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the board finance and operations committee meeting of Thursday, May 29th, 2025. Um, I call this meeting of the board of finance and operations committee to order. The committee would like to welcome the audience. Viewers may watch live board committee meetings
online at tcaps.net net back/board recorded meetings may be viewed on demand at the same address. Um we've taken role or somebody has taken role here I assume
um the committee has set aside this time for public comment. If you wish to make public comment please fill out a public comment card and present it to the committee's recording secretary as you speak. Identify yourself by name. Any individual may make public comment for
up to three minutes. Individuals addressing the committee may must take into consideration the rules of common courtesy. Public comment should not be used to make personal attacks against a schoolboard member or district employee by name. To ensure due process and respect of individual rights, the
district maintains a formal process for handling complaints against individuals. A problem involving an individual or specific incident is best handled through administrative channels. These procedures are outlined in board policy 254. Uh Julie, I assume we don't have
any comments. We don't have any. All right. Since we have no public uh procedural items, the draft committee meeting minutes for May 1st, 2025. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes as presented? So moved. Second.
All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Moving on to Rotary Charities grant resolution. Um I'm going to defer to Dr. Van Wagner who's on Meno Island at this point and reporting in. Yeah.
Good morning from the Meno Policy Conference. Um, so this uh this grant is a requirement. Um, I'm sorry, the resolution is a requirement of the uh grant process for Rotary Charities of Teres. Um, we are applying for a $20,000
seat for standing up a foundation for the school district um to working to help create a 501c3 um and and so there's a process for that obviously and also to have some support
of um a consultant to help us to set up more of that philanthropy um advancement uh uh kind of office that many school districts now have across the uh the country. Our public school
districts do recognizing the issues that we have with financing at the state and federal level for our school district and the resources we need uh to be able to really help uh our most vulnerable students um our most at risk students uh
and and many of our extracurricular activities across the district. we just simply don't get the funds from the state and the federal government to be able to do what we need. And so uh we've been very fortunate over time to have uh philanthropy across our community to be
able to help, but it's been somewhat rather informal and the way we collect those funds or ask or let the community know the need. So, this will give us an opportunity to really create a structured system and process uh for people to be able to know the needs of
our our kids in our school district and to be able to contribute and and give of of uh financially, but even of time is something that as we get into this further we want to be able to do. And so, this is kind of a first step, a
first seed grant to help us to get that process going. Oh, go ahead, Erica. John, um the the grant, how is it just is it for a time period? Is it is it to fund or is it just a flat grant? It's a one year and
it's just what that'll do is we we have uh we've already worked with Aurora Charities. I've had quite a few conversations with security um about this cramp and he actually uh suggested and they paid for uh me to be able to
meet with an individual named Desiree Worthington. She's uh currently now she's now the retired uh uh philanthropy director for Mson uh hospital and so she is now a consultant that helps uh
entities within the Grand Travers the greater Grand Travers community to be able to set up these fundraising foundations and structures. And so this would pay for the first six months of consulting service to help us to to get
everything off the ground and to give some coaching and and um services to be able to know exactly what we need to do as far as setting up helping to set up a 501c3 as a district. We can't do it, but we can work
with the create board to do that. um as well as to help our staff to set up a fundraising uh system, a a computer system to be able to, you know, figure out who different uh foundations and and individuals are in our community that
maybe often give. And so that will help us to to work that first six months of that contract. Okay. So, John, just a couple procedural things. is the amount of the request that we're making is for $20,000.
That's correct. Okay. And this is a going to be a request to Rotary Charities. There's nothing assured that we're going to get this or that full amount. Correct. Correct. This is a grant. Normally, when they do seed grants, they do only give 10,000, but it does say you can ask for more. I did
consult and talk with Sakira about that. And so, their new fiscal year starts July 1. And so in June you can put in for it's always a month behind. So for consideration in July June is when they would take applications for that. It's every month rolling but because it's
over 10,000 it has to go to their board versus just staff arbitrarily having discretion. But knowing the need and the conversation secure thought it was appropriate that we make this ask and to take it to the board. Okay. Um, as far
as we're concerned, we're simply moving this on to the full board for their approval to make this request. So, I'm not necessarily going to read the whole resolution. Application requirements is a resolution from the board of any entity that is making a request. So,
this is a a resolution. It's there's not really a lot of legalities to it to be honestly with you. It's one that myself and and staff helped to create. Uh, but it's just a resolution that the board is in full support of making this grant
request to Ro. Okay. John, I just I mean I'm fully supportive of this and and I think we're due for this to happen and you touched on this briefly, but talking a little bit about uh who will benefit from this foundation. You touched on vulnerable students, at risk students,
equitable access um to extracurriculars. Can you expand on what you think or we think this the scope of this foundation will be? Yeah, you know, I think it'll it'll grow as it goes, but in the initial in the initial kind of work that we want to try and do and have our staff, you know, not
to, you know, be overwhelmed is one is our SSM. We know that that is something that we want to make sure we're finding every resource we can that you know Katie first and foremost works on students basic needs shelter clothing
[Music] transportation food like those are real key things that she works on first and foremost but obviously that encompasses more and I do see a vision for maybe that being our umbrella for a lot of
this if not all of it for that matter in the end. Um but initially it would be the SSN and request for a lot of those basic needs. The other would be for opportunities for uh extracurricular and um out of school opportunities. LEAP
being a big one. You know right now that we are underwriting about $60,000 a year for kids that cannot afford to participate in LEAP to be able to do so. Um, and even even then, Katie is also getting donations to pay that the fee if
it's reduced lunch versus free lunch kind of student opportunity. So, there's some money that we're already raising there. But with our strained budgets to be able to, you know, do those kind of things with with 60,000, that's tough. And so, we we want to make a concerted
effort a to try and make it to where every dollar we have, we can use for what we absolutely have to by law. um but also that we have an opportunity to um grow it as well. You know, we we
would love to be able to have our students, especially in our poorest of buildings, be able to to have it completely paid and no question that we'll see how far the philanthropy will take us. And then a third is advertising across the district. We have venues, our
different uh sports venues, our middle school fields that right now we do nothing with advertising on and and promotion. And a lot of times you may have a parent that owns a business that would love to do that, but we really don't have a clear avenue for people to even know how to do that. And so those
are the first three initial pots that we've decided as a team to have the office initially start with. But again, I do see it even being able to go into more opportunities and more things. We've talked about music and we've talked even about like high school
athletic supports, but we already have boosters for those and we initially, you know, do a great job. Again, I think that we think that we can supplement in the future for those kind of things, but right now we just want to keep it a little bit contained to be able to get
our feet under. John, I assume this will be run by a board. Will it be people solely within the TCAPS community or will you get folks also from outside that community to be part of this board? Well, the 501c3, it's a little it's kind of almost
two different things. the 501c3 that will um you know what we what we see that is a little bit narrow maybe that some that they will they will do events they will do different opportunities to be able to raise funds but then you know
in the bylaws and those things that we want to try and work with the consultant based on her recommendations already to to make it to where that can feed into the district and the district to be able to you know do what they need to with those funds and these specific bods. Uh
but initially that 501c3 by nature and legally is its own and we're just kind of helping a group of community members to stand that up and be able to give them the language for their bylaws in that element. But we do want to try and work with that group
to make it somewhat narrow in focus so that it doesn't creep out and venture out of the the purpose and intent that we're trying to create it for. So that's that's the work that the consultant will help us work with with some legal folks
and stuff to be able to do. Right. Well, I think it's a worthwhile adventure here and I certainly appreciate Rotary Charities considering this because that's sort of their mission as well. So, um I I would move Well, I can't
move this on to the full board. Yep. I I move that we uh move the um the grant request on to the full board. Second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Thank you, John. Would you like that
under discussion so the full board can have that or Yeah, I would think that's probably where it goes most appropriately in case there are questions. All right. Uh, bids and services or purchases. Um, Evan, morning. You're on. I'm on.
It's infrastructure season for technology. So, the uh first uh purchase I bring to you guys is for our milestone uh mobile infrastructure. That's for our security cameras. So, we have just over
a thousand cameras throughout the district. um and the infrastructure needed to keep those up and running and provide all the necessary access both at the building sites uh centrally located and now more importantly uh for the law
enforcement access if if so needed. We need to keep those that infrastructure server and that licensing up to date. Um so with that uh we are hoping to purchase uh the milestone mobile infrastructure from peopledriven
technologies. Uh it's utilizing an Omnia purchasing consortium contract. So guaranteeing us the best price uh on that equipment. Um, this will be purchased and installed hopefully over this summer um, from People Driven for a
total contract award not to exceed $122,398 which includes a 10% contingency in case we needed any extra equipment for install or or that, but we're not necessarily anticipating that. Evan, is this removing the current
cameras and replacing with these new cameras or is it in addition to It's actually the server infrastructure kind of behind the cameras. So, the cameras themselves are al in place still and we did do what is it 3 years ago now. We did a very big upgrade where we did
replace many cameras. Okay. Um, this one's just kind of everything behind the scenes. So, what's making the cameras run and the licensing as well as those servers that help manage them? Got it. Okay. Okay. Any questions, Ty?
