together. We'll call him to the border now Monday January 20 2020. To 11pm that call to order is more what you give us. This Yes Thank you. Would you give us our meeting norm or please,
we respect the rights of all persons to participate in this public meeting of the board and kindly request that everyone engage in behavior that supports the same in the event anyone engages in behavior that is not in support of the good, we request that you refrain from that behavior. Thank you.
I'm 1.03 moment of silence.
And we'll move
to the approval of the agenda. Committee. Thank you. Thank you, and it's been moved and seconded that we approve the agenda as is that was used by Dr. Taylor. Speaking of which, items 3.0 Morning, everyone. Happy New Year. I certainly want to thank you for being with us. Those of you that online. Thank you. Also, if you are going to speak at public comment is now closed. I want to welcome our returning Dr. Iris Taylor. We want to welcome her back to the school board. We are excited about her being with us again. And also to welcome our newest elected board official military splendor we want to welcome her back to the to the board and to academic committee. So as we proceed with that, we hope that this will be a wonderful time your expertise or talents, your keen awareness of what our district needs as we put together here in academics would help to move the reform closer and closer to everything that we desire. We thank You again for running and winning. Having said that, I'm going to turn it over to our superintendent or the Superintendent's report.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Good to be with you. I'm just going to do a quick academic update, and then move into an overview of the budget agenda items. We went into this in great detail at the Finance Committee meeting. We have the budget amendment, which I'll really just give a high level overview of and then the other item or in a connected item, which is the creation of a separate account for our facility projects and just an explanation of that. So, indirectly two items will be addressed at a high level in my presentation because it's likely to bring questions from the committee, but I can answer questions through the agenda items as well. As we discussed at the last board meeting all all of our x academic indicators are moving in the right direction at the last board meeting. At a high level I review the mid year data and certainly there's improvement and at and above grade level performance and literacy and math across the grade levels from baseline to mid year. But we're also seeing more improvement mid year versus last year. It's mid year and and above grade level performance and growth. Our data indicators suggest that if things continue to move in this direction, then we should see improvement on M step at the at the end of the year as compared to the year before. Our average daily attendance is also higher this year. than last year. And chronic absenteeism is below where it was last year at the same time. Those are the same indicators I gave at the board meeting and remember I had quite a few days to charge so I didn't want to review those again. But just touch base on that. So now that we are at the end of January beginning of February, it's now when we start to really intensify the academic support for students that are almost at grade level or below grade level, obviously with more small group and one on one work. That's where academic interventionists come in and just making sure that we're analyzing the medeor data closely to identify those students that need more support. It's also the time when we do our second data comm review. And as a reminder, or for our new board member McClendon we do data comm and data comm is a meeting that I have with all of our principals in cohorts where we have a debt clear dashboard that looks at attendance, kind of cap and teacher attendance at an above grade level and growth and it's a data driven conversation we call it data calm because it's data but calm is for communication. So the principals it's an opportunity for them to really own their data and talk about what's working with not one of the challenges are having what might be some extra resources that they need to ensure improvement in all of our areas. So we've been doing this for several years. But getting back to that now that we're turning the corner from the pandemic and able to focus more on instruction and reform. So that's why, you know, this year in particular, we're really excited about being in person and not having to deal with surges of positive cases and going online and coming back and quarantining when we have our first more normal year, and therefore, our expectation is we show improvement again in trying to get back to the improvement we had before the pandemic but it's a great way for me to check in with individuals. And we talked about broader things, but the data is very much the composition is very much about data and then district level staff is there as well. So there's issues that come up with better support from the district. Those issues can be brought up by the principal as well. The exam process is always on the mind of parents in the community, and eventually it gets to board members as well. So we just finished the first round of the exam application process. We had an increase of about 150 students and applying this year to our exam schools. We're not where we were before the pandemic but every year since the pandemic, we've increased in the numbers of students that have applied 59% of students were approved or accepted into the school of their choice. We also change a process this year where we open more seats for first round application. And we did that because previously we held seats for the appeal process, but that frustrated did a lot of parents and even schools so by increasing the number of seats, it allowed for first choice applicants to get in faster into the school of their choice. That does mean fewer seats for appeal later, but at least it does address the need to address a demand earlier in the year than later. The second round opens on February 27. It closes April 23. And then those decisions for the second round will be mailed out on June 2. So if students are not accepted in the first round, or the second round, or they're not accepted into their first choice, then they go through an appeal process and they've done it directly about school. So they have either the principal sits on that, and assistant principal or the counselor and that's when a student or their parents parents can advocate for the child to get into that school, even though they didn't get in through the testscore GPA and their their statement of interest. The other change this year will be empowering application schools. So those are mainly K eight and a couple of our high schools to do direct enrollment. So instead of waiting for the district to process applications at application schools, that's going to be done at the school level with the exception of flex and the Montessori schools and Bates and the reason why the central office still involved in those schools is because there's a test that needs to be administered more demand and we just want to make sure that we're fair and consistent with how students get in and we don't need any problems at the school level and who does or doesn't get in. I just want to make the academic committee aware that we are engaging principals right now. We're going to engage assistant principals, Dean's and other staff and changes to the code of conduct. So usually the changes come to the committee at the end of the year or in the summer. But there has been a number of concerns that were raised with the last code of conduct that was approved in that a lot of schools are frustrated that they're not able to move, fortunately, or unfortunately faster into out of school suspensions. And there's concerns that we're not addressing some of the most egregious behavior fast enough which is causing a lot of disruptions in school. So I just want to note that that we're engaging staff on changes and although typically, those changes come at the end of the year. They're going to come more in the early spring to address immediate needs this year and to set the stage for the following year. So at a high level, those are the changes but obviously we'll talk more about them when they come back to you through the academic committee, and then I'll bring it to the Finance Committee, because it's really impacting district wide functions, not just if you will academic functions for the whole board will be able to weigh in on that. As we had been brought up, we did receive $20 million from the MacKenzie Scott foundation that is completely flexible funding at one time. So the board has talked a lot about the need to provide more academic support to students, especially those that are below grade level. So my initial recommendation is to hire more academic interventionists in especially in the early grades to again continue to try to catch up on learning loss. And I think to demonstrate for the district, whether it be at the state level, the federal level, that our academic intervention model works, the issue of just scale. And so what we are going to recommend is that we go very deep at particular schools and grade levels where we have greater need, but we also have a principal of a leadership team that understands our model of reform. And so that with the implementation of these federal dollars, we can show accelerated improvement academically, which I think could then use be used as a model for the district as a whole, but also either more philanthropic support or more legislative lobbying, to justify why we need increases in per pupil funding. And equitable funding to go deeper with academic improvement. So I plan on talking about that in more detail at the board retreat in mid February. And again, the use of those dollars will be approved by the board, but I think it's part of the greater budget discussion for next year. I just wanted to prep the academic committee for that complication. And obviously, I'll be ready to identify the schools the ratio of intervention is to students that are below grade level and go deeper into the rationale but just wanted to prep support for that. And then lastly,
