So welcome, everyone, to the Tuesday, January 13th, Board of Education workshop. We have six trustees present and, Doctor Melton, who is, recovering from flu, is going to link in virtually. Our first item of business is public communication. So we have infographics to, okay. So we'll move on to, our first topic, which is an update from Teaching and Learning. And the first item here is to talk through the course description.
But for our secondary school residents, let that go be firstly filled in in the middle school manifold that you're going to serve out of the map. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here tonight. We had a request from the board to provide a little bit of, an update based on feedback that was given during our November, 2025 board presentation with school data. Some of the slides here will be repetitive slides for some of our board members, but we thought it would be helpful, given some newer faces to the board to revisit some of the information
that was shared when the decision was made to, adopt a new middle school math curriculum and change our math sequencing. So I'm just going to share the first few slides. Pretty quickly. They are slides that come from the presentation that was given in May of 2023. When the board did move forward with that adoption, and then there's a few slides from last year's presentation to the board, just to give some context. And background. So the first slide just reminds us of our vision for mathematics. So this is the K-12 vision for mathematics moving into focusing our students and becoming doers of mathematics.
And this really lays the foundation for the interest in moving our curriculum and adopting our new curriculum, moving to AI and math. Throughout the process of review with the curriculum adoption team, there were some findings that came forward. Which moved forward this work. So the first was really, in looking at program data for five years preceding 2023. So this was pre-COVID data and some post Covid data. What that team saw was student performance slightly decreasing or being stagnant in the the former program.
They also looked at student, cohort data, which showed a decrease in the number of students who achieved it, advanced and proficient, and an increase in students who were not proficient. So again, this is data this slide. And this information comes directly from the presentation in May of 2023. The other component that was looked at in that finding was that students were not able to or did not chose not to, fluidly move between tracks in our middle school. So one of the findings that came out of the work was that the student in, at the age of ten, was selecting
whether they were going to be an honors math student or not at the age of ten. And then they were not able to make that change, very easily throughout their three years in middle school. So that was one of the things that we, talked about. And then we looked at classroom pedagogy. So, a piece of the work was leaning into the vision, the math vision that was just shown in how we move our pedagogy forward, focusing on task based inquiry based instruction. So ultimately, as we're all aware at this table, we landed on illustrative math as the recommendation, the key aspects of illustrative math
that were left that were lauded at that time, as when we went into that adoption, was that it's problem based, universal design for learning. And I won't read all these bullets, but it really lived into the math vision that we were hoping for. Our students. We talked about how, in eighth grade, students would have the opportunity to choose math eight or Honors Algebra one, the bullets that we provided to the board at that time talked about how students would, after eighth grade or going into eighth grade, have the natural transition to be able to choose
whether they wanted to move into the Advanced Honors Algebra one. That there was a lot of overlap between math eight and algebra one. So we we did a cross-reference of what those standards looked like. And the team presented at that time, how many standards would need to be embedded into honors Algebra one, in order to ensure that students learn all of math eight material? And that is what we have moved forward with over the last three years. The piece that we talked about was also how we would continue to support students.
So we talked about supporting students through, investing in our staff in professional learning. And in a couple slides, I'll talk about what that's looked like since. We talked about the enriching materials to ensure that, any math program that we selected for middle school, we wanted to ensure had an extension opportunity built in and illustrative math did have that that area is called. Are you ready for more? And then, we talked about ensuring that we maintain our traditional testing opportunities for students who want to move more quickly through, grade levels and, and move from, you know, math 6 to 9, seven.
So that test will take place every spring. So we committed to the board three, three goals. One was to see growth in the number of students who score advanced or proficient on the m-step, math assessment, the PSAT and the SAT. So that is a measurement, area that we focused on. The second one was an increase in enrollment in and successful completion of Honors Algebra one in eighth grade as measured through enrollment and and of course, summative assessments. And then the third is to build student problem solving skills and communication of mathematical thinking as monitored through internal common assessments.
We named for the board then that the measurement of student achievement may include annual reports on m-step PSAT, SAT, including cohort data and then math benchmark assessment data and that internal work, so not publicly reported, but internal data that we may be using would include unit assessments and common assessments, student enrollment data and student success or grades, and higher levels of mathematics. Some of the key reflections, from 2023 and the program change, were to align the coursework with our district vision, as we've already stated.
One of the key pieces of learning that the curriculum team presented was that. And when they worked with folks in the field, some of the feedback that was given was that our emphasis should shift shift to be on depth and fluency and not on speed. So really spending time with students to ensure that they have a depth of understanding as we move them through our math curriculum. And you can see these last two bullet, these next few bullets really talk about the aspects of the curriculum itself. So what's in the curriculum that make it more, more influential in the classroom?
And then finally, a continued commitment to ensuring that our students who desire to accelerate in mathematics would have the opportunity not only to reach algebra, honors algebra one by eighth grade, which was previously the opportunity, but also to continue to have the opportunity to test out in the spring if they so choose. So that's our background data, really the 2023, what we went through. I thought it would also be important that were asked about, the whether we are collecting feedback as this program is moving forward. The board may recall in May of 2025, we did present the student perception data.
We had a student perception survey. So we presented some of that data. We had 1900 students respond, which is a really great turnout rate for our sixth through eighth graders. And so we talked a little bit about student voice with the board back in May of 2025. And then we also conducted a teacher perception data. I know that that number of 19 sounds little, but that's actually quite a large percentage of our overall math department across middle school. So this is just six through eight. These are the teachers who are teaching middle. So what we need here and looked at was that, you know,
that 95% of our teachers say that they're comfortable navigating the resource, which was huge because this was just a year and a half in at the time. And that 79% of them feel that they have the tools that they need to accurately measure student progress. We did name with the board then that we also know that there's challenges, when when you adopt new curriculum. So it's not all sunshine and roses. We do have opportunities for growth. And our parents or teachers at that time are really talking about a need for more resources for families. So we talked about ensuring that the the families specific
components of the resource were going home, and that they needed some additional instructional routines that supported all student access. So those are some areas of feedback from the teachers back in 2025. This slide is to capture and share with the board. There were some questions about professional learning after implementation year. So the first year is not captured on here. In that board packet that was presented to the board in 2023, we clearly identified the roll out. So the 2023 2024 school year was the deep roll out year for the professional
learning that included summer and then four times throughout that year, professional learning in partnership with Illustrative math. That that is not a sustainable model, right? Our implementation year, whenever we're rolling forward with a new curriculum, we have a very heavy first year of professional learning. And then we it's a gradual release model. So in the 2425 school year, there was a focus really, a monthly focus with our Honors Algebra one teachers to ensure that we were moving forward to, build out that curriculum and have alignment.
Our district release days were used to be able to support teachers across the district. And then, last year, also when we implemented our PLC structure for the first time with our new teachers contract. So all of our teachers have an additional 25 minutes a day where they can collaborate with each other. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, those are earmarked as professional learning community days, where they're spending time together as either two math teachers together at Boland Park, for instance, or the whole math team can come together during that 25 minute meeting if they like to, in the morning as well.
And then again, as we take our third year step in, we see a little less, focus on middle school math. And it being focused more on our professional learning release days and our building level PLCs. I do think it's incredibly important for this board to recognize and understand. We currently have full time math specialists at our middle schools. Our full time math specialists service, just that middle one middle school. So we have a 1.0 release person who is there to coach and support the, 6 to 8 math teachers in that building. So that is a very small ratio of coaching.
When we think about that, our math specialists do also take on intervention work and support work with students. So that is not the only work they're doing, but they are full time resources for our math teachers when it comes to working through challenges of differentiation of building units and assessments that they might, have questions about. So the next couple slides are to bring forward some of the data as follow up. So some questions that were asked in November. I would like to just person has shared his packet around. So if you just take one and kind of brown, you know, the slides just for you, you have a copy of
will they be available in big box later? Yeah, we'll upload them after. Yeah. So, we have had, you know, we're really excited to have a new made on board. So, Doctor Jordan Dennis has joined us as you guys on that. Doctor Dennis and he's, he's here in the audience today to listen and learn a little bit about the kinds of questions that we have about data. On his second full day in this job, we asked him with some of this work, and, he was really just trying to get into some of our systems at that time.
So I share that with you as a board, because the next five slides are not going to answer all your questions, but they will begin to lead us down the path of looking at some of the data that we were talking about in November. We have a commitment to coming back to you in February with additional data around achievement. But the dialog today will be very helpful, so that we can continue to grow and become a more data rich, organization. So without further ado, the first line is looking at our eighth grade enrollment trends and honors math.
So let's just talk about this slide first. On the left side you will see the total eighth grade, the total number of eighth graders in honors math by year. So going from 2022, to 2025. So this is important. And just to name the theme this before and looking at data, we've identified the 2020, 2021 2022 school year as a year in which we are beginning our kind of data again post-Covid, we had those two interrupted years. So for for us, that 2022 year is an important here.
We started the 2022 instead of 2021, and this one because our students who were in, we looked at our our students who were in eighth grade in 2022, had incredibly disrupted experiences in mathematics before leading into it. So we were thinking a lot about who are we looking at and who are we measuring when it comes to our cohort. So we're trying to get as normal of a picture as we can. So if we look at 2022 and 2023, those were our two years that we had the previous system of a tracked six,
seven, seven, eight and Honors Algebra one 2024 is the first year where our seventh graders had choice to go into Honors Algebra one, but 2024 is also a blended year, where we were grandfathering out the students who were tracked, as well as students who wanted to make that choice so that eighth grade was a blended year of students, some who were tracked and some who were not. And then this this current year, 2025, this is the first eighth grade cohort to go three years through our new math system.
So I think in summary, looking at this, what you can see is that our change in 2024 did pretty significantly increase our student enrollment in honors math honors. This is the honors, math. So this is students not only in Honors Algebra one, but it's students who are eighth grade students who are also in honors geometry and Honors Algebra two. So it captures all of our students who are advanced. Anyone above that algebra and any course. And on the right side is just the, the representation
and the percentage of the eighth grade of the eighth grade class. So last year, 56.3% of our eighth graders were in honors math, Honors Algebra one or higher. And then this year, 51.7% of our eighth graders are in Honors Algebra one. As I am. So we only have two data points last year and this year, and so 56 and 51. Well, what we want to see is that 51 go back up again right and up to create a new line that's in the 50 and over 50th percentile for our honors math.
So we will continue to monitor and study, our enrollment in eighth grade. A piece of that conversation was also for us to dig into and look specifically at different student groups as represented in enrollment. So, if this second page of your, document is to look at the number of students who are in, the diploma track, but special education students in honors mathematics. So these are non categorical students. So resource room students with IEPs. And there's a variety of lines here for us to look at.
So I'll walk through each one of them for you. So the blue line that's presented there is the percentage of the eighth grade class. The percent of students in the eighth grade class who have an IEP resource for those students. So just to contextualize, in 2024, 5.4% of the eighth grade class had an IEP that was on a diploma track. The red line indicates the percent of diploma track students who are in honors mathematics. So if you look at that red line, you can see that
we had no students who were students with who with an IEP in honors math in 2022. And then last year we had 9.3% of our students, and then this year, 7.6% of our students. It's also important to know that the is a small number. So that is why that box is on the right hand side. So we're talking about no students in 2022, four students in 2023, five and 24, and 5 in 25. The yellow line at the bottom is the percentage of is what percent those students represent within the bubble of honors math.
So within all the honors math students, 1% are students with IEPs. So what we are also thinking about and what is a good way for our organization to think about some of the representation is if 6.5% of our eighth grade class has an IEP, I probably would want to see 6.5% of our honors math kids. But to have an IEP, we want to see that equal representation. But we also recognize that there are challenges and obstacles. You know, for for some of our students. So overall on this slide, we see we see growth.
And that's something that we would want to continue to see. So maybe what I'll do is walk through each group and then we can go back and answer any questions that you have. So we'll try to do our best. The next the next slide looks at our English language learners and their participation in honors mathematics. Again, the blue line identifies the percentage of the eighth grade class who are, identified as English language learners. So this year, 12% of our eighth grade class, are English language learners. And then the red line identifies the percentage of English language learners who are enrolled in honors math.
This is a pretty significant claim. So if we look at, when that when the when the opportunity for choice arose in 2024, we saw a significant increase from that 16.8% to 28% and again grew to 35.8%. So that's wonderful. But we can also see what that yellow line at the bottom is. What percentage they represent within the honors math bubble. So this year, 8.3% of the honors math students, are identified as English language learners. This this next graph,
provides the same data for our students who are economically disadvantaged. So, the blue line for us identifies that. Well, we've currently seen a decline in the percentage of our eighth grade class identified as economically disadvantaged. So this year, 12.3% of our eighth grade class, does identified as economically disadvantaged. And the red line, you can see that from 23 to 24, we see a pretty significant increase in our students who are economically disadvantaged. Being enrolled in honors math. And that that's was fairly stable going into this year.
And then if we look at the yellow line underneath, you can see what percentage they represent within the honors math bubble. So 5.9% this year. This next pie chart, attempts to look at representation. When we look at race. So if we start with the left, the, the pie chart on the left, the pie chart on the left looks at the entire eighth grade class. So the we have 1023 eighth graders this year of that eighth grade class. This is how the class is broken down. So, for example, 44.1% of the eighth grade
class identifies as Asian, 47.6% of the eighth grade class is white, and so on around the pie. We do not we did not identify with, a handful of other subgroups, student groups, in here that were not identified as different pieces of the pie we stuck to these four is the largest for with and being larger than five, which is was the kind of the cut off of our identified and the right side. What you will see is the representation of that student demographic in the honors math
pie. So if we were to take all of the students who are in honors math, which is 529 of that group, of 529, 66%, our Asian students and 30% are white students, 2.1% are African American, and 1.9% are Spanish. Like that next. So when you look at this chart side by side, some of the things that you might see are that, our white students are underrepresented in our honors math.
So, if they were equitably represented, we would have 47% of our honors math class, in white, white students enrolled in that class, we can see that we have an overrepresentation of Asian students, an underrepresentation of African American students and an underrepresentation of our Hispanic and Latino students. So this is an opportunity for us to just look at and have an understanding of who's in that classroom. And then our last slide, our last slide looks at the percentage,
the trend over time. So we're looking at the percent of students, by demographic who are enrolled in honors math, over the last four years. So what we can see is that there was a slight incline from increase from 2023 to 2024, with a slight decrease for Asian and white students. But what we did see is that with our that mix and our Asian students, that or I'm sorry, our Latinx and our African-American students
that the increase has been for, Hispanic students consistent over those four years, which is wonderful. And for African American students, we can see that there was an uptick from 23 to 24. And then it has remained stable from 24 to 25. So as we dig into this, one of the things that we were committed to with the board was studying this enrollment data. And when we talked about the enrollment data in November of 2025, this this past fall, we showed this the aggregate, right. We only talked about the aggregate.
