Speaker 1: Call to order at 6:01 PM Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance Speaker 2: Pledge Allegiance Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible with liberty and Justice. All Speaker 1: This Board of Education regular meeting is a meeting of the board in public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business. We value community input and public comment will be heard under agenda item four. If you wish to speak tonight and have not already filled out a yellow card, they're located on a table near the entrance.
Once you've completed the card, please put it in the box on the same table. Please note that cards must be completed prior to speaking. I will call the names of those who I have a card for during public comment for raw roll call. All board members are present with the exception of President Gupta and Secretary Buel who are absent with notice. And you may notice that I am chairing the meeting because the president is not here. Section three is communications. This is where we reference various communications that have been received under 3.1. Secretary of the Board of Education, she's not here,
but at this time, 13 communications were received and they are in the packet for reference 3.2 members of the Board of Education. This is where members of the Board of Education share communications that were shared directly with them and were not sent to the full board. Did any board member receive communications from the public? Trustee Anni. Speaker 3: Thank you. Vice President Blake. I received a, an email from Brandy Miracle regarding the trustee vacancy coming up. Speaker 1: Trustee Osba. Speaker 4: Thank you. I received two emails, one thanking me
for attending the interfaith dinner at the Islamic Association of Greater Detroit, which it was wonderful to meet our people there and see our students. I also received a thank you for participating in the auctions during the founder's day, and I was so excited to attend Founder's Day to see the children singing and hear the wonderful keynote from Brian Peterson, one of our excellent science teachers. Thank you. Speaker 1: Trustee Lacoy. Speaker 4: Andrew Weaver contacted Shelly Loon, Mr. Russo, and me on February 17th to appeal the denial and full Blanket redaction.
Of topic descriptions on the legal invoices that he requested through foia. No explanation was provided for doing a Blanket redaction and after reviewing the invoices myself, I don't see a ba, I don't see a basis for withholding general topics or tasks. Are there Speaker 1: Any other Speaker 4: Communications received that don't D point of order? Mr. President, Speaker 1: Go ahead. Speaker 4: I'm in the middle of making my statement. I rightly have the floor. So may I finish making my statement? Speaker 1: Yeah, just explain what your communication was. Speaker 4: Right. So in the Blanket redaction, no explanation was provided and I don't see a legitimate basis
to withhold general topics or tasks that don't disclose names or legal strategy. ORs point of order. They simply trustee Speaker 1: Whoever. Speaker 4: The purpose of this agenda item for AZA is for us to report out and she has accurately reported that Mr. Weaver contacted her and then she continued off topic on her investigation and her opinion. So I feel like we're out of the scope of communications at this point. Speaker 1: I mean, I I do think that you can communicate what he sent to you, but all of the steps that you took afterwards really are not relevant to the communications Speaker 4: Mr.
President. I would, I would disagree with that. I'm, I'm explaining what the communication was so the community can hear. There's no basis for saying that. I'm not allowed to tell you what the communication said and I'm just saying invoices are supposed to show how public dollars are being spent and I'm simply awaiting an explanation for why there was this Blanket redaction. Speaker 1: Is that all in the communication? Correct. All of what you just said, that you've been waiting for an explanation. Speaker 4: That's my, that's my view about what is going on here. Speaker 1: Okay. Any other communications? Okay, 3.3. We have the PTA council update.
Jamie Rockcliff will be joining us to give us an update from PTA Council. Speaker 5: Good evening. As Trustee Alba mentioned last week, P-T-L-P-T-A council held our biggest event of the year, our annual founder's day celebration. Nearly 70 parent staff and student volunteers were recognized for their efforts to our school communities through PTA Hampton teacher, Brian Peterson Roast co-founder of Bees and the DS shared a keynote address and we had musical performances by Hamlin Elementary, Meadowbrook Elementary
and bands from both Stony Creek and Van Huen. We wanna thank everyone who came out to support the event and recognized the volunteers as well as those who supported our online auction, which raised nearly $4,000 to support the six scholarships that PTA Council awards every year to RCS graduating seniors. Coming up on March 12th, our legislative committee is hosting its annual careers and public service event. This evening is geared towards students in eighth grade and above who might be interested in careers in public service fields. Any students interested in participating can reach out
to their PTA's legislative rep. On March 18th, we will be holding host hosting our district-wide reflection ceremony at Stony Creek High School. Over 200 students in kindergarten through 12th grade will be recognized for participating in this national PTA Arts program. Winners at the district and state level competition will be recognized that evening as well. Authors in April is currently looking for high school students to introduce each of this year's authors as at its annual banquet on April 27th. Interested students can apply online at authors in April's
website and information will be coming out through the school principals and PTA Presidents as well. Our green schools teams are working on finalizing their applications for green school certification. Applications are due by March 8th. Right now many of the schools are also collecting aluminum can tabs for recycling and donating to Ronald McDonald House. Future plans for the spring include a cleanup with the Clinton River Watershed Council and Earth Day activities. Currently our health and wellness team is supporting the fourth grade health fairs throughout the district and plans for the district wide health Fair will be
available as the events get closer. Finally, we are planning to host a college 1 0 1 night again in May. Plans are still being finalized and will be shared soon, but this informal night is open to all parents, families and students in the district who want to find out more about applying to college financial aid, getting their students ready for college and more. Thank you so much. Speaker 3: Excuse me. Thank you Mr. Vice President Blake. Jamie, I had one question for you. The student forum about serving in public office? Yes. Is that in person or is that online?
Speaker 5: It is gonna be online. It'll be a webinar style. Okay. So there is opportunities for interaction. Okay. With the panelists, it's just that they're not easier to get panelists than Yeah, if we have to bring them all Speaker 3: Together. I'm sorry, I don't recall you saying that so I just wanted to clarify Speaker 5: That. Sorry. Yes, no worries. It'll be online, but webinar, so there Speaker 3: Will be that information. Awesome, thank you. Speaker 1: Any other questions? Okay, thank you. 3.4 is our pack update. We have Jackie Mark here to give us an update from pac. Speaker 6: Good evening. My name is Jackie Mark and I'm the chair of the Rochester Community School's Parent Advisory Committee or PAC at PAC's.
February meeting. We welcome special education mediation services or ems. EMS provides free facilitation, mediation and training resources designed to strengthen collaboration between families and school districts. These services can be a valuable tool when families and schools are navigating complex situations and working towards building a shared understanding. We also heard from Rochester's Unified Robotics team who shared an overview of their inclusive program. PAC is proud to support this initiative and help spread the word as the team is hoping to expand to Adams and Stony Creek in the future. As I've shared previously,
PAC's theme this year is inclusion and action. We've been encouraging our schools to think intentionally about how events, activities, and programs reflect this inclusive spirit. One of the most effective and accessible ways to do this is through sensory friendly practices such as offering sensory time, sensory friendly practices, remove barriers, barriers so students can participate, and just as importantly, they build trust with families and demonstrate a proactive commitment to inclusion offering sensory time sends a clear message. Your child belongs here and we planned for you.
I'd like to take a moment to publicly thank some schools and programs already leading by example, the unified basketball and Unified Robotics. Thank you to the district for supporting these inclusive programs. This year Pat hopes to see them continue and expand the Tri school dance hosted by Rochester High School this year will offer a one hour silent disco prior to their main event. Hugger Elementary's Aurora Borealis Ball included a sensory friendly half hour before their event. Baldwin Elementary's, glitz and Glamour dance will include a one hour sensory period
prior to the event and north here Elementary is offering a dedicated sensory room. During its upcoming International Fest, pat continues to hear positive feedback from families regarding sensory friendly programming across the district. At the same time, recent conversations highlight that without clear district level guidance, inclusive practices at schools can be inconsistently understood or applied at the building level. Sensory time is not intended to serve only one group or students, nor is it dependent on how an event is funded. It is a low cost, high impact accommodation
that benefits a wide range of students and families and reflects our shared commitment to inclusion over time. District level guidance could help ensure these practices are implemented consistently and thoughtfully across all of our schools. Looking ahead, our next PAC meeting will take place on March 10th at 7:00 PM At University Hills. The public is always welcome to join. Our next PAC enrichment event regulate to relate will be held on February 26th at Adams High School. Please also save the date for our Sparkle Awards on April 16th at Adams High School, nominations are open through March 8th
and Be can be submitted through PAC's website. We are currently seeking volunteers for this event and you do not need to be a parent of a special ed student to help. We are especially looking for support with the Sparkle book. Experience with Canva or Word is a plus. Anyone interested can reach out to me directly or connect through PAC on Facebook or through our website www.rcspac.com. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. We're now at agenda item four, which is public comment. This provides an opportunity for board members
to hear from community members. If you wish to speak tonight but you have not already filled out a yellow card, please fill one out now if you have, if we have more than 30 minutes of comments, which so far we don't, the remainder will be heard under Agenda item nine. When your name is called, please move to the microphone and address the board. When addressing the board, you will have three minutes to speak. We'll let you know when you have 30 seconds remaining. Please be mindful of the time 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 isn't used. Any comments that could directly I identify an individual student are not appropriate in this forum and will not be tolerated will stop the meeting if needed. To protect student rights and privacy, please keep your remarks focused on broader issues and avoid any personal references that may compromise privacy. Also, we ask that you address your comments to the entire board, 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. The board reserves the right to exclude from our meeting an individual who engages in conduct that constitutes a breach of the piece. So I'll just name the first couple people you can get ready. We're starting with Shelly Brown and then David Tallman. Speaker 7: Hi, I am Shelley Brown Taxpayer and a resident in the district. At the last school board meeting on February 9th, I stood before this board and commented on how I as a taxpayer appreciate Trustee LAI's willingness to ask questions at board meetings, her questions
and requests for additional information appear to be reasonable in order for her to make competent decisions that affect students and taxpayers. I also commented how the gang of five on this board, trustees, Beel, anus, atch, Blake and Gupta. More often than not veto requests for additional information or address negative comments to Trustee Lai. Later in the meeting, trustee Kui asks questions regarding a web accessibility policy,
which was presented by Mr. Murphy who oversees hr. It was evident by Trustee LAI's questions and comments that subcommittee members had not shared relevant information with her, which resulted in her sending an email for more information on the Friday prior to the last board meeting and receiving no answer, she came here and asked questions. Trustee LA Lui's questions were fielded and answered with Mr. Murphy stating that he assumed the information discussed in subcommittee
would've been shared with the full board. No other members raised questions on the topic. However, trustee and Ness spoke up expressing no concern that a fellow trustee had not been filled in on information pertinent to the topic of discussion. Instead, trustee Anes began quizzing Trustee Lei on when she received her packet on a Wednesday and why didn't she send her questions earlier? As a taxpayer, I found that whole attack to be less than professional and prove my earlier point that I made in the meeting.
Trustee Lai is performing her duties as a board member. She's asking questions about policy changes. Roadblock blocks continue to be placed in Trustee LAI's path. The Gang of five is not sharing relevant information with her. The last comment I wanna make to this board, in case you're unaware 30 seconds. The US Department of Justice has issued lengthy letters to three Michigan school districts detailing a compliance review that is to be initiated regarding Title IX
and the revised Michigan Health Education Standards guidelines. A quite lengthy list of information is required to be submitted. Failure of those districts to voluntarily comply with the request could place federal funding at at risk. Thank you. And could result Inman action. I hope they expand their compliance Mr. For you to look at this district. Thank you. Speaker 8: I'm Dave Tallman, I'm a RCS Superfan. I always say that 'cause it's true now more than ever and I have been told that all I ever do is stand up here and give a sermon of Unity to that.
I say thank you for paying attention, but it's actually a little bit more like comm cooperation. I keep pointing out that the C and the Rochester Community Schools does not stand for chippy, but nobody seems to be listening to me. It stands for community and we are a community and we need to start acting at least like we sort of are. In that vein, I would like to give a very heartfelt thank you to Trustee Gupta for her service to our community and not just on the board. She's done a wonderful job at robotics and I hear people, oh, all she cares about is robotics. Well, you know, who cares about robotics?
A whole bunch of students who are in robotics and they're trying to give her an award for her mentorship and her leadership and the hard work that she puts in over there and it means a lot to them. It should mean a lot to all of us because we're a community. From there. I'm gonna pivot straight to Mr. Russo. Some friends of mine keep saying that he's Shaner 2.0 and one of them in particular I went to a few weeks ago to talk to him about that. Like what are you talking about exactly? And he had a list, an actual list of grievances over 20 things that he pointed out that Mr. Russo had done that were things he shouldn't have done.
Well, I put, I took a lot of time going through his list and paying attention to the edicts and policies and laws that he has to follow from the president, from the legislature, from the Department of Education, from the Department of Agriculture to the governor to the State Department of Education, probably 15 or 20 different departments in the state. The county has has got their hands all over schools, numerous state agencies and then of course the board. So when I did that, I couldn't find one decision
that he had made that he didn't have to make the way he made it. Now there's all the public comments that he makes and those were a large part of the list of grievances that were there and there might have been two or three in there that I could find that didn't, weren't edicts that were given. He hadn't, he didn't follow exactly the way he felt it and it was his opinion and they were opinions that were opposite of what my opinion would've been. Now, if he makes 50 decisions a day, which he probably does by lunch, but let's say 20 and he makes 20 a week of just comments, that means that he's batting about 99.9
9 7 30 seconds according to my math. What are we complaining about here? Mr. Shaner and Mr. Russo are nothing alike and let's get over it and start acting like we're together. If we change the superintendent every time we change the school board, which is what some people have in mind right now, it's expensive, it's foolish, and it doesn't help the students in this district. We have a great thing going here. This is a great district. Let's keep some continuity going and try to work together. Speaker 1: Thank you. Mike Reno, followed by Elvis.
