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I think maybe i got something here.
Yes.
Okay, now i gotta turn off all of my stuff.
Okay, i think we're good now.
Okay, Mrs. Johnson is not feeling well tonight, so she's going to be virtual, so i will be attempting to run the meeting if i can figure all this stuff out.
Bear with me, please, so i'm going to call the meeting to order, and Donna, we need a roll call.
Okay, now.
All right, carol pox.
I'm here.
Tom hankins.
Here.
Bill Johnson.
Here.
Tia Johnson.
Here.
Meghan Miller.
Presence.
Joanne Roo.
And Dan Shoeff.
Here.
The roll reflects that Joanne Roo is absent.
Okay, i would need a motion for approval of the agenda.
I would like the to be amended to remove.
Six D the professional adult student boundaries first reading the lawyer just sent some updates on that and we need to review those before we bring it to the full board.
Second.
Did you want to discuss something or do you want to remove seven D from consent agenda.
But did you want to talk about it?
Yes.
Okay, then we'll move a little bit later.
That's what I thought.
Yeah, we'll move that later.
Okay, so what you had a motion and a second.
Yes.
Can you confirm who made and seconded that motion?
Tia made the motion and Meghan and seconded it.
Thank you so much.
Okay, all in favor say aye please.
Aye.
Aye.
Now we need to rise for the Pledge of Allegiance please.
Okay, next is the board president report.
Mrs. Johnson, do you have a report?
I do.
Thank you.
Good evening.
Thank you for joining us tonight.
We appreciate your attention.
In support of the school district of Hawaii.
We are proud and grateful to have Dr. Edward and has been moved in terms of for attendance with nearly three decades of experience of the district of Hawaii.
Dr. Gordon understand, and it's ready to be the school district of Hawaii.
Dr. Gordon has served as the district as an elementary teacher on this middle school district of principal covers elementary school and assistant.
We are proud and grateful to have served as the district of Hawaii.
We are proud and grateful to have served as the district of Hawaii.
We are proud and grateful to have served as the district of Hawaii.
We are proud and grateful to have served as the district of Hawaii.
We are proud and grateful to have served as the district of Hawaii.
We are proud and grateful to have served as the district of Hawaii.
The board of education is efficient to vote back and forth and head back to simple for their decision.
we have received a report on the SSA IDK federal accountability
identification that every student can see and the individuals
with disability education act are new separate federal laws
requiring the DPI to look down to the Department of Public
Instruction to identify schools needing extra support
for local departments to improve.
State identifying struggling schools by tracking their test
or the graduation rates and attendance categories
class patients include DPI, comprehensive support
and improvement, targeted support and increased
DPI and additional targeted support and attainment
DPI, schools that are identified as anyone
in these categories must create improvements plans
to help make changes that will lead to better student outcomes.
The focus is created and received by identification.
We are eager to work together involving all departments
and staff members to help support the schools
that are on the list.
These identifications may be in part due to attendance.
This and other deficiencies have been resolved
by combined efforts to local partners and organizations.
If you have any questions or would like to help assist
one of these schools, please contact
Interim Assistant Dr. Borden, Interim Assistant
Superintendent Dr. Tengo for the specific building
principal.
We appreciate all help you get and even volunteers
coming into a regional group or assistant classroom
star appreciated.
The Board also received a presentation
on the report of the special education department
to appreciate the department in order
to help make this instrumental evaluation done.
Likewise, we are grateful to all staff members
who took their time to make interviews.
I want to let you know that your comments
and concerns can be received and are being addressed
to the administrative director of Pills and Services.
And you see those and directors of special education
here and here updated the board.
We can overview of the response and proposed actions
that will be used to help with systemic improvement.
Just as with the SBA IDA identification,
these issues will best be addressed with collective
efforts and support from all departments, staff and schools.
Board members and administrators continue to listen
to staff, families and community members.
We appreciate the support, understanding
of patients needed to navigate this challenging climate.
The Board met yesterday to discuss the district's financial needs
and the potential referendum.
We report the report from Dr. Gordon and her cabinet
over the next few days.
The recent financial challenges in the athletic department
have brought the administration together
to work on existence between the smarter allocation
of its resources and oversight of the department.
Yesterday, we heard different options
that will help me allow me a doctor
that will help align the department
to get a lot of subjects.
We continue to encourage administrators
to get ideas to see that from staff members
to help build stronger departments.
I especially want to say,
boys and girls, families help for taking on these extra tasks.
And finally, create a way to make financial choices,
such efforts to help us be able to use resources
for more health-related impacts that
is improving our district to maximize our students' success.
Together, we remain committed to the needs of the parents
and districts, and to help folks for every student.
My report, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Next, we move to upcoming events and announcements.
And our representative board member,
Shuf, is going to Freud and Slip.
Sorry, read the announcement.
OK, 28 years ago.
OK, so I'm reading this.
Megan has joined us virtually, but I'll read this
so some time in the room.
Offcoming events, announcements, good evening.
These are the announcements for Tuesday, July 21, 2026.
A back-to-school community health fair
will be held Saturday, August 1, starting at 10 a.m.
in the Bullet Memorial High School Field House.
Activities included free food, free haircuts,
free medical services, free school supplies, community booth,
live performances, games, and activity.
Saturday, August 1, in the Field House.
Community action in partnership with the City of Eloit
will have neighborhood cleanup days designated
to support residents in the Maryland Hackett neighborhoods.
These are part of a broader community-driven effort
to improve environmental conditions,
reduce illegal dumping, foster neighborhood pride,
and historically underserved areas.
The Maryland Neighborhood Cleanup Day
will take place on Saturday, August 8, from 9 to 12 p.m.,
starting at Regina Duncan Park, formerly Summit Park.
The Hackett Neighborhood Cleanup Day
will follow on Saturday, August 15, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.,
starting at the Bloitte Historical Society,
formerly Lincoln, Jr. High, just for the history lessons
and all of us.
4K program enrollment is open for all children,
four years old, or honor before September 1st.
Again, 4K program enrollment is open for all children,
four years old, honor before September 1st of this year.
Visit the Colac Education Center to enroll,
or enroll your student online at BloitteSchools.net.
2627, school year registration is available
through Skyward Family Access.
All students must complete registration
before the start of the new school year.
Any parent needing assistance may contact the attending school
or call the central enrollment office at 361-4171.
Meetings upcoming and being held
at the Colac Education Center include Monday, August 3rd,
policy meeting starting at 3 p.m.,
Tuesday, August 4th, business operations, finance, and HR,
starting at 5 p.m., and the teaching, learning,
equity, and people services committee meeting
is at 5.30 or immediately following.
I will say also Monday, August 3rd,
a notice will be going out that the board will be meeting
to continue discussions about referendum planning
at upon completion of the policy meeting
on Tuesday, August 3rd.
This concludes the announcements for tonight.
Thank you.
All right, our next agenda item is recognitions,
and we have recognitions of donations
to the district four program moves.
So tonight the Board of Education recognizes
the generosity of Dan DeRouce, is that correct?
Of Christofferson moving and storage,
and Yaney Rodriguez Garcia, a parent
for their donations of moving boxes
to support the district's relocation efforts.
After learning that several programs at Cunningham
would be moving, Christofferson moving and storage
donated 200 medium and 100 large boxes
to assist with re-clocating high school classrooms,
BLA staff, and moving programs to Merrill Elementary.
Likewise, when Ms. Rodriguez Garcia learned
that the even-start program needed boxes
for its move to Merrill Elementary,
she collected and donated as many boxes as she could to help.
Their generosity eased the burden of these transitions
and demonstrates the strength of our community.
The district is grateful for partners
like Christofferson moving and storage
and supportive families like Ms. Rodriguez Garcia,
whose kindness and willingness to help
make a meaningful difference.
Please join us in thanking them
for their outstanding support.
So thank you.
You want to say something?
Yeah, I'll go back to the microphone.
Is that on?
Yeah.
The Christofferson family has supported public
and private education in the state line area
for over 120 years.
2026 is the Christofferson moving family,
120th year in business in Belate.
We always welcome the opportunity to give back
when we can and we're glad we could help.
Thank you.
Again, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's it.
It means Ms. Rodriguez Garcia was not able to make it as planned
but she said her well wishes and thanks us
for her appreciation.
Thank you.
Next up we have public comment.
Do we have public comment this evening?
Yes, we do.
There were no e-mails but there are several in the room.
Okay.
And if you're ready for the first one,
we have Brad who will start us.
I think I'm supposed to read this thing here, right?
I hope this is the right one.
It says norms for public comment during board meetings.
