Board of Education - Regular Meeting

Thank you, Ms. Ozenski. I would like to now introduce the non-voting member at the table, Jazz Parks, Superintendent of Schools. Thank you. That brings us down to approval of the agenda. Trustees, you have been provided with the agenda in advance. Are there any changes or additions? I would motion to add special recognition right after approval of the agenda and to add a resolution regarding pending litigation after community feedback. There's support? Support. Any discussion? Seeing none, Ms. Ozenski, please.

Thank you, Ms. Ozenski. That now brings us down to special recognition, and I will turn it over to Superintendent Parks for that recognition.

And Ms. Parks, could you, I'm sorry, sir, if you could give us your name again. She said it very quickly and I wanted to make sure everyone got it.

Thank you very much, Lieutenant Parks. That brings us to public commentary. The Board would like to remind everyone that 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 Ann Arbor Pub

Thank you very much, Superintendent Parks. That brings us down to community feedback. Trustees, I would like to call your attention to the community feedback for this evening's meeting. That brings us down to reports of association. Ms. Olszewski, do we have a representative here from AAEA?

All right, that brings us down to community group reports miss Ozenski Do we have any group signed up for this evening? I have no group reports this evening Thank you very much. And that brings us down to number eight board action the resolution addressing pending litigation And I'll invite miss parks to invite mr. Landau on to the podium for this discussion.

Before we vote on it, is that appropriate? Yes. Okay. Ms. Lozinska, do you have it? If so, would you mind reading it at your leisure?

Okay. Is there a motion? So moved. And move to adopt the resolution. Is there support? Moved by Vice President Wilkes, supported by Trustee Baskett. Any additional discussion? Seeing none, Ms. Ozenski, please.

Thank you. That brings it down to board committee reports. I'll start with the Finance Committee and ask them what happened in their meeting, in their most recent meeting.

Thank you, President Feaster. The Finance Planning Committee met Tuesday, September 15th. We reviewed the items that are coming for first briefing, so I won't steal the thunder there. We also got a brief update regarding the strategic planning process, which I believe the superintendent will cover. and her update.

Thank you. Any questions? Seeing none, I'll ask the Equity and Performance Committee what was discussed in their meeting, most recent meeting.

Yes, we met on September 10th at 4 p.m. The information will be shared this evening looking at test scores across the district.

Thank you very much Trustee Schmidt. And that will bring us down to the information section of our agenda. I'll turn it over to Superintendent Parks for her superintendent update.

All right. Thank you very much, Superintendent Perks. If there's no questions, that'll bring us down to 10.2, Fall 2026 Student Achievement Annual Report, M-STEP, PSAT 8, and SAT. And I'll turn it over to Superintendent Perks to introduce her team.

I think it's probably worth mentioning now at this juncture. When, and if you said it, I was focused on something else maybe. When we have these different categories, people can be in more than one.

So I know, so thank you for sharing this. And I know I brought this up during committee. Obviously, as Vice President Wilkes has said, you know, these are disparities. These are things that we have seen for many years, and we've been talking about it for many years, ever since I've been on the board. And honestly, the question is no longer about the gaps, because they're there. And it's about what are we doing intentionally to urgently close them. But when these disparities persist year after year, we have the responsibility to act. And I understand that there are some interventions that we've

I appreciate this report. We've seen a lot of them. I've seen a lot of them throughout my career. I can't talk enough about literacy can't sit in a silo. The literacy program allows a student to access the rest of the curriculum, and that includes math. because there's so much more reading and math in the way we are teaching it and helping students understand numerics, right? So there is a school district in Ohio, Steubenville, and people can Google this and read about them. I've heard a couple podcasts about Steubenville. It's in a Rust Belt school. It's a Rust Belt school district. And these

All right, a couple of questions. First of all, I wanted to thank you for getting all of these data together and presented in such a short time frame. So I don't know if it was said at the beginning, but we just got this information like a week or two ago. Okay, so a week and a half ago. So this is a lot of work, but it is really important. So thank you for getting it together and getting it presented as soon as possible. It really, that's super important. I had two questions. One you talked about and you reiterated, the high expectations. How do we measure whether teachers are doing that or w

And thank you for that my other question is Most of these or maybe all of these steps that you have in would Help all students. Yes, so do we have specific steps for those specific groups that are that we're not serving, or we're serving the least, or I don't know what the... Underserving, yeah.

So I've been on this board for about three years now, and as everyone said, we haven't seen any real change. And I thank you all for all of the work that you've done and all the tracking that you're doing and all the changes you're trying to make. What I can say is that as a black boy in K-8, I did not, fully engaged in the learning process until I had teachers who poured into me, who connected with me, or unless I had material that related to me and that I could connect with. I don't know if we're doing anything on that level in this district at this time, but that's how I succeeded. And I wo

are we're not there we're not there and I know that you know some suggest in the research up to 20 of our students are just have dyslexia which you know it's an umbrella you can be very severely dyslexic and not and I know we're taking steps yeah to get people trained but I just can't There, I mean, when I taught at Scarlet, I got kids in sixth, seventh grade, could hardly read at all, and they were dyslexic. And once they were given the proper, you know, trained instruction, I mean, I have one little boy that went off his IEP for ninth grade, and it was like, That I, we, I feel like that is s

Trustee Baskett. Thank you. I was not going to say much today because there isn't much more to say. We have been, as, as trustees have mentioned, we've seen these numbers.