just continuing to think about with a lot with the end of COVID relief funding, and the changes that we need to make to the budget, I think our greatest need outside of the budget and the best use of philanthropic dollars moving forward. Beyond the MacKenzie Scott elders is continuing to try to expand health hubs, which the concept there is that every feeder pattern, every feeder pattern high school would have a nurse would also provide mental health support, medical support dental support at that high school so that all the theater Elementary and K aids can do this can be serviced here but families can be serviced there as well. And then create a Parent Resource Center where a lot of the issues that affect it attended at the family level can be addressed that way too. So for example, legal services services to help overcome eviction issues related to paying the DTE bills, whether it's access to coats and hats, issues with transportation, just so that we become more streamlined and and clear with where the resources exist. The resources sometimes are out there but they're scattered. And we don't have a direct point person at the school level or the feeder pattern level to direct family. Sometimes we have an exceptional let's say attendance agent or counselor that the resources are at an individual school but that needs to be more uniform and consistent across the district where those same individuals at individual schools are at a feeder pattern are directed to send those parents to the resource center at the feeder pattern level. So again, every feeder pattern has a height neighborhood High School and the high school would be the hub for the health hub or the Parent Resource Center. So we already have some philosophic support for some of the health hubs and individual patterns, but we want to scale that to all feeder patterns into the future. So we'll talk I just wanted to remind the board that's our best thinking or the academic committee. That's our best thinking and we'll talk more about what we're currently doing and the details of the model. But as we move forward, I think that's the our greatest issue beyond the day to day operations of the district beneath academic issues. I know Fisher view had wanted me to discuss a couple of topics.
Just asked students academic as well as if you would discuss about the Capstone Academy.
Sure. So
as we discussed at the last board meeting, I think our our two greatest staffing issues that remain in the district is cafeteria staffing. So food and nutrition and substitute teachers would be the two of the greatest at scale all the other staffing issues. We've really done a good job over the last five years. It doesn't mean that we don't have any vacancies but the scale of the issue I think is now remaining only in cafeteria staffing. And so again, I'm not giving the impression that we don't need an EFP pair right and it is a school where we don't need to teachers at an individual school but not the kind of scaled hundreds of vacancies that we want to add. And so one way that we thought through trying to address the cafeteria issue is we do have to revisit that allocation. Once again, I think the wages and benefits and we'll do that through the budget development process, but we are going to incorporate more of our students in employment opportunities which has already been approved at the federal level. So there are special education students or ESC students at center schools. That part of their curriculum is career development and opportunity. So there will be some students from our ESC centers that will work in cafeterias and be paid and then there are other high school students that are not ESC students that they're scheduled. And especially in their junior and senior year, there are heading credits. So that gives them more flexibility to possibly work during the school day so that they could be employed, be paid. And so we'll work on that as well. We think that's a win win not only to deal with staffing issues, but also to have students become more familiar with the workplace and be paid it's it's not a singular solution to the problem. But I think it's it's an opportunity and then to your other questions that we do as a district. We are an authorizer of charter schools. And we do authorize the programs that are used for detained juvenile students. So these are students that unfortunately have been incarcerated but they are still young. So they receive a a education but at the juvenile center, not because of the crimes they committed. They're not in the regular school setting. We don't directly run those programs, but we approve the contracting that is applied the programming that happens in those areas because the new jail in the city is being rebuilt and concerns about the condition of the current jail or juvenile center. They we processed a an amendment to the existing contract to have the services provided in Hamtramck so we had to go through a lot of logistics with Wayne resa which ones are overseas helps manage educational programs throughout the Wayne County to allow for Educational Services of Detroit children's occur outside of the city, and that's an anti Amaka it's temporary. So I informed the board of all of this through email in December, constantly before our two new board members added but you had asked for an update on that. So there were concerns about the quality of the data conditions of the senator. And now those students are being served in Hamtramck not city but we've processed right amendments to do that.
Do we know how many stillness they are within the cap? Male Female are they are
they're both male and female but I have about 100 or less but I can give you the exact
age the age.
Teenage teenage
lady middle school like blender
at
correct but we do not run the day to day We contract out for capstone to run those programs.
That's
just a couple of questions about the academic of the conservative application school. What is the distinguishing if I know that parent or child wants to attend? That they get fit tomorrow? Or they apply to Keene and they get sent to flake or they get sent to Renaissance. But is there a rubric that determines that what what it was one of those variances that would cause that to happen? So
the application process is the same for all exam schools. So whether you're planning CAS or teen or CMA, the application process is the same so the rubric looks at your GPA. It looks at your score on the high school placement test and it looks at letters of recommendation and that looks at your statement of interest as to why you want to attend this school. So all of that is graded or given point. And then that point is attached to the student. And then based on the number of feets and the number of applications, you get into your first second or third choice. So so all the applicants are ranked. And then based on whether you picked first, second, third or fourth and the school you want to demand is obviously higher for a king or for a cat or renaissance and right now King. So for instance, based on the demand of CAD, your first choice might be CAD but based on everyone else's choice. Your points are lower than the other applicants that takes care of the different choices. So if you don't get into CAD, it's because there were other students with higher points. And so you might not get in the cast, but you might get into King which was your second choice because the demand is not as high and your points are higher on the list because there are fewer applicants and the applicants are not as strong. So that's that's what now if you really wanted to get get into CAD and you don't get in on the first round, then you your your application is in the numbers are there and then you go into the second round, although there are fewer seats. So then everyone's ranked again for the second round. You might get in in the second round. And if you don't, then you appeal and then you can go to the appeal and say, although my points are lower, you know you take into account my talent in this regard or you know, you're the I didn't test well, but I showed the intrinsic ability and then you demonstrate that in the appeal, and then the school can let you
know who actually raised all of these applications. Is there a cohort of principals or so we
so we hire school staff at each of the schools to review the applications and scores now those high school placement tests ended up itself but the the the essays are reviewed by a team of people and then they they get the score.