I can't see the La Elvis. I think there's probably only one Elvis. So Speaker 8: Hi Mike Reno, longtime resident and former board member. The federal government's pacer website is your friend. Anyone can go and look up any court filings instantly and it seems that the federal case filings are more transparent than this board often is. For example, I can go onto this pacer website and see that the motion was filed to move the freedom of speech lawsuit out of the district court and into the federal court. So clearly you've made a decision to fight this and you've also decided to change venues.
So that's two decisions that have been made on this. You know, you, you basically significantly decided to direct your attorneys to fight what I can't see anywhere is a record of this board going into any kind of closed session to discuss and reach those decisions since you had no closed sessions, we're left to conclude that all six of you, well there's only four of you right now, five that did some sort of round robin message exchange. For those that don't know what this means, it's when two
of 'em talk and then two of 'em talk and two of 'em talk and they kind of go around until they've reached some sort of decision and they do this specifically to be able to avoid having a public record of this. And if that's what happened, that would mean that every single one of you that took part in this off the books decision making helps sidestep the law. And don't think because some of you are named in the lawsuit that that gives you some sort of Open Meetings Act exemption. You're not named as private individuals, you are named in your capacity as district officials. The district, the full board is the defendant here,
not you individually. So I'm requesting a straight response to a very simple question. When and how did the six of you make these two decisions? My email address is on the card and I'll watch for a reply and if you really can't provide details, you've got some spleen to do. Elvis. Speaker 9: Hello. Thank you all for letting me speak. Class started. Hi, I am, my name's Elvis logo. I'm a real estate developer locally. I just wanna make sure that our proposal is clearly on the record today we have submitted an offer for $1.7 million structured to preserve a hundred percent of the building's 5 0 1 university
drive, the historic facade and architectural character. Our intent is to work collaboratively with the community and key stakeholders to deliver a plan that respects the building's legacy and benefits the neighborhood achieve through adaptive reuse of the existing building for predominantly multifamily with integrated live work, use or space and and community oriented uses. As you're considering considering Mr. Bloomingdale's proposal today, I would appreciate the opportunity for our proposal to be reviewed and considered before any decisions are made with respect to his offer
and for the ability to formally compete against any offer brought forward so that the school can select the strongest overall outcome through a fair and transparent process. I live just outside of the community and am deeply invested in the area as we are deploying 55 over $55 billion within three miles of this building. And hope you guys will consider our proposal for the sale of the building. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Next we have Michelle Man hire, followed by Carol Beth Kuey. Speaker 3: Good evening, Michelle man. Hire three kids, two still in the district. I'd like to actually, I wanted to thank Ms. Gupta.
She's not here sadly, but I wanted to thank her for her dedication, serving on the board as well as for her responsible decision to officially step down from it at this time. Whatever the reasons and however the process, I am grateful for the opportunity now to begin bringing balance and sensible leadership into play for our district's sake. The task ahead of selecting an appointee to fill this open position is one our district has seen disproportionately too often in recent years, as is evident by the number of current trustees who began their tenure as appointees themselves.
Ms. Gupta included, we all know that doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Therefore, I encourage the remaining trustees who I'd really appreciate but be like looking at me while I'm talking to show that you're paying attention to put great effort and thoughtful consideration into choosing the next appointee to fill this open seat. Rochester Community Schools requires a board which will more closely reflect the diverse thought needs and ideas of this district and its students.
On behalf of myself and many other engaged and concerned district parents, I also wish to strongly encourage the remaining board members to take the positive action of removing the censure of trust Trustee Kui, as well as reversing the newest, misguided and poorly composed board bylaws which affected this current legal action. D, defending first amendment rights to be taken against RCS in the first place. Taking these two actions alone, removing the censure and reversing the bylaws would show our district parents
whether or not this board has our community's best interest at heart, or if they are sticking staunchly to their own political or private agendas. This board majority has officially jumped at the shark and needs to work only towards healing this board table and making it respectable and functional. Once again, I look forward to seeing the candidates that come forward to fill this soon to be empty board seat and hearing which ones have qualifications closer to the actual business of being on a school board. Rather than simply championing their own personal agendas,
please bring true diversity to our board table and move our district forward in a positive manner for all involved. 30 seconds. We parents are asking for this district to prioritize successful educational outcomes moving forward and return to a place of educating our children and preparing them for adulthood. May your choice for the next appointee reflect this focused, desired as desire as well, and bring a fresh perspective to this unbalanced board table. Thank you for your time. Speaker 1: Thank you. Mrs. Kui.
After her will be Stephanie Van Dale. Speaker 4: All right. I'm Carol Bethle Kui. I'm a trustee on our board and because our board voted this year to keep all agenda decisions behind closed doors, I'm speaking as a resident so the community can see issues I'm asking to discuss. So tonight I want to talk about what's not on our agenda, even though we have some pressing deadlines coming up. First, the enhancement millage. Other districts are doing this the way the public deserves one meeting to explain it and take questions, then a vote at the next meeting. Here in Rochester, we still haven't had a public discussion and our decision deadline is at the end of March, families
and taxpayers should hear the full case before a vote is set, not after the fact. Second is the state's new health framework. This framework blends scientific health content with belief based concepts about gender identity. And we have to decide as a board whether we want to adopt it or not. And it's not limited to sex ed, it's health instruction with broad encouragement to teach across multiple subjects. That's a major shift from what many parents think health class is supposed to be. And it deserves an open board discussion. And this isn't hypothetical, as we heard earlier, the DOJ just launched investigations this past week into
three Michigan School districts focus in part on parent notice and opt-out rights for this type of content. Whatever your politics, I would think we could agree that curriculum ought to be clear and parents shouldn't have to guess at what their children are being taught. Third is schools of choice and how we brace for it if state law changes. I brought this up at the last meeting because it could really impact Rochester and we would need a plan if that were to happen. House bill 53 10 says on page 58 that the number of seats available for non-residents is based on each school's maximum capacity.
And that's different than what we heard at our last meeting about boards being allowed to set parameters. And I find that really concerning. Our own facility study says we have about 2000 open seats across the district, but only about nine empty classrooms. So the question is, what's occupying some of these other spaces and what would we have to move or change if enrollment shifts and we get a bunch of non-resident students coming in. So my point is simple. These topics have deadlines. They affect the whole community and they belong in an open meeting. If our board is committed to transparency
and good governance, we should be discussing these in public. Starting now while there's still time for residents to weigh in. Speaker 1: Mrs. Van Dale, followed by Shelly Loon. Speaker 4: Hello, my name is Stephanie van Dale. I am a taxpayer and a parent in the district and I would like to thank Jessica Gupta for stepping down and no longer being in a position of authority in this district. Thank you Jessica for stepping down because you were
so disgusting with the way that you spoke to those girls, those heart girls at, I think it was Ruth and I couldn't believe you sat there and actually called them Fear Mongers because there was a biological boy pretending he was a girl entering into their bathroom. Speaker 1: Okay, we, it's, our rules are that we will not say things that identify students. Interrupt me because you're talking about an identification. I'm speaking of a student or close enough
to identifying a student. Speaker 4: I didn't say any student's name ya. Speaker 1: You talked about a school, you talked about a child. I Speaker 4: Said a school and I said Jessica, I said, girls, Speaker 1: Well we're calling a Speaker 4: Recess. I was generic. No, no, no. Speaker 1: Who will be in recess? Speaker 4: Go ahead, go to recess. Jason. Be a chicken ****. Yeah, seriously. Jason, come on. I said a school, Speaker 1: You're a avail. You can continue with your time if you refrain from doing that. Speaker 4: Refrain from doing Speaker 1: What? Identifying something that is, that's not, you can't, can't
Speaker 2: Control her. You can't control her speech. Speaker 1: I Speaker 2: Talking about the Speaker 4: Girls that I said boy, and I said girl public Speaker 2: Already. Stephanie, Jessica. Speaker 4: So thank you Jessica Gupta for stepping down and not being in a position of authority anymore. Speaker 1: Are we okay? We can continue with the meeting again with the rules as read. You can continue with your time Speaker 2: Ready. Speaker 1: Time has begun. Speaker 4: I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Mrs. Sarah Millard, the Stony Creek yearbook
editor teacher. She has been amazing and I honestly don't think that there are enough people who appreciate the amazing job that she does to publish a yearbook. I had issues last week and she was brilliant in her solution with my son's senior ad. And I want to say for the record that everything went well with her
and I believe that she deserves some sort of bonus for what she has to deal with some days. Other than that, I want to send a prayer out to anybody who has applied to be trustee to fill the gup dece 'cause you guys are gonna need it. And 30 Speaker 1: Seconds, which I've given you 30 Speaker 4: More. There's plenty of reason why people wouldn't apply to that trustee position, but I, I hope that we, that
the next trustee is a good choice. Thank you. Goodbye. Speaker 1: Thank you. Shelly Loon. Speaker 3: Hello, can you hear me now? I'm Shelly, I'm a trustee on this board. I'll keep this short and sweet as I really wasn't prepared to speak tonight, but someone previous speaker claimed that six of us were potentially an OMA violation according to this new lawsuit. I just wanted to make it clear that I have not been involved in any decisions regarding this matter. Speaker 1: I just wanna interrupt you to, and I'll give you your time back,
but you received instruction from an attorney about what you may or should not say. So do what you choose, Speaker 3: But I have not been involved in any decisions that have been made. But Speaker 1: Do what you but you have been instructed. Speaker 3: Okay, but I'm speaking Jason. I have not been involved in any decisions that have been made. I have been caught up to speed with one communication, but that is it. In fact, I've actively been emailing and trying to get to the bottom of this for the last few days with, and you know, of course I'm still waiting for a response. So I just wanted to clear the air that I am not one of the six, I have not been involved in any decisions. So thank you. Speaker 1: That's it. Agenda five is the consent agenda.
All matters listed under the consent agenda are considered routine in nature by the board of education and will be acted upon by one motion. There's no separate discussion of the items. If any member of the board requests discussion of an item, that item will be removed. Now we only have one item. So it's 5.1 current bills payable for January 1st, 2026 through January 31st, 2026 in the amount of $14,318,602 and 41 cents. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? Speaker 4: So moved. Speaker 1: Second.
Any discussion Trustee Kuey? Speaker 4: Alright, so we only have one item on this consent agenda. The bill's payable and I reviewed the bills payable and among the bills payable, there were several legal invoices. And on a few topics I asked to see some accompanying written materials. I haven't seen everything yet, but some of what I'm seeing worries me and I won't disclose what it was about. But what I can tell you is the actions that were taken that concern me because it has to do with the board president's communication with our lawyers.
And in one case, the board president is talking with our lawyers about a matter that was pending a board vote. But that information wasn't shared with the board, with the full board until I requested it. Just, you know this a couple days ago because I'd noticed it on the invoice. In an other cases, the board's communication with the lawyers looked like it was about protecting one trustee. She considers an ally an ally in a dispute and managing another trustee that she considers an opponent in a different dispute. And she's personally using our lawyers to help her do that.
And that's not how this is supposed to work or how the public's dollars. And Speaker 1: You're still talking about communicate attorney client privilege communications, which you're not to talk about. It's a violation of your fiduciary duties. Speaker 4: No, no, Mr. President, I'm talking about, I'm not disclosing point of order. No one in the public point of any idea. Point of order. I'm talking about point of order. I am. We are characterizing the communications. If Trustee Kui wants to say that she's not satisfied with what she got, that's, I mean, perfectly fine. And she did say she wasn't going to disclose it,
but then she went on to an allegation and a characterization of it. That is her opinion, which she has every right to but should not be discussed now. So I would ask that if, if you don't like what you got from the invoices or you don't, you can't talk about it, just vote against of order, abstain Speaker 1: Point of order is well taken. These are not things that Speaker 4: Point of order. I should state my point of order now. Speaker 1: Well, I'm answering hers first and then I'll move on to yours. I just responded to hers. Now what is is your point of Speaker 4: Order? My point of order is that I have the floor this
and I'm allowed to explain why I am, why I am disturbed with actions I'm seeing between the board's president's relationship with our attorneys. Okay? So our public dollars, Speaker 1: You talk about these things Speaker 4: Point of order. I have the floor. You're not supposed to interrupt me and I'm simply explaining that this is not, but I'm here. Not Speaker 1: I to protect the district from I'm Speaker 4: Interrupting her. This is not a legitimate violations of our, this is not a legitimate reason to interrupt my explanation. I am telling you that this is not how this is supposed to work or how the public's dollars is supposed to be. Point of Speaker 3: Order.