So some of the questions was, what does it look like when we dig a little bit deeper. So this allows us to start to see where those trends may have might be starting. And might continue from the change. Across all of the, all of the, data sets that we've looked at tonight, what you see is a noticeable increase from 2023 to 2024 of enrollment in honors mathematics. We know that one of the questions that was asked was, what is the rate of successful completion
at the end of eighth grade and actually be studied in a variety of different ways. So some of the things that we've talked about was looking at enrollment in the fall and spring to see if we've lost students over time. Another way to look at that data is to look at repetition in ninth grade. So how many students took algebra in eighth grade and then are choosing to retake it in ninth grade? Those are numbers we are planning to pull. We just haven't been able to do that because of the way our data is currently set up. And we are working on by we, I mean, Doctor Dennis is going to be working
very hard on trying to figure out a way for us to be able to track that, a little bit more easily. And then we also know as far as upcoming data, that achievement and growth data, in addition to what was already seen in 20, in November 2025 or something you're interested in, and we will be looking at it that way. So I'm happy to answer questions, collect feedback. In terms of other data to look at, I'd love to know how many kids test it out just to see how frequently that is happening. So that's definitely an equity timeline for to prepare to test out.
And I. So just you kind of just mentioned it, but it's a number that they should or should have been relatively easy to pull is how many kids are taking geometry this year. And comparing it as a percentage to last school year, because to me, other than how many kids are really taking algebra one, I want to know how many. I mean, I know it's. It's similar information that is being sold or how many just help me understand. So I need to ask how many students are.
So we should have been able to hold the data for 2526 to see how many students are enrolled at the high school level or at the middle school level. In geometry, honors or regular geometry. Because the eighth graders who successfully completed algebra one last year would be taking either geometry honors at the high school or regular geometry, and we should be able to compare this school year with the previous one to percentage wise. Sure. Okay. I think that yeah. So and I'm just asking these questions so I can make sure you get the right data
when we look at that. So one of the so are you seeking that information for just this. We have our, our enrollment growth. Right. We capture like 105% as we go from eighth grade to ninth grade. So we get a lot of new kids. The percentage wise, if you're comparing the the 23 to 24, 24 to 25, 25, 26, whatever the end is. Yep. We would we should expect to see a percentage increase of kids in geometry. Right. If I'm comparing year over year, those numbers should be indicative
of how many additional students are taking geometry. So a lot of students take geometry in summer school. It's like the recommended math of summer school because it's not a building. It's not as big of a building blocks as algebra two, algebra two. Okay, so we can I guess the answer is yes, we can get that data. There are a lot of pieces in there, and you might not allow it to stack up. So that's why I'm trying to understand what you're kind of measure when they take it in summer school. Is it like credit. No credit. Was it like a grade? It's,
to grade the grade. Okay. Unless they test out. And so that's another good piece of data too. Like how many people test it out of that. Right. But kids would have been taking geometry during summer school for the last five years, every summer. It's not I, I highly doubt that all of a sudden this summer, this past summer was the only. Did you just want to know the percentage of kids who take geometry year over year? Yes, for the purpose of seeing if it's growing. No. For the purpose of seeing if once more kids took algebra one, did they continue on to geometry this year?
Okay, the eighth graders who took algebra one, that increase that we saw, we should have seen a an increase in the number of kids taking geometry this year. Right? I mean, am I theoretically. So we'll get that information from table Intel. It's another way to look at the data. So if we pull including this school year, if you go 2 or 3 years back, if we pull the number of students taking either geometry, honors or regular geometry as maybe even just as a ninth grader, right.
That should tell us if if the increase of students that increase that we saw taking algebra one, if they continued on to geometry. Well, you know, and maybe the numbers look weird, but that will be, I as a, as a parent, I will say, you know, definitely more easily accessible extra from practice. And then the other thing, I think that it would apply to math, I think it would apply to all the data that we're kind of looking at. I know I've spoken to some friends who are in the Birmingham district,
and they really love their i-ready to the point now where, for some seventh graders, it is essentially become their homework. And while I read it will spit out a whole bunch of data for you. You cannot have access to any of the questions, because they're proprietary to i-ready. So I would caution us is we're trying to be more data centric that you're not starting to gather more and more data that blocks us out of the actual information. Right? So as is our high school students in the high school,
many different already may not always have meaningful access to their tests. If we now take it down to the middle school level, where in order to have all sorts of data, we're using tools, that also prevents us from accessing what the questions are. Then that's also not helpful either. So, more data all the time going forward may not be better in terms of learning. So if your homework assignments are ready
and you can never go back to see what the questions were that were asked, you might have data, but it might not be. It might not be. So if that's just, as we go down this data pathway, sure. Okay. But just to be clear, in the next in the data and comment section, okay, we're going to talk about because I'm looking back at the goals like to increase enrollment in honors. I'll save some data here for that. And then number of kids proficient SAT or PSAT three.
We're going to see that maybe broken down by demographic as well. Right. And we did see some of that in November. So we would build off of that gap. And and then that. Can you tell us what you think we'll be able to see that. Yeah. So we're going to work through we're going to work through that collectively as a team to see what makes the most sense to bring to the board. So we only have one year of growth data for you because anyways, growth metric is spring is fall to spring. So we are in the middle of the second year of that. So we would really only have last year's metric.
We don't have more than one year on that yet. But we do have a there's achievement components within WVA that are not growth related, but just achievement related. So we're going to kind of kick around what makes the most sense to see how we compare that, to bring it back to your product. And then are you looking at all at first you're moving. You're talking about completion. Is that like relative to grades or not credit. And then it. Right okay. Right. So we'll take a peek at that just to see that this does table. And then any sort of data you'd think about from an intervention
or enrichment standpoint, like many kids you've seen in your MTS systems who are really struggling in the eighth grade, whatever it is here, we hadn't quite put our heads around that. Yeah. Or this just so that specifically that there's a piece. But I do think that as we move forward as a system, we've really worked quite hard at secondary to build a structure for MTS that is more, organizationally sound. And so it should give us data to be able to look at how many kids are we,
how many kids are receiving, what are they struggling with? And also working in partnership with our specialists, who are the ones who are seeing our kids? That would be an opportunity for us to collect that data. So so I'd be curious to that. You mentioned the 1.0 math specialists in each building, and they're doing interventions and working with teachers like me. If at least 60% of our kids are in an honors track, where are they working? Right. And how's that going to. Or an honors track and eighth grade. Should we use facilities. But I think what you know, not to dive too much into that answer.
But but we looked at our data in November. I think it was where it's increasingly evident that we have a significant gap in our learning for students at the secondary and the mathematics and the yellow. You know, in mathematics, when we think about our special education students and when we think about, you know, our students who are economically disadvantaged, one of the big moves that has taken place in the last four years has been to really focus on moving students into tier one instruction. Previous previously in Troy,
we had we had a system in which students were taking supplanted math, oftentimes beginning in sixth grade during that transition from fifth to sixth grade. And we have been very focused on ensuring that any child who we believe can be successful should be fully in tier one that support. So our math specialists have been working with our teachers predominantly, welcoming new learners into their classroom, in a way that they have not in the past. And so that's really been a huge part of our work. When I think about our math specialists and the last on the our side
and much more on the side of supporting and differentiating to help them ensure kids are being successful. Thanks for being so thoughtful. I have the. We're done. I have a couple of generic questions. The professional learning, does that cover I assume it covers the course material that covers the new illustrative math that none of that does. It also cover now that we have students that different skill level in the same classroom versus before, does professional learning cover that also?
And how much of that is covered? Yes. So one of the key pieces of the lesson of math when it was adopted was that, there are many entry points in the, in the lessons and as we as teachers are teaching. So they refer to that, our teachers in the classroom refer to that as having a high ceiling and a low floor. So you can, you know, get people in or we can get them in. But then we can push them as high as we need to push them. And so the curriculum itself is built around methodology in that belief. And so as they've been doing learning around what that might look like,
they've spent quite a bit of time talking about how do we, you know, how do we establish groups in our classrooms? So if we're a triad, what are we working on and how, as a teacher, might I be working with this triad differently that I'm under with that triad? A lot of making thinking invisible, which you've seen in some of our visits to our schools, where we have students who are up at the board and their teachers are able to work with students and have differentiate when they can see that thinking, right, they're able to be able to notice, okay, David struggling over here with his group either I'm going to match this group.
But David's group or I might intervene here to help and support that. So my generalized answer to your your question is that continues to be an area of focus. It's not an area that we're done focusing on, but it's certainly something we've been talking quite a bit about. Okay. Thank you. The economically disadvantaged area that you have, where are we getting that from? Is that the reduced lunch? Bill falls or what? I'm just curious. The number is coming down, which means, either. Is our demographic not filling the information because it was
free lunches the last three years, or is that do you think it's accurate? So we we were quite tired. And, Doctor Jennifer, it's quite hard. And I'm looking at that data to ensure that it was accurate. One of the things that we have noticed and we're having some conversations about it, and that's been a part of the conversation as well, because it involves a food service team. Is how we're collecting that information from our from our families. We have families who may not be filling out the form because there is free lunch. And so, we we are once again encouraging our families
to fill out those forms for our secondary families and for our elementary, and some part but certainly as students move into secondary where there's, participation fees and whatnot, those forms help families with those fees. We are also looking at changing our format for how we collect those. So right now there's not a digital way to submit that. And so we're looking at changing that and updating it. So we believe there might be some barriers for our families that we need to get back to that to make sure that that number is accurate.
But we believe this is as accurate as our system is. Check it right now. So yeah, that's been the last question I have, about the data with us that is, student survey where they say it's just right. And, so I was talking to a couple of a few middle schoolers, both of them, their eighth graders at only two. So it's not a big sample. But, they were saying that their sixth and seventh grade was easy, like a posting it through, but their eighth grade is a they're doing the honors amid our algebra one.
Their eighth grade is definitely, I mean, much more rigorous than they used to. And I don't know if this is correct. They said they do six units of a grade math and like 6 or 7 weeks or something. So they do it a lot in a short amount of time. And so your survey is an aggregate of all the middle school students. I'm just curious to know if eighth graders may feel differently than sixth and seventh grade. So something like that. Just just curious to know. Okay, this is a great question. And I think experience
perception data is a value that that's something we can circle back and and do again. We can redo that survey and we can be separated out by grade, for instance. And, and and now that we're three years into that implementation, circle back and get additional to the survey that the get the students grade students with the grade level it does not matter. So and we could just review the data. Don't have to retake the survey okay. Well it's I mean I think it would probably be important to know that
not just so we did last year, eighth grade, last year, eighth grade did not holistically experience six, seven and eight. So the students at last year's last year students were the mixed cohort of some of our kiddos had six, seven, seven, eight and then honors. And then some of them had six seven inches with honors. So this would be the first year where all of our sixth graders had that experience, all of our seventh. It started with us. With them. Yep. That's right. Yeah. The challenge that we have is sometimes when we when we when we get a perception
data, some look at that said that's just perception data. It's not hard that I think there's value. So yeah. Yeah. So I, I so long as we as a group recognize that there's valuable data that we should continue to gather, that we certainly. If one was having trouble with audio, she says she'll reach out to question. Okay, that's other anything else? Okay. Thank you. Well, we'll look forward to additional discussion in February. And, we can go to the courts now.
Thank you. Thank you. Doctor Dennis. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Good evening everybody. We're going to transition to, some updates of our high school sports description book. I wanted to start out with a thanks to Christine and also Megan having one of our Athens assistant principals for leading me through this, this process as a first timer. We hope to share with you some new courses that have been proposed by the committee to be added into our high school experience, as well
as, some small adjustments in some courses, to be dropped. So Christine is going to start with the new courses that the team has proposed. Okay. Thanks, Tim. So we're really excited to bring these courses forward to you for your consideration. We have a pretty robust course proposal process for our high school. Our high school teachers who are interested in proposing new courses have to complete a series of forms collecting information. But then they also have to get approval from, their full departments and departments at both high schools. So Athens and Troy High School have to agree
that it's a good course to bring forward our department heads that both schools have to sign off on it, and then they have to present in front of all the department heads on the rationale for that, for the new course, they're given feedback. And then David and I ultimately collect feedback from all the department heads for every course. So whether you're English or math, you get to give feedback on every course that's being proposed. David and I review that feedback before we bring it to you. So these are the courses that have, have made it through. And we're excited about them. So I'll speak just briefly to the first few.
You can see that there's a slew of AP courses. The first two are very exciting. For us, the AP business, the Personal Finance and Apiserver security, our two courses from the AP, the College Board has a new AP Career Kickstart program that they're calling it. These courses were built in partnership with industry to be able to and not only provide students with college level credit, but also industry level certifications. So there are certain components within AP business. In AP cybersecurity, where students will be able to test for different
CERT certifications criteria within their industry, as well as tests for the college credit. AP business will become, the new entry level business class at our high schools. It's actually being proposed as the first class that students take. It is a survey level course that includes introduction into accounting, entrepreneurship, marketing. And there is a fourth one I forget every time, but there are four areas that they will get a break. They will have a foundation and it is a full year class.
And then from that class they'll be able to launch into the second level of business classes that we have, at both of our high schools. This works very well with our, CTE programing. Those students, if they complete two classes, become completers in that program. So, the business department of both schools is very excited about that. There's also an entry level opportunity for students in business if they do not want to take a full year AP business. And I think that's like an intro to marketing opportunity for some of our students, if they just want to try one semester or something.
So we haven't removed that that piece, but we have provided that. I think this is going to be something our kids really are drawn to. It. AP cybersecurity is another one of the kickstart. It will replace our cybersecurity course. Josh, cool off, propose that Josh is an incredible asset to us. Is a teacher over at Athens High School. He has a lot of statewide and national connections in, computer programing. So he's really been actually in partnership with, the College Board as they've been rolling this out. So he's very excited to bring this forward as an opportunity for our students. It will replace regular cybersecurity.
It is also, an entry level AP course, meaning you do not need to have any specific, background. I believe the only criteria may be algebra one. The next two AP pre-calculus. So it's important for this board to know that we've actually been studying and watching AP pre-calculus across the state and nationally for the last couple years. It's come up. It came up two years ago. And there were some, you know, interested folks within our math department, but those were also passions we have now, I think reached. No, I don't I don't think we have reached consensus that this is a great direction for our organization, for our students.
