. Plymouth High Schools is being redone this summer and Salem's will be redone as soon as the construction is finished with those major additions that we're doing uh at Salem in that process. Um this la this next question is an
example where we have two comments uh targeting the same thing uh where you have those two survey numbers as part of that and this is closing and selling the unnecessary buildings. one of the buildings you'll see this same question number 11 was also on moving the teachers for or moving the staff from
the curriculum center to the buildings and then closing that uh that building. I think that that curriculum center houses a lot more than just the curriculum people and there's a lot of things and that building is is quite full right now but this is an opportunity for us to look at buildings
that we have and see if there's things that are not being used. We have done this already with facilities like Tanganger uh where that building was sold and surplused. Uh we did this with a maintenance building on Lily Road that when we moved to Pilot Drive and we
moved people out of that facility, we were able to sell that building. So we do very much pay attention to this as part of that process. Questions or feedback in this area? safety and security. Adding a sidewalk in Canton Center from Canton High School
to Warren. Um, this is not the district's property. We can't uh just add a sidewalk uh outside of our district property, but it is something that we could do to coordinate with our uh our people in at both the Wayne County level and uh with Canton Township. I know that Plymouth Township
has been very successful in having a a comprehensive sidewalk program that they've deployed throughout the city and they've added sidewalks through much of Plymouth Township. um and they they've gotten grant money to help do that. So, it's one of those things that we can try to coordinate with those two organizational units to see if that's
something that could be done that would improve the uh accessibility for uh for people uh that are walkers. Uh this was a broad uh suggestion of investment in in district safety and security. Um for those of you that have been coming to these board meetings,
there's a lot of investment that we make around safety and security. Many of these things have been supported by the state level in the uh grants that we've had and we're actually seen as a a leader in the in the state and the nation in fact around the work that we do around safety and security uh
installing fences around all elementary school playgrounds. Um I will defer to the administration I believe that we have those but I'm not positive so I will defer >> not on every playground but that is work that we continue to do just based on the needs of the program we assess. So
there's currently some work underway. A couple of our schools this year did receive some fencing. So that's something that's a continuous process. So >> thank you for that clarification. Um increasing the security and oversight of of student behavior. Uh this is a recognition that we have some we
continue to have some uh student behavior problems that happen especially around bullying and not being handled well as as part of the process. And so it's a desire to to do better uh on that front. Go ahead. >> I kind of add on to what I said earlier.
I think this is a holistic approach instead of looking at these individually um and tackling them individually. This is where Dr. Liz's group with, you know, community family engagement, family involvement. Uh SVA, I was thinking
about how do we better educate our students to support one another. Sometimes there's a tendency just to stand back and watch and not engage, but there's got to be an active involvement at every level, not just increasing a security person, which can't tackle all
of PAP in particular. I feel like there's so much work that needs to be done here. And I don't know who wants to take charge of leading that, but there's all sorts of areas in the the board, at least I'll speak for me, fully support
all the different ways that we can better support students to decrease the behavior, the fighting, the bullying, and our kids have asked us for it. Our families have asked us for, our teachers have asked us for it. As we move on to the section for student and family engagement, uh providing a
stipen to staff to bring their own therapy dogs and to provide therapy dogs and social emotional learning in all buildings. Um obviously our therapy dogs are a big hit in the process. We've seen that here as those dogs come through and they really make a difference. Um I know
that it's uh it's quite expensive to provide um certified set therapy dogs as part of that process. So, I don't know if there's anything that can be added to that. >> We have 11 therapy dogs in our district,
and I continuously look for grants so that we can have more. It's about $15,000 for the first year um for the handler and the therapy dog to work together. >> And we have had some great community
support in that process in the past. So, you know, maybe we continue to uh socialize those needs and see if we can do something else on that front. >> I have just a question. I thought that was provided in all buildings. Am I mistaken?