I move that uh do we need to make a motion on each of these? Well, since we're going to do capital expenditures. Yeah, I just I I would appreciate having some motion on here in case there's any Okay. need for recogn. So, I move that the finance committee um
approve or moves to the full board uh the contract award not to exceed 122398. Uh and this figure includes a 10% contingency. Second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed.
Thank you for indulging me on the votes. Consent. Consent. Oh, I guess that's not my decision. We'll get in the swing of this. Interesting. That's all right. All right. Paul, capital projects. Nope. I'm sorry. Uh I've been spending money.
Still me. Still 11. All right. Uh yeah. So this second purchase bringing to you is is a pretty big one. It's for more of the behind the scenes, but all of our virtual infrastructure. So that'll be located at the data center. Um there's four virtual
infrastructure servers that we are planning to replace. Um what that looks like as opposed to in the past you used to have physical servers for each kind of server you needed for various equipments whether it's cameras or print servers um other things of that nature.
Now we can virtualize those. So those four uh virtual infrastructure servers will contain roughly 100 virtual servers. So virtual computers kind of built in on there which is great for efficiency. Um and it's also important
for us to keep that updated and we are a little bit past due on needing to upgrade that and set that in place. So um we're excited that we'll be moving to what's called Azure local. Um Azure is one of Microsoft's kind of infrastructure cloud-based um server
systems. This will enable us to be truly hybrid, meaning we have some capacity to hold that storage locally in our data center and also have some of that in the cloud. Um, which is always good for redundancy and security. So, and then it gives us the opportunity down the road
to look at, you know, fully cloud hosted infrastructure if we want to go that route. Um, that pendulum tends to swing back and forth whether everyone wants it in the cloud or we all want it local. So, we're we're excited to kind of be in that hybrid model. Um so we have both
options. Um this will utilize the mild my deal contract which again gives us the best pricing for that equipment. Um again we'll be purchasing from people driven technology one of our trusted vendors to help us acquire and install
that equipment. Um it's for a total contract not to exceed $459,780. And again, this does include a 10% contingency in the need of any uh additional equipment during server installation, which again, we're not necessarily anticipating the need for
that. And this comes out of bond funds, correct? Sorry, this comes out of uh the capital bond funds, our technology allocation. Um I had a couple of questions. We I I know Peopledriven Technology is one of our preferred vendors, but I I do notice
there is no competitive bid on this. Is there no one else that offers the same service and hardware requirements? Um there could be some other vendors who offer the same. I mean, that's the the benefit of using those big consortiums is we're guaranteed that is the best
pricing anyone could offer us for that equipment, which is why we um enjoy taking advantage of that when it's applicable. Um because it it essentially gives us that same pricing of going out to bid and and collecting all those from various vendors that we may not be
familiar with, um but knowing that they're not able to offer us a lower price on that equipment. And so then um it gives us that flexibility to work with a vendor that has helped us kind of basically build up that infrastructure from the beginning uh and ensure that they're very familiar with our systems
and it gets done pretty efficiently and quickly. Um so pricing wise with those consortium uh deals, we're very confident that there's not a better price sitting out there. We're not, you know, giving an advantage to someone like a people driven for that pricing model.
All right. and and we confirm that through this consortium. What verification do we have from them that they at least have gone out and gotten competitive bidding? I'm just sure I want to make sure that I can justify the half million dollars for this. Yep. Uh
so the the purchasing so there's several we're we're members and I work with uh Cindy Farah in the purchasing office and she confirms our membership in those consortiums as well as then if the companies themselves work with them and have their products on there. And so those are the guarantees of joining
those consortiums that they put that out. And the most common one that we see we're not using in this case is REMCY which through Michigan which is the same thing. And that's just kind of the guarantee that they've ensured the best pricing possible based on any item they've allowed into their consortium.
So if the item is on here then it's been guaranteed that that's the best price. So that's where sometimes we do go out to bid or something if they don't have the product on on the consortium deal so that we can see maybe there is a better price out there that we find. Okay. Any
questions? I move that the finance committee uh approves the technology department's recommendation for purchasing the virtual infrastructure servers from peopledriven technology for a total contract award not to exceed 459,780.
Uh this figure includes a 10% contingency. Second put on consent. Um just one last question before we vote on this. Um in terms of security for these um this infrastructure, this
cloud-based, wherever it may be, what what do we have in place? I know the county has run into any number of issues and so it's on the top of mind for most people. I would think that we have a fairly robust security system. We do to
make sure that we're not held hostage at some point down the road. We do. So we we have engaged with um two two specific uh companies or vendors that we're utilizing right now. Arctic Wolf is one that does overall kind of our network
system scans inside and out um and reports back to us. We meet weekly um and contact them pretty much by monthly with their team but they have a dedicated called sock team security operations center that is monitoring our stuff 24/7 and I can get a call at any
point in the night if they anticipate something suspicious. We also have uh an endpoint protection just meaning kind of like on each computer um it's called Sentinel 1 is the product that actually works with Arctic Wolf. They ingest those logs and kind of use that to help
monitor. Um, and so that's just in case anybody happens to get anything, click on a bad link, um, their computer becomes compromised, the Sentinel One software will both alert us and, uh, quarantine the device or the the program in question. And so that we can mitigate
that as well as things that we've had in place for a long time such as just our firewall. We use a PaloAlto firewall to prevent kind of unwanted network uh traffic as well as just block known malicious actors from getting in and protecting that. So those are just the
handful but the big hitters for what we do to definitely it is top of mind. Okay. Figure as long as it's in the paper we might as well ask the question here. Yep. All right. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. And we will have that on
consent. Now we get to talk aboutformational items, transportation, and Tyson. I'll give a little bit of a summary. Um, I asked Tyson to come today just because, um, in the past we've had some issues with staffing and we've had to make some
decisions about cutting some busing at the high school level. Um, we've been pretty fortunate this year, although every day is a struggle. Um, most of the managers and Tyson are driving on a daily basis. So, I wanted to make sure you had an update as to how we're doing with staffing. um it's not getting any
better. It's actually getting worse. And also just a number of things that um I'm not sure that the committee is aware of that he oversees. Um sometimes when we talk about district vehicles, I'm not sure that everybody's aware of how many we have and how many we maintain. Um
district vehicles like trucks and vans cannot be purchased with bond money. That's a general fund expense. Um so we're constantly maintaining the inventory, taking care of those and then um as needed um eliminating those from from our fleet and then purchasing new
ones. So he's going to be bringing um I think in September uh two vehicles from the white fleet um to the board. So just kind of giving you an overall update as to what we have. Good morning. Morning.
I got you. I'll do it. Okay, perfect. Okay. So, just a little personal our personnel update. So, our AM fleet, we require uh 44 AM bus drivers. We have 44 different buses that we put out every
morning. Um, and we have 45 licensed operators in the morning. Those 45 also include the 12 at the bottom there that are uh two uh bus mechanics that do not drive every day. Three facilities people
that have bus license. One of those drives every single morning, has his own route. And then we have uh five either directors or managers. And then two uh people up here at Boardman or I call it Boardman but anyway up here at Glenn
Lumis that also have a bus license. One include you. Are you in those numbers? I am a director. So yes, I am one of those. Okay. Yes. Christine is one of two staff. Okay. Dr. Van Wagner is a potential bus driver.
He has his license. I appreciate that. For the record, for the record, Christine and the lawyers, and I think she's turned them against me, recommend me not doing it. You're not. Yeah. Well, let's not renew. Appreciate
the process and you learning what they go through. That's right. Uh, also in the numbers that are above, we do have one licensed operator that is uh off long-term. long-term, meaning the rest of the school year.
So, actually, it's now two that are off long term. We had one that left us yesterday. Um, so that just happens. These are on disability or they're uh these are long-term personal reasons. Okay. So, yes. So, they may return at
some point or not. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. is the um I should know this, but when you say you have 45, it doesn't include the 12. The 12 are the ones to cover for those are TCTA drivers. So So the 12 are the ones
to cover for illnesses and other things. Okay. Yep. Yep. So those Yes. So the in the PM we put out 52 buses and we have 50 I can't even see it from here.
51 TCTA drivers. Uh that do not include the 13 that are below there. Again, we have three bus mechanics in the afternoon, three facilities people. Out of those two bus mechanics, uh three or sorry, three bus mechanics, three of
them have routes that are assigned to them and they drive every single day. Uh we have three off for long-term personal reasons. And then you can see the others the other ones there. So our numbers do not look great. We have
managers that drive every single day just because of this. None of this includes the normal I am sick today and I cannot come in. So as you can see and I think um some of this too is to stress the challenge when you have Tyson and
the managers and the bus mechanics driving every day. their regular work now is behind and not getting done, which I think when we get into some of the bus inspection stuff, I'm concerned that by having bus mechanics out on the road every day that they're not able now to prevent the great preventive
maintenance services because they're simply not available. And this is a lack of available manpower applying for these positions that we need. So, it's not like we haven't posted them and we don't have them in the budget. So, the the posting has
never came down since I've been the director for a bus driver. We've never taken the posting off. We've done incentives. We've done sign on bonuses. We've done referral bonuses for current drivers that refer somebody to come in.