Point of order. Vice President Blake, Speaker 4: This is an abuse of point. Speaker 1: Trustee Annis, Speaker 3: I concur with Trustee Alba's analysis of what she's doing. She may not be happy with the information she received, but she is analyzing it. She's offering an opinion. This is not the proper form in which to do that. So Speaker 1: Your point of order is well taken. It is grossly inappropriate for you to be discussing attorney-client PR communications and characterizing them and giving meat on the bones and information about them. I, Speaker 4: And you know that not Speaker 1: Disclosing ation and
that is why there is a lack of trust on this board because in at every turn, any information that you can release to the public that is privileged, you do Speaker 4: Absolutely not. I didn't disclose what this was about or legal strategy or advice, advice, order, point of order. I did not disclose any of that. Mr. Vice President, we've lost all decorum. Could we please take a recess on? Everybody's Speaker 1: Not take a recess. We'll just finish your statement and we'll go on. Speaker 4: Here's the point. The board is the client, not one person. If the president is the point of contact, the legal advice needs to come back to the full board. It is not supposed to be for her personal use or gain
Speaker 1: Which Speaker 3: Point of order that that was an opinion. Speaker 1: Alright, so we have a vote on the motion to approve the, does anybody else wanna talk about it? No. Then we have a vote on the motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. All in favor say aye. Aye. Hello. Speaker 3: Aye. Speaker 1: Nay? Speaker 4: No. Speaker 1: The motion passes four to one agenda item six is reports. First we have a super upper superintendent
update with Mr. Russo. Thank you Vice President Blake. First we have a few things under, under our reports tonight we have a strategic plan up. We have two different strategic plan updates. One that is a presentation. We have a presentation from an entity that is, that the board has decided to engage in discussions with for 5 0 1 West University with no, no decisions being made at all. But we do have a couple things to, to update you on prior to that. First would be some projects that we wanna remind the board
of what, what we have already approved for sinking fund and et cetera. Things that are major projects in the district. I'll turn that over to Dr. Delucca for that update. Speaker 10: Thank you Mr. Russo. Thank you for giving me opportunity to share with the board and community some upcoming operational items that are gonna happen in facilities in our tech technology department and in our grounds department in technology. Our spring and summer work that's coming up, but we'll be focusing on our annual refresh for student Chromebook fleet. We, we will be scheduling chrome Chromebook replacements for grade six and nine, roughly about 4,000.
Chromebooks will be replaced for the upcoming school year. Also, we'll be upgrading our security camera systems across the district buildings and to include a PTZ that's pan tilt and zoom. The philosophy behind a PTZ camera system is to understand who's coming into our buildings prior to them hitting the front doors. And so we'll be able to see cars pulling up, people walking into our buildings. The whole goal is that when you get outta your car, we'll know you're there. With our PTZ technology that's going in our buildings, also improvements to our infrastructure and technology. We'll be installing 22 MDFs and 62 IDFs.
And MDF is basically the hub of a building where all the wires come in from the outside. That would be the internet traffic and our telephone systems. And then the IDF, that's the closets across the, the organization that spread the information out to the classrooms. We, in the industry, we call them switches. So we'll be replacing all of our switches this summer as well across the district. Also, the district will be upgrading our malware protection platform, and that's gonna enhance our cybersecurity across the district. And also we implemented our strategics platform safety system across the district. We'll be updating our, our teacher badges this year, as well
as our visitor management system. We'll be moving to an upgraded system at no cost to the district as well in facilities in the coming months, the A board proposal will be coming to the table for replacement of our district theater light boards. Right now, each theater has a lightboard. It's a little bit more intricate than what we had probably had when we were growing up, where, where it's just a faders switches up and down. These are computers that program with the student health help of students and professionals that allow our students to engage with cues that change the lights with, you know,
I I would say intricacy with the play that's going on. These are multi-thousand dollar light boards. This is not something you'd buy at Best Buy. These are industry standard light boards that will be coming from the board. So we're excited for that for students. The orchestra lift at Stony Creek will be replaced with the board approval a couple months ago. We'll be taking a break at org at Stony Creek for many renters to basically replace the components of the orchestra lift that's within the Stony Creek facility. Also, we'll be planning on replacing a thou a hundred thousand square feet of concrete.
So when the fall happens and we get out a winter here, we'll be going around the district to mark the district across the handicap ramps, sidewalks, and entrances where vehicles enter our facilities. About a hundred thousand square feet. That will come in front the board too for approval. We also are looking at drainage improvements. So some of our, our, our lots as well as our infrastructure needs some drainage improvement. So we'll be looking at getting some surveys done in the coming months and then bringing that in front of the board along with roof replacements. Once we have the thaw that happens on our roofs, we'll take a look and see where we need to navigate across the district
and see what roofs need some attention for certain areas. Our last bond in 2016, we replaced a lot of roofs. However, though we're being good stewards of the money to look at what roofs that need to be updated from, from 2016. What roofs have leaks from the, the past winter that we have, we have over 25 school buildings with thousands of square feet of roofing. So that's gonna be taking, we're gonna take a look at that in grounds. We have a huge grounds department and that grounds department oversees all of our athletic fields, our grass across the district and our lawns.
But more importantly is the athletic season starts up here. Every high school, middle school and elementary school has some type of ball field on it. So the grounds department will be preparing for our physical education classes to go outside as well as our athletic teams. That will be approaching in competition. Also, we'll be inspecting our stadium facilities, including our press boxes and concession stands in, in, in anticipation of the April spring contest there coming up. And that's all I have. Speaker 3: Dr. DeLuca trust, excuse me, vice President Blake. I I have a question. Trustee Anderson. Yeah. Dr.
DeLuca, the PTZ cameras that you have referenced. Yes. How long is that information stored from those videos that are acquired and where are they stored in a cloud system? Do we have like a, you know, a heart? Speaker 10: Sure, I can address that. We use a system called OnPrem on premises. So all of our data that we hold is on our, our servers ourselves. We don't use a cloud for that service. We typically can go about 30 days with our video video enhancement or video recording. As you add more cameras though, you're gonna need more storage. So, we'll, we'll look at that down the road to see if we needed to add more storage.
But 30 days is approximately what we hold our storage for. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you. Dr. DeLuca, SBOC, superintendent Business and Operations Committee Update Mr. McDaniel. Speaker 11: Thank you Mr. Russo. We met on SBOC last Monday and discussed a couple items. One was the budget amendment that is gonna come forth to the board under new business to the debt service fund and the sinking fund. We also discussed the budget, actual reports that we've started providing in the superintendent's cabinet notes and making some changes to them as well
as the district's budget priorities for next year. The district's identified five sort of large areas that we want to focus on with next year's budget, starting with instructional support, which include curricular resources and the professional development required to implement those new resources as well as, you know, other instructional opportunities, mental health and behavior, as well as PD for that. Mental health and behavior support, safety and security. This strategic plan for next year's deliverables are yet
to be determined, but that is another area. And then looking at our contracts, not only our staff contracts with RAA negotiations upcoming, but the existing contracts that we have in place with the REA, the RPEA, our third parties like A BM Durham, Chartwells, things like that. And then the increasing costs of doing business just as a district as a whole with those contractual increases, as well as things yet to be negotiated with the governor's release of her budget. We know that a lot of that doesn't come true,
but $250 per pupil increase is what she's proposing. That is usually one thing that's been close to what ends up in the final proposal. So taking that into account, and I think that was the majority of the discussion from SBOC. Thank you Mr. Russo. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. McDaniel. Just something to add, you know, the, the governor's budget. Historically, as Mr. McDaniel has mentioned, the historically the first version of the per pupil increase has been kind of steady. A good number to kind of go by in terms of different iterations of that budget moving forward,
aside from two years ago when they did a budget behind closed doors in October and took every, just changed the structure of everything. But that is a good baseline to go by. It might fluctuate a little bit, but typically over the course of the last 30 or 28 years that I've been in education, that's been something fairly standard to start as, as a starting point. Lastly, we'd like to give an update on our counselors and our counseling department, Mr. Ano. Speaker 10: Thank you Mr. Russo. Good evening. Board members and community members. I'm excited to highlight a little bit about what our secondary counseling program's up to and what they're doing.
But coming out of National Counseling School Counseling week in the beginning of February, there was an interesting published article in the Daily press titled, Michigan School Counselors Spread Thin. They highlighted that Michigan has the second worst student to counselor ratio in the country. According to the American School Counselor Association, the ratio of students to counselors was 573 students to one counselor during the 2324 school year. More than double the 250 to one ratio that the association recommends, we are proud
that RCS remains well below the state average and student to counselor ratio of approximately 245 students to one counselor as an average of all of our secondary buildings. This varies depending on the number of students enrolled at each building. Rochester Community Schools has made a deliberate investment in secondary school counseling staffing. Each high school is staffed with six counselors. Each middle school is staffed with three or four counselors, depending on the building's enrollment. That staffing structure allows counselors to provide consistent and direct student support across
all secondary buildings. Counselors do a lot, but I want to highlight a little, some of the different areas that they do and I would never be able to do it justice in three to four minutes. But I'm gonna try. Across grades six through 12, counselor support students in three primary domains, academic development, social and emotional support, and post high school planning. Academically counselors guide course selection and academic planning at both middle and high school. At the high school. This includes direct support with credit review and graduation tracking. At the middle school level, counselors build early awareness of high school graduation requirements to help students
and families understand future expectations. Counselors meet individually with students, communicate with families, and participate in multi-tier systems of support and other support meetings to coordinate interventions and problem solve concerns in crisis situations. Counselors lead suicide risk assessments and participate in building level threat assessment processes in preparation for life after high school, which is a huge component of what we do. Counselor, support college career, military and skill re skill trades planning.
This includes individual meetings, application guidance, and collaboration with post-secondary institutions and community partners. All secondary buildings provide structured classroom lessons aligned to academic career and life skills development. At the middle school. A formal social emotional learning program is embedded, including the implementation of the SOS Suicide prevention program, which high schools also participate in. The district is currently engaged in three, in a three year commitment with a program called Hatching Results. I love that name. I love saying it. Think about hatching results, what they do.
Just, just for your knowledge, you're wondering what is hatching results? Hatching results for over 20 years has provided high quality training and consultation on the American School Counselor Association national model and multi-tiered multi-domain system of supports to thousands of school counselors and administrators to in nearly every state across hundreds of school districts. So it's something we're excited that we're participating in, in a three year cycle through the McComb Intermediate School District. So we're very excited about that. This is supposed to formalize a comprehensive six 12
counseling framework and strengthen what we already do Through this work. The department has identified two areas of district-wide alignment, careers and life skills. Specific lessons focused areas have been identified at each grade level and district-wide. Pre and post assessments are being developed to measure impact over time. Counselor, the counseling team is working really hard to get this going. In addition, this new, this new this school year, our district is collaborating with Oakland 80 career and education navigators as part of the state and county goal of 80% of adults to have earned a degree
or credential by 2030. So it's something that is a resource that we're, we're, we're using in tandem with our counselors. The focus areas are related to career readiness and post high school planning for high school students. Some of this work directly supports counseling initiatives, while other components operate alongside our counseling efforts as part of a broader high school readiness programming. In addition and maintenance of counseling staff, the addition and maintenance of counseling staff has allowed counselors to maintain direct student access, participate meaningfully in student support systems, and continue straightening program structure and measurement.
We are proud of the daily work counselors provide across all secondary buildings and remain committed to refining and straightening that work through aligned systems and clear measurements. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Mr. Ano. We'll move on to our strategic plan updates for plan number two, work-based learning. If you'd like to come up, turn it over to Mr. Ano to introduce our people. Speaker 10: Yes, I am very proud and happy to introduce Ms. Karen Malsbury, who's a lead on the strategic plan. And I love our conversations about this 'cause she try, she fires me up about work-based learning and all the great things she's doing.
So Ms. Malsbury, the floor is yours. Speaker 12: Thank you very much. Thank you for that introduction, Mr. Kasman. I appreciate that very much. I am the lead of strategic plan number two and this strategic plan number two is all about expanding work-based learning across the district for our nine through 12 students, this area is trying to give more career exposure, including military options at all levels. And it really is a way to help our teachers bring the classroom outside, sorry,
bring people from outside the classroom into the classroom. And also giving our students the opportunity to go outside of the classroom to find these work-based learning experiences. The plan has members quite a, a vast array of members, including the career consultants, the career navigators that we just spoke about from Oakland 80. We also have the CTE curriculum leads that have been part of this plan along with a CTE advisory community. So twice a year in career
and technical education we have to run advisory meetings and those have a multitude of community members that are part of those meetings. And so we have included them in strategic plan number two along with career and technical student organization leaders. So students that are in BPA, DECA Robotics, hosa, all those kind of groups have also been part of this plan. Thank you. So to start off with, this year we've really honed in, in creating a foundation for work-based learning. And we decided to take on a, a tool
that's already used in career and technical education, which was developed by the MDE. And this tool is called the Work-Based Learning Continuum. And as you can see, there's four quadrants on the continuum. And it really starts with career awareness and offering our students the ability to go to our annual career fair, which is usually in October, to go out on field trips into our community, led by teachers in the classroom and then guest speakers bringing in guest speakers into the classrooms.
So that's the, the career awareness component. And then we try to move on to a more robust career exploration, which could be an entrepreneurial project, it could be working a school-based enterprise, like we have school stores in all of our buildings. We also have virtual enterprise, which is a, a virtual business that our students can, partic, can, can participate in. And then also a formal mentoring relationship. We have many people that come in from the universities that help and support projects in the classroom. And we, we create those mentoring relationships there.
And then we move on to career prep. We have many students that go out on work-based learning in the afternoons during fifth and sixth hour, they get release time to go out to their jobs. And those jobs align with their EDP, their educational development profile. And we have students that are based all over the city and further afield. Those students have to work 200 hours during a semester and they get on the job training. And then we have job shadow opportunities as well. And then finally, virtual interactions. We do use different tools
to bring virtual interactions in the classrooms from autopsies to crazy things. You can find anything in a virtual interaction nowadays, which is kind of cool. And then we have clinical rotations as well, especially with our new Med Careers program and EMT program. Those clinical rotations are crucial and for the students to apply what they've learned. And then also our educational careers program also have that clinical rotation where they go out into the classrooms. So we formulated the continuum and then we shared that with the teaching staff across the district.
And then we wanted to make sure, next slide, sorry. We wanted to make sure that the teachers knew where to get the resources to be able to help and support them with these work-based learning initiatives and using the continuum. So we created a website where they can get the paperwork and all of the resources and, and tools that they need to be able to plan a field trip or bring a guest speaker into the classroom or to allow a child to go out on a job shadow. So we created this hub where they can find that.