AP Pre-Calculus AB replaces Pre-calc, our regular Pre-calc class. Now, some may ask why? Why do we want this change? What our teachers found when they studied the connection between, they looked at our our pre-calculus class, but our curriculum was how they were teaching it, and then they looked at what was being proposed in the AP, and they saw so much alignment between those two classes that they felt that it would be a disservice to not allow these kids to have that title on their transcripts, but also that opportunity
to take that test. And so they they feel that there's a minimal change when it comes to the curricular components of what is within AP Pre-Calculus, AB, AP, Pre-Calculus B replaces our honors Pre-Calculus class. What's important to know is AP Pre-calc. Both of those ABC are on the same three foundational units, so they cover the same three units. AP BC precut covers a fourth unit. So there's a fourth optional unit that is a unit that will be taught
in the DC pre-calculus. And the reason that that's taught is to prepare students for AP BC cap. So when students leave AP for Pre-calc AB, they'll be prepared to take AP calculus AB or AP statistics or any of the other math electives that we have. And then our students should take H in pre-calculus bc they will be prepared to take the BC up to this class, the APC cap to this class. So, that's the difference between the two of them. I think it's a nice way for our students to be able to continue to follow a track
that would naturally lead them toward after AP. BC is club three, which we offer in our schools in partnership with four separate I mean run 3 or 4 sections of that every year. So we have quite a few students who move their way through this pathway. So we're very excited about that. I think one of the other things that's helpful for us as an organization is it really helps with alignment across our schools, and it helps with professional learning. So our teachers of pre-calculus will now be in a professional, have access to a professional team, national professional team with the same, with the same set of standards.
Preparing for an externally normed assessment. There's a lot of nice structures and accountability that come from that. As an organization that will be helpful. The next course is the career capstone class. That class is going to situate itself in our business, department. It's actually an incredibly exciting class. This is the first class that's in partnership with the Caps program, the center for Advanced Professional Studies in, out of Kansas, that we went to go visit and talk a little bit about. This is an industry based, career capstone class where students are going to have the opportunity to partner with and be in an internship
and have real, real life experiences in partnership with, a variety of different areas of business. So Elena Wahlberg has been a huge advocate. She's at Troy High, she's been leading, quite a few business teachers and having these conversations. And I think it's just a great opportunity for us to continue growing. It relates a lot to our Cap program, our career accelerator program that's outside of school, but this kind of allows it to come in school and be a little bit deeper. So and that's a real job experience, not a virtual job experience. Okay. The next two
classes are classes that we are, technically piloting. We are we are hoping to pilot them for this year. So our feedback to the teachers, is that these are classes that are very niche classes. And so there's pros and cons to that, a great opportunity for students. But also sometimes we don't have the instructors to teach those all the time if we have too many kids who want to run. And so these are going to just pilot this coming year at Athens, because both of the teachers who proposed that are at Athens High School. So mathematics of tabletop games is, a course
that will be looking at, the mathematics of tabletop games. It's a one semester elective for students that would count as a math related credit. So as part of their graduation requirement, students are required to take four years of math. Of those four years, one year can be math related, and one of them has to be in your senior year. So for some of our students, it's a nice opportunity for them to take that elective. I will tell you that David and I dug deeply into this course, to make sure that there's validity behind the work that's going on. And there's actually a textbook that, that textbooks are on.
Our teacher guide and, instructor guide to going through this, teaching this curriculum. So, we're excited about that. And then the last one here is sports officiating. There's that. This will be an elective opportunity for our students to be able to take this class. It's a one semester class in which they will become certified in three identified sports in the fall, three identified sports in the spring. The goal in that work is one to be able to grow students in their area of interest or it's a great elective, but also for us to be able to feed our community.
So our community has a shortage of referees. There's a the program that we that will be used in this, when this class is called ref refs. So it's a program, that's used to give them that certification. There is a cost to that. That instructor is working on connecting and building partnerships with some of our community youth leagues to pay for the students to get their certifications. And then if those two students get their certifications, they owe a certain number of games for payback. That piece.
So we're working through it. There's models nationally. So what in Indiana in particular? There's models of the very well done within communities where the school has incurs no cost, and those students take on a part of their in order to get their grade, they have to complete a certain number of reffing obligations, and they cover those costs. So they're really working to try and build that. We don't have that established yet, but that's the premise of that. So that will run for next year as a pilot. That's an elective and correct. It's in one semester like that one semester.
Yeah. Is it like the AP? Yeah. Can they use it for the general elective credit at this time? It's not a piece that they're not doing physical activity or do they they're learning the rules of the game. Well exciting right. So it depends on how it becomes so like a part of this course and where it can be taken is you can actually embed it into learning the game itself. But you arguably you probably shouldn't be wrapping basket. I don't know how to think. So that's so we've worked through that.
So but for right now it's just a general elective credit. We're going to try and get it off the ground and then continue to build into that. But I'm very proud of our high school teachers because, you'll see, and those of you who've been on the board for a while, there's an ebb and flow of kind of new things that come. And then sometimes we had a couple of years and there's not a lot that's brought. And so I think this year there's a really great representation of high level academics as well as opportunities for creative growth and outlets. I just think it's wonderful. So many will be available at both the schools. Except for the last two. The last two will be offered only at Athens
because they're piloting this year so that we can make sure that they go well this year. But Troy High students can't take them. They just would take the bus over because we wish. So they can just take the bus over if they want to take those bus. Okay. And, I'm curious, you know, particularly in terms of the last three do when teachers propose this, do they engage student interest? So you have some idea that students, interested and would take these kind of courses. So I think they do very informally. So they have conversations in their classes. They talk through that and then the kids.
But we don't have any, you know, survey them for that. Does anybody propose anything about education or going into a teaching career class. The class that's similar to that like Grow your Own Teachers program, right. So we have our careers and education program through the preschool. And so that tends to be so at Athens. Right. So we have an opportunity there for child development and careers and education. Those are not only preschool. There's a there's a second level class with careers in education, that place to place students in our elementary and those this. So those are opportunities through our CTE program for education
but not normal. But it's through CTE as well. I mean, it's normal in that it's right there at Athens taught by one of our Athens teachers. So. I was reading the in board docs. You put the like, draft, of course, description book on the AP business and personal finance class. It does. It says the year long course offers students the opportunity to earn college credit and an employer endorsed credential. It sounds cool. Does that, but it doesn't say that in the AP cybersecurity. So that kind of make it so I didn't understand like like the test
or don't I might think I don't have to take the AP test to get college credit for that. And that's for for the person to find it because it kind of says it's in there, like you just get it got and that might make a difference for some students. Isn't that really implied? You have to take the test to get the college credit you have to actually score for, but I'll tell you, you know, an interesting piece. We had 10th grade parents last year at orientation who asked us what AP stood for, so not everyone knows what that is. So I think it's important to that. I think it's a good clarifying AP test.
And yet another thought as I read the description book, because I'm a super nerd and I read it, I did the first two year guys. So yeah, so, I read it to the students or. Sorry, maybe that's cool. I'm good. Company is, I wondered about especially thinking about parents who are first time high school parents. Like some sort of, like, color coding to help folks understand this is a math credit. This is a this credit or some. And just to be that sort of clarity in the, in the document itself,
I don't know if this is like the unpretty version or what it is, but you have the there is this is that is I see this like I saw that has specifically which courses fall under excuse thinking more like when you read in that section it does all this groups. Yeah. Yeah. It's like doing math and read Ela or whatever so that it's clear so that as parents or because parents on a coach, their kids and then they don't want to perhaps overburden their counselors with 500 questions on what they should take. And then then the counselor is getting a pass request. It looks all funky because the parents didn't know for sure.
Just a thought there and then. I assume you guys, as you work on making this the pretty version or whatever, you just smooth out the language because sometimes the descriptors change voice. Which is like a dorky thing to notice, but like the way they're described, the voice changes. Okay, so look at this, because clearly other people wrote them and been sent them to different media. Yes. But just to make it clear, yeah, I mean, like, it's very hard to say. Yeah, that's a beast. But just to kind of like, sure help that voice be similar. Sure. I'm thinking about parents more. So is that reading it?
And then one other thing in that, health thing at the back, you know, there's the health thing. Yeah. Like it's important that we should put asterisk or something that says, like a parent permission or a parent opt out component. So parents, as they read the health stuff to know that they have that right, okay. Whether they express it or not is one thing. But if we put it out there, then it's us being proactive and saying we have the right to say no thank you to these parts of this course. The conversation. Yeah. I noticed and I don't know if this is a change or not, but,
the rubric that says, you know, and they remind us is this GPA will be plus, and then for the AP classes, it's now maybe was always this way. It's different than I thought it was. So, is this new so, like in a, in a AP classes A five, whereas a B in an AP classes A 3.7 instead of a four. Is this new? That's not okay. I just don't want to be an intermediate.
I don't know, I understand, but it's not a four. Not offensive not a full. Yeah. One higher. The lower you go the more of a reading this is. It's always been that way okay. And I will confirm it. That's I will confirm that's accurate with what's happening on the computer program. I just get that I have no idea. It's just been right. Like, well, to make sure that those things they're talking to each other, I think that's the previous. Yeah. But confirming. Yeah. Okay. Smart. Perfect. Why I just because it's you know you would think everything would be
they would be all that one and it goes down and the lower the grade okay. Guess I don't really know what I mean. It seems weird, like just yesterday we, we started the waiting. That was back then. So that's ridiculous. I mean, I know it's, we did not late. It is a 25% jump. The rest of the letters are 25%. I know, but the 1.5, it's all 1.25. Multiply 2 million. Four times 1.5.
This is one time. 1.25 is 1.2. It's a 1.25. Multiply the lot conversation. Okay okay. And that's okay. But in the end it probably doesn't matter anyways because most universities have their own way. You know, they're typically strict waiting and in and they do it. They're all ready to enter. They do it. Yeah. So we stripped the weighting out of honors. But. Right. Because university. Yeah. But don't universities way way to end up some will in some.
What is it. That's why I think UVM actually for example does it right that you put in your raw grade and then they'll look at your transcript and see what your schedule uploads. So so any partially your high school GPA doesn't necessarily matter because all universities I think at the time when that changed, there was a perception that students were being disadvantaged because there was a bigger discrepancy of those that did wait at the university level versus those that didn't.
Yeah, I think that has changed over time. But yeah, I also think one of the drivers in that work is, application for scholarship. So many of our students are competing against other schools for application for scholarships. And many of those scholarships have GPA cutoffs. And so most adult scholarship applications are, choose whatever GPA you're given by your school. So I think it's that's an incredibly important component for our students when it comes to that. For for typically it's just IB
and AP courses that are weighted because they have external measures. Yeah. Right. Like no no one. And that's a part of the honors conversation. What makes it honors. Right. So we know what makes it an AP. We know it makes it an IEP level for us because there are external measures of what that looks like that are, you know, that are normed Christ. Yeah. Right. We made it through slide one. All right. We highlight for you all some changes, everything for our existing, 11th grade English classes. I was told. But as far back as 2019, there were questions related to,
our 11 alc English, specifically when the tracks of those taking 11 AP versus those taking 11 days like were studied, that some of the progress on standardized measures measures teetered off for our students taking 11 LC an obvious one on the one assumption you could make is that clearly the kids are taking one semester of English versus their counterparts were taking a year long, rigorous experience. Of course, kids can still take an English elective, though, but those electives would not necessarily cover like the breadth and depth of the state standards.
So over the past year and a half, the, Joe O'Brien has led, a crew of teachers from Athens and Troy High to revamp those courses and to make them rigorous to cover the 11th grade standards still, and also to add choice into it for our students and ultimately to boost the amount that students were reading in the past. It sounds like students were reading about two homeworks per semester, typically, a novel and a play. And they're hoping that students will read closer to six across the year. Now, in addition to that, they have some choice in what they read.
But six required experiences. So what they have developed, really is pretty cool here. The first semester, working more so on literary analysis and reading and still writing about reading, of course, though, since you can't really ever. I mean, hopefully not take the two of art totally. Students have three choices, which is really quite, quite stellar. The first being, the classics. And you could think about, the great American Stories, the second being contemporary American literature. So for the students
who are looking for a more modern version of the American Dream and to see what how it's portrayed at present day. And the third, is specifically focus on dramas and musicals. The team also sent out a survey to see, who is likely to sign up for what? Do you have a guess of what people are most interested in and to know the crisis? Oh, yes. Oh, I recognize and it would be the contemporary as well. But so far 43% of our first group of 10th graders going into junior are looking forward to the Great American Stories, 28%
contemporary American literature, and 30% American drama and musicals. So it looks like a nice spread of kids taking the various courses. The second semester that now flips to be, I will say that first semester. So the common experience, though related to the American dream. And then they break out into three time periods. Second, they also work on s.a.t, exercises embedded with them to second semester has more of a writing focus and still reading mentor texts for the sake of learning writing style, students can choose between persuasive
writing, writing imaginative fiction, and writing personal memoirs. Students have not yet been surveyed on their interest on that one, so I don't have the stats for you. They, will also also have some S.A.T. work in here, and they will all also do their their personal memoirs for, like, college entrance exams. Because there's been some inconsistencies in the past and how we handle that, for all students. So, Joe O'Brien, as, the part of the teaching, learning part of it in the department has brought that forth, for consideration in this course description book.
What? In addition to that, the next slide has courses that are, to be removed. It's worth noting that these courses have not had enough interest in the past five years to run. And so we've also tried to narrow down the book to being like, valid things kids are taking. So, the first are really a bunch of courses that existed in the social studies department. The next, courses that existed under the Ela department. And the final one, the CTE department. I'm sorry, I've skipped some questions regarding that, but
there wasn't enough interest on them in the nature of the case. But there isn't enough interest to run a full class. But there's usually ten kids who are interested. But we need to get around the public threats like that officer or someone. I mean, some of them could have no good set of grades. Yeah, but it's not enough for us to be able to run them in at least one full class. So I'm curious about political science, and I might be telling myself that, you know, I know that university there has a political science professor,
regardless of what kind of student you were, you wanted to present a semester of political science students to take in some civics or something. What we what we've learned a little science is that. So then there's an AP, right? So we have every student to graduate from tries three credits within social studies. Yeah. Right. So within social studies they take American history. They take world history one and two, and then they take government and then they take civics. So these were all social studies based electives. It's important to know in that course description book.
And you can see that I mean, political science is listed here. But we run current issues. Like right. So if you could kind of go like depending on what you think of political science, you would find it in all of the other electives that we have there, which I think is why it wasn't running. It just didn't have the appeal that some of these other courses did for our students. So so it's just, I mean, in the sense that medical science is being covered. Yeah. It's just not right. Yeah. Now you can have like AP comparative government. Like now there's all these other AP classes too, that probably book
a little econ is also a good amount of stuff, but they're such that, we have some other changes too, that were proposed, by the council. The first is that, for students in level three programing, their, goal work time is still called Achievement Skills three and to be in line with the changes meaning that resource room level programing, they will also be called integrated studies next year with the designation of three to know that their students in level three programing. We also worked hard as a team to clarify what could all be considered
a math related for students to provide options to those. Yeah, and so we've increased the number of math related. We are also working hard with our two NCAA, counseling reps to get as many courses as possible through the NCAA vetting process for students. And the last thing that Christine and her team has led is updating the format from a traditional PDF copy to return. So in the final version, Keith will actually will feel like they are reading an electronic book that turns pages. Paper turn also has really nice ratings for accessibility as well too.