Now, this is anecdotal, but it used to be that the number of people who are retirees would take a job driving bus because of the benefits package, not so much the hourly rate. Yes. Is that still a competitive package
at this point? Absolutely. Yes, we and some of those is one of the spouses will work for us. They might both have their own businesses, but they come in for the benefit package. Absolutely. We have uh landscapers, excavators,
uh a lot of people with their own business and not to put it that we used to market as the uh the part-time job with the full-time benefits, right? And it's still the benefit package is outstanding. And Dean transportation and outsourcing
some of this is not an option at this point. Yep. In my opinion, they're not doing any better getting staff. Um, they're actually, I think, struggling more than we are. We've had a lot of drivers leave and come back because we have a better benefit package and I
think because the staff treats the drivers so much better. Okay. We do have two in the pipeline that are are not on that list. We have two uh interviews that we're doing. So, we've had two applications. So, we have one tomorrow and one on Monday. And we do
provide um fully paid training. So, we have trainers on site. So, um you can get paid while you're in training, which is not always the case. And it's pretty expensive to get your bus license, take the test, and we cover that. Yep. We have two outstanding
trainers. So, uh on the bus side of it, we have uh conventionals, it's 77. We have four lift buses for any special needs students. Um, we are currently not transporting uh wheelchair
students, but we do have them in the district. They're just not requesting or requiring transportation. So, we do have the buses for it. And then we do have four transit buses. The flatnse uh normally trip buses. They are built for doing routes. They do have all the
lights on them and everything like that. Uh, but we do not normally take them on that. Uh, we are selling seven buses this summer. We have uh just because of the replacement buses that we've just received in uh we have buses that are
going out. Um on that note, uh the buses on order, we have five con conventional buses. Uh they should be here in July of 2026. We have one transit that should be due in February of 26. And then we do
have the one electric bus that should be here in September of 25. One of the thing the things on here and why I put the order dates. It used to be that we could place an order in November, December and get the buses the following July. We placed this order for the conventional and transit in February
of 25 and we're not going to get the conventional buses till July of 26. It's a very long lean time. Um, with the electric bus, we will place that order in November of 24. There's actually a little bit of a a concern. Sandy and I are a little bit nervous. If we don't
receive the bus by um September 30th, we'll have to go back to MDE and ask for an extension on the grant. Uh because the grant actually expires on September 30th. My guess is just knowing that there's such a delay with production that they would honor that. But currently, if you have to receive the
bus to be able to spend the funds and the grant currently ends September 30th and our current delivery date is September. So, just some things that we're watching. We don't run any propane buses at all. I'm sorry, what, sir? We don't
run any propane. Nope. They're all diesel buses. Okay. Except for the one electric that's on order. Uh, this is the white fleet that Christine was talking about. All of our our our pickup trucks, sander trucks,
uh, stuff like that. Um, we do have one mechanic that is our lead. Uh, he's just the white fleet lead mechanic. So, we go to him when it comes to replacement vehicles and stuff like that on which vehicles should be replaced. He he's on
the front line of that. Take all of his recommendations seriously. We do run uh three which I call the big sander trucks. They require a CDL vehicle, a CDL license to drive them. And then we do have one smaller
pickup truck sander that mainly does the facility site and the transportation site. We offer that up as extra work for a bus driver every year. They come in early in the morning sandar just our lot. Uh we did have uh we we have had
injuries in our parking lot alone. So that's what uh stemmed that. So we we do take very good care of our just because we have a lot of bus drivers walking around out there. So we do take specific
cautions when it comes to that. We do have four uh what we call our moving box trucks which are they do not require CDL license but they are fairly large. Three of those vehicles uh have lifts on them for moving tables, chairs,
a little bit of everything that anybody requests to be moved throughout the district. Yes, there's a lot of move management in the district. Uh, two of those specific movers are actually bus drivers that do it in the middle of the day. Again, offered as extra work for
them. And just so you can understand, we do have uh the passenger vehicles. We have uh those the bigger the bigger vans that I have up there is five of them. You'll see a picture of them as the one 10 passenger up there on the top. So, we
have four of those that are 10 passenger vans, legal for the school district to own and operate and run them around mainly for sporting events. And we do have one eight passenger van um that runs out of Trevor City High School to
do their programming, stuff like that. We have uh the managers and directors drive a lot of those uh four-door pickups down there at the bottom. I believe that one is uh food service vehicle right there for the director.
And then we run a few uh regular four-door all-wheel drive vehicles like uh our current ones are Escapes or Mariners, which is an old Escape. And then it comes to that that Escape picture there. It's a 14 with quite a
few miles on it. That would be one of the vehicles possibly getting replaced soon with the the new vehicles that we order. As you can see, the back of it rusted out and it's it's still gone through our mechanic. Still very capable vehicle.
It's just the way it is. Um and then a bunch of 3/4 ton one ton pickups. Uh, every secondary school has one of those with a snow plow on it that takes care of the stuff during the middle of the day that Elmer's does not take care of in the morning so they can clean stuff
up. Every year in the state of Michigan, it's a one-day illegal passing survey that all the school districts do. It happened to be on May 14th this year. Um, Christine had asked that I just pass this along. We do turn it into MDE. Our
findings for that one day. I did uh put a picture there. That is what the camera shows. They they uh they call them the red light runner cameras. They're on the side of the buses. We have one that points backwards and then we have one out the front
window to get the the uh plate numbers of these vehicles. Um, all but seven of our buses have these cameras on them and it's just the other ones are older buses that we haven't done yet. So anyway, um,
we had 12 in that one day, 12 illegal passers, five were in the AM, seven were in the PM, 11 of them were coming from the front of the bus, which would show just like that vehicle there. um we could see their license plate and
then we turn them into the sheriff's department. It depends on which sheriff's department we turn them into. Uh it depends on the area we're in. It's either Benzy County, Leelon County or Grand Traverse County or down here at the city. And only one of those vehicles
was actually coming from the rear of the bus and passed it on the lefthand side, which all of them were on the lefthand side. Um, this I think this is really important just to highlight this. This is a huge problem nationwide. I can't remember the numbers nationwide from
last year, but it was astounding on a daily basis how many cars are illegally passing school buses with their lights on. Um, luckily all of ours are from the left, meaning they're going around the bus on the non-door side. You do see horrible videos of people passing on the
right as kids are stepping off the bus. So, this is a major problem. Luckily, we have a good collaboration with all of the sheriff's departments and they do follow through on these, which is nice. And we have the added bonus um they actually passed a law to allow the stop arms to have cameras on them to collect
this and gave permission to law enforcement to use that data to uh give tickets. Do you remember what what the penalty is? I can't remember what it is. I believe right now it's $500. Wow. So, I mean, I'm saying, "Wow, that would
seem to be a deterrent, but apparently I don't I don't think a lot of people understand the rules about buses." You know, I'm not I'm not really sure. I remember when my students went through drivers training. I don't know that they hit on it very well. Um, a lot of people don't understand when we have our hazard lights on that you don't have to stop.
It's just like any other vehicle with hazard lights, you can go around. Um we do uh hazard light stops um in areas where um it's actually been proven with data that you're better off not to control traffic. And so like Garfield Road with five lanes, you can't cross
students anyway legally. So we are using those hazard lights to let students off on the right side and cars can pass around slowly. Sometimes sometimes they stop more for the hazard lights than they do for the red lights, which is kind of confusing. But I don't know that there's a lot of education out there for
drivers to understand the rules about school buses. Well, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency with buses stopping, for instance, with Beta stopping. I'm assuming it's okay for me to go around a beta bus when it stops, but it's Yeah,
Beta doesn't have um overhead red lights like school buses have, right? So yeah, it can be confusing because we can do a stop depending on the type of type of road, the speed limit and the time of year with the weather. We can stop the bus in various different positions on or
off the road. We can use overhead lights. We can use hazard lights. So it is confusing. Um un unfortunately you well you would think that people would be a little bit more cautious around a school bus knowing there are children on it and sometimes that's just not the fact. I mean I know that we're slowing
them down a little bit but So, it's scary. A lot of times they're hurrying. Yeah. They just want to get by. They do not want to be behind the school bus. And we our drivers do a good job after doing a stop on a major road to pull off and let let cars pass as
appropriate. Sometimes it's not safe. There's not always a good shoulder to pull off on. Um, but this just shows like how diligent our drivers have to be before they actually open the door to make sure traffic is stopped around them. Well, actually, you have to open the door to get the red lights. You have
to make wait and let the students off after you know the cars have stopped. And what happens if the students are egress the bus and then need to cross the lanes of traffic to get to their home? Do we leave that bus in that stop position that you can't pass it and tell
those students? Absolutely. Yes. They have to be off of the road service on the other side of the road before we can then shut our door which turns our lights off. And then we're supposed to if it's feasible to move off the side of the road and let traffic by. Okay.