And along with the hub, we also wanted to make sure the teachers understood that there was human capital people in the buildings that can support them to be able to help them complete their task of getting a, a guest into the classroom or to go out on a field trip. So we trained up our secretaries, we also trained our career navigators, which were at each of the buildings. And then we collaborated with Durham to make sure that our busing, whether we could use a a yellow school bus during the school day from nine 15 till 2:00 PM or if we needed to use other charter busing
to get our students from A to B safely to have these work-based learning opportunities. Next page. Thank you. So we also wanted to make sure accessible, like we talked about the hub, but we also knew that our teachers find it difficult sometimes to find things on our website. So we made sure that all of our links were un under bookmarks, so it's right there on their desktop so they can find the information that they needed. And then over the first semester, thank you. One more. Thank you. After first semester, we found
that there were 64 different field trips that went out. And so we wanted to survey the students that went out on those field trips. And as you can see, there's a list of different classes that took a advantage of the field trip opportunity. And we surveyed those students and here's the outcome from that survey. So we asked the question, which aspects of this experience stood out to you the most? And most students talked about looking at the tools and the equipment and the technology that was out there on their field trip, that that excited them. And they found that that stood out the most in
that field trip experience. And then the next question asked, did this experience influence how you think about your future after high school? And that's one thing that we are gonna try and do a little bit better with second semester, is really asking the, the teacher with our support in the career readiness department to really hone in on what careers are available at the field trip they're going out on. And so with that, the results came in that, you know, quite a few of them said it didn't influence their future plans.
They still had, you know, ideas of what they wanted to do, but then you guys, you can see 36% said it strengthened their interests that they already had. And then lastly, you know, the good old question, did you enjoy the field trip? And would you wanna do more of these? And that was a resounding 93.6% said yes, they would like to have this opportunity in other classes. So the final slide, and as we move into second semester and we continue with this journey of work-based learning, is trying to build more awareness of what work-based learning is. And it's not just a field trip, it's the opportunity
to bring experts into the classroom or allow students to go out on a job shadow or a clinical rotation. But in order to do that, we are going to need to budget accordingly for next year. So we're in budget season right now. So we would like to encourage staff if they are looking for some opportunities that require budget, that they come forward and they talk to us so that we can find the budget for them to do what they plan on doing with their students. And then with any of this, it's building confidence. It's making sure that our teachers understand what paperwork's involved.
It's quite convoluted to get students out of the classroom for the day with permission slips and making sure the transportation's in place and all of that good stuff, but building their confidence and, and allowing them to be supported, making sure there's enough chaperones and you know, just making sure they have the budget to be able to do what they wanna do. So that confidence piece, I think is key. Word of mouth is everything. Once the teacher's had a good experience, they might encourage a colleague to do the same. So that's great. Building capacity with any of this is, you know, a goal, a huge goal of ours to increase the amount
of offerings that our students have. And then, as I've always said, and I always will, we live in the greatest community and if you put an ask out into this community for anything for our students, this community usually delivers. And so building those connections, bringing those people into our classrooms, opening up our doors, because there's so much talent, is really what we want to continue to do as we move forward. And one last point, sorry, Laurie, you're gonna, you're gonna nudge me in a minute. My last point is our alumni. We have the most incredible alumni that have gone
through the doors of our schools. And so we wanna encourage those alumni to come back and share their wealth of knowledge with our students. And thank you very much. Speaker 3: Vice, vice President Blake, vice President Blake. Trustee Osborn. Speaker 12: Yes, Speaker 4: Ms. Malsbury, thank you so much. You know, I'm a strong supporter of work-based learning as two outta three of my children enjoyed wonderful programs at OSTC, I notice in your success criteria it says each participating teacher successfully embeds at least one experience. Can you tell me about the number
or percentage of teachers you have participating in, at what levels they are? I did see 14 classes listed there, but I wasn't sure if that was comprehensive or if you could just speak to that a little. Speaker 12: Yeah. First semester after we took out all of the busing that went out to sports and activities like that, we were left with 64 field trips that came from that list of classes that we spoke of. I don't know that as a percentage of total staff, unfortunately. I, I wouldn't be able to give you that at this point, but I can get back to you for sure. But when we were looking for that cohort,
we were looking at field trips specifically, we haven't calculated because the, the buildings, when I asked them how many guest speakers are coming in, couldn't give me that information at the time because there wasn't a standard form that was used for a guest speaker to come into the classroom and, and get that signed off by the principal. But now that form is in place, we're collecting that information and then we'll be able to give you a, an update, a second semester and fault. Thank you. Speaker 3: You're welcome. Vice President Blake?
Speaker 12: Yes. Trustee Enni Speaker 3: Question. Thank you Mrs. Mulberry. What question I did have under deliverables is in including the career exposure, there's the military options as well. Yes. And I'm just curious if as a district, how, how do we provide that option for students? And have we been tracking what percentage of our students are going on to that? 'cause I'd be curious to know that as Speaker 12: Well. Yes. So we do conduct the ASFAB test by yearly. And that's been in place since I first started in this role
three and a half years ago. So we have a January and a may test date for any student that are interested in the asvab. And our counselors are very aware that if a student is interested in that area, that they're highly encouraged to take the ASVAB because it's a, a real good indicator of the, the skills and aptitude that they have and how that would apply in life as well as the military opportunities. We also have at all three high schools, we have the military that come on campus regularly during the school day. And they usually hang out in the lunch rooms
and they, students are allowed to come to them. They're not allowed to go to their students, they're only allowed to come to them and ask more questions about the process. We also have, every year we do exit surveys with our students to ask what are their plans for success after high school? And so I could look back over those last three to five years we've been collecting those exit surveys and seeing how many military, I know for a fact in 2023 there were three students that went into the military because I counted them at honors convocation when my
daughter walked across the stage. Right. But I would definitely dig in that foot, that information for you and report back. Speaker 2: Did you trust Kui? Speaker 4: Yeah. My main question was about what baselines we had in some of these different categories and what targets we might have had. 'cause it really varied the work-based experience. There was the field trips and the guest speakers and, and versus, you know, job studies and internships and stuff like that. So I was curious just in those different categories, like how, how many students do we have participating in those last year versus, okay, what's our target for year two?
Yes. And also in terms of tracking, I was looking at where we're tracking this and I noticed that, you know, there was a school that had logged several entries and then there were other schools that didn't log so many entries. So I wasn't sure exactly where we're tracking some of those things. Speaker 12: And I appreciate asking that question. This year has been really tricky because the lack of understanding in our community about what does work-based learning entail. And it's not just going out into the field, it's not leaving the classroom. It is actually there components that we can bring into the classroom.
So that was the main charge of this group, was to put in that foundation and build in all of the paperwork to ensure that people were doing what needed to be done in a safe way. As we move forward, I am hoping that I would have more tracking and more targeted approach for the coming years. So we can build, but may I be frank, we're at capacity. I think it's very, very tricky to get students on, on school buses to go out on a field trip.
They're, they're, they're at capacity. It, you know, they may plan to go on the field trip, they may fill in the paperwork to go on the field trip, but getting them on the bus is really tricky. They, they have lots of things that they need to do and it might not be a priority that day as far as bringing guest speakers in. It's building those connections and encouraging more of our staff to do that. And so that's where we would like to focus our efforts, is bringing that capacity to us. And then a course budget busing is not cheap. It's, it's, it's tricky. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Any other, other questions? Okay. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Mulberry. Appreciate it. I'll put a little plug in for the podcast on work-based learning and career technical education coming out soon. Another strategic plan. Thank you again, Ms. Mulberry. Our strategic plan update for project 12 for the board's ask was that we had an oral update on this. And so I will say that Project 12 ensures the district develops a systemic process for policy and administrative regulation communication. The overarching intent of this plan is to enhance clarity
by creating a single one page guidance document that serves as a definitive roadmap for the district. It will clearly define the distinction between board policy and administrative regulations. Lay out the communication structure so stakeholders know how and when information flows and establish a predictable timeline for annual communications and how changes are conveyed to the community. The project has been processing, the project team has been processing administrative and board feedback to do this right and ensure that this one page guide is effective. The committee has adjusted their timeline from a mid-year launch to an end of year finalization.
This allows the district to accommodate multiple changes to board membership and the superintendent's policy and curriculum committee looking ahead. By June 1st, 2026, this finalized communication structure will be ready for full implementation for 26 27. We believe this small focus deliverable will lead to significantly increased compliance in a much stronger alignment with our district's vision. Any questions, Trustee Laco? Speaker 4: Well, I was wondering, is this, so this plan is, is this still the same plan that we saw in our superintendent cabinet notes that says
that if you have a policy, like for instance, if you're a trustee and you'd like to submit a policy, you submit it to the SPCC and they go through, they discuss it, they present it to lawyers, and if they decide they want to present it to the board, then it comes to the board after that. Speaker 1: That's a small portion of it. Really. This is talking about how we're communicating this out to public and if there are annual updates that happened, how is that best received by public? Like what is the public assumption? So our superintendent's policy, can, our SPCC superintendents policy and curriculum committee is looking at this, the team
that Mr. Murphy is leading is also looking at it and saying, are, is our communication workflow right now working? Is it not? Are things in the website visible and and is, for example, and Mr. Murphy, if you wanna chime in on any of this, that's fine. For example, if we have a policy that might have just a couple updates inside of it, not a whole new policy or no changes in admin rules and regs, is there an opportunity to just highlight that portion and blast it out to the community? One, one of the, one of the conversations we're having is that there are a lot of communications in the district, right? We get emails all the time on several things.
So is it better as a one-stop shop to leave it on in, in the website and not be overburdening residents email boxes, for example, with with, with things are, are we looking at is this a major change or a minor change that's just language. If it really doesn't affect the community, is that something we'd want to, you know, if it's just about board operations or is it about operations of the district that really doesn't have a student facing, you know, component? Is it something we'd want to put out to the community? So these are all of the things that we're looking at. Speaker 4: Okay. As a follow up to that, yeah, one of, one
of my concerns with this about it, not about it not getting out to the public, is that the policy and curriculum committee is not subject to the Open Meetings Act. And so I'm wondering what guardrails are in place to prevent policy proposals from just sitting in the SPCC committee indefinitely, effectively being filtered out of public view. Because for instance, I had proposed a conflict of interest policy, it was February 2nd of last year, and at that time we approved our agenda so I could, I presented it and I was told, no, you need to submit this
to the policy and curriculum committee. So I said, okay, I'll go ahead and do that. I did that and it's been sitting there ever since. So it's over a year now. And so I'm concerned about policies just sitting in committee being left to die essentially. And I'm concerned about the public not finding out what some trustees are proposing. I also proposed a district communications policy and, and it just takes Speaker 1: A long time. So I, I respect that. That's a question, but that's not related to this plan. I, I will tell Mr. Ruso Speaker 4: I was, I had the floor and it is related, Speaker 1: I'm sorry, go Speaker 4: Ahead. It is related to this plan because it was in our, our cabinet notes as part of Plan 12.
Exactly the procedure I'm talking about. I wrote to the board. We had, I had some communication with a couple board members about it, but I had suggested, for instance, adding a defined response window so that we knew when that policy might be coming back. So those are some things that I would like to see if it's, if it's in the process of being changed. And since I'm not a part of those committees, I'd like to just voice that feedback. Speaker 1: I appreciate the feedback. We've had things that we started on this superintendent's policy curriculum committee before I came into, into this position. So that's over 20 months, 24 months.
And some of the problems we have in creating policy is that there isn't a lot of decision making where board members are coming together. So we have, we have to set it back to and from lawyers. We have to set it, we have to have robust discussions on do we wanna see, for example, services, do we wanna approve every single service that happens? And if that happens, would we lose staff because we can't approve a service in time in order to pay them? That was part of the discussion that happened in one of our superintendent policy committees that started well before I got here. So while that, while the process of superintendent policy,
curriculum committee looking at policy and then developing admin rules and regs as part of my role and my team's role is part of the process. This is really, this strategic plan is ensuring that the, the, the policy and rules and regs not only come to the board when they're approved and when we have it right. Then what is the communication plan moving forward in front facing the community? Speaker 4: Mr. Ruso, just one more thing. As you say that it brings to mind that the, the other concern I have, I suppose is if there's so much concern with perfecting it in committee
where only three board members are present, for instance, and I get that it goes through administration, it goes through the lawyers, then once it gets presented to the board, the full board of seven and other board members who are not part of that committee get to finally weigh in on it. In some cases it feels like it's too late because then people feel like it's already gone through the process. We don't wanna dredge this up again. We've already gone back and forth with the lawyers and with the administrators are happy. So if you're a board member and you're not pleased with the work that this subsection of the board has already agreed on, you're kind of outta luck. Speaker 1: That's good feedback. Thank you.
I mean, I'll just respond to that, that it, it shouldn't feel that way. I mean we have had things that came to the board out of the SPCI think even recently that we sent back because once it got in front of the full board, there was not agreement that it was what we wanted to do. So, and the other thing is things being proposed and never being, never being heard by the public. These things, the proposals that you might make for different policies, those are not confidential. Those are things you can put out on Facebook. You can bring, you can get three people and put it on the agenda for the board. So there's no burying of these policies.
Trustee Anne, Speaker 3: I just had a comment. Mr. Russo, you talked about having the, a way to communicate with the community. Perhaps there's a feature or something we could turn on on Parent Square where you know, this is a certain category of a notification that people, if they want it, they can opt into it. If they don't want it, they don't have to subscribe. So I know there's many different categories, at least for us, that we get different alerts. So that might be something, a feature to look into just to not flood people, but if people want it, they could have it. Speaker 1: That's also good feedback. Thank you Trustee. Speaker 4: One more item before we move out
of the strategic plan update section. I had sent a couple emails to the board. I had not heard back from anybody, but I was wondering if we could receive a single spreadsheet that shows the status of all 19 year two strategic plans, just like we had in year one. And I was curious if the rest of the board was interested in that. We did have that in year one. It was a lot easier to find information that way. Right now it feels kind of cumbersome having to go back to the December 19th cabinet notes to search for the one pager to search for click. You're clicking on so many different links. Is that something that the board would be interested in?