Is it printable? I know that might be a stupid question, but a PDF you can hit control, right, and print the pages that you need, but I'd have to look into that. Whereas like Canva is not a single parent wants to print it when their child's a freshman and start. I know my kid was in eighth grade. I looked at the PDF and I saw the pages that I thought my kid might be interested in, and made a smaller, make a smaller book check with that. But that book landing page, can you give us an example
of courses that are math related and math related? Yep. So physics the AP physics is encapsulated course calculus based physics. Another example of a math related course would be economics. Okay, so we received oh yeah. Yeah, I have a personal finance trade. And then now an economics. So math applied mathematics tells us that this is for athletes who may not have enough math, but it and that counts. Is that what you're talking about? But what is it. Do you mean the NCAA athletes.
Yeah like that. So to two separate things I'm like no. Oh yes. It's our math related, our courses that don't necessarily introduce new mathematical concepts, but at least applied mathematics, such as economics, has a personal finance for him now, which is a great change that that kids have to do some level personal finance and apply math skills in the class. So that could be used for student, ideally in that fourth year of mathematics, your senior year of math, to count as their fourth math requirement.
So the math electives are expanded to add like applied physics and that you account. Right, so that the differences they're not taught by math teachers. Okay. So a math related course is an apple. That's what you've applied mathematics. It doesn't have to be taught by a math teacher. And it doesn't have to introduce new math content. So accounting could be another example. Or architecture could be another example. In the state of Michigan allows you to have one full credit as a math related credit, and it can actually take place any time during your four years.
For some of our kids, it naturally lands in their senior year, but for other students, it might be sprinkled somewhere else. And it can make sense sequentially or not. Right. So, if I, if, let's say math is really hard for me and it's I'm in 10th grade and I experience a crisis in my family and I'm not getting buried with without very well, I could take my math related course in 10th grade, and it could be something that I love, architecture, instead of it being algebra two. And then I could take algebra two and junior year, and then senior year.
I'd finish up my sequence in pre-calculus AP Freak out baby so it can fit anywhere. It could also be the capstone, or it could be the first thing to do. So we are required to have a list of math related credits. And we, David and I work with Kate Roney. To be able to work through what does the state require a math related course to have? And B, we found that definition. And then we worked with our department heads of all content areas to apply. And they could anybody could apply for their course to be counted as math related. And we review to that to those standards
to understand what that looks like so that we update that list anyway. And it versus NC, Double-A, which is NCAA is also updated annually. Separate those are courses that we know will transfer to account for college for athletes. Okay. I think that's one questions on this. I do want to give you two quick updates on things. You don't have questions just to make you aware. As we all go through change, change is sometimes hard. Our work in 11th grade Ela will be a transitional year for English department.
I think it's important for you as a board to know, because we'll be moving into 11th grade, a full year requirement. We will have one funny year where we don't have a lot of English locked in. So typically our English electives landed in 11th grade. This year, our 11th graders will be taking the new electives or, I'm sorry, the new requirement. And then electives are going to get moved to senior year. But for this current year, our 11th graders will be in a year long requirement. Well, our seniors are in a year long requirement, so our electives are going to shrink for a year.
And then they will come back. But that's shrinking for a year. Those electives are sometimes people's favorite things to teach, and I'm just sharing that with you in case you hear feedback that that, you know, a teacher is like, I don't like this new curriculum because it's taking away these things that I love. Just know it comes back in a year for that to situate with seniors. And so, you know, if you have questions or that if that gets brought to you certainly know that David or I would be happy to support to answer any of those questions. So thank you. Michelle. Yep. I thank you very much, Christina.
Yeah. Do we want to take a quick yes, Foreign ministry and then we'll come back for the budget. But let about the new age gender. So I think excluding the issue that's we went. Yeah. Because she, you been observing highly anticipated agenda item of the night the toilet renovations. Oh good. The other students are left. Is the toilet conversations happening? I think that's all I, I just do it. And our students all left at this. Fine. I think that is up to really well.
Next is really enjoy it. I've gotten so much feedback or I'm glad, Rosina, that we are running for life. It's that nice. Yeah, like this title of Big World. Like that award. What are we getting? You know, it says bad point of renovations. Maybe the best of the century. Better said that. Oh, yeah. That in the spreadsheet. Okay. Yeah. The one that has been born in terms of awarding the 12,600. What? We're going to do the fun stuff first so we don't get for foods that review.
I said, I'm when Christine said 6 or 7 and things that. So it's like it took her 30 minutes, which is 6.00. So long story. That's. Yeah. What is the six talking about for parking. So we're very okay. Let's I'm sorry. Go ahead and get started. So we're just going to tackle these two purchase items first. And then we'll jump into budget and then item for next year to well.
And so looking at elementary bathroom toilets. So we're going to address 12 elementary schools over a three year period. So we're going to start with for this coming summer. So Castelo Martel Street or Trade Union for the first four. So these upgrades are essentially addressing almost every bathroom in the school. Some will get a little bit more work than others. So your primary hallway bathrooms are going to get the most amount of work. The bathroom in the main office, they're the sick reuse. Those are going to get most amount of work goes all the everywhere compliant. We want to make sure that we have both in the office staff restrooms
and then the large student restrooms and the main hallways, fully Ada compliant, and then the classroom bathrooms, are going to be more fixtures, something flooring, new fixtures, nursing, student areas, paint, and then new lighting in some cases too. So and then as we go through, obviously that's what concern is for we can find a restroom that needs a little bit more work in a classroom than maybe the others do. Then that's what that contingency is going to be there for. So, we walked twice there and there's a full buildings, every bathroom, and kind of went through one by one with the architects to mark it on a list.
And, so it's a pretty detailed process. So, all that said that these four bathrooms, the total bins for all of these different categories here came in at 1.27, 5 million, with an 8% contingency. Six is a standard number, eight being that there's plumbing involved, we wanted to bump it up just a little bit more. Kind of like we do a site work. So the total amount requested for this approval will be 1.377 million. So work will start the day. School's out the next day, I should say, with the goal of being completed, by the start of school. So, if it's not fully completed, it may just be minor things like fixtures
and things like that. We're going to try to accelerate that as much as possible, but, we're confident with our team that we'll be able to finish that. So this will be split on a tile like we've done before, between the Bond Capital Projects Fund and then the building and sinking fund. So we're doing things like painting. There's certain things you can do with bond that you can do with sinking fund. So we're going to balance how to charge those accordingly. So any questions on this one. So at the end it's going to be done concurrently. There can be done altogether one at a time. Or they're going to try for all four buildings at once.
So and then the was there, I know some of our, some of our students are really on data that are going to be like changes, like the things that started with the 88. Yeah. Like you really mean it. Yeah. Yeah. So we talked about six inspects each year. But we opted for four for board just to make sure that they felt like that's where that confidence was high enough to be able to complete it. So that. That's that one. And then the other one answered my question over by last members. So all right, we'll see this.
Next week. And then the last item for purchase approval consideration is for, Athens and Troy. Hi, Jim. Renovations. So, the scope of work involved here is over at Athens. We're going to be removing and replacing the existing bleachers. So all the safety railings, bleachers that will all be upgraded, and then we will also be, sanding, repainting of ceiling, the gym floor, and then, upgrading the flooring at the entry points and then painting the lower wall, scrap the gym over at very high. They recently had their releases replace not too long ago.
So, we're focusing on sanding, retaining that ceiling, that oxygen floor as well. So total bids came in at 662,000. Only 6% contingency here was getting money for the work. So total package being $702,000. Again, this one will be approved for a split funding standpoint, but, this will be the bottom line for it will be something on, so we'll split it accordingly. Not a question, but more a comment to this the first time I've seen such discrepancy in the numbers in this fund. Like I saw a painting won.
The lowest bid is 15,000, but the highest is 85,000. I've never seen that spread. Leveling is usually like that. Yeah, it's all over the board. So therefore let us not do nothing. So it has a lot to do with how much work the contractor has. Yeah, yeah. Oh. And what equipment? Some might use very very long poles. Others are going to bring a lift and scaffolding. So it just depends on what they prefer in terms of their method. Some like to spray, some like the roll. So that can change pretty quickly. Similarly with flooring, flooring also has similar effect.
Okay, I noticed only those two areas had such a spread. Yeah, I assume the Athens work. The gym is staying right under the renovations. Everything's okay. Yes. Specially being designed and renovated in alignment with all the equipment. So Thiago Silva will step forward. But that's the front here. The the bleachers there. So it'll say Troy Athens on it. I said I would say was red bleachers with a green color to here. Yeah. So I'll go next to the inset that you do not.
The letters will be like a beige background will be red. Yeah. Okay. That'll be a little bit of black outline here as well. If you go to it's very high rate on a black plain white room. Right. I think the range. Over there and should brighten up the gym to keep it. Right. So the bleachers have like handicap cutoffs or is that just. Yes. That's the nice thing with upgraded bleachers is you get all the wider bios, you get all the appropriate railings along the sides, down the middles, everything so great. Oh, anything else on that?
I mean, it's chalk budget. Okay, okay. That's. So I'm going to go through, the first few slides here. Then I'm going to jump back and forth between some other documents that I want to share, just to highlight some of those. And then we can briefly go through all of the funds from a summary standpoint. So I. Have. So let me do every year I think this year was a little bit more unusual, in the sense
that the state of Michigan did not approve their budget until October 7th. So by law, they have to have a school aid budget to us by July 1st, which is the same time that we have to improve our budgets locally. There's no repercussion in the law if they don't do that. Which we found out this year. So they were quite late in getting that. They do have a September 30th deadline to approve the total state budget, which they didn't do. So they actually, at times like a supplemental budget to fund the government for an additional week. So highly unusual this year.
I've been in schools now for eight years. I know a lot of people have said that they have never seen that happen. So, it keeps us on our toes. But so as we go through, we're kind of going through and digesting this new school aid budget, you know, which takes time to filter through the hundreds of pages of budget line items. We go through, we update all of our grant funding, our patience, anything that we get from the ISD like GSP, Ida, those types of grants, we update all of those allocations and submit any amended budgets to them, for those dollars.
And then just kind of going through, obviously salaries and benefits to a significant portion of our budget that takes time to go through, making sure that we're reflecting all the increases and then, making sure that we have budgets to match that. So what I wanted to do with this slide was kind of highlight a few key items, as we look at revenue specifically. So our original budget here is what was presented to you in June. And then this amendment column here is kind of what this amendment entails. So for prospective enrollment, this was our internal
estimate here of where our funded enrollment will be. And then this is where we know that. So we were within three. So we know that enrollments consistent that factors in the school choice that we had last year going into this year. So we're able to take that information and, and with plan and real point really look at these numbers and, and make sure we're, we're getting as close to exposed as we can. So it's good to see the consistency there from a foundation standpoint. This is where, as we have, taken a deeper look at the school aid budget,
it's somewhat disappointing to see how the state has handled it. So essentially last year we had instead of a foundation increase, we had a one time mixer's allocation. So one 4784 there's just over $5 million. So the state said, you know what? We're going to now do a foundation this year. Let's just we're going to give it to you in the form of ministers money that'll help offset all of your costs that you have. So it was great last year. It was equivalent to $442, per student.
So where it becomes tricky, I'm sorry, $412 per student. So where it becomes tricky is then this year they said, okay, now we're going to give you a foundational piece. So for us that was about $5.5 million. But then they don't like to advertise is that they took away 5 million of Medicare money. And then they added 5.5 million of new money. So no reference to the massive $442 per pupil that they gave us. But then they forget to say that they also took away essentially $412 of people. So and that since then that is $30 a pupil when we look at it from that standpoint.
So what I wanted to kind of show here is the effect of that. So your blue lines are your biggest foundation increases that we're actually receiving. These last three years are kind of dropping off a lot, assuming that the states will be giving us 3 to 400 anymore. So what this orange represents, though, is what if they would have given us a foundation last year instead of a one time payment? That amount then compounds each year. So over the course of 4 to 5 years, it's $20 million that we just don't see because they don't include that in the base foundation.
So that's something that, you know, we obviously have to deal with. I mean, that's the reality of how the state handled this. I know we're not the only district in this position right now. But it certainly presents us with some more challenges with how they handle that. So again, here, the 550,000 is essentially the difference of of what we're really receiving. And then this 2704, that's a mixer's one time revenue contribution that the state gave us. The that is essentially money that they say we want this to help offset a lot of your retirement costs.
Again. So $1.3 million. That's great. This line item here though, 140 7A1 this was in the governor's the House in the Senate's budget proposals at the very last minute. And that first week of October, whatever three individuals are in the back room, make them a final budget. Decided they wanted to pull this out. So this was a last minute debate that we were fully anticipating because we have been receiving it, and they pulled it out. So that was essentially $1 million time. And then I don't
know the logic behind this one, but this 35, 85 early literacy supports that's been around for 8 to 10 years, if not longer. So I don't know the logic, but you know, in terms of pulling it back. But they did. So that was another hundred and 76,000 loss for us. So in total when you look at these larger items, it really wasn't as much of a gift to schools as I think was presented to us. So I thought those were important to look at. You know, from our higher level view of really working out. So as I mentioned last year, we receive this,
we go back to the office of the year. So last year we received that one 4784. So for us that was a little over 5 million. So that funding was essentially eliminated this year and then replaced with a foundation, payment. So this money does not now compound into future payments like a foundation of increase one going into this year. Then, as I mentioned, that last minute full back of the 147, a one that took away $1 million of additional pure revenue for us, and then employees last year were, reimbursed for a 3% health care
premium subsidy that they were required to pay. That has now shifted to employers. So for us, that's an additional 3%, just over half of our employees. So we are just under 800 employees that were eligible for reimbursement last year, that we are now paying that 3% on top of their other health care costs and, retirement costs. So the state discussed providing additional funding for us to cover that, which I think was partly the intent of that $1.3 million of one time. That was money that we had.
But again, that money was essentially reversed when they took $1 million of the other money away from us. And then these three bullets here at the end. So we had, there's various components to the retirement costs that we pay. So this pension expenditure was largely talked about across the state about how the state wanted to lower the rate from, you know, almost 16% down to just over 10%. And so last year they provided us funding to do that. But then this year, the rate actually went down.
But it's not clear savings because the two bullets under that are actual increases, to our retirement rate. So the net effect of all this is, you know, less than 1% savings essentially on the retirement. So again, not not what was communicated to us as not being included in this budget. So before I jump into the the general fund here, I do want to show similar slides. So we put this together.