But sometimes during the winter it is not feasible because then the bus will not get back on the road. So it's it just depends. So it's up to the driver if it's uh safe. Okay. Any other So we also have the Michigan school bus
inspections. uh hours are normally done in March. They they normally give us uh maybe a week of a heads up, but it's it's normally right before spring break is when ours is. There's a Michigan our
Michigan State Police gentleman that comes out, does our bus inspections every every year. Out of our 78 buses that were inspected this year, uh we had two which were red tags. We had zero yellow tags.
A yellow tag item would be an item. Let's say I had a one um one low beam headlight that went out during the route. I could complete the route before it had to be fixed. Now, if the headlight went completely out, the high
and low beam, uh they would have to call us. We would have to get another bus out there. That would be a red tagged item. The bus cannot continue. If you have a stop arm that does not uh fully come out, that would be a red tag item or one of your overhead red lights goes off.
Red tag item. The bus cannot continue at all. Yellow tag item, one tail light out of the four that we have. Yellow tag item would have to be fixed before it went out on the road the next time. So, we had zero yellow tags, two red tags. Uh the two red tagged items we have uh
you'll see the air brake chamber that I supplied a picture of. It had a broken spring on the inside. So that chamber if you were to put the parking brake on the parking brake would not hold because that spring would not hold the that
wheel. We had one broken spring on the inside of that chamber. Um and then the other one we had a the um had to do with brakes. So you'll see the arm that comes out there. That arm can only travel 2 in before it's out of
adjustment. And ours traveled 2 and 12 in for one of our buses out of one brake chamber on one bus. That was a red tag item. That was the other one that was red tagged. Um, as Christine mentioned,
our bus mechanics, they do drive school buses, especially in the afternoon. Um, and that's when they're not doing their regular jobs. I'm not setting this is our fault specifically my fault for not catching these. Um, but we do have
mechanics that are doing a great job. It just does it just does indicate that when we're pulling people off of their normal jobs, there's other things that aren't getting their its full attention. So, it's unfortunate. We've been a school district that's been 99
100% um passing for a very very long time, but there are incidents um we actually had one a few years ago that I didn't agree with the state police inspector. We had a bus parked in the back that we planned to sell, but for some reason it was still on a list, so he considered it part of our fleet and
he red tagged it when we weren't even using it. But um we have had them in the past. Very, very rare. So we do a phenomenal job taking care of our buses. For some reason, it seems like this year we've had quite a few air brake issues where mechanics are replacing a lot of those. Yes. I mean, it was to the point
he was telling me numbers. I'm like, are we having vandalism? What's going on? So, I don't know if it's just the same year of buses, but they've fixed a lot of them. And out of I think 11 that had issues, you know, we only had two that we didn't catch in time. Yes, those air
brake chambers, that one specifically, we were getting four to five years out of them. uh recently we're getting two years out of that same air brake chamber and we're not the only district that we're working with HRA to find a a better replacement but we do have to we
have to do our jobs and inspect them more. So how many miles do we drive daily? uh daily. Sir, I I I don't know why that number right off, but we do just under a
million miles a year on our buses, which makes us one of the largest geographic districts in the state of Michigan. I think we're third largest. Yes, I know. In the Beny Central, and then there's one in the UP that's bigger than us in Alpena. Yeah.
Okay. Ty, do we have uh ideas about I mean the busing drivers issue has been an ongoing issue for a long time and do we have ideas or solutions for that is one question. Two, what is our responsibility from the state law around
transportation? And three, what is our current policy around busing? Like for example, kids who live within a quarter mile of school. So um as it relates to recruiting, we have tried a lot. We've done um we've tried to package uh sometimes it's hard. You're asking a
driver to come in from 5 to 8 or um 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. and then they're gone all day because we don't have noon runs. We outsourced special ed which used to be all of our noon runs and then they have to come back at 2 to 4 or 5. So it's it it's hard to have a part-time job that
really takes up the majority of your day. So that's a struggle. But Tyson um has done a really good job of packaging jobs together. Like he said, we have movers that are bus drivers in the middle of the day. So where we can make people whole and give them an eight hour day. We're trying to package it for them instead of letting them try to figure it
out on our website. There's a lot of jobs that are part-time and we can work with them to say, you know, you get insurance if you're doing an AM and PM route and getting a minimum of 22 hours a week. So basically, anybody that's doing both AM and PM gets insurance, but
it's typically 4 and 1/2 hours max. and we can help them find maybe noon duty in the middle of the day. So, we we try to go above and beyond to make sure that they're getting what they need and then if possible, we try to package it together when we actually put it on the website that it's a posting. Um, other
than that, we've done um we've done events. We have school buses parked all throughout the summer with signs on them. Um, none of the events really have ever come to fruition where we're going out and having like hiring events, so we've stopped doing those. Um, we have
ads. Um our our best um referral process usually comes from our own employees. Um so we had referral bonuses and that that worked for a little bit. Um I think it's getting more and more difficult. We always kind of targeted retirees. It's more and more difficult I think with
some of the behavior challenges we have to get um some retirees to come in. It the behavior is different. It's unlike anything they've seen or know how to deal with. And so that is a challenge for sure. Um, as it relates to the law, we're not required to do transportation
other than special ed. If you do provide transportation, there's laws in place that say you have to provide transportation for anybody living a mile and a half away from their school of residence. So, um, we don't go that far. We don't say you're not transported at all if you live within a mile and a
half. We actually created non-transport zones around each school building and we transport everybody outside of that. as you know, it's not a good area with street lights and sidewalks. And so where where we have um areas like around Eastern Elementary, we have a boundary that's no transport. If you live within
it, it's way less than a mile and a half. You don't get transportation. However, everybody outside of that would. Um and we we've looked at the policy quite a bit. Um actually right now the policy is pretty bare minimum as we updated Tronee and we're going to take a look at that to see if we'd like
to change that or add to it. um we have full discretion anything beyond the one and a half miles um to provide it how we'd like to as long as it's a legal bus stop. We try to do depot stops as much as possible when in big subdivisions we're coming and we're stopping once. Um
so a lot of times it's at the front of the subdivision and and we get you know obviously a lot of parents don't really like that. Um, it's always for them a safety concern and I understand that. But for us, every stop costs time and money. Even though it seems like one extra stop wouldn't when you have as
many stops as we do. If everybody got the extra stop in front of their house, we'd never get there. Well, and their safety concerns for having our mechanics drive. Yes. So, will this policy come to review to us this year? Um, it's something on our radar to look at. Um
when we adopted policies, we went with the bare minimum for one reason for one. He's driving every day to try to take time to sit down and review that and create something. Wasn't our priority at the time. So we want to take a look at it, see if we have any recommendations for changes. It would be something that
we would bring to the board because we will get some kickback if we start making longer walks or longer rides. Um we try really hard not to have very long rides. Sometimes it's unavoidable. I mean, it it never fails. You have a student at the end of the peninsula that
goes to um East Middle School and it, you know, it simply isn't feasible to not have them on quite a long time. So, you know, we can take a look at that and make some recommendations. Um this year, um I think you're going to bid this year
where they're going to take a look at all of the routes and redoing them to get some efficiencies. Um, our challenge always is, you know, we require uh students or parents to sign up for transportation to get a ride and it just never fails. People sign up and don't
ride. So, we have like 118 um high school kids assigned to a route and 40 ride every day. And it's it's a challenge because you have to plan for them and then the driver has to figure out who's actually on, which it helps with our new uh routing software and the tablets that they have. they can
actually say which stops are not on and it'll reroute for them. In the past, it was the driver trying to figure out how to get to that stop and skip this stop. So, it's it's a little bit more um planned and safer in my mind, but it's a challenge. I'd like to get to a point
where um we have um elementary students scan on and off so we know when they're on the bus, we know right away if they're on the right bus or the wrong bus. We know when they get off. So many times um we'll have a parent call that they haven't got off at the stop yet and we're trying to locate the student and
we're calling the bus driver. Do you have the student on the right bus? Call the other buses at that school. Are they on that bus? Are they still at the school? Well, now if they scan, we know exactly where they are. We know when they get off, too. And there's an app so parents can look that up. We're only doing elementary and I would really like
to push to go beyond that to middle school and high school. Middle schoolers are the worst the first day of school. always get on the wrong bus. They they get on the bus they had last year or they get on the bus number, not the route number. Um I'd like to get to a point where we're doing the scan on scan
off districtwide. It would require students to wear their ID. So that's a bigger conversation, but I think it could provide a lot of efficiencies and more more safe and secure where you know where students are. You know, it never fails the first day of school. Middle school, nine times
out of 10 it's middle school. my student's not home, we don't know where they are and there's so many routes out of West Middle School and East Middle School. Now you're just randomly calling buses trying to find the student. It uh it takes a lot of time and energy and it bogs down the radios and the phones quite a bit when you
actually have a serious issue. It makes the driver's job will make the driver's job easier which then might be a better sell to get them to sign up. And it's if you can see the students name and picture and correlate them to a bus stop, you know they're getting off at
the right bus stop or you know they're on the right bus before wrong bus before you even leave the school. So it it does help us track students better. So you know we always used to say your students not lost, they're just displaced for the moment and we always find them on the wrong where they are on the wrong bus.