All right, open for discussion. Any questions to the superintendent on the committee? Budget about the applications old thing all right. Thank you. Okay, that's
okay. So I just thought it would be easier to talk about the budget at a high level the amendment so this is nothing new. Every year we do a budget amendment. Obviously, we build a budget and by state law, we have to adopt that budget by June and we adopt that budget without knowing certain things. We don't necessarily know what per pupil amount will be because of the legislative process and and we don't know what enrollment will necessarily be until we do our best to project that. And then after the fall count, which happens in October, then we know exactly what our enrollment is is a we adjusted budget and then we know what per pupil is because the legislative process is concluded for that upcoming year and then we the amendment is just making adjustments based on reality of revenue in a bid expenditures, but we have to don't want to spend a whole lot more than what we have. And so this happens every year. So what I'm doing here is just giving you an overview, high level of what is part of the budget amendment. So on the positive side, our revenue is higher than what we budgeted. So per pupil funding was about $550 more per student than we anticipated based on the legislative process. And then we also had about 500 students more than we had projected for the fall enrollment. And so that has increased our revenue for the budget amendments. as just a reminder, the way that districts are funded 90% of FTE is based on the fall count, and 10% is based on the spring count. So we're about to go through the spring counts now for this year, but we actually build our budget based on the for the next year based on the spring count, not the fall count. It's the most accurate snapshot of where we are for enrollment. So on the positive side, our enrollment has increased every year since the since after the first FTE of the pandemic, but is still about 2000 students less than it was before the pandemic hit. So when the pandemic hit we were in March 2020. And so the first FTE count was fall 20 but of the 2021 fiscal year, and we saw 3000 Students drop from the height of our enrollment with this administration and leadership team and really sent for over two decades of DPS was bring a point, March, February 20. We were at almost 50,000 students, so it's the highest we've been at for years. But when the pandemic hit, we lost 3000 students going into that fall count, but we've rebounded by 1000 Since the pandemic hit, but we're still 2000 students last and where we work. Now, our operating budget, our personnel levels, our salary levels have not decreased since that time, because we've had COVID funding that we basically plugged the budget with COVID funding one time money, the proper use of that. But now as we go into next year, we are going to have to make hard decisions in the budget. Knowing that we have 2000 students fewer than we did before the pandemic and without funding and that discussion will start to kick off at the board retreat in mid February. So at a real high level, when it comes to that FTE issue. We can basically with some changes keep the budget the same again with some changes. But we will not be able to for salary increases. That will not be my recommendation. My recommendation is that we make harder decisions so that we can continue to increase salaries. If we don't increase salaries, especially for teachers. We're going to go from a roughly 30 to 40 teacher vacancies I predicted maybe 200 or more based on what the demand of teachers are and where the market is. We've been very aggressive with teacher salaries. But we're going to have to continue to invest in that area, or we're going to have larger problems and if we do invest in that area, which I think we should we have to cut other things in the budget. So that's what we'll start to talk about. At the board retreat in much more detail where you see the numbers you see the positives and the negatives, and we start moving towards consensus on on what to do for next year's budget. But for right now, this amendment is fairly easy because it's there's no hard decisions that need to be made. Our revenue is higher than we anticipated because of the increase in per pupil and the increase of enrollment. Overall the revenues are increasing by about $80 million in the adopted budget. We also saw increased funding for EFT students have their special education students so a higher reimbursement rate and pass through mixtures reimbursement and that has to do with retirement benefits. To our staff. We also have one time reimbursement for our insurance based on the previous storm that happened over the summer that destroyed some of our buildings Cody in particular. So then when we move into expenditures, we did have higher rates of expenditures for staff. If we didn't hire more staff, we did a one time bonus for non union administrator non union employees. Because we did that for you the union employees and we had negotiated that for three years. We waited decide to do that for non union based on our enrollment in our budget. You could afford it the board approved that in November I believe, or December one of the two. So that was applied. We also have been hiring more staff at the school level to run after school programming. So they are teachers and other staff to do academic support after school. So the monies are higher there. Then I talked about additional costs because of the storms that we've been dealing with in particular here. This is from the issues that we're dealing with a se but we are having to repair 90% of the classrooms at Southeastern in order to get students and staff back at the school. We're spending money right there that was not budgeted that we anticipate to be reimbursed through our insurance carriers. And as a reminder, I say this because historically this was not the case by this administration. All positions are fully funded and aligned to our staffing model. So we are not we're not balancing the budget are not funding positions that are vacant, every vacant position is fully funded. So we don't play any shell games with the budget there any any position you see is fully funded. And then at the end of the year, if they're not filled, then that's excess money. That becomes one time money that we either budget for one time expenses that the board is aware of, or we put it in facilities or in rainy day funds. And then just lastly as you know the board approved $7 million of what was once COVID relief funding and I say that because when the federal dollars come in, we often use it for state expenses and then we convert that money to eventually pay for facility plans. Or facility projects. That's all allowable under federal regulations. And the state. That change was made because districts like ours received so much one time money that if we weren't able to do budget transfers, then we would just have to give that money back. So it's allowable we've been doing it for three years. It will and this is the action that the board needs to take. At a high level. The state only allows for 20% of per pupil funding to be allowable in a separate account for facility projects. And we have already we're already at that. So that's $80 million for us. And so we've already exceeded that. So we can't create enough we can't put more money into capital projects, because we already have money there. So what the board will need to do is create another account and we talked about this for a while the finance committee level. And so think about this as as as if it is a second facility account or facility project account. Because we have so much one time money that we are excitedly putting in facilities. We can't just put in can't put the extra money that's already been allocated by the board for projects in the existing facility project account because it is already maximized. So part of this budget amendment is creating a separate account, if you will, a facility
project to in order to deal with the access one time funds that we have for the $700 million in upcoming projects. So this is all anticipated at the end of the year. After the Budget Transfers we have extra money, which is really the COVID relief funding that we have earmarked for facilities, but from a fiscal management point of view, I the recommendation is to create a separate account. So the money is clear is there you see it and it can be spent down. We don't recommend putting in the rainy day fund because it just looks like a large amount of money that is not earmarked. And these facility dollars are actually earmarked for the $700 million of project. So it's just cleaner accounting. It's easier to communicate to the community and it doesn't give the community or others the perception that we have large amount of money that is not earmarked that can be used for miscellaneous purposes. So at a very high level all of that's in the agenda item for the budget amendment, but it's I think it's always
going to be the I believe it was the November or December board meeting, when some of our paraprofessionals came and they were talking about their salaries and increases and our teachers were getting raises and yet they were not. Will this amended budget address that particular population at all?
