School Board gives Kudlak $5,500 raise, names him ‘Effective’

After a three-hour closed-door session on Nov. 25 and another hour and 45-minutes closed-door meeting on Monday, the Van Buren Public Schools Board of Education passed a resolution giving him the highest rating allowable – Effective – and a raise of about $5,500.
Procedures recently changed making “Effective” the highest rating.
The “Highly Effective” rating was at the top of the chart on the multi-page Michigan Association of School Boards’ evaluation form last year. The board also gave Supt. Kudlak the top rating in its 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 evaluations.
The five-year contract the board approved in December 2023 is still in place and he expects to retire June 30, 2028. Monday’s evaluation was for his job for the calendar year January to December, 2024.
His base pay went from $169,500 to $175,048.50.
In other business at Monday’s 49-minute meeting, the board:
• Heard Belleville High School head varsity football coach Calvin Norman praise the football team’s academics. He said there were 70 players on the team and they had a 3.2 GPA overall team average. He said there were 8,000 people when BHS played Catholic Central, with attention from the entire state. He introduced Andre Johnson, Jr., who he called the most-improved player and was Center for quarterback Bryce Underwood. Coach Norman said he enjoys coaching the team and would do it for nothing. He said he works the midnight shift at Detroit Diesel. He said he goes home from BHS at about 7 or 8 p.m. and rests before going on to work. After the midnight shift he rests briefly and then goes back to BHS to coach. Athletic Director Joseph Brodie said the ultimate goal is building kids as leaders in society;
• Approved the Savage and Tyler elementary schools secure entry projects at a total cost of $2,350,312, with Davenport Brothers Construction Co. as construction manager. The project will be funded by the Sinking Fund and 31aa Mental Health Grant funds. The project will move the school offices from the center of the schools to the front, where school rooms will be converted into offices with safe procedures for entry. Construction will begin March 24 and be substantially complete by Aug. 18;
• Approved paying $306,979 for district-wide radio upgrades, programming and Cellular BDA DAS;
• Approved offering an unlimited number of openings for Schools of Choice for the second semester of 2024-25 school year. Director of Instruction Jeff Moore said the district usually gets only about 10-15 new students for the second semester, with most Schools of Choice students coming in the first semester;
• Set 7 p.m., Jan. 13, 2025 as the date of the organizational meeting of the school board at the Belleville High School Commons. The new school board members will be sworn in and the dates set for the upcoming year’s official meetings;
• Approved the retirement of Marc Miloser of BHS after 25 years of service as of Oct. 31; and approved the hiring of Cynthia Mullins as a speech pathologist at the Early Childhood Center as of Jan. 6 and April Crawford in the Resource Room of Rawsonville Elementary as of Dec. 9;
• Approved hiring the following non-instructional employees: LaDonna Walter as secretary at McBride as of Nov. 25; Fouad Zammer and Martisha Palmer as bus drivers as of Dec. 2; Angela Bragg-Carey as a bus aide as of Dec. 2; and Ashley Weddington in food service at BHS as of Dec. 5;
• Approved the termination of Amber Knowlton as a non-instructional employee from Rawsonville Elementary after six years of service as of Dec. 3;
• Heard Director of Instruction Moore say three students from Belleville were among the 32 teams that were in person competing in eSports at Michigan State University on Dec. 7. Chris Battle, Jaden Jones, and Justin McNeir were honored, and they are still competing statewide. Moore said 127 dinners were passed out at Owen for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners will be passed out, as well;
• Heard Supt. Kudlak praise the men who brought Lego Robotics into all the district’s school buildings. As the students grow, the skills grow with them and these people have created something special; and
• Heard Karen Wright address the board concerning Park Estates mobile home park on Michigan Avenue cutting off access to where about 12 students (ages 10, 11, 12 and high school age) are picked up by the school bus to go to Owen, McBride, and BHS. “The park management took down the gate and boarded it up,” she said. She said she called Transportation and they gave her a convoluted route down and around several dark and dirt roads without sidewalks. She said Transportation said it would take a month to figure out how to deal with this. She said she couldn’t get a call back from the school about the problem, but Belleville City Manager Jason Smith gave her the number of the manager of the park. When she called, she was told corporate didn’t want any riffraff coming into the park and it wasn’t a local decision. Wright started to cry, saying her young grandson had been hit by a truck and killed on Michigan Avenue and the school needs to supply safe transportation for students. She apologized for her tears and board president Amy Pearce told her not to apologize and that Supt. Kudlak will be getting back to her and, “We’ll figure it out.”
A gathering was held before the regular meeting to celebrate the work of the three board members who are stepping down from the board: Simone Pinter, Susan Featheringill, and Kelly Owen.