So this was essentially a report. Every year at the end of October, every district is required to submit their financial data to the state of Michigan. Much like we do for fall and much like we do for wrap on our side, we're required to submit our financial data that then generates an operating expenditure report that every district has on their transparency side. So it's a very apples to apples comparison across the state for every district. So it breaks it out very specifically in terms of these functions. And then it tells you what percent of your total budget that categorical item was.
So what we wanted to do is we said, okay, for instructional expenditures, let's look at this line item and then let's color coded green being the highest percentage and then white being your lowest percentages. So as you look across you can see that Troy is actually one of the highest. So we took all of our surrounding labor districts. And then I sent a couple of other comparably sized ones, or ones that were often compared to, so looking at that, we're we're at the top in terms of instructional expenditures. And then likewise, these pupil support services and instructional staff,
those are all may not be directly in the classroom, but they're providing some type of instructional support. So again, that fits that narrative that we every dollar we spend, we put as much into destruction as we can. And so I think the numbers in comparing other districts shows that here. And then just moving down into administration and operations, transportation, for instance, we know we're running when we're almost white on this one. So we're kind of on the low end of our total budget. So again, I think that supports the narrative that we want to communicate
and that we are very, very lean in our operations. For transportation. And then likewise, you know, on the, the other end of it too, with operations and all of that. So in administration, we're either on the low end or in the middle of the pack, for those numbers. So I think this is important to see as we go into the budgetary talks for next year, to kind of show like, you know, this, this is where we stack up with surrounding districts. Obviously, we do our own needs assessments internally. You know, we'll we'll build kind of that data driven assessment
to look at staffing across all departments across the entire district. But we felt like this was a good way to kind of keep us in check. So any questions on this one before I'll make sure I'm okay. Did you have something? I can't remember if it was uploaded or not. On top problem that, That there. Yeah. There we go. So as we went into the year, you know, we we had talked at length with not a whole cabinet, but with our ad staff groups and various stakeholders across the district about what are what are we need to reduce by,
so we tried to do it again through attrition. Obviously, that's the preferred route always is to to lower your FTE through attrition. A lot of it is hard to stick to 100% because there's a lot of variables that go into that. You're taking a lot of it at their word that they want to retire or whatever it may be. But that doesn't always come to fruition. So I would say we got just under half of kind of what we were expecting in terms of attrition. So you can see just by group there, you know, it's pretty, pretty consistent across the board.
But we did know we had opened up a couple of level four special ed classrooms this year. Just to stay in compliance. So we knew that there would be some narrow positions there that was kind of even to our number. So that's kind of like the total salary amount broken out by group. Just to give you an idea of, of how much in total salary we were able to reduce simply through attrition. So and again, we'll make sure we get these, uploaded to the, the board docs for you guys reference to. So jumping back into this. So our original budget had us at just under
$4 million of, use of fund balance. Just given all of the things that the state did in terms of the revenue, we're projecting right now, right around that $6 million mark. I'm confident that it should come a little bit better than that. We typically do get some prior year payments from prior years as there's tax. You know, homeowners can make a dispute with the with the county on certain payments that they've made. And so there's often times where we end up collecting money or delinquent payments that finally come through,
we'll see a few hundred thousand more of revenue, just from those areas. And then we do have a couple of mid-year retirements that are, coming through at the end of this month. So those will be captured in the the March adjustment. So we'll make sure that we reflect those there. But, the one thing I do want to point out is, you know, you'll look at it from like 190 to 197 years ago. Okay. Our revenues are significantly higher. Where did all that revenue come from? This is how the state handles the administrative retirement fine. So we have about $13.8 million that we get in revenue,
which is about $5 million higher than last year. But then we also get an invoice a week later. And we have to shift that money right back to AWS. So it's a way for the state to say, well, look, we just give you $5 million more, but we also get an invoice to that sends it to the Office of Retirement Services. So rather than the state sending it right to them, they funnel it through us and then it goes right to them. So that's where it gets a little wonky. And in terms of well, I've got 70 more million dollars of revenue, but that's not the case. That's actually 7 million more of expense to.
So that's where we kind of see the expense bumping up there to, so roughly equal ranking. Still, for the second time, the expenses, do we have an idea of what up by 9 million. Yeah. That so the USDA expenditures that we have. So that amount is what they invoice. So last year was about 9 million. This year almost 14 million. So we have to record the revenue and the expense for that. So that's going to bump up those expenditures. And then and we weren't able to budget that before. This is the difference of the original budget and amendment.
Right. Yeah. They we didn't have the state budget when we did the original budget. So they changed that amount dramatically between June and October. So we budgeted the kind of what the prior year was since it was equal revenues and expenses. And then four months later when they passed the budget, that amount was significantly increased. And what we need to pay them has significantly increased compared to what they gave us is dollar in, dollar out. So it's the same amount. Yeah. So then dollar in the dollar up to so it's revenues. So that expenditure differential to say yeah that's why you see about $7
million of more revenue and 7 to 8 million more of expenditure. But it's not in maybe more expenditures. That's the the 2 million. Yeah. And that's so the difference there is also when we look at kind of where we were targeting, where we wanted attrition to hit, we just fell short of that. So now I did record what the actual expense is going to be. Okay. So we expected more attrition which didn't happen. Right. That's what that is okay. And didn't get the oh, we didn't get the revenue that we anticipated getting from the state. We we netted essentially a $550,000 net revenue from the state.
We anticipated that random greater than that. That's signif. That's half a percent. Yeah. Shouldn't that have been in the budget though already. Well, we yeah, we anticipated the revenues being greater. Greater than the budget than what we but you don't get a budget until the middle of October. You've already started the school year. That's why this First Amendment is so important, because we're truly not what we thought we would get based on our best guesstimates and what we had heard. Yeah, from Lansing are the health care expenses also in the,
in the expenditures were just regular increases or, well, in the 3%. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, this this think this is updated with the new members rates. So our system automatically calculates that. And that wasn't in the original budget that increase because they didn't that those rates are established with the School Aid Act I oh so until we get an actual budget we don't know what those rates are going to be. So how much should that, 2 million, the two plus million dollars in overages also do to
I guess what I'm interested in is how much is because of the surprises we got and how much of that is really due to, us overestimating our attention. Yeah. So we were around the 2 million mark in terms of actual attrition. We were in about 1.4 ish total. So they were we were close maybe a little more than half. So, so about 600,000 of them is attrition. The rest in the healthcare expenses that. Yeah that that's where I again they're not going to start increasing expenditures on schools.
But that that's a significant portion to us because for a couple of years now there was talk of lowering that pension dual rate down 5.75%, which is substantial. You know, I $95 million of total salary. So when you don't see that to come to fruition, and now that's really offset by those other increases. That's the unfortunate part of that is that you're told like, hey, these are going to go down, it's going to help you dramatically, but then it doesn't actually do that. So now we've got to increase the total expenditures. Yeah. And and we pushed additional costs back to the employers.
Public savings. We didn't get the anticipated and then pushing additional cost back onto us, I'm assuming with then the proposal is going to try and help address some of these employers. Yeah, I know this. Yeah. I mean, this this is that this isn't the first time the state has done this. They have been better in the past few years. But this is what they said in 2011. Yeah. Yeah yeah. This is what have written essentially three. And you know and it's not it's not an exaggeration
when you have three people in a room essentially making the decision. Speaker. The House okay. So the Senate majority leader and representative from the governor's office was the governor herself, in in a room essentially hammering out the final budget. But boy, we better get good growth this year and be back on budget. So all that to get to an estimated 13.59% fund balance. So as we look, you know, we'll continue to Amanda's two more times before the end of the school year. And then from there, depending on where it shakes out,
we'll, we will present you a budget for next year to get us to that 15% mark, that there have been an amendment, related question, but I think we need in purple balance goes down like that. Does that impact our bond, sale that we're going to do next year? They would say that we will get they would go off like last year's audited numbers. Okay. Yeah. We're going to do we will do everything we can as a, as a team that we can over the course of the next several months to get that ending.
Balance fund balance as close to 15% as possible. And then the budget for present, whatever that shortfall is, will put us back to that puts back to that number is not over that number. There are some things that we there are some things that we can do during the course of the second semester. Okay. I mentioned those several positions that will be leaving us will realize savings there. There's several positions we're not replacing. And then in some cases replacing positions with long term substitutes because we have to, and then the other piece, because we're not going to shy away
position that we would likely reduce, into the future. There will be some other savings from a spending standpoint that we will realize that we won't spend or bear in the budget that we won't spend and semester that will realize the savings. So our goal as a team is to dig in as close by the end of the year to that 15% mark, projections puts us in a bad position for planning for next year. So next. And, you know, and I guess it's a good thing that, you know, we're starting to engage the community with finance and surplus.
This is very reminiscent of 2011. And that means that there's problems associated with decisions. And then when we get to that budget plan piece of talk them out. Yeah. How think forward to ensure that we get to that point. And you know, pre-COVID to the the majority of districts were between 10 and 15%. And then there was an influx of trillions of dollars federal and everybody shut off. So I think it's been most district's goals to start spending that down. You know, for us, we have done this now over a three year period to get it down closer to 15.
Obviously, a little bit less than that right now given where the funding came in. But, you know, as we talk about internally, we're not a corporate entity. We're not here to make a profit. We're here to educate kids. So our goal is to try to manage that and get it as close to 15% as we can. You know, you try to do it as, as much as you can. Protection. You know, sometimes you can't fully rely on that know. So that's where we have to unfortunately have a little bit more challenging conversations. But I think it's going to be done in a very meaningful and data supportive way. So I think, don't we?
We're not going to be getting a whole lot of what are you next year? No, I stay around everybody. We're going to get the you're going to put more and more strict restrictions on there and more and more waiting or whatever. So, so we've got to tighten our belts, and offers that come up. Clearly they don't. I mean, our representatives, I don't know that they feel a whole lot of pressure. So. We have well, they
you know, each side was doing this and they'll just keep doing it. Yeah. This and that. And they just one survey has that over. So just briefly going through some of these other smaller funds so we do have some money transferring in from some of our other ancillary funds. So we have a community service fund right here that, this has our care program in it. And then all of our. And we bring a blink and enrichment in,
and the expense increases because of our salary, the, higher salaries. But we also adjusted a little bit of the transfer amount out of this fund because they were sitting on, just over $2 million. So we wanted to try to soften the general fund as much as we can. So we bumped that up a few hundred thousand dollars, just to start pulling in a little bit from some of these other funds to help us get through this, as we have these conversations about staffing. So, this was a small lever we had to pull just in case the attrition numbers didn't shake out to what we wanted them to be.
So, but outside of those transfers, these funds are are doing well. They're they're typically right around that break, either penalized or, you know, 100 grand a year of net profit businesses to be able to park within us. And that's also maintaining our costs or that's us really consciously, maintaining our, fee structures without overly inflating those. Yeah. So the began fund balance changed, frankly in the original and amendment
because we pulled some money out. Is that what it does? So what happens is when we do an original budget, we're going based off of the final amendment budget from the previous year. But then you have an audit. So then the amendment one captures what the audited final fund balance is. So there's there is some there is a difference. Yeah okay. Yep. It's just a timing issue as. I was still pretty school for the same thing. So this is a fund that has built up considerable amount of fund balance over the last number of years. So, same thing here.
We had opted to increase, the amount of transfer out of this fund just to help, the general fund out. But again, we wanted to make sure we left them with an adequate amount. So they're sitting on about that 25% accounting that brings the transfer out is a separate line. And yeah, you'll see that, like the actual resolutions. So there's like an actual transfer, like like, yeah. So the detailed ones that'll be uploaded for next week, we'll have all that. So the 7 million increase in revenue,
part of that is from these monies being transferred. Yeah. I'm just curious word. Where do you see it? You know. And then the principal fund and that community service fund, we do have very, very modest fee increases planned for next year too. So, we're looking about that 4% mark. That's something that traditionally we've tried to hold off as long as you can. Yeah. But inevitably you need to stay competitive with the market. But also look at our cost too. So. Sort of trade center funds. So this is a federally funded program revenues obviously for your expenditure.
So that funds are pretty straightforward actually. They're food service budget. So this has the tri kitchen in there. So that's part of our spend down plan. So we have that plus some other equipment that was approved, ultimately in this number here. So it was around $1.4 million for the tri kitchen and plus some other, equipment purchases for some of our other elementary buildings. And then they did show outside of those spend down items. They did show a little bit of a loss this year. But again, that's that's just based on costs going up
and whatever the state of Michigan and federal government are reimbursing us for. So but again, that leaves them still with a healthy $824,001 million loss of revenue. A lot of that is just participation so far. Thus far, this year has been less traditionally. We've been in the 58% range. I think we're into the 40s right now. So any thoughts? It's 58 itself was bad with free lunches and 40 is even worse. Yeah I a lot of it. I I started packing my daughter lunch down and she just
wants her wrap every day instead of school. And so lunch is going to be back recently for her. Like this. Okay. I don't like that food program, so I don't know that we've solved that issue. I have gotten good feedback. The Troy High, that qualifies with some new, wines being again, I think those are doing well. I it would be at some point just to see the participation rate at the different levels. Because it, it is possible that at the elementary school it's down, but at the high schools it might be up, especially if you get training
with the new service lines and those whatever they're the 20 stations. There's like breakfast in your class that. Yeah. Except with some like social media feedback about like, parents don't know how to sign up for breakfast. And I just signed up and it's like, not. And it should be like, show up and get food, right? So we may be losing participation by making our systems too hard to. Okay. You remember never as a parent seeing this year how to sign up for breakfast. You really I know when it was new a couple of years back, there was a really big push so that that might be.
I have no recollection of seeing that anywhere. Practice this. I would say the most challenging meal to serve, in the sense that each building does it a little bit differently, based on the layout of their building and the logistics of getting the kids to the cafeteria and then back to the classroom. I have a lot, so I'm eat it in the cafeteria real quick, and then they go back to the classroom. So it's a coordination challenge of making sure that we can. But is that when you have to sign up for ahead of time or. No. Okay. So accepted is I think in some places that's why it's inconsistent.
Yeah. And then in terms of, Some of the you just sent it back to it with those special teams. But, I mean, I think this is one place because we definitely pull these funds to do a lot of Rumney renovations and things in the food services. So, it's definitely a place we may not want to lose the money. So we have to figure out this is a million is a lot. And Chartwells would would want there to be. Yeah, it's in their best interest as well.
So it was the equipment at the elementaries is very basic relative to the secondary building. So that limits the types of things you can cook now. So that's a larger question I think that we have in terms of how do we want to put money into those buildings. And it's possible that free lunches and free lunches may not continue anyways. Rose. But if they do, to lose that much revenue that we've been able to use to to pay for other things and not have to use, you know, their general fund hours for so.
