i pledge allegiance to the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for  in the classroom market we have three of our commended students here with us tonight i'm going to read off the names of all of the commended students but i'll start with the three that are here so they can come up to receive their certificate thank you thank you very proud of the students policy ninety three sixty eight order of business for this meeting on mcnary i have a request regarding something that i heard about at the high school at the p t s a meeting when during her principals report mrs pavlik was telling the parents that teachers have been meeting since the beginning of the school year regarding potential changes to the way final exams are handled and the final grades and at that point it reminded me of special committees that the board that the president of the board has formed in order to get in all the stakeholders other board member board members who are interested parents students and obviously the teachers because they've already started this initiative so tonight i'm asking you to use your power as the president of the board which is granted under policy ninety one thirty to form a temporary special committee to investigate potential changes to the way the district handles final exams and final grades to me it would make sense to put that is a subcommittee under my committee the education committee but i would leave that entirely up to you we have comprehensive assessments of our students it's just part of our educational practice and one of the points of discussion came up around how we are assessing our students what the weight is given to our end of year assessments and whether or not those assessments are the best way that we can use to evaluate our students and so the committee work originally was around just common assessments and common assessment and it moved into discussion about whether or not we need to have two and of term exams a first semester exam and a second semester exam and then how we weight those exams at the end of the year so the way our system works now it factors in is ten percent of a students grade and it's a comprehensive exam that's the entire school year so we would like to look at what other schools are doing and like to investigate some other options and hear some from some additional stakeholders about our practice and see if there is a alternative way of doing it that that would benefit our students a little bit better my thought is to mel was that few years ago when the initiative was made to change the way the g p a was calculated the board learned very early on that much everybody in town had an opinion on it and so we had we asked for volunteers volunteers we actually used the students from the b c calculus students to committees so i would i would like to see it happen sooner rather than later based on your schedule and the teachers who are already involved i think it would be pretty and to be in a committee to start that pro would be after the thirty first time perhaps can i have a comment in that you know i went to a seminar and the recommendation is when you create a special committee is to actually set a date or term is that possible so that you can say is it by the end of june so that it would you know be enacted over the summer and start in september or or maim but i think it would be prudent to have a date by which you want the committee to come back to an education committee and make a report that a problem this is there some would be special committees normally are standing till the work is completed if you place a date on it then you're forcing the committee to complete its work prior to that date and i would not like to see the committee forced to finish its work that's not done so granted your point i just want to make sure that it has if we're going to set a date that it is time sufficient for the committee to do their work because again a special committee has a ask for but i do know that i went to a seminar and they did recommend that even in a special committee you it's prudent to put a time on it and i think that is what we saw with this fall committee is that it just kept going and going and going i think that be a good compromise to have a date to report back in because i agree with dr hardy the my experience with the special committee was the g p a committee and that went on much longer than anybody anticipated because it became a bigger and bigger deal but eventually the final outcome was really very very good so maybe we'll just set a date that we want to probably i would say maybe january february everywhere everywhere in that way we could do this no to my way of looking at it until the committee meets at least a couple of times you don't really even have a handle on how big the problem is our big issue to you such a huge any other discussion aside any public comment on this number one community is that these cameras would be digital cameras and the the district is expecting that because it is digital we would upload that video directly to some service so that we could have a link within a day or two of our meeting so that people can watch school board meetings on demand and i think that right now there have been some times you know four weeks span and that information becomes very outdated and the inability for the public to  keep up to date on what's happening now is very difficult in addition to the fact that you can only watch it say on our cable channel if you don't have digital i mean if you don't have satellite you can't watch it and you can only watch it on you know the schedule of the channel so i think it's this is going to be a great improvement to the way in which the board can communicate what's going on in that will be the other standardized data analysis that will be very interesting to all of us i'm sure a public comment on  a policy committee meeting is scheduled for monday october twenty seventh at six thirty and there are many many policies that are on going to be on that agenda some of which might be generate more discussion or items such as student trips extracurricular activities one on interscholastic a little athletics concussion management and sudden cardiac arrest that should be posted along with the proposed changes some time i'm guessing would you say the end by the end of the week do you think  are ok by thursday so if you go on you'll be able to see each one on the proposed policies that will come under discussion that evening i'd also like have brought in mobile finger printing units to help our parents get their clearances for the f b i fingerprint clearance and i know that they have helped hundreds of people so that they haven't had to trance travel down to washington p a in order to get that so i wanted to say a special thank you and just give the boards  heads up that there is a new legislation that has been passed by both the house and senate and it's on the desk for the governor signature that really we were ahead of the curve in it because it is going to require that volunteers have the background clearances and it also is going to put requirements in the district to have employees updated and i believe the volunteers have to have their clearances updated every thirty six months so we might cause an additional revision to our current policy because our current policy says volunteers have every five years that if that is signed we'll make sure that our policies comply in accordance with with that statute but i just wanted to give everybody a heads up on out and for if you still haven't received your clearances the area council p t a is having the mobile fingerprinting unit come to the high school cafeteria on november twelfth from five to eight check your e mail because you do have to sign up in advance to get a slide but if you're on an e mail blast i've seen them go out for every single school check your e mails thank you f already know who's going to go into those positions or do you start having the dailies and then turn the center a long time so i guess i'm just concerned that there's the consistency for students from day one yes thank you so much thank you kelly i'd also like to say that thrilled with item number three that mr michael fisher will be coming over to the central office and i know that there will be some parents at p v who may not be too happy to see him go but just thank you expertise will benefit all the students are happy about that  and i would just ask that to be determined is that based on how this search will go on i mean i'm guessing there's going to be a search for both positions at once or how i think instead what he's asking is instead of just putting cheerleaders put to stir as opposed to the group  groups that usually have boosters are those that are athletic related and then the clubs have done their own and agile see when when we've been the policy committee meeting  i had the opportunity because there is an interest the last exports policy and i talked to mr guy or because i thought i will cover everything that's related to athletic activity but in fact there don't know how they're going to charge people for this that's not my as the former president i have somebody else who does that i cannot bring how it how it is maybe a fine razor is that the blood bank will donate money based on how much blood is donated in the form of a scholarship to a peters township high school senior based on an application process but  that is generated by that scholarship is directly related to how many pints of blood is allocated by these blood donations  bills to see if we're overpaying for anything and then we get to keep what was it like fifty percent of it in a take fifty percent  guess then and so while we will have to do because we wanted to set a time for that special time for that special meeting to get a vote down is that we will it john the policy meeting at seven and then