Testing. Testing. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Testing. Testing. One, two, three. Testing. Testing for the live stream. Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing. Check. Check. Check one two. Check. Check. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening, and welcome to the Rochester Community School Board of Education meeting called to order at 06:04PM. If you would please rise and join with me in the pledge of allegiance. 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 of conducting the school district's business and is not a public community meeting. However, there is a time for public participation during the meeting. General public comment will be heard under agenda item six. If you wish to speak tonight and have not already filled out a yellow card, they're located on a table near the entrance to the cafeteria. Once you've completed the card, please hand it to the shield officer. Please note that cards must be completed prior to speaking and I'll call the names of those who I have a card for during public comment.
I call on my board colleagues to abide by the norms we've agreed to. These include keeping comments germane to the agenda item, that we don't surprise each other at the Board table, that we have one speaker at a time that is recognized by the Chair before speaking, to be honest, to refrain from attacking others' motives and to uphold the chain of command and to truly listen to each other. To those in attendance this evening, I'd like to remind you that this is a meeting for the Board to conduct business. We request that there not be any outbursts from the audience. Outbursts or any other behavior that disrupts our meeting will be seen as a breach
of the peace. On behalf of my colleagues on the Board, we're grateful to be able to serve this community and appreciate your support. For roll call, all Board members are present. Moving to our agenda, is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented? Moved by Trustee Gupta. Is there support from Trustee Allspa? Is there any discussion at this point? All right. At this point then, all of those in favor of approving the agenda as presented, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. That's a seven-zero vote and our agenda is approved. Moving on to our spotlight on success.
Tonight, the Board is recognizing athletic, academic and club teams and individuals who won a state or national title. I'm going to ask each coach or presenter to step to the microphone and briefly tell us about the accomplishments of the team or individual. When those being recognized are called, we're going to have them come across the stage so the board can shake each of their hands along with the superintendent. The order is listed on the agenda because I'm going to step away from the microphone. So hopefully, everyone has that. First up, we have,
Mr. Holtz to tell us about Jase Morgan and Adams Ressler. If I could get my board colleagues to come stand in front here, I would appreciate that. Is Will Chico here? Right. Alright. Do next, do we have, the coach for the Rochester High School Business Professionals of America? Thank you. Test Hello. Use that sultry voice. Bad setting. Hold it. Okay. Well, hello, board. Thank you this evening for giving us the opportunity to honor our our wonderful students. This year with the Business Professionals of America,
my student, Safa Akhtar, was one of the seven competitors at the national level in Orlando. She placed third in the state of Michigan in the basic business office procedures category, and we were very, very excited to honor her, along with several other students. One of the students placing first overall in the nation for, financial math principles. He was also on a team for economic research, which placed third in the nation. So we're very, very proud of them. Unfortunately, Safa could not make it this evening.
She let me know, but I really wanna thank you and thank you for you for all of your support. Safa. Oh my gosh. Sometimes surprises are great. And Safa's right there and wonderful, and she's going to be attending University of Michigan in the fall. So a wonderful round of applause for Safa. And next, we have recognition for an AtomBot. Good evening, everyone. I am Dipanita Mukherjee, Co Lead Mentor of the AtomBot Robotics Team two forty five. It is my honor to introduce Anna Hikasino. She is a junior at Adams High School and is an integral part of the
AtomBot Robotics Team two forty five. She is the co lead on the AtomBot's impact team. She uses the AtomBot's core values close to the first core values in leading our team to be role models for other teams. Analita is a member of the Student Association for STEM Advocacy for three years and has presented to the national representatives in Washington, DC. She is actively involved in the Michigan Advocacy Conference in Lansing,
Michigan and has presented to the offices of her local representatives. She presented information on robotics to our Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education and to our previous superintendents. She is currently has an internship position with SASSA and hopes to continue volunteering for SASSA in the future, including assisting in NAC and NAC coordination and generally promoting still within our government. She is interested in studying electrical engineering after high school.
Anahita is the judge presenter for the Impact team and has helped us earn the award at Michigan districts for the last two years and at the Michigan state championship in 2023. She was the Dean's List award winner at the Michigan State Robotics Championship twenty twenty five and competed for the same at the Robotics World Championships in Houston, Texas. The team's list nominees are outstanding, passionate student leaders who demonstrate exemplary
effectiveness at attaining first ideas. They were nominated by their teams and their direct con contribution and impact on others, exemplifying leadership and commitment on the team and in their community. She is the co leader of the impact team this year. She has mentored FLL and FTC teams to help solve problems and develop STEM skills. She managed her middle school engineering notebook and maintained daily communications with team members.
Anahita is the leader of the Rochester United Advocacy Group, something that AdamBot started with two other FRC teams in our school system. Anita maintains a very high GPA while taking five advanced placement courses, managing the communications for the tutoring club, leading the impact team, leading the Rochester United advocacy team, and finding time to play on the junior varsity tennis team. She's also a member of the National Honor Society.
Thank you. Next, if there's a representative from the RHS Education Rising, special education I'm sorry, Rochester Education Rising Group. Hi. Yes. I am Sarah Mish, and I am honored to be able to work with our future educators at Rochester High School. And Rochester, Educators Rising is a national organization that is working to eliminate the teacher shortage by reimagining educator pathways, and, the Educational Careers Program is one of them. It is its mission is to inspire and grow current and rising educators to become
community leaders and advocates for high quality education. As part of Phi Delta Kappa International, it incorporates the five core values into its work, community, leadership, service, optimism, and excellence. This year, Rochester High School's chapter of Educators Rising had 16 students compete at the state conference at Wayne State University. We had students write children's books, create original lesson plans in theater, math, science, psychology, and English language arts. Thirteen students walked away with medals, with Ben and Harper Ben Milam and Harper Meach placing first and qualifying for nationals.
The category that they competed in, they wrote a research paper and we learned how public schools can best serve students with cerebral palsy. They were then asked questions about their findings from a panel of current educators. In addition to this competition, I wanna brag about them for just a second about them and their placements at Hamblin Elementary and at Longmeadow. At Hamble Elementary, Harper is with missus Sherman, and she said she is a natural teacher. She builds good boundaries, comes with energy, and has creative ways to think and work with the students. And, Ben is at Longmeadow with missus Pitchford, and she said and she said,
our computers can't wait to we can't wait for mister Merrim to come to class. He is patient and kind. His students said he's good at math. He helps us find the right answer without just giving it to us, and he is tall. Harper students said they love when miss Nash comes and they like that she's so nice and helpful and fun. So let's congratulate Ben Harper on with this place. All right. Next, we have the Rochester High School Varsity Dance Team. Good evening. I am Lisa Niskar. I'm the head coach of the Rochester Varsity Dance Team and this is Andrea Arnold,
the assistant coach of the team. We would, like to thank you for allowing us to be honored tonight. This group of 12 athletes has trained over nine months of the year together and outside of that for an additional two months in our off season to work towards this goal. In addition to being at all of our home football games and supporting our team, this group of athletes has competed regionally and in both the Jazz and the Palm category and have been undefeated at every regional competition in POM and Jazz was beat
only by ourselves I believe and we went on to compete nationally with over 200 teams in the competition in Orlando. In our Direct Division, there were over 40 teams and we ended up in first place. In addition to being champions of the Medium Division based on the size of our team, we were invited to a battle where we competed against teams of a smaller size and a larger size and we beat them too. So, I'm very proud of them and I thank them for their work ethic and their
dedication. They're amazing. Eva Technos is our captain. Amelia Sandoval, Luke Loftus, Ellery Morris, Shelby Lawrence, Victoria Brunel. Brooke Dieterly. Jillian Seber. Assistant captain. Shylah Buha. Alina Padalin, and Megan Myrick, who's also an assistant captain. Next, we have the Stony Creek High School Competitive Cheer State Champions. Hello. My name is Trisha Williams. I'm the head chair coach at Stony Creek High School, and I wanna thank the board of education for honoring us, this evening. It's been a really fun off season celebrating all of the work that this team
has put in over the past nine months leading up to the state championship. This team is comprised of three seniors, 20 juniors, four sophomores and three freshmen. So our three seniors, did a wonderful job leading this very large team, coming off of a twenty twenty four state championship where actually only seven of this current team competed on the mat. So even coming off of a state championship, these girls had to up their skill level and really learn how to compete as a varsity athlete. And they did an amazing job of that, working hard all season long,
never giving up, and very closely inched out, of course, our cross town rivals, the Falcons Rochester who came in second and Rochester Adams who are third place. And it's a really great thing that our community has so many great cheerleading teams in the vicinity. So we're very proud, to be the first back to back state champion in Stony Creek School history. And these are our twenty twenty five State Champions. Starting with a senior Sienna Wills, senior Grace Pereira, senior Sarah Adams, Audrey Harvath, Julia McDermott, Brianna Cairns, Natalie Marco, Lauren Denby,
Layla Biondo, Meredith DeGraw, Kate Casey, Maya Shamier, Isabelle Williams, Kendall Keller, Chelsea Coretta, Kelsey Phipps, Taylor Brand Mart, Cassidy Meiser, Ariana Phelps, Lily DeCarlo, Ali Depp, Mia Badaluko, Brenna Smith, Lauren Clark, Ally Schmanek, Gianna Heiner, and Avery Chmoleski. Next, we have Shashir Gupta, who will be talking about the Fed's. Good evening. My name is Yushar Gupta, and I'm the lead mentor for the Rochester High School robotics team, the Feds. We are a 28 year old team, and we are part of the FIRST Robotics program.
FIRST Robotics is a global organization which promotes STEM education through robotics. In our district, we have active robotics programs in all 20 of our buildings, and they're all run by volunteers. The FIRST Impact Award is the most prestigious award at FIRST. It honors the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the mission of FIRST. Out of the five twenty six active high school teams in Michigan, only four teams achieved this award at Michigan State championships. And our team has now won this award at State championships for three years in
a row, helping us advance to the World Championships. This award involves team writing 14 short essays, one long essay describing their work over the past three years, and then a seven minute presentation delivered to a panel of judges followed by five minutes of Q and A. The team also creates a three minute video highlighting the team's impact. Of the three presenters, we have two of our presenters here today, Lauren and Han. I want to thank all the volunteers and sponsors that our students have connected with to support this program. Congratulations to all the teams and the individuals,
who made Rochester so proud. So thank you for coming tonight. It was a pleasure to be able to congratulate you on all your hard work. Moving on to agenda item five, which is communications. This is where we reference, various communications that have been received. Item 5.1 is communications received by the Board. Trustee Blake, can you give us an update, please? Yes. We received 20 communications which are received and in the packet. In addition to those communications, we also received communication from Matthew K. Regarding class sizes And Jeffrey Robinson,
Vito Graziano, Lindsay Graziano, Jason and Julie Sinning, and Lauren Lilly, all in support of behavior interventionists. Thank you. Our next update is from our student representatives and each one will introduce themselves, tell us a little bit about what is happening in the schools. And since this is the last meeting, with these student reps, I'd ask that they each give us an update about what their plans are after graduation as well as, if you haven't already included it, introduce who's going to be taking over for you next year. And Adams, would you like to start?
Good evening, everyone. My name is Stephanie Javieriz, and it is my pleasure to be back with you all one final time reporting on the recent events at Rochester Adams High School. Beginning with our club report, the theater department hosted our dessert theater event last Friday with performances directed and led by students. They had an incredible turnout and amazing performances. Great job, theater. Our DECA team sent 10 state student qualifiers to compete in Orlando, Florida for internationals, with one student placing top of her event. Congratulations,
Yu Yang. The welcome committee honored our foreign exchange students with a barbecue last week to celebrate an incredible year spent making connections and learning within our community. Moving on to our sports report, our athletes have been working very hard this season. Our girls soccer team has a record of ten and four and one and is preparing for a district game against Utica Ford this Thursday. Good luck, team. Our girls' lacrosse team is proud to announce that they are second seed in the playoff bracket for the first time in Adams' history with a record of 13 to
three. Track had a regional meet this Saturday where nine athletes qualified for states. Our girls' tennis team competed at regionals last Friday and qualified for states as well. Our girls' softball team has a record of fifteen and thirteen and are preparing for their district competition. Great job, athletes. Our students completed their AP exams with testing occurring over the past two weeks, and our seniors are taking exams to today and tomorrow. We are proud to recognize our seniors at the Honors Convocation on April 24 with over half of our students earning academic distinctions.
Finally, today was the seniors' last full day of high school, an exciting and emotional moment for us all. We enjoyed spirit days last week, including Show and Tell Day, College Decision Day, and T shirt signing day. Tomorrow, we'll have a pancake breakfast before a half day. We look forward to celebrating our high school conclusion with a barbecue and color throw activity before our senior sunset tomorrow evening. The twenty first is our AHS Oscars to recognize our students with superlatives and a clap out before heading to their feeder schools.
And the final senior send off is our graduation ceremony on May 29 followed by our senior all night party. As my time with you all comes to a close, I would like to thank the RCS board and staff members for your constant support. The sacrifices you make positively impact our education system and truly do change lives. It has been my honor and privilege to be your Adams board representative this past year and better understand your influence on our lives. I am proud to announce that this fall, I will be attending the University of Michigan majoring in biology,
health, and society on a pre med track. Go blue. I'm excited to say that the board rep for the upcoming year is one of my best friends. She is the incoming student council president and was our vice president this past year. She quickly became a constant support system for me this year as we spent countless nights planning events and early morning setting up. She is someone who shares my passions and goals for our community while being a role model to our entire student body, embodying the principles of kindness and acceptance towards others. She truly has a heart of gold and inspires me each day.
I have no doubt that she will make an incredible representation of RCS this upcoming year. I am proud to announce your next Adams board representative, Libby Schultz. Thank you, everyone. That wraps up our final report for from Adams, and have a great rest of your evening. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I am Anna Grunewald, and this is my last time as the Rochester High School board rep. First, I'd like to start off with saying thank you to all the board members and everybody who's been able to give me this experience over the past year. As this position has helped me become and grow as a,
public speaker And overall, just helped me be able to be more confident in front of a crowd. So just thank you for everything. Next year, I will be going to Michigan State to study elementary education, which I'm really excited for. And now, before I give my update, I would like to introduce to you guys all the new board rep for Rochester for next year. Grace Colucci is going to be taking over for me. She is a wonderful, kind, and caring person, and I know she's gonna do an amazing job next year. To start off with the update,
Rochester hosted a variety show where some of our very talented Falcons were able to show us their amazing talents. I was able to go to this event, and it was amazing. And I couldn't believe all the talent that's in Rochester. Next, the RHS student council hosted a brand new event called Cars and Coffee. Thank you to all of those who brought their cool cars to to this event, and thank you for student council who came up with this cool new idea. Next, our very own Rochester rock Falcon Rochester Rocket sorry. Rocket League team,
were the spring twenty twenty five state champions. Congrats to all of those on a great work this season. Next, the RHS ed careers class had 18 students who received the Rochester promise. Nine of them signed letters of intent for four different state school programs in education. Congrats to all of them, and thank you for all who came to this event. The Rochester High School band performed for a packed house the other night, and they did an amazing job. Next, the Model UN students were at Troy High School collaborating to develop thoughtful global health
care, reinforms, and scrambling to respond to a crisis. Congrats to all the Model UN students who were able to go to this event. Next, some of our Rochester sports teams did an amazing job over the past month. First, the Rochester, JV boys' lacrosse team took down Adams in a great game. Then our Rochester girls' flag football team had a great win last week. And lastly, the Rochester girls' soccer team had a big win one to zero over Choi. Lastly, I have some fun events that happened for the seniors the past week and upcoming.
First, to start off, we had our Night with the Stars event, which went fantastically. And what those are are just awards for, the senior class, which is basically, like, best smile, best outfits. And thank you to all the seniors who came and did a worked very hard to put this event together. I know all the seniors appreciated it. After Night with the Stars, the class of 2025, which is mister Winkle's first group of students who spent all four years with him as a principal, gave him a poster. It's a big R poster, which all the seniors signed. It was pretty cool we put it together,
and I thought it was really nice we did that for him. Next, the RHS hosted honors complication last week, which was an amazing event. And I'd like to say thank you to all the Rochester High School staff who helped put on this event together and helped make great memories for all the seniors who attended. Tomorrow will be our last day of school for all the Rochester seniors. This is a fun kind of end to our school year because we will be coming back for our, closing event, which is, senior sunrise. We started the year with seniors or sorry.
Senior sunset is what we started the year with. Senior wait. No. I said that wrong again. Senior sunrise, we started the year with. And senior sunset, we're closing the year with. And I think it's just a great tradition we do. We start the year waking up early, and we get to end the year staying up late and playing fun games. But don't worry. We will be back for our senior clap out, which will be on Wednesday. This is where the seniors walk around the hallways and say goodbye to everybody one last time in our cap and gowns before we graduate. Then on Thursday, we will be coming back again for senior checkout to return all items that we
rented out to our Chromebooks and everything like that. And then lastly, we'll be wrapping up our senior events and at Oakland, May Twenty Seventh, for graduation, and then we'll be going to our senior all night party. Thank you guys for listening to me and my update one last time, and I hope everybody has a great rest of their school year and enjoys their summer. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Emma Chico, and I'm here to represent Stoney Creek at our final meeting this year. Let me begin by talking about some of our senior events that have taken place this past month. It is safe to say that seniors had the best time at prom.
Our amazing senior coordinator, Ms. Krederman, did a wonderful job. Students were able to use Polaroid cameras throughout the night. There were many photo booths. And a fan favorite was the rolled ice cream bar. It was such a great night that we will never forget. We recently had our honors convocation on Thursday, May 8. We honored about two twenty seniors that night, which was a great opportunity to highlight the talent and hard work that students have put in these past four years. In addition, we had our NHS induction and reduction ceremony where incoming sophomores of the National Honor
Society were inducted and our outgoing seniors were honored and received their courts. Last Friday marked the end of AP testing, which brings relief to many students at school, including myself. I know many people spent a lot of time studying and preparing for those, so hopefully all went well. We want to thank our AP teachers who helped us prepare for these exams and set us up for success. As for our spring sports, our men's volleyball team has their first ever playoff game tonight. We are so proud of the team they built this year and can't wait to see how they do. Our track team is sending seven athletes to the state finals,
so we are very excited about that. Next, our boys' baseball team is playing Adams for predistricts on Thursday, so that will be a good game and a fun one to watch. Also, boys' lacrosse is set to play Detroit Country Day on Wednesday for round two of playoffs, and girls' lacrosse has first round playoffs for Slapeer on Thursday. Lastly, girls' soccer plays in their first round of districts on Wednesday. As most of you know, the seniors' last day of school is tomorrow. We had exams in our last three hours today and half a day and a half day tomorrow for exams in the first, second, and third hours.
Directly after our last hour of high school, seniors will go to the football field for our color rush. The color rush is a special tradition where seniors wear their senior T shirts that everyone signed on our community day and at the same time throw powdered coloring in the air as a final celebration of the end. Following that evening is the senior sunset. This is such a special tradition, and I can't believe it's already here. I would like to thank my student council for electing me to the position of school board representative on our executive board. Without their support and trust in me,
I would not be here in front of you month after month reporting on the amazing things Sony has to offer. I loved my time at Sony so much. I've been able to experience so many opportunities, create amazing relationships with my peers and my teachers, and walk away knowing I'm prepared for what is next in my life. Next year, I will be continuing my education at Wake Forest University, majoring in psychology. While I am sad my time is over, I know that I will be passing this role down to the one I'm knowing that I will be passing this role down to the one and only Karina Morfin makes me so excited.
Karina is smart, kind, thoughtful, and a beautiful leader. Among many other achievements, Karina won the Michigan Student Voice presentation at the state conference this past year. She has spent her years on StuCo working hard, and I know she will represent Stoney wonderfully. Good luck next year, Corina. I can't wait to see what this next year has in store for you. And one final thank you to the school board. That is all for Stoney this month. Good evening, board members and the Rochester community. My name is Galileo Romero, and I am the student representative for ACE High School. It's hard to believe that this moment has finally arrived.
I feel so honored and honestly a little emotional as I reflect on this amazing journey I've had with my time here as your representative and a student at ACE. Even though our school is small, our voices are strong. When I first walked through the doors of ACE, I had no idea how much this school would come to mean to me. What started as just a new chapter quickly became my second home, a place where I not only found knowledge, but growth, purpose, and belonging. I'm so grateful for every teacher who believed in us, challenged us, and never let us settle for less than our best. Serving as your representative has been one of the greatest privileges I've had and to
be on the school board. Thank you for your constant support and your dedication to creating a school where students are heard, seen, and empowered. Seniors will be having finals today and tomorrow. Ace will have a senior celebration on the last day of school, which is tomorrow, where families can come and enjoy some food while we talk about our time here at ACE and watch a little slideshow with pictures that we took throughout the year. On Wednesday, ACE will have a tiger's tailgate cookout in the courtyard for our juniors. Although we do not have a student representative for next year yet, I trust whoever takes on this important role would do a great job on sharing
what's new with ACE and how important our small school is. As I prepare to take on this next step in my life, which is joining the US Navy, I carry everything I've learned with me, and ACE has really shaped who I am. And I will always be proud to say I'm an ACE student. Thank you for your time, and I hope you guys have a wonderful summer. Good evening, board. It's Min Joon Kim checking in one last time with news from IA. So seniors are done or almost done with their IB exams. Personally, I've gone through 10, and I have my last three tomorrow and Wednesday. It's absolutely an exciting feeling to be at the end stretch and see questions on
the test we've been preparing for so hard for the past four years. After the final math paper on Wednesday, we will have our senior all night party at Legacy nine twenty five and prom on the yacht next Tuesday, which I think is the perfect way to end off the season. And other than that, the rest of the school is continuing to work hard in expectation of the end of the year and their own summer picnic. Now I also want to take a moment to thank all of you for this wonderful opportunity to represent my school this year. Being at the IA undoubtedly separates us from our home school district's community and this
was a truly great way to reconnect. It's been an honor to spotlight IA showing how different yet similar we are to the other four RCS schools. And the valuable lessons learned here will absolutely be a stepping stone for any future experiences. It's gonna be definitely a time period I keep close to my heart. In the fall, I plan to study at Brown University where I'll be majoring in computational biology on the pre med track. Next year, I'm also very confident that Aya's name will shine brighter under Alexia Boda's representation where
her dedication will undoubtedly be an essential part of the team, especially with her background leading IA's own student leadership team. Thank you for your time on all these meetings, and I hope you all enjoy your summer. I just wanna thank each of you for taking the time this year to come and represent your schools so well. I know it is a highlight for me to hear from the schools and what's going on. So we wish you all the best of luck as you go, whether it's off to school or to a job or whatever you're going to do,
next year. And we look forward to working with all of the new reps as well. So again, thank you very much for, all the time and effort you put into, your presentations and being here. Thank you. Alright, item 5.3, is the section where members of the Board of Education share communications that were shared directly with them and not sent to the full board. Did any board member receive communications from the public? Trustee Alsbaugh? I I received, an invitation and a thank you for attending from Nish Haq,
who is, a on behalf of the Muslim Student Association. I attended their presentations at I at IAGD, and And I'll speak more about that during my comments, but I really appreciated her thanking me and inviting me. Trustee Annas. Yes. I wanted to share. I I received the same communication as well and attended the same meeting as well. Thank you. Trustee Licuy? On May 13, Michael Pedrosi contacted me to discuss how to handle an inaccurate pronoun lesson that was given to his student. And I received two emails which may have gone to others as well,
but I received two emails from Vito and Lindsey, Graziano regarding their support for the behavioral interventionists in our district. All right, next we're going to move on to a PTA council update and I believe Jamie Rockleff is here. Just wanna thank all those students as a parent of a senior. I can also attest how busy this time of year is. And despite that school is winding down, it's also been a busy month for the PTA Council and each of our PTAs. On April 22, the PTA Council sponsored a presentation on digital safety.
