001All right, I'd like to call this meeting of the USD437 Board of Education to order. Um, first on the agenda is open forum or is there any public comment tonight? Uh, none tonight. Okay. Um, and then item 3.01 is roll call. Um, everyone is present except for Brian Smith. Um, and then 3.02 and Brad. Oh, and Brad Nuller. Sorry. Um, and then 3.02. Um, would like a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. And a motion and a second. All in favor? Motion passes five to zero. Um, we'll move on to section four, um, which is disposition of business by consent. Um, is there a motion? I move that the board of education approve uh the disposition of business by consent, including payment of bills in the amount of $2,688,925. Second. There's been a
002motion and a second. All in favor? Motion passes 5 to zero. Um, that brings us down to section five, which is administrator reports. Um, first up is Tucker with the owner's representative report. Summer's almost over, right? guys can have our kids back. Um, so I'm just going to go through a brief I don't have anything to put up. I've got some notes here. Um, we'll be back potentially again at the August 4th board meeting to get really where we're at as we get into the school year. Um, Watchman Road North has been through its fire marshall walk and past. Um the last thing that we're waiting on is a certification of the retention ponds with the city. We have to uh do a survey as as built and make sure everything matches up with the
003grades. U there's always a little bit of things that change um that need to be corrected. So they're correct in that and then we should have our full certificate of occupancy. Um multi-purpose building pad construction. It rained. Um, so you're not going to see anybody get on that pad for at least until it dries out because if they get on it now, it's going to tear it up and we'll just pay more money for them to fix it. So, it's going to be a waiting game on that. Um, but the building is um we actually have the building. It's out there ready to get stood up as soon as we get concrete um geared out. Um WRMS uh I went over there today. It looks really good. Um Tyler and that crew over there are
004are really have been getting after it all summer. I know they were concerned about it. Um but I saw that all the storefront was in for the new office and we're really down to carpet and some hallways and a lot of the finishing touches. Um but it it looked looks pretty good. Not really have any concerns there. Uh Jyler is pretty similar. um they've done a good job of even it may have had some um congested areas or whatever moving people around. Um and I really I think a lot of the projects have done a good job of of getting people in and working even if the sequencing wasn't perfect. We had to do that at Farley. Um and so things are looking good at J Shider as well. Farley's looking great. Um I think
005there's we're down to painting and uh some toilet accessories and boards and some HVAC and electrical trim out. So, that one has gone really well as well. Um the one issue that we're having is Indian Hills is this the south edition. We talked about this a month ago. Um and they're pushing hard on it. Right now it's scheduled saying one to two weeks behind on the south edition. We've submitted the alternate plan to the fire marshall to be able to uh school renovations are all complete. We're going to have to do some fire barriers at the library. The library is renovated in the existing space, but it has access to the new addition. So, we got to figure out what we're going to do there. Um, and then we're going to have the two classrooms
006that are in the new addition is music and art. And so, those need a little bit bigger rooms. Well, we have two collaboration spaces that we can stick them in for weeks of school. Um, and so we're still pushing as hard as we can. Rain obviously doesn't help with trying to move around outside and that's kind of where they're starting to do some try to do some stuff out back, but I I know they're pushing on it. They had a ton of people there working. Um, the renovations look good. Um, and we're having meetings with them every week now on Indian Hills just to make sure and on all of them um that are going through renovations just to make sure that we stay on top of things. Um, right now drawings are progressing on
007the remaining three schools. Um, and then just like we do at the end of every summer, we'll do sort of a financial, you know, checkup, so to speak, on where we're at on contingencies and all that stuff. Um, so that we know how to make decisions in fall and next for next summer and potentially followup projects in the summer 27. So, it we may still linger out some of those things. Um, but we'll go through that this fall and next spring. Any questions? So, Scott, remind me when is the when do teachers come back? Particularly like at Indian Hills when when are elementary schools? Yeah. So, the uh first contract day the upcoming school year is Tuesday, August 5th. Now, having said that, there are times that uh some teachers may choose to come in
008a little bit early to try to get some things set up. Now the reality is um for the most part even in the schools that are under construction right now um parts of the building will be open to be able to accommodate that. We'll just have to be really cautious about which way in which they can enter and which sections of the building they can get into. Well, we did have that conversation at the last meeting last week. And then students start on Tuesday, August 12th, one week after the teachers report back. Yep. So that is a month from tomorrow. 30 days. Okay. Yep. Everything else at Indian Hills like the early childhood, all that's on doing well. I it there's no reason why it shouldn't be able to be ready by then. Anything else?
