Right. Good evening everyone. We're going to go ahead and get started. So, good evening and welcome to the Tuesday, November 18th, 2025 Board of Education meeting. We have all trustees present. We have our four student reps here tonight, who are going to be updating us on the great things going on in their schools. So with that, could I ask everyone to please rise and we will recite the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands.
One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, again, good evening and welcome. So our first item of agenda tonight is, our recognition. Doctor McCluskey, I'll turn it over to you to honor our West Elementary School personnel tonight. Thank you. So, part of appreciate that, my honor, this evening, to recognize elementary as a national blue ribbon for receiving the National Blue Ribbon Award. We're pleased to recognize West Elementary School
this evening for their designation as a National Blue Ribbon School. This award honors them as being one of the very best schools in the United States. Unfortunately, the United States Department of Education discontinue the national program. Therefore, the State of Michigan took over recognizing and designating 2025 Blue Ribbon Schools for exemplary high performance under the federal program, which was identified as one of 13 public schools in Michigan to be bestowed with this designation. Students and parents, school staff, and local communities deserve to be honored
for the outstanding achievement by our Blue Ribbon schools, said interim State Superintendent Doctor Sue Carnell. These schools serve as an example to others and at the same time, a representative of the accomplishments and progress at schools around the state. MDE and the State Board of Education want to make sure these outstanding schools in our state get the recognition they deserve, said Board President Doctor Pamela Pugh. Watson's right was recognized by the interim state superintendent at a ceremony in Lansing on November 1313.
Congratulations for this impressive designation. I need my crew to stand with me on this. Thank you, chair Rich and the Board of Education for honoring the community tonight. We are excited and grateful to be recognized for a second time as a Blue Ribbon School. Though this is only my second year, at last, I can tell you, from the moment I stepped inside our school, I felt something special. Our community thrives because our teachers and staff, our families and our students consistently work together. While many of our accomplishments within the Blue Ribbon application focused on high academic achievement, I want to also highlight
that our dedication to children is centered on humanity. Our core values are named and practiced daily in all areas within our school environment. It is because of our community's strong commitment to character education that our children are learning and growing both academically and emotionally. Our mission is to make sure our West walls are good humans who are giving back to the community that is always there for them, no matter what. Our theme at last this year is Better Together, and we are living into that in all aspects of our work. I want to again thank our amazing teachers.
Some of them are with you tonight for, all that they do and for seeing our children as gifts to our community. I am proud and blessed to work alongside such a wonderful group of educators. Every single day. School. Kristin, we'd like to get a picture with you and your team doctor. And doctor Philip Hart. Listening. You'd like to jump in that picture. All right, I hope so. Okay. So. Are you ready?
So right here. Yeah. Thank you. Graduates. What are you most excited to. We all congratulate you. Thank you, Mrs. Curling. To the team at last. We appreciate you giving up some time this evening to be here and allow the board, and our administrative team to celebrate you and the, exemplary work that you do on behalf of students in the community. I want to also thank, Chris Gary for who attended the ceremony in Lansing on the district's behalf. And, just truly a remarkable achievement, again, for the West Wolves.
So congratulations. Okay. Next under recognitions, my pleasure to ask Mrs. Montante to the microphone. On behalf of, the communications team here in the tri school district for some exciting news on some awards that were achieved. Yes. Thank you, doctor. A lot of awards that we need. This evening, we'd like to recognize the Troy School District community communications department. Could all the members of the department please come off? We are missing Mr. Burns this evening. So I am honored
to share that the communications team received 17 national School and Public Relations and Spirit Awards this year, and five Michigan School and Public Relations and Sprout Awards. These are awards are a true testament to the collaboration that can be seen in this department. I would personally like to thank Melissa Verdun, Thomas Butcher, Adam Burns, and Allison Henry. These awards would not be possible without their hard work and dedication to one. Troy. The team was recognized with the awards in the following categories. National awards 17 Awards of Excellence.
There were six of them. Financial policy publication TSD millage renewal Guide. Marketing materials for an IEEE postcard TSD Preschool and Kindergarten information book information booklet. Podcast. Attending IEEE the best is yet to come. Special Purpose Publication 2025 MLK Day of Service. Social media ad and video series. Portraits. Awards of Merit. Excellence in writing MLK program script infographic. Be smart on gun safety. News release. Turtle woods Grant approved.
Ponca creativity Richmond Peace educational leadership video series TSD alumni profiles video. Single school flood creates unique opportunity for collaboration. Honorable mention five. Awards magazine one Troy voice. Fall and Winter issues. Photo. Alumni returns a full circle moment video single. Making connections and celebrating community middle school collaboration in the TSD. Authentic research with Fun Cafeteria and five Michigan Awards. Awards of excellence. Marketing materials asking Athens High School profile which is new this year?
Awards of Merit video series TSD alumni profiles podcast. Smith Construction Update photo Athens champion powerlifting team infographic Leonard elementary schools. The team was recognized for the national awards in July at the NCAA conference, and will be recognized at the NCAA Conference in March for the Michigan Awards. The Troy School District proudly celebrates the remarkable accomplishments of our communications department. The recent awards not only showcase their exceptional creativity and innovation, but they also reflect their unwavering dedication
to sharing the inspiring stories and achievements that define our district. We are truly grateful for this talented, passionate team whose work continues to strengthen the connection between our schools and our communities that we serve. Thank you for your unwavering commitment to our world class system. We couldn't. Get if we could get. If we get a picture with your team. So far. Student. Very impressive. Just keep going. Yeah. This is good. It's good. Yeah. So we are going to keep going.
Since we did not have a long recognition tonight, we won't take a break. However, anybody who you know wants to scoot out and get on with your evening, you will not offend us. So please, please feel free to do so. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. And congratulations again. Do we have a public comment? Just, It's just non-agenda. Oh, okay. Yeah. Just wanted. Okay, so we will continue on in our agenda. Any additions and deletions? Doctor Markowski, are there none this evening?
Okay. Any public comment on agenda items? We have one public comment on non-agenda items. Okay. All right. So we will hold that. We have a, I think a fairly crisp meeting tonight. So we will move on with the, approval of the general consent agenda. Tonight's agenda consists of the minutes of the October 7th, 2025 Board of Education workshop, minutes of the October 14th, 2025 Board of Education meeting, the September 2025 treasurer's report, and a garage door purchase for Troy High School.
May I have a resolution, please? Mr. hot, be it therefore resolved, that the Treasury Board of Education takes action to approve items A, B, C, and D of the consent agenda. Support. We have a resolution by Mr. Hopps, supported by Miss Aleix. Any discussion of these items? Okay. Hearing none. All those in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Say no. Great. Thank you. Motion carries. Any personnel tonight? Doctor. Manchester. There's none this evening. All right. We will move on to curriculum.
And, tonight we will hear, a presentation, by our two assistant superintendents, Chris RE4 and Christine de Pilotto. On our student achievement data, you. Can see. Yeah. All right. Good evening. Good evening. I'm happy to be here tonight to share a little bit about our, student achievement report this year. We did have an opportunity during our board workshop to go in-depth
through this, presentation with our board to answer quite a few questions. Our goal tonight is to be able to share publicly. There have been some updates. Will staff there and, work through some of those slides. But hope to be able to share with you in total some reflections on our summative assessment for this year. So when we think about the purpose of tonight, it's really for us to focus again on our summative assessments, our state level tests that we give annually. This this test allows us to think programmatically about our district and the progress of the programs that we have in place, our curricular programs specifically.
It also allows us to look at how Troy might compare across the county, and the state. And it allows us to look at how we do over time. So we'll look at a few measures of how we are performing over time. We do believe it's important, at the beginning of this presentation annually to talk to us a little bit about the different kinds of assessment that we provide in a school district. Our state summative assessments are given annually. They, are moment in time or snapshots for us when we are thinking about our programs holistically as a district. They are not the kinds of data that we use when we are trying to support students or measure student growth over time.
We look at our students and work with our students through more formative assessment measures. But collect it here in this data set is again, that summative. So we're going to kick it off with our state assessment looking at proficiency in the m-step. Right. So we are looking here, just to orient you a bit to the slide. So this is m-step, as Christine said. Grades three through seven, Ela all kind of in, one combination is one way to look at them. This is sort of decoupled. We have that feedback from the board in previous years. So this is each grade level at a time. And you can see grades three through seven
in the orange is showing you the proficiency. And then in that that hash mark is that is the proficiency rate of the prior year. So this is just a quick at a glance to your, proficiency rates for Ela grades three through seven. So, as you can see from the chart, where we're looking at, the grades three through seven showing steady or improved progress, progress in some cases from, 20, 24 to 25. We see, there where we're at about in the mid to upper, 60% range.
This is just really illustrating our consistency over time. We talked, specifically about the jump in third grade that we were excited to see the 4.7% increase over time, and just highlighted a few of those areas for the board. At the workshop, one of the key pieces here is really, kind of highlights the strengths that we have in tier one instruction and then, areas that we have for improvement as well. Looking at this in mathematics again, kind of that glance over our system in grades three through seven. Again, our third graders showed a pretty big jump.
About 5% of an increase in this area. Most of our grade levels had, demonstrated, an increase with a slight dip in, with our fourth graders. Again, this is just highlighting the proficiency that we've had over time. And, the coherence that we have across grade levels in mathematics. This piece, again, back to kind of, lumping all the grade levels together. We looked at, grades three through seven and comparing ourselves to both, pre Covid during Covid and after Covid. So looking at that trend over time, we wanted to make sure
I know that was feedback that we had for our on board, in previous years to just kind of monitor that progress again at a 50,000ft view. So pre-COVID, you can see where we were, about 74% proficient in the area of Ela. And we were outperforming, both state and county averages, and pretty substantially during Covid, we saw a gradual decline. Again, the state and county really, dipped as well. But the, the state more sharply than, than here
in Troy School District, we maintained kind of a ten point, average over the state throughout that period of time post Covid. We're, we're looking at a rebound that you see, pretty consistently with our third graders now. And again, we see that as a, as an overall trend three through seven. But really hoping that this is kind of a, a trend that we can sustain over time with our interventions. We can notice that our students are recovering at a faster rate and, the state and county averages. So that's we're seeing some some positive work and celebrations of areas to grow from.
So again, we just wanted to highlight both in L.A. and mathematics, those trends are continuing to, in math, where we're actually exceeding what we had previously for prior to Covid and really wanted to highlight for the board in our community kind of where we were trend wise to add one, celebration in mathematics, as we can also see that the state and the county declined, going from 24 to 25. But Whitman Troy actually saw improvement from 24 to 25. That's just a, an important to note, because we often follow those county or state trends.