A prerecorded version of the presentation has been made available by our speaker for all those who weren't able to attend as well as some supporting materials, that parents can use. With their students and these are all available by contacting your school's PCA. During the last week April, all our schools welcome visiting authors and illustrators through the authors in April program. It was a fabulous week filled with presentations, autograph signings, artwork displays and more. The recently added high school visits with a career focus were highly attended this year
and offered students the chance to hear from published authors and illustrators about their career path. National Reflections competition results are in. Rochester had nine students move from the state to national level, and I am excited to share that one of our students, Rochester High School's Edwika Sambanthamorthe received the award of merit for her dance choreography piece, The Flawed Radiance. On May 3, our health and wellness team hosted its annual health and wellness fair in conjunction with the CoreWell student heart health checks. There were 35 vendors including a host of community health organizations in attendance to share
resources with our school community, and we continue, planning for next year's event. The May was also filled with lunches, activities and other events for teacher appreciation week as each PTA celebrated their teachers in their own special way. We are beyond grateful for our partnerships with teachers and staff that help make our PTAs so amazing. Once again, all 21 of our schools received Green School Certification this year, including many at the highest level of evergreen status. Recycle bank grants are underway again and several of our schools have submitted grants.
Communication will be coming out soon about donating points to support these projects, and I know they will appreciate any and all support from the community in getting those funded. Last week, the PTA Council sponsored its first ever college one hundred and one event. It was a huge success. We had about a 50 parents and students from middle through high school attend to learn more about the college application and financial aid process. Several of our high school counselors were on hand to answer parent questions as well, and feedback so far has been great. Plans are already underway for next year.
And finally, the Michigan PTA will be hosting its summer leadership academy this year in Rochester in early August. PTA leaders from around the state including our own RCS PTA leaders will spend the day in training and planning just before kicking off the new school year. Thank you all so much. Thank you very much for that. And next, we have Melissa Hoffman, who will be giving us a pack update. Good evening. I am Melissa Hoffman, President of the Special Ed Parent Advisory Committee for Rochester Community Schools. Our most recent meeting was April 22 at Hampton Elementary.
We were welcomed by principal Ryan Starr. Special guests included assistant superintendent of Human Resources, Dave Murphy, who gave a report to let us know how special ed openings continue to be unpredictable year over year, but with the consistent need for teachers in our ASD classrooms as that program continues to grow. We continue to utilize Talent Together and college recruitment as two ongoing tools. Our second guest, Kimberly Hampton, Assistant Superintendent for Elementary and Early Childhood Education, gave an update on how special ed and general ed are partnering and gave updates
on curriculum for all learners. Of course, top of mind was our shift in literacy curriculum as well as how we meet the very diverse learning abilities of our students in the gen ed classroom through group learning as well as push in and pull out services. As part of our efforts to create inclusive programs in our district for students who may not be able to reasonably participate in our existing extracurricular excuse me enrichment programs, PAC and Special Ed offered our very first recreational program, which was an open swim on May 3 at Stoney Creek High School,
led by RCS dive coach and West Middle School ASD teacher, Bailey Warren, and supported by a team of our high school certified lifeguards. We had 36 of our special ed students in attendance from early childhood to adult, many with siblings and parents in the water. So many parents and caregivers stopped us to ask, when can we do this again? Can we do this once a month? Can we do this twice a month? Which is wonderful, but also points to what a great need we have. More dates are being looked at for swim and more activities are being looked into,
including one that I can announce tonight. On Monday, June 9, after school, we will have an almost summer sensory friendly safety day at the Downtown Firehouse. Anyone birth to 26 who can use some additional exposure to have more positive interactions with our police and fire services can join us to meet and interact with our officers, comfort dogs, and vehicles, as well as get important and safety information and giveaways. You can even register your child with your precinct or fire department so that they are aware in advance of any special needs if there's a call to your house.
Since this is a half day for secondary and full day for elementary, we will begin at two p. M. And end at six to allow for a steady flow and keep the event more sensory friendly. Special thank you to our safety consultant, Steve Shuttenholm, for his work in helping to make this happen. Our last public meeting for the school year will be tomorrow at West Middle School at seven p. M. With our usual meet and greet time at 06:30 for anyone attending to speak with available administrators and PAC board members. Pasquale Cosimano, assistant superintendent of secondary and adult education,
will join us to give updates on how special ed and general ed are partnering on curriculum for all learners. And Matt McDaniel, assistant superintendent for business operations, will join us to give an overview of what we know so far and the many uncertainties of the proposed state budget for fall, particularly in regards to special education funding. On a positive note, I received an email from a mom who gave me permission to share regarding her son, Alan Johnson, who had been in RCS since he was just three years old and had an IEP all through school. He graduated from Rochester High School in 2022.
This past Sunday, he graduated from Oakland Community College with two certifications in automotive tech and maintenance light repair. She said, quote, I encourage any student or parent to go for it. She continued that OCC provided everything spelled out in his high school IEP. He was part of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and OCC honor program that will be on his certifications, and he achieved a 3.4 GPA, and it was signed from his mom, Dawn. Finally, as I know, it is heavy on many minds in our community. I would like to address the shift center building locations in a few of our
categorical programs in the district for next year. For many years, PAC, as representative of parents in this district, has asked for better alignment of programs in our schools. Some of our programs are too specific to offer in every building without diluting expertise, and so we have prioritized quality. But if we can't put every student in their neighborhood school, we have asked that we at least align them to their assigned school's feeder so that if they do stay in their categorical program, they don't have to leave their friends when they move up. Two years ago, the severe multiple impairment program known as SXI was routed from Delta Kelly across the
district to Reuther, meaning fifth graders in their program lost all their non categorical friendships after graduation. After many years of us asking, it was finally moved to its new home in Brooklands Elementary, where the students and staff were thrilled to welcome them. But first, it was tough news. I can speak to my own experience as the mom of a child with significant disabilities. When you are exhausted from years of fighting and discrimination, you know full well that the general education families are not subject to constant shifts. It should not surprise anyone when your initial reaction is to feel marginalized and all
the emotions that come with that. My son is in the ASD program and has had to make unexpected school moves before. And most recently, he had to move up to middle school when he entered sixth grade. And my husband and I don't have a clear way to explain things to him. The guilt alone is heartbreaking. But I also hope the families know these changes come from a good place. Two years after the shift to Brooklyn's of our SSI program, these students now align with their peers. They can bond with the other Brooklyn Students and move up with them to Reuther and then Rochester High School like they deserve.
One year later, we moved our EI program from West to Hart so that it aligned into Stoney where it leads. Now with this latest round of news, more are feeling that pain, such as the move from Delta Kelly to Hamlin and from Hamlin to our new locations. But this is why I do what I do, and it's why I'm passionate about special ed transitions. I know it's not easy. And I know that just because no harm was intended, it doesn't mean no harm gets done. And we wanna be mindful of that. We want families to know that the reason for these changes is to improve the
lives of our kids in the long run and to see them not just as seats in a building, but as whole humans who have made connections and deserve to stay with their peers like any other child. Another reason for these shifts is to not leave our teachers unsupported. We've had single ASD classrooms all over the district, leaving teachers with no one to support them in their difficult roles, and that's changing too. And one more thing I want you to know as we are growing, having these programs in our buildings is mutually beneficial. These shifts also reflect growth. Next year,
18 of our 21 buildings will house categorical programs, and that's an amazing opportunity for all of our kids. I want to be clear. The P in PAC is for parent. We are not staff. In fact, did not make these decisions, but we are here to help and support them. We want parents to know that placement is always a team decision and that parents are part of the IEP team. If you have questions, we urge families to reach out to your IEP team, discuss what works best for your individual child. Additionally, PAC has challenged our special ed team to treat this as any other move up
or building transition and to work with teams to create transition plans as best as possible, which typically involves working with the receiving building to create a warm and smooth welcome. We are here to help. You can find us through our website, rcspac.com, or on our Facebook page. Now I'm not a senior of any kind, by the way, but I would like to thank the board for allowing me to present these reports the past three years. My three year term is officially up tomorrow, and beginning next month, my incoming chair, Jackie Marcart, will give the PAC report.
I assure you the families of this district will be in even better hands. Having served this community will always be one of the greatest honors of my life, and I'm sure I'm sure you know I won't be far. As you probably know, we expect my son to continue into the adult program. I expect to be part of this district another fourteen years. And while our PAC has a history in RCS that spans well over three decades, the board report started with me in 2022. Being a part of these meetings and involving the board has not only allowed us to enhance the conversation and given voice to PAC and the families we serve,
it has increased our visibility and outreach exponentially, which has allowed us to better serve parents and caregivers and ultimately our students. And really, why else are we here? Thank you all so much for your time and this important opportunity to serve our special education families. Melissa, I'll just say thank you for your time and your advocacy over the last three years. We appreciate all the effort that has gone into everything you've done for that time. So thank you. We're now moving on to public comment, and this provides an opportunity for board members to hear from community members.
If you wish to speak tonight and have not already filled out a yellow card, please fill one out now. Right now, I will say it looks like we have about 11 people, who wish to speak. I'm going to ask that people be ready to come forward so that we can try to fit these in, within our thirty minute time limit here. When your name is called, please move to the microphone and address the board. When addressing the board, you'll have three minutes to speak and we'll try to let you know when you have thirty seconds remaining. Please be mindful of this time limit. When addressing the board, please state your name and your relationship to the district.
To protect student privacy, we ask that no one identify a specific student without their permission, even if the student's name is not used. We also ask that you address your comments to the entire board and not to individual board members, school district employees, or to members of the audience. The board will not be responding to comments or questions during the meeting. However, someone will follow-up if needed. So at this point, I have, Jenny Hamilton followed by Madeline Fox and Elena Lyon. Good evening. As an RCS parent and employee,
I'm here to formally express my deep concern regarding the recent decision to eliminate my position of behavior interventionist. My role is to support students who are exhibiting early signs of behavioral, emotional, and mental health challenges Through proactive intervention strategies, SEL programming, and restorative practices, we have been able to reduce reactive discipline referrals, improve classroom engagement, and build stronger relationships between students and staff. Eliminating this role not only undermines this progress,
but also leaves a critical gap in the support systems that help students build the emotional regulation and conflict resolution skills they need to succeed. It places an even greater burden on all these amazing teachers, social workers, and administrators. Above all else, removing this evidence based support is detrimental to the mental health needs of our children. As a district who pours into safety and security, please consider the implications of removing this role. Kids feel safer at school because of us.
We are critical in crisis intervention and allow students to disclose sensitive information that can be critical in prevention. It has long been understood that early intervention improves academic readiness. Children with early SEL skills are twice as likely to be academically successful in later grades. According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, also known as CASEL, students who receive SEL instruction show an average of 11 percentile point gains in academic achievement,
along with improved classroom behavior, increased ability to manage stress and depression, and better attitudes about themselves and others. Our roles as behavior interventionists are rooted in the principles of prevention over punishment, proactively addressing students' emotional and behavioral needs before they escalate into disciplinary issues. Schools that implement early SEL support see up to fifty percent decrease in disciplinary incidents, especially among younger students. By teaching children about empathy, problem solving,
the physiological symptoms of distress, and how to effective effectively cope, we refuse to give in to the stigma that too often surrounds mental health. Thirty seconds. Instead, we choose to promote student growth and well-being by advocating for early support, open dialogue, and equitable access to social emotional resources for all students. I respectfully urge the board to reconsider this decision. Rochester Community Schools has always prided itself on putting students first, and preserving this role is a clear reflection of that very commitment.
Thank you. My name is Madeline Fox. I'm a second year teacher at Hampton Elementary. I'm up here today because I'm extremely disappointed in the elimination of the behavior intervention support within the elementary schools. Although I'm aware that these positions are existing because of a grant, I am more upset that the board has failed to acknowledge the need for these positions to continue regardless of the grant. When I was first hired into the district, I had actually never heard of a behavioral interventionist. I quickly realized, though, that the BI at my school would become a person I would confide in,
bounce ideas off of, and appreciate in ways I never knew I would. I was at a team meeting for one of my students that she's been seeing the entirety of this school year when she told me that the BI position was not going to exist next year. I asked what happens next year when this kid has no support behaviorally and doesn't qualify for an IEP or a five zero four. Who will they have to talk to or work with on what is expected and not expected? There was no response to that question. Truthfully, I wanted to cry, not only because my students were losing someone who made a difference in their ability
to regulate emotions, identify their behaviors, and help with their existence, not only in the classroom but outside of it, but because the school was losing an essential person that made an impact on the learning of students and the teachers. Hampton is a title one school. It has one of the largest student populations, and now we have lost the only person in the school that we can that they can consistently see who need extra emotional or behavioral support who don't qualify for that IEP or five zero four. We want you to find a way find ways to fund the behavioral interventionists in
elementary schools because of what they've helped achieve for our students. Funding for behavioral interventionists truly needs to be a priority and not reliant on grant funding to support such an instrumental position in our school district. I implore those that are not only here watching, but parents of students who work with BI parents of students who work with BIs and even those who do not to consider what is being said today. It's important to stand together on this because of its impact on everyone's ability to learn and their education.
I believe in this district enough to know that they can find ways to fund this program and hope that the board will reconsider their decision. Thank you. Thank you. Elena Lyon, followed by Heather Guzik, followed by Christy Kirzowski. Hello. My name is Elena Lyon, and I have served as a special education teacher within the district for six years. I'm here today to talk about the proposed cut to the elementary behavioral interventions position. Too often students must reach a crisis point or meet special education criteria before receiving consistent behavioral or emotional support. This not only delays necessary interventions but also places additional stress on teachers who are
often stressed beyond capacity. Our behavior interventionist has been able to provide timely, preventative, and responsive support to students struggling with social emotional issues, trauma, anxiety, or behavior related concerns regardless of their IEP status. She works directly with students to deescalate situations, teach coping skills, and promote academic engagement. Just as importantly, she supports staff, collaborating with teachers, sharing strategies, and helping build a more trauma informed and inclusive environment. Cutting this position now would take away a resource that has made a real difference in the lives of our students and staff.
Regardless of the decision, I want to thank all of the interventionists that have worked tirelessly for our students. I've personally had the privilege of working with Jenny Hamilton the past few years, and I'm a better educator for it. Thank you for your time. Hello. My name is Heather Guzik. I am a Rochester School psychologist and parent of two Rochester ADAMS graduates. Tonight, I feel very passionate about the value of our behavior interventionists in elementary schools. I'm very disappointed this position is being eliminated, and I'm here to encourage you to please find a way to keep this position
in our schools. I'm not asking you to change your decision in response to an unpopular public opinion. I'm asking you to keep our behavior interventionist as a decision backed by strong evidence based research that proves there are significant benefits, many of which have already been mentioned. And we can provide you data if you want it. Here's some history. I've been a school psychologist here in Rochester for twenty five years. I have seen the need for SEL support at the elementary level grow at alarming
rates. In 2023, thank goodness. Sorry, COVID, but thanks for the money, government, because we finally made a decision to support students at that tier two SEL level for kids in elementary schools without having to label them with a disability. Behavior interventionists were recently informed about the position being eliminated. And I have to ask, why was this decision not discussed with other stakeholders, with teachers, the community, the board, about the impact before the position was eliminated?
The decision doesn't only impact our students. It's a domino effect. It impacts teachers, administrators, social workers, psychologists, resource teachers, even our school secretaries will feel the impact of taking away this position. Do all students need tier two support for SEL? No. Those who do, though, if they're not supported, their struggles become the barrier to learning, not just for themselves, but for the entire classroom. Many children need tier two SEL support and do not have an identified disability, but they need that support for situations like learning how to control their and regulate
their emotions and their behavior. BI supports students who have a sudden death, coping with divorce, problems in their home life, difficulties fitting in with peers. They don't have a disability, but they do need these supports. Children are general education students first. As a school psychologist, I hear this a lot. They deserve less restrictive supports when needed as a matter of ethics and as a matter of law. So if we don't have the eyes on our school, who is gonna be responsible to fill that role for general education tier two SEL supports? Is it gonna be the teachers?
I'm thinking not. For one, they already have heavy caseloads, time restraints, and role restraints. They're not trained in mental health, and the burnout rate is already high. That would put it through the roof, I'm imagining. They don't have the specialized expertise that is needed. And there's a high liability to the district if a student's mental health need is mishandled without proper training. I have Chrissy Girzell. Thank you. I will follow-up with a letter with the part I didn't get to. And Marcy Carlson. Good evening, Lord. My name is Christie Kaliszewski,
and I'm a proud parent to three Baldwin Elementary students. I'm here tonight not just as a parent, but as a voice for the students and for the families who are directly impacted by the decision to eliminate the elementary behavioral interventionist position at Rochester Community Schools. This is not a minor staffing adjustment. It is the removal of a critical pillar in our elementary schools, one that supports students who are struggling, teachers who are overwhelmed, and families who are trying desperately to navigate growing mental health and behavioral changes. Our district has long prided itself on a whole child philosophy,
one that values emotional well-being alongside academic success, and this decision undermines that commitment. At a time when students' behavioral and mental health needs are surging, we are eliminating the very professionals who are trained to address them. Please allow me to tell you what the behavioral interventionist role means from my personal parent perspective. When my daughter developed selective mutism, which is an anxiety disorder that makes her unable to speak in certain settings, especially school, her entire education came to a standstill. She couldn't she couldn't answer questions,
address immediate needs, advocate for herself, or connect with her peers, and school became a source of daily distress. Then came Baldwin's behavioral interventionist. She stepped in, not as a temporary fix, but as a consistent, compassionate, highly trained expert who changed the course entirely of my daughter's educational life. She coordinated with our private therapist, crafted a school based plan, and supported my daughter with empathy and skills. Today, my child walks into school without tears. She is more apt to face her anxiety and is finding her voice. She is beginning to thrive.
This transformation wasn't magic. It was the result of real time relational and responsive work from someone who understands behavior as communication and children as people. Our behavioral interventionists are not an extra commodity. They are essential across our 13 elementary schools. The behavioral interventionist team has quietly done heroic work in the last year alone, and I'm sure you have seen these stats in all of the emails that we've been sending the board. But 2,502 individual student sessions have taken place just last year.
2,244 group sessions, six seventy eight classroom lessons, two thirty eight peer mediation sessions, and they've responded to six sixty five crisis calls just last year, just at the elementary level. They've reached over 2,120 students. They're not just putting out fires. They're preventing them. They're not just responding to behavioral challenges, but transforming them into growth opportunities. They gave teachers space to teach students the tools to self regulate and families the reassurance that someone at school truly understands.
So I ask you on behalf of the countless students, families, and teachers who rely on this support to please reconsider and con reconsider reallocating. This is not about a few positions or a budget cycle. This is the heart of our elementary schools. By Mercy Carlson, followed by Loya Sadiki. Hello. My name is Andrea Kurth, and I'm the behavior interventionist at two of the elementary schools with very different demographics. I was a former special education teacher, and through this job, I realized what minimal support was given for general education in the elementary setting.
My first thought was how amazing all these teachers were and surprised that there was only a principal and an LC who needs to provide full time reading support. I quickly learned how essential this job was. My typical week is teaching groups for 80 to 90 students and running to crisis calls or leading restorative circles during my prep time. This past week, I had one of those days where I didn't stop. While still seeing all my scheduled groups, I also helped a girl who wouldn't stop crying, led one restorative circle for friendship issues, and two restorative circles for fighting. These nonstop days happen often for all the behavior interventionists. I've had several students refuse to come to school unless carried in by their parents.
I met them in the parking lot and sometimes spent hours helping them manage anxiety they mistook for illness. I taught them to distinguish worry for real symptoms, supporting them with coping strategies and helping them realize they felt fine and enjoyed school once they transitioned. This is not something a teacher or a principal has time for. We have had students transfer to Oxford Virtual Academy for this very reason. The reality is that one of my schools was without a social worker for six months during my first year, and my other school only has a point six social worker. And there is simply not enough time in their day for all the students in
general education and special education needing services. This has led me to support students for other emotional issues as well, including students who have said they needed they wanted to kill themselves or wanted to harm others. A secondary administrator told me the difference between secondary and elementary is that discipline takes a lot longer in elementary school. We are doing restorative circles so that we can change the pattern of behavior, develop empathy, and so we can help a first grader understand that when you don't say just kidding, it is actually a lie. We are providing the groundwork so fewer counselors will be needed at the secondary level
when they advance. The behavior of many students in our program affects the learning of other classmates as well. Honestly, I'm worried about some of these students when the position is eliminated. How do kids learn if a student is throwing a chair across the room? How does a teacher teach 30 students math while they need to break up a fight in the cubbies? How do you learn to trust when a classmate is stealing your items from your backpack? Myself and other behavior interventionists have been told by many teachers that they couldn't have done this year without us. I think they would have because they had to. But should they have to? I appreciate the district's efforts in proposing another model to address these needs.
However, each school still requires a certified staff who can build connections with students and provide direct support to teachers, ensuring they don't face these challenges alone. Please consider the needs of all students, social workers, teachers, and admin by reinstating the behavior and interventionist role. The futures of these students are being shaped today in classrooms where teachers are stretched beyond their limits and where some kids slip through the cracks, not because anybody stopped caring, but because there simply wasn't enough hands to catch them. Thank you. Marcy Carlson, followed by Loya Siddiqui, followed by Ayesha
Haas. Good evening, Rochester Board members and community members. My name is Marcy Carlson. As a proud Rochester community employee of twenty five years, I've had the privilege of serving multiple roles: classroom teacher, academic interventionist, school counselor, and most recently, behavior interventionist, and co department head. Of these positions, it is the behavior interventionist role that's had the most profound and measurable impact, not only on, as you keep hearing, the more than 2,000 students we've directly served, but on the climate and culture across all 13 elementary
schools. The ripple effects extend to families, staff, and the broader community, as you've heard this evening. Tonight, I respectfully urge the board to reconsider the decision to eliminate the behavior interventionist rule through the lens of student needs and, more importantly, long term outcomes. The position was created just two years ago in direct response to the significant and growing mental health concerns among our students. Like many other districts, RCS faced challenges in hiring and still do licensed school social workers.