They're still at the school. Um, but that definitely would be something I would like to move forward with, which could be a policy change. It would be up to I haven't talked to Don Dr. Vinwagner much about that, but I went to a recent conference um in Texas
on safety and security, and most of the districts were really, really big districts because it's a national conference. So, I'm talking to districts that have 260,000 students. And, you know, it it was kind of they were like, "What do you mean you don't already do that?" It it was, you know, it's very
different. We we feel here. Patrick and I went the director of safety and security and we've always kind of felt like the big fish in a little pond here. Well, there we you know, no big fish. I mean, people are doing things beyond what we have thought about. And we'd like to kind of take some of those uh
thoughts and ideas and bring them back to our district to improve our safety and security. All right. Anything else? Tyson, not for transportation. Thank you, Tyson. Thank you. Thank you. Just a quick question. This nags at me
with school of choice in this mile and a half radius that you will bus or not bus from. How does that affect is it students in their designated school mile and a half or so? Um it is their school
of residence. So, if you live by Eastern but go to Central Grade, you can only get on a bus to Central Grade if you get to a Central Grade bus stop. Okay. Um, and the mile and a half doesn't pertain if you're not going to your school of residence. So, if you're open enroller
schools of choice, the mile and a half doesn't pertain anyway. And we really don't even have to provide transportation, but we do. We actually, you know, we've done a lot of extra to accommodate child care. Um, every student can have two bus stops in our
district and they can be open enroll schools of choice or going to their school of residence with two different stops. So, they could have two different bus assignments. Um, and you never know which day they're going to what and you it's really hard to even schedule that because especially with older students,
middle school and high school, it they don't always have a set schedule. Um, so it's a challenge. We offer a lot which does put a lot of pressure on the system. Okay. Thank you, Tyson. Thank you. Appreciate the
update. Mr. Twain, Capital Projects. Good morning. Good morning. So, the uh first phase of the train performance management contract is continuing the lighting upgrades, uh the water management, uh replacement of fixtures,
plumbing fixtures, and that continues on. the building envelope portion of that is complete. We're moving into the summer rather quickly and when the boilers were turned off, they started replacing boilers uh and components for the HVAC systems. Now, the one you're
looking at on the screen there is the one in our offices at facilities. Rather small application replaced by an even smaller boiler, more high efficient city. However, at West Middle School, it was a little more involved.
Um, team Elmer's came out on site. They had to hoist a forklift to the other side of the building. I think we were there on a tour that day. Yeah. At West Metal one with the crane was over the Yeah, you could see them working away. Those were those were the existing
boilers that were removed. Wow. It was central grade. It was quite an ordeal. You say central grade. They busted a hole in the side to get it out and then they had a crane. First we had to trim trees in the back so it could fit. Then they had a crane lifted up and over the
building towards the parking lot. Wow. So there they're taking the old equipment out, placing the old boilers across and those are the new ones. We replaced two old large boilers uh in the same footprint. We put four brand new
ones. Those cleaver bricks clear fire. Yeah. Okay. So higher efficiency. um a lot of redundancy. Well, and I think too the the concept of we've always struggled with shoulder seasons. So, you saw how big those other
boilers were. It used to be a long time ago we would fire up both of them as soon as we started boilers. And that's a lot of waste of heating water that's just not putting out into the building because it's not calling for it. So, we got to a point after working with um Synergistic Energy Management where we
were starting the shoulder season with one boiler because it was enough to help uh take the edge off in the shoulder seasons. Then we would turn on the second one when it got really bad maybe January when we're in the negative degrees. We actually haven't run two in a couple of years. We haven't needed it. But when you look at these much smaller
and you can cycle them, you can cycle them. So you can bring one up in the shoulder season where you don't really need a whole lot and you're not heating all of that water. Okay. Over at uh Traverse Heights, I took these pictures um Tuesday morning
uh and they've already got the joists up and they're getting ready for roof deck and that. So they're moving along pretty quickly over there. This is the classroom edition from another angle. These are the three classrooms we're adding. Out at the front of the building, uh,
where the cafeteria is being expanded, this is a this is a little tunnel walkway that u we created to keep the students out of the roadway and out of the construction area. And it become quite an adventure for them over there. I bet it has. I bet they love walking by
the construction. They we needed to get a head start on the cafeteria edition because that absolutely has to be up and running for school in September. If the classrooms lag a little bit, we can make it work and move in a month or so late. But this one absolutely has to be done.
So, we let them get a head start on that. So, they're off and running. Uh putting foundations are going in. Okay. out at West Senior High. Um this is uh the circulation project out there and this is what we're uh working
towards at the end of this summer having this loop uh completed. I don't know how I can show it to you better. We're going to be down to one entryway directly across from Herk Road. Uh we're working with the county on the lights uh timing
those out uh and creating a single stoplight at that intersection. The bus loop comes in uh to the right. The traffic all goes to the right at the end of this and loops around uh the school in the opposite direction that it does now. And that the darkened areas uh is
the work that's anticipated to be completed u by the end of this summer. Yeah. Hopefully by hopefully by Yeah. They they said October, but so this um the focus here with this plan is to bring the parking up to the building so you
don't have people crossing traffic to get to the building and bringing the outside travel the travel lane out to the outside. So hopefully less incidents. We've had several is incidents, one very recently where somebody got hit by a car. This this will be the bus entrance and traffic
entrance. The bus loop is here. It's separate from the rest of the traffic. Then the direction is around and here. And then the parent drop off actually comes past and in and around this loop and then back out and around. And there's two way two lanes of traffic all
the way around there. So there's bypass on the outside uh and lines. So you don't have to sit in line, you can bypass the line. We did keep it one way. Um there were so many pinch points and stop signs if we tried to do two-way that they felt like a lot of congestion. And so we kept it one way, but we turned
it around so it's actually the correct one way. I don't I don't know if you guys are familiar, but it originally was built this way to go this way, one way, and then they brought a school bus in and realized kids had to cross in front of the bus to get off. And so we changed the way the traffic goes. And on the
right side of the building, uh, is eventually where the the lane of traffic is, is it going to be moved to the He'll show you. Okay, that's next summer. Okay, that's what I thought. I thought it was in phases, but I I just just needed to remember two summers. So, this
is phase one. Okay. The dark blue lane here will be a temporary lane uh for two-way traffic this summer. And I'll get to another drawing that shows that the pink area here is the area of construction this summer. Uh this is our
layown area for contractors. We've already got a construction trailer on site there um to manage the the project from Miller Davis has their trailer there. This is the uh summer uh traffic flow plan. The uh blue arrows are
obviously the in and out with the pink. Um and it's two-way traffic. We've got signage coming. Uh I think you asked them to put some up right away here. Yeah. So, um, so in in the middle of construction, it'll be two-way because we've blocked off half of the and we're
using the, uh, traffic light on the current out to do an in and out. And we're working with the county to time that light and then eventually that light will be removed when we have the main entrance done. So, we won't have the two lights so close together. Yeah. There's there's going to be signage all
along uh talking about the two-way traffic. We're going to stripe the pavement and that uh so it's it's more obvious. And lot C will be open for the summer. So you can get all the way around there and back out. Hurtner or
the Cedar Run Road uh entrance and exit will be open all all summer also except for June 12th and 13th. So, uh, so her Cedar Run will be open, but we're closing the access to North Long just the 12th and 13th of June, and they're making signs right now. So, we're
warning people ahead of time because they need time to create the temporary road to get in and out. They'll make the the 12th and 13th will make the connection. They should be out there prepping that shortly, getting it all ready so that on those two days, alls they need to do is make the
connections. And then this is phase two. U next summer till summer 26 and that that's the rest of the uh rest of the areas. So we have um I don't know if you can see it well because it's highlighted in green but maybe you can
get up Paul and point. So the road has come out to the outside but we added a little bus loop in front of the athletic area to kind of separate um staging for buses for trips. Oh, so traffic traffic will this will be the only entrance the
one main entrance and the the loop road is now on the outside of the parking areas. So smart. And here's the here's the bus loop at athletics. The um the roundabout here is actually going away. It's going to be a T intersection when
it's finished with stop signs and then obviously the rest of the way around. It'll be a major improvement. We'll have to deal with construction for two years. But all right. Anything else on capital? One
more thing. So, a couple of months ago, we received a letter uh from the state of Michigan. It was it was addressed to dear staff of uh municipalities and public schools. Okay. So, u and and I think the easiest way to describe this
is just to read the first paragraph. It says, "You are receiving this letter because all are part of your municipal separate storm sewer system, MS4, has been identified by the Michigan Department of Environmental, Great Lakes, and Energy as being located
within a regulated area with a population of 50,000 or more based on the uh current census. So, we've uh contracted with a a firm that's done a lot of work with other uh
municipalities and school districts to go around and do some mapping for us of our uh storm water systems. Um we're using Arch Environmental Group. Um this comes as a an unfunded
federallymandated state enforced program with the goal of reducing discharge of pollutants to uh surface waters in the state. Right. So and it's it talks about a separate drainage system for storm water only. So on a lot of our sites,
we've got um 26 sites uh properties. Uh 19 of them are within the boundaries of the regulated areas. On this map, the red outline is the school district taps. The pink areas are the regulated
areas. So 19 of our our properties fall within those regulated areas. However, we've investigated, we did this last week. I spent a lot of time with Arch Environmental going around to the sites and looking. Uh there's only two sites
that I can think of right now that where we're actually connected to uh or may be connected to the storm system. One is Thoroughby Field and the other is potentially West Middle uh Monastery. the rest of the sites not
even central grade we find a connection uh to the city storm system. So um well we do have separated storm and sanitary right? We do have separated storm and sanitary but most of our storm
system is contained within the site and it's filtration natural filtration filtration to the ground not discharging from a pipe somewhere and that's that's the specific language in this program is that it's
being discharged um so I'm hoping that through this investigation and through our our work here with the the consultant that we can uh exempt most of our sites from this. So what they require is you know as a
regulated they call it as a regulated MS4 we're required to obtain uh coverage under a national pollutant discharge elimination system permit which is issued by so so there's minimum control measures
we have to develop a storm water management plan um which includes public participation and we've been talking with the city and the county uh and I've been talking with other school districts about how they do this. We'll probably have to develop some kind of web page
that we manage and maintain on the school's um web. Have you been in conversation with Andy Smiths at all? Okay. Andy's been in my office a couple of times. Yeah. He's got some good ideas on storm
water management because the city's also behind the ball on this one, right? And so there's a public education program. So, with this public participation, we're probably looking at partnering with the city to develop something in common that we can talk about.
Um, the the things listed here on this are just minimum control measures that we have to uh look at. We have to put in a like I said, the storm water management plan itself. And then once we've got that all put together, uh we
have to submit for a permit for the uh sites that fall under the regulations. And the deadline for that is August 29 this summer. We have to submit for a permit. Doesn't mean we have to have it by then, but so and
we're not bound by any impervious service requirements or other storm water. I'm surprised by central grade to be honest. Um, but and I think as we redo it, thinking towards that of where the water goes during storms because it
can't all go on the limited green of central. There's well there's um underground retention there that it goes into and there's several um large bottomless um
inverted I forget what you call them sistns. Sistns like that bump into the great. Same with Willow Hill. Willow Hill is not there's there are no obvious connections to uh City Storms uh anywhere except at like I said Thoroughby Field. I know that one's
connected because when we did redid the turf there, we did an underground retention system that the overflow for was connected to the city storm and we had to go back and put a backflow preenter in because the city storm was back filling into our retention system and filling it up. And I'm actually
shocked about Monasuri because they have a retention pond and that's the issue is it's the definition in there is the discharge, you know. So that system filters on down from West Middle School into that pond
and then the overflow from the pond goes through a pipe and that pipe discharges and that's what we're going to have to manage is that discharge. So, it's a long because it goes under Frankie Road to the Meer side of the road. If it was all retained on the site and didn't go
anywhere, that's one thing, but because it has the potential to discharge somewhere else through that way above the ground, huh? you know, for the city schools, Oak Park, um, Central grade, the the city had a saw grant that they
got an analysis of everything except the downtown and where the discharge for storm was going. And I know they've got all those records because I've seen them. But the recommendation from the grant and the analysis was that they needed to spend a million dollars a year
for the foreseeable future just to bring their storm water system up to speed. So it's a problem that everybody's dealing with now. So they're not the lone stranger in this one. No. And this is this isn't anything new to the state. It's just new to us because the
population exceeded 50,000 in the last census and that was the trigger for it. Okay. All right. Um, are we done with capital projects? Yes. Thank you. Thank
you. Sustainability committee, if Dr. Stan Wagner hasn't disappeared on us, are you okay? So, we uh had the opportunity to meet uh we were a little light attendant this month, but um we did we are working on
there's a something called the Michigan Green Schools Initiative um and uh it's a state program um I believe run out of DEQ uh that um there's three different levels of of uh commitment to the green
schools initiative. We do have some schools already, I want to say about four or five that are have gone through that process. Monastery is actually working on their second level now. Um but uh what we're trying to do is look
at um what it would take uh starting um next uh late fall in the winter is the application due date. I believe next March uh to have all of our schools look at an application for uh the at least the initial uh level of green schools.
Um so we're working when we'll be working through the summer putting together a uh somewhat of a a form and an opportunity to figure out how to do an assessment of what things we have in place of the uh opportunities that you
do have to choose from. uh there are multiple things you can do and you have just a select few of those that you have to do to reach the first level. Um so that's uh that was a big bulk of our conversation um going in. We did talk a little bit about uh board policies and
how that works with uh energy efficiency and some of those kind of things. So that's something that um we talked a little bit about and it how our policy process works of creating policy and that you know that's reviewed by legal and then county generally brings that to
committee and to uh the board and so we talked a little bit about what that process looks like. Um and then uh that was about it. So we'll be meeting again this uh next month to talk more about green schools initiative and that work
and uh continue to move that forward. All right, thanks John. I got one little question. John, did the the team working on our climate action plan make any progress? They've been meeting um but at this point yet they don't there's not really
a, you know, any kind of recommendation. they're, you know, trying to look at what are components, what are some of those beginning level things, but that subcommittee has met um twice um and uh we're planning as well to to keep meeting until they kind of get to what
those thoughts are and bring that to the group and you know have some debate of you know what that looks like. Um but I think that you know the green schools was one of the key things that they thought you know would be in that. So, um, nothing real formal on that, but
they did acknowledge that they are meeting and we do have, uh, two of our our facilities director, um, one of our facilities directors, um, our managers rather, and, uh, Tom Fredus, our food service director, are a part of those conversations with them. And I don't
know if you two are familiar, but we're basing this action plan on Interlockan Center for the Arts climate action plan. and and it's if you haven't seen it, so maybe you can share it out with the board, John, but it's it's very impressive. All right. Thank you. Um finance
Christine budget update. So um we will be bringing on June 9th the uh final amendment to the 2425 school year and then the original budget for the 2526. For the final amendment uh we are definitely looking much better than we had originally predicted. So, we had
planned to draw up to $3 million from fund balance this school year. Um, and right now it's looking a little bit closer to half of that. So, about 1.5. Um, there's a lot of variances within our budget. I think we have between 15,000 and 20,000 account codes.
Now, some of this is a little bit deceiving because we do have schools that get carryover. So, we'll close out the year that they didn't spend it and then next year we'll have to add it back as part of the budget. So, it's a little bit deceiving from that front. So there's few hundred,000 that we'll have to add back to next year's budget
because we have to close out the year, but we allow them to carry that over to the next year. So it's not use it or lose it in some scenarios. It's not a lot of a lot of departments can't carry over, but we let the sites carry over any excess FTE.
Yeah, that's good. I think in January, I'm looking at the the first amendment we did, and that was around 2 million drawing from fund balance. So less 500,000 less. Yep. That's great. Yep. And you know I if if I were to predict I think it'll end even better than that.
Um we did receive for a couple of different projects some grants that were unexpected that we had planned to use general funds. So obviously that helped the bottom line. Sure. For next year's budget um as you know we don't know what our budget is. We've gotten two and two
and a quarter budgets. uh the governor state and senate and then just part of the house as it relates to a couple of sections which really doesn't help much because it's good to know what they're thinking about foundation and the mental health and school safety but if none of the other categorical identified you you
might assume they're zero which is really bad for our bottom line. I know they're not going to be but they didn't really put out a full budget so it's not very helpful. Uh typical typically what we do if we don't have all of the information or know our budget exactly, we kind of look at the three uh
proposals and kind of go with middle of the road, if you will, um for predicting our budget. So this year more than ever, it's very unknown. Um I'm not even sure that we'll have our budget by September. I think John's a little bit more hopeful. Um but we do have to uh adopt a
budget before July 1. So our original budget is is more of a um educated guess than ever before. Um we went with the governor's proposal uh for the foundation 392 as an increase. We are predicting an increase of students about
25. Um this is um a little bit at the elementary uh level but also quite a bit with the uh CLC program. So some of the online learning we're expecting an increase of students which is great. We pretty much stabilized the last couple years plus or minus I think 10 students.
Um but now we we might be seeing a different trend where we're on a little bit of an upswing. Um, we currently are aware of a a reduction in our at risk, which is 31A, of about a million dollars. I know, um, John's been advocating with legislators to change some of that language because a lot of
this is a result of not getting some free and reduced forms due to the state offering all free meals. Um, so there's a recognition there and I know, um, John drafted some language as a suggestion to try to make sure that we're held harmless, if you will, because we're not getting those forms. and we are focused
now on pushing those forms and and trying to make sure that we're getting a form back from every parent. Um right now we're assuming the other categorical stay the same. Um there's a lot of categoricals that have different um
focuses. Um we've gotten some money from the ISD. We've gotten a couple allocations that I think they had carryover. So they're able to give us an allocation. Um and then as it relates to um our typical variance, we typically see about 1.5 million in variance. So we
just put that right in here so that you can see the true bottom line. With all that being said, we are predicting a draw from fund balance of about 2 million. Again, that's with not a lot of information. So my hope is that it only gets better than that as we get our
information. One quick note I would like to give you how volatile this is. Um about 7 o'clock last night here on the island, the speaker of the house announced his budget will have a $12,000 foundation. Oh jeez. Wow. Um but basically wiping
out almost all categoricals. Um so which you I will tell you I was with u many Republican House members that were blindsided and had no idea he was making that announcement. Wow. Um so
Who knows where this is going to go? I can tell you I I I mean I was with the the budget chair at one o'clock yesterday afternoon. I'm convinced he didn't know. So, um it's wild west. I I'm not sure how this is going to go,
but we're trying to make a budget that we have to by July one by law based off that kind of volatility and things that are out there that are are seriously being being pushed. That's almost $2,000 more per pupil than what? Wow. And it
the the premise behind that's not bad. We've always advocated put it in the foundation, not the categorical because the categorical have restrictions, right? It would we'd have to do some math to see if we're ahead or not as it relates to what we got total in categoricals. But the premise behind
that is something I would support going forward. I don't I don't know that it would ever pass, but Yeah. No, it's the politics behind that that make me nervous. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And it makes me really nervous, too. Like I at one o'clock yesterday, I was feeling like, okay, there's maybe a chance at this.
And then, like I said, I'm sitting with John Roth and we're sitting eating pizza going, I don't know what to think. So, you know, it's it's wild. Well, not unlike Washington.
No. All right. All right. Anything else on finance? Um, no, not on budget update. Uh, upcoming district per anything you want to highlight on the upcoming district purchases? Yeah. Um, not necessarily. I just like to bring attention to it. Um, we um the top
section obviously is are things that are uh coming now or in the next month or two. We are still waiting for more details on some of the remedies we need to do on the bridge at Trevor City High School. I know Paul's called and emailed and bugged and begged, but I know they're also busy the services that
we're requesting. Yeah, they're supposed to be getting me uh documents to put out the bid here next week. Good. Um like I said, two district vehicles Tyson's going to purchase as um part of our ongoing uh program. Um I know there's
going to be some facilities equipment, custodial equipment that comes out of the facilities bond allocation. Um, we will be going out for bid shortly for some renovations at this building to prepare for central grade coming to the building. We need to do some modifications to the kitchen especially
uh to house that many students and feed that many students. Um, and a couple other things. And then we we'll be doing minor modifications to the central high school F-wing to fit uh the rest of the administration staff that's not going to sin. Um, so we're working on that. Um,
we'll have to do an upgrade to the gym here. Um it, you know, it hasn't been used in a while, so it hasn't been sanded down. Um so we'll do a proper sand down of the gym floor uh before Central grade gets here. Well, we still have a year or so before we're maybe two
before they occupy. Just a year. So we um we would like to be completely out of here in May so that we have time to start staging um moving them over. May of 26. Yes. Okay. Um elevator upgrades. this one. Um, some
new requirements, uh, have come to light. Um, Paul's working, um, with one of our facility managers. We've done upgrades to two elevators that really just required a phone line. Um, but we do have two elevators that will need to be replaced in the next few years. And I
actually think they're 250 a piece. So, I'm not sure if we'll do them at the same time or separately. Um, which are the two that need to be replaced? I think you said West Senior High. I think that's one of them. West and Central. Yeah. um high school, grade school. Correct.
Yeah. Okay. Um bottle filling stations. It's kind of like what um Paul just shared about MS4. We have new um requirements um for uh water within buildings and lead testing. At some point, we'll know all of the
rules with that. They kind of keep changing, but at some point we'll be needing to do some big purchases of those filling stations that meet the new code. Um, so that's kind of out in limbo right now. Um, and then some of the other things we've already talked about.
All right. I just I mean I I've asked for this before the last meeting and I'm going to ask for it again, but if we can just have an up-to-date summary of the all the things we've approved to date for 2024 bond. Um, what we've provided guidance on, including like I see music
renovations, but it says 2 million, but we've okayed 15 million, I believe. Yeah, the 2 million is just for West Middle School. Yeah, I see that. But I mean just like I just big picture of the 180 million just for So it's in my slideshow for the 9th for the update on the strategic plan. Thank you. The red,
yellow, green, right? Like where we're at. Yeah. I mean that's great too, but it would be nice just on one page. I mean it lists all of the things that the board has approved. So out of 190 million between what we had left in 18 and um the new authorization, I think
the board has already approved like $176 million. So there's not I guess that's what that's my question. So we've approved 176 so far. Yes. Um I'll have it on the slide on the 9th. That's what's coming to mind. Um I just worked on it yesterday. Don't hold Yeah, don't hold me to it, but it will be accurate on the 9th and that in that show and
slideshow and I have listed all of the projects um that have been approved with those dollar amounts. So you'll see that on the 9th. Thank you. Yep. Okay. Any other comments? We don't have any public comment out
there. I see head shaking. No. Um, all right. The next board finance and operations committee meeting will be Thursday, Jill. Yeah. July 10th. Yeah. Okay. We're
skipping the month of June then. Well, it technically this is the June one. Kind of. sort of. Okay, that's fine. Not anxious. The dates don't always line up now the way that we schedule them, but obviously with the Fourth of July week, we don't have any meetings that week.
So, all right. So, the next one's July 10th. And I do have a motion to adjurnn. So, move. Second. All in favor say I. I. We are adjourned. Part: 2
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Board executive committee to order. The committee would like to welcome the audience and viewers may watch live board committee meetings online at tcaps.net/board. Recorded meetings may be viewed on demand at the same address. Um, this committee has set aside this time for public comment. Uh seeing no
members of the public, there is no public comment. Uh procedural items, we are the draft meeting minutes of the agenda. Are there any changes to the minutes? No. Okay. No changes. Minutes remain as posted. Um getting on to the
uh agenda review for the June 9th and the June 16th study session. First, Dr. Wagner. Okay. Uh so we have our standard called order, pledge, our review, approval of the agenda. For recognition, we have two recognitions. We have a
group of outstanding educators that are nominated and uh sponsored by Northwest AD and TVA Credit Union as well as Travers Connect. Um so we have a great group. I think if I remember right, five, am I right on that ginger? Five uh
outstanding educators. Yes. As long as you're including the St. Francis the St. Francis. We have a shared time our shared time teacher St. Francis was also uh identified. So um we will be celebrating those folks
uh for the evening and then uh later on in the early June there's a award ceremony um I believe the city opera house generally is um to identify those folks and then also we have our compass award winners. Um I do believe that
Tammy has shared those out with the board. I know Eric and I had a conversation about making sure the board, you know, knows ahead of time who those folks are um as they maybe see them uh before the board meeting or at the board meeting. So, um you should have that information as well on all of
our new compass awards. Um we will have our public hearing for the budget. Um so again, required under law, we have to have that public hearing um uh open. It has no connection really with uh public
comment. So people can do that and then do public comment uh for the kind of a second time but you know for the meeting. Um so we will have that then we will close that then we will have our first public comment. Um then superintendent report both legislative
and district. We'll have our committee reports for curriculum finance and executive as well as report out from office hours on May 22nd for the board. We will have our consent agenda uh as listed which uh we do have uh purchases
that were uh approved just by the finance committee earlier this morning. Uh we will have our meeting minutes. We will have safe school safety update uh and Ginger will be talking and again uh to the whole board giving an update on safe route to schools. I know this is
something the board has wanted to discuss especially related to the Frankie road corridor. Um so that is uh an opportunity for us to have a discussion on that and questions and I have asked Christine to put some numbers together. Um I know for some questions
the board members have had uh as well uh in that area. So um we'll be prepared for that conversation. Um we will have as the board has requested a review of our current strategic plan. Um, as I've updated the board, uh, we are now working on a a document that that really
has a a a green light, yellow, red just to kind of show progress. Green being the strongest of progress, yellow being um somewhat medium uh progress, and then the red is something maybe we haven't made really the progress that we would
have liked to. And so we'll have some specific uh components and and specific data related to each one of those uh that we'll present to the board. Uh then we have uh our resolution to amend our last budget amendment uh for the board is required by law for the current
school year we're in. We'll have our resolution uh for a tax levy resolution to approve the new 2526 budgets which are required by July 1. Even though, as I had mentioned in finance earlier, we are really in a state of disarray of
really knowing at all what the budget's going to look like after last night. Um the uh speaker of the house um and the Michigan House of Representative announced that their plan will have a $12,000 per student foundation um but yet eliminate many if not all of
the categoricals. So we're not sure what that means. Um, and so, uh, we are we were making our our best, um, educated thoughts on what the budget would look like, but I
will tell you, I'm even more confused, budget more now than I was 24 hours ago. Um, and then we have uh our second public comment. Um, we have a close session for negotiations.
Um I um I do want to back up actually. I do not see Tammy that was done in finance for the resolution for um for the grant the Rotary grant. Correct. It has been added. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I sent it out yesterday. Um and so we have uh so we do have that in uh the discussion items as well. Yeah. We have a close session for negotiations is required um under the open meetings act. We have a close session for our midyear
superintendent evaluation which is new um this year. Um and uh as again my superintendent update, I updated the board on the process and plan for that information that will really feed well from the strategic plan goals and open
session. and then we will have uh come back into open session for board president closing remarks management. Right. So my only question I guess to the board members here is is the order of things. I've had a couple of different requests to rearrange in
different ways. One is to move the I think I I think everything in this should go relatively quick except for potentially the strategic plan overview. I don't think we're going to spend a ton of time on budgets because we don't have reliable numbers yet. So, the strategic
plan overview and then obviously this the closed sessions. Um I don't have a good solution to doing the closed sessions, specifically the superintendent quarterly evaluation anywhere but at the end. Um, but I know that frequently by the time we get
there, it always seems to fall on long meetings sometimes and uh we're all exhausted by the time we get there and and I feel like it's not the most conducive way to give feedback. But so that's it's more of a statement than a question. I don't know if there's any rearranging we want to do. Do we want to
get all the easy or quicker items out of I won't say easy but quicker items out of the way and move the current treaty plan overview to the end or would you want to deal with that like where it is right up front so everyone's fresher either way.
I mean I'm okay the way it is. Um I I have a feeling we're going to have a lot of students maybe that are trying to get their government credit in um right and their meeting credits. I know mine just went to one last meeting. Um but if they were if they they should
really be at the well executive I guess is early today, but usually that's the best one to go to. They're in school, right? I know. Uh but um so I think you know leaving the closed sessions at the end. I mean I'm okay with the strategic
plan where it is. Yeah, I'm fine with it too. Um, I just I really the one that I I would love to move but I can't is the closed session because obviously that is as soon as we go into that it's the audience leaves and fairly so because
they have no idea when we'll be back. So that's right. I don't really uh I would probably if anything though try and uh to switch I would like to switch 12 and well no because then again staff gets to leave so after the negotiation portions
like I'm okay how it is. It's not ideal, but we I we I continually get feedback that leaving the superintendent superintendent at the end is not good, but we have not come up with a we've never discussed an alternative and
and I don't have one within what I can do because obviously I don't want to move it. Well, the hard thing is the audience, right? I mean, because we go into a closed session and you know, they sit here for an hour and then we come back in to conduct the rest of our business. It just seems the
only thing I can think of which not for this one is if we said okay we got on the quarterly evaluations we start the meeting an hour early at like 5. Yeah five go straight in the close session and we say that we're only going to be in there for an hour and even if we're
done early we just recess until 6. is we start the rest of the meeting like so everyone knows everyone doesn't have to come because it's we're not going to even be in here but it's it's part of the meeting and it's done at the beginning. I I like that idea. Maybe try it at the next we can't do it on this
one but on the next one I mean obviously one schedules have to be work but I that is the only thing I've come up with other than doing it in a special meeting which I don't think anyone wants to. Yeah. No, I mean I I think it's our close sessions on quarterly evaluations
have been productive. I mean I do if people come prepared and they know what they want to talk about and you know I mean but I'm willing to try something different too. So yeah. So I guess I can ask uh board members and uh to give me
any feedback on that. I'll mention it at the next meeting. Um, and just see that will be my only suggestion that I've come up with is to start the meeting at 5, go straight into close session. If we're done at, you know, we're done at when we're done around 6 and if we're not done early, then we will just recess
until 6. Okay. All right. So, everything uh stands as uh posted right now or suggested. Thanks, Sean. Go to the next on the June 16th.
June 16th. Okay. Yeah. You there, Joe? Oh, what's what's that again? Yeah, I lost. June's uh um we're good as it stands. Uh I'm going to talk to board members about potentially doing future superintendent valuations at 5.
So, we open the meeting, start start with that, but the public knows that they don't have to be here until six. Um, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I think this one's a little wonky because the goals are the strategic plan goals and related and I think it would, you know, be almost redundant to do that
and then go back over and do the presentation of the strategic plan goals. So, I I do think this time it will make it quicker, but this is a little bit of a unique situation the way we're doing it. Well, and this is the first time that we have a legally prescribed way we have to do this and
come out of it. So, I I see this one a little bit more procedural than uh yeah, we have to jump through these these areas and and learn how to do it. And so, it' be a little different of an evaluation anyway. So, I don't think it's going to be John, but you're not
talking about switching it for the June 9th meeting, are you? No, I am not. Oh, okay. Okay. I misunderstood. You're saying you're saying it's good for what I'm saying, but I do think in the future Scott and I have talked a little bit about this and okay, you know, one of the things as we had talked um you know
with different folks actually a conversation we had with Tim Quinn before he had passed um was about the idea of trying to do it either the beginning of the meeting you know outside or even its own meeting to be able to have a you know a little bit
more um concrete you know time to have conversation and and even maybe you know if I need to bring staff in for different you know plans or thoughts you know as a part of my evaluation that that would allow it. So I think this is a good idea in the future.
So uh with that uh June 16th moving on to June 16th okay pull that up. I can I can go through it. It's an easy uh Yeah. Go ahead. Uh so on June 16th uh obviously call to order in the pledge of
allegiance um reviewing the approval of the agenda, public comment um any consent items which will most likely just be regular board minute uh board meeting minutes and then the main is the study session on the strate and then closing out with public comment board
president closing remarks. Um, and a reminder that this meeting is at Northwest Ed again on Red Dragon and starts at 5. It starts at 5. Thank you. So, that's the agenda for June
16th. Any changes to that? And and I just want to make sure that we're on the same page for that. Now that we're doing strategic plan update um at the regular June meeting, the board we've decided that we'll have Jesse and Dan maybe at some point later,
you know, with after the board identifies goals. So we really are are just moving forward with Nick's, you know, regular process moving forward. Correct. That is my understanding from the board right now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Okay. with no other changes. Then we'll move on toformational items. HR defer to Connie Taylor. Thank you very much. As you know, this afternoon we will be celebrating our 40 retirees from the district. That's a large number. Unfortunately, at this point in time, it sounds like only 12 are going to be able
to be in attendance, but we'll still take the opportunity to celebrate all of them. Um doors will be opening at 4:30 at Monasuri Building. At 4:50, our music um vocal majority from Central High School will be performing and then shortly thereafter, we'll start the
recognition ceremony. Um but also at 4:30, we've got a number of very generous, outstanding local donors who've provided food and beverage and ice cream for everyone. So we hope uh many of you are able to come and recognize the over
943 years of collective service for between all 40 retirees. Uh moving on to our staffing update as we've talked about we with our 40 retirees also additional normal resignations people moving out of the area. We have begun
our staffing early this year. So we are I would like to say significantly ahead of schedule which is outstanding. It's allowed us really to get a tremendous pool of applicants. Um we'd already extended 19 offers for teachers in terms
of hires. We have one special ed vacancy remaining that we're still um looking for candidates for, but that's good because we started, I believe, with like six. So, we're very happy with the progress that we're making. Um we have five elementary vacancies that we are
looking to fill. We use a new screening system. We've been doing it for the last few years. is called Sparkhire. And so it's our way to send out to individuals that um questions that they do on video. So it's our initial screening process. So for candidates that we're interested in, they do a Sparkhire video. Our
principles are then able to view those videos and then identify those um folks that we want to bring back for in person. And we're going to be doing those next week for the elementary positions. We also have an administrative vacancy. Um Mark Connors is moving back back to South Carolina,
which is a big loss to our district, but certainly understanding um that's where we we got him from South Carolina. They're looking to move back to the warmer weather, I believe, which has created an assistant principal vacancy for us over at West Middle School. And we are right now in the process of
getting applications and sending out Sparkhire videos to um those individuals and also hoping to have interviews for those next week. So, feeling really good about where we are from a staffing standpoint. Kudos to our building administrators and the HR staff um for getting ahead of it this year.
Inevitably, we know that we will likely still be doing some hiring in the summer, but um in a really great place at this time as we close out this school year. Um and that's all I have. Okay. Thank you. Um communications update to
find to Ginger Smith. Thank you. So, just wanted to let you know that we have finalized the sunshine bus schedule for the summer. It always takes a little bit of work to make all the contacts with all the locations and ensure that the bus can fit where it needs to fit, all
those good details. So, I just publicly want to state that we will begin service on Wednesday, June 16, and um go through August 25 with no service the week of July 4. On Wednesdays, we will be at
Trade Wind Terrace from 12:30 to 1:30, followed by Traverse Heights Elementary from 2 to 3. On Thursdays, 11:45 to 12:15 at Meadow Lanes, 12:40 to 1:40 in the Interlockan Plaza and 2 at Blair
Elementary. Finally, on Friday, we will be at King's Court from 11:45 until 12:15, 12:45 to 1:30 at the Zimmerman Gateway. I'm not sure if that's how you say that. Um, intersection, and then 2
to 3 at Silver Shores. So, that will be posted to our website by tomorrow. Um, and then you'll see all the the posters getting put up around town as well in the upcoming days. That's all I hear. Thanks. It's really appreciate the
sunshine bus for sure. Um, okay. Any other items? I think so. Okay. Then the next board executive committee meeting will be Thursday, July 10th at 4 p.m. in this
room and televised. Um, with that, I join the meeting. Thanks. Perfect.