Speaker 1: I guess I need to look back again at what it was before and what it is now to see what the difference is. Speaker 4: Before we had a single spreadsheet, there were tabs for each individual plan. So it was one, one place to go to look for updates on the plans. Right now we have to go to a particular edition of cabinet notes. There's different pages. You click on different links and you've got information in different spots. There's also a different spot that tells you, you know, when we're gonna be discussing these at the meeting. So it's just if the information were compiled in one place, it could be easier to navigate. Speaker 1: Can I weigh in on that?
So the reason that it exists, the way it does now is because we got feedback from the board last year that the one pager wasn't that that document wasn't working. So we put a strategic plan steering committee together where board member, a board member was present so that if there was any feedback that was not going well, that it would hopefully get back to board members. We put this together so that we could have monthly updates in a one page, easily read, easily readable document. And that was the intention. If we, if it's not working, that's fine, but I just wanted to come back to what the impetus was for it.
We got feedback, we altered it, we altered the communication plan for now for the, from the feedback we got. And if that's not working, that's fine, but I just wanted the community to know why, why we're sitting here today. Trustee Anis, I couldn't see Trustee Y's book. Speaker 4: If I search the drive, I do find a 2005, 25 2026 strategic plan year two. So I'm looking at the spreadsheet. Thank you for putting that together Lori. It looks like it was a lot of work. So we do have something there. Speaker 1: Trustee Lacoy. Alright, Speaker 4: I, I know that I checked a few days
ago, I couldn't find anything. I had sent two emails to the full board asking if anyone was interested. So if you wouldn't mind if there is actually something like this, but Mr. Russo made it sound like there was not and that it has been changed. But if you found something, I'm curious to look at it. I'll send you the link. But all you had to do was search the drive. Speaker 1: Well, I'll just say, hold on. I'll just say if there's a way that this can be communicated that's easier and it doesn't add a lot of burden to staff, of course I would support that. I just need to look and see where it is.
Move on. Okay, thank you. So on the, on our agenda tonight, we have Mr. Bloomingdale and his group. They have, we have talked openly about Mr. Mr. Bloomingdale has been here before at a public meeting talking about a, at the time was a proposal for 5 0 1 West University. Mr. Bloomingdale, I know you guys have waited for like an hour and a half and I just wanna give a two minute intro before I turn it over to you so the community is aware and so we have it on record. Back in September of September 22nd of last year,
I was asked to give a recommendation to the board regarding the future use of 5 0 1 West University. As part of that, prior to, we did a master property planning process to determine whether 5 0 1 West University was a need or a want and or would we need it for the future in terms of future enrollment, et cetera, based on the financial implications of declining enrollment across the state of Michigan and the birth rates going down across the country. And the fact that even our move-ins, you know, there's, there's a host of issues that happen through the master property planning process.
My recommendation to the board was to sell the property. After that recommendation, Mr. Bloomingdale came to us to say, I have, I think I have a use for the property. And came to present what that might be Tonight he is here for the board's pleasure and for the community to have a little more in depth presentation on what this entails. Speaker 13: Thank you and thank you all. You're very busy people and I thank you for this opportunity. We have updated you along the way. We've provided the presentation we're gonna make in an email to you, but this is an important opportunity to us
and I I thank you very much for that. I also want to especially thank administration 'cause they have been very, very helpful in, in allowing us access to the building and help us evaluate it. So hope we haven't been too much trouble, but it's been very helpful from our perspective in doing this. And we we're referring to this as the Harrison Center. As you can see on a slide, we've assembled a really, really good team. We've gotten a lot of compliments on our team, some of of whom will present a little bit of information tonight.
We're gonna try to do this as quickly as we can, sensitive to your time. So I would like to mention Tom Johnson. Tom Johnson was instrumental in helping establish the Webster community in Pontiac, which if you're not aware of it, you might look it up. They're gonna have their grand opening in March. On March 20th they took a a vacant, our elementary school building, about 55,000 square feet, completely renovated it, turned it into a community center. Very much like the thing that that we're talking about here.
James and Lynn Vireo are on our team. Lynn is gonna make some comments. This, this evening. James Vio was former city manager of Rochester. He's on, was on staff at RCU and administration and faculty. Tiffany Zerman is here. Tiffany is the president of Rochester Avon Stork Society. She's gonna make a few comments. Tela Rhodes is here. She's the president of the Pancreat Center for the Arts. She's here. She has a few comments to make and then we have a handful of non-profits that are eager for this project to go forward.
They have a real strong interest in becoming occupants of the building. So with that, if I might see the next slide, the Harrison Center, what is our focus? We have four areas of focus. We want this to be a home for a collection of nonprofits that serve the community. A place for community connection, another focus, the auditorium and the atrium. And our, from our perspective are wonderful places for community engagement, for community gathering. We also want to find a place in this facility for youth
to gather, for teenagers to gather with the appropriate amount of oversight. There's no such thing as that in the Rochester area right now. My wife and I have teenage grandchildren. We hear about it all the time. So our four areas of focus, our community health and wellbeing, the nonprofits will address those things. Community and culture and community which LER roads will address. Community connection is something that, we'll, we'll talk about a little bit further into this.
And then community safety. We have a a really nice letter from the police chief in Rochester, chief George who is very excited about the potential for this project. I see the next slide. And Lynn introducing Lynn Beno. Speaker 4: Hi. Thank you. First slide is actually taken from the school board I the school district's website and it is requesting proposals like the one that we are presenting this evening. Next slide please. This slide
is taken from the city of Rochester's current master plan. The parcel of 5 0 1 West University is identified as a public quasi quasi-public land use. This building went actually, you know as we know from a school to administration building and now could be rolling right into a community center. It would be a nice suitable natural transition for the building, for the neighborhood, for the community. It would mirror its previous usage so there's no change in use.
Next slide please. This is the current site plan for 5 0 1 West University. The site plan will be unchanged needed. Internal repairs to existing structure will be performed, exterior maintenance will be done and landscaping improvements would also be done. That's all for me. I'm going to introduce next up. Tiffany Zerman, the president of Rochester Avon Historic Society. Hi, good evening. As you heard. I'm Tiffany Zerman.
I am a federally qualified professional historian, president of the Rochester Avon Historical Society, a board member with the Michigan Historic Preservation Network and a preservation consultant. And tonight I'd like to briefly share with you the remarkable history of the Harrison School Building and the former Rochester Community Schools administration complex at 5 0 1 West University. The site has been tied to education in Rochester and Avon Township, now Rochester Hills since 1847 when a private academy was constructed on the property as the community grew, so did the campus,
the oldest building on the campus. Today is the 1889 Avon School District number five schoolhouse, later known affectionately as the Harrison School Building. It stands at fourth and Wilcox and was built after the earlier wood frame schoolhouse burned in an arson fire in 1888. In response to that fire, the district hired Michigan architect Claire Allen, to design a new fireproof brick school. Allen was one of Michigan's most prolific institutional architects, designing courthouses, libraries and banks across the state.
The 1889 schoolhouse was described at its dedication as a modern brick structure built at a cost of $8,000, which is almost $300,000 today. A major investment for a rural township in the 1930s. It was remodeled and renamed the William F. Harrison School to honor the school's longtime custodian who served an extraordinary 45 years until his death in 1942. As Rochester continued to grow, the campus expanded with it. A new high school was built in 1916 at university in Wilcox.
And in 1928 an addition was built to connect the 1889 and 1916 buildings creating the unified school complex. We recognize today. In 1987, the Harrison School Building was listed in the state register of historic places for its importance for early education in Rochester and Avon Township and for its association with Claire Allen's early architectural work. Together the 18 89, 19 16 and 1928 buildings show how public education, architectural styles and community priorities evolved from the late 18 hundreds
into the early 20th century. And even now, the materials, the craftsmanship and character defining features of these buildings continue to tell the story of a community that has long valued education and invested in its future. Speaker 13: Thank you Tiffany. We picked the name Harrison Center because during its annual meeting in the summer of 1942, the then current school board honored Harrison's long and faithful service with these words, may his name be forever hallowed and enshrined in the building named for him may the memory
of his of this good man be an inspiration to us all and we hope to carry on. If we're successful with this project, we hope to carry on that spirit. Our next presenter will be Tom Johnson. Tom, as I said, was instrumental in several projects around the state. Most recent one was Webster Community Center. Speaker 14: Thank you Robert. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been involved with the financing of community development projects for 35 years and they've asked to work on the analysis and feasibility of this project. There's three different parts to it. One is,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, can you talk a little closer? Thank you. Speaker 14: There's three different parts to our feasibility analysis process. The first is the building assessment. I'll go into that in a mon a moment. Financial analysis and then engaging the nonprofit interests of the tenants that are one of the revenue sources for maintaining the building. Have that next slide please. So the building assessment is a big project, 89,000 square feet, but it can be done. The building's in fairly decent shape and we've had a number of different professional contractors come through. Give us quotes on the roof atrium repair. And we've also had different people come in and assess interior res renovations, elevators, flooring,
auditor, navy equipment that we think need to be upgraded and build out for tenants. And next slide please. And then a financial analysis. We're looking at the revenue sources, breaking the building down into leaseable square feet and then rentable square, leaseable square feet. So we have tenants that would sign multi-year leases and then rentable square feet for areas that people would rent out by the day. We have, you know, we're looking in for nonprofit rates that support some of the nonprofits that are critical to the community. Then we also look at a number of exp expenses
for operating the building that that's for staffing 'cause we'll have a couple staff people, a maintenance person there. Then expenses such as utility security, ongoing operational cost, elevator maintenance, electrical and plumbing maintenance. That's usually part of an annual budget. Parking lot repair, snow plowing, et cetera. And then debt service capacity and replacement. Re reserves are all different operational costs. Look at next slide please. And final is the non-profit interest of of gauging. Does this really work as a community center? And what I found is just very impressive
and touches my heart personally is the number of nonprofits right now we have almost 45% of the leaseable space committed. And you'll hear from the, some of the nonprofit managers up here about what their programming is really an important part of the fabric of the community and that that really helps lead the quality of life in any community, the types of programs they run. And there's something really neat about the collaborative effort that you have when they're working under one roof. So in any case, that's the kind of overview. I'll turn over to Robert Cruz and talk about the community need.
Speaker 13: We so appreciate having Tom on our team 'cause that man knows numbers. I will tell you that what we feel is there is a clear and present community need and we're going to introduce you to a handful of nonprofits that have, are excited about this and have expressed to us in a letter of interest that if we're successful, they would like to lease the space. The first would be Amy Ever with a courageous voice. Thank you Amy. Speaker 15: Good evening all. My name is Amy ever. I am the founder and executive director of a courageous Voice. We are an Oakland based Oakland county based nonprofit
and we are dedicated to protecting children from child abuse and exploitation through child and teen safety prevention education. We work with children K through 12 and we teach them how to stay safe both offline and online. We are so interested in the Harrison Center project space in Rochester Hills because it would allow us to expand. We are five and a half years young and growing very rapidly. This would allow us to expand our programming, have a larger space for all of our volunteers, host trainings available to parents, PTA members,
teachers, educators, things like that. And then also strengthen community partnerships as we continue to build a safer future for children in our community. Thank you so much. Speaker 13: Thank you, Amy. Thank you Amy. The next presenter will be John Doer. He is the, I believe, the president of the Board of Gifts for all God's children. Speaker 10: Good evening gifts for All God's children is a non-profit organization that meets the needs of underserved children as a conduit of God's love. Since 1987, gifts for all God's children has served more than 90,000 children in needed in conjunction with their local churches
and other nonprofits. We provide Christmas gifts, school supplies, tutoring, summer programs, and much more. We have more than 400 volunteers, many who hail from the Rochester area who make our programs possible. The Harrison Property print a strong potential fit for our organization and would allow us to expand our outreach while continuing to partner with our volunteers in the Rochester area. Thank you. Speaker 13: Thank you. John Gifts. All God's children currently operates out of the First Congregational Church. It's not congressional, so,
and they occupy about 4,000 square feet there. They're busting at the seams. They're interested in 6,500 square feet of this particular building. Should we be successful, the next presenter will be Tela Rhodes with Pain Creek Center for the Arts. Speaker 4: Good evening. I'm Tela Rhodes and I'm pleased to represent Pain Creek Center for the Arts. Our mission is to promote artistic excellence and creativity through a full range of cultural programs. We serve the community, we serve as a community hub for people to explore, experience and share creativity.
We're excited about the Harrison Center Project as an opportunity to expand our outreach to explore greater arts education offerings and to bring the artistic community together. We're looking forward to having new spaces for community engagement, including exhibitions and artistic collaborations. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thanks. Speaker 13: Thank you Tekla. Our next presenter will be Cheryl with Sam Smiles. I think that might be a name you're familiar with. Speaker 4: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Cheryl Bone, Kristin Tibo, who's in the back of the room there. And I are the co-founders of Sam Smile. A Rochester based 5 0 1 C3 foundation. Sam Smile was founded to honor the life of Sam Dewey. Sam was a student at Adams High School when he ended his life by suicide in January, 2019 at the age of 16. Our mission supports mental health, advocacy, education, and suicide prevention in Rochester and throughout Oakland County. Our work supports essential services, provides programming,
funds, resources in local schools, and meets the needs of the larger community. From inception, Sam Smile has partnered with middle schools and high schools in the district. We're honored to be the beneficiary of this year's cross down charity week that kicks off this Friday. We're interested in sponsoring and developing a calm room in the Harrison Center. We've created calm rooms in several schools and we know the benefits that these spaces have for our young people. Calm rooms provide a sensory friendly environment for young people to self-regulate, relax, and decompress.