And so when we are not following those trend lines, it's a nice celebration for us as well. So another way to look at this data again, that, that combined look at grades three through seven. The top portion of the graph is Ela. The bottom portion is math. And again we're comparing ourselves across the county to benchmark ourselves. You see the areas highlighted are the areas that are, the top districts. We want to make sure that we're continuing to, to raise our standards and to be competitive in the county, and wanted to highlight for the board and our community kind of where we situate that might.
This next slide looks at PSAT eight and S.A.T. 11. So, eighth grade scores are important to us. It's the first time students take the PSAT, which is a new benchmark for our students. So they take the, step three through seven. And then starting in eighth grade, they take the PSAT. And then from eighth grade through 11th grade, they're engaged with the PSAT, SAT suite of assessments, which allow us to to, really measure that progress over time. I would echo many of miss for his comments and looking at, our subtle changes in both math and English from last year to this year.
When we look at our eighth grade performance scores and our 11th grade performance scores. So what you'll see, in eighth grade is a slight decline. And in 11th grade, a slight incline, in their performance. And, really, those numbers being as small as they are, tell us that our program continues to hold strong for our students. Our achievement remains consistent for our aggregate in mathematics. We go back to the format that we were looking at for the other one, where we're looking at that dash, and then the bar we can see in eighth grade, actually an identical score year over year. And then in 11th grade, a slight incline
in our proficiency over time, again, looking from pre-COVID to, 20, 2025 allows us to see that in eighth grade Ela, we are rebounding nicely. Moving toward that 80, moving back to where that 87%. So that 83.5% this year. And then eighth grade mathematics, that is an area where we have not yet reached where we were, pre-COVID. But that is work that we are continuing to move forward, that. Here's our eighth grade county comparison and PSAT. As as I mentioned earlier, it's important for us to remain aware
of the school districts that's around us and benchmarking and learning from each other. So we're often in conversation with these school districts and learning about what interventions might be working for them, what programs they're trying. This is a conversation that we often have the opportunity to have with our colleagues around those schools. Here's our 11th grade proficiency over time. A celebration for us. In looking at Ela, what's not represented on this chart is, school year 18 and 17. The two previous to 19. We're actually right in the the 70s, the high 70 level. And then we spiked into that, 80, 82% in 2019.
That was kind of an outlier for us pre Covid. And as we are looking at our rebound post Covid, it's fairly strong in our 11th grade. I think this speaks volumes to the work that we're doing in our high school Ela program is we've adopted a new ninth and 10th grade curriculum, and this year they're working on the 11th grade curriculum. And we'll talk more about that a little bit later in this presentation. But that's evident here as we look at that five year data over time. And then in mathematics, we continue to work toward, where our pre-COVID scores, our, our gap in, in math remains persistent.
And that's something that we'll talk about when we look at our, we look at our, gap analysis in just a few slides here. And here's our county comparison. And as that scores. So, you know, across the district where in about fifth in L.A. and second in mathematics, and these are familiar colleagues to us when we look at those who are listed next to us, in any given year by one percentage or two, we edge each other out, back and forth. This year, we've also wanted to, ensure that we were including both science and social studies scores.
So in science and in our state, we test in grades five, eight and 11. So you can kind of see at a glance there we took a small dip in fifth grade. We see growth in eighth and 11th. And in social studies, we're able to see that the improvements that we've made over time. But really, as we learn a bit more about our test, the inquiry based approach, questions have now been added to the end. Staff and those are included now in our score. So we're we're excited to see how our kids had paired with those, incorporated.
So the next few slides are we're going to dig into our gap analysis, and Ela and mathematics. Historically, we have student groups that have struggled in proficiency, on our state assessments, on these next couple slides, we are specifically going to be talking about students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students. Our English language learner scores are not present on the next couple slides. We did have an opportunity to talk a little bit about our English language learners. When we were at our workshop. The new formatted slides just don't contain that down. We took another stab at the design of the,
a key piece of our work, in the gap analysis and thinking about the work with our students who struggle is our commitment to multi-tiered systems of support, or MTS. That is the structure that exists in all of our schools, in our organization, that look at different ways to meet students where they are. And then going forward, we have worked very hard over the past five years in building coherence around the process. K through 12, knowing that our students transition through our buildings and their experiences are very different from elementary to high school. And in wanting to ensure that our supports are in place
so that all students, regardless of whether they fall into a specific student subgroup or not, have wraparound supports for them. So, we are very thankful to this board for their continued commitment to supporting our structures for MTS, for funding, our professional learning communities and professional learning opportunities that allow us to access our, our, our most vulnerable learners and support them along the way. We're also incredibly proud of the work that we've been doing around universal supports K through 12 in our organization,
and ensuring that all students, regardless of what fastening we're in, are able to access certain levels of support. And that's an incredibly important part for us as we move forward, an area of focus for us is continuing to move students into tier one instruction. In the secondary, structure, sixth grade through 12th grade, there are practices, historic practices, of removing students from tier one instruction into supplanted instruction, which is an out of tier one instruction, maybe into non grade level instruction in English and math. We know that that is not a best practice for students.
And in our work for multi-tiered systems and support, we're really focusing on ensuring that our tier one instruction is available to all. So this first slide, and it's a very colorful slide. And what we tried to do was capture all of the different elements of looking at our gap analysis. There are eight slides that look just like this one. And so, I will explain the first one, we can kind of look at what's present. I don't know that I will need to reiterate eight times exactly what we're looking at. When you look at that screen, what you can see is one of those blocks, is, if we look at the subgroup, to my left,
which is the economically disadvantaged students in third grade, what you'll see in those scores, working from the bottom up, the red bar and P stands for not proficient. So that has been the percentage of students who are not proficient in the third grade. Ela. So, if you look at the dashed bar, the dashboard there, 10.5% is the number, the percentage of students who are economically disadvantaged, as are the percentage of students who are not economically disadvantaged who scored not proficient. 28% is the percentage of students who are economically disadvantaged,
who scored not proficient. And if you work your way up, that list is not proficient, partially proficient, proficient, advanced. And then the the standard for the passing or meeting standards is considered proficient or advanced. So the state couples together proficient and advanced as our percentage of students who have met benchmark. So in this scenario, 72.5% of our students who are not economically disadvantaged in third grade
were proficient or advanced, whereas only 43% of our students who were economically disadvantaged were proficient or advanced. So that large number that's there, 29.5% is the gap, the achieve the performance gap, of our students in economically disadvantaged across the way from that we see that being 45.4. This is the same chart for third grade, but it represents students with disabilities. So 70%, 73% of students without disabilities in third grade
scored proficient or advanced in the Ela and I'm stat, whereas only 27.6% of our students with disabilities scored proficient or advanced, representing a performance gap of 45.4%. So, this slide shows the earliest and elementary that we assess and m-step third grade. And then the last grade, fifth grade before they transition out. So we can see that gap represented in those two slides. And you can go ahead. I was just going to say just kind of in the bigger picture, I know we represented this in a different in a different form. But the bigger picture is that, we don't want students
to get lost kind of in the love average we want in a high performing place. Students, we want to make sure we are demonstrating to our board and to our community that we are monitoring all students and the progress of all students, over time. And so this is just kind of a a bigger stab at making sure that our students are, again, we're monitoring that progress. It's easier to look at them in cohorts. But again, we just kind of wanted to to share with you that as we measure that over time, we're looking to make sure that gap closes and our students are all progressing. So just kind of a different a different viewpoint of of looking at what we did last time.
One of the questions that was asked at the workshop was, what is the, how many kids are represented in these subgroups? So, I can tell you that in third grade, 87, there are 87 students represented in our student group. That is special education and in economically disadvantaged is 121. And it's very similar. For fifth grade, it's 82 students at 125. So fairly consistent number between those lines that are there I think important to point out as well as our subgroups are outperform our state and county average. So just to kind of a different view of looking at, what we have here
and just I couldn't add any more numbers or colors. We'll see what it was like for me. And I think one of the things that we talked about at the workshop that's important to name here is, this is the first time that we've really put these sorts of charts together for public presentation, in the commitment to the work that Miss Greenport just talked about, which is naming our gaps, naming our areas of concern, and working to be able to improve upon those. And so we will continue to work on what that looks like. What is the how can we make this visible to you,
through the process. So get this. What's present here are gaps in mathematics. So the same along one side, we have our economically disadvantaged, student group. And on the other side, we have our students with disabilities student group. This is both sixth and seventh in, step because in middle school it just collects those two grades. So those are present here also within six and seven on the slide these days. That's something I thought would be entertaining have. But you can see that at that student, the analysis, the gaps that are there for our students in both academic disadvantaged and
students with disabilities. I'm going to click through because I think that actually the most important slide is the last couple of slides, which can talk a little bit more holistically about homelessness out here. So I'm going to fast surface with the present again seventh grade. And then this is eighth and 11th. So this is for Ela eight and 11 and mathematics eight and 11. So I thought that this slide here this this this representation was an interesting one. This is just this year's snapshot of performance. So 2025 performance of special with other
special education students in each year. And what I found interesting about this is that we see persistent and consistent gaps throughout, their students time in the school district. This isn't a cohort, so we can't say it's one group of kids that didn't change. But to see that each one of our areas continues to measure, if we look at Ela in particular, we go from 45.4 to 53.1, and there's a variance all the way in between.
But that's not a huge variance between those two numbers, right. Not even ten points. We do see an incline in mathematics of that gap getting larger. So again this this is not an achievement. This is the gap. So the gap is getting larger over time from third grade to 11th grade in mathematics. That makes some sense to me in special education because I am aware of how our curriculum, deviates from tier one as we hit our higher grades. And so for students to become further away from grade level expectations
in that secondary realm is something that's that I understand. It's also an area that we have targeted in the last three years on changing that process. So as we work to continue to measure the outcome of those changes, this will be an interesting way for us to look at that performance over time. The next slide does the same for economically disadvantaged student group. So I think a success here. And well, what I find interesting and also successful here is when we look at our student performance as we move into eighth grade
and 11th grade, we see that our economically disadvantaged students, the gap between our economic disadvantaged students and our non economically disadvantaged students is smaller and eighth grade than it is in any of the grades before. I think that's a great testament to the work that go that goes on from kindergarten through eighth grade to to move students to a proficient and advanced level. We see that spike go up a little bit in 11th grade. But again, that's something that will continue to work on. And again, we see mathematics
significantly applied from third grade through 11th grade. And so that's an area of awareness for us, something we need to really dig into about that. As far as the analysis and looking at these groups, I think there's some things, strengths to build upon and then also some focus areas for improvement. As we've mentioned, sort of throughout. So one thing that sticks out is our, the, the we far outperform consistently outperform our state and county averages with our subgroups. Just indicating some of the practices that we have in
structurally are strong and consistent over, over our system. We have again, that stability again in all of the areas. I know we didn't mention the Ell program, but I think it is important to mention how, in mathematics, for instance, there's areas where our, our students in that category are outperforming their peers by, nearly triple the amount. And so I think that's an incredible celebration. One of the, areas that we consistently our challenge with and our most persistent area is, the area of special education. So we continue to offer and look for ways to, offer that access.