>> At the elementary level was integrated, but school has different programs. >> Miss Curry Curry. >> Yes. >> Yes. Each school may have a different program. They could have PBIS. They
could have um I think some office. Yes. Thank you. Second step. Um so various programs. So they do all have a program within their building. >> Okay. Thank you. Welcome. >> Thanks for that clarity. >> Okay. On to the next uh slide. Uh
teaching and learning and curriculum. Um this is interesting that we see the uh the first item here and the fifth are opposite of each other. And we see this often when we get uh uh surveys. cutting school AI and unused programs and investing more in the classrooms and
books and then teaching AI as part of the core curriculum. So it's not unusual when we get suggestions like this that we have opposing points of view in this process. Uh it is very much something that uh the um when we look at the the
work that's happening is are we making appropriate use of the technology. I think the administration and the state are all have a lot of things that they're doing to uh to examine how technology is used and making sure that it's appropriate use. But as we heard from um Vice President Sadu, uh AI is
here and we need to make sure that our kids know how to use that as part of their process because it is in the workplace. It is in their future and they need to have that uh knowledge and awareness as part of the work that they're doing. We definitely have a lot of support for uh for Arabic uh as both
a foreign language option as for classes uh as language enrichment program. You can see that there's um you know five suggestions that are looking specifically for Arabic uh in that process and then one uh u that is looking for erdo and Hindi as part of
that process. So we continue to oftentimes see additional interest in uh providing support for additional languages in our in our classroom and network. And the last one is expanding the talented and gifted uh middle school curriculum to be taught at all the
middle schools. So it was an advocation for doing away with our magnet uh tag program at the middle school level and making that a tag program that existed at each individual uh school. And there's been a lot of conversations in
the past around TAG and whether it's best as a magnet program, whether it's best in the home schools, whether it's best to provide diverse um >> differentiation >> differentiation. I knew I asked about it earlier this evening. Differentiation in
in the home schools as well. I think all of those things are things that we have to consider. Um the I would say that the magnet tag program has been a big draw for us uh in pulling students into our district. Uh either those that live in our community and considered going to uh
other options like charter schools or even those that might be trying to come from outside the district to come in. um that program has been a a good opportunity for us to grow our our district and it is something that we certainly can look at to see whether it makes sense to do more for that in the
uh in the other levels. >> I think you probably go through all three of those. >> Okay, I'll go through all three of them. Um teaching and learn >> I think can I just add one thing? you had mentioned it earlier when we were um in I believe Jan Douglas's presentation about differentiation but I think I
would just like to highlight that also because I have personal experience with students some of whom you know qualify for TAG and thrive in that program others who may need um like may need support in one academic subject but are
really excelling in another one and I find that uh differentiation around that is not necessar necessarily uniform across our buildings and district. So I think uh however we can improve that would really help a lot of students.
>> 100% agree. It's how I got involved in the district in the first place. So um 100% agree. So I'll just pause. Were there any other comments in this section before we do the last two? Okay. The last two teaching and learning
uh and instruction uh in invest in smaller class sizes and early intervention teachers. So this is again one of those counter uh suggestions uh where someone before said we shouldn't have interventionists and um another say we need to have more interventionists as
part of the process. Uh class size is a hard thing for us. It's about $2 million for uh every student uh reduction in class size. And until you make a meaningful reduction in class size, like go down to like 20 or 22, um you don't
get a huge benefit from that reduction in class size. So, it's a massive cost to make those uh those those reductions in class size. Not saying that it's something we wouldn't love to do and we may do something um in specific areas but it is a a challenging thing for us
to do on that on that front to do a huge reduction >> and I will also share that we have maintained smaller class sizes than many of our surrounding districts. >> Yeah, it's a good point. As we were looking at some of the data that we see for surrounding districts and including high performing districts, our class sizes are smaller than than many of
those in that uh in that process. um reducing individual Chromebooks and and use computer labs instead again that conversation around what is appropriate with technology and I think that the there is a a specific program that we're
doing to to to review that correct >> yes currently in process >> and then of course the counterargument of making an investment in district technology um uh we we do make a pretty substantial investment in district technology right now we are are a onetoone district and
we continuously refresh and update the that equipment that's there including in our computer labs. Uh but we're trying to be very purposeful about the work that we do on that technology and where it's appropriate, where it should be used um in in that uh in that process.
And with the new state laws around device usage, uh we'll be paying very much attention to that to to try to reduce the distractions that occur in the in the classroom. Other question? Please go ahead. Sorry. You know, you've got some great feedback.