No. So that so that's a misunderstanding and any any emails that I get about that we and I can give that to the board as well. We've we've broken down the salary increases for all employee groups, including Paris and so that only over the last five years have they seen an increase to their reoccurring wages and salaries, meaning not just one time, but every year we've increased wages now to 15 to $16 an hour, but one time bonuses as well, whether it was as your pay, whether it was the holiday pay, even the seniority pay that we provided to the most veteran teachers over the last two years. That was all applied to parents as well. So the parents have got an increase there. They were doing increase this year, they've received that increase. So I think maybe misunderstanding or maybe when paychecks will cut, you know, maybe one group got their pay increases or their bonus before someone else but then based on a pay schedule. Not based on
preference. And what about the mental health nurses the contract that I guess some of those persons were also at that concern that they were not getting the money that they felt they deserved? So they were saying in addition to the pamphlets that the teachers seen, we are getting all of the reasons.
Yeah, I mean, there's there's no doubt that we have likely increase teacher salaries over the last five years at a higher rate than other employees. I don't think that it's debatable. When you look at every year the increase now it depends on among the teachers it also depends on if you're a veteran teacher versus a beginning teacher, you know, the percent increases vary based on the salary schedule. And what we tried to accomplish with being fully staff. We basically were at the beginning of this year, minus unexpected resignations here there. But every every employee group has received a salary increase every year, but not necessarily as a great celebration rate of teachers and we did that purposely because you can't really talk about a high quality education if you're talking about non certified teachers or vacancies. And so our core decision making and our core investments had been in the classroom with teachers doesn't mean that others haven't gotten increases, but that was done majority of our investment was and it's probably going to be that way moving forward. Now, from a livable wage point of view, all hourly employees that are employed by us are now at $50 or higher. That was a decision the board and I made we talked about even before the pandemic but we are celebrated during the pandemic contract the staff has not paid by the district so contracted staff remains with bus drivers,
custodians,
engineers that manage the day to day facility issues at school. The majority of our nurses and our mental health services as you stated are contracted. Everything else now is in the house. And so those companies have increased wages because they couldn't compete in this market either. So for the most part, and I know they are they're all at $15 or higher as well. And that's something that we asked them to do during the pandemic in order to be more competitive and improve staffing, especially our custodians. But as was brought up as policy committee, there might be a need to revisit that because we are seeing more we are fairly well staffed with custodians through contract services, but it's going to be increasingly difficult to maintain even the staffing that we had. That needs to be looked at when we look at next year's budget. But we do not directly pay the wages or salaries for contractors.
So when we talk about the health and I know that that's a real part of Dr. Taylor's vision and overall vision of the district in terms of mental health, physical health and most all of those pieces. How How does that look? If they're not paid? Well, does he go back to those companies and we associate those contracts? And are we are we fiscally positioned to offer more?
Well, the way we're thinking about this administratively, as for the mental health pieces, maintain what we expanded during the pandemic, which we use COVID funding to expand mental health services to all schools, through contracted services and the budget recommendation as we go into next year will to maintain that. And, you know, we can talk in more detail, but I can tell you, even if there was a demand to fully hire mental health support, we would never be able to meet that demand. There's not enough people that are certified to hire full time and there's no way we could fund it. We'd have to dramatically cut somewhere else we're gonna have to cut just to maintain five to $7 million of contracted services for mental health to shift to full time employment we'd have massive number of vacancies or offer salaries that would not be sustainable without dramatic cuts. And so, that answers your question on mental health nurses, our recommendation moving into next year as of right now, this is all internal would be to sustain what we were providing with nurse support before the pandemic. Right now we have a contracted nurse in every school building. The recommendation is not to continue funding a nurse at every building going into next year. It would just mean extensive cuts in current day to day operations. We can show you the budget for that. But then we got to cut even deeper than we're going to have to cut down and that and all that you will see. So when the board looks at everything we're funding out of COVID right now, just hypothetically the board could say well I want we want to fund nurses in every school. And I believe that's about $10 million
contract and nurses in every school
nurses would be Kevin million for the gen ed plus we have the transportation nurses, so total 10 million, but just for the 107.
Yeah. So you see that it's something we're funding on a COVID if the board said let's maintain contracted nurses every school, I'd say okay, but where are we going to cut in the existing budget $7 million and you're not going to cut $7 million in the existing budget unless we cut people and there's no way to do that with a 2000 student loss of FTD which equates to about $20 million. So that's where we want something and we can't fund it now. That's the that's the limb view of the budget. The more optimistic view of the budget is we balanced the budget based on hard decisions. per pupil funding dramatically increases with Governor Whitmer being re elected with a Democratic legislature and per pupil funding increases beyond what we budgeted for salary increases in the rest, and then we could have a conversation about using that money. In a one time way to expand nursing. Theoretical so that you know that the highest point and the most relevant I think issue for myself in the board going into next year's budget is are we willing to make hard decisions in order to continue to be strategic and increase salaries? And if we're not, are we willing to accept the consequences of not doing them and that is that's exactly where we are. And so and like I said, I couldn't I could present a budget to the to the board. That doesn't require a lot of hard decisions to be made. But as a consequence of that a lot of the things that we have been doing we're going to have to stop and we can't do salary increase, which is going to lead to other problems. So not the problems of well, why are we doing layoff by problems? Why do we have teacher vacancies? So, all of this will be spelled out and it's in the way I'll present it as a menu of options. And I will get my recommendation based on the strategy and then the board will just have to be comfortable in the hard decisions that need to be made.
Theoretically,
UPS could function in such a manner that you didn't necessarily need to have for us for how it is structured, right? Nice. We have my house like that.
That is not as intimate as a service we're providing now but again, I think it still provides enhanced services and before the pandemic and more families as well. And especially
nurses make grammar
is correct. Yes much
se When do they anticipate that the construction occurs?
So we've been right now the earliest right now, we would be back in the building is the late February would be the most optimistic. Believe it in February. Yeah. The end of February. beginning of March would be the earliest the latest would be make the beginning of May. And the end. The reason why there are questions are supply chain issues. So the main issue is we have people working in the building labor is not the issue. We have contractors in there, cleaning things out, you know, going through the asbestos process and all of that the issue with access to materials like tile, we can't there's supply chain delays in tile, namely so even when we clean it and restored the mini tiles to advocates come back. That's that's a difference in a month when I said the timeline so right now. We started doing engage DFT in the teachers last week and what what do they think is the best thing to do? Should we stay online or go back in person? So we've identified a location it would be Frederick Douglass, which is the old very right building. The federal drug of students which there are about 80 can remain in the building. And remember, they're moving at the end of this year. They're going to Northern High School as part of that change. So we prep the building to have the southeastern students and staff go there. Although all the southeastern students in depth cannot fit there at one with the federal DACA students so we'd have to do a hybrid. So on Sunday, some of the students would be there on Monday, other group would be there on Tuesday, other rotate on Wednesday, rotate on Thursday and then outline on Friday would be the current proposal and the best we can do. There's debate and conversation about whether it's worth going there in a hybrid structure for between now and when the students could come back to southeastern because the fear one, we can get a shuttle and there was a lot of problems with that with insurance and all the rest of it. We got charter buses to transport students from southeastern to federal Douglas or they could take city transportation but we are worried that right now. Attendance is about 85 to 90% a day dropped to 7075 When you look at the individual classes and that's been steady. We're worried that if we go hybrid, the attendance will actually drop because students won't go on day they're supposed to go or they won't log in on the days at the login because you're disrupting the habitual day to day and we have to be at that extra staff who was willing and we're willing to pay them to be on the shuttle bus. Just to watch the kids while they are transported. We're willing to pay the teachers need time to move into the building which can pay the teacher to do there's a lot of logistics linked to the move. And big picture. People are legitimately questioning Should we just stay what we're doing? And, you know, just wait till we go back at Southeastern. So what we're going to we already had an engagement session with teachers. We're going to do an engagement session with parents with students. Again with staff and then we're gonna do a survey and through the surveys gauge, if there's a consensus and then make a final decision by the by the end of this week.
If you don't do
a difference, yeah, the plan is didn't make a decision by this week.
That was the total amount of damages.
Maximum 390. How many
students are actually participating day to day virtually 600 Okay, and the population of the school is how many
about 90% of students are consistently logging in. The vast majority of students are logging in every day. Now, underneath that is about 70 75% that stay on from first period to and quite logging in and some time during the day but they're not necessarily logging in for the whole day.
All right. Any questions, especially I talked about
their role. Now. What are some what is the district doing to increase enrollment? What are some high level things that we're working on? To get back up to that?
50,000?
Yeah, so I mean, just to think didn't to get to where to just increased by 1000. It was really the whole process where we went to every home of a child who was not enrolled, family that was not enrolled and we would canvass the entire city based on the area that we did go to so that started at the height of the pandemic right when we started this inch back in a person, and that's continued every summer. Is the canvassing increased funding for this campaign awareness around attendance and enrollment we paid we have parent liaisons at every school, where we paid parents to act as a better mediator and go between between the school and parents in general. Again, that was COVID funded, something that right now is not in the budget for next year. But those are the things that we did what we found in the data is that the the enrollment law was great if at the earliest grades K through three so with the 3000 number, a lot of those students who are K to three where families did not log in or or did not send their children to school. When we came back in person last year. That was the largest concentration of students. And then once we came back and in person last year, what we saw was a combination of two things, either families moving out of the city entirely, or families going to suburban charter schools, because they were open fully the year we came back from the pandemic. So that was the 2021 year because all of our schools were open, but most of them functioned as learning centers outside of the teachers that chose to work in person. So because of that structure, students went to serve over charters that were largely Open City charters were not open, but suburban charters work, and that's where a lot of our family
activity our
virtual schools are much
better than last year. The data of academic data is much stronger, I believe higher than the district average. I memory. attendance rates are better chronic absenteeism is down. I think students family, feel the quality is much better. One you just have fewer number of students in the virtual school. We we move families and students out that were chronically absent the year before or failed two or more core subject areas, and we had all staff reapply. So that meant that the principal could do a better job of selecting teachers that were better equipped to teach virtually rather than last year, which because of the rise in the enrollment of the virtual school. We weren't not as selective with teaching when selecting teachers.
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Bailey. Is there any other discussion? Thank you, doctor. May we have motion to accept the superintendent's update? Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Bini for such a great update for us. We look forward to our board retreat and what is the date for that gonna
happen February 8 to February 18 2023. And that's
where we tell patients about it. Thank you again, our action items will point 01 recommendation to approve. The full year 2023 General Fund budget amendment number one resolution of course this is what we just heard. Motion. Okay. All right. It is so move 4.0 to a recommendation to approve the superintendent evaluation tool.
Their motion to accept
it. Mobile Thank you. 4.0 3.0 for 4.0 by have to do with books, curriculum materials. contract renewal with great minds. contract renewal renewal with McGraw Hill and the contract renewal with savage education. I've extracted the reading to again speak to this issue because again, it's come up several times about books and handbooks versus online. That could be could you just speak to that? That's great minds a crime Saturday.
So this is curriculum that we have been using over the years just to remind those listening and and our newest board members, Dr. Taylor's aware of this but we did an audit when we first started five years ago, which clearly showed that the curriculum we were using was below the standard that were expected in literacy and math and then we expanded that analysis even look at science and social studies. So over the years we've been adopting curriculum that is at grade level standards and considered aligned to those standards. And so when we do selective curriculum, we do have a group of teachers and district staff that review options, but are non negotiable is that whatever we pick meets the expectation of grade level standards. Unfortunately, a lot of curriculum that's used in the K to 12 space is not aligned to the standards. So it may just be historically used, but it's not necessarily aligned to the standards and not always at grade level. So these curriculums have been being used before the pandemic, and the last time our students tested before the pandemic. We had. We showed improvement in grade level performance and every grade level and literacy and math and that improvement was higher than the state's improvement during the pandemic, the first year that our students tested which was last year where they were required to be showed less learning loss than the state of Michigan on average and less learning loss and city charter school. And last year was a new baseline. And as I was saying earlier in the committee computation, our expectation is that at the end of this year, we show another year of improvement versus last year post pandemic baseline and right now our mid year data shows that so I believe this curriculum is working. It's never perfect, and there's always refinement and adjustments that needs to be made. The biggest adjustments I think as will and have come at least starting to happen in social studies, but we do our anti racist board agenda, Item and commitment. we're analyzing all of our curriculum for explicit or implicit bias based on race. And that's a separate review that we do with teachers, some community members, parents finding gaps in curriculum, and then we are supplementing those gaps as we review the curriculum, so I think, you know, we, maybe we are weren't always good at tooting our own horn, but I do think we're one of the leaders in the nation about that anti racist commitment and reviewing curriculum because I think, regardless of the curriculum you're talking about, especially those that are manufactured nationally, there is bias in that curriculum, and I think it requires teachers parents, community members, analyzing it, to identify those gaps and fill them so that's an overview of the curriculum that were being used and some of them that is on the agenda today. books in general to your question, because I know you've prepped me before so the when we when we purchased curriculum, we're purchasing hardcopy, curriculum and digital content. So you know, the National publishers are multinational, sometimes national corporations. And so although the trend is to move to digital content, we're all paying the same as we would for books. So if I pay for five books, or pay for five digital licenses do the same. Unfortunately, people think that you save money by going digital and you don't quite save money going digital because you're still paying for digital license. With all that said, when the pandemic hit, we accelerated our movement to access curriculum online. So all of our curriculum now is accessible online. So that means you can look at a book, you can get a workbook and it's all now online and accessible to teachers and students and we have platforms and learning management systems to do grades to assign assignments. All of that now is digital, which was a benefit of the pandemic if you accelerated that movement, and it provided funding to move in that direction. All of our students have access to a laptop during the school day, especially in literacy and math classes. Starting this year, they will all have access to their own laptop or iPad if they're young. They will be able to keep it during the day and then so in the morning when they go to their first class, they'll pick up their laptop or iPad to carry with them throughout the day. At the end of the day, they'll drop it off. So in the future, we are moving in the direction of not relying on traditional textbooks and workbooks and instead students will use the iPad or the laptop to complete assignments and even submit assignments. This is not revolutionary. We're actually behind. School districts have been doing this for years to districts and private schools. That said our students can do this they're ready our faculty and staff has built their capacity over the year by necessity because of online learning in the pandemic so they're more comfortable. It's our parents that are not entirely comfortable. And they even got a little better because of online learning. But I think it's important to move in this direction because that's where we are now. And we can say the future but it's now and our kids need to be equipped with the most modern tools to be competitive. That said, as we move forward in this transition, we're not we're not divesting in classroom libraries. We're not divesting in workbooks or textbooks. We're not doing imaginary learning without real concrete things. It's digital. It's not the text the old textbooks if you will, but if a learner still prefers hardcopy materials will provide the hardcopy material is just a transition in one we're not ripping the band aid off this has now been it's been implemented faster because of the pandemic. But we will still move gradually to this place over the next couple of years. Madam Chair,
I make a motion that we try bar four was grateful
for all three or four or five would be Tygart now
move on to 4.06 which is to approve the cooperative purchase with CBS Have you ever met and you saw the notations there this is hardware and software products including Microsoft software services. Is there a motion to approve? So moved and so ordered point 07 This is a recommendation to approve the contract. It's Molly. Construction of the demolition of Phoenix elementary middle schools. And to be the night talks about this I've had challenges with this particular contractor with us today. But I've been informed that they are indeed still be used by the city. That is you're standing right and that the subcontractor is a minority subcontractor That's correct. And this isn't working? Yeah,
so the total contract is 3.2 million and minority Detroit contractors receiving 1.2 million of the 3.2.
It goes to the consent agenda. Right.
We have one more item that was added
that would be
4.08. Was the recommendation to approve out of state travel request. Is there a motion to approve? And it's almost Thank you. Number five will not move to public comment. Miss Moore if you would now read for us please tweets are public statement.
Members of the public are welcome to address the board during public comments. Individuals wishing to address the board must raise your hand to be acknowledged for virtual public comment. Members of the public are welcome to address the board during virtual public comment. Individuals wishing to address the Board may do so by choosing one of the two options by computer select the Raise Your Hand option on the screen by telephone press star nine to raise your hand. The meeting administrator will select individuals and the order received. You will remain muted until as your time to speak. comments will be limited to three minutes. The superintendent will reply to questions or concerns raised today that do not violate ethical or legal standards confidentiality privacy of others or require additional information to respond. If you would like a direct response to your question and or concern. Please forward an email to the secretary of the board then you're more apt at that more at Detroit Tech Club that
Ford was online.
And we have to in person
Yep, three online.
Alright, let's start with the online Thank you.
Caller go ahead with your comment
Mr. Peters theater
let's go to Mumphrey comeback pace.
Mama Redmond go ahead with your comments.
Hello, can you guys hear me? Yes. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. I have two questions for that. One of them I didn't quite hear. Remember But you did say in the before Dr. Vt that the testing will be changed to go to King Renaissance cast and the other schools to be exceptional for other students. is that are we still up for talks for that? Well, we'll say that they take stay in there. My other question will be if you did not pass the test, and you did not go to a DPS schools. What is the appeal process for that because it started students that are not able to get in there. My last question would be I think I missed here you said it during the listening session. For some students that need to take summer school in classes did they didn't pass his last car mark? Is there a fee for summer school? As well as seniors that will be coming out in June? Will they still be able to take classes as well? Is there a seat that
Miss Redmond Could you repeat number one for us, please?
Okay, number one will be I remember it was talks before about trying to stop the standardized testing. So we'll be able to try to get in one of the schools because some schools may not. They may not test well, but they report cars may be well so I'm just wondering, are we still going to give other children the opportunity to go in there or will it strictly go by grade I remember it was tossed up to try to change that. And I'm just wondering what happened
all right, thank you. Thank you
who's next?
Hello, can you hear me
Hello, can you hear me?
Hello Can you hear me
okay here now
Hello.
Says Hold on.
Mr. Peters.
Mr. Peters,
yes, I'm here.
Well, how was your comments are
okay, we
lost you all after the comment started. We just begin to see a timer time down and that was it. Couldn't hear any audio.
Are you able to hear us now Mr. Peter? Yeah, I
hear you now.
All right. Go ahead with your comments. Okay.
Hi, I'm representing about six urban farms. That are owned throughout the city of Detroit. We compiled together to over two and a half acres, over 113,000 square feet and 27 parcels of farmland here in Detroit. So my plan was speaking to introducing methods to help bridge that trauma that the COVID pandemic created with the hybrid models of school. I'm not an educator but I do I was raised in the Detroit Public School System. And I did have home economics which is not there anymore. My thing was to you are utilized some of the urban farms and contract with us to help bring horticulture therapy, art therapy and nutritional wellness. And we can also hire some of those students as farm hands and cultivators, that, that helps to bring about the mental awareness necessity, as well as you empowered the neighborhoods. I think that's something that can be looked upon where the cancer students would be able to come out of that classroom environment and come outside, put their hands in the ground, which is a proven therapy they help drop it off the triggers of anxiety and depression. That was my pretty much comment if you get to just to that.
Thank you, Mr. Peters. Thank you so much. And
thanks to him
and go back to him.
It's Peter.
Yes, I'm here. Right. Continue.
Oh, I was saying how will we, the urban farmers, like myself and the other five that I'm representing, on this car? How do we get you out to our urban farms and just experience I mean, art therapy, the whole growing your own food, that entire mental physical nutritional piece for yourselves and then see if it what it does for your day and then take it back to the students something like that. I mean, we're, you know,
just something, just something to think about. Thank you, Mr. Peters.
If you would contact miss more than get that more. And Detroit K 12. That board will reach back out to
you. Thank you.
What's the first name more I heard
then? Yes, V
ani a dot more at Detroit K 12 dot o RG.
Thank you very much to you and thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. It's more
can get there. We we talked him is more ready. Yes. What was our question? Didn't we get Liam? No, no, I'll say know that was my my room and she couldn't hear. Miss Miller.
Yes. Can you hear me?
Yes, ma'am. Go ahead with your comments.
Thank you so much. I didn't think I was going to be able to get through but thank you. Um I am always at a loss but I still want to be confident in this board and the leadership of Dr. VD. But here we are again at another proactive moment when Mr. McClendon asked about what is the district doing to increase enrollment, Dr. V. The answer was of course, a PLC and maybe other things but if we're not going to have PLCs next year, then what are we doing? Why? If things are working, you know I understand some things have to be cut off, some things need to stay. But this conversation is not new, of what we need to do moving forward in this district. It's good to see that we do have a donation to Scott's donation, but what are we going to do with that? It's all about this money being allocated. And what we are going to do. It makes no sense to get rid of PLCs if they're working, if it's good to hear the academic interventionalist is a big topic which he should have always been since the pandemic, but moving forward. The conversation should be what are we going to do I mean, I don't I don't understand the lack of Daisy when it comes really down to it. To get rid of these positions, if you're talking about visiting the code of conduct, as I stated in the financial meeting, I am in the school. I don't know how many of you board members are actively going in the schools. But the disruption is a constant problem. You get students that get an in house suspension, but where do they go? Even if they're gone for one or two days, they come back with the same disruptive behavior. They're coming in these classrooms, and ultimately they're disrupting the learning process. So why we're sitting up here, having conversations about health hubs, which we already pretty much have them. We have dental that already comes in the building. We have eyeglasses that already come in the building. Let's focus on educating our students raising the rate for teachers and keeping the positions that actually are working. And then lastly, the whole illusion and the facade of parents just wanting books anytime my daughter was in a virtual setting last year, and I heard at least more than one to two students talking to the teacher saying I wish I had a book. So let's get away from the blaming the parents once again saying that we are not ready for technology when you compare us sometimes to other districts and other schools but at the same time, look at our literacy rate. Look at our mat look at our scores. Not ready but our national scores. So to limit books at this time is a no no for miss a board member vying to be a specialist at a curriculum. That's what her reelection information said. Let's not do that to these children and what Pacific survey was given to the children to say they don't want books. Thank you.
Thank you, Miss Moore.
That concludes
public comments. All right. Thank you very much. Dr. B. Miss Redmond was speaking of the back testing and that application school?
No, just so application schools there is an application process. Okay. You test for the exam schools which are high schools. You test for base, which we're moving in the direction of bringing back the Gifted and Talented program. You test at flicks because the language component there. So that's where the testing is linked to application schools so that the only application so there's a reminder and I think there were questions about special education students so they tested well, All Students test but their most students with IEPs Individual Education Plans are able to go to an exam school as long as they're admitted through the application process. There's only a few students with exceptionalities who based on prior IEP s and the testing process, their IQs are lower than what would be required for a standard high school diploma. And those students are mainly at our ESC centers. Would that being the exception then all special education students have access to the exam process? So there were questions about, I think, building off of yours around keen calves and they'll just go to Canada to based on how many students apply to an individual school. And then as you rank their scores, matching demand with the numbers, and then going from your first choice, second choice, third choice. That's all a function of how how many points you accumulate and how many other students apply that offer at higher accumulative point. There is no bad test score. There's just higher test scores and lower test scores and that influences your overall points. So theoretically, if you did not test well, then you can support a fill the gap have a lower score by having higher GPA or by having a stronger letter of interest at a particular school. And then there's the appeal process. If you still have lower points and the current seats are taken. There was a question about summer school from the same question from the last board meeting. We do not require students to pay for summer school that includes high school students that have to make up credit. But we only offer summer school classes for those classes that are required to graduate on time in four years and that's linked to English language arts, math, science and social studies. If a student has accumulated all their credits, then I think the question is can they still go to summer school in the summer at the high school level? No. The only cool courses that we offer in summer school at the high school level is of course recovery in the four core subject areas, but we don't offer extra summer school opportunities or you know, the opportunity to to accelerate credit. It's just mainly for course recovery. In person, public comment, I'll go back to miss Moore's comments in a minute. We do have the Parent Academy Parent Academy as it was explained at the Finance Committee meeting does offer classes on financial literacy. We work with local banks, and others that offer the financial literacy courses. I think the best thing is to meet with Miss Buckman who can explain the courses and the opportunities to offer classes you're always free to work with individual schools as well. They may be open to go a little farther and deeper with parent engagement. Just for point of reference. High School curriculum at the state level does require financial literacy for students and we meet that requirement during the four years of high school. Lastly, in person Polycom and also thank you for coming regarding the books. We have a local authors process. I'll say the website but we can provide that to you as well. Maybe someone's listening. It's www dot Detroit K 12. That org backslash page pa GE backslash 17660 And so we've had quite a few local authors come forward and ask for us to use their books. So we created a process where we do have a committee of teachers that review local authors products, they review it, if they feel like it could be relevant to the curriculum, or helpful to students, then they essentially approve it. And it goes on a list of options for schools to purchase those materials. So we don't force them. And we also provide a budget if like an individual third grade teacher would like to use the books or in this case. Your books probably better for even kindergarten pre K first grade students, then that teacher would say I'd like to use those books and then they can tell the principal and the principal can access those materials and buy them for that. Teacher. And so that's how we've done that in order to give our local offers better access to our schools and our teachers and our students. The last comments just as a response, you know, there's a lot of frustration around a sense of urgency and making these decisions. And I'll just remind Miss Moore and college in general, is that right or wrong? There are processes that the school district has to follow. You know the benefit of the benefit one of the negatives, and I'll just be honest of a superintendent and a board is that you have to go through a process and it's time consuming. The positive is that there are checks and balances. So the benefit Emergency Management from a management point of view is you could make decisions rather quickly and quote unquote, efficiently if you knew what you were doing. The negative now is that there are times when I see opportunities to do things faster and easier. But it requires a process. It goes through committees it goes through Board approval, it goes through RFPs that can take anywhere from two to three months. And when you're adopting budgets, those need approval contracts above 250,000. Adding positions often require union approval. So there are many processes that have to be followed in order you make significant changes. And I think that there's a positive to that, because it allows for checks and balances and I think more accountability and scrutiny and the downfall is it takes longer. And so I think you can certainly say over the past five years, there are been things that that definitely changed and happened. And we made some hard decisions. And there are things that I probably would have liked to do faster, but it does take a process and you know, going back to things that we funded out of COVID I think a lot of the things that we funded out of COVID world or has worked the parent liaison stuff to nurses in every school, the mental health support, but attached to those things are millions of dollars, millions of dollars that are not available in next year's budget. So we can't simply say we're going to fund parent liaisons for next year. Because that's about you know, anywhere from a half a million, probably about half a million dollars of expenses. And so if you're going to commit to funding that next year, there's a series of decisions that need to be made. That to move from one time money to reoccurring money, and discontinuing $500,000 of current funding expense. I can't legally I can't really make that decision without the board's approval. And the board doesn't want to make that decision because there's 100 Other things to look and decide whether we're going to fund or not fund so
it's not a matter of not caring. It's not a matter of not function with a sense of urgency is that, you know, sometimes when you become the superintendent or board member, you start to see things from about 3000 feet, when oftentimes when you're not in that seat, you see it at the ground level. And so that's the difference of governance. Between that and seeing what's happening. I agree with Miss Moore, there are things that she's seeing in schools, that doesn't make sense or can be improved or addressed. And I think we hear that we consider it we reflect on and we make the necessary changes as quickly as we could and but there is a process right or wrong that has to be implemented at the district level when we look at the superintendent and board structure. And, you know, I think we were extremely fortunate to to receive the one point about $2 billion in COVID relief funding and I have said that almost every meeting, very excited to do things differently and expand things like summer school and after school program nurse, mental health parent lays on home visits, protecting the budget even though we had a decline in enrollment and I said at every meeting, we should be really excited about doing these things. But in three years, we're going to have to make hard decisions because you're going to get used to those things. You like those things and if you're going to fund those things, you got to discontinue something else. Because when you when you look at our cost of what is current operational, plus the cost of inflation and the need to increase salaries, there's not enough in the reoccurring budget. And that means a series of decisions that need to be made and I don't think the board would appreciate me saying well, we're definitely going to fund parent liaisons and then I make the decision internally to cut something and then next year you could wait Dr. BD you cut then I didn't know you cut that. I didn't approve that. And then you have larger problems with the board and the community and that's why you have to go through a process and that's what we're about to start in February. So it's not always the most efficient way to do things, but it is the way that we have to do things in order to see the big picture at 30,000 feet. Thank you.
You want to comment on the credit and nursing
there's a need there's no question there's a need. We are providing courses for parents on financial literacy through the Parent Academy. I don't know the exact numbers of parents that are attending or have attended. I know that we do have partners that offer those classes directly whether they're banks or other organizations. So I think the opportunity, as I said Friday the sadness bishops I'm talking with Buchman, Miss buck, we just miss Bishop and then talk about what we're currently doing, and what are some opportunities. There are also RFPs that go out. And this I think also speaks to the urban farming opportunity, which is if those urban farmers are organized or connected to an existing after school program, or other organizations and maybe they can include that as part of their programming. So when they do bid for after school programming, or for field trips, or you know our all of our field trips that we offer through the cultural passport, then they can put in that request to be part of the cultural passport program after school programming. And so that would probably be the best way unless you're going to create a informal relationship with a school to go visit one nearby but the top we have to we have to work out you know, MOU and agreements on that on liability, but there's an opportunity, but I would say look at the RFP that are released for after school enrichment. And the cultural passport is opportunities to have our students attend more of the urban farming opportunities that exist
and to connect it possibly to drew in some way.
Yeah, there's an I mean, most of the work I drew happens with the students at Drew drew the model but it's mostly the students at our students do visit Drew, especially our younger students on a field trip. And so we do expose them to the farm that way, but there there are urban farms throughout the city that are placed closer to individual schools, that there could be better partnerships. It's just working out but the best, I think best opportunity to go directly to the school that is closest to a farm and build a relationship with a principal and then that principle can help sometimes work through the logistics of the RFP or an MOU in a partnership to do field trips. All right,
thank you so much activity. That is and we have a motion to dismiss, and we'll set the benediction. Right. I want to thank everyone for coming. Thank you all for coming. Thank you so much. Miss Moore Live Oak is all asleep