As Christine had mentioned, to our students. And in terms of those treatment intervention supports. The next few slides will allow us to reflect and learn a little bit more about middle school math. This slide specifically looks at, student performance, for the current class of, the current ninth grade class, which is the class of 2029. This is their performance, last year, last spring, as eighth graders on the eight, this is the, this cohort is the last cohort of students to have the six, seven, seven, eight track.
But then the students who weren't in that track are the first cohort of students to have the. I am six seven and then honors, honors algebra one option. So it's a, a little bit of a messy cohort, this class of 20, 2029 for data purposes. But when we when we look at this data, specifically some of the successes that we see are the movement from seventh to eighth grade, from partially proficient, from, from not proficient to partially proficient. So we can see, in the red, the red
representing not proficient in seventh grade at 16%. Those students, moved from that 16% to the partially proficient and tested in that area. During their eighth grade year. Again, this is cohort data. So tracking the same group of kids. But we can also see is consistency in their performance over time. So we saw a growth from fifth to sixth grade in their proficiency levels. That would have been when our students were introduced to the new Am six, but also half of the class doing the six seven. So over time, what we see is that our students continue
to achieve at levels that they had in the past. This slide shows the current eighth grade class. So they took that, step seven last spring. This is our first cohort of students that has gone straight through with I am six, I am seven. And then an opportunity to select either Honors Algebra one or I am eight. So those students are in their in eighth grade right now. Their last assessment was seventh grade. A celebration here for us is again the student growth from fifth grade to sixth grade. When we look at that blue bar growing in proficient or advanced,
what we see is consistent scores from six to sixth grade. So really no movement at all between that sixth to the seventh grade score for our students. So consistent performance. One of the questions again, when we started talking about why do we use or what might state level data tell us, it's helps us to look at the performance of our programs. So when we are looking at our our curricular selections, our curricular programs serving our students well, this state level data is a first indicator for us. It's not the sum total, but it is the first indicator for us.
And whether or not we are meeting the standards that existed before or did it. So at a minimum, I think what we are seeing here is our students are continuing to achieve at a level in which they had in the past, so that's good indication for us. What we want to see is continued growth in a positive direction. This slide here talks about and shows, the percentage of middle school students who are enrolled in honors high school level math. So when you look at this chart, what you'll see if you look at that black line on the top is student enrollment in Honors Algebra one over the last five years.
If 20, the 2021 2022 school year, 13% of our sixth through eighth graders were enrolled in Honors Algebra one. That continued at about 12.5% of our students for three years. And then we had a spike to 19.8% of our students in Honors Algebra one, in the 2425 school year. That is the first year that we allow choice. So we, students were no longer required to take six, seven, seven, eight or access Honors Algebra one. Any child was allowed to access Honors algebra one upon the conclusion of either
last year it was at the end of either six, seven, or in seven. So we saw a significant increase and then a little bit of a dip going into this year. But that dip can be explained by looking just below where you can see our enrollment in Honors geometry and Honors Algebra two. So we had a larger percentage of students this year who were sixth enrolled in sixth through eighth grade, who took Honors Algebra two or honors geometry. So those are the double advanced students or triple advanced students, depending on where they took their assessments to move up.
Indicated on the side of that chart, which I think is an important, important piece of information is our honors. Our middle school honors. Math enrollments have grown from 16% of our students to 22% of our students now being enrolled in honors high school math. So a growth of over 6 or 6% over the last five years. And I think it's always important to put that student that I like to put the lens of thinking about. How many kids is that? What does that represent? That represents an additional 175 middle school students last year who took an honors high school math course
and an additional 175 students, this year, who took an honors high school. And of course, so serving more 350 more students, than we have historically is a pretty significant impact. So, we will continue to watch and study our student performance, in mathematics. But that's kind of the update of where we are right now with our enrollment. And a few things to, just point out and be able to celebrate. And our team was here earlier. We have, presented a lot of numbers and slides, but we know this is the work of many
hands of the people in our organization, and our students are in our families as well. So, that connectivity is not lost on us. And we appreciate, their work. You just wanted to highlight a few things over time, that that stood out to us. So, first third grade reading, we have our Ela first in the county. And so that's exciting for us to see. While we're about 68%, it's important to note that we have grown about 4% over time. And it's exciting to to see where we're situated in that way again.
We're not content with that number, but just wanted to to kind of, give the third grade team a shout out over the district to see where we work that way. In addition, our third graders and math, exciting to see that, they had about a 5% growth, from where we were last year. And so excited to see, a lot of our programs that are new, and in our district, a lot of folks have been working really hard to, to learn on behalf of our students. Our students have been working hard. And it's exciting to see that that work pay off for, for our teams.
And there we are again, growing, an area that we thought would be important to highlight is our work around the seal of Biliteracy. Our students in the Troy School District, and Miss Creek, were referred to earlier. In thinking about even our students who are, you wish, learners. We celebrate a lot of different languages in our school district. And, the seal of Biliteracy is a wonderful way to honor the languages that are in our homes, the language studies that our students take on, in our schools on the weekends. And so the seal of Biliteracy allows students
to be recognized for their level of fluency in a language. There's a process that's established by the state, and we support it in the school district. We are currently the fourth, highest. We have the fourth highest number of students with a seal of biliteracy in state. And we're going to continue to move forward with that work. And we're grateful for, to Kerrville and Sherry Polis, who have taken on that work this year and are going to continue to move that school. One of the areas of success and celebration for us in the Troy School District is our AP enrollment. We made a very, conscious decision in in 2020 to,
about reevaluate how we enroll students in AP level courses. Our students previously had to have teacher approval signatures on their, of course, scheduling guides. They also had to have a specific grade in a previous class in order to be able to access that. Those AP courses, during the pandemic, students were not in seats. And so getting teachers signatures was not easy. And so we removed that barrier, because it made sense at that moment and then decided that that was something we didn't need to go back to. We were concerned or there were concerns that were shared at the time
that without those prerequisites or without those requirements put in place, that our students would not perform as well, and that we would have students, our AP classes who didn't belong there. I think that that's a huge celebration for us to say, not only over the last four years that we've seen consistent increases in our student enrollment in AP score, in AP enrollment, but we've also seen it in our AP scores. Our students have been, and what's represented in that last slide is 53% of our high school students are currently taking a AP course. So, that's 53% of all high school students.
That's not just juniors and seniors that includes nine through 12 at Troy High Athens and Troy College and Career High School. And so when we look at our student achievement, it makes it even that much more impressive. So this, this, chart that's here, is telling us that 89% of our students are earning a three or higher on one or more of their AP exams. So the reason that we use three as a threshold is because three is the number at which colleges begin to consider whether that is credit that they can use toward, graduation at those colleges
in and. Specifically, we've been monitoring our enrollment in AP English 11 we have implemented our new English nine and English ten courses at Troy High School and Athens High School. Those courses were designed in order to create a platform for all students to jump from in 11th grade to make the choice to go into AP English without any barriers or to, take a non AP, English 11. What you can see here is the increase in enrollment. The 20 2425 cohort of 41.5%.
Those are the 11th graders who were in the pilot, nine in the pilot, ten classes. This year's cohort of 45.3%. That was the largest four we've had in Troy, represents the first cohort of juniors who have gone through the new ninth grade and the new 10th grade curriculum. Another one of the concerns about, changing the structure of English at the high schools was that students would not be prepared to perform in our AP English 11 class, and last year's cohort, 89.5% of students earned a three or higher on that exam.
That is just an incredibly high number, and I'm very proud of the work that is going on at the high schools, the teachers who are leading our students through this work and preparing them for these exams, I'm a little timid, is showing you what the scores might look like next year because I can't imagine 65%, because that is just outstanding. But we will be back again in a year to tell you what that looks like. So this slide here looks at our diploma acquisition at the International Academy East. We continue to, move forward very strongly in that building.
There's just an incredible, staff there that has a really solid understanding of what, a child needs to be prepared for that diploma acquisition, and to go through that process and so, we report out annually on what that looks like specifically at Ised. And that is the end of our presentation for tonight. Great questions. Thank you. Any questions for Chris or Christine? I know we had an opportunity to really dig into this, at our workshop, but do you like the new format of the charts?
Okay. Let's see. Yeah. Probably not. Yeah, well, it was easy to see and easy to understand. So I do have one question. Go ahead. I know this is the first time we were doing the gap analysis between the different, subgroups. I wondered if you had gone back to look at it and see how we are progressing in this gap. If we have made improvements, we remaining about the same thing. Sure. So the slides that we did show at the workshop allowed us to see
slight progress in some areas, and and not for no progress, in other areas. It's really a two year window that we've looked at so far, but this is work that we're going to continue to do as we look at the implementations are getting to this point, it's pretty much ready to go. Thank you. You have so. Other questions. Yes. So many last week. Yeah. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Yeah that. So we're going to invite Doctor Richter up to also,
share some work that is going on in terms of looking at, a district performance dashboard that will be, released on our website, which will again give the community, a great view of a number of different, I think, important measures. You know, for our school community readiness as doctor records. Pulling that up. Thank you, Doctor Philip. And thank you, Doctor Rekha, for being here to, to provide that information, for the for the sake of the community,
the board, had asked to challenge the administration to put together, a to put together data in a format that the community could have access to. And, we, willingly jumped into that. And with the work of many individuals, led by by Doctor Ricker and, working alongside of, a third party Qualtrics, they have worked really hard to bring this data dashboard to life. It is, not 100% at this point, but we're really close. And we're really also looking and interested in we're interested
in the community's feedback, with the information that's there. Do we hit the mark? And we're open to whatever feedback might be provided as we, this, as I see it, is a living, kind of a living, organic document that will change as needs change, and as we progress, as, input is provided by either the board or, or the larger community. So with that Doctor Ricker place. Good evening, everyone. I know we had a chance to talk last week. But, tonight I wanted to show the public our our first attempt
at the external community facing data dashboard. As Doctor Chesky said, we anticipate that this will be, a living website that changes over time as the data that we collect changes. Also, as our strategic plan evolves over time, the data that lives here for the sake of transparency of our community, we'd also be open to changing as well. At present day, we have, the data dashboard. We're hoping that it goes live at the end of next week. This Thursday is our hopefully last, check in with Qualtrics to make edits based on last week's workshops feedback.