I don't think you needed two weeks to come back with what we have. No offense, Dr. Berger, but you know, it was pretty predictable. We know I am very convinced that there are much smarter people around who know how to resolve the issue. I was told many years ago by much smarter people. It's a political will that we need. Studies have shown highly effective school boards affect student achievement. I will say we have not been there and that is a disservice to our students. It's a disservice to our community. We've spent a lot of time dealing with rallies and other issues that aren't student foc

We appreciate it. We appreciate your presentation. Thank you all very much. Thank you very much. I believe that brings us down to our first briefing for the CTE program lease agreement. I'll turn it over to Superintendent Parks.

Is this a house or a building in a trailer or is it?

When you say approved by the county, you mean approved by the WISD?

All right. Vice President Wilkes. Yeah, thank you.

So the team is asking for $78,000 for a two-year lease. And as we discussed in the committee meeting, there is no current available space within our district that we don't have to pay for. If I said that correctly. That fits the bill. We're talking about 400,000 square feet you mentioned?

4,000, excuse me, sorry. Too many zeros. So again, if the community is willing to help us out in either helping to fund or subsidize or provide a space free of charge, they have two weeks now to contact the superintendent's office and discuss with you and the rest of the team if their space would be more suitable than what's proposed here today. But again, to clarify, we have a wonderful home builders program already.

But there is a wait list of students, if you will, or has been a wait list for students. And so you creatively created this program, this class, the construction fundamentals, for students who can't get in the home builders class. Although there may be seniors taking this class and therefore they won't be around next year for the home builders class, the underclassmen who are part of this class may be able to get in the home builders class. And if you've never attended the banquet trustees, I really encourage you to attend the home builders program banquet. It is truly a celebration of the stu

Wonderful. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

All right. Thank you so much for the presentation. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. All right, trustees, that brings it down to the consent agenda. Ms. Ozenski, will you please read the consent agenda?

Would anyone like to remove an item from the consent agenda? Do I have a motion? Moved by Trustee Schmidt. Second. Supported by Vice President Wilkes. Any discussion? Seeing none, Ms. Olszewski, please.

Thank you. That brings us down to board action. Approve MASB voting delegates and alternates. Is there a motion?

Any item for agenda planning, trustees? Trustee Schmidt?

Just wondering, I know that, of course, AI is in the news, you know. I know that we had a group come and present to us a And the spring, maybe? I would like to see what's happening in that regard. What do you guys think? Are you interested? I'm interested.

I'm interested. So I don't know what you mean by what's happening in that space.

Well, I know that I talked to one of the teachers that's in that group, and it was like they wanted to start gathering information from parents or something, but they were waiting to get something from us, and maybe they were going to present again. I don't know. What's the status of things?

or anything like that, as far as I know. So I think it's definitely worth discussing.

So I guess the question is, take action on it, is what you're asking us to discuss?

Just status report of all aspects, I guess, because I know they've still, I think they still have a working group. Superintendent Parks, do they still have that group together, I suspect? I mean, maybe a few of the students graduated, but just to see what's happening.

They said it was a great program. They've got state recognition and all that kind of stuff, so I guess we have to get an update and see if we want to take any action on it.

They're following. Yeah, that's part of that. They've got their finger on the pulse, I think.

Okay, anything else? Seeing none, I believe that brings us to items from the board. Do trustees have anything they would like to share? Sure.

I think that's a great idea because you've got a lot of experience leaving our most experienced member. We need to capture that. We need to capture that historical knowledge. And I'm sure that I wouldn't be surprised, and it's all preliminary, of course, because you don't have the new members, but there will be some carryover and there might be some expertise at MASB that some framework that they, I mean, this happens to other boards too. Yeah.

Not a bad idea, but trust me, you're not leaving the district, are you? You'll still be around, right?

I would ask, I'm sorry, Vice President Wilkes, if you could look to see if trustees are available earlier than 7? Assuming we don't need a closed session, that may make it easier. I like that idea. And, you know, why not welcome some comments from the community regarding what they think we may add to it? Again, I would highlight there is an article in Studies, and we've all received the article because we've received the Leaderboard magazine, but there is evidence that highly effective school boards affect student achievement. Yep. So that's a goal I think the board should aim for.

Trustee Wilkins? So this would replace our regular meeting that night? Yes. Okay.

I want you to drop an email to us to see who can come early. Yeah. Okay. That sounds good. We can check their calendar.

So, I'm just going to encourage the community to, Take the advice of our Freeman Environmental Center students who are trying to work on idling. I was very discouraged. I rode my bike past Phi Elementary with parents lined up and kind of scooched up to one of the parents and said, oh, you know, the students are working on an idling thing. yeah I know there's the sign and I said oh and she said yeah I'm not turning my car off this is messed up but you know if you look at the on your weather app it gives you the air quality of what happens in Ann Arbor and it's pretty bad and try to get the word

All right. If there's nothing further, that brings us down to adjournment. Do I have a motion to adjourn by voice vote? So moved. Moved by Vice President Wilkes. Is there support? Support. Support by Trustee Baskett. All in favor to adjourn, say aye.

It was moved and supported. Do I need to vote on that, I think, and then do it, or no? No, okay. All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. We are adjourned at 9.41 p.m.