And then get funds for this is the debt millage that we levy. So this one essentially is the local money is your revenue, and then your expenditures are your principal and interest payments on the bond. The bonds that we've issued for construction. So again, this one, this general is pretty close to breaking even. So last year, original budget, conservatively, some small loss by this year, we anticipate a little bit higher. That's typically attributed to taxable value growth. So again that one and then fund balance and just over 4 million.
So that'll help with any massive fluctuations in the taxable market. Which would impact all but the lower interest rates improve our expenditure. And there's not that it thank Mike. Yeah. I mean, our interest rates are whatever bonds we've already issued. Those interest rates are established over a 30 year period. So, they're kind of locked in. But as we look into February and the spring issue, this next series of, bonds, we are going to have a refinancing opportunity as part of that.
So our goal is to lower some interest rates on some of those ones. That's all I had just from my end. Before we jump into, budget planning, is there any questions? All of them. All right. So are there any plans with, like the the various K-12 groups to do some lovely work ahead of time? Yeah, they're really waiting to see what's going to happen. Right now, there's there's very little indication that they're not doing anything. Lansing.
Right now, most part, there's a couple of bills that are moving that. But but they're from a budget standpoint, they're really doing nothing at this point. So when when it starts to move, of K-12 science, and our Connie group, have been talking some, some lobby dates in Lansing. We, we do meet monthly with our, with reps from Oakland County and, what we call our legislative breakfast. So we bring them in, and we do talk to them about what's going on.
In some a lot of this also is going to, depend upon how they're going to go about doing the budget. Yeah. If they're going to go about doing the budget like they did last go round, which was essentially if in secret, that's not normal. But that works. And then with very few people having input, then it's going to be really difficult for us to impact, because we're just not going to know what's going on. So the only recourse is going to be this coming November, where
all the state reps for all, which they have to demand. Yeah, I think we need to know that there's a couple of things coming up that I did include as part of the last piece of the, of that budget timeline, we do at the crack with what's called the crack, which is a consensus revenue. Committee is going to meet on Monday or Tuesday to list the 20. So it's Tuesday. We can say they will meet. That's the first time that we'll have a sense for, what their revenues, are looking like.
The early indications would suggest the school revenues up about $500 million. That's not unusual in particular coming off of the holidays because of sales tax. So that's not unusual. But the it's the general fund because it's a general fund. That's really the key. Because if the general fund is down, then we know that they float. They will put some money that way into general fund in order to, and, and some of this is also where the other expenses are going to the tutorial candidates, and they're kind of where their angle is in terms of,
their focus on school funding, even though that's not going to impact on its budget, but it gives us some indication as to what we're going to see forward. But we do anticipate seeing the governor's budget early February. So that's the first indication of what her priorities are going to be. From, from a funding standpoint, I think we can I think we can guess that early literacy is going to be a race, going to be a foundational component of that budget, which is would come as no surprise, is probably a good thing. What other priorities that are out there we just don't know yet.
So we're just going to have to we're going to have to wait and see. But we are we are watching that closely. So that's part of our strategy moving forward. So if we go into, the first, the first slide was just really a summary of what of the great news that they had just provided. So there's a bit of an overview of, of all the things that they just said, are there, you know, it's a bait switch really is what it was. It's a shell game that that license plate. And they, they came out and said it was an historical budget was not a historical budget.
It was a historical fleecing of public education. I think it's what I would say, the, and not to mention the fact we don't know what the impact of the $1.6 billion coming out of school aid on roads, because the promise of 1.4, excuse me, the $1.4 billion coming out of school aid to fund roads was there was a promise that it would be backfilled, but they still hadn't told us when that that was going to be full. So. Well, it's that'll make things one. So we'll like inflation remains back around that 3%. It was a bit of good news. I think just recently about inflation here in Michigan in particular,
our unemployment, at least here in Michigan since that time. What about a little bit. So we'll see what that means. But we do know that our costs will continue to rise, getting onto the next one. So we got to put together what we think are some are from a priority standpoint, some some, talking points, as was discussed earlier today, securing our, our expenditure, our obligations, into the future through 20 2930, we think is a is a solid, not only just a priority, but it makes sense so we can identify what our obligations are going to be.
We can better budget. We can put we can begin putting together some three year forecasting when we know what our obligations are going to be. That's helpful as we think about, some turbulence over the course of the next couple of years, the, the labor stability and, and so forth. That, that provides us during these stable times is good. And that so labor piece and, and and labor stability. Right. So knowing that folks are going to be here for that period of time, is important for us. But second piece, we'll talk a little bit more about that. But but really leaning into a data driven alignment around how we support students.
Back to dance. Comment earlier about or that a graph and showed earlier about where we spend our money. I mean we are are amongst the tops in the economy. We are the highest in the county and amongst our peers in terms of keeping money in the classroom. We want to keep some money to do that. But when you look at that, plus other support services, all of our money will go to the vast majority of our money goes to supporting students. So when you see our ratio, which I'm going to hand out here in just a moment, you saw a little bit of it. I've got a more, fully fleshed out document to share with you.
You'll see that there's significant amount of MTA, across our district that is directly related to supporting students, whether they be special education students, all students and or interventionists across the district. So significant amount of revenue is tied up in those FTE. And that's what perspective where it should be. It goes to support students. But there's a given a take with respect to that. And when we start talking about reductions. Where we reduce one area is going to have an impact in another area.
There's just, or we're getting to that point where there's really very little, there's, there's very little, fat. Yeah. To cut, we are we're getting close with we're into muscle now unfortunately, and so forth. And that that leads really to that last piece. And, we will continue to look at reductions through attrition. But I do think we have to be we have to be honest with the fact that, as we have attempted to, to to do this, to attrition and will continue to do so, there comes a point time you can't do that any longer. And and difficult decisions need to be made.
And I think we're quickly headed to that point where, we'll be we'll be we'll be talking more about reduction in force to other means, not, other than attrition or stay away. The other word. But, you know, that that's something that we have to be conscious of as we as we think forward, which is, again, why I think knowing our applications moving forward are really helpful for us from a, from a strategic budgeting standpoint, but also from a strategic planning standpoint and all of this conversation is also through the lens of strategic planning, knowing that the board
and our team will engage in strategic planning into the near future. They want to know what, well, what resources we have to work with as we think about prioritizing goals district wide. And so that makes us sense. Okay. And then all right. So staffing ratio. So we we have a we we have utilized ratios internally. As a, as a group. So when we look at so how much FTE do we provide, which FTE we have assigned to students
and where are we assign right. So this document is is not going to be made public simply from the standpoint it's an internal document and it changes regularly. So this is a this is an attempt to share with us as board members. So you have a sense for gain when we talk about where where is FTE? I, I allocated across a district. You can, you can see where that allocation lies and to and to what degree it impacts.
So we tried to put we tried to put each of these positions, but each of these positions in into context around how many students those positions support, in some of it makes sense and some of it just won't make sense simply because, it, it is, there's there's so many students, psychologist, for instance, if you look at that first one, we have ten psychologists across the school district. And those they, they represent, they support about 1190 special education students. The, so they're both they're about a 147
to 1 ratio. We probably, could use more, but they can cover the current caseload that we have as an example. Right. No one on this list is going to is not is not going. No one on this list will advocate that they need less. They're on this list, but anyone will only advocate that they need more. But obviously we need to do to make data driven decisions. So you just kind of see the first page is it's all special education.
And I have point out, you know, in some cases that the very bottom of the page para educators with 98 para educators, and, you can see that at the. There's two pairs for one categorical program. And then if you go to the top of the next page, 87, those pairs are in categorical groups. So when we talked about in special earlier, fall talked about special education and the and the, the significant rise in categorical rooms across the district. Each one of those categorical terms that we add,
there are two paras that go along with that. And so there's it's not just the teacher cost, but those it's those additional costs. On top of that, we have six paras in academic support centers that help to staff those centers, and then five in elementary classrooms that are supporting our resource rooms, excuse me, that are supporting students. So it gives you an idea, 158 student Support A's. And I'm not picking on those to areas as I'm just using numbers. Example. You can see where those A's are spread across the district.
One of the the newer additions that you'll see are the next to the behavior support, the Bcba those are for certified behavior analysts and B behavior support patients. Those are relatively new positions. Bcba is are not new, but that the the degree to which school districts utilize those to help support students that have, that have, specific, emotional needs, specific behavioral needs.
They are, they are, a, a huge asset. They're helping to support, students, in, in their classrooms, helping support regulate behaviors, regulate their students into more normalized behavior so that they can, that so that they can, you know, maintain themselves in a, in a, in some cases, a general education, setting and so forth, and then behavior support tests, each of those Vas, will support behavior tech. So those people go into rooms and work directly with students and teachers
to help support to to help regulate student behaviors so that students can, can, have success in a, in a classroom scenario, as an example. And then when you get into you'll get into, elementary staffing, and then secondary staffing, there are a couple you'll see a couple of, italicized areas there. I literacy specialist at the middle, at the elementary, for instance, we we the the ratio with respect to those is currently k 146, which suggests that that there, there are
there will be a requirement for literacy specialists. We don't know exactly what that requirement is going to be. They haven't identified specifically yet what that ratio is going to be. There's been conversation around it, but we don't know specifically yet. So that's something we'll just keep having to keep an eye out. Similarly, because as was mentioned with our Eld program, where we're we're currently working within a program review. And so we're looking to see where that is going to land or our team is going to be working actually with our friends at the state level,
at through and really, to better help us identify what those ratios should be. So the takeaway here is that we've identified all the areas where we allocate support around, for students, where those students are, where those staff is, where the staff is allocated, what the current ratio is. And then we tried on the very right to identify what would be a perfect ratio. Some of those are some of those are that are those ratios are developed at the state level, through statewide organizations. As best practice. Some are federal,
some counselors, for instance, like school counselors there, etcetera. That would be nationally. They would suggest they should be a right around that 250 to 1 mark. Or that might be a goal. It's not entirely feasible. So you can kind of see where we are with that. So we're going to use this document. We will continue to utilize this document internally as well as we identify wharves supports are are provided.
Are we maximizing our ratios where we can. And so for instance, if there's a ratio that's lower and that we can raise that ratio that might be an area where where through attrition potentially we can make a reduction or whether in any other form that that require us to do so moving, moving folks around and and so forth. So that's how we that's how we would intend to use this document moving forward. I will I will tell you it's a working document. It's going to change.
But it's actually important for you to know that behind the scenes when we're making decisions, there's a there's rationale behind those decisions, because every decision as I mentioned, has an effect on some classroom somewhere minimized that. Our goal is to to make sure that all of our decisions have the least impact on the classroom environment and ultimately, the greatest impact on student achievement. So that's that document. I'd be happy to answer any questions about it to that document. You know, we could get into the weeds and those areas.
I really, really meant to just kind of give you a sense that if there is some data, it's the plan to develop, How to get back to our budget, or that. But. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. So, this document, this document will be the, the understanding that last bullet point that will be useful as we seek to balance the needs, with reductions, and explore as we lean into our next strategic plan. But specifically when we think about reductions, we use this document
to help maximize, our effectiveness around it, or if it's close as we can to like maximizing those ratios without going over them. And, some cases that you'll be able to in some cases we may not be able this may actually be important for next year because, yeah, some of the stuff, you know can be done right away. Yes. Yeah. As we think about planning. So so if you look at the proposed budget timeline, that this is where this is what we're really posing, in our, in our collective work about our team
and then working with the board team, forward that we would, January workshop. We're looking at amendment one. I put a couple of those. The correct, as I mentioned, is meeting simple that it's a 20 it's a 20. There's nothing. There. It's 20. That should say we want to find that system. Sorry. So moving forward, February workshop. We have a plan or we'll have our updated, any moment projections that will be provided to you.
As mentioned, the governor as an executive budget is due out early February and then per suspected state of the state is later February, which we should get some indication as to where spending priorities will be. But when that starts, the start of the circuits, unfortunately. And then March, we're we're currently scheduled to come together in March, if possible in March, we'll have a second and then we'll bring a second Amendment similar to this, where we'll have honed in further, what we know to be costs and any additional revenues,
that we've received by that point. And then we will review, and at that point, with working with the board, we will, review what we would anticipate being assumptions moving forward, those assumptions being what should we assume for revenue around enrollment? What might we cautiously identify as a kind of assumption around per pupil? It's going to be really difficult for us to zero in on at that point. But we're going to take our best together and we'll take our best stab at that. And then, whatever additional information is available
to us, we bring in, in March, we would like at that March retreat to have a book to have a conversation with you. Is our intent to bring you a, a framework around a reduction, a planned reduction, and to have a conversation with you at that point about what does that look like, what our part we're going to share with you, what our priorities are. We want your feedback on those priorities. And so with the goal the 12 to get to that 50% mark, to your point. Thank you.
April workshop, March provides us is a good time frame for that because, anticipated, the TBA as of the end of March is typically the time frame where we know with what our retirements will be, we have a really good idea by the end of March, so we'll have a general sense as we trend towards the end. Towards that point, what retirements will be. We are hopeful to have the House and Senate budget, or at least some indication as to what those budgets will be by that point. And then, you'll give us feedback in March.
We'll bring that back in April with what we believe to be, right. A final recommends for that final, but a recommendation based upon your input. And then, of course, June, bring forward the final amendment and then your, your, approve the budget as is required. So that's the plan of a cap as we move forward. As Nancy mentioned earlier, we are we are we do have our first choice of school finance engagement group. Our first meeting is next week. Next Wednesday. Looking forward to that.
We have if 49, 50 efficiency and 5555 individuals that will join us in kind of a finance 101. And what we provided here is just an overview of what some, some, topics that we would hope to to cover through this group. The first is kind of why would we bring this group together? What is the choice school district and what what is the school district look like. So looking at demographics and then Dan, we'll spend some time talking about how schools are funded. Because we anticipate within this group there's going to be some that know,
some that have some understanding, there will be others that come with zero understanding. And so we want we want to build this this knowledge base amongst this group. And then we're going to talk a little bit about what is our current realities. In other words, what are our challenges moving forward. And then the idea here is we talk about, our revenues, we talk about expenditures and then the talk to get into some of the ancillary funds, how we manage the the bond and how that impacts the work we're doing across the school district.
And then, sure, through this process, we will gather some feedback from, from this group. This is a response from the board. It asks if we administratively provide more opportunities for engagement with the community. I think this is a great way of doing this. What better way than to jump into a topic that, quite frankly, folks just don't know we don't know much about, but yet has such a huge impact on what happens within our schools. And so, should be really important. You're certainly all welcome to attend. But we will provide the presentation.