Citizens are welcome to attend all open meetings of the Board
of Education.
Robert's Rules of Orders will be followed at all times.
Persons attending board meetings are expected to conduct
themselves in a respectful and courteous manner that models
appropriate behavior for our students.
Persons wishing to comment are expected to comply with the
following norms in order to maintain a respectful and
ordered meeting and to protect all persons including members of
the public, district employee and district students from
personal attacks or discussion of confidential matters in a
public forum.
Comments should be directed to the board members of the Board
of Education and not district employees.
Students or other members of the public in attendance at the
meeting.
Comments that attack any individual personally or professionally
or our derogatory or mean others will not be tolerated.
Personnel matters or concerns regarding specific district
personnel are not appropriate topics to be addressed during an
open meeting and should be handled in accordance with district
policy and procedures.
Concerns or questions regarding students will not be allowed.
Comments regarding another individual membership in a legally
protected class are strictly prohibited.
Response from the Board will be limited to clarifying inaccurate
information seeking additional information from the citizen
or acknowledging that the citizen has been understood.
The Board will not debate with the citizen and the Board may not
take action on an item raised during public comment that is not
on the meeting notice and agenda.
The Chair will interrupt and roll a citizen who violates any of
these norms out of order.
If ruled out of order by the Chair the person's opportunity to
address the Board will end immediately and the microphone will
be turned off.
A citizen who violates these norms may be restricted from
making public comments at future meetings.
Thank you for your participation and your courtesy.
Okay, first up we have Brad.
There you go.
All right.
What's up?
It's a red.
What's up?
All right, Brad.
I am a former graduate of Blit Memorial and Born and Raised in
Blit.
I have a few concerns about as being the head football coach at
the high school for the last five years of some of the cuts that
we're trying to make on sports.
Number one is for all of us is the safety of our students.
By cutting coaches and cutting levels we are increasing or
decreasing their safety.
Okay, so if I have a bunch of kids with less coaches they're
not getting as much attention from me so they're not going to be
as prepared in the sport.
Specific sports need a lot of different coaches.
I'm not sure if some people are aware but as football it's not
like I can just coach a whole team by myself.
I need several guys that are coordinators, specialty coaches.
I can't say a guy that you know you have to coach lineman but
also have to coach receivers and you have no idea what you're
doing.
It's hard enough as being here since 2013 with all the outside
directors working closely with them just trying to get coaches to
coach here in the first place.
We've had not big candidate pools, open positions and now if
we're going to cut salaries too, who's going to want to coach
here when you don't have enough assistance and you're not
really getting paid that much.
So we're really hurting the kids in that way because they're not
going to be prepared and our kids don't have the lectures as of
we play in the Southern Lakes Conference where they're getting
private training and they're doing year round travel league and
stuff like that.
So they're really counting on us to have it locked in tight and
having enough guys to coach them because they're behind the
able.
I mean I'm getting ninth graders that probably are playing at a
middle school level against kids that are probably at a senior
level and by the time they get to varsity those kids are ready to
play college football and my kids are just learning high school
football.
So we're not doing ourselves any favor by cutting sports in
that sense and I think it's a safety issue for our children
which is the main thing.
Not enough coaches, I know like soccer and volleyball, you're
going to be cutting kids 30 to 40 kids that aren't going to play.
Now if they don't get a play as a freshman are they going to
come back at a sophomore?
Probably not.
And so we have to look into that as well.
We might be saving 286,000 dollars but that's really only
equivalent to about 13 kids.
You know we get about 20,000 dollars per kid and I might be
off on that.
I might fluctuate between 15 to 22,000 per kid from federal and
local funds but that's only 13 to 15 kids.
You're going to lose hundreds of kids.
We're going to lose millions of dollars.
Plenty of parents I've talked to earlier talking about that have
younger kids are looking to relocate their kids now because
while I want to stay in a district where sports are important and
my kids love sports and they're going to go somewhere else.
They're going to go to Turner.
They're going to go to TLA.
They're going to go to Rockford.
They're going to go anywhere else but here.
And we're going to lose millions of dollars just by trying to
cut 286,000 dollars off of a budget this year.
I'm sorry that your two minutes are up.
Oh.
Three minutes are up.
Sorry.
All right.
Well I appreciate your time.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Next we have Connor.
Hello.
My name is Connor McClelland.
I'm a science teacher and a coach at BMHS.
I'm going into my sixth year at the high school and I'm here to
address and ask for reconsideration when it comes to the
cutting of the strength and conditioning addendums in the
proposed list of cuts.
Those addendums are new as of this last year.
That is something that Dan grads put into effect this past year.
But me personally I've been acting as a strength and conditioning
coach for the high school for the past five years.
When I got to the high school in 20, it would be fall of 21.
There really was no organized strength and conditioning in the
high school whatsoever outside of just PE during the normal school
day.
And there definitely wasn't any organized athletic strength
and conditioning for athletes.
And I don't know.
I don't have a perfect answer of how many addendums we need to
keep, how many we need to cut.
I'm just asking for reconsideration into having people
available and paid for their efforts in strength and conditioning.
I am the strength and conditioning coach that has been working
with football track and throughout the athletic department.
I'm the one that runs summer workouts at the high school
through the summer.
I run them all winter.
I coach football in the fall and I coach track in the spring.
But those addendums are incredibly important for myself to get
paid for the work I'm doing.
We're in the weight room after school from 3.45 to 5.30 every
night in the winter in the weight room in the summer for at least an
hour, hour and a half during the summer using that time to train
our athletes.
Strength and conditioning is incredibly important to high
school athletics for multiple reasons.
It helps us prepare athletes to compete their best on their
chosen field of competition and also helps prepare our athletes
that are looking to participate in college athletics for the
college athletic world.
And also just from a health and safety standpoint, it
significantly reduces our risk of injuries in football alone.
Training in a weight room for strength and conditioning can
reduce concussions significantly.
I'm not going to say a percentage because I don't know it off
the top of my head.
But having that opportunity helps tremendously increase our
safety.
Big example is what's called proprioception and
stability to move your body through space and confidently.
Training and strength and conditioning helps increase
proprioception.
It can reduce things like ACL tears, ankle rolls, things like that.
So having quality strength and conditioning at the high school
does increase the safety of our athletes on their chosen field
of competition.
So yeah, I lost my notes.
My phone turned off.
I'm usually somebody that kind of sits in the background.
I'm not used to talking in a public space like this.
So yes, I feel very strongly about the need of strength
and conditioning at the high school in some way, shape or form
outside of the school day because it helps keep kids involved
in their sports, keeps kids prepared for success in their
sports and helps most importantly keep them safe.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So the strength and conditioning was struck out of the
addendum matrix because it will no longer be under the addendum
matrix.
It is going to be time-carded and so it's a separate, totally
separate budget item.
So we appreciate all that you do.
And we're certainly not going to have our kids not have someone
there to supervise them.
Sorry for the confusion.
Okay.
So next in the room, we have Ty.
Yes, I'm Ty Earl.
I'm a coach in the district.
It's coach volleyball, coach soccer, girls basketball at the
high school as well as girls and boys basketball at the middle
school level.
And I'm just here to talk about the students that I see in our
community are often under-prepared versus the different
districts that we face.
And I don't think removing anything as far as sports for our
community and for our kids is a good thing.
I have spoken to several parents that have kind of asked
questions about the middle school football, about high school
sports.
And the end results of the conversations are, well, I'm
going to take my kid to this place or this district where we
don't need to lose more kids.
As a district, our population, our student population has already
decreased.
That decrease affects us teachers, coaches, teachers, teachers,
teachers, because if we don't have kids to teach, if we don't
have kids to coach, that takes away from our job security.
Also, another major point with the freshmen teams is that it
gives you a sense of purpose.
Students are allowed to come to school.
They know that to be in a sport, they have to be in class
on time.
They have to be in school.
They have to get the grades.
They are student leaders throughout the school.
If you have students that are kind of leaving middle school,
come to the high school, most of our kids are not going to be as
prepared as 11th grader, 12th grader their freshman year.
So my fear is that they will lose the edge that they have for the
sport.
Oh, I didn't make the team, so now I'm done playing.
We don't need to lose any athletes.
Especially for the girls basketball team.
Last year, we were struggling with numbers.
But with a lot of motivation going out in the community, going
out into the classrooms, talking to different students, that
number has almost tripled this summer alone.
Just getting out, letting kids know how you don't have to be
the best.
We just want you to come.
We want you to try.
Put your best foot forward.
It has built great community.
Great connections throughout with our girls program.
They have people that they now that they know that they can look
up to when they come to the high school.
