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Council Minutes of 03-03-2015 degree or 28 years of municipal law service. This stems from Michael Gareau, Sr. disagreeing with Lambert. Gareau, Sr. had a different opinion than Lambert on a matter that was the subject of municipal law. Since that day, Dennis Lambert was going to have a problem with Michael Gareau, Sr. over Michael Gareau, Sr. having a legal opinion. So what? He's a lawyer and had an opinion, and that's the way it goes. It's been 20 years and it's probably time you moved on. Michael Gareau, Sr. will faithfully serve this community well again as a member of the Charter Review Commission. He's donating his time to this community. He's forgotten more about the Charter than Lambert will ever know. Plus, Michael Gareau, Sr. wasn't the only member on the Commission the last time. Lambert said that's correct. Gareau, Jr. told Lambert he should accept the fact that Gareau, Sr. had a different opinion than him. Terry Groden, 25211 Chase Drive, Vice President of the North Olmsted Board of Education said he came before Council in October 2014 with a report. He has no formal presentation this evening, but wanted to bring Council "up to speed" on some of the district's advocacy efforts since then. In early February, he attended a conference in Washington D.C. about public education. They heard some good things at this conference, such as putting control back into the hands of locally elected officials and communities and taking more authority away from the Federal Dept. of Education. There was discussion about funding for IDEA (students with special needs). This was a mandate passed on local school districts by the federal government years ago. When they imposed this mandate on public school districts, they promised 40% reimbursement on the cost to educate these children because they realized it was a very expensive endeavor. He is proud of the North Olmsted schools and believes every child deserves a quality education regardless of their background or what their needs are. But, the fact is that it's very expensive to educate students with special needs. Last year, the total cost for North Olmsted to educate special needs children was just north of $10 million. The federal reimbursement was supposed to be 40%, but they received 8% from the federal government ($823,000). The State of Ohio does help reimburse the school district for catastrophic special needs, but in the end last year North Olmsted residents bore about $8 million of that expense. There was a bi-partisan bill introduced on January 27, 2015 that says the federal government should honor its commitment to pay local school districts 40% toward the mandate for this expense. He met with Congressman Renacci's office and encouraged him to read the legislation and hopefully support it. Another concern Groden spoke about is that any legislation affecting public schools could also include an increase in vouchers. This is a significant concern because Ohio has one of the worst charter school systems in the country. There was a report that came out in December 2014 that was commissioned by Stanford University, and one of the authors said that the best thing she had to say about Ohio was be thankful you're not Nevada because other than Nevada, Ohio is the worst. The City of North Olmsted does have students that attend one of nineteen different charter schools in this area. Only one of these charter schools out-performed North Olmsted City Schools, and that school has been shown to be very selective as to whom they will admit. North Olmsted received $1,600 per student in basic state aid. Every time a student leaves North Olmsted to attend a charter school, they lose $7,100. 3