In response, we implemented a proven solution already in use in neighboring districts, hiring qualified mental health professionals to work directly in each elementary building, supporting, most importantly, the general education population. Using our collective experience and expertise, we built something meaningful, a department designed directly to support student needs in real time. This proactive approach has allowed us to respond quickly and effectively to behavior concerns, build relationships, and prevent issues from escalating,
as you've already heard from personal stories, all of which fostering a supportive school climate. This level of daily embedded support is not something professional development alone can replicate. Has the need diminished? Quite the opposite. You've already heard that at this example tonight. The demand for mental health support continues to rise. Teachers are still overwhelmed, and our skills and our schools continue to lack the capacity to fulfill and meet, as we've heard tonight, the the emotional and behavioral needs at the tier one and tier two levels. You hear keep hearing these numbers,
but I'm gonna say them again. We reach over out close to 5,000 students in small and individual groups. We did over two thirty restorative meetings. We helped the with the evaluation process and five zero four plans by delivering essential behavioral insights and observations. We met six fifty crisis or behavior response calls, also making CPS referrals to protect students' safety. We did close to 700 classroom wide, and this is not in the 2,000
number, SEL lessons, building emotional literacy and preventative skills on a broad scale. Thank you for your time. Moya Siddiqui. I may not be saying that right. Followed by Ayesha and then Yasir. And I apologize I can't make out the last name. Hello, everyone. My name is Zoe Sadiki, and I'm currently a senior at Rochester High School. And I'm currently serving as the president of the Muslim Student Association. So thank you, mister Russo and the board, for giving me the opportunity to speak. So our district values inclusion. We take breaks from major holidays and moments of rest. And as we grow into a more understanding and diverse community,
I believe Eid deserves to be recognized as an official day off. For Muslim students, Eid is one of the most sacred and joyful days of the year, a time of family, faith, and celebration. But when it lands on a school day, we're forced into a choice. Do we celebrate our faith or keep up with schoolwork? And so when I was in sixth grade at Luther, I had just started fasting during Ramadan. There wasn't a lot of awareness back then. I had to quietly explain to my teachers what Eid was and what it was and what I was gonna be doing for the next thirty days. And, yes, on Eid, I still had homework due. I still missed tests.
I rushed through my morning prayers only to log in to Google Classroom in the afternoon to see what I had missed that day. And it didn't feel like a celebration to me. It felt more like a compromise. And this year, something had changed. After a group of students last year had presented to the staff about where Ramadan was, what Eid was, a lot of students I mean, a lot of teachers understood what we were going through. They checked in with me, and my AP statistics teacher even moved her exam a week so we could celebrate. And this year, Eid fell on a Sunday. So there was no school, no stress. But next year, Eid might fall on a Thursday or a Monday, and then what? So recognition is a great first step,
but we need policy. Muslim students make up about 10% apart the district, and that's about 1,500 students who face this dilemma each year. We're not invisible, and we're not the only ones asking for help, for this. Other districts across Michigan have already taken the step, including Troy and Bloomfield. So let's do the same. Let's pick a district that shows every student that they are valued, not in spite of their identity, but because of it. Because if we can make room in our calendars for growth and rest, we can make room for something beautiful like Eid.
And I may be graduating this year, but I have two younger brothers, and I want them to grow up in a district that doesn't just talk about diversity. It it expands it, and it lives it. Let's be the district that says, you belong. Your holiday matters. Take the day and celebrate. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Ayesha Huck, and I'm a junior at Rochester High School currently serving as the treasurer of the Muslim Student Association. Thank you all so much for taking the time to hear from us today as we share our perspective on how the Rochester School District can take one more step
towards inclusion by recognizing the Islamic religious holiday, Eid, as an official school holiday. In 2023, over a dozen school districts across The US, including New York City, Philadelphia, and Montgomery County, made the decision to include Eve in their academic calendar. Not only did this help students feel seen and respected, but it also led to reduce absenteeism and a stronger connection between schools and their communities. Here in Rochester, I'm proud to be part of a district whose mission statement is, quote, to provide quality education while contributing to a diverse,
independent, and changing world. That mission statement isn't just a line. It reflects a deep value system. And today, we're asking for a small but meaningful action that fully lives up to it. Every year around Eid, many Muslim students who come from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds face an impossible choice, honor an important religious holiday with their families, or attend school to avoid missing tests and assignments. This decision brings real stress and creates an unfair pressure to choose between faith and academics. By recognizing Eid,
the district wouldn't just be supporting its Muslim students. It would be living up to the very mission statement that defines RCS, which is providing quality education while contributing to a diverse, independent, and changing world. We also understand that calendar changes are complex and take time. We truly appreciate that our voices that our voices are being heard, and we're thankful to be part of a district that listens, engages, and makes us students feel valued. Thank you again, mister Russo, and board members for your time and commitment to making RCS a place where every
student, regardless of background, feels valued and supported. This isn't just about a day off. It's about standing by the values that make this district exceptional. Thank you so much once again. Thank you. Yasir, followed by Samantha Robinson, followed by Adam Avzaluddin. I mean, I I'm not sure on the spelling. Yazir? Hello. My name is Yasser Hamdan. I'm a current senior at Rochester Adams High School and the co president of the Adams MSA. Thank you, superintendent Russo, and all the board members for allowing me to speak today. One of my favorite things about being a student within the RCS district is the
diversity and ease of accommodation that the district provides. Prior to moving into the RCS district, I came from an Islamic school where I had the luxury of praying built into my daily schedule. When I became a when I became a student at Van Hoozen, I no longer had that luxury. However, when I spoke with the administration at Van Hoozen, they made an accommodation for me to go down to the office every day and be able to pray at school. Fast forward to my freshman year of high school, mister Kusumana, who was the president of Adams at the time, provided me with the same opportunity as well as a classroom for the Muslim students every Friday to conduct our Friday prayers after school.
Not only does the district do a really good job of accommodating their students' beliefs, but but it also does an exceptional job of making the students not have to worry about small things like what they eat at lunch. In the lunch line, the main ingredients of each meal are listed, allowing us to be aware as what of what is in our food, ultimately letting us know whether we are able to eat a meal or not. However, there's one area in which I believe the district can improve. Unfortunately, last year, Eid coincided with the date of our SAT. And although the district was very accommodating and set up a makeup date for the students who weren't able to attend the initial day of the SAT,
it was disheartening to realize that the district that provides us that prides itself on, that prides itself on its diversity doesn't give us the day off considering that the Muslim population across the district is pretty large. Not only would the not only would giving the students a day off Farid make it more convenient for the Muslim students who would not have to worry about missing content in their classes, but it would also bring more awareness to Muslim students' beliefs, ultimately making the Muslim student population more comfortable within their respective schools. Although I'll not be present to witness the changes go into effect, this change is very important to me as it would benefit the education and the
experience of my younger brother who's a junior at Adams and all the other Muslim students who are coming into the district or in and are currently in the district. I believe that this change is very important and it would ultimately result in a more welcoming atmosphere, maintaining the spirit of the RCS community, and allowing us to continue being a leader within the state of Michigan. And before I finish, I would like to thank trustee Elspach and, Representative Anas for listening to us and encouraging us to come here and speak to, speak to you all today. And thank you again for listening, and I really look forward to seeing these changes in the future.
Thank you. Thank you. Samantha Robinson? Okay. Next, we have Adam. I apologize on the last name. And Adam will be followed by Mark Serra, I believe it is. My name is Adam O'Sullivan. I am a fifth grader from Brooklyn's Elementary School who is about to graduate. Because of this, I have a lot of special events coming up. Special events like graduation, going to a going to an arcade, a field trip to Reuther, and more. However, there is one in particular that I am concerned about. It is called field day,
one of the most fun events of the school year. This year, field day is on the exact same day as an important as an important holiday in my religion, Eid. I have thought about what to do for weeks. We should have a holiday on Eid, so me and every Muslim in the district do not face this problem. Not having a holiday on Eid makes me think that my religion is not as important as other religions. Many Muslims think that this problem needs to be fixed. In conclusion, I think we should have a holiday for Eid so these problems don't arise again.
Thank you. To my board colleagues, we have just one more left. I'm assuming everyone's okay with going over three more minutes. Mark? Yes. Thank you. Mark, Sarah. I am a dad and, have two children at wonderful, Rochester schools. I've been living in the area for thirty years now. Just love the community. And, so these women and men speak so eloquently about the behavioral interventionist position. I am probably not gonna be that eloquent. But we elected you to make the right decisions for our children.
I mean, when I listen to these to these to these women about how to train a child throwing a chair across a room, I mean, you're firing all these people, and I think the kids are gonna suffer. I mean, if you've lived in this community, you know what happened on this road. It was a tragedy that happened on this road not too long ago. These these women and men are helping. And I really think and I've been told that, well, the the the district has enough money for them to continue.
So talk about it. I mean, you guys are highly educated. You make good decisions, so just talk about it. Find a way. The kids are gonna suffer if you fire all these men and women. They will. And then, you know, you don't want by the liability, everything that goes into this. I mean, my I may not speak eloquently, but my heart is in the right place. And and I know you guys your heart is as well because you care about these kids or you wouldn't be sitting behind these chairs. So, thank you for your time, and I hope I want you to make this work.
Make it work. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who spoke tonight. We are moving on to our consent agenda. All matters listed under the consent agenda are considered routine in nature by the Board and will be acted upon by one motion. There is no separate discussion of these items. If any member of the board requests discussion of item, that item will be removed. Please note that the items removed will now be discussed separately under the consent agenda and will retain the same number. For instance, if item 7.1 was asked to be removed, we would vote on items 7.2
through 7.6 and then come back to 7.1 for a motion discussion and vote. You may still request just one item in a report to be removed from the consent agenda. If this is the case, we would approve everything else and the item removed from the report would receive a new number. In this case, it would be 7.8 but still under the consent agenda. Our consent agenda consists of the following: 7.1, current bills payable for 04/01/2025 through 04/30/2025 in the amount of $18,627,567.95
the human resource recommendations. Item 7.3, Board of Education closed session minutes from 04/07/2025. Item 7.4, Board of Education work session minutes from 04/07/2025. '7 point '5, the Board of Education regular meeting minutes from 04/21/2025. And 7.6, Superintendent Russo reimbursement in the amount of $588.59 At this time, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? Moved by Trustee Alsbaugh with support from Trustee Annas Does any board member wish to
remove an item? Trustee Liqui? Item seven point one and seven point two. All right. So at this point, both seven point one and seven point two will be pulled. So those in favor of approving 7.3 through 7.6, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. That's a seven-zero vote and items 7.3 through 7.6 have been approved. At this point then, let's, is there a motion to approve item 7.1,
which is the current bills payable for 04/01/2025 through 04/30/2025 in the amount of $18,627,567.95 Anyone? Trustee Alspa is there support. Trustee Blake? Any discussion? All of oh, Trustee, who are you, Trustee Gupta? Madam President, I just wanted to let the Board know that Madam President? Madam President? Okay. Madam President, I would just like to let you know I'll be abstaining from this vote because there is an invoice, related to Rochester High School robotics,
for which I am a mentor on the team. And so just to reduce any potential perception of a conflict of interest, I will abstain. Thank you. All right. All of those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. And I have one abstention. So that's a five-one-one vote. And the motion is approved. Next, is there a motion to approve item 7.2, which is the human resource recommendations? Moved by Trustee, Gupta. Is there support from Trustee Allspa? And then is there any discussion on this?
Trustee Liqui? Speak try and pull it closer. Hello? Still not good? The green light is on. I don't know. Good? Okay. So I had a question about this. And I asked it, and we got a response in our cabinet notes. And I was curious why our HR report doesn't reflect position eliminations. It reflects when we create new positions, but not when they go away. And so I was told that our current practice is to only include REA and RAA, hires, resignations, retirements, non renewals and terminations. It also includes administrative appointments,
but it's not going to include something like when the DEI Director position got eliminated. It's not including that we eliminated the behavior interventionist positions. I'm wondering if the board is amenable to including information about position eliminations in the HR report for the sake of transparency and clarity. All right. At this point, that is not a discussion item. This what we're doing is we are approving the human resource recommendations that are in the packet. Well, I'm asking about the HR report. And we had some positions eliminated that could have been on the HR report if it
was our current practice. So I think that would be a different agenda item because this is specific. What is the agenda item would that fit under? That would be one that would need to be added in the at a future time or So you don't consider that a question about the HR report? Point of order, Madam President. Point of order. Trustee Gupta, what's your point of order? And this is not germane to our agenda item at this time. And your point is well taken, and I agree with that. So at this point, we do have a motion to approve the human resource, recommendations, as presented. Is there any other discussion?
All of those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, please say no. That is a seven-zero vote. I would like to congratulate, Dan Amore, who is here, and Laura Matthews on their appointment as principals to MacGregor Elementary and Musson Elementary respectively. Dan, you're here. Congratulations. We also have a couple of retirements listed, but they are working through the end of the school year and will be recognized, I believe it's at the June 9 board meeting. All right. At this point, we are we have several reports,
and we'll start with the strategic plan update. Mr. Russo? Thank you, ma'am. Hello? It's just taking a couple seconds, I think. Yeah. You good? Thank you, Madam President. We have a few updates for strategic plan. I would like to, turn it over first on our for our update our regular update for strategic plan to Ms. Hampton. Thank you, mister Russo. The first plan, to be updated this evening is strategic plan number four, which falls under the vision area of learning. It's representative of developing a common language as to what DEI is and is not,
creating a structured approach to communicating the purpose and impact of DEI work. And and the background behind this particular plan as I understand it was really rooted in furthering the Rochester, work with the equity statement and how staff, students and the community at large would continue to feel safe, valued, respected, heard, and welcome. And you see, two different, areas of focus within this particular, frame by June 1, RCS will have common DEI language documents and that by June 1,
stakeholders will have positive reception of those documents. And one of the things that I would bring forward in this highlight this evening in terms of an update is, several conversations that have occurred related to evolving this work, continuing this work, not only with the terminology that's identified, but also something that, can continue to be more transformative in terms of embedding inclusion within instructional practices and the interpersonal dynamics that are occurring, in the classroom and across the broader community within Rochester Schools.
We recognize that, the the starting point here is respective of the strategic plan and it may not have the same continuation in the dashboard given the way that the success criteria are named, but we assure the board and Mr. Russo as well, the community listening that, as we continue to seek evidence of inclusive practices, becoming more embedded within daily practices. Within the organization, ultimately ensuring that all members of the learning community, continue with robust experiences that help all individuals realize their full potential.
There may be questions that we want to move through or we're going to move to the next plan. I'd say let's let's take them one at a time. So are there any questions at this point? Trustee Blake? Yeah. I I have a I have a question. Okay. I have a question relating to this one. It relates to a future one too. I'm all for the the and maybe it's not even for you. But we've got success criteria that by June 1, we're going to have a common criteria that by June 1, we're gonna have a common DEI language document, that 80% of representative stakeholders are going to have a positive reception of.
Is that document here to look at? And if not, why are we doing this on May 19 when we have something coming up on June 1? It seems very inefficient. I'm not sure I understand Bill. I'm not sure I understand last time I think it's so close to the deadline. I think the question is what can we talk about some of the work like what is the what's been accomplished? And, Trustee Ernst, do you have a follow-up question? Yes. Related to, Trustee Blake's question, mine was going to be, the CEI language document, where is it going to be housed?
Is it a forward facing document that will be on our website so that our entire community can see etcetera? So I'll start and then I can turn it over to miss Hunton. I think prior to the initiation of year one of our strategic plan, there was a document that existed, that had the language for what DEI definitions around what DEI was and was not, that had already been produced prior to to this, strategic plan. I believe there was, quite frankly, something more political in nature that kind of had an impetus for this when it started. And, as we know what happened in the last three or four weeks regarding
the potential of elimination of $10,000,000 or $10,100,000 annually. This the the key I wanna say something that's that's just kind of an umbrella statement over this, this specific plan is that the title removal of a title of a person does not mean the work does not continue. And there was work done prior to the strategic plan existing with definitions, but I think there was a willingness from a certain board members at the time to have something that was inside of year one to to make it front facing to see if this was,
something we wanna continue or not in future. That that would that for future years. That's how it's explained to me. What has been done, some of the work that's been inside of this has not been, has has taken a couple turns for throughout the year. And if miss Hampton wants to address some of those, I would appreciate that. Sure. So when, and I can't I'm sorry to not have the history on when the Rochester Community Schools adopted their respect code and the district equity statement, that are posted in all of our learning spaces. These documents detail, very clearly, what we value in terms of climate and,
our stand against prejudice or discrimination in any way. The the work that this plan specifically was looking to, advance was related to understanding the perceptions of students and families in how these, ideals are carried out within our broader learning community. And, some of those, survey works have been, taken place over the years within various platforms, whether that be, OCRE act surveys, panorama surveys, thinking about how, the student experiences, learning in their day and,
the access or or level of inclusion that's felt. And as a result of the way some of this work is embedded very closely, within that district equity statement, the survey body within that would have really gotten us closer to, a language document didn't feel like the right work at the time given, an understanding and use of, very active use of, both a respect code and a district equity statement. And so frankly, I think the the team while continuing to advance, a number of, conversations internally around what it means to be inclusive and and responsive,
were uncertain of what document would be evidence of continuing to advance this work. I think frankly the success criteria were were perhaps not fully real in, understood internally in terms of what outcomes would be helpful to the organization in advancing the work that's really happening LeCuey followed by trustee Gupta. LaCuey followed by trustee Gupta. Well, one thing is I'm I'm not exactly sure what we're trying to accomplish here, and I don't blame, miss Hampton for this at all. I'm kind of wondering if it was a little bit unfair for us to saddle her with this particular plan because she's right.
We have the respect code. We have the equity statement. We have things like the positivity project, for instance, that carries out a lot of those sorts of things. Meanwhile, we've got this issue going on with the behavior interventionist, which seems like it's designed to try to help, you know, with some of the inclusivity that we might be looking for for some of our students. I'm wondering if having something like this where we're trying to just create a document talking about this particular acronym of DEI and let's see if we can I'm not sure what we're actually trying to do there.
It would be more sensible, I think, to come up with something that's actionable, that's really going to benefit teaching and learning. And so I'm wondering, do we think that this is still important? We've actually stripped the DEI language off our website last I saw. And you're right, we don't have the DEI director position anymore. Why are we so focused on that instead of just actionable steps that can help our students? Trustee Gupta. So, if I recall, the kind of genesis of this particular plan,
was the result of survey data and focus group data from our community that told us that our community is in some ways confused about and that we weren't able to give a clear answer on what we mean when we say DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion. And so that one way to advance that work would be to work together as a school district and with our community stakeholders to get clearer on that,
because there was a lot of misrepresentation, a lot of confusion, a lot of critique, and we're all aware of that, right? So, so how do we make sure that our community really understands what it is that we're doing in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion for our students despite this kind of overarching political climate that, you know, seeks to demonize it as something it's not. So that was the original genesis of this plan as I recall it. So what I'm hearing though is through our transition,
and that's understandable I agree with Trustee Lecui that this is not in any way a critique of anybody at this table, but through the transition of leadership, this has kind of gotten lost. And then add the layer of complication of the recent EO that we're trying to or letter memorandum that we're trying to figure out what that means for us as a district, right? And so how do you move forward on this? But I I just wanted to clarify that as I understand, I don't know if others share my recollection of that,
that's where it came from. Trustee Blake. So it's probably me and I'm missing something here. And I'm certainly not critiquing Mrs. Hampton or anybody on here, I'm just saying this was one of the plans that was chosen to be presented tonight and it says that there's going to be by June 1 a common DEI language document, but now I'm almost hearing like there isn't one or it's something that was pre existing, there's not a new one, maybe I'm missing it. Is there something that is going to be presented that is this common document that
is going to explain and are we going to do this eighty percent people that have a positive reception or is this need to be changed completely? That's a great I'm sorry, I'm just going to answer the question. I don't know if it was aimed at Ms. Hampton, but thank you, Jesse Blake. So plan for just to give just take a couple of steps back and then I'll give you a direct answer. We have, as you know, had a schedule for what plans were going to be presented at each board meeting. So there's really not a when you say this was like to answer your first part of your question, why is this being done now in June 3 and whatever that question was and
forget the date. But this had no bearing on that. When we put these together at the beginning of the year, we just had a cadence of let's go into this one and this one and go through the school year so that you had an update on each and every, plan within within the or each deliverable within the strategic plan. But this right now is not being done. This is being for lack of better words. I'll use the word suspended, but it is, it is not being done. The work's not being done. Number one, because the project, falls under the DEI director for the workload and the lead, and we have since we got rid of that position or eliminated that position,
the work has not been done since that point. Trustee Annas. So I guess I need some clarification here because, I still think this this work is valid. We don't have an assigned staff member who is now tackling this. However, we have folks in our community that are very concerned that we are still living up to the district equity statement that we made, and that this board passed and which is still on our website, and supported. So I guess I need clarification on if if there's no one actively working on this,
then where do we move forward? So I wanna I I just wanna say, and then I'll turn it over to miss Hampton because she's been closer to the work if she chooses to answer anything further. Trustee Anas that I just the deliverable says develop a common language as to what DEI is and is not. I think it's important to recognize that the equity statement and us providing equitable services to students does not necessarily sit in a DEI code all the time. Right? And our equity statement is separate. It was adopted by the board and you went through that. And our equity statement says that we will give students what they need.
Actually, it I think it says learners. So it it is about, I just I think they had those have to be separated in the sense that if you look at what the incentive was, it says provide the understanding of the RCS equity statement with students, staff, and parent groups to ensure the communities feels valued, respected, heard, and welcome. I think it's different than develop a common language is what DEI is and is not. Some of the work that went into into this up to this point, as as miss Hampton said, was really about surveys asking students how they felt regarding that. Are are we meeting the needs of equity?
And I think that are are we being equitable in our practices across the district? And I think it took a little bit different turn instead of getting to the getting to the deliverable, I would develop a common language as to what DEI is and is not. So if we could separate those in our heads, I think that's better for us because our equitable practices, specifically as we roll into, into data driven work and etcetera, which hopefully when we get when we start talking about what, year two and three and four will look like in our strategic plan that Scott can talk about and we can also talk about directly,
there's a piece of equity that's there that is independent from DEI. So I guess for clarity then, you're saying that instead of doing over this past year, instead of doing what this plan actually says, instead we have been surveying students and getting information back about how equity and and how that's going? And if so, then can we get a report on that and what we've learned? We have not surveyed students this school year. There's a survey that took place a year ago spring,
about a year ago now as I understand it. And I think that was some of the original data points that were gathered to establish, as as miss Gupta described, perhaps some, disagreement and or misrepresentation critique of of what this language when it means to be inclusive or equitable or to honor diversity, means. The survey work, really was intended at getting good data, which then resulted, in some, direct teaching, if you will, of terms, and we we knew that was going to be something that, could be misconstrued or,
not, fully supported in terms of our, ask of our educators and perhaps even the community at large at this time. I would highlight the work that has been occurring this year looks much closer to what you read in the vision statement, which has been embedded coaching on character, citizenship, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, cultural proficiency, communication, continuing to prepare students for success beyond school. The cultural proficiency networks that have been long established in Rochester have continued for, several iterations over this school year. We know that our,
various leadership groups are thinking about their next steps, whether that be in feed back to students, whether that's about grading and reporting, whether that is related to, resource analysis of what really provides, a representative body of of curricula, for learners to utilize during their time in Rochester. Those things have really been at the heart of our focus more than ramping up for a survey work as this particular plan describes. Trustee Gupta followed by Trustee Lecui. So I mean the equity statement equity is quite literally the core of diversity,
equity and inclusion. So I'm struggling with how we are saying we want to somehow extrapolate that out and it's not one they're not interconnected. I mean students come to learn in our school district with all parts of themselves and that's all part of it and we have to be responsive to that. But what I'm hearing is that we haven't really done any of this work. And there's been historically some surveys that speak to student perception of some of this,
but nothing within the timeframe or focused on these specific deliverables, of this work. And so perhaps what we need to do is decide as a group what it is what it is we want to move forward with here. Is it is this it? Do we want to amend it and move forward with new deadlines? And now that we've got, you know, and I want to hear suggestions from, our cabinet members and the team. But, you know, what is the plan for this work,
which is important. We can't dismiss the fact that in over 6,000 surveys with our community, diversity, equity and inclusion was a theme that folks really were interested in, whether it was from the standpoint of wanting better clarification and understanding of, or were proponents of it and value it. So that in order for us to move forward with our strategic plan in a way that is responsive to that community feedback, we have to figure out something to do with this that is is that.