>> Um, so with the smaller class sizes, I know this is a conversation we've had many times and huge support of smaller class sizes. Um, in targeted areas, I don't think every classroom, every building needs to be reduced. The $2 million that you talk about, I think, is
just overall. >> Yes. >> Um, and we have talked with Dr. Merit, when we look at classes or schools where you need the most support, I think looking at smaller class sizes, breaking the 28 up to maybe 16 or 20, whatever
the number that's um affordable within our budget. I definitely think we need to start investing in smaller class sizes um and start with the where the need is the greatest. >> 100% agree. While we're having a conversation around what's important for
us to include in the budget cycle, the opportunity to do that in a targeted way, I think would be a huge win for us as a a district. >> Okay. Um I have a comment not necessarily about the section but usually we hear like around um the high school campus.
Hey could we have covered walkways or I know I was disappointed that we didn't >> there is no Montreal. >> No Montreal. >> This is a first that was a consistent like for several years. >> I think maybe that student has graduated. >> No they they learn because we said it
was not possible so they stopped putting those in. >> We >> Yeah. Yeah, >> we don't want you to stop dreaming. Um, >> yeah, >> we do have another bond that's going to come up in the future. So, >> no, I I think my overall takeaway is like, you know, very good suggestions. I really appreciate the the commentary
that the administration and that, you know, the board is able to give. You know, this this is 35 responses out of an entire community. So what would be really great is if we could um you know put our heads together and get a greater response rate and maybe we could even
start to see where everyone's kind of coalesing around you know certain areas from a a budgeting standpoint that we could also respond to as a district. So I challenge us next year to get more than 35 people to answer this survey. >> Challenge accepted. >> Yes.
>> Okay. Thank you. Um I know we have a few more agenda items. So, um, if you have any other questions or comments, please send them my way and I'll I'll share with Dr. Merritt and team. >> I think the rest of them will go fast. >> What? >> I think the rest will go fast. >> Okay, cool. Thank you. Um, up next we
have action item number 26 uh- 03-54. Consider approval of a resolution for bid pack number- six, east turf replacement purchase. This is a first and final reading, so I um would like to ask for a motion. Madame President, I move that we
consider approval of a resolution for bid package Peps 6, East Turf, East Turf replacement purchase, first and final reading. Action item 260354. >> Okay. Can I have a second? >> Second. >> It was moved by Treasurer Kho and seconded by Secretary Wester. Miss
Vinnick, will you take us through this one? >> Thank you. So, we have for your consideration this evening a recommendation to replace the East Stadium Field turf. A recent evaluation of the field by an independent firm determined that the existing turf has reached the end of its service life and
needs to be replaced in order to maintain safe playing conditions for student use and athletic programs. Synthetics turf fields have a useful life of about 12 to 15 years. However, heavy usage and recent flooding uh both with the August 2023 storms uh that we
sustained as well as other recent storms have accelerated the deterioration uh of the field. And so with that, the East Stadium turf was last replaced in 2015 as part of the 2013 bond program. Uh and to ensure timely manufacturing of the
turf for a summer replacement, then uh the team has utilized a cooperative contract through source source well. Uh Astro Turf Great Lakes of Novi, Michigan submitted a proposal through a co that cooperative contract and they have successfully completed multiple athletic
facility uh improvements for our district in the past. The recommended award amount is $650,547 uh with an additional $65,000 contingency set aside uh within the bond program budget. Uh if it's approved tonight, the work is planned for
completion during the summer of 26 so that the field will be ready for next school year. Uh with that, this item was not an identified project within our bond program. However, it is a bond eligible cost. Uh and at this price point, we are recommending approval
through the bond funds um as as to relieve the general fund from that um expenditure. Uh so with us this evening, we do have Brian Gman with McCarthy and Smith, our uh construction management group, uh to assist and answer any questions and to walk us through this
project. Brian, thank you. >> Thank you for the summary. Thank you for having me. Um as Mi Miss Minnik had identified um AstroTurf is a contractor who's worked in the district uh is part of the source cooperative that Plymouth Community Schools is currently involved in. Um one of the reasons um that we
bring this forth to you today for a first and final um one of which is from the urgency of wanting to get this going this summer. Uh PAP is a very very busy place. Um, so to try and capitalize on the summer activities, the schedule would be um, basically as soon as school
is out, roughly June 15th through 4th of July, it's roughly a four-week process as part of this process. The turf proper would be removed, the aggregate base would be regraded, uh, the new turf would be installed, um, and be ready for play that we'd be targeting basically middle of July. Um, again, a reason for
the the first and final due to recent global events. Um there is as far as quarter 2 there is a estimated 10% increase. So we received that information today from um from Astroturf for some of this petroleum based products. Um so from that perspective uh
from a cost avoidance to to some degree. Um that's why we're bringing this forth for a first and final to to you today. Uh happy to answer any questions that anybody might have. If I may add a little commentary just from our discussion at FNO, um the
summer install was a was um identified, but we know that we have spring season that's going to happen or occur on the the east turf and the team assured us that there are no safety issues in in um ex extending the life of of the turf through that season for summer install.
>> Yes, thank you. I appreciate you mentioning that. I neglected to note that uh we will take uh steps to be sure that continuous safe play in the meantime until we can get that turf replaced. Uh and so that will be coming out of our general fund of course our
maintenance uh work order accounts. Um and as such then that is part of now that we have this report indicating that it it needs replacement we need to move forward with that. >> Thank you. Questions? I'll start with Aman. I just had one question around um
what is the expectation for how long this turf will last now? >> Yeah. So rough estimates about 12 to 15 years. The great news is is that as part of the bond you've now added an additional turf to kind of help supplement some of that activity. So uh the more use it gets certainly it it reduces that time frame. We're roughly
about 10 years 11 years into the life cycle of this turf. So 10 to 15 12 years is probably a good average. Um, but again, you know, uh, trying to help diversify the the use of that and proper use of that helps extend that useful life for sure. >> Thank you.
>> No, I'm gonna ask my question. Thanks. >> So, I missed the FNO, so I didn't get to ask my million questions then. I'm only going to ask one. Um, it looks like we in 2024 is related to the flooding, we had done some work on this. Was this just a repair that was done there?
because I know we spent almost $500,000. That was for the um the west turf field, the quote unquote JV field. Is that right? >> That's correct. There was some remedial repair done on the east turf, which is really equates to stretching. So through that flooding, wrinkles had incurred. Um
a separate contractor was was coordinated through with the district where stretching of the existing turf, but there was no I'll call it substantial remediation taking place on the east turf. Um but the west turf was replaced actually in its entirety. So if we move forward with the the east turf replacement, you would actually have
three fields um at the park, which would be, you know, three years or or less. >> Okay. Thanks. Thanks for clarifying that. I just couldn't remember which ones were which. >> Sure. >> Being that all field all three fields will be relatively the same age in 15 years, there'll have to be a whole lot
of money in $2 million in three years. Any other questions? >> No question. >> Um, so you can't like do this work when it's raining, right? >> So, fair question, right? So, we've got four weeks and as in coordination,
collaboration with all the APAs, I' I've really only got four weeks um to try and squeeze this in. To that end, we can't control weather. Um, so if it rains for the four weeks that we're supposed to start, certainly that will unfortunately extend the duration of that construction activity, but it's a it's a fair point.
Um, those are some things that we can't control. Um, but as far as best laid plan, our plan is to hit the ground running uh middle of June, be wrapped up by July, which somewhat coincides with the um activities that are scheduled to be on that turf knowing that there's a big ramp up uh you know, middle of July,
late July into August. Certainly. >> Thank you, Josh. Any questions? >> Uh, my questions were answered. Thank you. >> Mhm. >> Thank you very much. >> Vote. >> Yep. There. Okay. At this time, I'm going to call for the vote. Those in favor, please say yes.
>> Yes. >> Those opposed say no. >> Motion carries. 6. Okay. Up next, we have action item number 26-03-55. Um, consider approval of a resolution for the purchase of classroom furniture
for bid pack number EL4 Hovind and Galamore and bid pack number MS-3 Discovery. This is a final reading. Can I have a motion? >> Madam President, I move that we consider approval of a resolution for the purchase of classroom furniture for bidpack EL4 Hovind and Gallammore and
bidpack MS3 Discovery. This is the final reading in action item 260355. >> Can I have a second? >> Second. was moved by treasure Kho and seconded by member Amed Amed. Uh we discussed this at our last meeting, but I will open up for any other questions or comments at this time.
Hearing none, I'm going to call for the vote. Those in favor, please say yes. >> Yes. Those opposed say no. >> Motion carries 6. >> Okay. Up next, we have action item number 26-03-56. Consider approval of a resolution for
bid package P sub6, uh Plymouth High School paving. This is also a final reading. Can I have a motion? >> Madam President, I move that we consider approval of a resolution for Vidpac Pep 6, Plymouth High School paving. Final reading, action item 23 26356.
>> Can I have a second? >> Second. >> It was moved by Treasurer Kho and seconded by Secretary Wester. Again, I'll open this up for any questions or comments. Hearing none, call for the vote. Those in favor, please say yes. Yes. Those opposed, say no. >> Motion carries. 6.
Okay, we have another action item number 26-03-57. Consider approval of a resolution for a uh W intergovernmental fiber connectivity agreement with Northville Public Schools. This is a final reading. Can I please have a motion?
>> Madam President, I move that we consider approval of resolution for WAN intergovernmental uh fiber connectivity agreement with Northville Public Schools. Final reading action item 260357. >> Can I have a second? >> Second. Okay. Okay. So, it was moved by Treasurer Kho and seconded by member
Ahmed. Again, any questions or comments before we call for the vote? >> Hearing none, call for the vote. Those in favor, please say yes. >> Those opposed say no. >> Motion carries. 6. Okay. Thank you everybody. Um, we have
our citizens comments overflow section. We don't need to um we don't have any additional comments here. So, it moves us to discussion. I just had one item that I wanted to bring to everybody's attention. Last last meeting we had a discussion on a board workshop. We did
hear back from a facilitator and um she gave us a couple of dates. So curious if everyone could quickly check their calendars to see if they have availability on April 16th or April 22nd for a board workshop.
I don't even have mine open. I'm available either of those days. You said 22nd >> April uh >> 16th >> 16th and the 22nd. Yes. >> 16th I'm available. I may have uh an
educational foundation board meeting on the 22nd. >> Okay. >> I can do >> just to just to confirm on the 14th we have a board meeting. On the 15th we have a closed meeting. And then on the
16th if we do a workshop, it's a marathon. You know, we like to be together, don't we? Don't we? >> I'm in town that week. So, >> yeah, >> I'm on board. >> I know. I I Okay, that's a that's a fair point. Um, are you available on the
16th? >> Yes, I'm available. I'm just >> Okay, >> better better bring snacks. >> Sure. We can make it a dinner. We'll bring in food. have a possible conflict on the 16th. >> Okay.
>> I'm okay with either. >> You're okay with either. So, we have a possible conflict on the 16th and we have a possible conflict on the 22nd. We can ask >> We do get out who's who's more important. >> I'll let you know tomorrow night after my next board meeting. >> Okay. How about we f follow up? Let me
know and then we can share that out in board notes and get it secured. If we have to look at some other dates, we we can do that as well. Everybody hold both dates so you'll give them up just in case until tomorrow this Friday. >> Yep, that sounds good. >> And we talked about the start time. I thought was that 5:30, did we say?
>> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> I'm sorry. That's because I'm the problem. >> No, it's perfect. That works for me, too. >> Okay. Um Okay. We're going to move on. Thank you, everyone. Moving on to follow-up board questions. I did not have any um from last meetings. I know
um member boss you had asked something about our spring data that will be coming up. Um is there anything else though in terms of followup board questions? >> I had just one which was I'm curious what the response rate has been for the
budget survey over the years. >> Okay. Any others? >> You want to give us give us a range how many you use your >> four years. last four years. Five years. >> Five years. We've been doing it for a while.
>> Yeah. I've been I've attended many sitting there, but I don't remember how many people. >> Sure. It was five years. >> Okay. >> I have that for you. >> I just had one question. I've been hearing from families that they were
contacted about um why they families who block the district. They've been contacted to do surveys about why. Will we be given um a report with like reasons why you know how that ever that information
has been gathered? >> Yes, good question. >> Okay. All right. At this time, I'm going to adjourn our meeting at 9:53. Thank you everyone.