We have our older girls kind of being mentors to some of the
younger students.
And like I said, it just feel like as a district, we should try to
put more resources into our kids and make sure that they are
prepared as other districts are.
We don't have a lot of youth programs.
We don't have a lot of youth programs around here.
So me, in my opinion, taking away freshman sports is not a
good idea.
Thank you.
Just to clarify, we're not taking away middle school
sports either.
Just the funding source has changed.
So it would be fun to 80.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next we have Melissa.
Good evening, Dr. Gordon and members of the Board of Education.
My name is Melissa Barbek.
I'm co-president of the Blight Education Association.
I'm here this evening to speak about the proposed changes to
the Addendum Matrix for coaches and activities.
While we understand the BEA is not privy to all conversations
regarding the budget and budget cuts, we can assure you we were
not the only one shocked to see the Addendum Matrix and drastic
changes to be made to be reviewed and voted on in a special board
meeting where there would be no public comment.
While we appreciate Board President Johnson's reconsideration
of action to be taken at the special board meeting as well as
adding it to the regular board meeting to have public comment
tonight.
Sorry, lost my spot.
We want to express our concern about the BEA having a seat at
the table when it comes to discussions regarding changes in
pay.
Many coaches are also BEA members.
The BEA has always been included any time a new salary
scheduler and a matrix has been created.
As a final thought on this subject, we would like to remind the
board that teachers and administrators have steps built
into their salary schedules based on the years of experience
and longevity pay to recognize commitment to the district.
This board just recently decided that this was important to
continue for longevity pay was to continue in the preliminary
budget that was just passed just a few weeks ago by using OPEB
funds.
How are our coaches different?
Just like teaching, they give countless hours to our students
before school, after school, evenings and weekends.
They should also be compensated for their years of experience
to our students not just receive the fixed rate amount.
We want to attract and retrain, attain great coaching staff for
our students just as we want to attract, attract and retain
great teachers.
As far as the cuts to elementary addendums, we are concerned
about programs potentially being cut.
MEO, student council, and just say no as well as intramurals,
teacher student skills they can use for a lifetime.
These programs help students meet new friends, learn leaders to
skills and serve our community and schools in various ways.
Intramurals also give students the opportunity to try new sports,
as well as honan skills they have already practiced.
Finally, noon supervision addendums being cut, sorry, as we see
noon supervision addendums being cut at the elementary and middle
school levels, we are wondering who will do this.
We know elementary students that students must be supervised
during recess.
What is the plan?
Maybe there is one, however we just want to make sure everything
is thought out before the year starts in just a few short weeks.
While we know we are trying to balance the budget is a very
difficult task.
We are concerned for our students and the opportunities they will
be missing out on.
Thank you for your time.
Next we have John.
How's it going?
I'm John Klobuchar, I'm from Volo, Wisconsin.
My family has been here a long time.
I've been here a long time since before.
Well, I can't even remember when I was born.
I'm a financial planner.
I look at things as like a return on investment.
I did some research before coming today.
Just to kind of talk about the return on investment in
investing in athletics.
A 10-year study in the state of Missouri that included high
schools showed that the average grade point average for non-athletes
was 2.6.
And the average grade point average for athletes was 3.2.
In another study that's a worldwide study that was done
again over 10 years showed that the average passing rates for
athletes was 77.1%.
And non-athletes was 49.24%.
So I just think that making any cuts to athletics, just being a
coach and seeing our kids, you know, a couple different people
have talked about just how unprepared some of our kids are
in just investing in our youth.
We started at a foundation called the Beloit Youth Basketball
Association and just kind of going off of what Coach Ty said,
just showing some of the fruits of that labor and some positives
in that investment as we went from having eight girls at the
finish of our season last year.
Now we've got 25 to 27 girls participating consistently in
athletics and empowering a group of young ladies that felt like
potentially they didn't have the opportunity to do that.
And so I just want to show that even in our district where our
median income is 33% lower than any other district in our
conference, that if you invest in it, it does show results.
And I can just tell you that, you know, the people that I,
the people that I see at the high school and the kids that are
there, we have probably some of the most athletic kids in the state
of Wisconsin having competed at a collegiate level, a high school
level at a very high level in athletics, just knowing that the
city of Beloit, we have some kids that are the most raw but
powerful athletes in the state of Wisconsin.
I think if we put investment, both in a dollar amount and in
man hours, you know, just we've seen the fruits of that already
and the sky's the limit for the school district in Beloit when
it comes to kids in our athletics.
So I just don't think that there's any good reason to cut stuff
to that.
I mean, and it's like small amounts too, you know,
addendums, we're talking, I made $2,400 bucks coach in last year
and I did 442 hours and that continues.
So I just don't know if that's necessarily, I made $4.4 an hour.
I don't know if that's necessarily where we need to be making cuts.
And I think there's a lot of people in the community that are willing to help
with that but I think you also have to make it so that people can get
paid for their help and paid for their service.
And again, I just can't emphasize enough how much natural talent
that we have in our community that isn't being taken advantage of right now.
Last but not least, we have Jane's.
Good evening, Dr. Gordon and members of the school board.
I come to speak to you tonight as co-president of the BEA,
but also as a teacher who's dedicated 23 years to this community
and a coach who's dedicated 18 years coaching boys golf and 16 years coaching boys hockey.
First, I'd like to thank board president Johnson for responding to our concerns
about the proposed changes to the addendums by adding the proposal to the agenda tonight
so we could talk about it after public comment.
I believe the special board meeting last night allowed for many open conversations
about our athletic department, coaches and addendum pay.
I think it was a great opportunity to get clarification for a lot of people
on a lot of issues related to those topics.
And I think everyone walked away with a better understanding of athletics and coaching.
I believe there are two main issues with the original proposal that we talked through last night.
First, the proposal made the broad decision to combine all freshmen and JV teams.
As discussed last night, I would argue that the administration and the board
should take a more precise approach and look through the numbers.
There are only a handful of teams at Blake Memorial that can support a freshman-only team.
We don't want to cut those teams.
Why cut those teams?
You're going to deny an opportunity to those students.
Take a more precise approach, look through the numbers,
and see where those teams are not supported by players, then decide to make those cuts.
While doing so, it is important to include a process to add a team back if numbers grow,
like I'm sure we all hope they do.
Secondly, I disagree with the proposal to move away from the current coaching pay matrix
based on years of experience to a single payment amount that doesn't take experience into account.
The proposed plan penalizes coaches who've dedicated years to coaching.
At Blake Memorial, because coaches at the top of the pay scale would take a pay cut of at least 20%.
We should want to encourage coaches to stay with the district, to build stability,
consistently, and a culture in our athletic programs.
Instead, this only incentivizes coaches to leave and coach somewhere else or leave coaching altogether.
Years of experience are already recognized for teachers and administrators.
They should be for coaches as well.
Again, I believe there are a lot of good discussions in our agreements on these concerns last night.
I hope the board allows Dr. Gordon and Ms. Pells the opportunity to examine the athletic department budget and processes
and let them come up with solutions to help with any budgetary concerns.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. We appreciate all the comments.
And there were no email comments tonight.
All right. Next up, we have Superintendent's report. Dr. Gordon.
All right. Good evening.
As you can see, there's been a bit of a change in the superintendent's seat.
Dr. Anderson says that he's officially retired, so we will have to stay tuned for an update to see if that, in fact, holds true.
Something tells me that he will be doing work in some school districts somewhere,
and I look forward to checking in with him and learning about his travel adventures.
I want to thank the Board of Education for welcoming me to the interim superintendent position.
It has been a pleasure meeting with the board members during one-on-one discussions
and hearing their viewpoints on the district and school community.
Collectively, we have already been very busy with continued work on the budget and necessary reductions,
discussions about district needs and goals and future planning.
I'm excited to collaborate and keep moving forward, even though we are in tough times financially.
And we have a lot of work ahead of us. Each member of the team has so much to contribute.
I am hopeful as a collaborative group we will be able to right-size the district
and to be the best for our students, staff, and the community.
Additionally, I have been meeting with community leaders,
and I look forward to continuing to collaborate with more community leaders and grow our partnerships.
Last week, we welcomed Dr. Ryan Stengel to the administration team
as the interim assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction.
Dr. Stengel joined the district in 2019 from Jamesville
and has led in both Assistant Principal and Principal Capacities at Converse and Frusin.
I am excited to have the opportunity to work with Dr. Stengel again
in his new leadership capacity, and I know he will bring great perspective and knowledge in his role.
You may have heard that some school districts are looking to limit technology for students.
We will be doing that here as well in the SDB.