009All right. Thanks, Tucker. Yep. See you guys in a couple weeks. Okay. And then uh after that is 5.02 uh bus transportation updates. Yeah. Just like we did at the last board meeting, a few of us will take the lead on this. Uh still keeping it to three sections. Communication, uh recruitment efforts, and then also safe routes to schools planning. Uh in regards to communication, as it was stated at the last board meeting. So, uh for those families that have been impacted by the change moving into 2526, uh we have communicated through US mail, uh through multiple emails, through text comm uh text messages. Um I don't know the official term, Patrick. Robo dial voice service and then actually at the la after the last board meeting on July 8th about 20 of us just
010picked up the phone and started calling families that we have not yet heard from. And so at this point uh since the making those calls we have shifted from that process of communication to now the people the families that have said yes we are going to uh participate in transportation either two-way transportation at the elementary level or the one-way ride home transportation at the secondary level. Uh we now have shifted to collecting fees and so uh July 15th was the initial date that we had established. Um we have found that that was pretty early and of the majority of folks that said yes, they had not paid by the 15th and so uh we're continuing to communicate to that subset of families. We've extended the payment date uh to August 1st and that has been
011communicated to them multiple times. Uh transportation department knows that. um they're still working towards routing all the yeses even though the payment hasn't been paid yet but that's a payment that we'll have to have in coming to us at some point and that's the new date. So I wanted you to know that we wanted to work um favorably with families and so we thought it would be best to adjust the date. Uh that's the communication piece. Um we'll go back to any of these um after we go through them all. Uh Chelsea, recruitment efforts. We're thinking about our bus drivers and paras and crossing guards. Yeah. So for bus drivers, we've had five um applicants that are in on the path to being hired. So we have good traction there. That's good for a bus
012driver position and we'll probably see more. Um and then the parap position has been kind of on fire. I think our principles have been spreading the word and whatnot. So um a lot of things there. you'll see um the signage splashed in the normal places, the usual spots for now and then we'll rotate it. So, if you've been out in the community, you've probably seen some new messages out there and we'll continue to move those around. And crossing guards, our principles just came back this today. So, they will start to recruit and hire more directly. Um HR has kind of housed that for the time being and then they'll start to work on that this week. and talking to a couple of principles last week, although they're not officially on board quite yet. Um, they
013have been talking to current staff members that might be willing to pick up an extra hour or two for the position of crossing guard. Our hope is that some of our internal staff will choose to take that position. Um, Chelsea, you posted the job some time ago. Um, do we have any applicants in the system at the current time? Well, last time I looked, there were five. Mhm. So, um I think there are some that have applied directly and there are more conversations being had than that. So, see how it comes together. Yeah. As we switch over to a rich and safe routes to schools, one thing I'll mention about crossing guards, it's possible to get a school year started in a specific building. We might start with like say two or three crossing guards
014just to ensure that we're training kids to be able to utilize the crosswalks appropriately. And then over time it's possible that maybe one of those can peel back and then they're just down from three to two as an example. Um that was the outcome of the survey and as Rich has been communicating with those engineers that might make sense. So we might start with a little bit of a higher number and then at the end of the year by then we might have a little bit of a lower number. We'll just see how it goes. But of course student safety be the premium and that'll kind of drive those decisions. So Rich, in regards to uh safe routes to schools, there's a lot taking place in some of our schools. So maybe an overview of
015where we're at. Sure. Um Indian Hills and Farley, we're adding uh sidewalks internally on our property connecting to the uh city county sidewalks that are already there. Um we've uh gotten our permit in to the county. um discovered when we did that that one of the crossing areas that was recommended was within the city limit. So, we're now working on that permit with the city. Um initially we didn't think we're going to have to do anything with the city because it was just uh Womaker, but um one of the crossings at Indian Hills uh falls in the city limits. Um so, the one that's recommended at 26th in Indian Hills, um that's one we'll have to work with the city on. Uh we have a contractor in place. It's the contractor that the city and
016county use recommended to us. So, um we have that. Um we uh the county has agreed to put some sidewalks in um at the Pauline South and kind of help us out over in that area. Uh getting those lined out. Even though we um we're not changing transportation a lot in that area there, they still found some areas that were unsafe for students. So, we're working on that. so that we've got safe routes everywhere. Um we've got bike racks in um at or not bike racks, the pads are in. Bike racks have been ordered um for all the schools that are are going to have that. Working on a proposal right now for the high school to add a walking path from Waker up by the soccer field that connects um that sidewalk for middle
017school students to be because right now there's no way for middle school to get down there. Um, so we're working on that. Everything's going along. We've got signage ordered. Um, uh, we have a little bit more of that to order. We're kind of waiting on some time frames to on some of the signs, but um, we've got that going. Uh, and that, um, same contractor will put those signs in for the county and, uh, the townships where they go. So, u, I think it's all going pretty well. Um we've worked with the the principles on especially Farley that was uh they had a great idea, the building had a great idea over there. We've got um we're changing the parking lot around a little bit so that they can get three lanes of cars in
018and keep them off the street because that was a big concern for everybody was getting cars in off the street. But uh we think with the change in the parking lot, taking out one of the islands and making that loop a little wider, um we think we've got that figured out. And if we don't, we still have the overflow lot um that we could put cars in if we needed to. So, I feeling really good about the infrastructure piece and how it's going. Um it'll just be if our contractor can get everything put in in time. We've asked that they prioritize the u our RFBs, the the lighted crosswalks. Those will be the priority. Um the bases are already in for the ones in Auburn and we're just waiting on the county to to hear
019back on that, but that should be in the next day or two. Um we we had submitted the permit. They came back to us about 26th Street, so we had to resubmit and we met with them at Indian Hills and they said it wouldn't be a problem. They're they're good with that. We are going to have to tie in um a couple of ramps that they're they recommended, but they're small. It's just small areas um that we'll get a contractor out on and get that tied in to the to the street, the curbing on the streets. So, as a friendly reminder to everyone, uh we're still not suggesting or recommending walkers or bike riders to Shidler and Waker. Correct. And although transportation will be status quo at South and Central because of the survey, we're
020just adding some safety features. Any other questions, comments? So, Rich, when uh when do you anticipate having kind of routing? I know you're That's a good question. Um they thought that they would be close within two weeks of the 15th. So, by the end of July for sure, we we think we'll have it close and we'll have the stops figured out. Um which will tie closely with the August 1 date. We'll we'll know for sure then. um who's paying and everything, but right like Dr. Mc Williams said, we're routing everybody that said yes currently. So we'll have have space and have the routes figured out. So what do you know roughly total number of students um transported this year compared to last year? What that kind of looks? Oh, I didn't get a total number
021on that. of the uh of the 1300 that could 50 I think it was 55% said yes. Cool. So last year we transported 4300 uh daily so 3,000 so probably somewhere around 3500 just quickly figuring that. Yeah. No. Perfect. Yeah. It uh the it's kind of interesting. So when we started communicating with families impacted by the change, initially the yes, I want to ride percentage of those responded was pretty high and it started off right around 70%. And then it just started dropping every week thereafter. And so there may still be a family that has that have not yet confirmed a decision and may still reach out and say, "Hey, is it too late?" And we'll do everything we can to be accommodating. But again, kind of the new deadline is the the 1 of
022August. And so it has trended down to it's been right at I think it was 56% the last time I looked which was a week ago. So yeah. All right. Anything else? All right. If not we'll move on to uh section six which is items for discussion. First up is Dr. Dodto with the needs assessment 61. [Applause] You can close the laptop. Done. Okay. All right. Well, good evening. So, as promised, I'm back um for the second meeting to talk about our needs assessment. So, if you recall the last time when we discussed this, we talked about the highly collaborative nature of the needs assessment, all the input that we collected and gathered and the KISSA process that has led um us to where we're at now. And again, we talked about the three goals
023of a continuous improvement system. That it's meaningful, that it really moves us all forward collectively, that it's aligned so that our efforts um are efficient while also being effective, and most importantly, that it's school focused because the best efforts in terms of school improvement happen in the buildings and the building level and the classroom level, not from the district level. So, I shared this with you last time. So this is the KISSA framework and what they have us do in the process is identify a fundamental from four. So structured literacy, standards alignment, balanced assessment, quality instruction are four areas that KSCE is really um focusing on all across the state. And so we had to select one of the four fundamentals based on where we thought we were um in this process uh both in
024terms of our current work but also our future efforts. And then we had to select two of the structures and there are certain lead indicators and measures of progress that go with that. So again through a lot of dialogue with the guiding coalition with the group that went to Greenbush and data analysis and looking at where we're at in our PLC planning, we landed on professional learning and professional collaboration. Professional collaboration really thinking about the PLC process and how that is the heart of what we do. professional learning and then that and that being a guaranteed and viable way for us to partner with teachers and make sure that that they have the resources and skills they need. So from there then um each building is developing a blueprint and this blueprint I I I
025joke a lot about this I love a good acronym or a good initialism and I kind of beat them to death and my team gets tired of it after a while but um I actually think this is really important to think about. It's a building level unified effort plan. So from the district, we might be focusing on standards alignment through these structures, but the real magic of the plan happens in what the buildings choose to do with it. So from a district perspective, we selected a fundamental and we have to pick one that we work on as a district that is part a required part of the KISSA process. And so through dialogue and discussion and picking professional learning and professional collaboration, what we had to do for KISSA was identify specific actions um that
026the district would take and lead others through and metrics that go with those actions and report that to the state. So, as a reminder for this school year, um our compliance for KISSA is to develop a plan and then to implement the plan. So, as long as we do what we set out to do, we will have met the compliance component of this. And so, um, in summary, what this says is that that we as a district are going to provide meaningful professional learning on standards and common assessments and that in six months we will have completed 40% of that and by the end of the year we will have completed 100% of that. Um, we have gathered feedback from the field in terms of professional learning needs assessments and teachers have prioritized areas within
027this that they would like to see us work. And as we develop our choice sessions for September and for November and for April, they will see the results of that. They will also have collaboration and goal setting on the upcoming August professional learning day. Um and we'll set the table with this more um also back to school in August. that uh our PD plan will account for what the standards um align grading look like, what does common quality assessment look like, how do we communicate progress to students and families and what does that look like? All right, so the second part of this then is professional collaboration. So we we selected a second structure and um we have two different sets of actions and metrics for this one. So the first one is about making
028sure that we have quality common assessment um all across the board. So we will provide tools for PLC's to engage with their existing common assessments um or maybe some areas might want new common assessments but having common quality um attributes that we use for and then they are then PLC's are supported with those tools through instructional facilitators through professional um collaboration in their PLC's we give them the tools and then they're able to engage and a lot of PLC's already have high quality common assessment so it's a matter of looking at what they're doing and go, "Yeah, we feel really comfortable about this and we make minimal changes." And some might want more support from us and we can provide that to them is necessary, but we're looking at a common level of quality um
029within the elementary level and then within the secondary level. We have two separate u metrics that we're looking for with elementary and secondary because they rely on common assessments in different ways. Um at the secondary level, they're very much driven by PLC's. um at the elementary level they want more uniformity and so um they're more district design. Then the second part of this then is about using data. So um have you ever heard of the phrase data rich information poor? You have a lot of data to look at but it doesn't always mean a whole lot. Well um that happens within education too. And so we want to be able to provide tools um and resources for PLC's to be able to tell student learning stories with their data. So, you've got high levels of
030data like Kansas assessment or ACT um or the MAP assessment. How do you then marry that with your common assessments in your classroom? How do you look at the day-to-day ongoing formative assessment and and have good quality conversations about student learning in a way that doesn't bury you in the data? Uh we've had a lot of work with dashboards um over the recent months and we're excited to roll that out with teachers and that will be part of this. um but really establishing some standards for what data discussion looks like but more importantly tools that people can turn around and use. And so um by the end of this first year PLC's will have collectively gone through um one cycle with their instructional facilitators based on um those structures and resources. So those are the
031district level plans and what's beautiful about blueprints is those are things we're working on as a district system but buildings have a lot of freedom within form. So each building then is asked to to look at these goals and think about okay where are we at in our school and what might we want to do in terms of standards alignment and professional learning or standards alignment and professional collaboration and outline their plans. What we're asking for here are outlines. We don't want big long narratives. We just want here are some initiatives, here's some data we might look at, here are some resources that we might need from the district in order to be able to pull this off. Um, and and buildings are working on these over the summer and as soon as school is
032about to start, we will then collect these and in an later August meeting, we will bring them to you for your review and approval because they are part of the needs assessment. And so, um, we're excited that the buildings have a lot of control over this. Um, the other part of this too is that we don't want our building partners to be alone. So, we've got builtin collaboration times and review times with the learning services through our learning partnership meetings twice a year to engage in in dialogue around the plan. How are things going? How can we support? What do you need from us to be able to bring this across the finish line? It's our first year in this process. We think it will go well. Um, we're excited to try it out and
033I think it will be a net positive. um we'll share our goals with the teachers at back to school PD. Um for your review is the professional learning plan that's in here. Uh I won't go through this um every single piece of what is in here. I do want to just uh show you a couple of key points though in this. So back to school um on August 5th, we'll have convocation. We'll have some specific training for uh ELA teachers in particular with their new resources, but we have a lot of time built in for PLC's to collaborate. This will all be structured and focused and reflective um on where are you at and where do you want to go? And then on the 7th, then we'll start talking specifically about the goals that I
034just walked through with you. So, we're on year two of our PLC plan. we're talking about assessment and data and analytics. Um we'll focus on that and we'll have PLC's engage in goal setting around those topics. So we're excited about that. Um as we get closer to September, I'll tell you more about September PD. But just so you know, we have a whole PD outline in here. And hopefully what you'll see as you um take some time to read through this is an alignment between our KISSA planning process and needs assessment and the PD plan that you have in front of you. So um just the highlights that I wanted to briefly share uh with that. So still ahead um at a future board meeting uh I will share with you some school-based building blueprints
035and you'll have an opportunity to see their needs and their goals align with this. Um we'll provide an overview of the data that got us to where we are at now and then talk about next steps in implementation. Have any questions for me? So Jeff on the and you probably said this last time but I slept since then and I probably forgot. That is okay. I throw a lot at you when I talk about this on the when we talk about fundamentals and structures. Is that a process that you go through every year and pick a new fundamental and a new structure or is this a multi-year building on what we do this year staying within that? Great question. So, as part of the new KSC KISSA model, um, every year we could, if we
036so chose to pick a new fundamental and a new structure. Um, so for this year we picked standards alignment because we had started the standards alignment pieces last year knowing this was coming. So that's why we intentionally did the mastery 10 work, the instructional bundles that were supportive of that because we knew um that we needed uh some more universal clarity in that process because of this and it also was able to be a good springboard for our assessment work this year. And so we knew that this was coming. We didn't know exactly what it would look like. Um but the goal was to stay with another standard or the standards the same year um moving forward. Now next year it's possible as we talk about um tiers of student learning and tiered support. We
037may or may not say with standards alignment, you know, if we have really good clarity about where we're at and we feel like our assessment and data systems are good and we feel like teachers have high quality instructional resources and we might want to think about quality instruction and tiered systems of supports, we might go that direction. But it's nice because the the team, the guiding coalition can really look at the data, look at our efforts in the plan and go, we want to stay with what we're doing or we want to make a change. Thank you. Any other questions or comments, Jeff? Was this driven by legislation or the legislature or was this something that KST derived? Great question. So, um, you can see some alignment between legislative priorities, especially when you start looking
038at things like structured literacy, but really this plan has emerged out of KSC reflecting on um their accreditation process and trying to make it as user friendly for possible or as possible for schools. Um, my own personal opinion, I applaud them for that because a lot of this is just high quality teaching. So, we're really focusing on what's important and how we can move the system forward on some pretty straightforward um areas of improvement. I guess the fundamentals, right? Any other comments? