Board of Education - Regular Meeting

Via Zoom. Ms. Ozenski, may we have a roll call, please?

Trustee Baskett? Yes. President Feaster? Here. Trustee Muhammad? Here. Trustee Norton?

Here.

Trustee Schmidt? Present. Trustee Wilkins? Here.

Vice President Wilks? Present. We have a quorum. Thank you, Ms. Ozenski. I would now like to introduce the non-voting member at the table, Chaz Parks, Superintendent of Schools.

Thank you, President Feaster. Good evening.

Good evening. Good evening. Trustees, you have been provided with the agenda in advance. Are there any changes or additions to the agenda?

Trustee Norton? President Feaster, I was hoping to introduce a proposed amendment for referral to the Governance Committee. Okay.

You want to add that as an agenda topic, or is that something you want to discuss during item from the board or agenda planning?

Well, I think probably as an agenda topic so that we can agree to refer it to committee. Okay. How about we do that...

Perhaps, Trustee, you could discuss that during the agenda item portion of the meeting or at items from the board at the end. I mean, just as an idea.

I was just wondering, I don't know what the procedures are for an amendment to be introduced here.

It doesn't have to be voted on, so you can just bring it up during items from agenda, and if there's a consent that is something that governance should take up, then it goes. I mean, it can also be a formal motion even during that time.

Well, happily do either.

All right, so it sounds like we're going to address it during agenda planning, either as a consensus or as a motion at that time.

Okay.

Yes. All right. Thank you, Trustee Norton.

I believe that brings us to... We have a couple of things. First of all, there's a moment of silence, but we can do that since we've already started the approval of the agenda. We need a motion for the agenda approval, and then we should go back to the moment of silence, please. Thank you, Ms. Ozeski. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented?

I have an addition. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. President Feaster, under board action, currently it reads a resolution suspending board bylaw 1500. I'd like to change that to board policy discussion and possible adoption of board policy 5011.

That actually is not on the agenda at the moment, but it's something that can be added, the resolution. Did we update the agenda then? You may have it in your board notes, Trustee. It is not on the public agenda.

It is just a... I'm sorry. So then you're asking to have that added to the agenda.

Whatever gets it done. Okay. Trustee Norton, we're agreeable. Whatever gets it done.

All right, so we're going to add a resolution suspending bylaw 1500 and adopting amendments to 5011 under board action. That's the motion by Trustee Baskett.

Well, I actually see it on my agenda, so I'm not really sure. Are you sure you're looking at that?

It's actually under board action.

Board action. I'm sorry.

Again, is it locked? There's a lock on it?

There's a lock on it. You're right. I hope the public gives us grace. Some of us are techno.

So again, Trustee Baskett is motioning to have it added to the public agenda.

We can just approve the agenda as amended.

Okay. All right. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as amended?

So move.

Second.

All right. Moved by Vice President Wilkes, supported by Trustee Schmidt. Any discussion, trustees? Any discussion? Seeing none, Ms. Ozenski, please.

Trustee Baskett? Yes. President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Muhammad? Yes. Trustee Norton?

Yes.

Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. Vice President Wilkes?

Yes. Motion carries. Thank you, Ms. Ozenski. That will bring us back to 1.4, which is a moment of silence and memory. of Fletcher Campbell, and I will turn it over to Superintendent Parks to give us some details about this.

Thank you, President Feaster. It is with deep sadness that I share the news of the sudden passing of Fletcher Campbell, a recent 2026 graduate of Pioneer High School. Fletcher was a beloved member of the AAPS school community who also attended Burns Park Elementary School, Tappan Middle School, and Ann Arbor STEAM Middle School. Fletcher was exceptionally smart, clever, and funny, known to say something completely unexpected at exactly the wrong moment. He had a close-knit group of friends going back to his days at Burns Park, and those friendships meant everything to Fletcher. Sports were also a big part of his life. He ran track and cross country at Pioneer, earning his varsity letter as a junior. He loved the Wolverines and planned to attend the University of Michigan this fall. We extend our heartfelt condolences to Fletcher's family, friends, teachers, and all who knew and loved him. Ask us to observe at this time a moment of silence in Fletcher's honor.

Thank you. That will bring us down to number three, public commentary. The board would like to remind everyone the individuals who have signed up for public commentary will have their name called and will be given an opportunity to speak. Commenters will receive up to four minutes, and the public commentary period will be limited to 45 minutes. When your name is called, please come forward and speak at the microphone. To help manage your time, a clock will be placed on the screen in front of you. We would like to remind everyone that public comments generally pertain to the NRA Public School District matters. Comments about any individual or individuals are expressly prohibited. Also, please understand that board members do not respond to comments, but we will listen carefully and we'll follow up as appropriate. Ms. Osinski, how many times do we have for this evening?

We have two signed up this evening, and first is Lafiste Gallimore. See Mr. Gallimore today. Next is Kerry Yondrone.

Good evening.

Good evening.

As you heard, my name is Carrie Yandrone. I am the parent of incoming ninth grader at Community and 11th grader at Huron. I am going to be serving voluntarily on the board for APAC this coming school year. I have not officially assumed those duties and I'm speaking tonight only for my personal self, not representing that organization. Those of you who may have heard from me before, something you may not have heard is that I am a school of choice family. We have been since kindergarten for my older student. And in that view, I want to call on you as board members and superintendent to seek the input of school of choice families while you are going through the current and long-term budget and strategic planning processes. there are inevitable changes coming to aps it's going to happen and so with that is a duty to be fully informed on which of the changes are going to be the ones that are going to be most likely to result in some current students leaving and some future assigned students never enrolling So how do you get that information? Ask us. You know who we are. We're flagged in the system. Ask us two questions. Why did you leave the district, your home assigned to you, and then when you made that decision, why did you come to AAPS? You're gonna hear wildly different things, but I'm gonna bet there's gonna be some really valuable trends in those responses. As a sample of those for myself, the reason we left, three reasons. Ongoing financial crisis in our home district. Building consolidations, anyone who is ever as an employee or management gone through mergers knows what a painful experience that is to work in and be part of. And third was the lack of onsite childcare for before and after at elementary level. Why did we choose AAPS and specifically Mitchell Scarlet Huron? the programs, the IB, the arts, CTE, PLTW, world language extracurriculars. Second was the lower student to teacher ratio. And third and the most important to us was the high quality of teachers and the support service professionals that help them having a reputation for wanting to work at AAPS and then staying there once they do. So I'm not saying don't consolidate buildings. I'm not saying don't cut programs. I don't have enough information to intelligently tell you yes or no on those things. but find out what the trends are so that you can go into it with eyes open and factor in what those likely things are so that nobody comes back later and said, you didn't think about this. we're here to share that information and perspective for you because the truth be told 11 years ago when i was making that choice i don't regret it i'm glad we're here but if i was making that same choice today with aaps in the position it is now Would I make that choice again? I cannot confidently say yes. And I would probably lean towards no. And that breaks my heart, and I hope I can be part of helping to fix that. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

That concludes public commentary.

We appreciate hearing from our community. The board would like to thank everyone who spoke and shared their comments tonight. Ms. Parks, are there any points of clarification?

No clarifications. Just thank our speaker this evening, and we'll be talking a little bit later under updates about community engagement.

Thank you. I believe that I need to notify trustees and call to your attention the community feedback for this evening's meetings. That brings us to number five, reports of association. Ms. Ozenski, do we have a representative here from AAEA?

I do not see anyone here from the AAEA.

Do we have anyone here from AAEAP?

No, sir, we do not.

Okay. Ms. Ozenski, that brings us to community group reports. Ms. Ozenski, do we have any groups signed up for this evening?

We have no groups signed up for this evening.

Thank you, Ms. Ozenski. I believe that brings us down to board committee reports. And I will turn it over to Trustee Baskett, Chair of Finance and Planning Committee, to tell us what occurred at their August 21st, 2026 meeting.

Thank you, President, Mr. Help Me Trustees. Our meeting was on the 21st. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Yes, the Finance Planning Committee met on the 21st. You will see, the trustees will see the recommended first briefing items, one requiring immediate attention, the dishwasher at Scarlett. So we will be asking for expedited support on that one. We also had a briefing regarding our strategic planning process. I believe the superintendent will probably cover more of that in her update, so I won't bore you with that. But it was a very positive report, and we look forward to continuing the good work there.

All right. Thank you, Trustee Baskett. Any questions or comments, trustees? All right. Seeing none, I hope that brings it down to number eight, the information section. I will turn it over to Superintendent Parks for her superintendent update.

Thank you, President Feaster. And as referenced by Trustee Baskett, we're going to start out with an update on strategic planning. So the strategic planning process is well underway. We have garnered about 2,000 responses to the survey that we sent out at the top of the summer, end of the school year, beginning of the summer. We are reopening that survey also to capture more students, families, parents, community members, and staff now that the school year is about to be back underway in hopes of getting even more feedback to that survey. We will also begin the process of convening the focus groups as well as the community meetings, and those will take place through the months of September and October. And that will all lead to the steering committee work. And the work of the steering committee will be to work with the strategic planning vendor and their staff to develop the needs assessment, the theory of action the priorities and goals as it relates to the overall plan so we look forward to that work going strong this fall as we get started with the school year so that's pretty exciting we've been waiting for this for a long time and are excited to continue this process Next item, the district is embarking on a reduction of idling on our school campuses campaign. Through the leadership of the Freeman Environmental Youth Council, AAPS is instituting a reduced idling zone at all of our schools starting the fall. This initiative is aimed at protecting our students' health And our staff's health. So please help our staff and students breathe cleaner air by following the guidelines, especially at pickup when we see vehicles waiting for up to an hour before release time. And some of those guidelines include turning off your vehicle engine while waiting at the school drop-off and pickup line before dismissal begins. During drop-off, when you're dropping off your student, if you arrive and there's a line of vehicles waiting for the first bell, please turn off your vehicle until cars begin to proceed through the line. At pickup, if you arrive before the bell to release students and join the pickup line, please turn off your vehicle until the line begins to move. Please make an effort to park and walk to pick up your student instead of waiting in the drop off and pick up line. Consider sharing rides and carpooling with other families. Walk or bike to school if possible and use the school busing system if you're eligible. Each choice helps reduce pollution around our schools and directly improves our students and staff experience on our school campuses. So we're excited for this campaign. The next update here is around the... Sorry, hold on one moment. The Morgan Wallen Foundation has generously donated musical instruments to Scarlett Middle School as part of Morgan Wallen's 2026 Tour Give Back Program. The Morgan Wallen Foundation supports programs for youth in sports and music and often gives back... to communities in which Morgan Wallen recently performed, in which he was here at the end of July performing at Michigan Stadium for two days. So Scarlett Middle School's music program will receive $30,951 worth of instruments and accessories. So congratulations, Scarlett, and we are grateful for that donation to our school's music program. It is great. Last week, we were excited to welcome new teachers and staff for a week of professional learning. This orientation was designed to provide them with the tools, resources, and connections they need to thrive in their new roles. The role in shaping the experiences and success of our students is deeply valued, and we are excited to welcome and support them as they begin their journey with us here in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. This week, we welcomed all staff back for professional learning, setting up classrooms and workspaces and preparing for students to walk through the schoolhouse doors on Monday, August 31st. Leading up to day one for students, our schools will be very busy hosting registration days and other activities, deploying... technology, working on completing class lists, balancing classes, completing facilities and custodial work inside and outside of our buildings, and attending to myriad of things to be ready to welcome our students back on Monday, August 31st. So although the summer has gone by very quickly, we are excited and very much so energized for the return of our students on Monday. As a part of that back to school or beginning of the school year process, we usually remind trustees in the community every year that while we are in this process of kind of balancing enrollment, balancing class sizes, staffing needs tend to shift and we make those adjustments accordingly. So we know that that that is something that is always top of mind for us and that we are keeping an eye on. as it relates to all of our classes, including our special education services, making the adjustments necessary when classes get too high or things of that nature. So we continue to keep an eye on that type of data as we get ready to launch the school year. And lastly, on Monday of this week, the Ann Arbor Public Schools and the Ann Arbor Education Association reached a tentative contract agreement. And although we are not able to comment on specifics until the agreement is ratified by the AAEA membership and approved by this Board of Education, we wanted to let our community know this important step has been taken. taken. Reaching this moment has taken hard work, good faith, and shared commitments. And as we prepare to welcome students back next week, we are grateful to both negotiating teams for remaining engaged in the process and invested in coming to an agreement. And that concludes updates this evening.

if I could just piggyback on a comment that you made about preparations for the school year you know all my years of teaching I didn't really have I think a full understanding of what what happens in the summer to prepare to start the school year and the people in this building uh teachers that are involved in training i've talked to a number of people this summer that have taken training to be prepared for some reading instruction but i just want to thank all the people that have put in ridiculous amount of hours this summer so that when the school year starts i think as a teacher i was always ready for may june and i was like i'm out for the rest of the summer But there is so much activity that makes it so we can kick it off when the school year starts. I just want to thank everybody for all their hard work. Thank you.

Thank you, Superintendent Park, for the update. I believe that brings us down to 8.2, budget discussion update. Turn it back over to Superintendent Parks.

Thank you. We just have a brief update under budget. And then I know Trustee Norton will also have some information. So I'll have the team over there pull up our slides to walk through just our update for today. As has been referenced already here today, we know that there are some thoughtful decisions that need to occur as we think about the future of our district and what we want it to look like. And our goal for every decision that is in front of us is predicated on several things. equity in the distribution of resources, transparency, making sure that we have data that supports any recommendations that we make, and determining what the risks are for any of the recommendations that we will ultimately bring forward. We always want to start with our student needs, obviously, and using, again, that data to inform our decisions as we plan for the responsible actions required to get to long-term sustainability. Next slide, please. So the strategic actions that we've talked about over the past few months that we know are in front of us, we have shared already that some of those decisions or recommendations, rather, I should say, will be around land and building sales. And we're going to talk about two of those specific pieces tonight. We're also going to be looking at and have already been looking at cost control and effective vendor contracts. And we are also, as we have been the past several years, focused on the right sizing of staff. We've been intentional about actualizing staff. right-sizing through attrition, and we continue that process and will continue that process. And the other piece we're going to be doing is looking at school and programming consolidation. By programming consolidation, we mean what are some ways we can go about finding some operational efficiencies across all of our schools, from staffing to programming. so that we can still maintain our quality programs that we want all students to be able to have access and opportunity to engage in while maintaining our incredible staff as well. Next slide, please, Mr. Cooley. So when we get to the decision-making point of the recommendations, the framework that we are going to be using will include the enrollment impact. So we're looking at what are some of the enrollment trends across our schools? What's the capacity utilization of our schools? Do we have schools that are significantly underutilized? Do we have schools that have been trending in decreasing decreased enrollment over the years do we have schools that are close in proximity to other schools what is the risk of losing enrollment as was referenced during public commentary what is the risk of losing enrollment to other schools outside of our district and what are some ways that we can again ensure that the programming that we have in place and want to keep in place best prepare students for for college and or post experiences. The other part of the decision-making framework that we're going to be focused on is financial sustainability. We're looking at annual operating costs and savings that we can have with some of those costs. We're going to be looking at one-time revenue that will come in mostly in some of the building sales that we will be talking about over the next several months. And then we're going to also look at the per student variance when we get to bringing that information forward. We also want to keep a very focused equity lens on the impact of any of these decisions. And so who are the students impacted? Who are the staff impacted? What are the communities that will be impacted? What's the transportation, food service impact, things of that nature? And then we're going to look at implementation readiness as it relates to timeline and the operational complexity of any of the decisions that we have to make. So when we talk about the phase one recommendations, we anticipate, and again, these are approximate, one-time revenue to be in the area of about $9.5 million in savings that we will actualize. and $1.5 million in annual or recurring savings. And we've talked quite frequently over the past several years about how in order to make sure that we are really significantly addressing the structural challenges that we have in our budget, we really have to focus on those recurring operational savings. So the one-time revenue, yes, they will help our bottom line, but it's those recurring expenses that we really have to pay it pay very close attention to. So for phase one, our recommendation this evening for trustees consideration is to list for sale this property that we're in here, the Earhart property. We are also recommending the continued attempts to sell the Ballas Administration Building. We have attempted selling that building in the past. And we are looking at revisiting selling the ballast administration building. So selling the two administrative buildings and moving administrative staff to other buildings. We are also looking at some strategic schedule alignment, which I referenced a little earlier, which would be, again, those programmatic adjustments across schools for some operational efficiency. How are schools... in relation to each other schedule-wise. It helps us to create staffing efficiency. It helps us to create programming efficiency. It helps with equity across all of our schools and making sure students have a common experience no matter what high school, middle school, elementary school they go to across our district. So the administrative transition related to selling the Earhart and the Ballast administrative buildings is a recommendation that we would use to garner one-time savings to revenue to be able to help our financial circumstances. We would be looking to centralize administrative functions, too, also in one building for more efficiency and collaboration at the administrative level. We will be looking at getting closer to the central part of the district in our town here so that we can be a little bit more accessible and available than we are out here at Earhart. And the one-time revenue would demonstrate some responsible stewardship and rebuild some of our reserves before impacting our schools. So by selling this Earhart Administration Building and the Ballast Building, we would look to find savings before there is any student impact. Excuse me. The next related to strategic schedule alignment, looking to expand student access and strengthen our staffing efficiency. This would, again, improve the flexibility of our staffing, improve student course and programming access. It strengthens our consistency and collaboration across our schools, and it decreases our operational complexity where we can be able to really assess how things are going and find the efficiencies a little bit easier and quicker when we notice that things are not in alignment with each other across the system. And so we will be doing work on identifying what some of those strategic schedule alignments might look like and entail. And it is also something we will be talking about as we go out and engage with the community. And once we finish that work, we will be bringing some specifics back to the board and the community on what that will look like. Lastly, here is the financial impact summary of 2020. These phase one recommendations, selling of the ballast property, the selling of the Earhart property, and the programmatic strategic schedule alignment that we will be working to identify. Approximately about $1.5 million in annual savings we'll be looking to identify programmatically.

Next slide.

Phase two, we're looking to target around $20 million in one-time revenue and $10 million in annual or recurring revenue. Again, that one-time revenue largely from the building sales and the annual revenue from operational efficiencies that we find in the system. So when we get to phase two, next slide please, school consolidations and closures, we wanna have a data-informed process and a community-involved process so that we can have stronger decisions. We're working now on a facilities plan and ensuring the long-term financial stability of the district through looking at a host of data points to see where we are operating efficiently, programmatically, staffing, et cetera, and where we are not. And we also want to make sure we include as was referenced here this evening, a diverse constituent input. And so below here, you see an engagement process timeline. Those dates are approximate, so don't hold us to those exact dates, but it's to illustrate that throughout the fall, we will be engaging with our community in this process because much like, again, with state, we want to make sure we are speaking with our diverse array of constituents here in the district who all have valuable information and input that we want to hear And we want to be able to utilize that input as we look through and work through the decisions that are in front of us. So, again, this is just a recap of the decision-making framework as we're out collecting data from engaging with folks and looking at the efficiencies and the operations of the district and thinking about the decisions that lie ahead of us. These are the things that we will bear in mind, the enrollment impact, the financial sustainability, the equity impact, and the implementation readiness. Okay, and that concludes that piece of the update. So I know you probably have some questions, so we'll take questions, and Mr. Britton, Well, thank you. We'll likely jump in with some of the dollar figure details here, but we're ready for your questions.

So I'm glad that there's some community engagement. especially before we make some decisions. Of course, there's the ones that were presented, but for other further decisions. I just wanted to get an idea of how are we gonna implement the community engagement and what does it look like? And then some suggestions that I've heard from the community is, Is it going to the schools and listening to the feedback from those constituents, or do we work with PTOs and see if we can get as much community input before we make decisions? Great question.

We imagine both of the above, plus some. So we're still working out all of the particulars for what the full engagement process will look like. But once we do, we'll make sure to share that here, and we will also share it with all of our families and staff and students also. So everybody knows the avenue that they have to be able to participate, not just through the survey that we're reopening and sending out, but actually that in-person engagement. So we'll make sure to share those details once we have them.

Jordan, was your hand up? Any other questions trustees All right, thank you so very much.

Thank you information superintendent Thank you, and I'll turn it I believe over to trustee Norton at this time Thank You superintendent Superintendent parks asked if I could I present some information that is based on a document that I originally drafted for the use of the board, but was hoping could also become public. And so I've rapidly put together, with the assistance of some non-living intelligence, a slideshow that I think captures the essence of what I'm trying to say and what's going on, although I am going to Closer? Because that seems to make it worse. Closer? Hello? Hello?

Can you use another microphone?

Okay, now. Okay, that's better. Thank you very much. In any case, I was going to say I was going to share a PDF of the original document that could be linked to the eventual records of this meeting that should be considered more accurate than...

I'll use mine.

Okay. You sure you want me? Okay. So I'm sorry. The point was that as we were about to go into considering what could be some fairly serious changes in the way the district operates, that it was really important that we communicate with the community about how we got to this place. And one of the things that I have spent the last 20 years doing is acting as an advocate for public education at the state level. And unfortunately, a lot of that time has been fighting for adequate funding and to prevent policy changes that hurt public education, both financially and otherwise. So I have some slides. Thank you. So the focus is going to be on three parts. First of all, some background on Ann Arbor's individual situation. Then a little bit of data-based coverage of Ann Arbor compared to some other districts to which it's usually compared. And then finally, some background on the state environment that has helped bring us to where we are today. the ai helpfully pulled out some some important numbers which i think are useful here it's important to know that in our our real per pupil foundational allowance funding since 1995 has declined by 30 percent in other words in terms of actual buying power we have almost 30 percent less than we had when proposal a was introduced in 1995. um If our foundation allowance had kept pace with inflation simply, nothing more, we would have approximately $5,000 more per pupil. And some numbers like this or similar to this are true for every district in the state. It's useful to know that although we have been losing enrollment over the last few years, that has actually brought us back to the levels that we were at in 2014. But unfortunately, the financial environment is very different. And then finally, another thing that needs to be remembered is that less than half of the general fund revenue that we receive, both locally and from the state, is unrestricted. In other words, can be used to pay for any programs for most salaries and other things, as opposed to being legally restricted by local, state, or federal rules. Next slide, please. This is just another look at the enrollment trends. I was a little surprised to see this myself. But in the 1990s, we gained about 1,500 students. And then we're pretty stable in the early 2000s and actually until about 2014. With some bumps here and there, we lost about 200 students when Pfizer closed their global R&D facility here. Then in 2014, the administration embarked on a program to try and increase enrollment in order to make more funds available for the district and to counteract the problem of a stable enrollment, meaning falling revenue because of inflation. And so the district opened up to schools of choice, but maybe more importantly, added programs in a number of different buildings that attracted families from around the area, both inside and outside of APS. And we ended up with a peak enrollment of close to 18,000 students. After the pandemic, however, we lost students very quickly for the first two years, and then there's been a slow decline in the several years since then, which brings us back to approximately the levels of 2014. The trouble behind all this is that when enrollment is falling, because almost all of our revenue, both restricted and unrestricted, is tied to our enrollment, it means that our revenue falls faster than we can actually control costs. It takes longer to try and wind down programs and to shrink than it does for that funding to disappear, which it does immediately as soon as the October count numbers come in. And every pupil this past year brought in unrestricted funding, $10,922. Next slide, please. This is just a view of what's actually happened with our foundation allowance. The foundation allowance is partly locally funded and partly state funded. It's the amount that most people talk about that we get per pupil that is unrestricted funds. And so aside from whatever it's used for, The blue line shows the actual dollar figures that we would have seen in state budgets or in district of Materials and you can see even in that From around the time of the Great Recession It took about 12 years 12 to 13 years for us to recover even just the the nominal level of funding that we had had in 2008 In the last few years and this data ends actually this data goes through the current the next budget year last few years The legislature has been more generous In this year particularly as an election year. It was notably generous Whether we can count on that in the future isn't clear and Nevertheless, once adjusted for the increase in prices facing state and local governments, the value, the purchasing power of our foundation allowance has been sliding virtually every year since 1995 and getting to the point where, as I said, we're about 30% less than it was in 1995. For the last few years, it's been holding flat. Even though there have been nominal huge increases, all that did to counteract the high levels of inflation and the high levels of the cost that we face. In current dollars, it's $11,301 per pupil, but inflation adjusted, it's a little bit under $5,400 compared to the $7,734 that we had in 1994. It's important to note that as a hold harmless district, Ann Arbor has in general been receiving half of the annual increases as most other districts in the state because of the 2X formula. Hold harmless districts were not eligible for the funding formula that was supposed to rapidly bring all districts up to the same level. It has now actually done that within the last couple of fiscal years, every district. is now receiving the same base level of funding. And the only difference from Ann Arbor is a remainder of what we have been able to collect since 1995, which I'll mention in a minute. In addition, that extra, the amount that we were able to collect since 1995, because we were already outside of the state formula, has never changed. It was $1,234 in 1995, and in fact, it's shrunk, and it's $1,001 today, and maybe even a little bit less from that if Section 20M is repealed. That's part of the main reason why we have done so poorly against inflation, because a large proportion of our funding has never been adjusted at all. Next slide, please. Another way of putting it, as some of my colleagues had at one point asked for, is what would happen if our foundational island simply kept pace with inflation? And if that were true today, it would be something over $16,000 for pupil as opposed to the statutory $11,301. And you can see how it tracked fairly closely for the first decade after Proposal A, but after that, it diverged quite a bit. And the... where our foundation in Rhode Island was flat in the post-Great Recession years and in the Snyder years, our costs, actually, inflation kept going up, which meant our costs were going up. This was not a management failure. It was not poor tracking. These were decisions made by the state of Michigan, the state government, Governor Snyder in particular, and the state legislature to change how they funded local schools. And they did so with the priority of keeping taxes low and of pleasing some of their constituents who tend not to be in Southeast Michigan. Unfortunately, that's the picture that we've been in. Next slide, please. Just a quick picture in last year. So this is fiscal 25, the 24-25 school year, which is the latest data I had from the state financial information database. Only about 48% of our total revenue was unrestricted, and that's the local and the state portion of the foundation allowance. A large portion of the foundation allowance, 12%, ends up going right back to Lansing to pay for the district's unreimbursed portion of the costs of the state retirement system. In terms of the restricted funding, The largest share is for special education, but then another 6% of the state funding is passed through money that is meant to help us make the remainder of our obligations to pay for the state retirement system. And that's the increasing burden over the last decade of the state retirement system costs. is something that is not often mentioned and I want to emphasize at this point just when I bring it up this is not because the benefits are amazing or because anything that people are necessarily getting anything more than they used to almost all of the shortfalls that we are currently having to fund are because of the retirement system did not meet its targets for investment income and that means that all school districts must then contribute more so that they can be financially able to meet their future obligations.

Did it also have to do with every time we privatize, there are fewer people paying in?

Well, that, of course, wasn't necessarily going to get into details, but When we private, 20 years ago, there were about two working members, school district employees, not just teachers, but all employees were members of the system, for every one retiree receiving benefits. Now it's three retirees for every two current employees. So in other words, every time we privatize, every time, and that's one of the attractions of privatizing is because we no longer have to pay this extra amount to the state retirement system, MIPSERS, but it means that there are yet fewer and fewer people paying into the system. And eventually it comes back to bite us because our mandatory contributions have to increase. Next slide, please. This is just a quick over time. I know it's really hard to see from there. But if you look, the green, so this is our AAPS revenue since 2011 adjusted for inflation. The green wedge is our unrestricted foundation allowance. And you can see the light green, which is what comes from the state, has been getting consistently smaller. And then there's a little sort of a gray shadowed area down at the bottom that shows how much of our of our foundation allowance actually has to go straight back to Lansing anyway. If you look at the top, the blue and the red and the purple sections, this is our restricted funding from the state and from the federal government. The largest one, of course, and the fastest growing being special education. These are reimbursements for costs that we incur that's not funding up front. So that means essentially that As with most districts, we've been spending more money to meet the needs of children who are eligible for special education services. And the reimbursements have grown with them, and in particular, we're fortunate here in Washtenaw County to have a countywide special education millage that allows us to actually recoup most of those expenditures. You'll notice at the top, the little purple things, that's the federal money. And that's a lot smaller a share than I had expected. And secondly, you can also see that that dark blue area, which is state restricted funds, have been growing over the years for a lot of different extremely well-intentioned and well-motivated programs. But nevertheless, it is money that can only be spent in a certain way and can't be reused. Next slide, please. I want to go quickly through just some quick comparisons to some of the other school districts that people often compare Ann Arbor to. And this is data from the 24-25 school year. Even though, well, one thing I should say, Ann Arbor is the fourth largest district in the state after Detroit, Utica, and Dearborn at 16,700 at the time. Our average teacher salary, as reported to the state, was in the mid-range for the state and for the region. However, our basic instruction expenditures per pupil and our total instructional salaries per pupil led all of these comparable districts, which means even though our individual salaries may have been lower, we were spending more on instruction than most of the other comparable districts. On administration, we were somewhat on the high end, but well below the top, Wayne-Westland. And I also want to note that our overall pupil-teacher ratio, which is just simply the number of students divided by the number of basic instruction teachers, is next to the lowest of all of these. All of these things contribute to relatively high cost basis, and we have been trying over the years to maintain this by doing everything we could to protect the classroom. We privatized food service. We privatized transportation. Thank you. We privatized custodial, all of which had been district employees, all of them represented by unions. ALL THAT WORK WAS PRIVATIZED BECAUSE IT SAVED US AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT IN THE MIPSER'S COSTS SO THAT WE COULD TRY AND MAINTAIN THESE KINDS OF RATIOS AT THE CLASSROOM. UNFORTUNATELY THERE'S NOT A LOT LEFT TO PRIVATIZE. NEXT SLIDE PLEASE. This is just a real quick idea that shows because of our status as a hold harmless district, this is the impact of inflation on our foundation allowance compared to other districts. Northville is the other hold harmless district in this chart, and you can see that both Northville and Ann Arbor have lost substantial ground since 1995 as compared to, say, Plymouth, Canton, Saline, and Dexter, who were holding their own until about the Great Recession and haven't had to cut as much. Next slide, please. Here we go. Unfortunately, the tough reality is that there is a trade-off between class size and teacher salaries because about the same amount of money has to be spread over either fewer or more classrooms. Ann Arbor has the lowest pupil to teacher ratio of all the districts that are in our range of average teacher salary as of fiscal 25. And there are a few other districts that have lower class sizes, but they also offer considerably less in terms of average teacher compensation. Although there are certainly a lot of different options and ways to save money, it's very difficult to get around this basic dilemma. Next slide, please. This is just for the record. Ann Arbor has made a point of trying to keep its class sizes low, especially at the lower elementary level. And these numbers reflect the limits, the contractual limits, above which teachers would need to receive extra compensation for extra students. And you can see that we are the lowest until we get about to middle school. And from that point on, we're about in the middle. That was an intentional decision over the years that we have tried to maintain. And I know that my children benefited from it. And I am... I think that our community is right to be somewhat concerned about what changes might bring to that, but we also have to be aware of the choices that we face. Next slide, please. A little bit on state context. One of the things that surprised me, if we look at overall spending on education, Michigan ranks in about the middle of all 50 states. But if we look at spending on instructional salaries, we're 36th. But if we look at our rank and employee benefits, which is mostly the state retirement system, we are eighth in the country. This graph here shows adjusted for inflation. The green part is the funds that are distributed by the state that are actually available to not just Ann Arbor, but to all districts to spend on their current operations. And the red is the portion of the state funding which actually has to go straight back to Lansing to pay for the state retirement system. And it has grown, as a matter of fact, it has more than tripled in real terms since 2000. Next slide, please. This just shows more of that data where our K-12 spending and instructional spending as a state are in the middle of the country, whereas our salaries rank is considerably farther down the list. Next slide, please. And yet again, just pointing K-12 instructional salaries adjusted for inflation. We're not just down the list, but we are significantly below the U.S. average. And in fact, we have been falling faster since the Great Recession and the stimulus funds, despite the COVID era funding. That gap has continued to widen. Next slide, please. One of the things I try and bring to people's attention is that because for a lot of policy decisions, a lot of them tax decisions, but also budget decisions, our state is using a considerably smaller portion of its economy to fund K-12 education than it did 30 years ago. the percentage of our spending on K-12 education compared to state personal income, which is a little bit like state GDP, has declined if we had kept as a state the same commitment. So in good times and bad, the same percentage of our economy, it would currently be $4.1 billion higher in annual spending, which spread across the entire state is almost $3,000 per pupil. Next slide, please. So bottom line is we do need to act. Many of these trends don't appear to be reversing. They will require strong political will in Lansing for these trends to change. And if we want to maintain the quality of our programming here, we need to take steps to protect it. All of these hit the same points about enrollment declines hurting. The issue of the state retirement system will apparently all go away around 2036. And if we were all able to hold our breaths until then, everything would be wonderful because it'll mean that there's another $3 billion that districts are currently paying into the system that we won't have to pay anymore. However, children don't stop growing and people don't hold their breaths for a decade. So we have to figure out a way to hold out until we can get to that glorious day in the future when we're back to simply paying for pension normal costs. And that's it. Thank you very much for listening. Good job. Good job. Wow. Be happy to take any questions.

I wasn't expecting that. Thank you. Yeah. Trustees, Vice President Wilkes.

Well, first of all, I just want to say thank you, Trustee Norton, for presenting this very thorough presentation on what the reality is. It's sobering. I think many of us sitting at this table are aware of what's going on, but I mean, that was a lot to digest, and I'm just glad that we were able to present it to the public. But again, This just sort of underscores, again, what we're facing right now and some of the tough decisions that are gonna have to be made. So I think this was necessary. So thank you again for making this presentation.

Thank you, Trustee. I'll actually say that when I gave my statement, when you were looking to fill the seat, One of the things I said is that the enemy is not in this room, and this is what I meant. The biggest obstacles that face us right now are not local, but they are outside of our immediate control. They are not outside of our ability to influence if we organize and take action together with communities across the state.

I don't know what else we can say. I mean, trusty basket.

Again, thank you, Trustee Norton. And I want to let the public know this is an abbreviated version of what the trustee shared with us. There were 22 pages, and I thought, okay, this deserves a lot more attention than just the seven of us. When you talk about, tell us more, please, about your thoughts of organizing and influencing the decision makers. You know, I always say that term limits didn't help us. as an educational body. But what are your thoughts? I know you've spent years working on this.

That's an excellent question. It is sort of a problem for districts like Ann Arbor where, in general, if we go and pound on the doors of our state representatives or our state senators, we find that they're generally already on our side. It's just that they tend to be in the minority, and they have tended to be in the minority for many, many years. One of the things that has always been a challenge is bringing parents and communities together that have very different backgrounds, that are from different geographies, have different economic bases and so forth. And that has been an ongoing issue. I had a superintendent from the west side of the state tell me that he would join me in arguing for increased funding as soon as his district was getting the same dollars as Ann Arbor. And I don't know exactly how to respond to that. I wish that every district could get the same amount of dollars that Ann Arbor gets and that we could all keep up with inflation. Neither of those things has been happening. And in fact, the pressure has been pushing down the value of the funding that we get. And other districts are seeing some gains, but again, not enough to keep up with inflation. Right now, because we have reached that promised land, of essentially equal per pupil funding except for those to hold harmless uh provisions which which are very much smaller relative than they used to be now all of our districts will be in essentially the same boat Before it was possible to have those two X formulas to have districts earn twice the increase annually as some of the districts at the high end. But that system is now gone. Last time this happened, it took a while for people in the rest of Michigan to understand what was happening and they came together and tried to fight. The legislature's response at the time was to change the rules and to reinstate the two X formula. to what it became in the last decade. Nevertheless, there really isn't any place else to go. And so we have an opportunity here to work with folks from rural areas, from large cities, small towns, Northern Michigan, the UP, West Michigan, everywhere. We're all going to be more or less in the same boat. And I think that this is our opportunity to reach out both to other school boards, to other administrators, and as communities to other citizens and parent activist groups to try and put pressure on our legislature to value K-12 public education in the way that we believe it should. Trustee Schmidt?

Thank you for sharing that, Trustee Norton. My experience working in the legislature, I can say that, and I've done a lot of advocacy work there with dyslexia bills and literacy bills, You make the comment that talking to your own legislators that are already in your camp, it's good for them to hear from us so they have a sense of that, but the way the legislature's set up, there's the policy side and the appropriation side, and the appropriation controls the money. And so I would tell people that, of course, affiliating with groups like our board is with MASB and they're watching what's happening, getting on the mailing list for those committees. So you'd want the chair of appropriations and the members of that committee, and then the education appropriations committee. And what we found is that sending an email can quickly be zapped. If you go to their website, sometimes you have to put in your zip code so that they don't even take yours because you're not in their district. But snail mail letters, letters from children, phone calls, fill up those voicemails, those are the things that they're feeling the pressure. And I can say, having worked in those offices for a rep, You feel it when those calls are coming in and such. So if you have a group of parents that care about this issue and you get organized, and I'd be glad to sit and chat with them about how to do this. And you know this, Steve, from you doing it, that you get organized. And, of course, MEA has their voice in the legislature doing their advocacy and their lobbying. But you have to think of... not just going to your own legislators and not just flipping an email because it's just too easy they won't listen so you have to those phone calls and those snail mails they they really do make an impact i think i would completely agree

And this is an opportunity where I don't know if you all had the same experience, but when my kids were little and we would be at the rec and ed soccer meets and all the parents could do was to stand around and talk with one another. When your kids get older, if they still participate in sports or in theater or other things, go out and meet some of the parents from other districts from other parts of this this region that's an opportunity to start to make those contacts because although we can send messages to legislators from other parts of the state there is nothing like them going home and having their coffee hours and hearing their own constituents many of whom they may know personally tell them that they're concerned about what's happening in Lansing and asking why they're not supporting education to the extent that it needs to be. And some of it is a question of getting the message out. They've been able to pat themselves on the back saying, oh, we put more money in the foundation allowance, but what is given with one hand is taken away with another. When the MPSERS costs go up and it's a hidden tax on the foundation allowance, an increase in the foundation allowance doesn't really do a lot of good. So that's why these kinds of person-to-person, if you have relatives who live elsewhere in the state, anything. Ann Arbor, I have always believed, can be a leader in this, but we can't do it alone. And we need to bring other people along and change the narrative around public education in this state. And in particular, given the preference that a lot of people have to eliminate community governed public education, that has been a policy priority of many of our key political leaders in this state. We need to address that and we need to tell people, we need to get people together so that they hear from all of us that we care about our local public schools and we want them to be strong.

All right. Well, thank you so much for that great presentation. It was a lot of great information. Hopefully we all marinate on that and make some plans on how we want to address things moving forward. That'll bring us back to or down the first briefing, 9.1 AN 2288, Scarlet Commercial Dishwasher Replacement. And I'll turn it over to Superintendent Parks and her team to go through that item.

Thank you, President Feaster. We have Ms. Margolis coming forward for this item, the dishwasher at Scarlet Middle School, which has sadly reached the end of life. So we will turn it over to Ms. Margolis.

Thank you, Superintendent Parks, and thank you, trustees. Yes, a very long life. We are here this evening to ask for approval for a new dishwasher, as she said, at Scarlett. We did have two different vendors that came through, but we are asking for the Stadford Smith model. It's an organization, a company that we deal with all the time. And the funding will be provided from the capital bond for a total of $48,104. And we would really appreciate it. Trustee Baskett mentioned it earlier. This is an urgent need for the start of the school year. So we would really appreciate it if this could be voted on this evening.

Thank you very much. Questions? Trustee Baskett?

Ms. Margolis, if I heard correctly in the committee meeting, there was an eight-week the timeframe from order to actually receiving it. So trustees, imagine all those dishes in your house accumulating for eight weeks. Of course, we have health standards, so we are setting these, as I understand it, sending these dirty dishes to other dishwashers in the district, but it's an eight-week process.

They have a very good plan. Mitchell is luckily right nearby. And they have a plan with the food service staff in order to maintain all proper hygiene in the kitchens.

Vice President Wilkes?

First of all, I'm completely on board with approving this tonight since it is school starts Monday, right? Yes. So this is definitely urgent. But a quick question about the disclaimer from Stafford. It says additional costs due to tariffs, freight surcharges and supply chain issues would be passed on to the customer. And I'm just wondering, have we encountered this recently with other contracts? And if so, how much of a monetary impact has it had on the district?

I really, I do see that. I guess I don't blame them for posting that. But I don't know. I don't know if Mr. Rice... I don't know if you...

I think the effective question is, is it made in Canada? Yeah, so true.

Sorry, I don't mean to call them all up here, but I'm not sure if we've experienced that yet.

I'm just curious. It just sort of stood out to me, so I just thought I would ask if we're seeing this a lot more in contracts these days.

It's just like a standard for every contract that comes out. They always put the disclaimer on.

Okay, so just extra wording just to kind of cover themselves. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

I know this has been a very reliable vendor for us, and that's one of the reasons that we went with a little bit of a higher cost.

Okay.

All right. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much. Thank you. That'll bring us down to 9.2, AN2289, sloss and renovation, electrical trays rebid. Okay.

Thank you, President Feaster. We have Mr. Bing coming forward to talk trustees through this electrical trade rebid for Slauson Middle School's renovation.

Thank you, Superintendent Parks, and good evening, trustees.

Good evening.

We appreciate the opportunity to bring forward some timely major modernization and new construction project items for consideration, addressing the projects underway at Slauson Middle School first here and then Thurston, New Thurston Elementary School to follow. So our first item this evening as superintendent parks mentioned, uh, and two, two, eight, nine sloss and renovation and electrical trades rebid. Uh, the sloss and middle school project is our first major modernization and first deep retrofit of a historic school building. and has challenged our team to recalibrate through the process since initial planning began. It's not atypical in a renovation of a historical building, particularly one that has experienced a series of additions and interventions tacked on to the original historic structure. So in the case of Slauson, there are two overarching factors that bring us here tonight. One is the continued migration of the Gelman Plume, which disrupted district plans for a geothermal supported HVAC system. And two, some redesigns associated with an extended phased implementation and efforts to limit the overall costs of the project based on today's inflationary realities. So because the Gelman plume would have added cost to the geothermal bore field and significantly extend the timeframe to complete the installation, our architects and engineers helped evaluate the best alternative high-performance options, which created changes to overall project scope and implementation timeline, which impacted the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and other project scopes. And additionally, when the project team was repackaging these construction documents and bidding materials, the recommendation was made to extend the phased implementation schedule, reduce some of the more complex structural interventions to ensure safe and consistent operation of the school building. This also created changes to overall scope and implementation. So ultimately these changes resulted in requests for information, bulletins, and recommendations to re-bid the electrical scope to clarify expectations and ensure the district saw the most competitive pricing. So we are evaluating the re-bid of mechanical plumbing and carpentry contracts as well for this work. In the case of this electrical rebid tonight, the original contractor Huron Valley Electric agreed to complete phase one work prior to the termination of their contract. So this rebid represents the balance of the remaining work at Slauson or phases two through five in the project. So our capital program team and our construction manager conducted post bid interviews with each bidder. To review the scope of the project schedule, confirm staffing level requirements and confirm they had all of their bases covered. The resulting lowest qualified bid represents an overall cost savings to the district. And as a result, we are bringing forward a recommendation to approve a contract to Gemini Electric Company of Charter Township of Clinton, Michigan for electrical and fire alarm phases two through five trade contract for the Slauson Middle School renovation project in the amount of $5,696,000 plus a 5% contingency of $284,000 for a total award of $5,980,080 to be paid for through capital program funds.

Trustee Wilkins?

Thanks. Have we worked with Gemini Electric Company before on other projects?

That's a great question. Actually, I will ask Mr. Steinhebel from Gilbane to clarify that.

No, the district has not. They have not worked in the district. Our CM, construction manager, does have experience with them in other districts.

All right, thanks. And my other question was, you said because of this Gelman Plume issue that's become more of an issue for us. Other things, you mentioned plumbing and mechanical and things like that. So are we going to see rebids for those as well?

Yeah, that's why I mentioned it, because we're expecting that we'll be back here at the table for you folks to review a couple more rebids.

And we talked about, I'm sorry, one more question, in finance committee. the Gelman Plume issue was original, as far as I understood it, was not supposed to affect the area around Slauson, and then it ended up affecting that area too, is that right? So it wasn't, that's why we're facing these kind of unexpected issues or I don't know if unexpected is the right word, but can you phrase that again in a better way than I do?

Can I add to her question? Sure. Can you explain for those folks who may not know, what is the Gilman plume? I don't want to assume that everybody knows what that is, but I'll just put that out there.

And I will explain from a non-chemist, non-environmental health background. I got you. But as it relates to our projects, Gelman Plume was the origin story is Gelman Sciences site on the west side of Ann Arbor. They had an issue with dumping 1,4-dioxane on their site. That dioxane contaminated groundwater. That groundwater has since been migrating from that original source site. And so EGLE and the county environmental health department are tracking the migration of that dioxane plume. The company under consent order is required to be filtering and repumping this water up and out and trying to address the contamination. But as they're doing that, it's continuing to migrate in the community. And we prepared a couple slides that just graphically, yeah.

Will you go through those for us, please? So again, the community has a better understanding as well as some of the trustees. It's not everyone has the knowledge of the issue.

So for general information on Gelman Sciences and the back story there with tracking the plume, the prohibition zone, you can find an EGLE map at the link provided here. And then as it relates to Slauson on the next slide here, when we started our planning process in early 2023, this was right after the Board approved the Phase 2 plan in November of 2022. We went to the Slauson team, created our engagement schedule, started planning that major modernization. And then the Fourth Amendment, I believe it's called, or Fourth Consent Agreement was signed with the state. And that changed basically the parts per billion that they track on Congress. uh identifying what is plume and what is not plume and so when they reduced the overall parts per billion considered included in the plume it expanded quite a bit and so you can see then when we started in early 2023 there was a much smaller footprint we were locating a geothermal field on the other side of the allen creek drain And then mid-2023, that Fourth Amendment was signed, and now the plume expanded and created challenges for doing vertical bores in that area that had been identified on the other side of Allen Creek. So this is something that the county is also tracking. They have a wonderful web, very official and scientific website that helps understand the definitions of the dioxane plume. You can find information on the safe levels of contaminants, how they're tracking those, and guidance for property owners and what you can and can't do with groundwater drilling in the area. So hopefully that provides some background there on how we got to where we were.

Trustee Wilkins?

Another thing that came up during our finance committee is that this alternative process, now that we can't do the geothermal, is actually going to be less expensive. Is that right, operations-wise?

We're hoping that from an operations standpoint, we're investing in a high-efficiency mechanical system. We're going to see capital savings through this rebid on the order of approximately $4 million.

So it's capital savings. Yes. Okay.

Thank you. capital savings for the project being built, but how about the sustainable year-to-year costs of having that system versus geothermal?

So incrementally, we would be saving more money if we were able to implement a ground source heat pump. We'd also be eliminating a significant chunk of fossil fuels on the site. So there's a lot of reasons to want to invest in geothermal here. But in this case, we're just trying to use the highest efficiency equipment that is available to us.

Do we, at this site, I can't remember, are there solar panels also part of this project?

There is solar planned for the roof. It's sort of a limited footprint of space available on the Slauson roof, so it'll be a modest system, but we're planning for solar.

We'll get something there.

Okay, great. Trustee Norton? Thank you, President Feaster. Just a couple of questions. One, I know that when people talk about the Gilman Plume or dioxane, I was hoping that you could confirm what I believe, which is that it is not an immediate threat to people living at the surface if they're not drilling deep wells for groundwater. Is that correct?

Yeah, that is correct. And we had lots of conversations with Eagle about this topic and what it would mean if we were to drill. But essentially, the site at the surface, there's no... There's no issue at the surface. It's if you drill down and you're extracting groundwater to the surface, then you have to have a way to treat that water that you're bringing up to the surface. But otherwise, the risk exists underneath the ground subsurface and it's not a risk for anybody on site.

okay thank you and then one quick question we we had asked you this in committee and i was just wondering if you could repeat uh the answer that you gave the uh the bids uh for this rebid seemed to break down into two very different classes one significantly larger than the other and and you were able to give some background on why that might be the case and why choosing one of the lower bids was not of concern.

So, yeah, I think the simple way to say it is that we have two bidders who have smaller firms that are very interested in finding work locally, and we have a couple companies that are very busy that have lots of available work that have access to work that's paying bonus pay per diem rates and overtime. And so they are able to provide, you know, a more, they're able to take more of a risk on bids than are the two or the lower bids. I'm not sure that's the answer you were looking for.

No, I think that was just that there are different companies with different priorities and that we're competing with other projects and not the same companies don't always all bid for the same thing. So I just want, if someone were to look at that, it's an obvious question. I wanted to bring that up before we finished. Thank you. All right.

If there's no other questions on that, thank you very much. That'll bring us down to 9.3, AN 2290, New Thurston required water main infrastructure modifications.

Thank you. We'll turn it over to Mr. Bing to talk us through these. These are post-bid changes due in large part to some delays that we've experienced with the city review process. But Mr. Bing will talk us through that. So go ahead.

Thank you, Superintendent Parks. Yes, so annex and 2290 new Thurston since the contracts were awarded at Thurston as Superintendent Parks mentioned a series of regulatory and required changes have occurred resulting in additional scope and costs for the school district. In particular, local fire department requirements related to the continuous operation and maintenance of a looping water main on site to preserve fire safety while the school is being constructed. And repeated design and engineering changes to the water main and sanitary sewers during the engineering review process. created required changes that have introduced additional design material and labor costs to the project. So as these additional costs were in direct response to local regulatory and permitting requirements, the capital program team is recommending an adjustment to two of the new Thurston Elementary School project trade contracts to accommodate these additional site infrastructure improvements. Um, so this was, uh, changes resulting from the, the in-between stage or the gap. Um, whereas we submitted, um, project plans that met the letter of the law, the codes for an end result. We have requirements that were asked of the district for the in-between stage for while we were maintaining an existing school to get to the new school constructed onsite. These are the costs that we're talking about or considering tonight. So the construction manager, in collaboration with our design team, thoroughly reviewed and validated contractor pricing associated with infrastructure modifications. And the two increases to project trade contracts in discussion here are, one, to site development of Madison Heights. um and one to um excuse me of madison heights and one for fiesler and bowman of holly michigan funding these improvements to ensure compliance with city requirements while maintaining the overall project objectives so costs of these changes have been broken out in the attached materials provided to you all and represent three separate changes made to the the project So the team is recommending to approve the following revisions to trade contracts previously approved on 4-2-25, April 2, 2025, and 2-1-9-9 to Site Development, Inc. of Madison Heights for an increase of $907,654 from the original contract amount of $5,156,000 for a total revised recommendation of 6,063,654. and an increase for Fessler and Bowman of Holly, Michigan for an increase of $3,639 from an original amount of $1,013,500 for a total revised recommendation of $1,017,139 for a total additional amount of $911,293 to be paid for with capital program funds. Mr. Vice President Wilks. Vice President Wilks? Vice President Wilks? Vice President Wilks? Vice President Wilks? Vice President Wilks? Vice President Wilks? Vice President Wilks? Vice President Wilks? Vice President Wilks?

Just to clarify, so this is a city-mandated improvement that has to be addressed. Is this something that – I know we always pay a contingency fee. Is this something that the contingency would cover, or do we want to – I guess once we start continuing with the project, we may come across something that needs – addressing that the contingent that the contingency fee would cover so can you just sort of talk about that a little bit like is this something that you're presenting tonight is this something that the contingency could cover

So that's a great question. And when initially the thinking was the contingency may be available for costs like this. But after we got to the third set of revisions that added up to an amount that threatened the overall contingency for for. uh basically for projects that were actually unforeseen and that we actually couldn't account for the idea was that we needed to protect the contingency for real unforeseen conditions whereas we were able to document very specifically all of the costs associated with these measures and describe exactly how we got to the costs which is why we're bringing them

for you tonight so that we could protect the contingency for actual unforeseen conditions on the project okay and just curious I you know I read there's the documents and maybe I just overlooked it but why was this city mandated improvement why did it arrive so late I guess why wasn't it on the on the beginning end of this project as opposed to sort of midstream can you address that

Yeah, so we go through a process with the, so we are subject to the Bureau of Construction Codes and Bureau of Fire Safety at the state of Michigan as our primary authority having jurisdiction. We are subject to the city's utility interconnection and interface where the stuff on our site meets the city infrastructure. so there is a review process that we go through with the city but that the process here uh in particular was a really extended and protracted back and forth uh where we were getting we made revisions and we got more information then we needed to make more revisions and then we got more information and then we needed to make more revisions and then we got more information And so it was beyond what is a typical process, but help me if I'm misspeaking, Kevin or Mr. Steinhebel, please. But it was a very extended process and one that we didn't anticipate being as lengthy and as involved as it was.

I agree. There's a little bit more nuance to it, but basically that is exactly what happened. We also started a little late with the city.

Okay. All right. Yeah, it just really just seemed somewhat odd that there were so many different... I mean, I think there were like three different... Mean it was a long process. That's what I'm trying to say and But usually something like this would be caught would be noticed on the front end of a project Okay, yeah, we told our architects resolve all this before we bid got it But that didn't prove possible on any of our projects. Okay. All right. Thank you for clarifying I'll see you trustee basket the trust Muhammad. I

Thank you, colleagues, for all of your good questions and for the memories of my colleagues on the Finance Planning Committee. With the Board's support, I have asked that the team start tracking, if you will, these additional requirements that are, as the team has stated, a bit unusual. But we do know that the Thurston project has caught a lot of attention and lawsuits. that we just need to be mindful that we are getting maybe a little more love, if you will, from certain entities than we probably would have expected. Again, right now we're talking about $911,000. it's a small amount in the scope of it but again as we track projects all of our projects if we've started to notice again this little extra attention and requirements from the city but as I've said to the team I'm proud of the fact that we will do as requested again in terms of safety for all so that's why we're here regarding these increases but again thank you for all of the questions and

know the team has definitely been mindful of this um so I mean definitely 900 almost a million dollar so when you look at the overall project so this is an additional cost from what from what I understand it from the original what we approved originally with these projects is that correct

That's correct.

Okay. So are there, is there an opportunity to make adjustments within the, because I know we have to do this. I mean, this is required by the city. Are we making any adjustments to stay on track when it comes to the budget, the overall budget for Thurston? Because I know it's still a million, but are there opportunities to see what we can do within the Thurston project to keep us on budget?

Yeah, I appreciate that question. We have looked at a number of ways that we could reduce costs if possible. A lot of the costs are not set in stone, but there are a lot of costs that are committed in the project. And so where we have any flexibility at all, we are looking at ways to reduce overall costs.

All right. Seeing nothing else. Thank you. I believe that brings us down to 9.4, AN 2291, AN 2292, and AN 2293, special education student support services contracts.

Thank you, President Feaster. We have Ms. Lewis here to present this item. As trustees know, we are proactive in as much as possible to try to make sure that we have qualified ancillary and support staff ready and prepared to support our students. And so Ms. Lewis is going to talk us through a few recommendations for some consultant services to make sure we have enough staff to be able to meet our student needs. Ms. Lewis, go ahead.

Good evening, trustees. How are you tonight? Good evening. So as Superintendent Parks mentioned, you know that the availability of special education staff, specifically speech and language pathologists and school social workers continues to be an area of critical shortage within our state. We are requesting the support in total tonight. We're looking at 3.0 total speech, FTE support, and 2.0 school social work support. This is temporary support as we will continue to look for individuals to hire within AAPS, but our goal is to minimize the disruption to service for students. So if we can be a bit more proactive in finding some I would say some gap providers to provide service for our students. And these providers are fully qualified and meet the criteria for providing those services, but they would be through, we have two different agencies. One agency is Illuma, which will provide us with up to 2.0 equivalency for school social workers, plus 2.0 school for speech and language pathologists for a total of 4.0 FTE. And then Princeton staffing has availability to provide us with a 1.0 speech and language FTE. Again, when we look at our bidding process and look at various rates for the contracted agencies, those rates ranged for speech and language pathologists anywhere from $75 an hour to $120 an hour. And for school social workers, those rates range from $65 an hour to $85 an hour. And as Trustee Norton gave us a great presentation this evening, these rates, when we pay to the contract agencies, they do not include things such as the retirement, any benefit components, any of the payroll taxes that are also included. require when we're hiring people so in terms of the cost factor for us oftentimes this turns out to cost us a little bit less and again that's not what we're going for that's just kind of what happens in the process if that makes sense so for in terms of recommendations For this first one, I'm recommending, again, for ELUMA, an amount not to exceed $459,000. Again, we will only pay for the services that we are utilizing. And for Princeton staffing, for an amount not to exceed $106,500. Any questions on the ancillary services before I talk about the board-certified behavior analysts? Yes, you're welcome.

So to be clear, this is only if we're unable to hire these speech and language pathologists. That is correct.

And what the past trends have shown me is that even as we're hiring, sometimes we're still losing. And so being able to have some flexibility to move that support around the district is important.

And the reason we're getting one from Princeton is because Illuma can only give us...

Right. It's based upon availability. And we, again, are looking for providers that are available to us versus waiting three months for somebody to find somebody. These individuals have folks that are ready to serve and support us.

Will we use Illuma first, and then if we still need more, we'll use Princeton?

Well, currently we have 4.4 speech FTE open, and this is only requesting up to three, so I would probably be using both of them immediately. So, again, it is, yes.

Thank you.

Yep. And again, this is a moment in time, right? Maybe there's some magical hiring happening while I'm here in the board meeting, as HR has been working feverishly to get our folks in, but that's where we were before the meeting.

Just real quick. So basically, so Princeton is a backup, is that?

No, no, no. They are both. We will utilize both because we currently, again, have above four FTE available. Illuma has two for speech. Princeton has one for speech. So we still have a gap for speech. So you might see me back again if someone else magically appears that we need.

Okay. Thank you for clarifying. Thank you.

Any other questions about that, those two? Okay, so then the next one that I wanna talk about is our request for board-certified behavior analyst support. And these individuals have very unique and specialized training in applied behavior analysis. And they work with school staff to collect data, to help analyze data around student behaviors. So oftentimes there are students within our district that have some unique behavior needs, some unique behaviors that may not be appropriate for the school setting. And so these individuals work with school teams. They also oversee and support any registered behavior technicians that we have in the district and guide them as they are working one on one with students. And this support is really critical. It's essential. And one thing that I've noticed is they have that expertise that our typical school social workers, our counselors, our special education staff don't have. They have a very unique, specialized training where they're able to analyze that behavior data, tell us what the function of that behavior is and say the student is doing X, Y, Z because they're seeking attention from this particular thing and then help the team develop a plan around how to help that student to redirect those behaviors. So we are requesting the support of 3.0 board certified behavior analysts up to that amount to support all of our schools across the district in an amount not to exceed $328,860. Questions? Trustee Wilkins? Yes. As far as timing for all of these contracts, are we going to be...

Is it urgent, like the dishwasher that's broken at Scarlet? Are we not going to be able to have these people there to support our students until this is approved? That is correct. So would it make more sense to consider also moving this to second briefing? Would that help the situation?

That would be at the pleasure of the board, but I'm not necessarily standing here asking you to adjust your process.

but I will chime in and say, yes, that would be helpful.

It would be better for the students that need these services.

Thank you so much for that presentation. Thank you. I believe that brings us down to second briefing. At this time, I guess, does anybody want to move to a motion to move other items to second briefing? I heard some chatter. Don't want to do that? Okay. to the consent agenda right correct okay okay i'm sorry when we get down to board action you can just move the items thank you for correcting another discussion thank you ma'am all right so we're at 10.1 policy series 2000 administrative uh administration sunset review any changes trustee

For the Policy 2000 series, there's been one change since first briefing. We missed changing one of the titles of the roles, and so we've made that correction. So it was listed as Deputy Superintendent of HR and General Counsel, which is a position that doesn't exist anymore, and the one that we missed. And so we changed that to Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources and Employee Relations.

Thank you, Superintendents. Seeing no questions, that brings us to 10.2, Policy Series 4000, Human Resources Sunset Review. Any changes?

A couple of changes here from the last briefing. We missed a couple of technical pieces here, too. One, in 4020, we still have legal services there, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources and Legal Services. We don't have As much as Ms. Langford does, legal services isn't one of those things, so we've corrected that to read employee relations. So we missed that in the first go-around in 4020. Then we have another one in 4300. where we removed, after the discussion at the board meeting, the word stakeholders and changed that to community members. And the third one was policy 4450. We, again, corrected it with the correct department name.

All right. Seeing no questions, that will move us down to the consent agenda. We are now at the consent agenda. Ms. Olszewski, will you please read the consent agenda?

Adopt Policy Series 2000, Administration, as presented. Adopt Policy Series 4000, Human Resources, as presented or amended. Approve minutes of the August 12th, 2026 regular meeting. And approve minutes from the June 17th, July 29th, August 10th, and August 12th closed sessions. And approve a closed session on September 9th at 6 p.m. for the purposes of attorney-client privilege and negotiations.

Thank you, Ms. Osinski. Would anyone like to remove an item from the consent agenda? Because I should ask, would anyone like to add an item to the consent agenda? Okay, then I will motion to, okay.

Well, we don't want to add the other ones to the consent agenda because you can't have discussion. Okay. So I would take, sorry, I would just take the, after we get through this, we can go back. Okay. And vote the others. All right.

So seeing that, did you have something, Trustee Wilkins? Question.

Yes, ma'am. Typically, the consent agenda has included approval of donations or recognition of donations.

We had no donations.

So the Morgan Whalen donation?

I didn't know about it. I don't have anything about it.

It came in right before the meeting. So we don't have to have that. We'll have it next time.

It doesn't stop anything from happening. It's just the formal acceptance by the board.

It came in today right before the meeting.

Given that, do I have a motion for the consent agenda? So moved. Moved by Trustee Baskett. Is there support? Second. Support by Vice President Wilkes. Well, I guess there is no discussion. Ms. Silsinski, please.

Trustee Baskett.

Yes.

President Feaster. Yes. Trustee Muhammad. Yes. Trustee Norton. Yes. Trustee Schmidt. Yes. Trustee Wilkins. Yes. Vice President Wilkes. Yes. Motion carries.

Thank you very much. That brings us down to board action. President Feaster? Yes.

I'd like to move the purchase of the dishwasher for Scarlett under board action, please.

Thank you. We move by Trustee Baskett.

We can just make a motion to approve that. You don't even need to. I mean, it's going to be an action item. So you don't need a separate motion to move it to board action. If you'd like to just approve the item, make a motion to approve it. Is that your motion, Trustee Baskett?

Yeah, but does that not fall under board action?

It will be a board action item, but a trustee can make a motion at any time.

Yeah.

I second that motion.

So it's been moved by Trustee Baskett to approve the dishwasher and supported by Trustee Schmidt. Any discussion, trustees? Seeing none, Ms. Lozinski, please.

Trustee Baskett?

Yes.

President Feaster? Yes. Trustee Muhammad? Yes. Trustee Norton?

Yes.

Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Wilkins? Yes. Vice President Wilks?

Yes. Motion carries. Good. We are still under board action, trustees. Is there another? Thank you, Trustee Wilkins.

I make a motion to approve the National Education Support Program.

AN 2291, AN 2292, and AN 2293. That's the one. Thank you.

Second.

That's moved by Trustee Wilkins, supported by Trustee Schmidt. Any discussion, trustees?

I do have a brief discussion. I know there's a reason why we do first and second briefings, and so I know we've had a discussion about... not overly approving things without actually going through first briefings. So I just want to be mindful of that, but I do understand that this is a timely issue, but I just wanted to state that for the record that as a rule, we generally try to have a first and second briefing on items when it comes to spending district money. So, again, I just wanted to go on record saying that. But, again, I do at the same time, I do see the timeliness and the necessity to put this on the front burner because school starts Monday. I get that.

Trustee Norton? Thank you, President Feaster. I completely agree with what Trustee Wilkes is saying. I think that in this case in particular, it is mitigated by the fact that these are positions that remain to be filled, that will be needed, and that we will only exercise these contracts if they are actually needed and we're not able to hire inside candidates. So that does, it's not as though this is, we're taking a new initiative. We're trying to make sure that existing positions get filled, whether internally or whether from outside. And that, I think that that may help mitigate the concerns about moving so quickly for this

I obviously agree with Vice President Wilkes and with you.

So I have a question for Ms. Lewis. So do you need folks on day one, on Monday? I mean, is it, I mean, or like the first week, is it pressing to really do that?

We are legally obligated to provide services the moment school starts. And so certainly there are a variety of some students might have speech and language service once a week. Some students might have it three times a week, depending on there are some cases where those folks might be going into some of our self-contained classrooms on a daily basis. So In terms of should we have them on day one, legally, we are required to. Thank you.

All right. So if there's nothing else, it's been moved by Trustee, by Vice President Wilkes, supported by Trustee Schmidt. Trustee Wilkes.

I think it was moved by me.

It was me. Trustee Wilkins who moved it. I'm sorry. Oh, that's an L not a G. Sorry. LW not GW. Apologies. Moved by Trustee Wilkins and then supported by Trustee Schmidt.

Trustee Baskett. Yes. President Feaster. Yes. Trustee Muhammad.

Yes.

Trustee Norton. Yes. Trustee Schmidt. Yes. Trustee Wilkins. Yes. Vice President Wilkes.

Yes.

Motion carries.

And I believe we added the resolution, Suspending By-law 1500 and Adopting Amendment to Policy 5011. I believe we have, I'll turn it over to Senator Parks to introduce our guest.

Thank you, President Feaster. We have our legal counsel, Mr. Landau, here to talk through the reason for the resolution in front of you this evening in response to a federal complaint and ensuring that we are both in compliance and also ensuring

uh responding uh accordingly to the the terms of the complaint so i'll turn it over to mr landau thank you very much trustees superintendent parks uh i'm richard landau let's see here yeah if you could move it aside so we can hear you the button on the left side right hand on the right side then right there we go i left there you go there we go good okay uh I'm Richard Landau, and my office represents the Anna Republic Schools in Federal Compliance Matters. I'm here tonight to formally introduce the resolution to adopt permanent FERPA amendments to Board Policy 5011. The resolution is a direct and protective response to the written notice of noncompliance received by the district on August 24th, this past Monday, from the U.S. Department of Education Student Privacy Policy Office, the SPPO, in case number 260331. The federal government has determined that policy 5011, as written, violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, FERPA. FERPA is a US federal law that protects student privacy by giving parents and eligible students the right to inspect their education records and control who can access them. The parent makes a request for an education record under FERPA, we are obligated to produce that education record to the parents and it has been our consistent policy to do so in every instance. SPPO stated in its August 24, 2026 notice that policy 5011 effectively denies parents their rights under FERPA by instructing schools to hide gender identity information from parents when communicating with them and give students authority over what information the school must share with parents. The district has expressly denied this allegation. SPPO ordered us, however, to amend Policy 5011 before school starts on Monday, August 31, 2026. Failing to meet this deadline puts an estimated $15 million in annual federal funding, which supports special education, Title I and USDA school lunch programs, at immediate risk and exposes us to potential Department of Justice civil litigation. To protect the district, we transmitted a formal qualified affirmation of our intent to comply yesterday, August 25. In doing so, we have denied SPPO's characterization of our policy. Tonight, I'm asking that the Board take the necessary Board action to fulfill that commitment by addressing SPPO's technical concerns while adhering to the principles underlying the policy. Let me point out once again, we got this notice on Monday. They told us to affirm that we were going to comply yesterday, less than 24 hours after the notice, and also told us that if we didn't amend our policy by August 31, 2026, we would be at risk of losing our federal funding or for them to initiate proceedings to lose our federal funding. So this is something of an unusual circumstance for the board. In my over 20 years of doing this kind of work, I've never seen anything quite like it, but here we are. Because standard policy amendments under board policy, board bylaw 1500, require a committee referral and a 14-day waiting period, We cannot meet the August 31 deadline through our ordinary process. this resolution invokes board bylaw 1050 which authorizes a board majority to temporarily suspend bylaw 1500 for a specific action the action proposed by this resolution would amend policy 5011 in a manner that we believe addresses the concerns of sppo without abandoning the principles that the Board recognized in enacting the original policy. The proposed amendment does four essential things. It guarantees parent access. It establishes that nothing in Policy 5011 shall be interpreted to withhold records from a parent holding legal rights under FERPA. It defines search scope. It mandates that a FERPA search must include all responsive records, including electronic records, district email, counselor files, and any separate or confidential files. It removes consent barriers. It clarifies that student consent is not required for a parent's lawful inspection request. and protects daily confidentiality. Crucially, it establishes that FERPA's reactive inspection requirements are distinct from routine daily interactions. It does not create an affirmative duty for staff to proactively out students or volunteer sensitive information in casual daily communications. Finally, By taking this voluntary action, AAPS does not admit any prior FERPA violation, does not concede the SPPO's characterization of our policy, and preserves all legal defenses. This resolution is a highly protective, legally sound path forward. I recommend that the Board of Education adopt it tonight, and I'm available to answer any questions.

Thank you very much, Mr. Landau. Questions, trustees? Trustee Muhammad?

So I understand that there's gonna be a motion on the table to suspend policy 1500. Obviously, I'm not gonna support suspending it because I understand why we would suspend it to pass changes to the policy of 5011 tonight. but I do believe that 5011 is significant and deserves a full thoughtful process, not a rushed decision. We need two briefings before adoption, and if necessary, a special meeting for a second briefing. I do believe that the board, including myself, staff, families, and especially the students directly impacted are transgender and gender non-confirming youth, need adequate time to understand the proposed changes and provide meaningful input. So I do believe that if, and I understand there's a timeline, I understand that we are being asked to address this by the end of the month. But we should consider, and I know we have not gone through 5011, and I have my thoughts on that, but we should consider temporary narrow-tailored change while we gather feedback from the community before we have a permanent policy. I feel like it's important not to rush this, and we should really slow down you know, do whatever we need, you know, again, temporary changes, but I feel like permanent changes should not be voted on tonight.

Thank you, Trustee Muhammad. I saw Trustee Norton's and I did not see it, so I'll go to Trustee Wilkins.

I completely agree if we were changing the policy. But we are making amendments to the policy to add clarification and to tighten some of the language, but we're not changing anything in the policy. An amendment is a change, though.

It's the same thing.

Fair enough.

I see Trustee, excuse me, Trustee Norton. Okay.

Pardon me. Thank you, President Feaster. Although I certainly sympathize with Trustee Muhammad's concerns, I wanted to ask Mr. Landau, does this, are we changing anything, are we at all changing the operations of policy 5011 as it exists today?

To my knowledge, no. We have our position has been consistently that where we receive a FERPA request, we produce all responsive documents irrespective of whether they are in a If it is a segregated or confidential file, if it is a record involving a student in our district and we receive a FERPA request, we provide it. The interpretation that I provided, the SPPO in my correspondence is that the reference to confidential files or essentially an administrative convenience so that there's no inadvertent disclosure in voluntary communications between parties as to a student's gender identity or gender expression, but that when we receive a FERPA request, irrespective of whether that information is a confidential file or elsewhere, it is produced. And it's my understanding based upon my consultation and my understanding of the district's processes that this is the way that we have always behaved. This amendment clarifies to the extent it wasn't clear to the SPPO that this is the way this district operates.

And I'm sorry, this has been true since the date when this policy was first authored? To my knowledge, yes. Is President Wilkes?

Yes. I would just like to, thank you, President Feaster. I would just like to concur with Trustee Wilkins that, again, this is not a rewrite or complete changes. This is an amendment. And I think that was clearly stated. I would like to add that, or actually, I would like to ask you a question. So based on what's been amended, Can you clearly state that we're still planning to protect students?

My understanding and the direction I've received from the superintendent in handling this affairs and my understanding of the board, the sense of the board, is that yes, we intend to protect all students within this district irrespective of their gender identity or gender expression. My understanding as to what SPPO is challenging us on is are we, quote, hiding records from any parent who requests them. It's been our consistent position that we do not, that when we receive a FERPA request, we provide those documents.

Thank you. I think it's important to stress that, that we are protecting our students.

I would characterize this as a technical amendment to the policy.

Okay. I appreciate that.

Thank you. Or do Trustee Baskett, Trustee Smith, and then back to Trustee Muhammad. Okay, Trustee Baskett and then Trustee Muhammad.

Trustees, I think our intention is to address or mitigate any potential alarm that we may have with our students, all of our students, any of our students. And so I'm responding to the signs in the audience and the heightened tension that I feel in the room. This amendment again is to clarify what we have been practicing for the longest since we've had the policy, but also to address a federal issue that was brought upon us for whatever reason. My urgency is to resolve this so that, again, we can assure the community that our practices have not changed. We are adding clarity to what we're doing to be in full compliance of the law, as well as, again, to assure, I'm repeating myself, but to assure our students that we're here for them. um if it requires an amendment to clarify the language i think that's easy enough to do so to speak um to drag this out if you will is going to in my opinion cause undue tension and alarm and potential risk of federal dollars uh mr landau mentioned 15 million dollars in this budget crisis we can't afford to lose one dollar especially if we can mitigate the situation by a simple adoption, again, of an amendment to the policy. Any policy, as we know, can be brought forth for revision. And again, due to the urgency This current administration is not playing We have heard of what's happened to other districts in the country We are a premier district and I'm sure we would Administration would love to make us a target a case, you know example if you will and I don't think we want to do that I encourage us to take action tonight to amend the current policy, again, for clarity, not for major changes in practice or in our intentions and feelings of all of our students.

Superintendent, may I have a word, President Feaster? Yes, please. One thing I should have made clear in my remarks, no one to my knowledge has ever filed a complaint that we are not somehow in compliance with FERPA. This is not the action by the SPPO was not generated by a parent coming to them and saying that the Ann Arbor Public Schools is not in compliance. This action originated on the on the on the department's own initiative. So no one has ever said we're in noncompliance. They've reviewed our policy and have independently reached that conclusion without any complaint before them.

And Mr. Blandau, if you'll confirm, we haven't had a student complain or a family complain that we violated their privacy rights or records.

No, nor does the SPPO say that anyone has complained. They simply are reviewing this on their own initiative and have reached that conclusion. Go back to Trustee Muhammad, and then we can try to move forward.

So I understand what FERPA is, and I absolutely support making our district in full compliance with the federal privacy laws. But my question is, if there's questions about or concerns about FERPA, I would ask that we address those directly by creating or clarifying a standalone policy on FERPA. and clear district procedures, but not by changing policy 5011. I feel like it does send a message to our students, especially if we're changing this specific policy and not others. So I am for clarifying FERPA and the procedure and the policy, but it does not have to be through this policy. I also understand the timeline, because we do have to respond to the Office of Civil Rights by August 31st, and that we do need to address this issue. But understanding the timeline does not mean we have to rush this policy, especially when we're talking about students' privacy, safety rights. I understand these are two separate things. 5011 focuses on the rights of transgender and gender non-confirming youth, but then FERPA is in play. So I would recommend that if we have to make a small amendment to hopefully get back to the Office of Civil Rights, and address their complaint but we should not have any permanent changes to vote on tonight we should still take it through governance this is a very vulnerable community It's very important to hear from the families and hear about this policy and their thoughts. So I would rather, I'm not going to support moving forward with this. I believe we have to take our time, do this right, and listen to feedback, especially the students who are directly affected. So I would rather see a separate policy focused on FERPA and not necessarily changing the specific 511 policy.

you have something directly yes yes I mean trustees August 31st is in five days Monday Monday thank you the start of school when we have to respond this is Wednesday we all have busy schedules I'm not sure we can fit all of what you're proposing trustee Muhammad into five days we have a proposal again I think The community will be confused as to what we're proposing. If we do not act on this, again, we're not changing the substance of the policy. We are clarifying for federal oversight people that we will be in compliance. We will continue to protect our students and their privacy. Yes, we do need to clarify some language, as they have requested. By the way, I don't know if we have that revision ready. Board Docs. Oh, thank you. Board Docs, thank you. But again, the urgency is real. It is real. School starts on Monday. And the very students you claim you want to protect need that protection. And so if we don't act on this, who knows what can happen between now and Monday. Subsequent days.

I don't think we have again time to play with Schmidt trustee Norton and then let's see if we can try to get a vote on this.

I think the words I I think the words that you use, the technical amendment, is really the key here. And I think ginning up this concern, this worry, is really unfair to this group of students. And it's very troubling to me that this is kind of being used to drum up this. Because what we're trying to do is do a technical amendment to get this administration that is doing some horrible things not to bother us anymore. It doesn't mean we're changing anything. We're trying to be more clever than that. So what I'm hearing here is just trying to get people to worry, and I think it's totally unfounded. And I'm sorry that our students are feeling this way right now, because it's unnecessary.

Trustee Norton. Thank you, President Feaster. I certainly understand I think the concerns of all of my colleagues who have spoken so far, I guess for my own understanding and for those who may be listening, I want to clarify. Our original policy has always said, or as required by law. And that meant without spelling it out or as required by a formal request under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Apparently that was not clear enough for people in the Department of Education and so what we are doing now is making it clear for them without actually changing our practice because there is no accusation that our practice has led to a violation of the law. However, We do not yet have assurance, I believe, that the Department of Education will accept this as sufficient. Is that correct, Mr. Landau? That is correct. So we will perhaps potentially be addressing this again, whether we want to or not, and the intent here is to give the department a chance to walk away thinking that they've won something. If I may.

Yes, please. To be completely transparent on the process, what I am instructed by the department to do is to provide them if we do make a change to our policies, to provide them with a tested copy that I would get from Amy and provide it to them as our gesture of good faith, compliance, if you will. And then they will make a determination with regard to whether or not they're going to close the file or proceed to take any further action. But essentially, they're telling us, take some action. We will consider whether it fixes what we're concerned about. And then we will decide whether or not we will initiate enforcement proceedings or whether we will close the case. Yeah.

I saw Trustee Muhammad, then I saw Trustee Wilkins.

So I just wanted to respond to some of the comments that some trustees have made. I understand that there is a timeline. I understand that we have to address this by the end of the month. My question is, is that why do we have to specifically, we can address it by, you know, having us maybe, I know we could do like not a permanent change to that specific bylaw, but add something regarding FERPA. But then take the time and build a standalone FERPA policy because it applies to many different groups, not specifically this specific group of vulnerable students. So that is all what I'm asking, is that we take our time, but we would have to submit something by the 31st, but not this permanent amendment that is being proposed today.

Trustee Wilkins?

Again, I agree, Trustee Muhammad. I think that's a good idea. I think we do need to Introduce some kind of policy that addresses FERPA for other Vulnerable groups so that they're protected in this same way I want to reiterate that this is not this would not be a financial decision. This has nothing to do with the threatened federal dollars If that's the case, then I hope this board will agree with me in figuring out how to come up some other way with that money. As board secretary, my name would be on this resolution if it's passed. to amend this policy to clarify and tighten up the language. And I'm completely comfortable with having my name on this resolution. And I hope the folks in this community who know me know that I'm okay with that, with having my name on it. And it's that important that it's not a change. It's just tightening up the language. And that's what we're trying to do here.

I agree. I mean, obviously, if we were changing the substance of the policy, rather than just changing the wording and clarifying things, then I might have more of a problem. But given that all we're doing is making our current procedure and policy more clear to comply with PPO, I can support this policy. And whether or not they accept it or not, we'll deal with that down the road. But clarifying our policy 5011. I think that's totally fine as long as we're not changing the substance of what this community is, what this district is, and we are not doing that by passing this. So if no one else has made a motion to do so, I move that we pass the resolution to adopt the permanent FERPA amendment to board policy 5011.

Point of order, President, because I think we have to suspend the bylaw. Okay, thank you, President Feaster.

I just want to say that...

As board members, we are here for our students. And we... I can speak for myself, okay? I would not do anything to endanger any of our students, okay? That's one of the reasons I... ran to be on this school board is for students. I'm here for our students, our kids. And I just want to reiterate that, and I'm sure every single board member is here for our kids, student achievement and our kids. So I just want to make, this is a very... Yeah, I mean this is, protecting our kids is really what we're here for, okay? So I just wanna reiterate that. I don't want anyone to have any doubts about that. So I just, again, I just feel it's necessary to say that. I had three sons who went through this district and I just know that it's important for us to be looking out for our students. And that's exactly what, for all students,

students so so trustee basket you had a motion I do thank you president Feaster so I move that we temporarily suspend bylaw 1500 solely for the specific purpose of considering and adopting the amendment to board policy 5 0 11 no other provision or application of the bylaw 1500 is suspended second thank you supported by trustee Schmidt saying no discussion mr. Zinske please

Now we're just voting to suspend the bylaws.

No, it's both. Okay, we can do it at the same time? I mean, the resolution calls for both.

The resolution calls for both, but I think if you want to vote separately.

Do you want to vote separately to suspend the, because the resolution is written to temporarily suspend bylaw 1500 and adopt a permanent amendment to policy 5011. That's what you said.

Let me be clear. If a majority votes in favor of the amendment, then by implication that a majority is also voting to suspend 1500. Gotcha. So I think we can do it that way. So is that a front?

Do you mind amending it?

No, I do not. I prefer to do both separate, but that's fine. We've got the support there. Trustee Smith, do you still support that?

Yes. And this is the motion to suspend By-law 1500 and adopt the permanent resolution to Board Policy 5011. Should I read the resolution at this time? Yes. Okay. And so it was moved by Trustee Baskett, supported by Trustee Schmidt. Now we're at discussion. Trustee Norton, I saw your hand.

Well, if Trustee Baskett's going to read it, maybe this isn't necessary, but I wanted to call attention to of the resolution which says this voluntary amendment does not admit that the prior text of policy 5011 caused or authorized an actual FERPA violation, does not concede SPPO's characterization of the policy or its prior operation, and does not waive any objection or defense available to the district. In other words, we are making a change in order to make clear to the Department of Education that we have always been in compliance with the law. And that is all we are doing here. Is that a correct characterization, Mr. Landau? It is. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee.

It's been moved and supported. Any additional discussion? Seeing none. Do you want me to read the resolution or no? No.

I think we were thinking that would be... We were. Thank you. So bear with me, folks. Resolution to adopt permanent FERPA amendments to Board Policy 5011, August 26, 2026. Whereas the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education exercises its governance authority for the adoption and dissemination of board policy. Whereas board bylaw 1050 authorize a majority of the members serving on the board to suspend a bylaw temporarily in order to accomplish a specific action.

I think that's 1500.

Whereas on August 24th, 2026, the U.S. Department of Education's Student Privacy Policy Office, SPPO, issued a notice in the case number 26-0331, directing the district to affirm that it would amend policy 511 through board action or adopt an interim policy and to remove or replace the policy before August 31st, 2026. Whereas the ordinary bylaw 1500 process cannot be completed before August 31, 2026, and the board finds an immediate amendment to board policy 511 is necessary to provide immediate and explicit implementation direction to employees, administrators, and staff. Whereas the district maintains the position stated in its August 10th 2026 response to SPPO the policy 5 I'm sorry policy 5 0 11 regulates routine communications does not authorize withholding education records and must be administered to provide a parent or eligible student access to all responsive education records maintained by the district or a party acting for it and whereas the Board desires to make these principles express without admitting the Policy 5011 caused or authorized an actual violation of FERPA. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Ann Arbor Schools Board of Education as follows. One, Board By-law 1500 is temporarily suspended solely for the specific purpose of considering and adopting this amendment to Board Policy 5011 at the August 26, 2026 meeting. No other provision or application of bylaw 1500 is suspended. Two, board policy 5011 is amended as set forth in Exhibit A to this resolution effective immediately. Three, the superintendent or her designee is directed to incorporate the amendments into the published version policy 5011. Issue written FERPA access and records search procedures provide appropriate staff notice and training. review pending or reasonably identifiable prior access requests for admitted maintained records and submit the amended policy and implementation materials to SPPO. 4. This voluntary amendment does not admit that the prior text of policy 5011 caused or authorized an actual FERPA violation, does not concede SPPO's characterization of the policy or its prior operation, and does not waive any objection or defense available to the district. Exhibit A, Permanent Amendments to Board Policy 5011. One, replace the first paragraph under, quote, privacy slash confidentiality, unquote. The superintendent shall ensure that all personally identifiable and medical information related to transgender and gender nonconforming students is maintained and disclosed in accordance with the applicable federal, state, and local law. In routine, unsolicited communications, school staff shall not disclose information that may reveal a student's transgender status to a person who does not have a lawful bias to receive the information unless the student authorizes the disclosure or the disclosure is otherwise required or permitted by law. When disclosure is legally required, the school should, where practical, provide the student an opportunity and appropriate support to make the disclosure. Nothing in this paragraph restricts a parent or eligible student's right to inspect and review education records under FERPA or requires student consent when the parent holds that right. Two, add a new section following privacy slash confidentiality. FERPA Access to Education Records Nothing in this policy limits the rights of a parent or eligible students under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act When a parent or eligible student requests to inspect and review education records, the district shall provide access to all responsive educational records directly to the student and maintained by the district or a party acting for the district, subject only to limitations authorized by law. The search for responsive education records shall include all reasonably likely custodian systems and locations, including cumulative files, student information systems, paper and electronic records, district email, shared records, support plans, and any separate or confidential file. A record does not fall outside FERPA because it concerns gender identity or gender expressions, is labeled confidential or unofficial, or is maintained separately from the cumulative file. When a parent holds the FERPA right of access, the district shall not require the student's consent before providing access. The district will provide any communication reasonably understood as a request for access to education records under its published procedure and may seek reasonable clarification when necessary to identify the records requested. Purpose inspection and review requirement is distinct from routine unsolicited to unsolicited communications, except as otherwise required by law. This section does not create an affirmative duty to volunteer information merely because the information is contained in an education record. Three, clarify the parent communication sentence under names, pronouns, and school records. Replace the sentence beginning, it is recommended that school staff privately ask. With the following, school personnel shall privately consult with the student regarding the name and pronouns the student requests to be used in class and in routine communications, including routine communications with a parent or guardian. subject to applicable law. This communication practice does not define the contents of the student's education records, authorize alteration or destruction of records, or limit any right to inspect and review education records under FERPA. Four, replace the separate file sentence under names, pronouns, and school records. Replace the sentence, records with the student's birth name and gender will be kept in a separate confidential file. With the following, when records reflecting a student's birth name, legal name, gender marker, gender identity, or gender expression are maintained separately for private security or data minimization purposes, they remain education records to the extent provided by FERPA. The separate location or confidential designation shall not be used to exclude the records from a FERPA search or to deny, delay, or narrow a lawful request to inspect and review education records. Five, add implementation authority at the end of the FERPA access section. The superintendent or designee shall maintain written records for recognizing and responding to requests to inspect and review education records identifying relevant record custodians and locations Preserving records while the request is pending documenting completion of the search and providing training and appropriate staff You know Thank you, sir.

Thank you trustee basket So again, it was moved by Trustee Baskett and supported by Trustee Schmidt. We've all had discussion. Is there nothing else? Ms. Ozenski, please.

Trustee Baskett?

Yes.

President Feaster?

Yes.

Trustee Muhammad? No. Trustee Norton?

Reluctantly, yes.

Trustee Schmidt? Yes. Trustee Wilkins?

Yes.

Vice President Wilks? Yes. Motion carries.

Yeah. All right. That brings us down to items for agenda planning. Oh, thank you, Mr. Landau. Appreciate it. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

That brings us down to item for agenda planning. Do trustees have any items for agenda planning? Seeing none, that brings us down to items from the board. Do trustees have anything they would like to share? Trustee Norton.

President Feaster, I would like to present to the board a proposed amendment to, I'm sorry, let me, get my stuff here um a proposed amendment by way of a substitute for policy uh 5900 student personal electronic devices uh last adopted at our last meeting I would ask that this amendment that has been circulated to the board be referred to the governance committee for consideration in order to both have the policy better reflect our intent and also to ensure complete compliance with state statute.

Trustee Norton, I believe that everyone has received the email that you sent to the board. I assume that, I don't know, I asked the colleagues, was there a consensus that we should look at that in governance?

Right. Thank you, President Feaster. So I was under the assumption that governance was going to take another look in addition to the revision that Superintendent Parks provided. So...

I agree. I think it's a reasonable thing to look at you what we need to do.

Yeah, trustee basket I just wanted to clarify as I understand from trustee Norton that the intent of their review is not to undo the decision That's already been made but again to make things clear and understandable All right, seeing no objections.

We will try to address that at the next governance meeting. Thank you trustee Norton. I If there's nothing else for item from the board, that brings us down to adjourning. Do I have a motion to adjourn by voice vote?

So moved.

Second. I move by Trustee Baskett, supported by Vice President Wilkes. Thank you. All in favor to adjourn, say aye.

Aye. And we're returning to closed session.

Okay.

We're returning.

All right. So is your motion to adjourn and reset and go back to the closed session? Sure. Yeah. All right. Do I need to second that? Yes. I second it. Thank you. All in favor? Trustees, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? With all children. We are adjourned at 1014.

Record.