The TLE team is working to solidify a plan to bring to the committee's next meeting.
As it stands, we will not be eliminating Chromebook use altogether,
but defining strict limitations for how and when technology should be used.
Students in grades K-8 will not be taking Chromebooks home,
and this should help keep some of our repair costs down as well.
Hiring has been ongoing this summer as per usual.
Today, we held interviews for the Frusin principal position.
The TLE team is preparing for the upcoming admin academy days,
as well as new hire orientation,
and the skyrocket and open literacy conversations have been going very well
between the Congress and guests and administrators,
and Michael from skyrocket and Sarah from open literacy.
Just last week, the district HR finance district administration
and BMHS leadership and interim athletic director,
so Emily and Emily, have started to meet weekly to discuss the budgets
for the athletics department and plan for the athletic season.
We continue to work through cabinet and the administration
with the board on potential budget considerations
as we prepare for the 2627 school year.
The new school year is quickly approaching,
and we have so much work ahead of us.
The work is tough, and much of it takes deep thought
and some difficult conversations lie ahead.
As we continue to push forward,
it is important to remember that we are all here for kids.
Our district, our kids, staff and community
deserve to be talked about with positivity even when we are faced with challenges.
We do have great things that go on here,
and we have some pretty darn amazing staff,
some really fantastic kids and families,
and a lot of really fantastic community support.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. We appreciate it.
So, next is policy report, and that's me.
So, the policy committee actually has met twice since the last full board meeting.
We met first on Monday, July 6th,
and we briefly reviewed the policies for field trips,
adding the specific timelines that was requested by the board at the first reading,
following the suggestions of administration.
This policy is on the consent agenda for final approval.
We reviewed the professional adult student boundaries policy,
and we did move it to first reading,
but that's the one that got removed because we got a whole bunch of stuff
from the lawyer about that one.
So, we're going to go back to that one.
We also made some changes to the policy about public participation at board meetings,
and the policy about fund balance,
and these two have been moved to a first reading tonight,
and these policies will be discussed later this evening.
Yesterday, Monday, July 20th, it was just yesterday.
We received an in-service from WASB regarding the best use of their policy resource guide,
and we will be discussing how to best use this material at future meetings.
We also heard from Principal Emily Pels about the cell phone policy,
and some suggestions from her team about how to retain our policy
to support what is being done at the high school
to curtail the use of, quote, personal electronic devices
because we have to take out the word cell phone by students,
because it's all of the electronic devices.
The policy has to be much broader than just cell phones.
We will be finalizing any changes to the electronic device policy at the next meeting.
At both meetings, we spend some time discussing some of the other policies
that we feel need review.
We're looking at compulsory school attendance and promotion retention.
These will be discussed at future meetings,
and our next meeting is Monday, August 3rd at 3 p.m.
So the next committee is the business operations and finance
and human resources committee, so that's you, Tom.
Thank you, Vice Chairman Foxx.
It's okay.
President, sorry.
My name is Tom Akins.
I'm chair of the business operations and finance and human resources committee meeting.
We met July 7th at 5 p.m.
We had a full attendance of our members who are Bill Johnson and Dan Chu for myself.
We went over the 26 monthly financials with Stephanie Elwood.
We didn't have, it was a fruitful discussion,
we didn't have too much to add or delete to it.
I know she's bringing it, and we moved it to the full board,
and she'll be sending that to everyone tonight.
We had a talk about property liability workers,
compensation and other business insurance renewals.
We also looked at that, asked our questions,
and that also is on the board tonight for approval.
There was a purchase approval from Skyward and extreme networks
to keep going using those things that we're currently using.
Stephanie told us to spend, they've been extremely good to work with,
and so we're just going to move that forward to the full board tonight.
There was also a purchase approval for Chromebooks,
and it turned into a larger conversation on where this district really wants to go
with Chromebooks versus texts, and if we do need to,
I mean, if we're going to buy, let's figure out our strategy first
on what we're going to do to the future,
and not just put a Band-Aid on something,
and we don't have the money to spend on things we're not going to use for a while.
But anyways, it was on the consent agenda tonight,
and I'm going to ask the Board Vice President to remove that from consent
so we can discuss this, and I would hope that this goes into further discussion,
and so we can strategize the admin and the board
on what we really want to do with this technology.
It's a big subject, so it'll take some thought,
and that's my report for tonight.
And we meet also on August 3rd, no, August 4th.
Sorry. Right? Okay. Thank you.
Okay, the next report would be the Teaching Learning Equity
and Public Services Committee. Chairman Ruiznot,
here this evening, is there anybody who was on the committee
who wants to make any comments about that meeting?
Or thanks, Vice President Box. I'd be happy to pop in if that's okay.
Can you hear me all right?
Yeah, I can hear you fine. Thank you.
Beautiful. I will be very brief.
I think Board President Johnson did a really nice job of alluding already
to what we discussed at the TLE Committee meeting last time,
which was the kind of the district-deployed continuous improvement piece,
and I really just wanted to thank Eric Weir and the CBVers
and their team for providing such a deeply comprehensive overview
of where we have been, where we are, and where we're going.
And, you know, certainly there's a lot more to come,
but I would encourage folks to check out.
It's like a 22-page slide.
And I'm trying to remember what date that was.
I think it was July 7th.
And so TLE Committee will also be meeting on August 4th next.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Board Member Miller, appreciate it.
Okay.
So we are to section six, board action and discussion items.
The first thing is the 2627 budget update with Ms. Elwood
is to provide an update to the school board and community
on our 2627 preliminary budget efforts to date.
So Ms. Elwood.
Good evening.
Thank you.
So I did want to just give the board a brief update of where we're at
with the current budget for 2627.
The administration had been working very hard to implement all
of the changes that were approved at the end of June's board,
or the board meeting at the end of June.
And then we also added a few additional adjustments that we did
to discretionary budgets.
We did some changes to budgets for the schools.
Some added in the additional revenue of the possible sale of
the right building.
Also adjusted a few soft revenues.
I like to call them like interest and some of those.
School fees.
Some of the smaller ones.
And then we also did make some adjustments to facilities budget
to include the increase in utilities within the budget.
So not increasing the total overall budget,
which will have an effect on maintenance throughout the year.
Not being able to do all the,
possibly some of the things that break down and things will have
to wait until we can do those repairs.
And some of the other adjustments were we were able to do that
and some of the other adjustments were we were able to keep our
insurance rates lower this year.
Our insurance renewal, as you'll see later in the meeting,
did come in quite favorably.
After putting all of that together,
we are about, still about about $400,000 short.
And this however does not include any of the proposed adjustments
to addendums or to any other staffing adjustments that we had
talked about that were not voted on yet.
Did any board members have any questions about?
You have to call on people.
Oh, sorry.
Do you have any things to look at?
Yeah.
Thank you, Stephanie.
One thing as a new person to this board,
it was really interesting to learn the process you all went through
last year and you authorized use of reserve funds,
but then through diligent budget management from the team,
we didn't need to use any of those during that year.
So I think that's something we should point out to the public again,
that the board made good decisions last year,
had a reserve fund and then we didn't need to use reserve funds.
So that's great.
My specific question is, we voted to put on the market the Colac Education Center,
and of course we haven't put that on the market yet,
but this wouldn't have any dollars.
Your current budget thing that we're looking at here doesn't assume any sale
of Colac at this point, right?
That is correct.
I did not include any sales of any equipment or buildings like the Colac building
that were not more confident that they would have you during that fiscal areas.
Right.
So of course, it's one time money and we understand what that means
and why we need to do it.
That's why the board had the consensus to do to market the Colac Center.
But if we were able to close that within this fiscal year,
we obviously would have a surplus which would help us in the decisions
we're going to need in the future.
Thank you.
Ms. Johnson.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I just wanted to say thank you to the executive director,
who has been on the board for three months,
and I know it's a lot of partners,
but she's already talked on the front.
And again, people like Daniel said,
but he's hired and the whole design of the public person has been phenomenal.
There are not many districts in the school.
They call districts that say that they actually are coming out aspect
and I've not been growing up a farce for that.
And again, I would like to repeat myself earlier
when I did a shout out to the memorial principal,
for looking toward ways to save money within the athletic department,
sometimes adjusting how we spend money,
raising words, and spending how we can use horse horses elsewhere.
If we spend less money on fuel to the sports event,
that gives us more money to be able to have more coaches,
and that it is important and it's also important that we all understand
and tell us within this effort.
Thank you so much.
Don't forget to put your hand down.
The attachments were attached in board docs for you to go through.
I don't know that we need to go through them individually tonight,
but certainly if board members or public has questions about a line item
that's in one of the documents,
would you reach out to the administration that can answer those questions?