So we're yet to make those changes, but by Thursday, we hope that they'll make them in real time with our call with them and, to be able to show it, end of next week to our public. It will live and to be about TSD tab here where we have other items such as, the superintendent's welcome and the strategic plan, which I imagine many would toggle back and forth with to understand our goals. And then where we send data wise. So when you get to the data dashboard, go first, be a welcoming and orientation to the district's four pillars. Quick at a glance. Who we are as a district in regards to, languages,
spoken enrollment are the number and types of schools we have. And from there, community members should be able to toggle among, the pillars, the first being the green pillar. When they get to the green pillar, they'll see some of the beginning metrics that we've begun to pack, that we've begun to, tag as indicators of success or to be monitored for our, early childhood to career, whether it's the percentage of high school kids in dual enrollment options, AP courses, CTE classes, AP testing trends, graduation rates,
and International Baccalaureate diplomas, as well as kindergarten kindergartners that have preschool experience. And from where in the red pillar, the data that we've begun to initially, collect our participation of high school athletics by sport, participation in the fine arts courses districtwide, our attendance rates. As we said last week, we think we could dig into this graph at a time thinking about just what helps our kids get to school at the different levels. We also have a graph showing and we've we've joked, and I'm not sure who the young lady is.
I'm sure she's not chronically absent. The next, absent graph here, we we have kind of an inverted C that shows our chronically absent rates by grade level. As well as our suspension rates. Specifically, we've tracked students who have received a significant suspension of three or more days from a singular, discipline incident. In the blue pillar category, it looks of very similar to the presentation you've seen overnight. Here, our community can see mCAT performance. The percentage of kids who received proficient or advanced grades
three through seven from 23 to 25, the aggregate score. They can also see PSAT eight, nine and ten, as well as our S.A.T.. We'll have a weaver measure, and then we have our proud moment there of the the number of National Merit Semifinalists. The gold pillar is the final category, and it is the one that we're doing the most work on. On Thursday, we're going to be showing, the amount of teachers, the distributions of teachers with various degrees, a very draggable point, though, to know that 87% of our staff
taking care of our kiddos have an advanced degree or more, which I've personally found super impressive. We are able to track to track the amount of time teachers have worked within the Troy School District. We don't currently have a great way to track years of total service and public good. And our average teacher has 13.41 years in our district. And then we also just noted, that the teaching and learning department puts on in district, PD for our teachers and last year, our teachers completed and successfully uploaded to the state website, which is a arduous
task for Angelica and Rhoda, over 40,000 hours. So we're going to continue to make some tweaks to make sure it's digestible for our community and some other formatting items. And we hope that by the end of next week, our community will be able to see this, to have a little look at our district. I know we have a lot of time to talk last week, but are there any other questions you have tonight, Doctor Rucker? Do you see putting something on the website to actually gather feedback directly on the website as people are?
You know, perusing this? That's a good point. I think that would probably be the best way to to have some catcher there. Yeah. Maybe there's a form or something. They can, have learned a lot in this process of how far we've evolved and recognize this is where we currently are, but there's definitely room for growth. So I think it'd be a good way to collect it. Great. Something else I thought of green color. Might be post-grad outcomes that you can get like from power BI or something where you like look and see how many of our kids went to college and graduated in four years, that sort of thing.
That might be an interesting something else. Yeah, we can play around with absolutely. Let's go. Good. Okay. Anything else? All right. Thank you for shade that all right. We are going to move on to business. So, Mr. Trudel, if you'd like to start out. Good evening. Board. I'm going to introduce to you both of our partner manager and plant manager here with us tonight. Partner Chris Cook and manager of making sure. No, no direct relation. But,
so they're going to go over the board presentation and then I'll jump into the other agenda items is great. Thank you. So, thanks for having us tonight. We're here and happy to present the results of the annual audit, which is required by all districts to be submitted, to Michigan Department of Education by November 1st of each year. Our audits included, several deliverables, the financial statements themselves, which we issued an unmodified opinion, which is the highest form of assurance, for federal programs. This year, we tested the special education cluster.
One caveat to that. We have not yet issued a single audit report. Neither has, any governmental entity within the, the entire nation. Really. There's no compliance supplement yet that's been issued by the federal government, as you, I'm sure a well aware there's been lots of delays with the budget and other, happenings at the federal level. And until that compliance supplement is issued, no auditor can yet issue their single report. So we've completed that testing to date. No findings. No issues with the special education cluster. Just waiting for that document to get published so we can issue that report.
We also test your, bond and sinking fund expenditures for compliance in accordance with state law and bond ballot language. I'm happy to report no findings from a compliance standpoint. No violations with the Budgeting Act. The total expenditures came in under your, budget in accordance with state law. And happy to report that the 2024 financial statements, were submitted for the annual Certificate of Excellence with the Association of School Business Officials and that, financial report did receive that certificate this year. So, congratulations to the business office and having a nice, clean audit
and receiving that certificate for a 2024 and, being prepared and having no findings of this year's audit. Great. With that, I'll hand it over to, Quentin. He'll cover some of the details and highlights in the general fund. And happy to take any questions as we present. Great. Thank you. Thank. Okay, so this first slide is the results of the year at a 10,000ft level for the two major funds of the district. So the general fund and the 2023 capital Projects Fund, and then all other non-major funds are combined into one. I know there's sometimes not full understanding of what I mean,
what we mean by major fund. So I'll just take a minute there. Major fund is a gasb definition completely objective mathematical. So based on the level of activity and balances in the general fund and the 2023 capital projects funds, they're defined as major funds, get their own columns for the governmental statements. And then all others did not meet that definition. So they're not major funds. So that's all it means. So for the general fund for the year, 190.6 million of revenues came in and 193.6 million of expenditures went out.
So that was a usage of the fund balance of that fund of 3.1 million, bringing it down to 33.7 million. Fund balance at year end. Quote. Just for a little bit of context there, the final budget was a usage of 3.8 million out of the general fund. So the 3.1 million usage that actually happened was fairly in line with what that fund budget was over to the 2023 Capital Projects Fund. So 7.3 million of revenues came in. That's all exclusively investment earnings on the bond funds that are held in financial institutions.
And then 57.9 million was spent on capital projects for the 2023 bond that reduced that fund balance down to 127.4 million. Kind of different in, how we look at these funds. So the general fund, naturally, being the main operating fund of the district, we look at as a going forward, basis with 33.7 million fund balance to fund future operations with that 2023 bond fund, that one is really going to be spent until those funds are gone, and then the fund will disappear.
The 33.7 million remaining fund balance for the general fund, we will spend a little bit of time in a few slides getting more into detail on kind of what that really represents. The rest of the slides that we have prepared really do focus on the general fund. I can spend a lot longer going into the rest of the funds for the full financial statements, but in the interest of time, we want to really just focus on the primary operating fund. So for the year, I mentioned general fund had 190.6 million of revenues. The largest source, about 66%, was from the state, 25% was from locally sourced funds like property
taxes, 7% came from inter district funds. So that's primarily the PA 18 fund, special education funding that comes from open schools. And then about, 4 million or 2% was federal funding. Key takeaway here is that this break out between two different sources of funds, highly consistent with what we've seen in previous years, with the one difference being that federal funds slice so that yellow slice of the pie, much smaller than the past three, four years. And that's really because that pandemic era funding was finally completely spent.
So that 4 million or 2%, that's much more in line with what we would have seen for federal funding in pre-pandemic years, and what you can expect to see going forward in future years. So this next slide, the total pie is the same as the previous 190.6 million of total revenues. But now it's zeroing in a little bit more on what that state foundation allowance really means. So the per pupil foundation allowance accounted for 44% of the general fund's total revenues. There was more to the state revenue. That would be the other categorical state grants.
147 C funding. Now, that's all represented here in that yellow pie along yellow slice along with everything else. And then the other thing I wanted to focus on is that that blue slice, 43.6 million for property taxes, compared to 46.9 million of total local source revenue, just brings home that the property taxes as the vast majority, almost all of what that locally sourced revenue is. Yeah, and just a highlight there too. So you know, the 44% and the 23%,
you know, so 67% of your revenue in the general fund is from the foundation. So that's number of students multiplied by the annual foundation allowance, which we'll look at on the other side. So, you know, a very significant portion of revenue. Has been suppressed okay. So now flipping over to the expenditure side. So this first slide on the expenditures shows that of the total 193.6 million expenditures, vast majority, 80% was was spent on salaries and benefits for employees, 15% on purchase services,
4% on supplies, and then 1% on other miscellaneous ones. Again, the common theme here, going through all of these slides, is that the breakouts for the pie are going to be highly consistent with prior years. That's what we would have expected. There was nothing that would suggest that we would see a big shift this year. The other key takeaway I have on this one is that 95% between salaries, benefits, purchase services, 95% of general fund expenditures is spent on people serving the district. Now this slide similar to a couple of slides we have on revenue,
this second slide on expenditures has the same total as the previous slide. But instead of looking at it by object, so salaries, benefits, supplies. This one is now broken out by function. How I like to think about that is the object is what the dollars were spent on the function. On this slide is why those dollars were spent. So between direct and indirect instruction, roughly 80% of the general fund expenditures were for instruction on that direct piece, 64.5% that, is higher than the average Oakland County for districts
across the county, which were about 58% on direct instruction. Again, common theme is this breakdown is very consistent with prior years. So now we have a slide on the pupil number or the total enrollment for the district over the past six years, as well as for the current year year in and then also stacked against the state foundation, the state piece of the foundation allowance over that same time frame. So the the general theme is modest declining enrollment in each year, including for fiscal year 26, offset by increase in the foundation
allowance for each year except last year, the year under audit, there was no increase to the foundation allowance. The good news is, for fiscal year 26, there was a $442 per pupil increase to that foundation. That's. Yeah. And then enrollment trend would be consistent with what we see at districts across the state. And I think nationally to address, overall an aging population across the nation and in many nations, frankly, across the world, and specifically, again, in Michigan, we do see that trend, in the in the student count being kind of a steady decline over the years.
More specifically noted to, you know, during that first year of the pandemic, there was think statewide about 50,000 students about public education and still have not, totally returned, went back since that 2004 started. So again, kind of consistent trends that we see in district two this year. Okay. So now last slide that I've got on the foundation allowance. So this just shows where Troy lands with other Oakland County districts and how that foundation islands per pupil. And then for the year that was under audit. So this is not every Oakland County district,
but this is every Oakland County district that is a hold harmless district. So those that are allowed to levy in excess of that baseline, 90 608 per pupil. So this just shows that for all of the hold harmless districts in the county, Troy is about middle of the pack in what they're allowed to levy plus the state portion of the foundation allowance. So I mentioned we'd talk a little bit more about the fund balance for the general fund. So I'll give it back to Chris to take us home. Yeah. Last slide here and some of the results.
Over the years for the total fund balance that we're looking at on this slide. So this is the ending fund balance and the general fund only the last ten years. So going back fiscal year 2026 through fiscal year 2025, the year of the audit, again, total fund balance at June 30th of 2025, just over $33.7 million. A common measure of the health of overall fund balance in the general fund is looking at that amount as a percentage of your general fund expenditures. That ratio for fiscal 2025 was 17.41%.