If I could just insert real quick, there has been a number of educators and leaders across RCS that have been contributing, to the milestones and measures delineated in this plan, since late fall. And I wanna make sure that we, recognize that work, which has been to identify survey structures, working directly with, methodologist, doctor Parrae, out of Oakland Schools, thinking about a structure that might really, be research bound and and allow us to access quality information around the sense of belonging that is felt within students within our classrooms.
That survey structure was built out over the course of it looks like about fifteen weeks of time with that Oakland Schools consultant who is a research evaluation and assessment consultant, in the school culture and climate division of Oakland Schools. She has, supported a team of educators in in in Rochester in thinking about how this survey gets best built. And as we move through the later part of fall, designating students in grades five through 12 and a survey mechanism that might best support that while a contract with a certain provider was coming to a close Panorama,
thinking about how to bridge those data points across multiple survey tools. We slid into January and a global context that changed significantly, and that's when this work was put on pause. So I would not want the the team that's been supporting this conversation and this work to feel that a conversation here reflected that nothing has been done with plan four. That would not be accurate. Trustee Lecui and then you can have a team. Well, in some sense, this does sort of circle back to what I was saying. And I would agree that, yes, DEI was a theme that came up a lot in the surveys. There were proponents for it.
There were people who were very critical of it. And so what we sort of what sort of happened in the deliverables workshop is to try to come up with some kind of compromise where people said, well, let's develop a common language as to what DEI is and what it's not and help people understand that. But really, people were confused about why we were spending so much money on DEI and whether we were getting anything out of it. So some people said we need to be doing this, but there were also a good number of people who thought it's not fulfilling all the promises that I want it to fulfill, and how could we make that happen?
And others were critical of it for judging people based on skin color or thinking, well, closing the achievement gap is the wrong goal. We should just be rising the tide to lift all boats, so to speak. So, anyways, regardless of where you're at on the spectrum, I don't think most parents, whether you agree with me on this or not, wanted more academic language just about an acronym about DEI. They want to see how is learning at RCS going to help my kid and benefit my kid? What are the actionable things that can be done?
And we already have some of these sorts of things in place. We mentioned the RESPECT code. We mentioned the equity statement, embedded coaching, a lot of various things that have been going on. But if equity means fair and means let's meet kids where they're at and help them succeed, we have to be looking at what kinds of action steps can we take that will help student outcomes and student learning? And we heard a lot about that earlier. Those are the kinds of things we should be looking at is how can we use the adults who are closest to the kids to lift them up and help
them to succeed. Did you want Trustee Gupta? So for me, what's missing in this particular piece here on this deliverable that seemed really important at the time and that I I don't want to let go of is helping our community understand what this work is. How it operates in our district. Because it was clear based on the survey feedback and the focus groups that, we as Trustee Lucuy noted, they're proponents, they're people who are in opposition to it.
And when you, got into the conversation and the dialogue about it, it became very obvious that a lot of people who were either opposed or weren't sure had questions about it, had had a perception of it that we knew didn't match what we're doing in our district. And so that's why this was proposed as a deliverable. And Mr. Fuller, I don't know if you remember this conversation, but right? So we it was to try to clarify with our community and get, a little bit better,
maybe better consensus through that about what how what this is in our district actually, despite whatever it might mean somewhere else. No. I'm just I'm just more just a a point of, you know, this actual deliverable wasn't even really intended to be about how, let's look deep inside. This is important work still, but how do we look internally about, you know, how are we doing all this? It was more about how do we communicate to our community about what we're doing and why and what this means. Well,
I guess at at this point, if there's no other I mean, I think you've heard from the board and the importance that many of us feel in a lot of these pieces. And as trustee, I agree with Trustee Gupta that the main point of this was to be able to clearly communicate what it meant here at RCS. And whether going forward we choose to use those terms or not, DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, or what terms we're going to use, I feel like we need to make sure that we're clear so that everyone understands
what it is and they don't just latch on to something else that's being, some definition that's being tossed around someplace else. I hear the board and I hear the concerns. I just I wanted to say the work and how we're communicating with if our teachers are being instructionally responsive to the needs of students, I believe that they are providing the equity that we're looking for, not based on any other thing besides what their needs are. I think that that's equitable instructional practices. I think the question that you're looking for I shouldn't say that.
I'm wondering if the question you're looking for is what are the other things surrounding? Are we are we honoring students' backgrounds and heritages and cultures? And are we be inclusive to students of all different types? And I and I think that if that's the question, then I think that we can bring artifacts to that point. And those artifacts can be shared with community. And I think those community members, if they're feeling that or not, is why some of those surveys were starting to roll out. But then this this kind of change in society as of January,
put a pause on that because of some intentional language that was in there. And if that's what you're looking for in terms of our families feeling this, is this what's happening and here's the artifacts that we could present to you, I think that that's very doable. Does that make sense? Okay, couple other comments of your I saw Trustee Alspa and then Trustee Annas. So I think, yes, that does make sense. I think what we're looking for, I think, in the transition of leadership, and I I fault no one in this, and I do recognize the fact that,
our situation has gotten a little bit more tenuous when using these terms. I think what we're looking for is artifacts that talk about how this work is addressed, and that the work of equity and inclusion is not just globally student learning. It's addressing those pieces that make our learners feel marginalized so that they can't access it and don't have the same achievement. I appreciate you being here, Scott. And one of the things I remember is this is a working document. So I think you've heard from the board and you have a little bit more
clarity. You know, we don't want a definition of DEI because we understand living document, changing conditions, but we do wanna see that we are still doing this work. And and you've said many times that, you know, we're continuing to do the work. So so we wanna see something like that that's digestible to our parents so that they can understand that those people are still included and are still getting an equitable education that acknowledges the pieces that they bring to our learning communities. With that said, it being a working document,
I think with the clarity of what we were looking for, I'd like to see, us give an amended deadline where we can get so now that you have a little bit better idea what we're looking for, I'd like to see an amended deadline that, okay, we have a better understanding and we're going to bring something back at a date. Does that sound like I'm summarizing our board members? Trustee Innis and then Trustee Lecui? Yes. Just to piggyback on what you said, Trustee Alsbaugh, and knowing that this plan is it lives and it breathes and it grows with our district and
where we're at. And recognizing that, you know, miss miss Hampton, you mentioned the work that was done at the beginning of the year until about January, and then there was a change in the landscape. And recognizing that you know that as well, mister Russo, But, you know, it still doesn't negate what this is about. And I still wanna see that definition, and how it's defined in terms of, the education that our educators provide to our students in the classroom. And,
it it should be something that's forward facing for our community to see. I I feel really strongly Trustee Lacoue. I'm actually just a little bit confused on what people are looking for. Are you guys looking or you're looking to just engage like in an academic sense on this topic on the DEI acronym and I don't know or are you looking to see like what what actionable things are going on in the classroom? They've been telling us about some of that Like what is the directive to the administration? I don't understand it myself. Trustee Blake followed by Trustee Gupta.
So for me, the conversation has been helpful for a couple of reasons. First of all, I was under the impression because we see these plans come up at different times that you were picking and choosing to come forward and talk about these things. So that's why I was confused why this one was selected, but now I get that. But back to the substance of this, I understand that the landscape changed in January and that we're living in many ways under this oppressive kind of kind of situation right now where you can't talk about diversity, you can't talk about inclusion. Those things are not acceptable under this political climate.
But when we made the choice to get ready to get rid of the DEI director or we when the administration made that choice, our community was assured that we were still going to do all of the things that needed to be done to recognize the diversity and include children and provide equity. I sat at this board table and assured people that we were still going to do this work. Other people did the same. I would like to see a plan of what work are we going to do that is going to ensure that we're not going to suffer, for instance, because we don't have the DEI director or that we don't and that's a little
different than what this is. But what work are we going to do going forward to embed these principles that we have that we haven't changed to provide that comfort to people that we haven't totally changed the district, we're not going to, you know, the people who are concerned about the DEI director position and things of that nature. I would like to see somewhat of a plan. I don't know if that's the same thing or if that's a new thing, but that's what I'd like to see. Yeah, I mean for me what I'd like to see is what it says in here, to develop a common language as to what DEI is and is not.
And although this is under the project title, it says create a structured approach to communicating the purpose and impact of DEI work. So that's the piece about, you know, so this is what we mean when we say DEI. And quite frankly, if we aren't able to put that in words, then what are we actually doing? So, we should be able to define what DEI is and how it operates in our district. And I know that parent groups have have worked on that for many years, of which I was a part of that group when this work got going in
our district eight years ago or whatever it was. So, this would be have to start over because you need buy in from the current stakeholders, I think. But, but also these are not hard words to define. Like you can do we I mean, you know, like diversity is diversity. I mean, there's some different ways you can word it, but it is what it is. So, coming up with that common language and then how that operates in our district and figuring having a plan for how we're communicating that to our community. That's what I'd be looking for. Madam President, I guess Just one second.
Madam President. I'd like to speak. You're supposed to recognize someone today. I'm going to speak. I know, but according to Robert's rules, you're supposed to recognize someone who's requesting the floor before the president speaks. And Trustee Lukui, are you planning to speak or do you have a question? I have a question. And my question is will you please clarify that, of course, we can still talk about diversity, we can still talk about inclusion, those words haven't been outlawed in any kind of way whatsoever anywhere, right? I mean, like I'm not sure who you're asking. I would just say that personally,
I think that, it's made it trickier based on some of the executive orders. We've been doing it now even. I mean it's not we're allowed to talk about those things that is not that has not been outlawed. Okay. I guess for me okay, no sidebar conversations, please. For me, I would just say that, we are coming to a close in this sort of this first year. And I think between the combination of maybe what was originally in here and what Trustee Gupta had just indicated could be answered prior to the end of the year.
But I'll say that I agree with, Trustee Blake in that I think a subsequent potential deliverable for the following year might be to, to build on this would be to identify what type of things we're going to do to ensure that we're meeting what we feel we have to do and putting into that, how we're going to measure it. How are we going to ensure that we do that? Go ahead, Trustee or Mr. Russo. Thank you. I think as I've heard you're looking for definition, you're looking for artifacts,
you're looking for a plan for continuing DEI work, you're looking for a new deadline. I think that's part of what come into hopefully when when when Scott Fuller comes to talk in a in a few minutes here about what we're doing today and tomorrow, hopefully, this will kind of fit. And if there's further questions about this specific plan or its elements within it, I think we can address them, very specifically. I I just wanna come back to and I know a couple trustees have said it. This this the elements within this plan got very tricky starting in January. And whether or not you wanna argue the fact that it's risky or not risky,
or we can talk about it or we can't talk about it, the idea that, you know, former government officials and people who are discussing certain things on social media or putting things. There's a portal to report people when they're doing work. I think really everyone has to take a moment with our administrators and our teachers to recognize where we are. And that's all I'll say. Thank you. Mr. Cosimano, Plano fourteen. Okay. Top mic here. All right. Strategic Plan 14 is in the visionary of leadership. Vision statement is alignment between the district and schools will continue to ensure cohesive vision
progress. The deliverable is implement structures for alignment of the strategic plan, district, and school improvement plans. The project title is identify school level deliverables aligned with district deliverables. And the incentive is strategic plan deliverables will be aligned with continuous improvement. My KIPP goals, which is the Michigan Continuous Improvement Plan. And the success criteria is by 06/01/2025, '2 updates on district progress towards my KIPP, which is the Michigan Continuous Improvement Plan, will be provided as evidenced by Board of Education through meetings,
presentations of the progress with our leadership team, which we just did at the last board meeting. But I'll give you a little update of where we are. I'm gonna use my KIPP for Michigan Continuous Improvement Plan because it's a long word. So my KIPP is a platform developed by the Michigan Department of Education to support districts' continuous improvement cycle, which is planned, do, and act for the purpose of supporting the whole child. Districts generally will have one to two active system goals in the platform. These goals are intended to complement and support goals established by our schools through a
systems approach. Over the course of the year, various teams met to progress monitor current my kid goals, which we shared with the board at the last board meeting, work session. Multiple data sources were reviewed to determine progress on the goals and identify potential adjustments to strategies or activities. This information in the form of progress notes is entered into the my kit platform as a means of noting progress and potential adjustments. In the fall, school teams will collaborate as they review their data and set goals as as they
will focus on for the upcoming school year. This information will be reviewed by the curriculum department to determine how, as a system, we can support buildings towards reaching their goals through research based strategies vetted by the Michigan Department of Education. Updates will then be entered into the MYCAP platform and shared with stakeholders in mid fall, which we said we'd share with the Board in, I think, October and do another or September and then do another, like this time of year update on our MYCAP plan. So that's where we are. It's embedded.
It's something we have to do. It's something that we'll continue to do, but that's where we are with this deliverable. Are there any questions on 14 right now? All right. Seeing none, would you like to move to 17? Mr. Murphy. Thank you. Strategic Plan Goal 17 is structured around recruitment and hiring strategies. The deliverable includes including recruitment and hiring strategies in order to reach a broad diverse group of candidates, and the project title is around developing recruitment materials and processes for prospective hiring.
So the work in this area has kind of gone down two prongs this year, sort of the clarity and process of job postings and recruitment and then the reach of those postings. So the goal throughout the year and some of the work we've been doing is to get a wider reach, including posting positions on Indeed, statewide websites and reaching, hopefully, new markets for folks that are coming into the district. Adjacent to that, was mentioned earlier, there's been some other avenues to expand the hiring pool,
such as Talent Together, which we've participated in this year as well and will continue to expand next year. Also, I think what's important when you're looking to recruit something as simple as the clarity of a job posting. So we've developed a process this year to ensure that every posting gets reviewed prior to going up to make sure it's the most up to date. And if it does get changed, to share that out to the current practitioners as well, something that was done in the past but maybe not as regularly or as consistently. So we've had a real goal toward that.
Sort of the success criteria points toward June 1. To be honest, I'm not sure if I'll get there. And it doesn't sound like maybe that should be complicated, although we've had a nice curveball toward the end of the year this year, and that's our ParentSquare messaging system. So job postings now go out via our school messenger. To be honest, it's a little clunky. It's a little text based. It's probably not the most pleasing to the eye. And the new format presents some interesting opportunities, such as the applicant to translate the document if need be and then just visually
probably is a better tool. So weather between May 19 and June 1, able to successfully train, sort of our team and myself to get us to the point where they're all going out that way. Probably not, but I also want to get it right. So some of that end product probably will depend on getting caught up in that system to ensure that we're using it to the best of its capability. Happy to one additional part of recruiting is how you're going out and finding candidates. So typically, every year, we evaluate whether we need to do an internal job fair,
whether we want to go to external job fairs. So we've gone to a couple external. We decided not to do an internal this year. And really, that's sort of the changing dynamic of probably not needing to hire anywhere near the number of people that we normally do during this hiring period in summer. So not needing to do that this year, but still creating the process where that gets evaluated on an annual basis if need be. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you. I'll just ask, when it says marketing materials will be redesigned,
is that are are we only talking what comes out in parent square or email? Or is that, like, you know, hard copy materials for a fair or that type of of thing? That and working with our community relations department sometimes for positions of need and how we're going to, try to attract social media, flyers, additional ways to get that out. And that's an ongoing thing. It's an ongoing process. I don't think it's ever something that we would put in place for every position ever posted. But when there are positions of need,
that's a partner that we often engage with to try to reach additional. We've done that a lot of times hardest hire hardest jobs to hire in the district is the lunch NRB para or the lunch aide. So a lot of times, we've utilized that type of recruitment tool through the school newsletters. So it's sort of the continuous process to evaluate that as well. And then I'll just one other. When the deliverable is developed recruitment and hiring strategies, is there a document then that is, so if something happened to you, someone else could step in and they'd see something there? Yeah. We intend to kind of combine all that work toward the end with all of
the I think there's three plans that fall into my lane this year to house that in one area within our department. Did anyone else have any questions? Okay. So then are we moving on to Scott or Thank you, madam president. If I I think the If we can go back to the slides, I wanna go over the full, strategic plan real quick. Thank you. Right there. So, in your it provided for you in, in the packet for today, listed, again, to go over the the color coding that you had asked for. The board had asked for the color coding, and we're doing this monthly.
The green means it's on track. The yellow means it's off track. And blue means it has been completed already. And so just going through here, I just want to call attention to a couple. Plan number 15 is blue in the communications department. I know that the, I know there's a couple of questions regarding a couple of these, and I just wanted to offer the board any opportunity to do so. Number plan nine is complete as well. That is coded blue. And then the two that we have discussed, one we haven't discussed for a while, just to remind everybody about the grant opportunity,
that does not provide a list of provided, of approved, I should say, from MDE or the state, for literacy. That is that's why that one is yellow. And then the one we just talked about, DEI. I just want to give an opportunity to look holistically at this to see if there's any questions before we turn it over to to mister Fuller. And I apologize. I think it was out of order, in my stack, which is why I went last on this instead of first. I guess I I would just say I know I have communicated to you that, you know, I had come some concerns about some of these as being green,
but yet I didn't feel that they had specifically, hit the target of what that was supposed to be. You know, for instance, and I don't know what number it is. It's the one that, we're doing the parent square Mhmm. Is meeting there. And, you know, I I I have some concerns about that because this was supposed to be community engagement and a way for the community to be able to provide input to the district. And, it appeared that, like, surveys were only being done with
teachers and principals and that parents weren't really involved there. And that while Parent Square may be a great piece and it may be something we need, that I didn't think it really hit what the goal of that, that plan was. Thank you. I did, take that. I heard when we had that conversation, I think it's important to remember that for that specific as well, that one specifically only, I should say, it falls under the vision area that you approved, right? That we talk about two way communication. And I think there are a lot of things that are happening in two way
communication. And that's just one piece of that. We could have at our next meeting or after Scott Fuller talks today, kind of address some of those pieces very specifically on that one. Because I do think there are you know, we've had community forums. We're trying to look for a survey mechanism that's going to be, better suited to use across different departments and etcetera. How do we get feedback from families, post this presentation and presentation in the future of what strategic plan two will look like? I think that falls into the vision of of getting to two way communication,
but I think, ParentSquare was just one piece of that. But I I do hear you, madam president, and I wanna make sure that we're we're meeting the needs. I I just wanna say that I think there's there are pieces here that might not be delineated and in alignment with that plan. And I guess my piece is just that I wanna make sure that we're meeting the intention of what these were, and that, you know, especially when we're talking about community engagement, that that's where this fell, that it should have community involvement in identifying that part of it.
I hear you. Thank you. So I think it's time to turn it over to mister Fuller. Good evening, everyone. See if this work is this working okay? Yep. Okay. So it's not giving me the feedback, so I didn't know if I was doing it right. Thanks for the time today. I'll I'll be relatively short on presentation in order to be able to open it up to answer any questions or, or wonderings you might have about the process. This, you know, I was reflecting on this coming when my first conversations with the district actually happened about two years ago. First conversations just leading into this.
And many faces are different on this stage, than when we had first conversations. And that helped drew there were many different faces in the room today and tomorrow. And I mean that in a good way. I can't speak highly enough of the team's work and reflection today, and I'll talk a little bit more about that and their willingness to lead into some of the discomfort of doing something new. When we embarked on this journey with you, I think one of the things we made very clear in our first conversations and interviews and in our RFP response was we recognize this is not the norm and
this isn't how most districts do this work, that it's going to be different. And with that is a learning curve that comes especially in year one. So the key is for our leadership to model being learners, which is an uncomfortable position because typically, and I include all of you in this, we're here to develop people and empower people and do those things. And sometimes, it's uncomfortable for us to say, I don't know. Or, well, we're still working on that, and we're figuring it out. And again, just based on today and the people in the room and the conversations I heard,
they really leaned into that. And I can't say that about every group I work with. And I think those of you that have worked with me long enough know I don't just throw things out there to say them. I'm happy to keep my mouth shut if I don't have anything nice to say. So if I say something nice, I do mean it. I want to just spend a little bit of time covering where we've been very shortly, but also the work over the last over today and tomorrow and then what's to come and then field your questions. This actually does represent the end of our initial contract of the strategic planning work.
So our time with you on this scope of work is actually wrapped up after this work. So and we're our goal in all of that is to make sure there's a high level of understanding and really increasing the likelihood of sustainability and constant involvement of this work as the district grows, changes and conditions change as well. So I'll just start with where we've been and just remind those of you I know that went through it, but those of you that weren't part of it either,
just we started this with planning conversations and that included things like interviewing. We interviewed board members one to one. Every board member had a one to one conversation with me just talking about what you are hopeful about in the future and just having very blunt conversations about what your hopes and hesitations were moving forward, what was important to you and how we could get to a place where that might come forward in the work moving ahead. We put together we did a data review. We asked the district to share as much information as humanly possible with us and
they filled folders with surveys and videos and we started watching Board of Education meetings then. Your link is on my favorites list in the bars. So I would that's not an intimidation thing. I don't want you to think my eyes are always on you, but my eyes are always on you. I have been watching. So and that's helpful because as you know, we don't can things. We really work hard to support you and meet you where you are in your context. So we have to have a finger on the pulse of what some of the
issues are and what some of your conversations and discourse are frankly if we're going to come in and try to support you through that work. So we reviewed that data. We went into community engagement mode. If you remember, we did put out a survey and that survey was developed based on those conversations we had with you based on the data review we did. I think you'll remember we did several iterations of that where we sent a starter pack and you guys gave us all feedback. And I shared when we did that work of all the feedback, I think we received
somewhere around 15 or 16 pieces of very specific feedback, add this, take this out, change this wording. We responded we were able to respond to all of those items except two, because we just didn't have consensus as a board to move forward with that and we felt that was important. So we felt comfortable with that. That survey did go out. We had over 6,000 responses to that survey. We feel good about that number. We feel good about the representation in that survey and what we got. And then we synthesized that. As I said at the time, we view a survey like that to be good for one thing and one thing
only, figuring out the right questions to ask people face to face. It was not meant to be a decision making document. We put that forward in a report. We shared the report with the synthesis of what was shared in that survey, broke it down question by question and gave you themes. We then went into our focus groups and community engagement work. I think we engaged with over 400 people, face to face or virtually through video or phone calls. We did unlimited amounts of that. You guys scheduled us and I was very busy those days. I think my average on those days was about fifteen hour days.
I had a six a. M. Focus group with some parents because that's what worked best for them. And I had several seven p. M. And then presented with the Board. And then so we put the due diligence in there. We jammed a lot of interactions with students, families, community members that don't have kids in your district, educators, employees all throughout the district to do that work. And then we followed up with the offer to the community both in the public forum at the board meeting, but also we made sure I think it went out on your communication system at
the time to say, look, if you couldn't make one of these, here are some virtual opportunities and I know we put it out as well to say, if none of that works for you, here's Scott's phone number and email, feel free. And we did get people reach out. I got emails, I got phone calls and we just did one to ones with whoever wanted to talk. So, we felt really good about that. And then we came together. Some of you are part of this. We came together in a two day vision workshop where we presented some of that community engagement. We pushed the thinking a little bit about what education could be and where it's
going, had some really good conversations, and put you through a workshop where you are telling us what you wanted the direction of the district to be. From there, we put that into narrative form, which is now your vision document. And, again, that went through several iterations, where we asked people for feedback. Every board member at the time received a Google Doc with the vision draft in it, individually, and and every one of you provided several comments, questions and feedback. And we did I went back and looked at those about two weeks ago again.
And again, we were able to accommodate almost all of the specific suggestions that went in. And when people had questions, we worked to answer those questions until people were satisfied about why we wouldn't recommend this. Often, a recommended change, if we cautioned against making it, it was because, well, that's not what we heard from the majority of your community, and so we would want to honor that. Ultimately, it's your decision. So we went through several iterations before getting that approved. And then that's where the strategic plan work came in,
where you all and the district developed deliverables against those vision statements. Now if you remember at the time, some of you who were in there, I actually said, we're going to be sitting here a year from now and you're going to look at some of those things. You're going to say, what were we thinking? And some of them are going to say, okay, yes, that's still very relevant. And others are going to be maybe not so much anymore because the vision is your constant. Those deliverables are something you should look at annually. And it's not a wholesale, just change them, throw them out, add. It's being responsive to what the priorities and needs need to be as you continue
to learn and evolve as a district. A good strategic plan, we've said this all along, a good strategic plan is one that is a working document and it's agile and how it goes. I'll get to some of the concerns you were raising in the last conversation. You probably saw me over here chomping at the bit because they're good questions, and I appreciate them. And that I think that creates a healthy culture when we ask them. So we have to be in a good position to respond to those questions and make adjustments where needed. But once that strategic plan was approved,
we made ourselves available. We provided some recommendations for how to roll that out, some structure for doing health checks and doing some deeper reviews. And then we as we always have, remember, we don't start a clock when you call us. The contract is a contract. So we made ourselves available for the last year for on demand support for anybody that wanted to call us to ask us anything they wanted to about the planning process or just thought partnership or deeper questions. And I know I fielded some of those from even some of you through the
process. What that leads us to and that year one implementation, because it is different and, I think, especially in your case, like I said, there's a lot of 's a lot of different people on this stage right now. And when we started this work, we knew of one person that was going to be different. When we started writing this strategic plan and putting it together, it was, okay, we know we're going to hire a superintendent. We've had significant change. So what I'll say even about the team is, I think coming forward with some grace and understanding, they're curious about what they don't know and they're asking those questions.
It is tough to be handed something that you aren't sitting in the room for and operationalize that. And so I'm appreciative of the work. So what have we been doing? What did we do today and what will we do tomorrow? So this week's work is really focused on a couple of things. This morning, and we're this is a continual process, but we're really reflecting on the strategic plan that you just looked at. When I say reflecting on, what I've asked people to do is really think through what updates,
where are we? What's been accomplished incrementally or towards the big goal? But what's been accomplished? What have we learned through this? And I think it's important to call out that learning is a big part of this first year, especially. Sometimes you get in projects, especially when somebody else wrote sometimes and you don't have the context and you get down the road and you say, you know what? The context is different. This approach needs to be different. And we need to have the agility to shift there and engage in that learning. And that's why you see some changes sometimes. Again, it shouldn't in an ideal world,
it doesn't change the larger goal and what we're trying to get to. But we all know any implementation as first year rarely is a perfect world. And so we talk about that as well. Some of the reflection we've been doing and will continue to do tomorrow is things like what processes have worked for us in this and what processes haven't, what do we need to fine tune, whether that's how we report to the community, how we report to the Board of Education, the frequency of that work, how we work together to make sure we're all aware of changes that happen across projects that might need to happen and processes for that.
It's also just around things like, well, how do we make sure we're doing the right work the first time and get to some consensus and do things like write more effective and clear SMART goals and measurables for each of these projects. That's a huge focus of our work tomorrow. And the group knows that. I told them I would be a part of it. But that's something we usually do ramp up the learning on in year two. It's important. It has to be there. It's a critical part. So we have to provide that support and training and make sure we're doing that
fine tuning with your group to to make sure the measurables are right and we're prioritizing the right things and we're doing the work and being accountable to it. We work today to talk about some priorities, just knowing current landscape. We often frame that in things like we know there are some things we have to do. For example, I'm very aware of where your conversations around reading curriculum and where the state of Michigan is and this list that hopefully comes out in January 2026 that we're waiting on.
I've experienced that in other states with other partners and it's a painful thing. What I was encouraged by today is, well, that doesn't mean we stop our structured literacy work. That doesn't mean we stop anything. We don't need to wait on a curriculum. We really need to focus on resource agnostic strategies that are aligned to science of reading, that are aligned to structured literacy processes and make sure our people have the supports and training they need to execute those now. And then when a resource does come, we're we can easily take that on board and put it into our system of
our structured literacy model. It's stuff like that I think that that's why it has to be agile. Things come down the road all the time, and we have to have conversations about what barriers can be overcome and what can't, where we pause things or what work needs to keep going and how do we continue to work. Coming to consensus on some twelve month projects to bring back to you all for review and approval, to say, okay, over the next twelve months, here's what we'll do. Part of that is looking at the strategic plan and doing what we call a
plan record and that will be something you can look for towards the end of summer most likely as far as communicating very clearly what the work what work has been done and where we are going forward. One of the things we've been reflecting on and will continue to reflect on and I'll give very strong and direct recommendations around is something I've heard from you all, not just tonight, but as I've been watching too. We'd like to see more artifacts. Let let show us the work. And it doesn't I think part of that is
in the learning, there has to be a culture created where people feel comfortable and safe in showing work that's not perfect. And so the only way you do that is you show people work and and see how they react to it. Right? So I think that's the biggest challenge, of any school district's culture is to say, we are going to bring work forward. We're going to bring artifacts forward. And sometimes we're going to tell you, this is not the final product, but we want you to have eyes on this. We want you to know some of the challenges we're dealing with in this work, some of the barriers we're dealing with,
but also show you that we're moving forward in it. It. So we absolutely are having those conversations in these two days to really fine tune this process and frankly onboard the part of the room that wasn't there a year ago. And they engaged in some good learning today about where all this came from. For instance, they had time to read both the survey synthesis report and the focus group synthesis report. That's probably something some people haven't had time to do yet, and they got the time today because we need to keep that front of mind
when we're identifying priorities. They've looked at the work some of you all did last year in prioritizing things and saying, no, we needed to work on this, and this is really important to us. So getting to that right capacity, those right projects is going to be really important. And again, it's part of the process. As with the last time, it will come to you. We'll have some suggestions about how that gets presented to you and for your approval feedback. It should be an iterative process and a process that responds to feedback for sure as we go through this. And then really, I think looking for that in June is going to be realistic.
I'm going to push that as quickly as I can to give people the time to develop that, get some consensus amongst the groups. And then we need an opportunity to provide feedback and for people to respond to feedback. We did that last time, if you remember. People took a swing at it. We provided written feedback. We met with different people, remotely. We'll do the same thing again because what we want to do is make sure you get the cleanest draft possible, and one that the people around this stage can stand behind and the people in
the room can stand behind confidently and say, this is why this work was selected. This is how this work's going to look. And here's the accountability measure you can hold us to. And I think that'll be a more confident and stronger statement this time around because of the people that we've been able to engage with today and I get to engage with tomorrow. So with that, next steps and thinking about this, this group the group will complete those project details, map it all out. And again, we're going to be paying special attention to hearing the board.
I've been listening to board questions all year when these presentations have happened. It needs to be accessible so that you all can read through what the project is trying to do. And of course, you might have contextual questions, but you need to understand what the steps are, why they're happening and how to measure whether they're happening or not. We'll provide that feedback. That will all come to you all, obviously, again for approval. We at that point, that will be the end of our contract. We'll provide some recommendations about how to move forward that we've seen comparable districts,
utilize that have brought them great success. And we do have comparable districts that have found great success in doing this. And then it's your you'll see community engagements listed twice up there, and that's on purpose. I can't say this enough. That is an ongoing thing that should never stop. How are you onboarding people to the vision, to the strategic plan and helping people understand the language of what it is you're doing and the goals you have? And then through implementation of the plan, you need to engage the community by providing windows into the work.
And that's where the artifacts come in. That's where presentations come in. That's where conversations come in about pieces of the vision and the deliverables we're working on and and helping people understand the why and the what and the how and the impact it's having, whether it's on students because it's a student focused project or the adults in our district because some of them are focused there. So that's the work in a nutshell. Next steps, like I said, I wanted to be fairly short and sweet. You may have questions, and that's fine. And I'll take any that you have. But again,
I always appreciate the time and the learning that's going on about the process itself. And our experience of doing this for well over fifteen years, year two is always smoother. There's a deeper understanding of process and there's a deeper understanding of what the Board and community is looking for usually because you've had a chance to engage and do that learning. Trustee Blake? I just have a real simple question. Who are the people that are in these workshop identifying priorities and all those other things?
Yes. Well, if you're looking for names, I don't have them because some of them I just met today. But as far as makeup of the group, and please correct me if I'm wrong, we have cabinet in the room and we have several of your learning consultants in the room as well. Who else am I missing there, if anybody? If anyone else wants to jump in, I'm fine with that too. We have leads for plans. We have, our grant person. There's a host of people in the room. And to the point that Scott said, I'll I'll kinda go over through that again to make sure I don't skive over
it. We have cabinet members in the room. We have leads from plans. We have literacy coaches. We have MTSS coaches. We have, instructional technology, technology. So HR pieces, parts from all of our departments, and people who have led some of the work in strategic plan one and different makeup of the room. And I'll say Director Blake, I'll say that we always recommend that you get the people in the room that are the ones that will be operationalizing these plans. So just to follow-up, I thought last year that we had three board members that were part of the process.
And this year, apparently, we're not. And why has that changed? Yes. I'm happy to speak to that. Again, recommendation wise, what we found and I'm just going to be blunt here. We didn't feel that you had all of the people in the room that were operationalizing the plan. We feel like those like the learning consultants, for instance, are integral part and need to be there as those plans are written. And then as far as the board goes, bluntly, the culture didn't exist with the board in the room for people to have open and honest conversation to get to the priority work.
So our recommendation, where we've seen that work best, is for that to be mapped out and bring to the board for feedback and recommendation. It's not removing the board from this. But I when we came out, nobody on the board owned anything on the strategic plan. And so we want to keep you in the feedback loop. And certainly, you'll have that opportunity to say, here's what's missing. Here's what we need to see. So that was on our recommendation for sure. Trustee Lecui? Well, I find some of this kind of surprising because it was my understanding that the
role of the board is to set the vision and goals for the district to help guide those sorts of things. And when you don't have board members in the room, I do see that as being kind of problematic because what I'm hearing is I understand you have people who represent lots of different departments who are in the room, lots of different areas. But it sounds to me like they were maybe all RCS employees. And is that true? Yes. Okay. So they're all RCS employees, but this is the community's district and this is the community's board. And I'm just concerned about the community's voice getting lost in some of that.
Sure. Because even when we did the deliverables project last time, and I disagree with you that the culture was such that people didn't feel that they could voice their opinions because there was raucous debate even at some point when I was in the room before. And that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes that's good to be able to just let ideas flow. But the problem is I don't want the community's voice to get lost. And when we ended up coming up with the deliverables and you had you had made a statement that stands out in my mind where you said, don't just choose what's easy, choose what's most important, what's gonna impact student learning.
But a lot of the goals that got selected were things that we were that we were already kind of doing as a district. And some of the things that were harder to figure out, like things that the community asked for, like when they were looking for an IB program, for instance, or like when they were looking into, investigating block scheduling or some of those kinds of things. It got pushed out to future years. But once you come to the board with a plan, it's really hard to send that back or to tell people, well, we'd really like to see something completely different than what you worked on without us.
It feels like it's cemented. It feels like if you don't accept this, you're, you're dismissing all of the work that all of these people did. But the problem is the board is supposed to be part of that work and part of setting and guiding Yeah. Those principles. So how do you reconcile that? How do you reconcile that the community's voice was miss is missing from these meetings? Yeah. I'll I'll disagree with you on that. Like, there's a couple things. One, remember that the strategic plan is always guided by the by the vision, which the board was directly involved in developing and feeding back on and you approved.
The vision is vague, though. I would argue the vision is not vague. The vision is actually comprehensive and provides flexibility for how you attain those things that are listed in the It does provide flexibility because it's so vague. No. A vision is meant to be aspirational and provide room so that you have the agility to reach things. But I'm happy to disagree on that. But so you did set the vision, and you did approve the vision, and that's what the strategic plan is based on. As I said during the presentation, we didn't forget the community voice.
It's always something we put forward to think about. But two, there was dedicated time in that room today for people to go through somewhere around 50 to 60 pages of synthesis of community input that we received when we did this work. That's still relevant in our experience. I'm I'm concerned that the people who are actually that that there aren't people representing other parts of the community that might not have the same kinds of interests as I you you need to have a group that is just representative of all the
different stakeholders in the district, not just one group of stakeholders. Employees voices are important, yes. But it is the community's school district and Yeah. And as I said, we took that community engagement and put it forward facing and front and center today, when we started having that conversation. Like I said, you all if that feels awkward, or uncomfortable as a board to provide feedback to the administration once they come with a draft. Happy to have that conversation. But I would hope it doesn't to say we always frame it around, okay, what you're looking at here.
And I'm going to recommend that the district, when they present that, give the rationale and here's where this came from and here's why it's listed here. Here's why this and here's why now, for you to take on board and feedback on and share your perspective on. And then I would always say, what are your hopes, hesitations, and what's missing? And I see that as part of the duty as the board and responsibility to the board to do that. The way we look at it as the board, you're right, sets the vision, which you did, and that empowers the employees of the district to
realize that vision. Okay. So the board sets the vision, but they don't necessarily help in creating the deliverables in your opinion. That is the job of that. Sure. Trust Yili Kooi, let's allow some other people to have some time. And after we do that, we can get back. I'm going to ask a little bit of a follow-up question because and I'm not sure if it's Mr. Russo or if it's you. But Mr. Russo, I was under the impression and I didn't hear it during the presentation, which is why I'm asking that after the plans or goals have been identified that there was going to be some sort
of ability for the community to provide feedback, so not just the Board, but the community as well. So is that still a part of this? Or does that change? Yes. That will come forward in our recommendations about that piece with the community and getting forward facing. I can tell you right now, I would recommend smaller, more intimate groups even if that means a lot of them, because what we found is when you try to jam it's like we've said before, a camel is a racehorse designed by committee. Getting too many people in the room at once, it's not that we're trying to eliminate voice.
It's that voices don't come forward. And we want people to be able to have nuanced conversation about this with the district. So that is a two way conversation so that understanding is built and feedback is taken. So we will absolutely be providing recommendations around that and how you do it. Well, I wanted to say that, I really loved several of the things you said because I have felt that, while we give updates of, some of our plans that as a board and community,
we don't really know what's happening within that. So adding artifacts that would show, like you said, the and I specifically wrote it down here in my notes, the surveys or how students are doing on pilot programs or that type of thing would, I think would really add engagement and allow us to better understand what the impact is on these projects that are happening. But one of the other pieces, and I don't think I quite heard it in here is that I feel like
we really need to at some point be able to celebrate and truly understand what we completed in this 2024, '20 '20 '5 year. And if you've got thoughts on how we can do that so that we can see what did we really do and what is the impact going to be on our students? That's part of the conversation we had this morning. And that's the piece I said that I I would look for realistically towards the end of summer on that. I began a conversation with Lori Grine about some best ways to do that in
an engaging way and in an accessible way. So the language is accessible, people understand, and there are artifacts shared in that. So we started a conversation about what are some of the best methods for that and then certainly sharing what we've seen successful districts do in the past with that. Do you normally, when you do that celebration, also then kick off what the next year's are or to do or are those separate? No. Typically, they come in close proximity because there are some things on this year's plan that
will end up carrying over, and there will be continuations of the work based on lessons learned. So what you should see is that, that crossover happening and kind of that handoff versus Mr. Russo said earlier and called out some of the ones that are marked as blue and complete. And we talk about is that embedded. So it's not that we just stop doing the work. We feel that is cultural now if we mark that blue. And the work will continue to evolve and scale because that's just how we do things now, versus something where we say,
we need to we got a lot done on this and we need to have this represented in the next iteration of our plan because if we don't pay attention to it, we're scared it'll go away, and it's not quite habitual or in our culture yet. Thank you. Trustee Alsbaugh? Hi, Scott. Hi. We're glad to have you back. So I'm hearing that you're here for two days ish doing a workshop where you're going to create a plan record and specific projects for the next school year. So I'm assuming that's going to be done when you leave in the next?
Yes. Like last time, the process that happened there, we identified some what those projects were. And then part of our conversation tomorrow is setting timelines for how we proceed and when that's done. Typically, what happens is we set the stage so there's understanding in the room and then people go and write the plan details, measures, and that's when it starts going through feedback processes. Last year, for instance, that was taken to Team Rochester, I believe, it was referred to. So a wider group where people got into small groups and fed back on that
work as well. So that's some of the conversation about norms and agreements for moving forward that will take place tomorrow. Yes. I guess that's my question is, what is the time line? So it sounds like that will be part of the discussion. And I'm sure we'll get an update after the team sets up timelines because I'm wondering when is the feedback? End of summer, like what's your definition of like when would that be and all of that? Yes. I'm going to push I'll push, and I know Mr. Russo and I have talked about this. We're pushing to be able to have that draft for you all to look for and respond to in the month of June.
Trustee Gupta? So at what point in the process does Student Voice, come in to this? No, it's a great question. So there are a couple of things with that. One, student voice was absolutely included in our community engagement work. One thing we would always recommend and we said it at the time when we did, I think the last time I was in front of you talking about process, maybe even a year ago, we strongly recommended that, that sort of focus group cadence continue and that we continue talking to students
and representative students. For instance, not just our highest achievers, not just our most successful, but those who might have different challenges or just be disengaged for whatever reason. Maybe they're not being engaged at the level they need to be engaged. So that's something we would recommend. We're happy to provide structure for that. That's something you can do internally or bring somebody from the outside in to do as well. In a more mature state, again, I'm going to be pretty blunt here. What I'd love to see is those student representatives I saw earlier come up and tell you about all the
things that are happening in their school. I would love to see them engaged in the strategic plan and having some of those conversations about impact of work. They bring so much to the table during focus groups that we do work with districts where eventually students have been owners of managing plans on the strategic plan. It usually doesn't happen in year one or two, but I would strongly recommend that. We also work with districts that bring students into the visioning process when that happens, for instance, into the room. So I think there's a lot of opportunities.
I'm happy to talk through or list many for you that we've seen be really successful. But please, I hope students are involved in this more intimately and actually driving some of the conversation. All right. Did you have anything else, Mr. Raso? I just wanted to add a couple of things. Thanks, Madam President. Scott, when we we talked about celebration, madam president asked about what a celebration might look like, etcetera. And you talked, you talked about how some things are embedded and some things are still ongoing, etcetera. I I just wanna make sure that everyone understands what that really means. If we're a strategic plan,
if we if we had year one out of year five that we said, this is done, and we were saying, yes. This is done. And then we move on and we went to year two and then say, now that's done. That becomes very episodic in nature. And the celebration that it's done and we push it away is not the culture we're trying to build. So I just wanna make sure that what we're celebrating is what what what we're actually doing. Dave, mister Murphy had a good example today of something that in HR, as we improve onboarding, it doesn't mean it's a one year and done. Right? That we're gonna continue to as as whether the class is large of of new
staff coming in or whether it's small. There might be different feedback annually from that, from a survey regarding, you know, how how was your onboarding session today? How was your thirty day? How was your ninety day, etcetera? And if that needs to be improved, then we would change it, and and we continue to do that. So I think the celebration is about that it's being implemented and that we continue some of those things as a culture. I just want to make sure that we're all saying the same thing. Yes. And I agree. It's not a onetime event. Specifically, with the first year of the plan, we have that plan record that will come out. And I think that's an opportunity to kick off the celebration.
But I also think it's like community engagement with the plan. Incremental celebration throughout the entire year and directly connecting it to the work of the strategic plan becomes very important. Educators are notoriously bad about tooting their own horns. So we have to do it for them, and it should be done I had this conversation with the group today. I believe it should be done in the context of what work is happening to move the vision forward and strategic plan impact work. That should be the stuff we're celebrating, the most.
And we should hear about it often, whether that's in person, at these meetings. I love your student celebrations today because I think it hit a lot of different areas. State champions, sometimes people's minds go to straight to an athletics thing. So it's nice to see a mix in there of different things. But I think that's the regular, right? And the more we can connect that to the work of the strategic plan and the vision, the better because that's going to help people understand the work, but it's also going to continue to incentivize your best educators and your best employees
to do the work because that is a huge incentive for them. We know because they tell us that. And you should see the smiles on their face when they talk about the work they've accomplished when we force them to. All right. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate that. At this point, I'd like to take a short break. It's 09:12. And if we can all come back in like five or six minutes, that would be great. Thank you. If I could have people return to the stage, please. If I could please have board members and staff members return to the stage,
please. Mr. Russo? All right. We are returning here at 09:20 and, we are moving on to eight point two, which is the superintendent's update. Mr. Russo? Thank you, Madam President. Just a few things before I turn it over to mister Murphy to discuss, something. We continue to monitor the cell phone bill. Currently, there are two versions of the bill, one in the house, one in the senate. Legislators have taken feedback and made changes to the bill such as exemptions for students who may need a personal device for monitoring medical conditions and local board adoptions that allow local school districts to pass policy that makes sense for their community,
rural communities and and urban communities and some some suburban communities might feel a little bit differently on when and how a student might need, a personal device, given the fact that some schools just don't have transportation, etcetera. So we're monitoring that. We believe that that's going to be something that's getting some serious legs and will and will be passed soon, for the consideration for the governor. And then we continue to monitor the budget process. Currently, the school aid fund is in really good shape, based on the rest of the based on the state estimating conference last week, but the rest of the state core categorical revenue estimates are not good.
And so, while the school aid fund sits over here and looks looks like it's doing what it's supposed to do, it's making money as it it's putting the right amount of money, if not a little bit more than expected. I continue to work with legislators and lobbyists to protect another raid from the school aid fund from, other lobbyists and other, interests. For a bit of history, we've had years where the school aid fund was taken taken up from, with higher ed, which became permanent, as most of you know, and then other state based projects. So, that's something we're monitoring pretty well. We had a great first day with, Scott Fuller today. The team dug into
not only where we've been in gathering artifacts and etcetera, but looking at where we're going. And so tomorrow should should prove to be, should prove to be really beneficial. Lastly, I continue to monitor the movement at the federal level regarding potential cuts to Medicaid and title one. As been, told to us by many legislators that that's those are the things we should be looking at in terms of potential cuts. We don't see anything yet. I think there's a lot of back and forth right now if you're following the news with Medicaid. But little title one has kind of been in the background and not getting a lot of national attention, so we're making sure that,
we're watching that. And lastly, I'll turn it over to Mr. Murphy to discuss some changes being made, internally based on grant funding. Mr. Murphy? Thank you. I want to discuss the behavior interventionists, share with the board and community. This is a talented group of caring people. They've worked hard to serve this district the past two years. They've served it well. They've served our students well. They've served our families well. This elimination of these positions are in no way a reflection of that work, no way a reflection of the folks that have been hired to do the work
or even the realization that there continues to be a need in this behavioral space in elementary. A little bit of background. These positions are funded by 31 AA funding, which has been cut for this year by 50%, totaling around $1,700,000 going forward. Sorry. And because of that, it was decided to sunset these positions in elementary, that have been in place during the '23, '20 '4, and 2425 school year. I will say that as continued COVID era grants intended to support expected behavioral needs
and or learning loss continue to fall off or be reduced, difficult decisions such as this may need to continue. We are planning a more sustainable model that could still utilize a lesser amount of remaining grant funds with the expectation that that model could continue with or without ongoing additional grant funding. However, in the future, this would always be subject to the needs and the finances at that time. In total, there were nine REA employees, which amounted to 7.5
FTE, that are now considered displaced heading into next year. They are owed positions in our district so long as they're certified teachers and they have appropriate evaluation ratings, disciplinary records, and seniority. So we will be finding a home so we will be finding a home for them, and that process is currently underway. I just want to thank them for their energy, their expertise and their care for our students and families the past two years. Thank you. Madam President? Trustee Lecui? Would you mind repeating? I just missed how much money were we getting per year from that 31 AA grant? Mr. Murphy, did you say it was $1,700,000
that we were getting? Or I did not say how much we were getting. I said that we had roughly a 50% cut, totaling nearly $1,700,000 So the 50% cut was 1.7? Thank you. But you said that's not how much we were getting? 1,700,000.0 was the cut, about 50% cut. Mr. Russo, did you have anything else? I do not, just if there's any questions or comments. Trustee Annas? So, you you touched briefly on, you know, watching, the budget that's being developed. I know that one of the line items in the budget,
the school aid budget, was $350,000,000 for school safety and mental health. Now, you know, and just in terms of this discussion, obviously, I'm not sure how that that bucket of funding is going to be specified to districts. It could be a grant based situation again. But, you know, has the district considered that if that comes through through the next school aid budget that, we could consider supplementing that reduced reduced loss for some of these,
BI positions. So if it's safety, if it's school safety, it would probably fall under that grant, but we would have to check and see if anything changed. But yes, we've I've openly said to to folks who have who have reached out about the behavior interventionist, positions that we that were eliminated, that if funding changes, even in good you know, in a good way, we we we we would reevaluate and put that in writing. The same goes for the other. If it's, if this comes in, then it's a per pupil, you know, I keep going back. I feel like I'm a broken record sometimes in how last year there was all these promises made and then at the very last minute there was nothing.
So if that happens, right, then there could be more cuts. And I think that's what Mr. Murphy was trying to allude to in very different ways is to say, you know, all of these decisions are based on what is right now or we're trying to make our best guess based on what we know. In the past week, I mean, did that answer your question, Trustee Nance? Yes. I guess the follow-up I had was, obviously, we're committed to ensuring that, the students that we have who need these intervention supports get that support. So moving forward with this 50% reduction in the cost of that and also in
the staffing reduction to provide that service, what is the plan, the model plan looking moving forward? Do you have that yet, or are you still thinking about it? We do have a plan. We have a pretty, robust plan. I think our principals were just made aware of this. Our elementary principals were just made aware of this on Thursday, miss Hinton, or Friday? Thursday. And we'd like to present to you the the the entire plan. One of the things we didn't do tonight because the agenda was so full. It is not like we were trying to push it back. We wanted to make sure that was rolled out appropriate,
right, that our staff knew what that looked like, etcetera. And then we'll present it to you as this is our this is, what we're going to do. What I what I will say from a general general idea is that it's very comparable to other systems that are used in in districts around us and and across the country. And I do feel that it's ours is enhanced, that it crosses over to a gen ed lane, that can also bridge and and be less in isolation or less siloed our gen ed versus special education. Right? There's some behavior interventions and the ways to address behaviors that,
special education teachers and registered behavior technicians are so skilled at, that they can help some t some general education teachers who might not have been privy to behaviors like this prior and not understand how to how to deal with that in a classroom, etcetera. So there there's it's a robust, learning model and application of our of our of our people. But just remember, we had to reduce, you know, almost a million dollars in just that little piece of it, as part of this grant. And just as a follow-up to that and I think the biggest concern from you
know, based on the feedback we heard tonight during the comments is just that it was so embedded throughout all of our elementary school, you know, school buildings. You know, my concern is that you're going to spread people really thin, and you're not going to be able to service the students that obviously need the help the most help. So I will be interested in seeing what that plan looks like when you're ready to roll it out to us, hopefully sooner rather than later. Does it work? It works. Okay. So we lost about 50% of the funding that was towards this.
How can we remove all of the roles and just not 50%? We lost 50% of of the allocation for safety, security, and mental health. So some of those things we chose to keep, some things we had to reduce. So there was more than just behavior interventions. Behavior interventionists paid out of that allocated money. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. Trustee Blake, then Trustee Lacoue? Well, my question was going to be what the plan was. So it sounds like you've already, touched on that. I guess I'm wondering, because we've only had these positions for two years,
what did we do before that? Like, what did we do to deal with these types of situations? Is the school do we are there still school counselors? Is this something that they do? I know they don't go into classes. I guess it's fairly new. What did we do before? Yeah. I think I I don't wanna speak for what we did before in Rochester specifically, so I will turn that over to a former elementary principal in Rochester, Mr. Murphy, for that portion of the question. But I will say as a general statement, I I wanna be clear that even if we didn't have a replacement plan, which we do, and let's say we didn't,
there are still teams of human beings inside the elementary schools that can service people who, service students who who need help. And we're doing it through the MTSS process. Right? We have social work, psych, etcetera. It's it's really hard. It is really hard when you have a new position that's presented and now you as I think trustee Ennis worded it, embedded. Right? They feel like they're part of this is now I'm leaning on to this, and I'm leaning into this because I have a student crisis, for example, or a student comes in crying because of something or whatever the whatever the reason, they had this person to turn to,
for half of the day. Is that a fair assessment? Because there's 7.5, we have 13 elementary schools. Is that about right, Mr. Murphy? And so, I think what to to answer the question, what did we do before, I wanna turn it over to Mr. Murphy because I wasn't a principal. Yeah. You alluded to it. There are child study teams. There's groups of people. Let's be honest. So we wouldn't have added these positions if we didn't see a need for it, right? So to say that removing them makes things equal going forward, that's not genuine. Right? There's there's going to be additional work there like there was prior to them coming into that two years ago.
The principal was more involved directly with maybe some of those, I call them soccer fight type issues. The the special ed social worker who's really there funded to help special ed probably stretched what they were doing to help in the general ed lane more than we would have liked, and the team worked together on all of those issues. So, again, this isn't to say that all the elementary children behaviors haven't solved, but we have a reality also related to how much funding we get,
how much directly to affect classrooms, class sizes, which is another huge debate and huge issue and something we wanna keep low. And then I think most importantly, whatever model we come up with needs to be able to withstand the current complete unpredictability of the budgeting process from both the state and the federal government. We can't, in my opinion, even if funding was to balloon at the last minute because of the political whim this year in Lansing, to then expend all of that on staff, which might disappear in a year and we might be right back here.
I don't know how wise that would be given how unpredictable everything has become. So I think the goal of our team is to create a model that's still supportive. But could maintain it not being grant funded. So it's embedded and also will stay in place no matter what the current, whims are. Again, always subject to the catastrophic change that could come because you never know at that point if the budget is in such a situation or the funding is in such a situation that you're looking at all options.
So it is a choice. There are other positions funded. If the grant funding continued to be reduced, we'd have to continue to look at that. Enrollment and enrollment projections across the state and in our district, we have to look at that as well. Not an easy decision, and it's not, again, to reflect the work being done. I would have been surprised had we not heard negative feedback about this decision. That would have told me that the work wasn't being done. So I give the folks that came here credit and even the ones that weren't
here that really I met with individually, who shared their passion and shared how much, they thought this there was an ongoing need for this in the district. And I don't disagree with them. It's not an easy decision, but it's also we have to be prudent and we have to make tough calls sometimes, not knowing exactly the funding picture going forward. Well I have a few questions related to this. It sounds like, you know, you don't want to pay for critical jobs with one time funds, generally speaking. And so one of my questions is when when teachers were recruited to these roles, did they have an understanding that these roles were somewhat temporary given that they were
tied to this grant? And I'm also wondering what we chose to keep instead, that was kind of a follow-up to trustee Lauzon's question. And I'm also wondering if we've got a new sustainable model for the future, do we have an understanding about why the mental health crisis in elementary school is increasing so much more from where it used to be? Because it seems like we need to understand what's going on there in order to be able to address it. I what was that? Computers? Mister Russo, can you have There's there's
I I could've heard that. There's many parts to that, so I just wanna assure the first part, I just wanna make sure I'm addressing it, Trustee, was what what did we decide to keep based on the fact of a reduction in funding? Is it the general idea? Well, my first one was I can get the first one. Did the teachers understand that these were somewhat temporary roles that they were being, you know, Well, my first one was I can get the first one. Did the teachers understand that these were somewhat temporary roles that they were being When these were posted, they were posted as grant funded. Okay. It didn't say if the grant goes away, the position goes away because I think as a team, we believe that that's not automatically the case.
Right? So if you you have a you have a grant and it allows you to spend it on certain things and you create positions based on the rules of the grant and the grant goes away, does that automatically mean those positions go away? I don't believe it does. I believe at that point in time, you do a reevaluation of of what you're funding with that grant, and you make decisions based on that. So, it wasn't inherently explained that, no. Automatically, something would end if grant funding ended, but when they're posted, they're posted as grant funded positions. So Right.
Because you could find the money in the general fund if you felt that it warranted that. Correct. Correct. Okay. And then what like, with this grant money, you mentioned that we chose to keep other things instead. So what we're Mr. Murphy or Mr. McDaniel, would you like to jump into that? I mean, I can speak in generalities, but I think if you have these acts Yeah. I mean, looking at can you hear me? Keep talking. Is this better? Yeah? Okay. Alright. So just looking at what's in the twenty four-twenty five grant, and I want to remind everyone that we're a year behind,
right? So we're using last year's grant to fund this year's position so that we had a little bit of time. We added what was Safe Ed at the time but is now SCC Shield at the middle schools. That was funded through this grant. We've added, Steve Shettinhelm. He's funded through this grant. We've added, counselors, through this grant. We've added Syntegix through this grant. That's a continuing cost. And then, there's been various other items. I don't know that any of these will continue, necessary next year. We added AEDs to meet that upcoming requirement. I believe we'll have met that,
once these machines are here. We've added security cameras, door card readers, items like that. Okay. And my last question was about what do we understand about this mental health crisis in elementary school and why it is increasing. You know, this used to be a large part of what behavior management is a large part of what teachers do in the classroom to try to do what they do. And so what's going on there? Why is this problem increasing? Yeah. I'd I I'm I'm not a mental health professional, but, I mean, what I know about kids for the last twenty eight years,
being an elementary school principal and an elementary school teacher and an assistant superintendent, now in this role, kind of having a 10,000 foot view, there is it's not it's not only restricted to K-five. Right? The mental health concerns are are pre k to 50. Some of the mental health concerns are really born from parents as well, right? Parents' overuse of cell phones. Parents you know, there's many reasons for it, but I'm not a mental health professional. I think, to the to your question, if we had an answer to that, we wouldn't be in the position we're in where states are trying to fund mental
health issues. I don't have an answer to what you know, what's the magic answer to what's happening. I think post COVID, there's a host of issues that have that have risen. Okay. Next, we have an update regarding curing stubs. Yes. So, to set this up, and I know that's already in part of the slide, but I just wanna set it up for for miss Hampton and the board. In March, you asked us to come back from May 19 with a recommendation for what excuse me. A recommendation for what we will be doing with caring steps. And so this is, well, actually,
I I believe I miss spoken the date. I think you said May 14, and that was because we were preparing for the May 19 meeting. And so, we are here and gonna give this presentation on what what we see as the next move for for how to use the facility and how to best service our our community. Ms. Hampton. Thank you, Mr. Russo. The, the update starts with, a bit of the history that Mr. Russo was just mentioning, the March 17 board meeting and the request that was made through that motion. During that meeting, we spoke about a number of, matters specific to the Caring Staffs facility that included,
impediments with, staffing leadership, staffing classrooms. We discussed the capacity of the center that has been impacted by a variety of variables over many years, including challenges with third party staffing structures and, a bit about how the year round care model is creating some challenges to create good continuity with. To create good continuity with. We're gonna move into some examples of the twenty fivetwenty six, early childhood plan, which is really designed to bring some stronger alignment in the coming year by mirror
mirroring, many of our pre k programs that exist across four other elementary campuses in the district. And so I'll walk through those. We are proposing to offer pre k three, pre k four, and the Great Start Readiness program across five locations in the coming fall, and that would add caring steps to the existing four elementary schools. And all programs would run as school day offerings, meaning, that that's a bell to bell 08:30 to 03:30 or nine to four class construct. We would also continue to consider the ways that early childhood special education supports services
and, education, supports services and, drop whether drop in or direct classroom instruction, can be housed at the Caring Steps campus as currently are. And then, we've also considered some ways that we would propose supporting staff retention and growth, and that is to include all early childhood staff, including the director, as Rochester Community Schools employees. I'm gonna break down each of these programs that I'm talking about so that you can see, their comparison points, and then Mr. McDaniel will join me on the back end of this presentation with a bit of
the financial detail. So that's kind of the big picture of where we're headed. The Great Start Readiness Program, for the group's knowledge is a registration process directly through Oakland Schools. This is a countywide registration in all counties as that's how the funds enter into, funnel into school districts directly. So as families register, the Oakland Schools or our intermediate school district houses that wait waitlist for us. We fill all of the seats that we have requested and have available based on our facilities, and the space within.
And at this time, there are 53 Rochester area residents that are sitting within that waitlist. So while we have access to some of that information, we don't directly place them. That's a process for later on as we move through. Per pupil revenue is going to be varied based on that program model, and we'll talk about a bit of that in a minute. A GSRP classroom needs one lead teacher and one assistant, and then depending on the configuration, may also need some care providers that are providing some coverage across lunch and other
other various points of the day. Our pre k three programs, are held two days a week for three hours a day, and our pre k four programs are held three days per week at five hours a day. We have currently 69 children waiting for a three year old classroom and nine to 10 depending on the day. This this data is about a week old, waiting for a four year old classroom placement. And the tuition, for each of those programs are are respective there, $2,050
annually for three year old preschool and $49.80 annually for pre k four. The staffing needs for those classrooms are also consistent. And then for our three year old summary data, you see here the four, I'm sorry, the three locations that are currently supporting three year old preschool at Hampton North Hill and the North Hill early childhood special education classroom. We would propose to add three year old tuition classrooms at Caring Steps facility as well. The number is to be determined still and you can see the enrollment that we're
anticipating for the twenty five-twenty six school year. You'll see 15 of 16 enrolled in one classroom at Hampton, for example, 16 of 16 in another, and the wait lists respectively with each of those classrooms. And then I'll move forward to the four year old, version of exactly what the three year old looks like. So just trying to be a little less, a little more clear with delineating between three years old and four year old care because once we're four, we're also eligible for GSRP. So our four year old care may fit a variety of configurations.
Some of these students come three days a week for five hours, others come four days a week, all school day long, and yet others are also in a half day GSRP classroom, which is slightly less popular particularly if you're the PM section. You can imagine that midday transition to school is a little less desirable for most families and we've been told directly by several that are enrolled there that should a full day spot open up, they will vacate this classroom as quickly as they can in lieu of a full day placement. Sometimes that may be within our district and sometimes not.
Remember, the county is placing students for us, so they give priority to the area of residence. But should another school district have a vacant seat, that opens before hours opens, that resident would be able to take a spot in Troy, Avondale or a place like Goddard or KinderCare, anyone hosting a GSRP program. And we know that the county is certainly looking to expand in all area facilities that they can fill. So, the placement for GSRP is a little nuanced. But you can see our classrooms
at Brewster. We have two GSRP classrooms there, and they are currently enrolled with three spots remaining, again, as of about a week ago. You see that Hampton has five GSRP classrooms if we stay on that side. That has two half day configurations and three that are not. And the 86 of 90 is spread across all of those classrooms. Obviously, we don't have 94 year olds in a classroom or we would never be able to staff that configuration. But for clarity's sake, that just just represents all of the students enrolled in that model at Hampton and then you see the tuition classes within.
Caring steps is down below and we have requested for two Great Start Readiness programs to be launched at Caring steps in the fall, and we would operate that particular each of those classrooms as a Monday through Friday program option. So GSRP calls that an extended day. GSRP is built for a four day model with the fifth day that has had a variety of requirements within it from home visits to staff planning to record keeping to assessment tasks. They're all required of this program.
And when you're directly teaching children for five of those days, you have to make space for how those other those required tasks still exist and sit somehow within the teacher's scope of work. So the Caring Steps facility would operate at a five day extended day option and then we would explore into next school year how our four other elementary locations may or may not expand into that five day model as well. That's something we always have our eye on, but I'll save that update for the end. You can see that families have a lot of choice within each of these descriptors.
Some do prefer a half day program. Some prefer that Monday, Wednesday, Friday model that GSRP doesn't currently offer. That's That's a four day a week, half day model. Some are looking for a full week placement. So the location we know also has some impact. If there are older siblings within the elementary school, families are interested in retaining their spot at the elementary that provides care obviously for their their k-five students as well. Mr. McDaniel, are you ready to jump into the financial parts of this? Yes, I think it's my turn, right? So as Mrs.
Hampton said, GSRP, there's a regular Monday through Thursday programming and extended day, which is really like an extra day. I think extended day, you kind of think extended hours, but our Monday through Friday is extended day. Paid at two different ranges because of the number of hours. For our regular, GSRP, dollars 5,092.5 per slot. These are half day slots. Dollars 6,111 per slot for the extended day, the Monday through Friday program. There's a maximum of 18 slots per classroom. The district requested 72 slots, so two full time classrooms,
right? Two full time 18 student classrooms. So 36, full time students securing steps, with Oakland Schools. That would award us about $440,000 of which Oakland Schools gets to retain about $40,000 of that for management costs. When we look at expenditures, keep in mind this is two full time classrooms. So we have two teachers in the budget, two associate teachers, and two caregivers to meet the requirements that missus Hampton outlined. The two teachers, we're estimating about $157,000 For the two associate teachers,
a total of $113,000 and then the two caregivers, limited hours, about $30,000 there. We've also put in some of the district administrative costs. So that's our leadership, our early childhood director, and the support for that. And then programming costs total about $27,000 A lot of these are smaller items, so I've just given you some examples of what those could include. Consumable materials, creative play, I think we get into detail of what the difference is between consumables and creative play later on. Food. Food is part of the GSRP program.
Substitute teachers and staff, mileage for home visits, parent meeting materials, etcetera. So on the next slide, we'll show you kind of a summary of what that looks like from a cost perspective. Revenue, about $440,000 again, when we total the different costs, the Oakland Schools Management, the staffing costs, the, district administration costs, and then the programming costs, that's about $412,000 So that leaves, just under $28,000 which we could apply to support the cost of the Caring Steps facility. We're able to prorate based on the actual usage of the space in that building
to cover various facility costs. So that wouldn't cover all of carrying SEPs, but, you know, up to about $27,000 20 8 thousand dollars of those costs. For starting up these classrooms, we need furniture, consumables, and creative play. So, district staff have estimated that furniture is about $17,000 for the two classrooms. Again, this is a two classroom total. They need areas for rest. They need areas for art, reading and writing, for blocks, for house, and for math and science. And then consumables, I think that's probably the easiest one to understand. Paper, pens,
pencils, paint, things like that. And then creative play materials, letters, blocks, paint cups, those are creative play. To go back to consumables, just under $2,000 for that. And then the creative play, about $5,800 So, GSRP is a very popular program. Initially, you could apply for startup grants for these classrooms that were $50,000 On April 28, Oakland Schools informed everybody that those grants would be reduced to $40,000 because of, I guess they're running out of funds. And then on May 9, they communicated that,
sorry, there are no more funds available. So for these two classrooms in particular, we will not receive any startup costs. Next, we'll go to the tuition based model. Right? So this is more under district control. GSRP is a state grant program. So the way our tuition based pre k four year old model looks is tuition costs $4,980 maximum enrollment of 18. We've given you two models here so you can kind of see a difference. A full classroom at 18 and then on the right there, a classroom at twelve. So,
really the differences are in the revenue. The expenditures, the staff members, dollars 50,000. Program costs are small. And then spreading our administrative costs, our leadership team and support staff across, one well, two GSRP classrooms and then, one pre k four classroom and one pre k three classroom. Now these are fixed costs, so if you open more classrooms, that number would become smaller. So about $15,000 for those costs. For Pre K four, if it's full, that nets about $23,000
If we're if we're at 12, then we lose about $6,500 and maybe make a decision that we don't operate at twelve. Maybe we wait till thirteen or fourteen. That's kind of a decision that we can make based on the need that that appears. Right? So that's the the one question, that I have, especially when you can get, GSRP for free. Who's going to pay for, pre k four tuition base, right? If you could pay $5,000 or zero, maybe you pay zero. So, that's a program that will will, really base on need. Pre k three is slightly different.
That's our next model. So that's $2,050 annual tuition. Enrollment here is capped at 16. And again, we've modeled it at twelve. As Mrs. Hampton mentioned, these are shorter hours for the pre k three year olds. So $20,000 in staff costs, program costs slightly smaller, and then again spreading those administrative costs. So pre k three is interesting because even at a full program, we don't make money on pre k three. As Mrs. Hampton, outlined, right, that's where we're seeing most of the wait list. Most of our, need is there.
And so I'm not sure. One thing that was unique, this year with GSRP is that if you had a student that was in the pre k three program, you automatically got into GSRP. So there's different, timelines with GSRP, and maybe Mrs. Simpson understands them a lot better than I do, but, you know, at certain income levels, if you ask in say January, you might get put on a waiting list. If you ask right now, you're in if there's a spot open. So I'm not sure if that's why. You know, people have gotten the news and shared that with their friends that, hey, if you're in pre k three, you automatically qualify for GSRP.
We don't know that that's going to necessarily be true next year, but that's what happened this year. The next piece that I want to look at is the wage scale. So two slightly different wage scales. Pre k tuition based, we have a pre k teacher and a pre k assistant. The pre k teacher has a 10 step schedule, starts at 22.58 and tops out at $28.93 Whereas the assistant is $15.63 and then tops out at $18.26 On the GSRP side, there's some different rules, with pay when it comes to GSRP.
For example, during COVID, we were able to give bonuses to our tuition based staff that we could not with GSRP. So those staff are on a five step schedule. Our GSRP teachers dollars twenty five point six zero per hour to start off, up to $30.36 our associate teachers, dollars eighteen point three seven up to $20.4 and then the caregivers, dollars fourteen point five eight to 16.58. Not my area of expertise necessarily, but lead teachers are required to have a bachelor's degree in early childhood education
or a related field, and a Michigan teaching certificate with an early childhood education endorsement or a ZA. Associate teachers typically have an associate's degree in early childhood or a CDA credential. Or I guess there's another option of an existing one hundred and twenty hour approval. So on the financial side, a few different considerations. You know, from our approach, demand is going to dictate the offerings at Caring Steps. We're not exactly sure what the makeup is going to be. We can apply for additional GSRP classrooms in the future if need should demand that. We have the option to run pre k three or pre k four tuition based
programmings. Those are completely under district control. So if there's a need, I think we'll have some serious discussions of, you know, pre k three because we lose money, how many of those we wanna run. Maybe we want to run and meet the entire need, but with the understanding that we would lose some dollars on that model. Pre K-four, I think, to me is the one that's most in question just because, again, would you pay $5,000 for a shorter program or nothing for a five day program? That's a decision that our families will have to make. You know, with pre K for all a big topic in the state,
we're going to prioritize filling those GSRP classrooms. So that means, 36 GSRP students at Caring Step is gonna be the first, place that we work to fill. And, you know, when you think about tuition costs in pre k-three, right, you saw that we've run that at a loss, even if it's full. You know, we believe that we're committed to that. We don't want to go back to families and say, Hey, you know how we enrolled you and said your tuition was going to be this? Well, we need to up it to this. We don't think that's the right thing to do. Though, with the structure, I think twenty six-twenty seven is kind of the big year,
right? So there's a lot that we'll learn in twenty five-twenty six as far as childcare program when it comes to pre k three and GSRP and all that. And I think we'll look to probably restructure and maybe do things differently in twenty six-twenty seven based on what we learned during the current year. I think that's all that I have on the financial pieces. I think I'll turn it back to Mrs. Hampton unless there's specific financial questions that I can answer for you now. Trustee Alsbaugh? I have two questions, but I'll just start off with one. The cost that you've given us for the pre K,
all of these programs, that's not unique to carrying steps. That is the cost structure no matter where that program is in the district. Is that right? Correct. And then I see you've got the wages here. What is the starting how do these compare to the wages for GenEd Para? Give me a second, I can pull up the contracts. Can take another question while I do that or we can sit in silence. Trustee LaSalle? This would be for Kimberly, I would think. What's the plan if sorry. My mic is loud. If the five day does not get approved,
would we do another back to a four day? Or The five days sorry. Okay. The Caring Steps facility in its application for five days of GSRP has been approved in terms of the number of seats and slots that can be assigned to the district. The agility to downgrade that, if you will, or backstep that to four day, I don't have that answer. I I don't know if those sit in different pots or or exactly how that process works. But at this point, we have let them know that the the five day extended day is what we were looking to support.
Trustee Blake. A few things as I'm going through here. So the waitlist according to this is 53 Rochester area residents and we're going to try to open 72. This is for GSRP. Sorry. 36. Right. 72 slots, which is 36 kids so that, but this would require all those people to want to go to Kerik steps for it. And we don't know if they're going to want to do that. But if we get it full, then that there's a surplus of twenty seven thousand and six sixty eight. But if we don't get it full, you know,
we lose out, let's say five slots or five kids rather, then we're back down to a loss on the GSRP. Am I reading that right? No, you're correct. Okay. And then the second thing, so for the pre K-three, where no matter how we figure it out, no matter how full it is, we're going to lose money on that. But for the pre k-four, it depends. But, and we can decide not to do pre k-four if we kind of want to, I don't want to say force, but urge the people into the GSRP, right? Okay. Those Okay. Those are clarifying. So I can come back to Trustee Alsbaugh's question,
if now is appropriate. So, this is twenty fourtwenty five salary schedule for repairs. We're currently negotiating that contract. There's three different rates for our PIRAs. There's the non instructional rate, which I believe is the noon recess bus PIRAs. They start off at $13.25 There's the instructional rate that starts off at 15.25 and then the categorical rate that starts off at 16.75. Is there a reason why we are doing the Monday, Wednesday, Friday four year old versus requesting additional GSRP?
Is that a parental desire? Or is it because we didn't have any GSRP available? No, I think we can continue to request GSRP. I don't think that's been expended yet. I think we wanted to give options to our families, right? So that's the typical pre K-four programming. And And if it comes back that, you know, GSRP has a waitlist, I think we would go to Oakland Schools and try to apply to add a third or fourth classroom there at Caring Steps. There's definitely the space. I'm not sure if we'd have to get any rooms relicensed,
but we can certainly do that based on the need. And on the furniture piece, is the GSRP not able to use any of the furniture that was already in the preschool in the caring steps? I think some of it, they can. The infant and toddler piece wouldn't apply, so we would look to probably auction that. I don't know if that would sell. There's been some conversation with our pre k team that that could help offset some of the cost of the start up. Though, in talking to our purchasing supervisor, those are the items that don't typically sell.
But, you know, maybe there's a childcare facility that is trying to open here, nearby and aren't interested in infants and toddlers, because we have plenty of that equipment that we could auction or sell them for a pretty good price, I would think. But there's also opportunities to instead of put that towards facility costs, we could talk with Oakland Schools and see if we could take that $27,000 and try to purchase some of those materials to get us started. Trustee Gupta followed by Trustee Annas. So I have a few questions. For that $40,000
management costs from Oakland Schools, do they get what do we get anything out of that other than the enrollment assistance? Registration. Registration. Just that? Okay. And then you had mentioned, the home visits, that there's something there for home visits. Is that part of like the ECSE program or? I believe it's a requirement of GSRP that there's Is it servicing GSRP kids? So the Great Start Readiness program and that administrative cost, when I indicated it does support registration, it does. It also supports a program that we would be required to participate in where there
are some oversight to districts that look for the way that you're enacting high scope curriculum, that look for the way that you're enacting some of the core growth indicators for young people and how professional learning unfolds with staff and carrying that out. And so I liken it somewhat to when you have a field service, a field teacher, an intern teacher in a school setting and their site supervisor from the university comes to visit. The intermediate school district also has that responsibility for GSRP GSRP programs.
And so I think that is also a part of that administrative cost. As for the family home visit, those things have been set up and are a changing component of the program over time that requirement has been adjusted in some cases reduced and in some cases I believe waived, depending on the configuration for staffing. They're recognizing that some of the original foundational pieces of the launch of this program have created some challenges, in our district's ability to to carry out placement of the program.
But a connection between home and school is what that visit is really intended to be. So there's one at the start of the school year, where where teacher meets meets child and family and there's typically some goal setting and some milestones and markers made there and then that relationship, of course, continues, through the school year. Some, GSRP classrooms, and I I can't speak to Rochester specifically with this, but, I know that the the idea of a a school conference often could be submitted as a substitute for the home visit, for example. So I think that the pardon me,
I'm getting a lot of feedback over here. I think that the, effort is really looking to evolve, to meet needs of community and certainly, four four year old preschool for all has adjusted what how this program may fit alongside that statewide effort. The notion of three year olds who have a spot, certainly, that was related to the facility in the spot you might have in your district if we had greater three year old programming than we had four year old space for. I'm not sure how they would have navigated that. Perhaps part of our wait list challenge. The guarantee of that in future years,
we we don't know. We know that there's been a lot of iteration happening with the design of this program, as they try to meet the needs of families and districts together, right, in concert with one another. Thank you. And, the the wage schedule that is in the packet, is that set by Oakland Schools or the state or is that our internal wage schedule? That's our wage schedule. And then can I ask one last question? Is there, and it's hard for me to imagine three and four year olds going to school on a bus, but I know that was something that was mentioned previously in respect with respect to
GSRP. Is there any transportation, like that associated with what would be our GSRP model? That's a possibility. It's not baked into our model. We would have to figure out a lot of things, for transportation to work. One is the funding piece that, as far as I know, that pot isn't getting any larger. So we'd get a smaller amount and then the difference we'd have to cover. And right now, we don't currently have enough drivers or buses to, cover an additional 36 students at carrying SEPS to make that work.
So, you know, we've thought tried or tried to think creatively of how we could do that, which is probably more of a hub and spoke system, which means we'd have, you know, four year olds on a K-five bus potentially because we couldn't put that on a special education bus. Because if we did, then it's no longer a special education bus, and you forego 70% of that reimbursement cost. So then you may have, children on buses for quite a long time. And it would, you know, depending on which area they lived in and the start time of that elementary, it may work, it may not work.
So, right now, we're not planning for any transportation for GS or P, either throughout the district or at Kearny Stebb specifically. Trustee Hannes? Yes. That was going to be one of my questions as well, if transportation is included. So it's not a requirement, for this program. It's optional for the district to offer it. Okay. So the time line for making this decision, you kind of outlined a transition time line. And I see that you posted, when you've you've already posted actually for Director and for some staffing.
What kind of response have you gotten thus far for those? Well, I don't know. Mrs. Hampton, do you want to kind of present our next two slides, which include the time line and future considerations? Sounds perfect. Thank you. So if you'll advance to this transition time line, you see here some dates have been noted for staffing, but I would back up actually prior, to this, to share that we recognize the shift that this proposal brings, to prioritize preschool at this time and, that a twelve hour child care model is not reflected here. And so that mirroring of,
as I started, what is happening at the four elementary schools is the rationale for why those, settings that we've walked you through here this evening are reflected at Caring Stops. The, that being said, we've done a bit of work to think about how this might transition in several different areas. We've met with the staff at Caring Staffs and we've talked about that opportunity to transition for those eligible and or interested to apply with Rochester Community Schools. We've talked about some of the classroom configurations that would exist and we've begun recruitment
for these early childhood classroom teaching positions as well as for the director. The director posting was April, '20 '20 '5 and the lead teacher and caregiver post job descriptions or I'm sorry job postings were released today. So, we've been monitoring, the director role and, have fairly robust response at this point in time. We've not begun any screening or interview set up for that particular position and you may know that some of the other early childhood leadership roles are also transitioning and
so that position was posted with confidence reconstitution or a reimagining if you will of early childhood, direct supervision across a variety of sites. And we look forward to entertaining conversations to get that position off the ground as soon as possible. We are thinking about how enrollment promotion with families, including those on the waiting list and outreach to them would launch following this evening's conversation, including the new location options and what's Domino's may fall as I mentioned some of the PM class that's of less interest now with those families be interested or eager
to transport their children out to the Caring Steps facility that remains unknown. Might some of our more northern families who are traveling south for GSRP classroom want to transition? Perhaps. So we imagine that some dominoes may fall as a result of this configuration. We recognize that our current classroom configurations would discontinue as of August 1 based on our March conversation and that we would have approximately 20 enrolled children that would not be age eligible for a fall placement.
And I sorry, I apologize, I blew past that part pretty quickly on the three year olds and four year olds in terms of your age eligibility, similar to kindergarten in terms of when you might be able to have a spot in a classroom for three or four year old preschool. So recognizing that we are doing our best to bridge for families if they may be interested in continuing on for one of these configurations preschool in the fall, to be a month without care is a challenge. And so we are proposing that while those classroom configurations become disbanded as of August
1 that we bridge that time with a multi age classroom of sorts from the period of August 4 to August 15. We would need to retool classrooms possibly with licensing, possibly with new furniture supplies, etcetera. So we would need that space to be able to prepare learning environments for launching on September 2, which aligns with the calendar of the rest of our pre K programming across the four elementary schools. The last slide moves us forward beyond the twenty five-twenty six school year. So I'm not sure if that's helpful for our conversation or questions that remain on
slides one through 15 this evening, but I would want to raise, the board's awareness of some interest in aligning this future work with any, strategic plan conversation that would occur and how we may vision with the support of our community and, other stakeholders, maybe those with the support of our community and other stakeholders, maybe those are university professionals in early childhood, those are members of the Intermediate School District, those are our early childhood experts here in Rochester, that might inform service models alongside community need. We anticipate that some focus groups would be able to provide us some good input
into what they see as strengths and what kinds of gaps they see across the organization. Certainly, as was mentioned earlier, those conversations are fuel for questions rather than next step decision making. We know that certainly the budget and the staffing and our ability to provide a robust amount of care is dependent on multiple variables. We look to expand staffing, and have not done so in this model that we shared with you this evening in terms of, like, for example, school age care, if you're in a preschool program at Brewster there is not before or after care
for children in that age group and that's directly related to the ratio that's required for the age of that child. So if I'm five through 12 years old, that classroom can have 18 for one adult and then be capped at 36. So we have two school aged care staff in one spot and there are 36 spots for them and that's a licensing requirement. If we were to add the four year old, to that classroom because they are within the school setting, that ratio changes to one to eight and and leverages sort of a new setting that's required and so school aged care is not a part of our pre k
programming within our four elementary sites at this time and we don't anticipate the ability to do that at caring steps steps either next full year based on those ratios, so we wanted to bring a proposal that was sort of a direct mirror and launch that with the greatest chance for success. As well as, I'm sorry in the last part on the future work revision on deck also describes, what we see as an interest in our facilities usage. And to the questions about expanding GSRP, I think, the county will continue to have seats. We have districts that are unable to utilize all of their facility space.
That being said that doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be profitable or not have some sort of budgetary challenges within that and so I think that it's the district's responsibility to also think about how we want to imagine those spaces much like the master property planning conversation. Madam President. Trustee Raccoui. I had a question from earlier too, But I was just I've been thinking about this presentation and a few meetings ago, we took a vote based on the administration's recommendation to eliminate some portion of Caring
Steps. And so I was kind of hoping to hear a comprehensive presentation about Caring steps in that building so that we could really kind of discern whether we've improved that situation financially. And from this presentation, it looks to me like we're keeping that building open for two GSRP classrooms. Is that correct? And we're going to have about $27,000 left over to apply towards that facility. But I'm wondering how much does it cost every year to maintain that facility?
Is 27,000 going to be enough? It didn't sound like it was going to be enough. You said that could be applied toward that, but sound like the amount would probably be greater than that. I'm not sure who is answering this right because I think there was some question about four year old if we're going to add four year old programs as well as GSRP to Caring Steps as well or three year old programs, right? The goal for the Caring Steps facility was to offer there anything that was offered in the elementary site. So with tuition based four year old and tuition based three year old,
while Mr. McDaniel shares the models for them not necessarily being, a robust tuition source given the hours of service that are are within those programs, we recognize that they are currently in play at the four elementary schools. And so, treating Caring Steps in this model as a fifth facility to continue to offer early childhood, hearing the importance of that in the pathway for thirteen years of time within RCS, was was one of the takeaways from the March meeting. And so I recognize that the facility itself has its own set of questions,
maybe similar to five zero one. Is this a facility we want to keep in the in the portfolio of the district or not? But given that it's here and, we have some early childhood special education programming happening there, and if we'd had a different timeline for GSRP this past school year, likely would have had a successful start. That felt like, a good recommendation configurations for the facility, we would respond with Mr. Russo in kind. Well, to follow-up on that too, I'm thinking GSRP also requires that food component and stuff too, which is that's something that's a lot easier to do in our elementary schools.
And I know there was also that concern. I remember in the master property planning process, people were coming up with this stuff too and we just got the raw feedback from that as well. And people are interested in early childhood, but they're interested in using it within their current elementary buildings. And it makes sense if they have if a lot of people have siblings and stuff too that already attend those schools and a lot of people don't live way up north where the Caring Steps Building is located. So I would be concerned about our people willing to drive over there for the early childhood. And right now,
I mean, I it just looks like we're operating at a huge loss still if it's two GSRP classrooms and it's not going to necessarily cover what the building costs would be over there. And yes, so that brings me back, I guess, to the other question that I was asking Mr. McDaniel about what does it cost to operate that building each year? Yes. So right now the Board approved budget amendment is $194,000 for operations and maintenance for that building. Though that would likely be reduced because we've removed the six to six kind of
component of that, so you wouldn't need a custodian for as many hours. You may see a small reduction in utilities because it is more like a school day program. But right now, dollars 194,000 for facilities and maintenance. I guess just to follow-up on that. But is that the cost just to operate the building? Or is that the cost to cover shortfalls in like the Caring Steps day care program? No, that's just the cost of the to operate the building. So I'm sorry, that's the cost of what? To operate the building.
So there's roughly $80,000 in there for custodial. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think there's about 50,000 to 60 thousand in utilities, meaning water, electricity and natural gas. And then the remainder is likely different custodial supplies or maintenance needs if that's inspections, repairs, things like that. Okay. Madam President? Trustee Alsmaa. So first of all, all of my children enjoyed the three year old and four year old programs. I think it's a wonderful way to start a relationship with and they did,
attend different buildings. We did drive them around and it was they like to get it warmed them up to the idea of, oh, this is where I go to school and the whole transition and what a school looks like. I want to connect two things I heard. Mr. McDaniel, I'm sure from like a budget point of view, why would you pay $0 versus $5,000 That seems like a really easy decision. But I also heard Ms. Hampton say that this program has been evolving over the years. And the past of this program is that it was very needs based. And some of our families might still have that perception of the program.
And I'm wondering that it's been my experience that sometimes a family will choose to go to the four year old rather than GSRP because of their perceptions about the program. And I'm wondering if that's still something we see or has that kind of gone away? I know that we've exponentially increased the opportunity. So, in the 2022 school year, I believe, there was one GSRP classroom in the district. The following year there were two. The year after that there were five. In this year there are 10 and then 12 following, right? So I think that the the demand is certainly rising.
The ability to continue to hold space for both GSRP and tuition has is proving difficult in the elementary school setting. Certainly, there are only so many classrooms that are the elementary school setting, certainly. There are only so many classrooms that might be licensed or that have a restroom within them or that have the appropriate, counter configurations and things that had been established within those elementary schools as an early childhood, kind of pod. And so we know that the demand is often exceeding those spaces. The idea that GSRP will likely continue to move tuition for four year olds off
the table, I think Ms. Brown, was she here, would probably describe that the reason that classrooms continue to exist is because our community still has a number of children or families who select to not have such a full day, not being able to not being able to or being concerned about having that SAC program, even just at Caring Steps. I guess I'm concerned that while we're offering a variety of programs, we're limiting it to families who have a stay at home parent or potentially have
a flexible work schedule and not to families that have full time working parents by not offering that. And that's something I like the district to look into and I guess I don't feel that if we offered it at Caring Steps that it would necessarily have to be offered at the others. That might be a reason why people would want to go to the Caring Steps location is because it has this extended coverage. And I mean, I would go so far as to consider what a summer program would look like
so that those families could potentially, they wouldn't have to find different daycare in the summer. Sorry, I mean, those are my thoughts on that piece of it. I just think that's important that I don't think we're offering something that's really viable for the whole community if we don't offer that piece of it. Trustee Blake? Just Following up on what Trustee Lecuey had to say because I had some of those thoughts. You know, we hit we took a vote a couple months ago to get rid of the toddler and infant program because,
a number of reasons, but they were losing money and they were consistently losing money. We could never could get them to break even, but also they weren't part of our core mission. These things are closer to our core mission, so I understand that. But if we're doing two classrooms of GSRP, if that's the plan, and we're hoping, you know, these numbers bear out and that we have the demand, I mean, we can't really sell the building between now and September. So even that's not even on the table, but it could be at some point. So we could try this. But I think like long term looking years down the road,
I mean, I can't see operating this building for the next ten years with two classrooms in it and that's it. So there would need to be ultimately a plan to better utilize the building if we're going to keep this building long term. I guess I'll just follow-up again to say, I mean, is that the plan to only have two GSRP classrooms there? I mean, aren't we still talking about having early childhood special education there? Is right, isn't there the thought to have three or four year old programs there? I guess maybe I need clarification to make sure that I'm understanding it since when
I see TBD, I'm thinking that means we are considering classes at Caring Steps for those other groups. Yes. I think we're not committing to anything because we're not sure of the need, right, especially at a pre K-four level. I think that's a very personal choice for families. Again, as Trustee Alspa mentioned, for me, it's a math equation, right? I can pay $5,000 or I can get it for free. But if I had the option and I was concerned about my child going, to school five days a week, then I may be willing to pay the $5 for that. So, I think what we were trying to communicate is we've got two GSRP classrooms approved,
budgeted that we're moving forward with for sure. And then based on this recommendation being accepted and an advertising campaign, some information out there depending on the need. If we get a bunch of three year olds, that have interest in going to coming steps, we may open four or five, pre K, three classrooms. Right? So we could open a multitude of classrooms there. I think the facility is technically licensed for 13, but two of those classrooms are being occupied by ECSC. But there's still a number of classrooms there. I think we would be happy if we filled five or six of those classrooms,
on this short timeframe. Trustee Annas? Well, touching on what you mentioned about advertising, because, evidently for the GSRP, that wait list is held by Oakland Schools. Who traditionally, advertises for the GSRP programs? Is it Oakland Schools? Is it our district? If it's our district moving forward, if we do, want to utilize that space at Caring Steps for more GSRP programs, then my, guess would be that, that would be something that we would be, you know, challenged with in terms of advertising.
Is that correct? Yes. We do promote, on our website all of the dates and and registration for all early childhood programs. And historically here, they have filled almost upon opening of registration. And so in terms of marketing or or needing to, PR those things, I think it's a it's a need for us to communicate the processes. And then should we be willing to expand, certainly be, in contact with all of our families about the opportunity that sits right here within our district so that we aren't, feeling the need to go elsewhere for that particular care.
This, number of families that are on the wait list that are Rochester residents, we have direct access to in terms of their registration information and our team is is poised to work directly with the enrollment and registration folks at Oakland Schools to get that communication out as soon as possible regarding those 36 seats. I think Mrs. Simpson can correct me if I'm wrong but I think also you know the talking point right now is we have 36 full time slots occurring steps where there's were to the time of year that there's no income requirement that you have to meet
any income. You express need you're gonna get into that slot at caring steps. So to me I think that's the key elements to communicate. You know we pass the time of year where there's all these different income requirements where, all right, sorry, Trustee Alspa, you make too much and then we'll check again in a month or two, right, or to the time of year. If you want a spot, it's yours. Just one follow-up on that. If they have approved the 36 spaces for us and there are 53 Rochester area residents who are on that waitlist,
I mean do they assign them there? I mean how soon do we know if they those students are planning to come? Those are 53 phone calls with our office and those families, alerting them to where the placement sits. There are a number of families that the team is regularly in communication with either because they've been waiting from a half day classroom to a full day classroom. You see we have two or three spots, at Brewster. We have a number of families, perhaps depending on the age of their elementary children or maybe what is going to
be happening with a family member that's dropping off or picking up that are regularly looking for a different spot at one of the four. And so there are movement within after those assignments. That's ongoing right now. And the phone calls to those families would be detailing, which locations and classrooms have space available to them. We also anticipate that there would be families, in some of our placements that may be interested in the five day, program as compared to the four day program that their elementary schools are offering.
I think where we have a bit of confidence is that we have more interest than we have spots still even with adding these two classrooms, and so it it's our hope that they would all be at the 18 student capacity to start the school year. Trustee Gupta. Yeah, so I I'm not sure if this is changed recently or not. I haven't looked at this in a little while now but the last time I looked on the website. The kind of information about the GSRP income. Guidelines pretty at least to me confusing mhmm and so I'm wondering if there is
a way to kind of offer some sort of decision tree on there for families to help families understand whether they would qualify or not and if that might be helpful. In the marketing- and then as in the side as a comment I just wanna- say that I really appreciate how. The slides were laid out and the information was presented, because it was very, to me at least, it was very helpful in understanding what's going on. So thank you for that. Thank you. Trustee Lecui? Perhaps I'm alone in thinking this, but I feel like
we need a standalone presentation on caring steps. This is mixing and matching a lot of different programs together. And I was really surprised to see that the paid pre K programs are in the red, because we've been doing those for a number of years, I thought and I was just surprised to see it that way. But right now, I'm not seeing a plan going forward, where we're not losing a lot of money. And I just want to remind everyone that the reason that the Caring Steps issue has been an issue in the community is because people are tired of funding it
with the general fund. And it doesn't look like that's going to be stopping anytime soon from what I can see. But we don't necessarily have all the information in one spot. Would the board want to see just what's going on with Caring Steps and have we improved that situation financially over there, so we can better understand that building? Because the community survey was not talking about going over to Caring Steps. It was talking about, yes, we like early childhood, but we kind of wanted in our buildings. So I'm trying to expand that. Can I address a couple of those things?
So just to clarify, the master property plan results, the average was 2.27 versus 2.2 for how many people wanted the carrying steps and or I'm sorry, or having it across the district. So it's within, hundredth seven seven hundredths of a point. So it's pretty close, kind of response. I think there's a bigger question for the Board that sits before us. Do we want to while I understand Trustee Lacoue, I understand and respect everything you just said about we had seven years of caring steps with infants and toddlers in our daycare that was losing money,
right? That we said, that the childcare portion was was why we were losing money historically, and there was new plans that came forward and they never got realized. So I respect that a %. I think for you to talk about three year old and four year old preschool, and if those students, attend if we if they are in our school system at Caring Steps and or across the district, that's more closely tied to their they will come here for for, k 12 education. And if they even if if whether that was the same or different than we're
talking than than the model of infant or childcare in general. Are we will is the board willing to and I'm okay with whatever answer that is, but I think the philosophical question sits in, are we willing to let a private opportunity, you know, down the street capture those capture those kids for preschool, and then potentially funnel them into a private school somewhere else. The conversation that that has come across this table since I've since I've been here and prior to has been loss of enrollment, etcetera. When we talk about birth rates, there are certain people at the table that don't wanna believe that it's birth rates, that it's people choosing elsewhere.
This is an opportunity for it to be for for for us to address that in some fashion if you want to. If not, we can look at we can look at Caring Steps as another property like 05/2001. Is it worth our investment to keep it? Is it is it worth is it is there something else we want to do with it by refurbishing it and having it to be, you know, some some other service model, whether whether it's a high school, you know, whatever. There well, there's there's there's host of options.
The idea that this is built right now to accommodate littler humans, let let us not have an initial investment, a a second initial investment in that property, and and care for our three and four year old folks, three or four, families with who have three or four year old children in the district, that we know that there are the number is 53, 70 six, 50 three students that want GSRP. So we know the demand is there. We have a model right now. The reason we present it this way is we have a model that is working across the other schools in terms of our ability to hire and retain folks.
We didn't have that in childcare. In fact, it was in national news this past weekend what what it costs for childcare and how there are there are families all over the country who can't find child care because they can't hire folks to provide it. And when they do, it costs so much that it's not worth a second parent working. And so that was just on the it was national news this weekend. So I I we we put this out there for for your consideration. It's not that we are married to this. We believe that this can work. We we there might be an initial investment of a of a loss to the
general fund to that. There might be. And there might be two years of it. There might be three years of it. We might end up making money, but that's depending on demand. What I can't control is what parents want to do with four year old children or three year old children right now. We we just can't. There are many options we have. Three year old, four year old, as it's up on the screen, tuition based programs or GSRP. So I'm not gonna say any more. That's just where we sit, and we're open for feedback on where the board would like to go. Trustee Yannis? So related to what you just said, Mr. Russo,
that wait list that we currently have, which is 50 plus children, if caring steps wasn't an option, for additional GSRPCs, do we have the capacity throughout the rest of our elementary school buildings to take that on that capacity and grow within it? Or does carrying utilizing Caring beginning with this model of utilizing Caring Steps in this way, does that allow us then to have the ability to continue to grow in a way that we wouldn't be able to if we didn't have this facility?
That's my question to you. That's a great question. I think can you hear me? That's a great question. I think, we have space now, like today, in our elementary schools that we could make that work. And I'll put that in air quotes, which I don't like using. It's gonna be the growth that would be the issue because we're also growing categorical programs. And even as we lose students, we don't lose them in pockets of three year olds. We don't lose them in pockets of nine year olds. So, as enrollment is declining based on all the factors we've talked about, this provides space for folks not only in the Rochester Community Schools area,
but also the surrounding area if they want GSRP. That's just an option. Like I said, we're not married to it. We we are we are proposing this that we think it would be vi viable and work for for families who have three and four year old who need who need care. Madam President, Trustee Blake. Another way to think about this that I was I was just thinking about is, you know, how much time, effort, money do we spend on kids that come into kindergarten that are not really prepared for kindergarten the way that we would like them to be? And if we had the ability to go back one year or two years and
get them better prepared, mold them in a certain way, you know, there's some value in that. And I know people made that argument about the toddler and infant, but to me that was like too many years earlier that was too attenuated. But here we're talking one to two years before, and I think there's some value in being able to get these kids better ready that we may be able to save over time, a lot of effort and a lot of time. Trustee Ospa? So I heard you say that, Oakland Schools does a registration for GSRP, and they will place them.
Obviously, the kids kids that live in our district, they will give them preference. If we, did not have a larger GSRP capacity let's say one of our residents, can't get a spot here, They can get a spot in Avondale. And Avondale has school of choice so that they when they start their four year old, they might go to kindergarten there also. So I know we're concerned about dropping enrollment, but is it the case if we don't maximize our GSRP enrollment that some of our students might begin their four year old careers in another district and then choose
to stay there? So one of the parts of the time line for GSRP enrollment plans have two dates that are significant. One was that, as of May 1, we could enroll all age eligible children regardless of income to the estimated allocation, which was what Mr. McDaniel mentioned earlier. And then as of August 1, in addition to those enrolled starting May 1, LEAs can also enroll children that reside outside of their district and have not yet been enrolled previously. So, yes, as of August 1, the district would need to wait until that point to be able to grab.
The families that sit there without a placement have to wait until that point to be entering another district. Trustee Lozan? It's kind of a question slash idea or if it's been considered. So since three year old preschool is not profitable, not that we're in this for making money, has it been considered that potentially dropping three year old preschool in replacing the three year old preschool classes with tuition based four and GSRP throughout the district? Since we're capturing them closer to when they would be in the k through 12
would be maybe something to focus on that age group versus three year olds to kind of, you know, I get the capturing the kids and keeping them in the district at a, you know, a younger age. But like my child for example she's not in the district because there was no room. So obviously she is coming for kindergarten but if we can capture more four year olds keep them throughout the district and to be more profitable? Well, breakeven, I would say, not profitable. Was that has that been considered? The pre k three program for this particular coming or the coming school year has
been so well received by the community with 69 families on the wait list that we have not, taken a step to reduce those opportunities, knowing that that's where the greatest interest point has been in registration this school year. But certainly, the idea that the most appropriate entry point given our ability to staff, given the budget and given the needs of the community is what I imagine a conversation may result with an early childhood task force exactly that. If we have limited classrooms or limited facilities where we expand, where we shrink,
I think that being guided by a broader body is a good idea. It could be more like a long term type thing. So service the children that we have enrolled for this upcoming school year, but then not have an enrollment for 3s the following school year and kind of make the shift. I'm looking long term. Thank you. Mr. So Yes. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just going to ask you. So I know it is 10:50 Mhmm. And this is a is on our agenda as a, report and not an action item.
So I guess my question was, is there any action required at this time? Or It's a good question. No. Not no action at this time. We are moving forward unless we had major, concerns, that the board had major concerns with this plan. We I'd like to say a couple of things in addition that, you know, we can obviously, we wanna reevaluate every year to see where we're going and how we're doing. Mister McDaniel made a good point that we're not gonna change tuition for this year for because that that's already been laid out for people. That would not be that would not be appropriate. But looking forward, would it be advantageous to to increase tuition or to look at it for three
year old moving forward? Possibly. After school carrying steps, that's also a possible look. Right? I heard I heard what you said, madam president. I don't know how the the rest of the board feels in general, but I I feel like that's something to look at as a as a incentive to do this. And the last thing I'll say, in terms of incentive to be at caring steps if you were traveling further. The last thing I'll say is, you know, I I I noticed when I came into the district from being in a former district that had early childhood centers that had directors that were that were that were invested and had some leadership, kind of continuing continuous is with continuous leadership in in in that space.
And I heard that at the table as well, that there was a lack of leadership. So the addition of that, there's something that we mentioned in the in the slides, but I wanted to draw attention to, the addition of an early childhood director that can direct across the district to then say, Let's make this move here. This is what's working. This is what I'm hearing from families, etcetera, will help inform us for years forward. Alright. Well, at this time, I'd like to move on to present business. Trustee Nakoui? I just want to state for the record that I have serious concerns about this. This looks just like what we were doing with Caring Steps before.
And I'm we've already tried investing in this. I don't know why we're trying to make the building that particular spot work so hard. I mean, we could explore that more if we wanted to. It doesn't sound like people are very interested in that, but I'm just concerned about it draining more money from our general fund because again, we're investing in this and it comes at a cost to other kinds of programs and offerings that we want to offer in the district. So I'm just going on record for that. All right. So at this point, we're going to move on to new business.
Item 9.1 is the second reading of policy updates to policies 02/2001, '4 thousand and '3, '6 thousand and '2, '6 thousand and '3 and '6 thousand and '4. Mr. Murphy? Thank you. Yes, as mentioned, I think there are five second readings this evening related to admission and enrollment and then a series of safety and security updates as well. These were covered in detail at the last board meeting. If you have the same attachment that I have, it still has some trailing errors that were fixed in what was sent over to
update our website in preparation for this meeting this evening. So I apologize if you're still seeing that, but they have all been corrected and will be on the website Willing to answer any last minute questions. If not, seeking approval this evening for these to take effect tomorrow. Thank you. All right. So first, is there a motion to approve policies 02/2001, '4 thousand and '3, '6 thousand and '2, '6 thousand and '3, and 06/2004 as presented? Moved by Trustee Annas. Is there support? Trustee Lausanne? Is there any questions or discussions on this?
All right. Seeing none, all of those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, say no. That's a seven-zero vote and the motion passes and the policies have been adopted. Next, we have the Health Education Guide approval. This item was discussed at length during our work session. The CECS Education Advisory Board had spent significant time updating the guide to ensure that it meets state requirements. During our last meeting, the board did ask that the superintendent check on possible policy updates that might be needed if the board will be authorizing another person or group to act on our
behalf. And I understand it will be discussed at the next superintendent's policy and curriculum committee meeting. The Board also asked that the District implement a review of our curriculum and the organization that is currently providing secondary instruction. At this time, I'll turn it over to Mr. Cusmano for any additional information we may need before voting. Thank you. Tonight, we're asking the Board of Ed to approve the health education guide for our sex education I'm sorry, That our sex education advisory board worked very hard to update to ensure that we are in line with HIV,
STI, and sex education legal obligations and best practices in Michigan public schools. At this time, we are not recommending any changes to the current curriculum. We will follow our current curriculum review process that we have in place for all of our departments, established and content areas. Health education is included in this review process, and we will continue working with our health curriculum consultants and health teachers in the process going forward, for the review part. With Mrs. Deminick retiring thank you, Mrs. Deminick we are working on finding a new sex education supervisor that she has served
in that role for quite a while, and we appreciate that, going forward. Once that happens, we will work with the board and and, superintendent Russo on assembling the rest of our sex education advisory board per our legal obligations in the law. I would like to, before going forward, I'd like to thank missus Demanick doctor Demanick, sorry, and other members of the sex education advisory board who have been so patient tonight, so I'm gonna recognize them. We have Tanya Regmont, our RCS, nurse, who's part of this, sex advisory board. We have Amy Oppett,
who's a health teacher at Rochester Community Schools. Give a little wave, you guys deserve that. And we have Deb Branham, who's a community member, who has served on this committee for quite a while as well. So thank you guys for all your hard work with this, with all the work you've done throughout the years. And updating this health education guide, really appreciate that. So that's all I have. And if you have any questions, please ask. All right. Well, first, let's, is there a motion to approve the updated Health Education Guide? Moved by Trustee Annis. Is there support from, Trustee Alsbaugh?
And at this point then, are there any questions? I know I had I just had one. You talked about following the regular timeline for review, but can you give us some idea of when that is? Yes. I would like to share that at SPCC. There's a big chart that shares the year, year one, two, three, four, five, six, and it shares every department in like a big matrix. Right now, the health falls in they're in year four of implementation continued, and then I mean, sorry, for next school year,
but in the following school year, 'twenty six, 'twenty seven, they would be in year one curriculum inventory and review, but we can revisit that. Obviously, if this is something that needs a little bit immediate more immediate attention, we will be reviewing that quicker. But I will I'd like to share that at the next committee meeting so you can see the big picture of the review process, the curriculum review process, and all the departments in our district. I guess I'm just I I guess I will just say I'm questioning that if you say if you're saying we're in year four because I thought we had talked about not having done anything for over ten years.
They review the Susan, if or Doctor. Demond, if you want to talk about this, our health teachers review the curriculum. Go ahead. Sure. Thank you. When you had asked me, at our last meeting about the last review, it was the last review where the board made changes, which was about ten years ago. The actual curriculum that is taught in the classroom is reviewed twice a year because the teachers are in the classroom each time this information is presented. It's presented at all of the secondary buildings, and so those teachers review that every time it's presented. Trustee Gupta?
But the guidelines say that the Board of Education will review the curriculum on a semi regular basis. So I think that that was the question about when has the board reviewed the curriculum last. So it's understandable that the health educators delivering the curriculum would be reviewing it more often, but the question was more pointed at when was the last time the board had, reviewed the curriculum. And that's in the guidelines we're being asked to approve tonight, that state law says the Board of Education will review that curriculum.
So I'll be voting no tonight on that for that reason. Let us remember that the guidelines that are presented before all of you are guidelines for moving forward. They're not a summary of what has been done in the past. So we use the guidelines from Michigan Department of Education to make best practices moving forward. Can I just say, to Trustee Gupta's point, looking at if this has been kind of historic that is on the cycle every four years to review, That's why we're that's why I'm looking into policy and seeing what if there should
be policy that should be written or is it state law and it should impact or impact our our our cycle of review for curriculum to bring it to the board? So everything that you're saying, I believe that I'm trying to capture and correct. Are there any other questions? I guess at this point, I'll just say that I will be voting for this. However, I do have some concerns about that time line. And also, obviously, as I had said previously at last month's or last our last meeting, that I definitely think there are some policy updates that are required to ensure that
either the Board is doing their job as mandated by the state or that we have clearly authorized another board or individual to make those decisions on our behalf. So all right. So at this time, all those in favor of approving the updated health education guide, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, please say no. I believe that was a six-one vote, and the motion is approved. All right, next we have Oakland Schools fiscal year twenty six budget.
Every year Oakland Schools sends their budget proposal to all districts and each board is asked to approve or not approve the budget resolution by June 1. The resolution is included in our board packet. Board members have been asked on multiple occasions as to whether there are any questions since we do not have an Oakland Schools official at this meeting to address any questions prior to. To date, I have not been sent any questions. Mr. McDaniel, did you have anything else to add at this point before we have a motion? No, I was presented the budget and didn't have any questions and neither did most of
my colleagues across the County. Thank you. So at this point, is there a motion to approve the ISD budget resolution as included in the Board packet? Moved by Trustee Annas with support from Trustee Gupta. Any discussion prior to voting? All of those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. No. I'm sorry, I guess I need hands. Those who are no, please raise your hands. All right. The motion that's a five to vote, the motion passes and the ISD resolution has been approved. Next, we have the International Academy fiscal year twenty six budget resolution,
which is an annual approval by voting on the I apologize here, Item 9.3, which is the annual approval of the International Academy budget by voting on the IAE budget resolution that is in the packet. Mr. McDaniel? Yes. It's our recommendation that the Board approve the IA operating budget. If the Board does not approve or disapproves the budget, then we will have been deemed to unilaterally withdraw from the consortium and end our relationship with the International Academy. Is there a motion to approve the IAEA budget resolution as included in the board
packet? Moved by Trustee Gupta with support from Trustee Annas. Is there any discussion? Trustee Blake. So I know that it's late and I know right here we're just approving the budget, but I don't want to miss the opportunity if this is the only opportunity to discuss this or at least bring this up for a future meeting. We my understanding is that after we added the 10 seats last year, that we had an even higher number of people who, applied for the lottery. So we still aren't meeting the needs of or the demand for this. So I would like to at least to consider having a discussion about whether we
want to add 10 more seats. I don't know if we have time to do that now. Is there a cutoff for when we have to do this? I'll ask whoever can answer that. I don't know the information to answer that question tonight. I have to look into it, but I don't know if anybody else does at this board table. But I would have to look into that. Go ahead, Doctor. Luca. Yes. I will jump in here. Trustee Blake, the discussion we had last year, we're behind right now if we want to add seats. Remember, I talked about we already scheduled and we already have our staffing completed for next school year. To add more seats again, we're gonna start changing our staffing numbers,
even 10. At this point, we, we've we've kinda missed that window. I would advise the board of not adding seats at this time based on we've already completed our staffing allocations and students are rescheduled, and we've already done the lottery. The lottery is already done. So it'd be up to next year that recommendation come from the Board. I'd recommend the Board, revisit this in the fall of next year. Next school year. I guess, are there are any other board members even interested? If I'm the only one, then there's no point in I think it's something that we could certainly put on the agenda in the
fall to discuss. Madam President? Trustee Liqui. I just want to state that I would be interested question about the International Academy was germane to this discussion item and it actually was not once his question was, but actually once he started talking about making, I was going to cut him off at that point. All right, so at this point are there any other questions about the IA budget resolution? All of those in favor of approving the IA budget resolution as included in the Board packet, please say, aye. Aye. Opposed, please say, no. That's a seven-zero vote and the motion passes and the IAEA budget resolution is approved.
Next, we have the Oakland County School Board Association bylaws and resolutions. Proposed changes to bylaws and resolutions are included in the packet in our recommendations of the Oakland County School Board Association resolution and bylaws committee, who reviews them annually. Each member school district is asked to submit completed ballots by June 6. I'm planning to do this in two separate votes. So first, is there a motion to approve the proposed amendments to the Association bylaws as included in the Board packet? Moved by Trustee Annas with support from Trustee Gupta.
And then is there any discussion at this point? All right. All of those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, please say no. That's a seven-zero vote and the motion to approve the amendments to the bylaws is approved. Next, is there a motion to approve the proposed amended resolutions as presented in the Board packet? Moved by Trustee Gupta. Is there support? Support from Trustee Annis. Is there any discussion on this one? Seeing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye.
Opposed please say no. That's a seven-zero vote. And the motion to approve the amended resolutions is approved. At this point, it is eleven zero eight pm and I am wondering if my Board colleagues are willing to amend the agenda to eliminate board member comments. Moved by Trustee Annis, is there support for that? From Trustee Gupta, is there any discussion before we vote on this? All of those in favor of amending the agenda to the new member of the
Board education agenda item? Does this include the following Section two? The, Is it administrator comments? No, just 11.1 is what I'm asking for at this moment. Okay. You could feel free to could we amend it and just add votes? Well, maybe they'll just not speak very long if they have anything. Well, now that they hear that that's a desire. All of those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, please say no. All right. That's a seven-zero vote. So we are going to skip to eleven point two.
I'm sorry, maybe I'm off. Am I on ten or eleven? No, thank you. Okay. Members of the administration, as you've heard, we'd like to limit these. So Mr. Russo? Thank you, Madam President. I understand there should be a rule that nothing should go past eleven in Board meetings. Doctor or mister Murphy, is there anything to add? Miss Gauthier, I know you have something. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. The special education department would like to extend our deepest gratitude to Melissa Hoffman, for her leadership as the PAC chair over the past three years, Her dedication and close collaboration with special education administration and families have created meaningful,
lasting change for students with disabilities across our district. While her term as chair is concluding, the positive impact of her advocacy and actions will be continued to felt for years to come. And thank you, Melissa, for always staying till the very end of these meetings. Thank you for all that you've done for us. I also had a quick update regarding special education categorical programming and an alignment update. So as part of our continued commitment to excellence in special education, the special education department recently communicated district wide updates to special education families regarding aligning
categorical programming beginning in the upcoming school year. These adjustments were designed to better support students in their least restrictive environment and minimize transition with their peers and will be implemented over the next five years. The changes for the upcoming 2526 school year include adding a high school SXI program to Rochester High School, relocating two ASD classrooms from Hamlin Elementary to University Hills Elementary, relocating one ASD classroom to North Hill Elementary, and adding three additional ASD classrooms to already established ASD programs at Baldwin,
Hugger, and Musson. We are collaborating closely with families and school teams. We do recognize the challenges faced by families whose children will be relocating for the 2526 school year, and we do remain committed to partnering with them to ensure a smooth transition. Thank you. Thank you, miss Gauthier. Mr. Cuzmino? Miss Hampton? Mr. McDaniel? I'll be quick. I just wanna acknowledge that May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. I was going to read a proclamation from President Trump and Governor Whitmer, but I'll just refer you to them. They're out there if you're interested.
Thank you, mister McDaniel. Doctor. DeLuca? If we approach the end of the school year, I let, just wanna let the board know that we need your help. The last three days of school, we don't allow students to bring backpacks on buses, and so I won't see the board until that Monday of our of the last week of school. So, we'll be, sending an email out to our new, communication device, ParentSquare that just went live at 03:30 today with all families as well. But, we appreciate if parents could refrain from sending their kids to school, with backpacks the last, three days of school, which should be June. It's all levels. And I will bypass my comments in the interest of the greater good today.
Thank you. All right. Just a couple of announcements. May 26, there is no school. On May 27, we have the Rochester High School Commencement at OU Arena at seven p. M. May twenty eight is the Stoney Creek High School Commencement at the same place. May 29 is the Adams High School Commencement, also at the OU Arena at seven p. M. And June 9 is the next Board of Education regular meeting that's at the Rochester High School Auditorium at six p. M. And if there is no objection, we will adjourn at 11:13 p.
M. Seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you for attending, and have a good night.