But we will present we'll provide a presentation to the board prior to the meeting. So you will look at that, will decide whether if it works in your schedule to attend, you're more than welcome. You don't don't have to be there more than one to participate. Ultimately, this group may help to become an advocacy group for. Yes, that is that is my intent. And it's fine. Thank you. So we're we're building a cohort of individuals who can speak knowledgeably with their neighbors, but also can advocate
knowledgeably with our, with legislators, and, and are equipped with, you know, that level of understanding that we can't we can't we simply cannot continue. We've been saying this for a long time, but we simply cannot continue, to provide the services at the level of providing them at the revenues the state is providing us. Just they're they're they're taking or the lines are going in the opposite direction. And absent a significant influx of revenue, it's going to be hard for us to chew up those, those lines.
So one of the charts you you should use is, you know, I got to say, it's Carol's favorite chair, but, you know, the foundation alliance and then inflation. Right. Which. We do continue to use that one. We do use that one in our fall update. This will essentially become, conversation about our spring update, but we will definitely use that because that is one that people really understand. Even if you don't understand school finance, you can really appreciate the fact that those the gap is getting bigger.
I would even at the time if the meeting would work. But then when you do the update, then when you do the update at the meeting, I would just flesh that, you know, because I think it's I think it's just a really easy visual for people using funds for. Yeah. I mean, yeah, since we're talking about not getting the increased money and all of that, I think this is an easy way for people to understand that we are $5,000 short as you can, where, you know, even if we just that's just, you know, in relation to what I'm.
Yeah, the cost of raising a family has increased. And if your revenues aren't keeping pace with that and you as a family, you have to make choices just economics. Fortunately, you know, we we have a plan. So we will bring forward, a plan that the March workshops would be a good opportunity for us to to dig in. We want your feedback on priorities. We'll bring you the information. And it's a robust conversation, but those priorities should reflect.
And I get we want to be thinking about planning for the future budget time. But strategic planning into the future and so forth. And I haven't mentioned it hasn't bulge. But that is still out there. But a little bit more about that in February. It not mentioned it simply because it's not there on yet. But, I don't know if the political environment is good. The city that the city bond didn't pass. So we're going to have a there's a there's yeah there's several we're going to we're going to say so February workshop.
But I think a lot of people in the public were well aware that there was not a school budget that came out of in time, and there was probably one of the few times maybe where the, the, the general public was aware what was going on. So lots of people have kids in schools. And, you know, we're worried about that thing. So, yeah, I mean, you know, it wasn't that long ago. And so we'll remember. But, when we took a there were fossils festivals, our parents went up to Lansing
and advocated in Bass in Lansing on the steps 2011. And then that made a huge impact. I think, back to to them when that occurred, that put a huge invoice after 20, 2011 was devastate. Yeah. The real bad times. There's the $11 million reduction and we think we found 11 volumes. And then that's the debate. And what I think that would be helpful because, you know, it's good for us to be talking about mixers and planning.
147 but when we take this, you know, to our board meeting next week, and that even the finance if we could take, you know, some of the questions that were being asked. But you take that almost two point something million dollar, increase in expenditures, for against the deficit, I guess. And if you can break it down into, you know, this much was you know that we didn't we had planned on more attrition.
I didn't have the tuition, but this much is due to the 3%, health care costs. And this much is due to the loss of the, literacy categorical. You know, we can put those in terms kind of a build up chart that, because I don't mind us taking hits from the public of we overestimated how much attrition we have. Okay. We can fix that. Some of these other things. I think we just really want to communicate. Yeah, obviously it's our responsibility.
We're going to have to figure out how to offset those. But those were batches that came to us and, you know, at the end, did I think, you know, we need to get people understanding that so that as we go forward, you know, into future budget planning, we can get advocacy support. This just is so reminiscent. I mean, a state action was getting better, you know, over the last few years. But we are really going back to where we were in that 20 1120. And those were miserable, miserable years of big cuts. And,
you know, I remember being in this room and we were talking to parents like, you know what, children to go, you know, and it was, it was, it was really a bad time. Yeah. We can put that together. And, you know, what I have to say is, in the time, maybe ten years I've been on this board, we have never been swept teachers. And I don't want to see us. Doesn't mean that, you know, they they weren't included out, you know, for other reasons, but we never have had to pink slip mean we've always been very stable.
We have not had to do disruptive programing in the middle of a school year, which many districts have done. This is leading districts to having to do some of those things, which is, you know, not going to have an with, you know, student performance. But I think other things too, like where we're doing our part to that, like an inflow, like what competitive grants are we playing for and taking and use them and to be like, hey, we didn't just like pass on money because that is not a good optic either. So as we move forward.
Have the, you know, how many grants we've applied for and all that, just at least we can show that we are trying to utilize everything out there so you can get that information as well, not necessarily for next week's meeting, but just as we move on to this whole and there's a lot of grants will reach out to teaching and learning and say, hey, this is a new one like that. A summer grant from the United Way would say is one of only some districts qualify. We tried this and now you get a little light, so it's okay to say it's a it's okay to even
it's okay to even present that information. Say we apply to these. This is a list that we did not qualify for for whatever reasons. You don't have to, you know, but just so that there's an understanding by the public that we are trying to gather resources from wherever we can. But, you know, some we're not going to be open soon, because for some of those, we don't have enough low income students. So we're not for this. But that's okay to even say, yeah, we tried. We just didn't qualify for one.
Yeah. We have a grant tracking sheet that shows like all of them and didn't apply. Then there's a reason why. So this grant. Kind of one related question were related. Did we end up getting the Eagle money for section one? Did it ever materialize? Kind of. I mean, we just got an update this week. I got an update this week. As a matter of fact, it's at data. So they're they're only two millions. But yeah everything goes. Yeah. Does December 15th or so was the, the town's
Planning Commission meeting that they approved kind of the package to send to the state to start the official process. So, yeah, I still think it may be sometime later in the calendar year. That we like it's moving, but we included that it's not in this budget. No, no, we didn't get that. We didn't account for that information. It's a we are dissipating it. But he said we don't know when we'll get it then. Yeah. Once we get an official document that shows are sending it, then I'm. I should that. But for now I could help us a couple million dollars. Yeah.
So that's kind of our thought is the there's another fund we have that is with housing right there. And then just pull on it as we need to soften things. Okay. So all right anything else on budget request. All right. Last item of the night. Though. Yeah. What do you think 835 do we want to do this? Bam. Well, let me tell you what we were thinking about doing. And we'll tell us something. I don't know that the workshop is going to get together.
Okay. But we always have the option of adding something in bond. But the plan tonight was to kind of break into groups and have some small group discussions around, you know, kind of what are the what are the things in calendar. You know, we really resonated with that. You know, youth were, you know, kind of spent right there in agreement with what are some things are there some things in here that, make them take issue with?
And if so, what are those. And then really get to the third piece about so what is this going to be to us. So there's things in here I just that are recommended that we should be doing. So one thing to put in the answer would be because I had this problem. And so you just said, okay, let's go to best leave this before members and then reflect on their own and then bring it back to the next meeting. That might be more of a and then, yeah. Yeah, we can kind of hit the ground running with the meeting time.
This is what. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I don't know that. I thought I, you know, I make no Mrs. Greenham Common. If you put that, if I'm just going to get that, maybe this would give folks a chance to just kind of reflect. And actually, if, you know, if you are going to take some notes and want to look at, you know, it's kind of sharing it, we can totally email. Yeah. Okay. Good. Yeah. I'm kind of violent for people to send into. But one of the things that, like I said, for new board members that,
you probably aren't aware of is that we do do a board self assessment, but we did not do one, you know, 20, 24. I just think we had new members coming in on board, you know, starting at the beginning of the year. And, you know, the old board sort of disintegrated. And so technically we would have done a board assessment, a self assessment at this May sometimes we did and just some number
sometimes in January. So given, you know, the fact that it really you know, we want to have, our new board members have an opportunity to at least, you know, get a year under their belt. My recommendation would be that we look at the workshop calendar and maybe after we have this discussion, we find a spring workshop, that isn't overly loaded. To do that board self assessment. And we should pass out,
and get answered all. Yeah. So we'll have June. It was the board's self assessment that we do was kind of based on was based on this model. But it was modeled after the first elements of this. So that doesn't mean we can't change. It is you know talk about this. But and so that's probably a good thing to send out to people in conjunction with some of these topics. So I know the part of us reading this book was
because we were going to also start the strategic plan. So what do we have a timeline for that and what that is going to look like? So we were going to start discussion of the strategic planning process next month okay. Okay. So if you ask me today, you know, you don't have a timeline, but you know, that'll be you starting to talk about it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But this was sort of, intended to be sort of background
information in terms of, you know, the role of governance, the, key pillars, that allowed the board to plan and strategic discussion. I think maybe if, if, if for next meeting, we kind of have people's responses for these and we can print those out and hand them out then and you can even bypass the getting into the small group you just in, in just use that discussions. Okay. Yeah. This talks about with already us having the bullet points of what people
had said under each one of them. So why make it. Yeah. Why don't we ask that when you know that, if we can all can put our notes down on this, and then I guess I would ask to send it into Genevieve said consent. We just put it in, okay? Because we don't want to get into exact violations. We could just compliance for sure, pilot. And we don't necessarily we don't see it ahead of time. Yeah. We don't need to share it with each other at I can go on the board. Okay. Yeah.
Like a pilot and do it on the board. Just to be clear, you want us to type responses in on Google back or she's going to make one. Or if you can just yes. I don't sure that she'll put together. So yeah okay. Yeah okay. Just so I know it would be seven of us. You got it. Then she will put it in the Google Docs with all of it together. Yeah. And she can do it by by the seven of us. All right. That I know very much about you guys, but we do have enough since I believe it is, okay with that.
I one thing I want to ask about. Okay. Which is meteor. Yes. By January, I'll have that for you this month. Cool. Yeah, I have to. How do we talk about it begins. Yeah, I remember that the the first things we did. Yeah. So that's that's all I have for you this month. Yeah. Rich, for you to read it like that. Yeah. It's a requirement. That is by the day you just kind of give us your. So very. Sorry. I couldn't believe it myself. What do I mean? We'll stay. Yeah, yeah. Oh they. That's awesome. And schedule. That's I actually by the chat. I'll be back in a minute. Yeah. You need to have it by the end of January, right? Yeah, yeah.
All right. And so what we're starting to retreat at nine is that on Saturday one is that kind of for the retreat every time you want to go, I have a basketball game and I'm coaching at 8 a.m.. Did as early as I said I may be here. Or is there a possibility to change the day? I was going to ask that make it the next Saturday? Oh, I came up much like that, you know. So can't thoughts on that or any other person that that is based on the dolls.
Okay. Or obviously possessed or say, you know, are you not able to come or I have an engagement, but I don't know the time for that. That's the problem. And that right now is that full day, I, I mean, I don't know that we would be done with attempt to be done by 11. I usually I, I know that, I can try and ask that engagement if they can put me in the later part, but I don't know how that will work. But let's see. And that's the that I can
yeah, I can do what data it may March 7th, Saturday. Okay. Yeah okay. Put it go up the week. February 20th 2828. Works for me. Should be okay, too. I'm just offering to. I can do all of those. So whatever. Basketball might be less complicated. Open the 28. Okay, let's do a let's. We can do Judy. Do that little. And then we can you just we can decide the 28. If that's not okay. Okay.
That's great. Okay. So we need Dan to go down this. Are you free 28. Yeah. Brooks. And long way a man that we don't mind coming to your house. And we can bring food to the food. So any other round table. Definitely. I mean, are we for the 31 funds? Do we have any information? And what those amounts will be 1.86 or 31 196196.
Yeah. So they've gone up a little bit because some districts did opt out of them. Are we going to do anything at the meeting to to put that on the record? I have, in reference to a meeting, the fact that we we can because the timing analysis wonky. We can pass a resolution at the on the 20th that would essentially voice. Discomfort, you know, accepting the money. But I was wondering if it would provide an option
for board members to to share their concern and put that because, yeah, I think that's a valid. Yeah. I mean, I should have put it on the record anyway. So whether it's enforceable, it's not a formal but this it also makes it public. Yeah. Yeah. So there is a sample resolution that solvable. I did provide districts. I will get that. Okay. Yeah. I think it's fair because this is to me something that's very significant, in terms of rights that we're waiving. So,
it just seems like it should be something that should be, you know, a public record for sure. Yeah. No, I think that's well, I, I think, you know, as I think about my remarks again, this is I mean, it's blackmail. It's it's really a tool. I mean, it's poor governance. I mean, we just read the governance. It was poor governance. And that's awful, you know? Yeah. So bullying, did you have anything else? Yeah. I had, I know there was some communication that went out to,
the community for the reading curriculum. So this is just me at the onset saying, you know, and I and I said this in the last couple meetings last year, I'm going to from now on, I want to know what we're gaining, what we're losing. You know, from the email, it's my understanding that we are just going to choose something that's on the list. I suspect a part of that. That also means that we might be losing something that's.
Maybe great in our programing. So I would like to know, you know, if we are going to. To what I imagine is probably be much more prescribed. And maybe I'm wrong in repetitive nature. I want to make sure that in trying to meet certain needs that we that we need to meet, that we are, that we are not losing something else. Right? So,
Right. And to me, that losing something else may, may be more free time and reading and choice than some of those things. You know, I always and I know I'm not an expert writing literacy. My general philosophy in life is things typically are not all good or all bad, but that there are things that we do, they're positive and that are negative and that need to be fixed. And by fixing them, I want to make sure that we are not losing
the things that have been positive. So, you know, our our yearly scores for the last cohort of third graders was pretty good. So that means that what we were doing was not all bad. I do understand that there are students whose needs we are not meeting, so I just want to make sure that. So that's going to be my question. And I don't know, you know, I don't know what those answers are, but I want to know.
What is the good and the bad of what what we would be bringing in and what we would be leaving behind. And if there's a way to mitigate. Right. Some of those I think there the importance is if we have a big, well developed process that answers, that asks those questions in a meaningful way. And provides answers. Well, I think I think we will happen. I let David and his team member are working on a process that is going to be robust,
and we're talking about that, next, next February. But even before we get into the process, I mean that this was my way of I think it's fair to say, I want to know, what is it that we're losing? Because I think in some of the curricular changes we're making, there's even with the math. Right. And I said this publicly at the time, gaining deeper knowledge, maybe losing some fluency. Right there is. So, when we're doing a science curriculum that no longer has a textbook that needs to be read, we're losing the reading part.