To compare it to some metrics, some statewide organizations would recommend, you know, at least 15 to 20%, maintenance of fund balance as a percent of expenditures to have, enough cash on hand for operating expenditures, especially that school districts do not receive state aid payments during the month of September. So it's important to have fund balance on hand to cover those those bills, the payroll, so the district does not have to borrow and incur additional debt service expenditures. So, you know, 17.41% would be right within their recommended range. Another ratio,
data data point rather the statewide, average fund balance for all general funds for June 30th of 2020 for its last year that the current data has been compiled for is 24.7%, is the statewide average for all general funds from last year. So you can see all over the years here, the district's done a good job at that, maintaining a pretty steady, proportion of the general fund fund balance as a percentage of their expenditures. All right. With that, happy to to take any questions,
questions from any of the board members. I have one question. So that I was actually quite surprised when I saw that 24.7 that is kind of would you say that was artificially high because of the funds from the pandemic, and that your expectation is that will dramatically go down as a statewide average? Because people will spend that one time cash? Absolutely. The I had looked it up for another presentation, and the statewide average, I think was 2015.
Was 15%. So it's it's, actually, you know, I take it back, I think that was in 2020. So the statewide average has has risen significantly. A lot of it is because of that one time, Esser pandemic funding that was very flexible in terms of how those dollars could be spent. So, you know, we've seen over the last 3 or 4 years that statewide average has definitely ticked up. Where are you seeing, you know, districts that, have dipped in to fund balance in fiscal 2025? I predict that number probably goes down once those, that data is published for fiscal 2025.
And I've seen that most districts I work with are, projecting to use fund balance to balance the budget for fiscal 2026 as well. So, yeah, I do think that statewide average is going to come back down to more, you know, I'll call it, a minimal proportion. Now, the effects of, of that one time pandemic funding have been exhausted. Okay. Other questions I have one one last question. And that is, you know, typically in the past, we would see a chart that looked at the increase of the foundation allowance.
Vis-a-vis inflation. I didn't see that this year. But can you comment on that? I mean, given where foundation allowances have been, say, over the last decade and the rate of inflation, we're still more behind that and they're at pace over the years as we look at the, foundation allowance increases, you know, as a percentage, you think about the cost, of course. You know, we looked at that slide that had the percentage of your total salaries and benefits. And again, benefits includes, health care benefits, the net service
contribution, which is the state run retirement program, and our school districts, participate in, you know, this year alone, there's been years where, you know, you have a 10% increase along based in your ministry's contribution rate. Not to say, you know, health care premiums as well. The last couple of years, those have significantly increased. So, yeah, to your point, the rate of increase in, percentage basis of the foundation allowance has not kept pace with expenditures year over year. Yeah. So you know, and I just really want to make the point, you know, to the public
that, you know, the foundation allowance increase this year might seem big, but when you kind of track it over time, you know, we were better off in 2010 than we are today. It's a little misleading to say it was a $442 increase, this year. But, one thing that happened to with the budget this year was the removal of the 140 7A1 funding, which, is tied to retirement, but it's unrestricted in terms of how you can spend it. So I think that, shakes out, close to an 85 to $90 per student for Troy, specifically.
So that does kind of eat in here. 442, you know, increase. So it's not quite all that it seems on paper. Yeah. Great. All right. Well. Oh this is yeah. This is the chart. Yeah. This is the chart I. Yep. Yep. So this one was included in our fall update. So as we speak to different staff groups and PTA groups we kind of go over this. So you'll see on that far right column there, that's our actual foundation for this year. And then that yellow line is the inflationary adjusted, since 2006. Yeah. Another bad gap.
It's about those guys can do math really quick. Yeah. So it's it's important to know that we're today and 2526 we're operating essentially in a $50 million gap compared to 2006, 2007. Yeah. Yeah yeah. That's a that's an important point to a lot of the funding was awarded based on need. So as your free and reduced numbers were higher, you got more dollars. So districts like Troy and Rochester growing and growing, you know, relative to the students, we didn't get as much money.
So when you look at the amount that was awarded to districts that were higher needed, based on economic factors, the dollar amount they received was significantly higher to their overall margins to some of that. That's where you see that fund fund balance number high. Okay, great. Anything else? Well thank you. That was a very good, you know, good good audit but a very clear, presentation. So thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. It's right.
So, Dan, do you want me to read, to recommend, or are you going to recommend, adoption of the. Pardon me. So, so for your consideration, that is to, the administration recommends that the Board of Education accept the financial statements as presented by Cameron. Okay, so we're being asked to accept, the audit report as presented. May I have a resolution, please? Be therefore resolved that the Board of Education accept and approve the Troy School District's audited 2025 financial statements
as presented by Plan Margin Support. We have a resolution by miss and a supported by Miss Elish. Comments or discussion on this. Okay, all in favor of accepting the resolution, please say yes. Yes. Opposed. Say no. Thank you. Motion carries. All right. We'll move on to our next item of business. So next item for consideration is the series two bond authorization resolution. So in your board packets we did include the full legal document which has a few more words than the resolution.
So we try to consolidate that down for your purposes tonight. So to summarize what that resolution says, it's, the $555 million bond issue that voters approved in November 2022. We issued the first series in May of 2023. So the district is at a point where we are looking now to issue the second series of three total series. So this package, of bonds that we're looking to issue pending your approval is going to be split into two parts this time. Number one is related to the $555 million bond program.
So we're looking to issue $193 million as part of that bond vote. And then we're also going to include what we call refunding bonds. For some 2016 bonds that we have, totaling $27 million. So both are not to exceed numbers right now. So that $27 million is essentially going to refinance some older debt that are coming on their ten year mark right now. And that's going to lower the interest rate, from about 4.5% down to hopefully just under 3%. So by coupling it with the larger 193 million, you just have more,
ways to hand out to the market, I guess you could say so. So combining those in total, it's not to exceed $220 million, for this issuance. And we're targeting some time between March and May of 2026 for this issuance. Great. So we're being asked to, consider a resolution for the issuance of our series two bond authorization. May I have a resolution, please, miss Sandler, therefore, it be resolved that the Board of Education of the Troy School District does hereby authorize the issuance of bonds
designated to the 2026 school Building and Site refunding bonds in an amount not to exceed $220 million, and that the attached resolution in its entirety. It made a part of the official minutes of the November 18th, 2025 regular meeting support. We have a resolution by Miss Sandler, supported by Mr. Hoppe. Any discussion on this? We all got an education on how this works. So okay. Hearing none. All those in favor of the resolution, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Say no.
Thank you. Motion carries. Next item D for your consideration relates to an asset purchase. So as we talked at the board workshop this purchase would be for 1000 new, 11th gen iPads and faces. So these will be distributed to our seventh graders across the entire district. The goal is pending your approval, we will get these ordered and hopefully in about January. Depending on when they come in, those devices will come in, they'll get provisioned and then distributed to the buildings, for seventh graders to get their iPads,
doing about six months early this year just in light of, some issues on the support end of that with respect to the software and then storage issues, we want to make sure that there's no disruptions to the teaching and learning process. So, this total purchase will be for $433,950, and that's paid for by the Capital Project fund. Okay. Thank you. We're being asked to consider a resolution for the purchase of iPads. May I have a resolution, please? Mr. hot, be it therefore resolved that the district purchase iPads and cases from Apple
in the amount of 40 $433,950, and that this amount be approved as the expenditure of the capital project fund support. We have a resolution by Mr. Hopps supported by miss. Any any discussion on this? Okay. All those in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed. Say no. Thank you. Resolution passes. Okay. Security and technology. So item E, for your consideration relates to a security and technology system
that, so this was a rebid from the package that was approved back in October. We had to refine the scope a little bit more. We tested the market to see kind of what vendors would recommend for certain solutions. And then once we narrowed it down, we wanted to rebuild it accordingly. And make sure we're getting the exact system that we want. So this will relate to all the specialty areas, over at the new Smith Middle School and then it will also provide for the boardroom. Technology as well over at the Central Office building. So, think of spaces, larger spaces like your gyms,
your common areas, cafeterias, things like that. So the total bid, this was the lowest qualified bidder. Total bid was $384,610.17. And this would be paid for by the capital Projects Fund. Great. Thank you. So we're being asked to consider a resolution for the purchase of security and technology systems for the new Smith Middle School and the admin building. May I have a resolution, please? Miss Aleix, the attempt to resolve it, the bid for technology systems to be awarded to
Title Systems, Inc. in the amount of $384,610.17, and that this amount be approved as an expenditure of the 2023 Capital Projects Fund support. We have a resolution by Miss Aleix supported by Miss Potts. Any discussion on this? Okay. All those in favor of the resolution, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Say no. Thank you. Motion carries traffic improvement. So item F for your consideration relates to the new traffic signal that will be installed pending your approval over
at the new Smith Middle School. This traffic signal will be right off Lawrence Drive, directly across the street from the new entrance way. That's been, under progress right now. So Road Commission's working on this. The goal is to start the work in the spring, with the intent that it'll be, ready to go for the start of the fall of 2026 school year. So this was awarded to the lowest qualified bidder, totaling $494,694, tentatively funded by the Capital Projects Fund. But we were awarded as part of this last state budget of $421,000 enhancement
grant through the state of Michigan, that will be used to offset this cost. So, that'll essentially put some money back into the bond program for other projects across the district. Okay, great. So we're being asked to consider a resolution for the purchase of a traffic improvement system. May I have a resolution, please? This part, be it therefore resolved, that the bid for the traffic signal and infrastructure be worked J ring electric in the amount of $94,694,
and that this amount be approved as an expenditure of the 2023 capital projects support. We have a resolution by Miss Potts supported by Miss Sunny. Any discussion on this? Go ahead. I do have a question. Like you said, this was tentatively being paid for by the state part of the state budget, and now we are approving this amount. Could you help, the audience understand how does that work? And, what is the funds? So the the money allocated for this project was budgeted as part of our bond program.
So the dollars are earmarked in the bond program for this. Sometime last year, Doctor Michalski received an email from one of our local reps from the state of Michigan who gave us the opportunity to apply for what they call state enhancement grants. That's a program where there's about $20 million allocated for local legislators to work with their local communities to try to help them out with some type of project locally. That would provide a public benefit. So through that process, we applied for this traffic signal and signified that, we believed it was a public benefit, just given the safety factor
of getting people safely across the river. And I rode allowing easier access in and out of that campus area, also allowing for a second entrance and exit from that campus, for emergency vehicles and traffic. And so after submitting that application, they did award us and back in June, we got the notification, that that would be submitted as part of the state budget. And then, with the state adopting and signing, finally, the budget, in the first week of October, it was included as part of that. So we haven't received any money yet. That's why we're putting it as funded through the Capital Projects Fund for now.