Okay.
I just was looking at the building level budgets,
and I'm just appalled at the smallness of those numbers.
It's like people need to look at that because you're looking at it a whole year,
and I think it was like $20,000 for some of these buildings.
It's just like, you know, you have three, four hundred students,
and you get that pittance amount of money,
and I know we asked them to cut it a little bit more,
but that's, you know, it would be very difficult to try to run a building
with that kind of a budget outflow.
Okay, I see no other questions, so I guess we moved to the next agenda item,
which is the addendum discussion.
So let me just check here, see if I have anything I need to do.
Okay, so the purpose is to present the 2627 addendum matrix for board approval.
We had some discussions last night, so that's going to impact on where we go tonight.
So Ms. Almondaris is going to be coming to the front to explain what she's got for the addendum matrix.
We did go through that last night, had productive conversation about what that would look like
with focus on the fall first, and maintaining what we could maintain,
and really analyzing what our sports needs are and how many coaches are needed for each team,
and in collaborating in our now weekly meetings with the athletic department,
finance department, and administration, and the high school administration,
I think we'll be able to streamline things and make much better sense of what we need to do with budget,
and I will turn it over to Ms. Almondaris, thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Gordon.
I want to start with that, which seems to have been misconstrued
in cost, angst unnecessarily, and the addendum matrix.
There are notes next to the last entry for noon supervision that says
we'll be paid hourly, separate budget from addendums, so it does not mean that nobody is going to supervise our kids
while they're at recess, et cetera, that would have been reckless,
and the same thing is true for strength and conditioning.
This was the first year that we put that on the addendum and its budget,
but it was determined that it would be easier since it was split amongst a couple of individuals,
depending on the season, that that would be a time-carded activity or function as well.
Although they're struck through, it's because we're moving them from the addendum matrix.
Not because those functions are no longer being met.
The other thing that came up today that I wanted to point out is the student clubs,
and upon reviewing last year the 2526 addendums that were issued at the building level,
these were the ones that were not issued to anyone for the majority of the schools.
That's why they're being recommended.
Certainly if these were thriving and fully interested clubs,
then we would not be recommending them.
So that's where this recommendation is coming from.
I do want to preface by saying that there's not a single one of us in this room
or in this community that wants to see anything taken from our students.
However, this document was supposed to be the beginning of a much larger conversation,
and I think that we've accomplished that.
I'll wait, not in the order in which we would have desired it.
The rush about this comes about because we do have false boards,
and we do have coaches and athletes that will be starting their training here in about another two weeks.
And so it was important that we at least present the board with some recommended cuts
and start the conversation as to where what is the appetite of the board.
Athletics has been one of the departments that has not been visited in the past couple of years
as we have looked at budgetary cuts, both in the classrooms, in the buildings,
and administratively here at Keck.
And so back in March, I believe it was, we did have a preliminary discussion
about some changes that we could be looking at making within the addendum matrix
and the athletics department budget.
We're also not proposing the reduction of freshmen access to athletics.
Unfortunately, one of the outcomes of removing a classification of team
is that you have that fewer students who can actively participate in that sport.
However, I want to dispel that it means that our ninth graders will not be able to participate in athletics at the high school.
That is not what this recommendation was designed to be.
We did have conversation last night about the freshmen or JV2 and the other JV team as well as the Varsity teams.
And there are some that absolutely we had to revisit.
So you'll see some edits from what was originally uploaded for last night's meeting
versus what's uploaded for tonight.
I did make the changes in the fall sports, and we looked at fall for soccer as well as volleyball
in making sure that we kept three teams.
And so the freshmen and JV combination was removed from those.
And then we also not reflected in the change, but for winter we'll also be disjoining the freshmen and JV
so that we can have freshmen separate for basketball, boys basketball in the winter.
Our goal is to continue working.
I did set up a committee, not sure what we want to call it, but an interdepartmental team.
That includes Dr. Gordon and Dr. Stengel as well as Miss Elwood.
Mrs. Emily Pels, our new athletic secretary Paula Hunt, to come together, and of course our interim AD, Miss Emily Fuentes,
so that we can together try to work on a lot of different things that as interdepartmentally have come up in the past
that we need to organizationally work and strive to do better.
And again, we're only going to get as better as we put our heads together.
And part of this discussion will include the addendums.
We did get a lot of feedback from some of the coaches letting us know how enrollment driven.
So we are getting the last two years of participation by our students in each sport, maybe instead of reducing the number of offerings,
removing an assistant coach with or less participants.
So there's a lot of work to be done, but what I would like to see the board entertain tonight is a focus on the fall athletics.
So that whatever direction we go with winter or spring, that we at least can communicate to our coaches and our students what they're trying out for,
who's getting an addendum, and what the value of that addendum will be for coaches,
because they are starting rather quickly, and if that buys the board some additional time to entertain the winter and spring,
I would really appreciate that consideration.
Comments, questions?
Again?
Good evening.
I just wanted to thank Ms. Almondaris for her comments.
And I just really appreciated the nature of how our special meeting went yesterday.
I thought the input that was given was invaluable.
And I echo board President Johnson's gratitude for Ms. Pels and Ms. Luntase in their work.
I am excited to move forward with the recommendations that I just want to clarify that I understand them correctly.
It's my understanding that we would like to move forward with making the necessary changes to consolidate coaching positions
while for the time being leaving the matrix and addendum pay intact before further discussion,
you know, for further discussion at a later time, which is what I think I just heard Ms. Almondaris say,
as well as maintaining, and again, thank you again to DD for seeing this,
but just as well as maintaining girls, freshmen, volleyball, boys,
freshmen, basketball, and boys, freshmen, soccer teams.
Is that correct?
That is my recollection from our meeting last night.
Okay, that is perfect.
And again, just so much gratitude to everybody involved.
So I don't want to make a motion because I'm sure other people have thoughts and comments.
So I'll let that go.
Thank you so much.
Ms. Baxter.
Acknowledging my comment.
Just to clarify, because I know we're saying a lot of things and I know it's straight in your mind,
DD, but we talked a lot about fall sports and the need to get that going.
So we kind of pivoted and said, okay, let's just talk about fall sports so we can get that out and then talk about winter and spring.
So I don't know if you're looking for a motion to develop the whole thing and then go back and revisit spring and fall or spring and winter.
Or do we just want to do fall?
I would love to thank you.
Go ahead.
My preference would be that the board approve the recommendation for fall sports and then make the exclusions at that point.
So basically would be approving the fall sports with the combined coaching and keeping the matrix and not a fixed rate except for the volleyball and the soccer, which are the only ones that are fall.
I think that's a wonderful motion, but I would like in that motion and direction from you and Dr. Gordon and staff Emily F and Emily P.
You know, when is that next?
What's our strategy for when that would be to look at winter and spring?
We've already started the work of getting the rosters.
I am including it in the agenda.
We have a weekly meeting that I referenced before where we will make this a priority and just start gauging the decision making based on that.
What we can do is provide the board with an update, but with the goal of not going to two weeks before the winter, so it starts to bring it to you.
Yeah.
Yes.
That's what I'm looking for.
Like a date.
Someone like, I don't know, September or whatever.
Ideally, I don't because it's not just solely on my.
Right.
I will consult with the rest of the team and I can gladly update the board with when we could come back with a new proposal.
Okay, I'm very happy with that. Thank you.
Thank you.
Bill.
Yeah, looking at the girl's swimming.
She told us last night that she only has one assistant and they're still two here.
We did not make all the edits last night.
We only made the three two of which are fall and one of which is for winter, which is a boys basketball.
So if we reduce, if we don't have a need for the additional coaches, we simply don't expense that money.
But again, it was not what was if the board wants to make that recommendation, we can move with that.
But those were not the three sports that I was tasked with updating. I apologize.
Oh, thank you.
Q just said that we had to have as many people. So thank you.
I have a question.
Okay, go ahead, Dan.
So the.
Can you repeat what we are doing tonight?
I know we're not doing the matrix changes.
So I understand that we're so that the addendums will be as they exist today for the fall and going forward.
That's the board. So we're not making changes to the pay.
That's I mean, we haven't done it yet, but that's a recommendation.
But tell me the three things we're doing, the sports we're doing.
So those would be the fall soccer and the fall volleyball.
And then the other one is a winter, which is the basketball, but we're not worried about that.
So it's just all of the fall, which is what is on the attachment. So all of the fall athletics as proposed.
But just to be clear, the thing that came out suggested in soccer's case, they have they have a varsity JV1 and JV2.
We sometimes call JV2 freshmen, but it's made up mostly of ninth graders, but not all ninth graders.
We are not eliminating those are what you're saying.
The ones you just mentioned were not eliminating. So the other ones we are eliminating.
So can you go through the fall sports that we are eliminating the JV2 programs?
Sure thing. So for fall, we have cross country varsity.
We're not eliminating anything there. So we're keeping the head coach and the assistant coach football.
We are eliminating the freshmen.
Two sections, the varsity, the freshman and junior varsity.
The freshman and junior varsity head coach and the freshman and junior varsity assistant coach will be replacing the freshman head coach and freshman assistant coach.
So those are getting combined.
Also in the fall, we have the golf varsity head coach for girls.
And we are eliminating the golf varsity assistant coach for girls.
Okay.
So just to get consensus, Carol, I'm not comfortable with eliminating the football positions as we talked about safety tonight.
So when we get to that, or maybe others have the same concern, that would be something I'd want to not to do.
And maybe somebody can clarify that for me.
My understanding was that there really were only three sports that had enough kids to really do a quote unquote freshman sports.
And football actually was not one of them.
So do they have, do they fill all those positions?
That was the other thing that was confusing is that just because the position is listed on the matrix doesn't mean it's filled.
So could you clarify that?
So we currently have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, different football, football, coaching positions across JV2, one, and varsity.
And so we're reducing that two by two.
And do you know, the last time I looked, there was about 54 students, so that that should be an efficient enough number to cover 54 students.
Yes?
I would assume so, yes.
I'm not comfortable assuming anything when it comes to the sport that you bang your heads against each other.
I'm sorry.
I want to take the advice of the football coach who was here and said safety was a concern.
So it's a couple grand.
I don't know if we want to fight over it or figure it out.
Bill, go ahead.
The 54 students is two teams, so correct?
I don't know how they're spread out.
I don't have the roster for this year, so I don't know how those 54 students.
Emily, Ms. Pels, do you happen to know?
I just, I don't know how many students are typically on the JV team.
So I would have to, I would have to fight.
I don't have to look into that.
Yeah.
To determine how.
Okay.
So there is no freshman team, and that's where the reduction is coming from.
I don't have the JV and the varsity teams, but they have nine coaches.
There's nine originally, and we're reducing two in this proposal.
And the JV plays games, correct?
They're not just there, so you're going to have four and three or five and two.
And
It's an odd number currently, so I'm not really sure how we came up.
I believe we have three per team, three coaches per team.
Thank you.
And then you have a head coach beside that.
And then you have a head coach beside that.
Okay, my recommendation would be to leave the, you know, what we want to do is we want to not touch the salary money.
So we would leave the, you know, what we want to do is we want to not touch the salary matrix.
So we would leave that intact for the fall sports, for sure.
And leave it up to the athletic department and these groups that are working to determine how many coaches are needed and where they're needed.
And their pay would come off of the matrix as it's designed.
That would be what I would think.
Tom?
Well, listening to this, again, we're all kind of, because nobody's here.
Well, I know Emily's here. Emily's here.
You know, going through teams, defense, offense, head, that's four.
So four times, two teams is eight.
So a compromise might be cut one, so we have two teams with four coaches per.
Well, we don't have that girls swimming and put that as a ninth one.
I mean, pay that code.
Megan, I saw a hand and now I don't.
Did you have a further comment?
Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I didn't want to.
I want to be at the conversation too much, but, you know, board vice president.
Fox, like, I agree with what you just said, like, I don't know how we would phrase that in the motion to leave.
Leave the decisions regarding like.
The safety and coaching positions.
Like, I don't think that the motion that they're asking is for is one where we can leave some gray area.
So I guess really my question is more for the board.
I agree with Mr. Shoeff and wanting to make sure that we have all staff needed to ensure safety for our students, especially with football, kind of type stuff.
I guess I'm kind of curious and my question again is to my colleagues, like.
What would that motion look like in a way that respects what we've kind of set forth with, you know, budget concerns, but also what we.
What we're looking for the administration to do so they have clarity from us.
That's a good question. I'm not sure we have an answer.
Well, and so I mean, could we like, could we make a motion to approve the recommendations of the administration, which, you know, which, again, to my understanding, include like those other freshmen teams being maintained.
The coaching reductions that we discussed being reduced.
Kind of that everybody seemed on the same page about last night.
With the understanding that if there needs to be additions or subtractions based on, you know, ongoing discussions with coaches, but they could bring those back to the board or is that too nebulous.
Like, is that unhelpful to the administration if we make a motion like that is what I want to know.
I think the board needs to approve the matrix, right? That's what our charge was.
And again, whoever is on the matrix is up to the administration and the athletic department to decide because there's an awful lot of positions that were on the matrix that weren't filled to begin with, right?
And what you need to move forward is the matrix because you need to know what to pay these people.
And you guys, and the athletic department, the administration should be the ones that are figuring out how many coaches that we can afford within the amount of money that we have and have to make it work.
That's your job.
Well, no, and I think that makes a lot of sense.
So I'd be happy to make a motion to approve the matrix and the recommendations of the administration as presented, but I don't want to do that.
And until I hear from Mr. Shoe for others, if that's truly in the spirit of what we want based on the discussion we just had.
Dan.
One more clarifying question before we get to emotion.
On the elementary school.
I don't know if this is a question for Dr. Gordon or for others that know this for the student clubs.
You know, is DECA really not an active club anymore at Blue Memorial?
It's not?
No.
Okay.
And then, and then MEO is though, isn't it?
Okay.
And so we're keeping it at middle school and, and BMAHS, but we're not, I know this doesn't eliminate the club.
We're talking about the addendum for staff that become the activity, whatever the right name for that is, advisor.
But is there really no MEO at our elementary schools that needs advisors?
So it's been very difficult to fill that as an elementary position.
So the elementary schools do have, I can't even see them on here, but I know they're there, to principal choice addendums.
So if we were able to find somebody to do the MEO club, that's where we've got the money to pay for that was with the principal choice.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
And in some cases, we had a kind of a combined student council MEO, like more of a student leadership type situation too.
It's just kind of how we were able to find the staffing to execute the club.
Yep.
Okay.
All right.
So then, Vice President Fox, you turned to me when Megan asked a question and now we've sort of lost the question.
I'll tell you where I'm comfortable.
I'm, you know that generally I do like to approve the administration recommendations.
I appreciate the conversation we've had last, we had last night tonight and that we're, you know, not going to change the matrix.
We're going to keep the longevity parts of the matrix across the board.
I'm comfortable with adding back into things.
I just think we should give the, give Dr. Pels and, and the interim AD and the football coach the ability to keep those two if they need them for safety.
So whatever we heard that tonight, so I don't want to ignore that.
So if someone wants to come back at our next meeting and says, Oh, turns out this how many kids we have and we can, we don't need them, we can put it in, you know, we can delete it later or not use it.
I just aren't, I'm not comfortable having a board motion that crosses those out tonight.
Do you?
Thanks, Vice President.
I am concerned with safety.
I'm concerned with the safety of each and every one of our students.
Absolutely.
We are all concerned about safety.
Because of the last year of the year before, when the agenda matrix came forward, it was a concern.
And I actually look into the statistics.
Tia.
Yeah.
You're putting up.
It's very hard to.
We should actually be putting more coaches into soccer and football, but safety is actually a concern for the administration, but that the administrators do their job.
Okay.
So we want to let the administrators do their job.
Okay.
So we do need some sort of motion to move forward here.
I'll move that we move the, the, the.
Patrick forward.
As presented by myself.
Elmond Harris and the admin team.
And that's my motion.
Is that duty?
Is that, does that cover everything then?
To clarify, are you moving to approve the entirety of the agenda matrix?
Well, that's, I want to get back to you.
I don't want to start Nick.
You know, do we just do the fall sports in the matrix?
If the board feels that they need additional time for us to do some additional research and make some additional recommendations or remove.
We don't mind revisiting and bringing back the winter and spring version.
My priority is fall.
I don't want the board to rush into a decision over the entire matrix unless you're ready to.
You know, and a concern of that is, you know, what our student enrollment is going to look like in the fall and the interest in these sports.
I mean, it's granted we'll have X amount of kids in it because there's always, but you know, when you, you'll know, you have a better headline enrollment in the fall.
For spring and winter.
Plus you'll be able to do your sharpen your pencil, whatever you want to do.
So yes, okay, the motion then would be to approve the matrix for all fall sports as presented tonight.
Okay, I need a clarification.
With the, with the matrix, not the fixed rate.
With the matrix, not the fixed rate.
Sorry.
Thank you.
Do we have a second?
Okay, but we didn't get a second.
Somebody read that the motion.
So that I know what it is.
The motion would say your motion again, Tom.
Well, Donna, do you have it down?
What I captured was move approval of the addendum matrix for all fall sports on the 26, 27 school year.
Matrix as presented by the administrative team.
For the, the.
The matrix in its entirety and not only the fixed rate.
Correct.
So there's a second.
Say again, Megan.
Sorry.
The timing on this is a little odd.
Before there's a second, I'm just wondering, Mr. Hankins, I agree with your motion to approve the fall position.
I know that there were many people who were very concerned about the freshman boys basketball position being maintained.
And I believe that falls into the category for winter.
Is that something that we'd like to roll into the motion since that's what we discussed yesterday?
The concern was more about football.
Yeah.
And if we start taking things out, it's going to be a long night and pinpoint different sports that not are in that are not in fall sports.
According to this.
No, I understand.
I just want to say, like, what were the three positions that was girls.
Oh, I'm going to forget to tell us the girls, volleyball, the boys, soccer, and then the boys basketball.
So I just since those were the three ones together.
I just wanted to throw that in there before there was a second in case you wanted to consider making that part of the motion.
And if not, that's totally fine.
May I?
Yes.
Please.
So I already made that change board member Miller for the winter basketball boys to maintain the three teams.
And so that will be presented as is when we come back with the winter and spring.
I don't know if that appeases and just keeping just a fall on the table for now.
I don't know if that's easier.
You know, that's totally fine. And I think we just want to also clarify before there's a second.
The difference between the salary matrix and that list of addendums.
So it sounds to me like this almond era is like it sounds to me like you have already done this great job revising these things.
And so maybe like we just want to reflect in the motion that we want to approve.
The fall for its matrix and list of addendums as presented.
Does that make sense.
As presented would have the fixed rate.
Then okay.
So should we make a motion then to approve the current matrix for the fall sports.
And the list of addendums.
What like does that would does that encompass those changes or I guess I would love to hear from you and the administrative team.
How you would like us to phrase that in a way that makes them based on what we discussed yesterday.
My recommendation would be to move approval of the fall athletic addendums.
Based on the tiered matrix and with the recommended reductions.
Okay, so that thank you so much.
I really appreciate that and I would be comfortable supporting that, but I just want to check back with Tom because it was his original motion.
Point of clarification when Bill has his hand up to.
So we will be reducing the football coaches from nine to seven.
Unless the motion excludes football.
Yes.
Point of clarification.
What about the what about the stuff at the bottom all the clubs and chairs and activities.
We would.
The board obviously wants to go to a.
Longevity matrix keep that in place.
We would approve all that as well.
I didn't hear.
Any big complaints about things are being crossed out.
Did I.
Did we.
No, I don't.
Again, I would.
And maybe maybe we need to toss this to Leah.
I would think we need to approve the addendum matrix with the positions that are on there, all of the positions that are on there.
And the administrative team would be the ones that are responsible for deciding which of these positions are filled within the constructs of the budget constraints.
Okay.
So.
Can I make a motion?
I'm running the meeting.
Well, I think I have to withdraw my motion.
It was never seconded.
Right.
There's your motion.
I was never seconded.
So if you would like to make motion.
Okay.
So I would like to make a motion that the board approve the.
The matrix with the.
Salary differentiation.
I don't know how else to say it.
And for the entire matrix and the administration would be tasks with.
Providing the proper coaches and other positions within the budget constraints.
So that I understand when I take it back.
So the.
Addendum matrix as it existed for 2526 were keeping.
Correct.
No changes.
Okay.
That's easy.
Yeah.
But then you guys have to decide.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
That's easy.
Yeah.
But then you guys have to decide.
Okay.
Okay.
That's easy.
Yeah.
But then you guys have to decide which, which is appropriate within the budget constraints.
You have, you have an athletic budget and you don't dare go over.
But we haven't passed it yet either.
Vice President Fox, can you repeat the motion?
Can I?
I'm not sure I can.
But with the board approved the.
The matrix as presented with the.
Now presented the matrix with the budget consideration, the yearly.
I don't know how to describe it.
The salary differentiation.
Thank you.
And we will leave it to the administration to decide which positions are necessary to fill.
And then they need to stay within their budget constraints.
So we're.
We're doing all sports and not just a fall.
We have to trust our administration to do what we're asking them to do, which is to
stay within the budget that we gave them for the for the athletic department.
And we never talked about cutting any of these other positions ever.
Correct.
Our focus has been on sports.
Correct.
MEO was discussed briefly.
Yeah.
Okay.
Any, any further discussion?
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Motion carries.
Motion carries.
Yay.
Okay.
Back to you, Leah.
We just bounced it back to you guys.
But you have a you have a matrix.
There we go.
Okay.
Next on the agenda is the policy 187 public participation at board meetings.
It's a first reading.
We did make a few changes.
To this policy, the main change is that we wanted to change the reading of all of the
emails that come on a particular topic.
And I'm trying to find that part.
But so basically we would keep that email open so that people can email through the public
comment.
All of that would be forwarded to the board.
And the board secretary would summarize at the board meeting what emails were received,
what topics they were about.
And so and but all the board members would be able to read them and know what was said
in them.
And they would be received before the board meeting.
So that was the main change.
Any comments from my committee?
No, just thanks for the good discussion in the committee.
We talked about this.
And I think as a new board member, we've really been we really read those emails that come
in.
So that's the emails that come into the board and will come in through public comment or
come directly to us.
They do get read by board members.
And so I think it would be helpful if we were to help us formulate our opinion and listen
to our constituents.
So thank you and keep those coming.
They just won't be read out loud at the meeting.
Thank you.
If if this passes the board.
So yeah, my our understanding was that the emails being read was part of a COVID initiative
and that it's really no longer necessary.
So Tom, you had a question?
Just reading the three minute and yielding time in the when the original that person has
to be here and I don't know if that's clearly stated in the revised the green part.
If you're yielding tag from someone, I don't see that that the yielded person that presently
they have to be here to yield that time to it.
I don't know if that's captured.
And that's exactly why we do this first reading.
So yeah, thank you.
That's a good catch.
So you wanted to say that if they're yielding time, they need to be attending at the meeting?
Tom, the intent when we discussed this was that however each person must complete a public
comment card.
I see that.
And so that's really what that intent is.
But we can tighten that up when our committee to make it clear for a second reading.
Any other comments?
Okay.
Help me with procedure.
Do we if it's a first reading, do we need a motion to move it to second reading or do we just move on?
My understanding is we do not need a motion and we take consideration.
It'll and it'll when it comes up next time.
Well, it'll go back to our committee and we can make a change.
You can go up for second reading.
And then of course in people will be able to make their own public comments on it because
it would come up at a regular board meeting.
Okay.
All right.
So then we move on to the next agenda item, which is the fund balance.
I have to pull that one up.
We made some minor changes to that one as well.
Stephanie, would you mind?
Thank you.
So we did make some minor changes to the policy.
A few wording changes just to clarify what the actual definition of the fund balance should be.
And reducing the percentage required as recommended by our audit firm.
Right.
So we changed a range from 14 to 25 to 15.
And then we changed with a goal of at least 8%.
So those were the and then any amount.
There was a 14% any amount under 8% of the fund balance was another is another part.
We just sort of changed the percentages.
Yeah.
And the percentages don't have any effect on operations per se.
It does give the board a little bit more leeway in what kind of decisions you're going to make it year end.
And the goal of fund balance is to help prevent the need for short term borrowing.
No, the district does have a fairly low fund balance currently and has been doing some short term borrowing in the years that I've been here.
However, we have been reducing those short term borrowings as we've been going along as our percentage has been increasing slightly.
But we're right around that.
I think it's 9% right now, which has been pretty reasonable in my opinion.
And we are looking at getting a little bit better with our with our fund balance as our expenditures are going down.
That percentage will creep up because and we haven't made any changes to our fund balance.
We've made a slight change last year, but nothing says substantial.
Tom.
Yeah, I kind of push for this because I remember the last two years when the audit comes and.
I don't present her ding das or told us, you know, this is this is a policy or not keeping and she notices it.
So I thought it was prudent that we this is a quick, I mean, easy fix.
You know, it's just that 18% is almost unattainable at this point.
But so we get down to at least something that's attainable and reachable and we can stay there.
Thank you.
And as long as did you check with our short term borrowings, if they're okay with that.
The fund or the policy itself by violating that policy.
Yeah.
You're right.
It does.
It looks negatively on us and we're violating the policy by not having our fund balance.
Correct.
That percentage.
So by lowering the policy that not we are would be meeting the policy.
It'll make us look a little better.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yes.
Okay.
So we can take that one to a second reading for the next.
Next time.
Up next is the consent agenda.
There's no separate discussion unless the board member requests an item to be removed.
Is there any items that need to be removed from the consent agenda before we proceed.
Tom.
Yes.
I would like to remove for discussion seven.
D.
D as in dog.
Any other items that need to be removed from the consent agenda?
Okay.
I need a motion for approval of the consent agenda.
So moved.
Second.
All in favor.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Any opposed?
Motion carries.
Motion carries.
Okay.
So then we move to item seven D purchase approval for Chromebooks and carts.
Tom.
Oh, yes.
You know, this discussion triggers a bigger discussion and before we get into buying Chromebooks
and we've we've all seen the report on how many Chromebooks are actually in the district.
And I know that our agreement with skyrocket is to have some and we I know we change policy
on taking some home before, you know, I think I just think it's a prelude into discussing
a longer discussion upon, you know, the use of, you know, screens versus reading a text.
And I know it's a long discussion and everyone's, you hear it all over the country now.
It's, you know, getting away from the screens and I don't want to turn around and be negligent
of that and just say, okay, we're going to approve money that is very precious to us
and buy some of Chromebooks.
When the, you know, on the other hand, I know I administered an administration and Lee has
just said it, you know, about moving off of that.
So I just didn't, I just wanted to make a, I wanted to bring it to the board so it can
be a bigger discussion about it and that we could, you know, if we approve the purchase
of these Chromebooks with a caveat that, you know, we get a strategy involved on how to
proceed forward without buying more.
Thank you.
That's, you know, that's, that's my request.
I just wanted to bring it to the board and with, so there'd be much more discussion about
it.
Thank you.
Any other comments?
Just real quick, Tom, I appreciate you, you bring this up and I know you've been involved
in this conversation longer than Bill and I have been on the board.
So it's good to have context.
And you know, I would love to hear Dr. Gordon's perspective on things and see where we can
be.
I do know that there's some, we heard at committee that there's some funding that could be used.
What's our, the federal funding that is sort of used to lose it, that we could use to
buy these windows echo away?
We definitely have that.
Sorry, Stephanie.
I should give you a microphone over there.
Yeah, we need to put a microphone over there.
So the funding is Title I funding and we haven't spent enough of our Title I funding
over the last couple of years.
And so the limit to spend those funds is September of 26th.
And at the college there's funding that we got that was like the dollars have to be
out the door.
I mean, so you have to have transferred the money to the vendor by, what was that that
you just gave up?
September 30th of 2020.
Okay.
So reasonably the board would have to, what's our real, real deadline on to buy these with
those funds, you think?
Well, the district went to RFP, so we did a request for proposals.
And I believe that the vendors are only keeping those quotes, yeah, open for 30 days.
So we're kind of stretching the limit here with when we can keep them accountable for
the dollar or for the prices that they've given us.
So as we're talking about the Chromebook purchases too, I want to remind the board that, yes,
the district has a little over 8,000 Chromebooks on hand.
However, 7,217 of those Chromebooks were purchased in 2021.
And I don't know how long you guys keep your computers at home, but a Chromebook that's
six years old is six years old.
They're out of warranty and they are breaking down.
And how much was that we purchasing here again?
I believe it's 720.
All right, thank you.
Any other discussion?
Yeah.
I would like administration's input into this balancing act we're doing with buying them
and then moving off of them.
720 sounds like a lot.
And I hear what you're saying, Stephanie, and I appreciate the input.
Do you remember the cost, remember back we had it open and we were going to buy them
when Wayne Dr. Anderson was here and we had, because they were prices were going up in
the window.
Do you remember what the prices were at that time?
I don't have that in front of me, but I do want to make a comment about that because
yep.
So we had looked at where we came in with the prices for this go around with the RFPs and
the prices I think are just a little bit higher than they were before.
However, the item that we're buying is of less quality.
It's a different manufacturer of the Chromebooks this time around too.
So every time you look at Chromebooks, you know, you've got many different manufacturers
of them.
So the make up of them is different, so the price is very quite a bit.
But the specs of these Chromebooks are very similar to the Chromebooks from before, but
they are different manufacturers, so they're a little bit more but not much.
Well just my comment as I've stated all along, I think it's a bigger discussion and I don't
know.
I mean I want to hear from Dr. Gordon and Ryan also, the input on this balancing act
we're trying to do and if we have a month and we could do it in August, can we use that
month to at least get a strategy, you know, you know, that doesn't have to be a specific
strategy like this is where we're going, blah, blah, blah.
But if we buy 750 Chromebooks, where are they going, and how are we going to ease into, and
how are we going to ease into texts, I mean, what's the plan?
We're all saying it, but nobody has a game plan and before we go out and buy 750 times
probably close to 500 between 350 and 500, if I remember my numbers right before, I mean
that's a lot of dough and I just, you know, I'm not criticizing anything, I'm just thinking
it needs further discussion amongst admin and debauf team or, you know, the board and
we could bring it back in August in the committee and then move it forward in the middle of
August for purchase, if that's the way it's going to go.
That's my recommendation.
If I could just jump in here before that.
When I'm talking the timeline for the month, we started this process way back in June to
bring to the board in July so that we could have that month from June until the mid-July
board meeting to make those decisions.
I would hope that we'll have to go back to the manufacturers if we don't decide to purchase
these tonight and ask them to keep those prices.
Here's my, we actually kind of talked about that, the technology when we had the referendum
discussion last night and it's going to take some work and some challenges and some figuring
things out to move back to regular curriculum.
We're starting with the little kids but I don't know that these Chromebooks are really
intended much for the, you know, for the really little kids anyway and we need them.
We need them for the sky rocket which we approved.
We need them for assessments which the state mandates so, you know, whether we put it off
another month or not, we're going to need to buy them so I don't know why we wouldn't
just buy them now because we're not going to be able to wean totally off technology
probably ever but we do need to sit down and have a really strong conversation about
where we want to use the technology and how we want to use it and I know Dr. Gordon is
already working hard on trying to get us to that kind of discussion but that's also
going to take money to replace the things that, you know, we no longer have like curriculum
textbooks and things like that so until we can do that we still are going to need these
Chromebooks so I think we should move forward.
Bill?
It's eight o'clock, I guess we have to have a motion to extend the meeting, thanks Bill.
So I need a motion to extend the meeting.
I moved away to send the meeting by 30 minutes.
Hopefully we've done it.
Bill seconded.
Okay, and Bill seconded.
Okay, all in favor say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Okay, go ahead.
Just to clarify my position, I am not.
I just wanted to have that discussion and that's when we talked about it in the beginning
of the month.
The caveat was that we'll go to further discussion, you know, whether we buy, you know, buying
the Chromebooks is one thing but with the caveat in there that we got to decide are
we going to lean ourselves off, how timelines, monies, how do we budget for that?
You know, I just, we need a strategy and this is, you know, it's kind of away from this
but to me this was my, the end to talk about it and make sure that we put ourselves on
a path, meaning admin with us if there's a strategy involved with it.
So thank you, I support it, so.
Okay, I need, I need a motion to, for the Chromebooks then, a motion to approve the purchase of
the Chromebooks.
So moved.
Second.
All in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Motion carried.
All right, so.
Now we're moving on to human resources, employment recommendations.
Motion may be made in a vote taken to move the Board of Education to closed session.
If there is a need for that, does anybody have any closed session questions on this?
Closed.
Does anybody have any open question sessions?
Questions?
Tom?
Yeah, I'm just wondering.
I mean, it's been a while since this has been posted.
We looked at this two weeks ago and I know it's prime time.
Are there any, many changes in this deletions to this one?
I mean, people, you thought you might get and then, I'm sorry, deed is right there.
I'm hoping everybody's, the addition stayed.
So with our new cadence, the only thing we've made as far as revisions or any errors in spelling
or position titles, but we're not throwing surprises your way without at least letting
you know.
So anyone that we have hired since we last presented is on the next exhibit for the committee
level meeting.
So no surprises.
Oh, I was just hoping that nobody backed out that's on the list of hires.
Oh, no, hopefully not.
That was my question.
Thank you.
Okay.
I need a motion to approve exhibit A.
So moved.
Second.
All in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Okay.
Too bad we just went on just a little quicker.
I need a motion to adjourn.
So moved.
Second.
Second.
All in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
All in favor?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Well, we need to do it all through.
Thank you everybody.
The meeting is adjourned.
803.
Yay.
Thank you.
Great job.
Have a great night.