So there's so I fully under I want us to be very honest and say this is what we would lose, and this is how we're going to try to eradicate it and address it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. But we're not there. I it's completely unrelated to any of this. So in December, a bunch of us have gone to the Oxford, presentation, some cog, which is Southeast Michigan Council of Governments apparently gave a nice presentation in there about,
trends, population trends, student trends and all. And, my friend, one thing that extremely surprised me in that presentation was, of course, our student enrollment is reducing the number of students over there saying, and it showed the data for Oakland, Oakland County, Oakland schools. One of the things that surprised me was, yes, there is a 10% reduction in our enrollment in the public school enrollment in Oakland schools over the past 15 years. But if you look closely, almost the entire 10%
was taken by charter schools, private schools and home schools. It wasn't truly reduction in population, but it was more just schools of choices that took it. I understand this is the entire Oakland schools, and I even asked the temple guys if they can give us something with 12 scores, which, they gave me a spreadsheet, which I could understand. So I went there, I reached out to them, and I'm still working with them to try and get it, though. I mean, they said they got all this data from public records and public information,
but it begs to think, to understand if we should make do a study ourselves. To see is our student population reduction to be because of reduced population, or are there other things that are currently cause and yet and it may help us with the budget too. So I just wanted to put it out to see if there's anything we can do with that. I mean, we do plant verandas on each one of those benches. They they do, yeah, they do. We can inquire with them to see if that's something they have
the capability of doing, because they do pay for that. Rather than information to us in the past about the number of students in Troy who attend private schools that year over year, how many students were capturing. So we yeah, maybe we don't have that. And I can just hear everybody else. We've we've we've we've had it again. This is this is the entire Oakland County. It's not our district. And it may end up being that our district is fine. And it's not because of, going to other districts around state percent. I think last I heard from around 29.
So birth rates are falling. That's, Oh, no. So she did show. They did show that actually, the data showed that the population of Oakland County is actually increasing. Yeah. Which was not so bad. Yeah, but but but, yes. That's not necessarily from birds. You're right. Migration. Yeah. She said migration in bird migration was causing the increase in Oakland County. Very small percentage point is one of those. It's actually going up slightly. Yeah. So it's very small. Exactly.
But she did address she did say the students have ages five school going schools, 18 students ages 5 to 17 has been reducing. So there is a population increase but not the school going Kent. So I guess yeah. So not nationally. The shift away people just aren't you know after that came after the pandemic. There was that there was a mark shift after the pandemic, during and then immediately after and public schools across the United States have not recovered yet. Yeah, right. Yeah. So just that, I mean, since we talking about budget and last
even some people losing money, not necessarily people, but one that surprised me, that presentation, I wondered if it isn't interpretable as a child, a thousand bucks per child or something in health. Giving doesn't look too good to come back. Proposals that encourage you to have children with. Them. But I would also say that they are adequately supposed to be there. Yeah, people would be.
Yes. Yeah. And for your step, and one of the I can't remember where I saw it, but in one of the updates the tech director talked about a board I policy and a TSP policy. I just wondered if that could be sent to us and looked at it, but I couldn't find it like that. It existed because we're talking about. I think you brought it up on the meeting. So yeah, we have to deal with it. Thank you. You have his update? I don't think it was approved. No. And I just was like, I'm so glad to know.
Let me start, because we have it. Yeah. That wrote I got it. And I promise you that we, we have not approved that. We've not. Yeah, yeah. But we definitely there were a couple referenced in his. Yeah. I think it was in a communique or something. Yeah. That was yeah, it was from the director or maybe it was from I thought know was somewhere in technology. So I'm just curious because I've not seen it. Yeah. No, it was brought up as a point of something we need to keep working on, but we need to work in 2025. That's my statement for this.
And then to your point, I mean, I, I wanted to comment on the literacy stuff, too, and I want to sort of from like educational leadership point of view, think about like the fact that the change from balanced literacy to structured literacy, which is what the 146 147 requires, is a first order change shift for like particularly our staff. Right. Like for the last 12 years or so, our staff have had nothing but balanced literacy support and robust and fantastic. And they have our staff
have, in my opinion, taken it in and used it in every way possible. Which doesn't make it bad. No, nor does it make the shift to structured literacy bad. The bridge between the two will be the thing that obviously is like not ready for public consumption probably is the professional development plan. How will we help our teachers to learn the structured literacy approach to teaching reading, if they've if they haven't already learned it in college, because we haven't taught it in our profession, brought me here in the last decade plus. So that's like a,
it's one thing to be like, well, here's a textbook to teach reading. And that's like a very that's like 5%. And about your teach reading, whether it's a structured textbook or a, leveled reader or, mini lesson that's like this much the bigger piece is the philosophical and pedagogical background, which will be that bridge of professional development. So we'll hope to see that piece, like, Doctor Ricker mentioned in the parent email, like it had this impacts assessment instruction impeding professional development. So that's the bridge to like neither nor are bad or good.
You know what I mean. They're both meant to support all students to best support all students. So I would challenge and hope that as we move forward that that is like that tie that binds. Because if you hand a bunch of teachers who've never had or have had very little, learning around structured literacy and textbooks with structured literacy, it's going to feel like putting on your left shoe, on your right foot. So the bridge to that is teaching them what that's why that is that way. And that'll be, you know, the work for the district in teaching and learning as they move forward to implement the laws.
So like a positive, is that neither bad or good? I think they're both robust and wonderful in their own way. We just we have to give our teachers an opportunity to learn like, so that they understand that this isn't like, the state's making you or else it's, this is a way to teach literacy to. So just to sort of help calm the waters there, there's, like, great bridges. I can say this as a person who's dropped both sides, like structured literacy and balanced literacy, when I taught structured literacy and administered structured literacy, it wasn't like Roboto.
You know, you're not going to learn except what I say in this book. It's it's bigger than that. And I know that our teaching learning department and our teachers, frankly, are up for that with the right vision. So nothing less to worry about, I hope. I think it's fair to think that there might be things that that are going to be lost. Yeah, 100%. Right. So, you know, I would agree. It's so nice to say what. But my first to say, you know. Yeah. No, my place to say what we need to do is follow the law. And how.
Yeah. To determine how we adjust. Yeah. But we have room in how to solve. Well, right. We had somebody come to us to say that when, you know, in, the teaching learning team has decided to go forward with the list that's there, and that's fine. We just need to meet the law. We don't need to meet it in a particular requirement. So if we can both take something that's off the list, but also be cognizant that we may be losing something and to figure out how to not, then we would still be meeting the law, right?
And meeting the requirements of the law. Right. We should be competent enough as a district to both use something that has been suggested as a list and do what needs to be there, but be very cognizant of are there things that we might be losing, and is there a way to not right and and while still meeting the law in the needs of our students? So I, you know, I look at it in a more complex way then I don't think that
I, I generally don't know that any curriculum is all good or all bad. I mean, I don't look it. Yeah, I don't, I, you know, I, I don't think that's true. But it's, you know, with math, for example, we're gaining deeper learning. We've lost some proficiency. Right. Because kids are not doing the practice in really fast. And my own kid can set up an equation, but he has lost his speed in proficiency. So there is a loss. And is there a way for us to keep the great thing of the new math curriculum
but fix the loss, you know, so literacy is not any different, right? Just because the legislature passed a law against their math loss to write was, I'm saying I don't, you know, I just I want us if if we are going to be world class and work at a higher level to be able to meet the requirements that we need to meet, we have to follow the law. But make sure as we're doing that that we are not. So that's the that's it. Yeah. A little bit of grieving that change.
Yeah I don't read the change I don't have I'm not you know, I my kids are have gone through that process. I have I as an individual as a parent have nothing to gain or or lose. I just. We need to you know, the state gives us of this, but we, you know, I think my expectations of us as a district is for us to function here and to try to, to function at the highest possible level. And that is not necessarily always done by meeting just the law.
I don't like I don't, I don't that's not how I, that's how one I think those things in general. Yes. As an example of a yes and yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, we can meet the requirements of the law and we can continue to do those things that make us work less. Yeah. And and there will be some additions to what we're currently doing that we'll find holes likely will help to support or will be maybe needed changes. Welcome changes.
And the, the great work that's occurred doesn't just stop and get thrown out. Yeah. It it too can continue. It might look a little bit different, but we want to make sure we're not abandoning good things that we're doing. And I agree with that. And and yes, we can still comply. At the highest levels I suspect we're going to our curriculum is going to on what opinions our curriculum is going to look different. We're going to continue to do it better than anyone else. And that from our perspective, as we work with teachers, as although there's a shift we can we can embrace that shift
with the mindset that we're going to do that better than anyone else. And and at the end of day, our kids will benefit. So right now, well said. I like the yes and yes we do want that. And I circle this so I don't wonder is she I think she was having some trouble. Then she started feeling gross. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yes. The government. Yes actually thank you. I think I just, I just want to, acknowledge the, the team at Athens this week.
But like, but, Friday, they were they were on the situation that occurred and they responded appropriately. And and, they responded based upon the information they had at the time. And unfortunately, there was information that was shared via social media and it wasn't entirely accurate. And that kind of took on a life of its own, and, and, and they, along with Kendra, Christine, myself, to a very small degree, have been helping to support them through that.
But, in visiting with them today, I think, said settle down dramatically. They had done a very nice job of, of responding. The kids are doing just fine, which is what's most important. Like many situations, this was an adult issue, that, For adults that were further complicating the matter with tally. But, yeah, kudos to them for the work that they've done. But we did. We did do an interview earlier today, myself and Vernon with Jay.
They did run that. That was, they took snippets of, Vernon's comments. And our understanding is that, Fox two was likely to do a story. We don't know if it's going to be tonight or tomorrow morning. Hundred percent sure yet. But they would think they want to thank us for going on camera because they did comment that many school districts don't, in these situations, just ignore their requests. And down below, we just we made it a point to say, look, we and this is a scenario. This is a situation that is it's unfortunate that, there would be a physical altercation.
And, we acknowledge that, there is no place for hurtful language, in our schools. There never will be. We're not going to tolerate it. There isn't. There is a zero tolerance for for those behaviors. But we also have to acknowledge that these are kids that we're dealing with. And young people make mistakes. Our job as educators, to help them learn from those mistakes and grow forward. There does come a point in time where discipline has to be meted out. And and it has been in this case will continue to be, as it as those situations arise.
But I did make it a point to share, and I don't know whether it will make the news. You'll make it a point to share. And I think it's important that we acknowledge that this is not a Troy Athens issue. This is not a Troy School District issue. Or if we deal with the ramifications of what transpires, this is a this is a city of Christ. This is a society of this child. I mean, the students don't learn that language in school. They learn that language outside of school. Whether it's in there in social media, whether it's in music,
whether it's at home or wherever, wherever it is they are learning it. They bring it into our schools. We don't shy away from dealing with it when it comes up. It's our obligation to do so. We'll continue to do so. And all that pulls folks accountable. But we have to acknowledge the fact that we as adults and we, the community, have to do a better job of policing what students hear, what they see on social media, and quite frankly, the language that they use because it's, it's it's terrible. And we just can't we can't shy away from it.
We can acknowledge that it doesn't happen because we know it does. We have to have it. We have to combat it and, continue to do that. So, rich, it's, I agree 100% with what you just said. Parents, though, in this situation, resorted to go to social media instead of coming to the coming to the adults in the scene, which is the district administration or the school administration, for future such incidents or situations. How do we encourage them to say your first point of contact
should be, have we reached out to the school administration yet? Instead of posting the video or posting a comment on the social media because that's not useful. I'm talking about the adults. I'm not talking about the kids here. The adults. Right? I would certainly agree that that's people not useful. But, unfortunately, that's the world we live in. And some kids, we just the last year and a whole host of topics that we've dealt with, people go and put all sorts of things on social media, and it's just up. What I can tell you in this case is the,
the, the first contact that the principal had with the individual involved in this, one of the individuals, by the way, she was the first contact that we had in two years when one and actually reached out to them. Yeah, that's the third part. That's what I'm trying to say and is like reached out. Yeah. He reached out. He made it a point to reach out. Yeah. There was not a reach out to. And in an effort to come together and resolve contact, it was that is what I'm hoping if we can address that to our community
which is adults, can we be adults. You. Good luck with that because I like I get so well I don't want to but this comes up. I know you'll be fine. Yeah. Just so we can. Because that's the sad part, right? Kids will be kid. I'm not saying that's right. No, kids need to learn to look like that. It does need to be the adults in the building. And we need to reach out first to the to the district before they go to social media. And, and we have to continue as a community to do better
in terms of providing, confidence that if you continue to remind folks that if you reach out there, you're going to find a willing you're going to find someone on the other end of the phone that's willing to engage in a conversation around this topic based solutions. Right. We're going to work together and solve the problem. This is not about, I'm fearful going to to my school administrators. Because we we can continue to work on building those bridges, which we will. I'm very confident that Mr.
Burton and his team at Athens have done that. Or and does a great job of reaching out to the kids. Everybody loves them. And should we do something to reach out, to make it easy for parents to reach out and not be worried, just encourage. Just nobody knows that, you know, if it if if a comment is made to you, the first question is have you talked to the building? Exactly. We talked with teachers. I talked to building principal and if not council, if not, why. And you can make it happen. Or how can I help you? Yeah. Can I make it happen?
Just having them be okay to say is an option, too. Yeah, maybe. Okay about anybody, but you can at least do that versus I just want to say that the the team over there did a great job. And they managed everything really well in a very difficult situation. And they will they'll continue to do so. Complete competency. Thank you Christine. Kendra thank you everybody. Appreciate it. It's fine. Okay. All right. Let me just make one comment.
Because. We are new members have gone. You guys went to an organization? Yes. Yeah. That is your. That was our. First meeting? Yes. You know what's happening? And you know, again, I will be looking as I run that for you know, we know who wants to who is going to take what position. So I will be looking for people to nominate. And the people that we have discussed who will take the officers position.
So okay. And we will need to role is to do that portion. Super fast. Yeah. We will get accommodated in 12 minutes once. And he said that was a record. If we can have 11, we going to be. Yeah. And see if we can be okay. Yep. Okay. Okay. Nancy has to beat that. Okay. Well, with that, what? Returned again? So we will talk about this in February, so probably do it within three.
Our 71 workshop that our 73 workshop is the first week, right? Yes. So maybe let's say if we could have this done by the end of June to give junior the lead time to. Oh, wait, our February workshop is the third, right? Yes. They're doing what time? And I bet you are coming back with me. So we'll be here. Yeah, I'm calling it. Yeah. But I've been like. It's actually. Oh. You back? Oh, you're coming back from that. Okay. Somebody say 20%. Or no.
So what do we say if we if we have people, know get that tax kit. Okay. Can we say if people have have this to do leaving for the by the 30th. Well, that's enough time. Yeah. That's the problem. And she can. Okay. All right. Well thank you everyone. That's the 20th. Yes. The next meeting is on the 20th. So we'll see you next Tuesday. Okay. I called and said this. Make your and. But that's what I'm.