As indicated in the proposal, there's a clear and present community need for accessible, affordable meeting rooms, community gathering areas and presentation spaces. For charities like us, the right space can determine whether we can host a speaker, sponsor an event, or hold a program. The Harrison Center can potentially solve that problem for us in other local charities that may not be tenants in the building, but could still access those spaces, thereby extending its reach and and its service to the community. Sam Smile supports the Harrison Center proposal. We're excited about what it could offer.
The Rochester community and local nonprofits, we look forward with hope to being an initial partner, partner in this exciting endeavor. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank Speaker 13: You Cheryl. Our next person will be Gina Spain with the New Day Foundation. Speaker 16: Thank you Bob. My name is Gina Cal Spain. I'm the co-founder and president of New Day Foundation for Families. We're a nonprofit organization focused on providing financial assistance and emotional resources to cancer patients and their families. Statewide, we partner with about 120 hospitals
and one of the things we do a lot of is a lot of high school interaction. We've had several partners throughout this year, the over the years with the Rochester Community Schools. We're grateful for the support that we get from this community. And I just wanna say, Bob, I love the vision that you have for this space. You're gonna have lots of great comments about this tonight, but I think that your love of community, your thoughtful intentions and the inclusion of multiple nonprofit organizations created a great opportunity for collaboration and community impact. So thank you. Speaker 13: Thank you Gina. The next presentation would be from
Rochester Police Chief George Roja, but he couldn't be here so I'll just read a, a brief expert from it. He says, I believe this particular building would serve as an excellent location for hosting community initiatives such as neighborhood watch meetings, crime stoppers, hope not handcuffs, saves project and multiple training programs. I am currently developing a self-defense program for women as well as a traffic stop safety class for our vulnerable community members. And this location would be ideal for hosting these programs.
Chief George was very excited about that. With that, we're pretty much done. I would like to suggest that this project would be a win on a lot of fronts. It would be a win for these nonprofits. It would be a, a win for young people. It would be a win for the community at large and I believe it would be a win for the Rochester Community School system. We hope we have demonstrated that we have a series and legitimate plan for repurposing the building. We've reached a point where we would like to request
that the RCS board enter into negotiations with us regarding the terms for the community center that we might be able to acquire ownership of it. I would like to point out that at this point we have a lot of momentum. We have significant momentum and there's nothing that will kill momentum faster than a lag of time. So we're asking that you would make a decision as soon as you reasonably can and get back to us with that. If it helps in any way, we would be welcome the opportunity
to meet with a smaller committee and discuss any concerns or details that you might be interested. And we are ready to move. As Lynn Vio said, the building, we could occupy it tomorrow if we had an arrangement with you. There is no change of use, there's no one or two year issue with the planning commission. We would be basically ready to go. So with that, I ask that you give it serious consideration and in whatever way you can, you let us know. Thank you again for your time
and thank you again, especially to the administration for helping us evaluate the building. Thank you. Speaker 1: Be Thank you sir. Before you step, I just wanted to say, so I do appreciate, I think we appreciate all the time and thought that have gone into this. We're not in a position this evening to, to authorize or enter into anything. I I do have a question and it, it may be in here, but when you're doing your, your viability studies and what you want to do, are you building into that a cost for per, for obtaining the building or what is the, what is your intention on that? Speaker 13: Yes, we are, we have as,
as you typically would work at this stage, we're working with ranges. So we have, there's certain things that we're not sure about yet. We're not sure at this point. We will, if we're able to enter into negotiations with you, we can rather quickly determine how much grant or donation money we would be able to acquire. That's one of the things that would help enable us to determine what we could afford to pay for the building. There will be an issue of what you would expect and require from the building and we realize that you guys have to justify
what you do with the building. We're not trying to avoid that issue at all. So that would help us in that sense. So in negotiations we would be able to work that out with you. Speaker 1: Okay. I just wanted to clarify that because we do have financial fiduciary duties to the district. So thank you so much for, lemme Speaker 13: Answer it real quick. Real quick. Speaker 1: Any other questions? I'm sorry I didn't see trust you, Anne, Speaker 3: Thank you for that presentation. Previously, the board, we voted to delay making a decision until May. Is that too late for you guys or? Speaker 13: Yes. Speaker 3: Okay. You would like the decision before May, Speaker 13: We had requested that that was something the board decided Correct.
But we had requested that you would delay any action on the building until we were able to make this presentation tonight. So going forward, as you can see, we have a lot of momentum. We, we desperately need to continue that momentum. So that's why we'd like to get an answer back from you as soon as possible. Speaker 3: So then is it safe to assume then you have kind of funding lined up? Speaker 13: We do. Okay. Yes, we have, we have partial funding lined up. You know, it's, there's some things that are still in flux, but yes. Okay. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: Trustee Kui. Speaker 4: I was wondering, has the district issued an RFP
for the property or do they have plans to do that before May, or what's the timeline there? Speaker 13: Well, I'd like to point out that you did issue an RFPA couple of years ago. Speaker 4: I think we did several years. And you got responses several. Yeah, because we decided to sell the old, we decided we were trying to sell the old administration building and they bought the new administration building. Yes. So there was an RFP that went out. It was several years ago. That's, this was Speaker 13: Just a couple, this was just a couple of years ago and you, we participated in that and you did get several, that's probably where your,
your appraisal of the value of the building came from. If you remember, as is the appraisal was 2.1 million. The highest offer at in that RFP was 2.1 million to knock it down in bill 20 houses. I assumed that was a non-starter. The the, I never heard that there was a response to any of the RFPs that were offered at that Speaker 4: Time. I'm not sure if things might have changed since then now that it's 2026. Speaker 13: Could be. Could be. Yep. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that was a number of years ago, probably before most many of us were even on the board. But I don't think there's an active RFP at this time.
Speaker 13: I'm sorry, Speaker 1: Trustee. Speaker 4: So I think Trustee LA brings up a big, a good point that part of our financial responsibility would, would be including the RFP process. I'm looking at your website and it says a new opportunities coming to Rochester, Michigan. And you know, you have talked about momentum. There's a donate button on this website. Could you talk a little bit about, you said you had financing. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Speaker 13: About the website? Did you say Speaker 4: Yes? Speaker 13: Yeah, it's just something that we put out to, we're trying to raise community awareness of what we're doing so that when we do start to solicit donations
and contributions and we have people standing ready, Tom again has been especially helpful in, in preparing for that. People who are ready to donate. When we get the go ahead, we have soft commitments as they call it. Speaker 4: Well, I do appreciate y you coming to us and I loved hearing the history of the building and some of the organizations you brought, like the Pink Creek Center there for the arts was a big influence in my childhood. So I appreciate you coming out. Speaker 13: Thank you. Speaker 1: Does anybody else have anything? Thank you for coming. Appreciate it. So the next item on the agenda is 7.1 High School math
and World History resource adoption. An action item with Mr. Ano. Speaker 10: Yes. Thank you. While my math team is coming up, I will, I have two propo, two proposals for recommendation for the board to approve. The high school math department recommends the adoption of Imagine Im curricular resources for all levels of our Algebra one, geometry and Algebra two courses. Beginning in two, two thou, I dunno. 2020 6 27 school year. The high school math department engaged in a rigorous pilot process in which teachers collected observations
and data of student learning. During the piloting windows. Stakeholder input was gathered from the district math department students in algebra, geometry, and algebra two classes throughout RCS and like districts in the surrounding area. The pilot team used the RCSK 12 math rubric that measured the resources effectiveness in addressing standards and mathematical practices, formative assessment and instructional practices. The findings from the PRO process produced a recommendation for Imagine I am, I'm not gonna get too deep 'cause I know our team has a little presentation,
but this aligns to our strategic plan. Plan three, plan five and Plan 11, which the, the team will highlight in a little bit further a little bit the recommendation of Imagine Im also provides benefits to our students to support P-S-A-T-S-A-T college readiness. And this curriculum proposal has been reviewed by the Superintendent's Policy and Curriculum committee, the assistant superintendent of secondary and adult education and the superintendent. But I would like to turn it over to the leaders in the middle who are the ones who did all the work and allow the research
and all the hard, sweat, blood and tears to come to this point. So I, I'm going to turn it over to Jill Gums, our high school math coach, our high school math curriculum consultants, Sue Rapp from Adams High School. Stephanie Little from Rochester High School, and Craig Rizzie from Stony Creek. So they have a little bit of a presentation so you can understand a little bit more about their process. Thank you. Speaker 15: Thank you Pasquale, and good evening everyone. On behalf of our RCS High School Math Department, we are excited to join you again tonight
to share our process and recommendations from our high school math curriculum resource review. So you'll see tonight we will share about our review process, all of our findings and our recommendations moving forward. Speaker 9: So as you know, our curriculum department has an eight year curriculum review cycle. This year is year two of the high school math departments review cycle. So last year we took inventory of our high school curricular offerings, which is why we already came to the board to propose AP pre-calculus and our new dual enrollment options through Calc three and Differential Equations through Lawrence Tech.
The rest of our inventory revealed a need for updated resources for our Algebra one Geometry and Algebra two courses. So currently we are in year two, finishing up the piloting and the resource selection. Next year we would be moving into, into our initial implementation of the new resources. This is a pretty detailed timeline of the work that we have been engaging in as a department since December of 2024. As you can see, from December, 2024 until April, 2025, we just took inventory of what was out there. We talked to different districts in Oakland schools. We surveyed our teachers, we looked at other vendors
and had people come in and give presentations so that we could see what was out there in terms of high school math resources. We narrowed it down to three using the district rubric, and we'll talk a little bit more about that later on. Taking a lot of different things into consideration there. And we'll talk about the three options again in a minute. But the first one that we did try to pilot was the big ideas math curricular resource that we are already using. They have an updated online portal and platform that our students and teachers were able to explore a little bit. So we use that in May and June just to get a sense of what was out there for our current resource in an updated technology setting. In August, we brought in college preparatory math,
also known as CPM to do some training for our teachers who were, were going to be engaging in the pilot process. So we did some training actually in the spring and then again in August as a refresher. And the teachers who were in the pilot program implemented college preparatory math with their students from August until October. Right around that time, towards the end of October, we brought in Illustrative Mathematics to do a training through Imagine Learning, also known as Im. So they trained our teachers in how to implement using that curricular resource. And then from November until December, we went ahead
and implemented there along the way, collecting data and we'll talk about the type of data that we collected to lots of different things just to make sure that we were doing our due diligence, exploring all three of these resources to the best of our ability. And then in January we, we brought the entire cohort team together, all of the teachers who piloted the different resources to dig through the data that we had collected throughout this entire time. And again, we'll talk more about that, but that team came to a consensus on what they felt was the appropriate move forward for our district. Ideally, if we can get the curricular resources approved
today, then we'll be moving forward with the purchase and then begin training in the spring so that our teachers are comfortable and ready to implement on day one in the fall. And then we will obviously continue training and support for our teachers throughout next year and the coming years. Just a quick little sneak peek. The, again, these are the three resources that we had piloted. As you can see, there isn't one consensus that's being used across of Oakland County and like districts in the state. But again, this is just a, a quick overview of some of those different resources that are out there. Speaker 15: So Craig talked a little bit about the pilot process.
I want to give a a few more details on that. So for our pilot, all high school math teachers were invited to participate in the pilot. Participation was optional and voluntary. We had 25 high school math teachers. 58% of our high school math department chose to participate. And this included honors on level team taught and intervention courses. And we also had representation from every high school. During the pilot. Materials from all three resources were integrated. During the designated pilot windows. We had training from each vendor as well
as structured collaboration and planning time for our pilot team. During this time, pilot teachers gathered evidence and observations such as a full high school math district, department resource input survey, classroom artifacts, instructional process notes, teacher observations of student learning, as well as teacher and student perception data. At the end of the pilot, teachers collaborated to engage in a culminating data processing to inform the curriculum recommendation. As Craig mentioned earlier, as we examine the data collected,
we use the RCS evaluation tools. The RCS curriculum resource evaluation tool was used to select the three resources piloted that is from our teaching and learning department. In addition, we used the RCSK 12 math rubric. This was used by our pilot teachers to evaluate each resource using our data that was collected in efforts for the K 12 sort of coherence. These are the same evaluation tools that our K five elementary team previously used to select the K five math resource that's currently used, as well as our middle school team used these evaluation
tools as well and rubrics to select our current middle school resource. As you'll see in in future slides, the RCSK 12 math rubric centered on three domains, the standards for mathematical practices, formative assessment and instructional practices. Speaker 2: So, Speaker 3: Pardon me. So our math educators at this meeting examine the evidence that Jill had described earlier and the findings from their collaborative work are in the following tables that we will show. So that first domain from our K 12 math rubric is the standards for mathematical practices.
There are four look fors that we see there on the left. Each of them are rated low acceptable or high low. Being that the items are not addressed, addressed superficially and or easily omitted acceptable would mean that they're addressed, but it's not consistent throughout the curriculum. And it's rated high if it is embedded throughout the curriculum materials in ways that help students to develop them as habits of mind. You'll notice in the second look for there are actually two ratings. The reason for the additional rating is because we had our special education partners join us
and we had them take a look at two of these look fors that were specific to their expertise. And so we'll see additional ratings in the look for number two and then two slides later in look for number nine. Our second domain was on formative assessment. Formative assessment being where we can assess our students and get information and provide feedback to our students. So there were two look fors in this domain. And the third domain is on instructional practices. This is where, look for number nine again, has two ratings where our special education partners provided some additional input and information for us.
So in our summary of findings, the tables show that the piling educators rated, imagine Im equal to or higher than the other resources across all 10 categories or look fors of the K 12 district math resource rubric. Speaker 17: So at this time, the high school math department recommends the adoption of Imagine Im curricular resources for all levels of our Algebra one Geometry and Algebra two courses, beginning in the 20 26, 27 school year. On this slide, there's a suite of resources that Im provides. A couple that we'd like to point out specifically is
that it does align with the Michigan State Math standards. It also has a digital platform that we'll speak about in a little family support resources and data and reporting features on the suite of resources that Im provides thoroughly supports students, teachers, and their families. Speaker 15: So the estimated cost for this curricular resource are listed here. The digital platform for students and teacher additions for a total of eight years is 504, 540,000. And this is the total that covers the entire eight year timeframe.
Eight years, because that is the cycle of curriculum resource review. And so for eight years, this would be that total cost. There's flexibility for purchasing consumables, which is sort of a, a printed version. It's not a textbook, but a, a consumable version versus teachers printing the resources out for students. When we surveyed our department, most teachers do prefer to rely on a digital platform with the ability to print in stages for students. So we do have a possible purchasing of student consumable workbooks for one year, one time purchase of $123,000.
This would be a first year consumables that would be available for teachers per like teacher per discretion. And then the department would revisit the need for future consumable purchasing after the first year. In addition, we've integrated cost estimates for training and professional development. So our IM Resource Training and professional development has an estimated cost of $200,000. This includes training for over eight years. This ES this is an estimate based off of the implementation needs. We wanna be responsive and make sure
that our teachers are able to get the training that they need as we're implementing over the next eight years, as well as when we have onboarding of new staff. That and new hires. This also includes the cost of having IM trainers work with us specifically as well as the cost of subs. In addition, the curriculum resource has manipulatives and supplies needs. Some materials are yearly costs and some are one-time purchases. So we have a 10,000 initial cost estimate. And so this would be a one-time purchase for things such as
flat reflecting mirrors, measuring tapes, number cubes, et cetera. And then a 5,000 yearly sort of consumable supplies. And examples of this would be trans paper or transparent paper, clay strings, materials like that. Speaker 17: With our recommendation of Imagine Im, we wanted to make sure that it aligned with our strategic plan. As mentioned earlier, it specifically aligns with Plan three, which is explore academic opportunities for high achieving and high ability students. Imagine Im utilizes low floor, high ceiling pedagogical approaches, which every lesson includes an extension.
Problems that are labeled. Are you ready for more? Which allows students to go behi, or excuse me, go beyond what is being taught in the classroom and extend their knowledge. Also aligns with Plan five. Establish consistent data collection analysis and response protocols. One of the strongest advantages of using IM through Imagine Learning is the live, teach and data dashboard features the data dashboard, aggregate student performance on warmups, practice problems and cool downs. And this can help teachers respond to needs within their classroom by not only looking at formative data,
but also at summative data after and how they can go back to teach things maybe differently in the in the future. The last plan that we looked at for alignment was Plan 11, implement and assess responsive instructional practices. As I mentioned earlier, the curriculum is built on a framework of formative assessment. For example, each lesson ends with a cool down designated to check for understanding immediately included in check. Your understanding is differentiation planning and additional practice sets for students intervention and extra support materials are provided to help teachers structure lessons based on these
cool downs and other formative assessments included in the resource. Speaker 9: So along with alignment to the strategic plan, it was also important for us when choosing a new resource to make sure that those resources were aligned to PSAT and SAT college readiness goals that our district has. So we've outlined four of those different ways that Imagine Im will support college readiness through the PSAT and SAT. The first one is that the content and practice alignments in Imagine Im aligned perfectly with all the domains that are tested on the SAT. The SAT is heavily weighted towards two domains, which are algebra and advanced math,
but also include questions about problem solving, data analysis, geometry, and trigonometry. We know that Im is a problem based curriculum. Im starts with a real world scenario before progressing into synthesis of that information and a deeper development and dive into procedural fluency that is structured by the teacher. Modern SAT questions ask students to interpret the meaning of a slope, for example, in a business context or create an equation to model population change. Im students practice these skills on a daily basis, meaning they're not thrown off by the text heavy content rich nature of SAT word problems.
The second major feature for us is that embedded Desmos integration. We know that the digital SAT has a built-in graph and calculator that's powered by Desmos and the online platform through Imagine Im gives students many opportunities to play around with the Desmos platform to really become familiar with the ins and outs of all of that. The third is the focus on the eight mathematical practices. A major component of the SAT requires students to apply the eight mathematical practices to access deeper level questions. For example, in I am Algebra one and algebra two, they emphasize the structure of expressions. Students are taught to see expressions
as objects that can be manipulated. We know that the SAT rewards students who can recognize that structure rather than just brute force calculate. So I am trained students to look for structural efficiencies, which is the key to solving those harder SAT problems. Finally, we always are looking for rigor and deeper level questionings. We know that SAT questions are designed to expose gaps in understanding tricks and memorized steps can be inefficient. Inefficient, especially on some of the harder questions on the SAT. So Im uses a research based model for classroom discourse. Students, for example, must explain their reasoning and critique the reasoning reasoning of others,
which when they're looking at some of the answer choices on the SAT might help them to discern from some of those distractor answers. That can be a little bit tricky too. You two, at this point, that does conclude our presentation. Thank you for the opportunity for allowing us to present our findings with you. We'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have at this point. Speaker 1: Any questions, Joey? Trusts loon? Not Speaker 3: Really a question 'cause this is my second time hearing it. I just wanna thank you guys for your time again and for filling in the questions I asked during SPCC. Thank you for that. Speaker 1: Trustee Kui. Speaker 4: So I realize this is part of your job,
but thank you for reviewing the curriculum and moving the district forward. It's clear that there was thoughtful consideration in the whole process that you went through and it's exciting actually to see these SAT issues being addressed and stuff too. It'll, so we're responding to the data we have and it's just, I don't know, it's exciting and I could tell like you guys are smiling up here, like, you know, this is a good choice. It's, it's great. So thank you so much. Speaker 1: Any other trust Yaba? Speaker 4: I wanna, you, the other trustees are saying we appreciate your effort and your due diligence. The things that stuck with me in your presentation is that there is special ed consideration,
which I greatly appreciate that, that you use your co-taught teachers and real world problems because as a co-teacher of an algebra class, when will I ever use, this is a daily question we need to answer. So I appreciate it. Speaker 1: Anyone else? I just wanna add to everyone else and thank you all for the work that you put into this. So at this point, we're going to take a break again. Okay. Mr. Ano? Speaker 10: Yes. A lot of people ask me during the break how they get some RCS, mathematics department, hoodies and sweaters, but you have to be mass certified
because I, I got a t-shirt, so just so everyone knows. Alright, the second team, which I'll introduce in a minute, but I will read a little bit of the memo so you know what we're asking for. Recommendation for approval. The teaching and learning department recommends the purchase of a new world history textbook from McGraw Hill Publishing, starting for the 26th 27 school year to replace the current world history textbook from Prentice Hall, known as SAVI World History Teachers from across the district. Review three text from well-respected published companies, McGraw Hill World History, savi, world History Interactive
and Houghton Mifflin, har Cut, har Court World History. World History courses are currently used. Prentice Hall World History, which was purchased in 2009 after world history became a required course in 2006. Selection for the new textbook began in spring of 2025, where resources were collected from publishers and narrowed down to the above three. Text texts were then reviewed by a team of three teachers over the summer of 2025 using the RCS textbook rubric and the texts from Hollin Mifflin was eliminated
as a viable option. All current RCS world history teachers met in early September, 2025 to discuss the rubrics and explore the online components of the final two choices, Sava and McGraw Hill. In late September of 2025, a team of five teachers met with the publishing company of McGraw Hill to learn more about the textbook and its applications, particularly the online components. The decision was made to recommend the McGraw Hill text for, for purchase based on cost effectiveness alignment to Michigan State content standards and benchmarks and timely historical references, including connections
to current world events and issues. The purchase of the New World History textbook is needed for not only the online adaptive resources to serve diverse student needs, but also to support the strategic plan vision for learning and building culture proficiency in our students to prepare them for an ever-changing global society. This curriculum proposal has been reviewed by the Superintendent Policy and Curriculum Committee, the assistant superintendent of secondary and adult education and the superintendent. And now I'd like to turn it over to the real leaders of this work. The teachers in the, in the middle, the leaders in the middle. We have our high school social studies curriculum
consultants who have been patient tonight waiting for this moment. We have Jack Beal from Adams High School, Sarah, me from Rochester High School, and Kahr from Stony Creek. So I will turn it over to you guys. Speaker 5: Hi, we are so excited to be here. This has been a very long journey, but a good one. You wanna thank you. Okay, so this, like I said, this has been a pretty long journey. We actually got the opportunity to start collecting resources the fall of last school year. So we reached out to some publishers, started collecting books, identified some teachers to look
through them, and we'll go into more about the process. But there, there's just so many cool conversations and nerding out about historical resources and history, education, and we just see so much great opportunity for our students and the resources that we're bringing forward tonight. So, Speaker 18: So one of the things we want to continue to do as we go through this presentation is just the timeline that we featured on. That first slide is essentially captured throughout the rest of the slides, and we can always refer back to the timeline if needed. But it basically encapsulates what's happened over the past, really about 16 months. One of the things that we learned having been
through this process about three years ago, was the need for the diligence and the need that we really apply and, and use the rubrics to their full extent when considering different options for our students. So we were able to really gain upon the experience that the three of us gained again three years ago when we were choosing a resource for another one of our courses. And so we feel even more confident this time that we've really done our due diligence again, to make sure that we are putting forth to the board a recommendation that we feel very strongly about.
We know that this resource is gonna be potentially in the hands of our, particularly our ninth graders here for who knows the next couple decades. And we don't take that decision very lightly. The the last resource we had was from 2007. So the possibility of it being for a few decades is actually quite real. So we wanted to make sure that we were very clear and and concise in all of our efforts to pick the, the best or recommend, I should say, the best resource we felt for our students. Speaker 12: Great. So our current world history textbook that our current world history textbook that we're using, sorry, it was my theater voice. Our is nearly 20 years old
and we can all agree the world has changed quite a bit in the last 20 years. Not just the culture and everything around the world, but also like the technology of how of tech, of, of textbooks and the way our students learn. So from the lens of purely like selecting a resource for our kids, the ones that we currently have, there's no online supplemental resources that we can do at all. So if we needed to currently make it adapted for a different student, it was very difficult to do that. We couldn't change Lexile, we couldn't have it do the read,
couldn't have the book read to the students. So we really were desperate to get a new textbook. So in October we saw a window, we started collecting them, and then we passed 'em on to three of our veteran teachers to take a look at them. Speaker 18: We're very fortunate in our district that we feel we have very passionate, very caring teachers. And our group of teachers in our district that deliver our world history curriculum to our ninth grade students, they're a veteran group. We are very fortunate in our district that we have this group to tap into their expertise. And what's also refreshing is that they're,
they're not a group that even though that they're veterans, they don't see the value in evolving and trying to provide our students with new and updated resources. And one of the things that we really like about this product we're recommending is that there is a, a online component that is constantly going to be updated and will allow our students a lot of interaction with the material. So in the spring we had three of our top teachers from each of the three buildings that we decided to give them the summer to look over these different three choices. I would like to note too that one of the teachers that we selected purposely, so had a 10 year
career as a special education teacher before becoming a social studies teacher, we really felt it was important to have that lens of understanding our students with diverse needs and differentiated learning and understanding how students that learn at different lexile level, read at different lexile levels and have those different adaptive needs that that be a big part of this decision. So having him be part of that initial kind of vetting process we felt was a very important step. And now we're gonna kind of get into the process again. First and foremost, our top educators in the field
of world history vetted the three resources over the course of approximately four months. And then they made their recommendation and the consensus that they came to was that the McGraw Hill product, which we're gonna call a bundle because it actually has a hard copy textbook as well as an online component called Actively Learn. We felt that that would best meet the needs of all of our Rochester learners. Speaker 2: So of the, sorry, I'm just so excited. Oh, think you're Speaker 5: Of the sources that we looked at, as noted earlier, we eliminated the Houghton Mifflin one right away. It's very clunky. It reads more like a,
an encyclopedia than a historical narrative so that we didn't see the opportunity for students to make connections between historical events. So that was something that just didn't seem appropriate for, for our students. We did also look at the McGraw Hill Modern. We didn't really take it very far because it does not match the 2019 pacing standards for world history. So for world history, it, you know, every historian views, history periodization slightly different. So there is, so McGraw Hill has two textbooks, world history full survey and then world history, modern world history modern picks up
with 1200 ce, which our state standards start with 300 ce. So that's a pretty big chunk of history that that textbook doesn't cover. There are other states that only cover the modern part there. AP world history starts with 1200 ce. So they're kind of model it after that pacing, but it does not fit our state standards. Also, because of the students take the first half of world history in seventh grade, there is a gap of time before they reengage with the rest of world history. So those foundational units and what they call ERA four from 300 to 1500 CE are really crucial.
And that's why the modern history textbook would not work. So the proposal that we're putting forward is called the full survey 'cause it's, it's everything, it's all 1700 years of, of world history that are in our current state standards. So we then use the rubric to compare the Savas world history text and Savas purchased Apprentice Hall. That was where our previous textbook had come from. So we have essentially been piloting that book since 2007 because when, when Sava purchased it, they reprinted the book for the most part, just added a couple of new images and visuals and we didn't see a dramatic change in some of the content.
And we'll get more into some of the online components that McGraw Hill has better adaptability for. Speaker 2: So moving, Speaker 18: Moving forward with the process, as the three teachers completed their investigation of these three different choices, we came back in this past fall of 2025 and the three teachers then put forth their recommendation with the rest of our world history staff. I want to note that every single world history teacher in our of the three high schools was invited to this consultation and were given an opportunity for some healthy debate
to be able to look at the materials themselves and to get some consult consultation as well. And at that point, it was basically a consensus that as a whole we felt very comfortable as an entire group of world history teachers to recommend for that McGraw Hill bundle. And then we're gonna talk, Katie's gonna talk a little bit about what we felt was particularly important was the alignment to the Michigan standards. Speaker 5: Sorry. So our standards got updated in 2019. They hadn't been updated since the course became required. So one great thing that the McGraw Hill text provides is a crossover document.
So I know this isn't an active link of, 'cause it's a PF, but on, if you want the website, you basically can look and it gives you chapter by chapter where each state content standard is covered for the state of Michigan, which is, we felt really crucial for some of our younger staff members because they are trying to figure out how to cover 1700 years of history in one school year with 14 year olds, which is a very daunting and brave task. So this was really helpful, a really helpful resource that the Sabas text was not able to provide to where it could kind of help shortcut some
of those planning conversations and our professional learning opportunities for teachers to really get together and see how they're addressing the standards throughout the texts. So we have a long list of reasons why we went with McGraw Hill. As I've been saying, it's, it's clearly aligned to the 2019 standards. One major change in the 2019 standards was a commitment to the C3 framework of career, college and civic life. So the arc of inquiry is embedded now into our social studies standards. The McGraw Hill text provides opportunities for inquiry in every unit in the text and online. What we found with the Sabas text is the online inquiries do
not match the print. So if they're, God forbid, we're position where the online license is expired, what is in the textbook is not as high quality as what is in their online resources. McGraw Hill matches it identically. And so we felt like their online and print inquiry resources were much better aligned to the standards and much, much more grade appropriate. Their online materials allow for multiple lexile levels. It can even be read by Helper Bird for, for students using who already have helper bird extension on their Chromebooks. There's also these really amazing interactive maps that I have never seen in any other resource
where it shows you the history of a region over time. And so kids can see the evolution of geography and politics happening right in front of them. And no other resources that we looked at have that. There's also the ability to use Google Translate for multiple languages. So anything that Google translate supports, then they are able to get the textbook read to them in that language. There's a actively learned component that is made by professions in social or professionals in social studies, geographers, cartographers, economists contributing to looking at some of the standards through more disciplinary lenses
and more updated current issues. How do they, how they tie in and finding primary sources can be hard in world history because they're not all in in English. So even the teacher sometimes has to figure out like, what does this say from the Soviet Union? And then trying to figure out how to get that in front of students. Whereas like the McGraw Hill text, their, their primary sources of are really high quality. We did look at the Michigan technology standards and we felt that on the rubric it scored really high with the technology components. And as I said, like the actively learn component has
different levels so that kids can continue to kind of dive deeper. So when they have that more like adaptability as they answer, they can pro probe for more, almost like what some ais are doing. It's not ai, it is not, but it, it gives them further extension opportunities. So, Speaker 18: So once we had given the opportunity for our teaching staff to also meet together along with representatives from the vendor, we decided to go forward and try to orchestrate a budget proposal, most
of all ensuring that the rubric wa for potentially adopting this product was followed very strictly. And we ultimately presented our findings and ultimate recommendation to the SPCC in January. I also want to note, one thing I admitted earlier is that training and PD is a part is woven into our budget proposal from the vendor. So they would be taking time to work with our staff and help them to learn how to navigate the online resources and some of the, the, the cool features that the, that both the textbook
and the actively learn online component have. So there is training involved in within the budget proposal as well. Speaker 12: Ultimately we are recommending the McGraw Hill actively learn bundle become the primary resource that we use for our world history history. We want, we teach history different than maybe you learned it or I learned it where we memorized a lot of facts, right? So we don't want that. We want kids to engage with the material, we want deep learning, we want inquiry based learning and this resource really supports that. And so we want this book. Thanks guys. We can answer any questions you have.
Speaker 1: Does anybody have questions? Trustee Lacoy? Speaker 4: Well I just wanna say again, this is great to see on the agenda, just kind of like with the math one, you guys are coming at this with such passion and I love how you're aligning it with the rubrics and making sure we're covering the right span of time with the standards and everything. And kind of wish I would've had you for some of my history classes when I was growing up. I've become interested in it as an adult, but when I was growing up and memorizing the facts and stuff was not engaging to me. But it seems like you found a great resource and you're, you do a great job at presenting this. So I'm also very excited to approve this.
Speaker 1: Jesse Loza. Speaker 3: Yes. Thank you again for the presentation. I, it's my second time seeing it. It's very exciting. I really like the digital aspect of it. I don't see in here the financials regarding it. If you could just, I think I saw it in SPCC, but not everybody has seen that. Speaker 5: Yeah, so in, in total it would be $255,551 and that would include a textbook for every freshman. So if there was some online and in an eight year online licensing. So if the online subscription runs out, we do have a
physical book and there are some kids who still prefer a physical book. So we think that option is really important for them to have. So, and that includes the training, the shipping, everything. So Speaker 1: Anybody else? I mean, I'll just say I also like everyone else, appreciate what you've done and I think it, it sounds like a great recommendation. I was surprised to find that they haven't changed textbooks since 2007. So it's probably time. I do, I actually being a little older, I prefer that. I like hearing that there's actually a hard book too 'cause that's how I like to read. But yeah. Sounds good. Thank you very much.
Speaker 18: Well, we appreciate the time that you guys gave us tonight and we're gonna show ourselves out. Speaker 1: Well we're gonna do a vote, so if you wanna wait for the exciting vote. Hold on. Oh, Speaker 18: You're gonna vote. We're gonna vote. History teachers like to vote. So this should, we're gonna, Speaker 1: Or we can clap first? Sure. So unless anybody objects, I'm gonna put these things together and make one motion. Is there a mo or I'll accept a motion. Is there a motion to approve the adoption of Imagine Im curricular resources for all levels of Algebra one geometry in Algebra two courses as well
as the purchase of the new World history textbook from McGraw Hill Publishing, both beginning in the 20 26, 27 school year as presented. So move Speaker 3: To second. Speaker 1: Okay, so moved by Trustee Anna, second by Trustee Loon. Any discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Speaker 3: Aye. Aye. Aye. Speaker 1: That's approved. Five. Oh, Speaker 10: Can, can I just say thank you? Thank you to all you curriculum with solves math coach, everybody. I've watched them work so hard this past year and a half and
besides there were normal daily job, this is just another function. So thank you for representing Rochester County schools the way you do and thank you for bringing this, this forward. Speaker 1: Absolutely. The next item, you're welcome to stay. The next item is, is 7.2, the second reading of policy 8,003. It's a, it's a edge of the seat kind of thing. Mr. Murphy? Speaker 8: Yep. Good evening. This is the second reading and a request for adoption of the
updated general policy 8,003 web accessibility. It was covered in pretty good depth at the last meeting, so willing to answer any additional questions and then recommending approval. Speaker 1: Are there any questions about this Trustee? Lacoy? Speaker 4: I'll just make a statement that on this one I'm planning to vote no because none of my prior concerns were addressed and I believe that the, the way the policy is written, the language is just simply too vague. Speaker 1: Any other comments, questions?
Okay, is there a motion to approve the update to policy 8,003 as presented? Trustee Alspac and a second Trustee Anni? Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Speaker 8: Aye. Speaker 1: And opposed? Speaker 4: No, Speaker 1: The motion passes now on 7.3. Budget amendment, sinking fund and debt service fund item from Mr. McDaniel. Speaker 11: Thank you very much. So I'll give a brief presentation on on both of these.
The debt service fund I don't think needs a whole lot of explanation. We've talked about the bond refunding at the last meeting. So this essentially is our best estimate of the bond funds coming in and then the payments going out and then the bond issuance costs and things like that. So all in all, still a healthy fund balance, no concerns there. The other piece really is two things for the sinking fund. I think Dr. DeLuca mentioned it earlier, but we have a couple projects for the sinking fund that weren't incorporated in the budget. This would include filter first phase two, which the board approved January-ish I think.
And that was us taking general funds because there wa weren't enough grant funds to try to make it equitable amongst our school buildings. And then the other project that Mr. CIO shared was we have two elevators at our elementary schools. I think it's hugger and mussen that need to be refreshed, modernized, I think is the term that he used. So there's funding budgeted for those two projects. Filter first, phase two, and then two elevators. And based on that we recommend that the board approve the debt service fund, budget amendment, and the sinking fund budget amendment. Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. Any questions from the board?
Is there a motion to approve the amended debt service fund and sinking fund budgets for the 2025? Is that right? 1 25 26 fiscal year as presented Trustee? Second Trustee Enni, any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any nays? Okay, that motion passes. We're on section eight, which is the remainder of public comment. We did finish all of the public comment earlier, so we don't have anything further here. Section nine, additional comment
by members of the administration. Mr. Ruso? Thank you Vice President Blake. We have just a few announcements today. I will turn it over to Ms. Goer first. Speaker 15: Here we go. So good evening. On behalf of the special education department, I'd like to take just a moment to share several exciting program updates planned for the 26th 27 school year. So through last year's master property planning process, our community voiced strong support for realigning special education categorical programs across elementary, middle, and high school feeder pathways.
We began this important work during this current school year and I am pleased to share that our alignment efforts will be fully completed in the year ahead for the 26th 27 school year for be aligning our elementary emotionally impairment program and our last remaining elementary autism spectrum disorder program with their respective middle and high schools. These changes are designed to strengthen continuity for students, support meaningful peer connections, and foster a strong sense of belonging within our school communities.
In addition, I'm very excited to announce the expansion of our secondary autism spectrum disorder, categorical programming. Beginning next year, we will add one additional middle school classroom and one additional high school classroom to better meet student needs. These will take place at Hart Middle School and Stony Creek High School. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much to our Board of Education, to our superintendent, Mr. Russo, and to the community for your continued support of special education programs and services. We also hope to see you at the next PAC
meeting on March 10th. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Kath here. And Ms. Ms. Green, Speaker 17: Thank you. We have really so much to celebrate in this district. Community men, community members can look forward to seeing our upcoming edition of the community update. It will be coming out this week through the Rochester Post. It is an insert some of the, the stories that we will be highlighting, our AP capstone program, the newly approved courses, elementary number corner, innovative tools to,
to enhance learning at the middle school level, the unified basketball program, and so much more. So look for that coming out this week. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Gr for me, I just wanna say a few things. First, I wanna say thank you to our PTA Founder's Day was an incredible event, is an incredible event. And I, I made a joke, I think, to Miss Grime that only in Rochester would there be volunteers hosting a night where they're honoring volunteers on a volunteer basis. It is an incredible event, and thank you.
I think for the people outside of Rochester, you know, PTAs can be very functional and PTAs can be very decorative, and we have a very, very functional and complimentary and integral part of our district. So thank you for, for all you do on behalf of students and and families, I also attended the interfaith dinner. It was an incredible event. They were very thankful for our presence and for our support. The, the, the food was great as well,
but that was not the, the reason for being there. So I just wanna say thanks to, to them for inviting me. You know, Ms. Gothy mentioned the alignment efforts in special education when I first came to Rochester about almost two years ago, that was something that was on the front of minds of a lot of special education families. And Ms. Gothy has taken that under her wing to make sure that we have alignment from Kay to 12 in specialized programs and in this district, this size. Not only in the district this size, but the history of not having that alignment and then moving to that, that is a very big undertaking in a
very short amount of time. And you did it seamlessly. So thank you very much and we support and we thank you for the support of our special education families as well. Shout out to our math and social studies teachers today. I think they could both, I think both groups could give a masterclass on how to do a pilot, how to involve the staff, how to use a rubric and make sure that we're making the right decision for, for students. So it was incredible to watch. I, I think it's the first time I've been in a district where people clapped at the end of a presentation for curriculum resource adoption. Very, very proud, very proud to have clapped with and,
and been a part of it. Shameless plug for our district right now. Our second podcast is out on artificial intelligence and this one is very student focused. They talk, students talk about, if you haven't had a chance to watch it, students talk about their use of ai, what they'd like to see in schools, what they think AI is good for and not, they talk about academic, academic integrity. It's really great. And our next two are coming out soon. They'll be focused on AP capstone and then work-based learning and CTE. And within my three minutes I will close
by saying I was very happy today that the weather forecast changed because last week we were looking at negative four with 25 mile an hour winds and I did not wanna make another snow day call today. So thanks for the weather for helping out there. Thank you. Okay, now we're on section 10 announcements. There are a few on March 6th, which is Friday. We have a half day of school for students in ECSC through grade five. Only on March 9th is our next BOE regular meeting at 6:00 PM at this location, the RCS Early Childhood Education Center.
Also, this is not on my list, but I wanted to remind everybody that we are still accepting applications for the board vacancy until noon on Friday, February 27th. And that is available on our website to do that. The process for those who don't know is then on March the ninth at that meeting we will be selecting and whittling down to I, I think we haven't talked about it all, but in past practice it's been six people to come back for interviews and then those will happen on March 23rd. That person will be appointed and they will be right then a new trustee.
So anybody who's interested, who thinks they want to sit up here and do this apply. So anything else, if there is no objection, then the meeting will be adjourned. Any objections? Seeing none. The meeting is adjourned at 8:55 PM Thank you.