Barring any, unforeseen circumstance without getting that money. But we were approved for it, so it's just a matter of waiting for it to come in. So I guess my question is more, so this amount is allocated for this, and since it's not potentially not going to be spent, it goes back into the Smith Middle School. Yeah. Currently it's part of that overall budget. So when that school is finalized and released to the the Smith community, then any dollars unspent from that total project, just get pushed back into other projects across the district.
So we have like an unallocated line item that we essentially take these savings from projects and put it into there and then repurpose it. Yeah. Got it. Thank you. So Dan, a question I mean, since we're buying this, are we responsible for the maintenance of it? Yeah. So we're going to be in there maintaining and to maintain it. Oh, okay. We'll just we're just writing the check. We're not. Okay. I didn't think we wanted to be in the traffic like maintenance business. I want to say 25, 20. Yeah, yeah. That's your job. Okay, great. Yeah.
So it's actually owned by the school. So the road traffic section is responsible for Liveright Road. They're basically just granting us access to install this equipment on their property. More or less. So, so, but we all it's our our it's our light. It's our equipment. But on their property. Yeah. Okay. If that makes and then we have to pay them to maintain it okay. To it because they're certified and they want to maintain a certain way. So. Okay. Interesting. Okay. Okay. Any further discussion on this?
Okay. Hearing none. All those in favor of the resolution, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? Say no. Okay. We just bought a traffic light. So item G, the final item under business, for your consideration, relates to Eld materials. This was presented at the October workshop. I know you guys all had, various meetings to learn more about this in depth. So this is through language power. It is a combination purchase. Where of of the $104,000, just over 82,000 will be funded through title three.
And then the balance of just over $20,000 will be funded by the general fund. Okay. Thank you. Are being asked to consider a resolution to purchase, eld materials. May I have a resolution, please? Miss Aleix? Oh, be it there for a result of the district purchase language power. Uli. Curriculum materials in the amount of $104,509.12. And this amount be approved as an expenditure of the general funds, at which $82,681.38
will be funded through title three support. We have a resolution by Mr. Aleix supported by most parts, comments or discussion on this. I do just want to ask a couple of questions and I think somebody may have brought it up somewhere else. Why? This is under business as opposed to curriculum. I positioned it under business because we were paid strictly for the per purchase purpose. Since the teaching learning department already
had an opportunity to meet with the board and and answer specific questions. It just made sense, since we're asking for authorization of the of the purchase itself to situate it under business, it would normally be situated under, under a curriculum. And then I do want to Mr. Trudeau alluded to that, but we we did all have an opportunity to meet, and review the materials that are going to be boards. We were actually able to open the, the learning kids and to see what the materials looked like, as well as ask questions about,
some, you know, compliance things with the state in terms of, of Uli. So I think, you definitely had an opportunity to, to ask all of our questions and, and interact with the materials. Well, okay, Stephanie, I just want to give some feedback to, Miss Polis and her team to say thank you for the opportunity to learn about the materials and to learn about the, progress that the department as a whole is making for this really important student group, in our districts. And so many of our students are either actively acquiring English now or what we consider flat or formerly limited English students.
And certainly we see that as part of our, group of kids who are getting their seals of biliteracy, too. So you can see that data all the way through our organization. I know Shari and her team are going to continue from here on to work hard to, be really transparent to the whole community that they serve as they continue to develop, implement curriculum and professional development around it. So we appreciated that first, step at it from your team at our presentation, and I hope to see it for the whole community as we move forward. So thanks. Great. Thank you. I do want small clarification though, so what we are approving here
is that the new curriculum and purchase of the curriculum. Right. So as a board, we are approving the new curriculum implicitly with this purchase now. No, really, I think all you're approving is the supplemental materials go, because the curriculum is the tier one curriculum that's taught in the classroom. These are really more supplementary materials that help support tier one instruction. So you really the purchases for the materials themselves for them okay. So the curriculum hasn't changed. It. Correct. The curriculum for our Eld students is tier
one curriculum that they receive in the classroom. This is more of a supplement that goes along with and help support, the, their ability to more quickly, achieve proficiency within that that that classroom instruction. Okay. So we are approving the supplemental curriculum, not exactly the main one. Correct. The material, supplemental literature, supplemental materials. Right. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Documents. Wanted to thank, Doctor Wrecker and Miss Polis for taking the time to put together that presentation.
It was really helpful for me to have a better understanding of the workings of EOD. Be able to look at the materials, and, And I think Chris is here, too, but but but, helping me understand how that particular set of materials would be incorporated and how it would be delivered to students as well. Because as a board member, I really want to make sure that we're making the best decisions for our students, and this really helped me understand that. So thank you again for taking the time to do that for us.
Great. Anything else? Okay. Let's vote all those in favor of the purchase of the supplemental Eld materials, please say yes. Yes, yes. Opposed. Say no okay. Thank you. Motion carries. So thank you, Mr. Trudel. Okay. That concludes business. We have one, public communication on non-agenda items. Mr. cook, would you like to come up and address the board? Open it up on here. Can you see?
First, I'd just like to thank the administration, for putting together the presentation on the data dashboard. You can see it's, really exciting to see. And thank you also to the board, for the discussion at the workshop. I come to a lot of these, and that was really interesting to me. I'd like to bring your attention to something, outside our district, which is right now, the city is in the midst of redeveloping mostly vacant office buildings along Corporate drive up to 82 higher density, more affordable units. Although redevelopment for office buildings into mixed use and residential properties around a lot of corporate is being considered by the Planning Commission,
the City Council will consider plans in the near future. At the City Council meeting for at least two more developments of, mostly vacant properties of that stretch of corporate. My view, these multi-family residences are a fantastic step forward for our city and district, because these multi-family homes will be more affordable than single family homes or new neighbors will potentially add to our economic diversity. Moreover, many will be families whose school age children will help stabilize enrollment for the district. While the district overall has excess capacity and is facing the prospect of declining enrollment overall, particularly at the K-5 level, that's not true at all our schools.
In the specific case of corporate drive, it's currently in the Hamilton attendance area. But my calculations Hamilton is around 50 students of capacity. Within capacity. Will Martel, the next closest school, has capacity for around 150 more students. One straightforward solution to the district to avoid overcrowding might be to rezone to include corporate in Martell's attendance area. However, that solution requires intense interrogation to weigh the pros and cons of such an action. Therefore, I have to suggestions. First, we could reconvene the Attendance Area Review Committee to analyze the impact of these new residential developments,
and of changes need to be made to the attendance areas to do so well before anyone purchase a home with the expectation that their child will attend a particular school. If the board were to wait until these homes along Corporate Drive are built and purchased to take action, this board will likely face intense fury from these new home owners in the not too distant future, if they're dissatisfied with their school assignment. I'd also call on the district to work more closely with the Planning Commission to provide feedback on future developments in terms of existing capacities of the district schools. Last week, I completed the community academy, and I was surprised to learn from city staff about,
lack of regular engagement there is between city staff and the district. This is a missed opportunity to work together for the collective good of both city residents and districts. Parents, thank you for okay. Thank you, Mr. Cook. All right. We are going to move into our other and we will start with, reports from our students. I think I will start at that end of the table tonight. So, Chloe, would you like to tell us what's going on at TCS? Good afternoon, Troy. Board members and attendees. I'm going to I'm going to be honest, I have a bunch of activities
I'm really excited to talk about. So I'm just going to get straight into it. Starting with just this morning, almost all of our staff and students attended the Michigan Career Quest Fair in Novi, which was beautifully organized for us students to get the chance to get as much hands on information about engaging, about and engaging work week about engaging workplace opportunities, internships, job shadowing, as well as everything in between from any and all the booth booths we chose. Next up, our building sub by day and rock star by night.
Mr. Vance, Mr. Manderson took all of the music club, as well as other interested students to raid student studios. To learn about how to make professional music. They really, Sorry I have so much on this page. I'm trying. Anyway. How basically just teach them how to record music and a lot of other tips and tricks that they can take home to their instruments. Next, can you guess what I'm about to talk about? Next? You guessed it, another field trip.
And I mean, the career thing is, in our name, you know, our interest in students. Miss Clifford took a trip to Core Cornwall. Help to focus on all the different paths and fields available to them in the medical world. By participating in multiple hands on stations and listening to medical professionals, give them crucial inside details in their fields. And an honorable mention they would probably like me to mention in and to add on in here is they are totally pros in drawing blood and giving CPR. Now following up with my announcement of our Halloween movie day slash potluck slash fundraiser
held by our student Council, which was a humongous hit. We made fliers and a million announcements throughout the whole month of October, and ended up getting the whole school together in our lgi to eat pastas, salads, potatoes, soups, pastas, dips, popcorns, charcuterie boards, cookies, candies, cupcakes, pies, juices, and all kinds of sodas and drinks, all while watching a totally terrifying movie called insidious. Being a student council member, I know myself as well as all my other members. We're so proud to make our goal of $255 with this fundraiser,
which is a pretty significant amount given our school is pretty small. While I'm talking about student council, I'd like to wrap up my report with the student leadership meeting. A few of our student council members attended in Lansing, where attending students got to see a magic show, while at the same time being enlightened on mental wellness, depression, and coping skills. In addition, we participated in teambuilding and leadership activities with other students from all over the state of Michigan. Let's just say we really put the career and Troy College and career this well. Thank you.
So how many students attended that leadership conference? I think it's about six, including myself. Okay, excellent. And I know there was, students even that came from all the way up in the UK, so that was pretty cool. Talk to them. Yes. Great. Great, excellent, good. And what's happening at East? Okay. Good evening everyone. So I hope everyone's having a great Tuesday. And I'm really excited to share some of the things I've been going on at East. So back in October we had our powderpuff game between the juniors and seniors.
And after a really intense game, the seniors came out on top with a 26 to 6 victory. And even though the juniors did lose, it was really fun time between the two greats on the field. And just last week, on Wednesday and Friday, we had our first Red cross, Red cross blood drive of the school year and it was a huge success. So thanks to all the students and our staff, we collected 22 successful donations which has the potential to save up to 66 lives. And we thank every volunteer donor, student and staff member
who helped this meaningful, meaningful event happen. And just last Saturday, our Science Olympiad team kicked off the season with an exciting start at the Hawk and Hornet Invitational at Athens High School, and this year, the competition hosted over 40 talented teams, including top teams from Ohio and Indiana participating as well. And despite the tough competition, our team placed top ten across nine events, including first place in engineering, Cadd, third place in robot to fourth place in Remote Sensing and sixth place in Anatomy and Physiology.
And it was an incredible performance for our first competition of the season, with many more to come. And our model UN team also participated in Smyrna with a record breaking of 78 total delegates, representing our largest team to date at the biggest conference in Michigan's history, with more than 1400 total delegates. And the conference brought students together to debate and collaborate on real world global challenges, including climate change, global health access and international security world, where delegates work to negotiate
right resolutions and engage in meaningful diplomacy. And on the more art side of things, our drama club has been working very hard on their full performance. Titled The Book of Will, which is a play that set in 1623 after the death of Shakespeare. And they'll be bringing the story to life this weekend, so be sure to attend if you're interested. And that's all I have at I thank you, great. Thank you. And lots, lots going on at area and board. Feel free if you have questions or comments. Actually, when is that
that play. It's this Friday and Saturday. All right. Thank you. Excellent. Sarah, we'll turn it over to you. What's going on at Athens? Athens High School has had an incredibly productive and thrilling end to the fall, with major successes across the board. On the academic and community front, we successfully launched our first Athens Family University, where 25 families attended to learn strategies for, Did or digital detox. We also introduced our new student
of the month recognition program honoring students in three categories best overall Student, best Art, student investing athletes. Our extracurricular teams are also dominating. The Athens Theater Company delivered three fantastic performances of their fall production. The Brothers Grimm and our Science Olympiad team successfully hosted the annual Hockey Hornet tournament. Our Hosa chapter sent 124 students to regionals at Troy High, and an astounding 69 students qualified for states in April. Finally, a massive congratulations to all of our fall sports programs.
Football, boys soccer, and volleyball all wrapped up their seasons with huge wins against Troy High. Victory that I am told means Troy High administrators will be doing lunch duty at Athens this week. I like in addition, numerous individual athletes from boys tennis, cross-country, girls swim and dive, boys soccer and football all earned regional and state accolades. We are looking forward to the fall break next week to relax and recharge for the remainder of the semester. And remember, it's always a great day to be here at Hawk. Great, great.
And I know many of us on the board had the opportunity to actually have, you know, we went and visited some some of the classrooms at Athens and then actually had, lunch with several of the Athens students, Sarah being one of those, at the Terrace Cafe. So that was a, a great experience for, for many of us. Okay. And Bella, bring us home what's happening at Troy High? And of course, you get the last word. So you know, now you can talk about what? Troy, what Troy High has done to to Athens. Good evening everyone. The fall season that Troy
High has shown a lot of energy, dedication and strong commitment to excellence. To begin with, our academic and leadership clubs this weekend, we took 90 underclassmen, from our model U on delegates, and they attended Simona, which is the Southeast Michigan Model UN Association conference, where they practice debate skills, collaborated with students from across the region and represented Troy High. Additionally, model launched a brand new outreach called falling into Month. Nearly 100 middle school students from across the Troy School District joined us in Troy High on November 5th for a workshop introducing key debate and diplomacy skills,
helping them explore opportunities available in high school and hopefully, building those model on skills before they enter at the high school level. Shifting over to athletics, our fall sports teams have also had a very strong season. Boys hockey team opened their season with an impressive 6 to 1 victory over Stony Creek and Cross Country. Audrey Hamilton and Isaac Kaminsky qualified for state finals, finishing their season with outstanding performances. Our boys soccer team won the district championship and emerged as a strong as well. And finally, our boys tennis team are in the state championship, which is a tremendous accomplishment and it reflects
all the athletes dedication and the depth of the program at Troy High. And, incredibly proud of all of our athletes and we wish them the absolute best of luck. Moving from athletics to our career focused programs, Hosa had an amazing month as well. They hosted the region nine competition on November 8th at Troy High School. The event brought together 396,000 members from across the region to have students earn one 114 medals or place them in top three, and 88 students qualified to advance to the host the State Leadership Conference in April. Events included
mental health promotion, public health, medical innovation and way more. We're also very, very proud of all their hard work and dedication. In addition to academic and competitive success, our student groups have been focused on service remediation and spreading warmth from November 1st through the 25th with their annual coat drive. So, they're collecting new and very gently used winter jackets to keep our community warm this winter season. Continuing with service initiatives, Project Lead held their annual Can drive this month and partnered with student government to launch 75 cans for 75 years of Troy cords.
So first, our classes were encouraged to collect 75 cans, or $75 in honor of Troy High 75th anniversary. Together, students collected over $700 and cans combined, turning to Stem, our robotics team has also had a very busy and productive year. On November 15th, they hosted the annual Shark Fest, which is one of the largest robotic events in the region with over 1000 sorry with over 1500 attendees. So it was split into two different categories. So there was an ethanol explorer, which is kindergarten through second grade. This is a more hands.
These are more hands on activities which were led by Troy, students. And then there's Ethanol Challenge, which is third through fifth grade. There were 47 competing teams. And new this year we had participation from every Troy school district, elementary school. Many teams have been preparing since August and are now working towards a state championship. And the Troy High robotics team themselves, are also gearing up for their own competitions season this spring. We're excited to see what the rest of the year brings us, and we wish you all a very early and happy Thanksgiving. Right? Thank you. Lots going on at all of our schools.
Yeah. Continues to be quite impressive. You know, everything that's going on. We're going to turn it over to other for the board. And so, Miss Sandler, you can start us off all right. First, I'm with you early. Happy Thanksgiving. And, I think it's a restful, homework free project. Free, long weekend for our students and our staff. So we hope everybody gets, gets and takes that break. I even saw that there's a technology rubric suggested, so keep that going to, second, to my fellow board members, I wanted to let you know
that I put in front of you tonight the Troy Youth Assistance Annual Report. I wanted to give you some highlights as that, board. I sat down. Now, it is my absolute pleasure to help tree for assistance in their mission toward, prevention. Helping keep kids out of our court systems and helping keep our families strong. So this year, the 24, 25 year, 72, families were referred to tree assistance. 42% of those kids, families were high school, 40% middle school. And not to be forgotten, 18% elementary school students.
Top reasons that students were referred to Troy Youth Assistance were school and ability, intervention services and truancy. So we're working as partners with the school district to make sure that, we can help students avoid, chronic absenteeism and hopefully increase, student achievement. Detroit Assistance is proud to report that seven court actions were diverted by their efforts this year, which keeps our kids on the track for excellence, by the numbers. And to sort of not respond to our community responder.
I had, my first opportunity to speak to the city council last week on behalf of Youth Assistance, where myself and, the treasurer of Troy Youth Assistance and, one of our administrators, Kerry Brennan, went to ask the city council for increased funding. So it's my first chance to be there and meet them and start to build a relationship. Short story. They didn't increase our funding, but that's okay. You can keep asking if we can keep asking. They know we exist and we're kind of not going to go away, so that's good. Truth assistance is proud to report that they spent,
$3,448 supporting community and individual actions, in addition to primary sponsorships like clubs and skill building activities to which they spent, a little over $3,000, which provides scholarships to students who need or want to participate in afterschool classes or other clubs that their families may not otherwise be able to afford. Tree assistance is also been working hard at family education opportunities, and they have published a parenting podcast in the last year with three episodes. So, lots going on with the Truth Assistance Group that is partially funded
by our school district. We've recently even reached out to ask our peatos to help, support the youth assistance work. And more. You'll see more about how we're going to continue to make an impact and prevention in our systems for our grades. So thank you for that good report and thank you for participating. Share. Yeah. Connecting us for our connection to the tire. Yes. Yep. Great. Thanks. Miss Potts. And have a little bit after something. First I just want to say congratulations to Voice Elementary.
Personally, I think Miss Doctor fell apart, and, Miss Sunny should have been pushed to the side. And you should have been in that picture just for you. Yeah. Thank you for. All you have to do is just honorary. All you have to do is be an officer next year. That's that. Or you want to say, I'm always impressed. I'm always very, overwhelmed at times at all the stuff that's going on in our district. I continue to be completely impressed with our eld.
Shout out to Miss Paulus, Mrs. Paulus and Doctor Record. When I sat in that conference room in that presentation, I just was so moved, I think, by how intentional you were with choosing that language power. I saw a lot of myself and my parents in that, you know, in that presentation. So I just want to commend you on, that, very engaging presentation. And I look forward to seeing the progress of our committee. Recently I went to the,
to Traverse City. I was able to travel with some fellow board members to another to the Michigan School Board conference up there and attended some classes. And, I always feel like I come back with so many great ideas to bring to you, rich doctor Majestic. I can't wait to have that conference. I know you're looking forward to. Other than that, I don't have a whole lot to report. Looking forward to going to the National Honor Society induction next Monday,
where I've been asked to say some kind of speech. I don't know why I was chosen. I'm a little bit scared. So if anybody has any advice, what to say and whatever, I appreciate it. I think we have an eye to you. Right. Is patients okay? I'll be coming. And I have a bunch of awards. Other than that, happy Thanksgiving to everyone, albeit choral health working that day as you're all stuffing yourselves and watching the lions. So, think of me while you're about to go in your food coma.
Thank you, Doctor Melton. Yeah, I was able to attend the Traverse City conference. Several other board members as well. I did want to comment on, how I think it's very important that our board, members do take these opportunities for learning, especially since we have a fairly, new, newer board. You know, it sounds really exciting. I think they're going to Traverse City. I was in class for 15 hours. Yes, nine of which were
accounting, auditing, budgeting, capital planning. I'm like, I would never want to be Mr. Trudel. Right. But that that information was so helpful because when I got the, I don't know, like 130 pages of audit material, I actually knew what things meant and what I should look for and what's important, and, and so I just want to stress that, well, that is a cost to the district for board members, to attendees. It is money well spent.
As having an educated board is very important to, having a high functioning district. So I just wanted to, express my gratitude, but also point out how important that is, that that we take those opportunities. I am super excited about all the awesome data we saw tonight. And I think it was, definitely the most, extensive data presentation that that I've seen. I appreciate all the time and effort that went into putting that together.
You know, I look forward to hearing more about these programs. One of the areas that that has been brought up was, the achievement gap. And one thing I did want to point out was that that work, that work has been ongoing. It's just that this is the first time that it's been presented to the board and to the public, which I think is important because it's like you hear about goal setting, like when you have it yourself and it's internal. It's one thing, but when you put it out there for everyone else, it,
it gives a little bit different level of significance and urgency. So I appreciate that because it's also, kind of a little bit scary when you do that too. So thank you for doing that. And then also to, the teaching and learning department and Doctor Rucker, the data dashboard, I'm like super excited. It looks awesome. I can only imagine how much work that's been. And for Mr. Rucker between let's see more eld. Let's get a data dashboard.
Oh, let's revise curriculum. I know we've been kind of, heaping on you and as a, as a new person to do teaching and learning. Thank you for the time, because I know that you're having to really go above and beyond with the time you and your staff are putting in, and that hasn't gone unnoticed. So thank you. Thank you. So a lot has been said that I was to say so thank you to everybody. I know it was briefly mentioned, but we were some of the board members had the opportunity to go to Athens recently to take a peek into some of the classrooms and math classroom in their classroom.
And I just want to reiterate how much I appreciate that not being a teacher, not being an educational setting all the time, it's very, eye opening to see, you know, the students actually working through the curriculum and with the teachers. So it's just thank you for giving us the opportunity to do so. And I'm very excited for the Troy High one that's going to come in January or so. So thank you. And Venus is coming soon, you know. Yeah, I can't go. But. Like Thanksgiving dinner. We're going around. So I do want to go back to,
to treat the assistants. I was the former treasurer, so it's it's an organization close to my heart. I will just add, if you go on to youth assistance.org, you can make a donation there. It's it used to be Troy Youth assistance. In addition to be more being more fully funded by the city, at some point in the past, it was $35,000 a year. At this point, it's 15. So that is a significant cut. But also what used to happen, you know, ten, 15 years ago is,
during that first week of school, parents would come in and there would be lots of packets and, they would go during curriculum night from table to table, and there would be one for Troy Youth Assistance and parents would write checks. And so even that amount has gone from a significant amount of money to a very small one. So I would encourage, everybody to go and trade assistance that organ and, and make a donation, as well reiterate everything everybody else has said. I also attended the conference,
and took lots of, of, of classes having to do with budgeting and, and audit reviews and things like that. I did want to talk about last week. I attended the Government Relations committee for the county School Board Association. So there's kind of, two big ticket items that that are out there. One is funding under 31 A, and this is where in order for us to get this money for safety and security and mental health, the district, the language is quite vague.
So, you know, not all of it is clear, but one of the things is that it would if we, accept this money, we would automatically have to allow the state to come in. If there's any type of mass casualty event which is not defined. In addition, the district would have to waive all of its attorney client privileges. Again, we don't know what the extent of that is. And information came out today. So lawsuits were filed last week. The deadline for acceptance of that money was moved from the 16th of November to the 30th of November, and then today was moved to the 4th of December.
So the hearings will take place and decisions for, for injunctive relief will take place those first 2 or 3 days of, of December. So we've been giving a little bit of a reprieve on that. The other thing that is moving through the legislature, and I'm not sure how successful or unsuccessful will be, there is a push for school board election, elections to be Partizan, which would have all sorts of negative, consequences. The same is not being asked of city council. So it's very much specifically, directed at us as school boards.
And they did receive the, the full package of that, last Friday evening. And I will share out with the rest of, of the board there's some simple language to to reach out to our legislators. I've done that with, with my state rep. What I would encourage, you know, other members of the board, especially those who are on the east side to reach out, to their state reps. So those are kind of the two big things that were covered in OSB. And then this was also covered at MSBA as well.
These are kind of the two big topic. So that that's where we are with with those. Are they asking boards to pass resolutions relative to that. So the at this point we were not we did we did vote at the meeting to make, to make the, the issue a legislative priority. So that way or the county can advocate on behalf of in lobby. So that was done. The ask at this point is for,
just, you know, for school board members to reach out, to reach out to their legislators. Great. So those are, not as fun as some of the other things. And then, yeah, I would just say, you know, I hope everybody has a happy and safe Thanksgiving and get some rest so we can come back and work in December. Great listening. I do not have anything more to add that they have already added. I just want to wish everybody, happy bread and happy Thanksgiving. Hope you have a relaxing time with your family
and not think about work for a few days to think about school, well rested and come back energized. Yeah, that's it. Great. Doctor Chesky. Yeah. Thank you. Miss Ellie, for for mentioning that I was going to give that 31 double AA update, but you did a great job with that. Congratulations to the staff. With that, we had an opportunity to celebrate this evening as well as the, communications department, Kendra and your department, for the efforts that they, put forth in getting out the good news and the important news, across our, our school district.
And, lastly, to both Dan and RL and your department and, and another, fine, clean audit, appreciate all the efforts that your team puts in, to, to make that make that happen and ensure that we are on a fiscal sound fiscal footing on an annual basis across the school district. You can look for information. Miss Zeller, already kind of teased this one, but you can look for information on Friday in the, in the weekly newsletter. And while this weekend. So that information will be coming out, officially this Friday.
So, I'd encourage everyone to, to take a look, for that information, the shout out to our, to the entire community that helped support the the Troy Center for transition, the teen, our food pantry. A lot of information was sent out. We received, a tremendous amount of donations as well as financial assistance. And we were even able then to support other food pantries in the community as a result of that. So thanks to everyone who provided that, that support, for families across our, our, our entire community.
So I want to make sure we, we thank individuals and Mr. Cook who spoke earlier this evening, is a member of the of the coalition and, and helped, provide, support for that as well. So I want to thank Walter for that. And the entire coalition team. A couple of announcements coming up. Or let me just talk about some things that we were able to. We had our first, cap evening, our career accelerator program, parent evening was this last Monday. So we we have the the cap program for this year kicked off and ready to go. So we'll be soliciting applications, video applications from students
that are interested. We'll be taking 100 students in this year's cohort, up up almost four times from where we were when we first started the program. And, and over 50 businesses participating at this point as well. So I want to thank, thank Kendra and, Christine and Mike Monaco and everyone who's been involved with helping to support that program moving forward. The this, coming, or tomorrow, Wednesday in this room at 530 will be, continuing the conversation, with, Miss Shantell Yancey.
We'll be kicking off that conversation. So we're inviting community in to continue conversation, around anxious generation and where that's going to take us next in terms of supporting students, across and one another, across the school district, the student advisory board has their basketball fundraiser this Friday will be at Troy High School 6:00. So all those interested you can you can pay at the door. But we would and we welcome everyone to come out to that event at 6:00. As was mentioned earlier, the Hawk and Hornet, a tournament that took place at Athens. I had an opportunity this past Saturday that to to walk through
and see the Olympians in action. The Science Olympiad tournament is not really a spectator sport necessarily, because a lot of the work takes place behind closed doors. There's a lot of quiet work, and then there's some active work that goes on, but but this was, this was the largest. This is the largest Science Olympiad tournament in the state of Michigan. So kudos to Eric Bogosian at, at Athens. Who helps, works tirelessly to help pull that together. So want to make sure Eric got a huge shout out for that. He's certainly well deserved. Want to also mention last week we had a chance to,
to acknowledge our 57 national merits as we had a reception last week. The board, of course, had an opportunity to pass that resolution earlier this year, but we had a chance to celebrate those, those individuals kicking off, kind of recognition season, for, for the school district. And lastly, want to also mention I had a chance to see Brothers Grimm at Athens this weekend. Just another tremendous, performance by the the Athens Theater department, Athens Theater Company. And, as Athens was working on, on Brothers Grimm, what were those three, fine performances?
The Troy High group is working on their next performance, and very shortly, auditions will be held or are being held for labor is that will take place in the spring. So a lot of work going on. We heard some we heard some comments, earlier, or late last spring, I guess, going into the summer about, the theater programs. And I can tell you that, the, the Athens theater program, that performance was excellent. And, we are already working on transportation, for those students that are at. You heard you might have heard students talking about how am I going
to get from Athens, to to Troy High in order to participate? Christine, has already worked with transportation to to make sure that that is available to students. So that information is going out to students so that they know, that transportation will be available to them. For both tryouts, auditions. Excuse me. And, and then, the, rehearsals and so forth, moving forward later in the spring. So just wanted to update the board as to where we were with that, with that. I think that's that's about it. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Wow. Information. Well, well, I won't belabor things. I just have a couple items. First of all, I wanted to build on something that Doctor Melton said. And really, to the community, you should be very, very proud of our three new board members who have jumped in, with a lot of enthusiasm and with a lot of their time, in the, kind of school board training system. You become an honor board when all of your board members have achieved a certain level of training, and it is very customary,
when we have new board members, for a district to lose its honor board training for a period of time as the new board members, come up to speed and get their training, we didn't miss a beat. We stayed in honor board because our three board members really have taken this seriously, put in a lot of time and energy, and so I really just, want to acknowledge that to the community because you guys have done an awesome job. Our prior board members did the same thing. So there is a history of this in Troy.
But I think but I think you guys took the record. I mean, it was you were fast and furious, so thank you. I know I appreciate that as the old person on the board. But I know our community does as well because, we cannot govern effectively if we don't know what we're doing. And there are some nuances in school governance that the only way you will learn is if you are trained you to you can just even mention how it differs in Troy and compared to other districts is we are one of the few districts
that requires the initial nine series in the first year. Some districts don't require any trainings. I don't know if. Yeah, I mean, I think that that's important because all of us invest a whole lot of time. Yeah. I mean, it really has been a long standing the culture of this board, to, you know, really ask people as they are running, as they make the decision to run, you know, to understand that there is an expectation, that you do take advantage of, you know, the training and, and, you know, again, try and people have,
you know, obviously different abilities because of their life commitments. But to try to do that as soon as possible. And again, you know, this new team of board members has really gone above and beyond. So, so thank you for that. Doctor McCluskey mentioned the Cap program, and, it kind of the student side, I'm going to mention the business side. And we really, should be thankful to our, business roundtable lead, Doug Teets, who is really taking,
the initiative with, businesses in the community. But again, for our community members, who are, business owners or work at companies in the area, you know, please consider, sponsoring a student. It's it's an opportunity to really make a difference for them. And I think your organization will benefit from, you know, having, the enthusiasm and innovation of of our students, participating, one final note. So the Troy Foundation
for Educational Excellence, we had, you know, a meeting last night, and I am actually thrilled we are now bringing students, on the board. So I think you see a trend here for all these organizations. So they did take applications, you know, and they got some representation. They'll be looking at inviting students from Troy High in Athens, but none from TCS or Iirc. So if they're if you have an interest that the Troy Foundation, is really,
an umbrella organization that supports, you know, all of the schools and teachers in the district, they, they offer grants. Many of you may have, had advantage, of grants and maybe didn't even know they were funded by, the but the money that they earn. And by the way, even though we're going into winter, the golf outing has been set for June 9th. So anybody who thinking ahead to summer, you know, that is a big,
a big area fundraising, for them. But again, I would just put, an ask for students if you have an interest. This could be another great community way, you know, for you, for you to be engaged or for, for students in your school to be engaged. So with that, if there is no further business, we will conclude our meeting tonight. Our next workshop will be, a week later than you might normally, see on the schedule.
So it is December 9th. And then the following week, December 16th will be our last, meeting of the year. The workshop will take place here, because you can see there's lots of construction trucks, over, at the administration building. So we will have both of our December meetings here. So with that, I hope everybody has a great holiday. Happy Thanksgiving, happy detox from technology and not thinking about work and school.
And let's come back in December. There's a lot of great things happening and we will close the year strong. So thank you everyone and good night. Thank you.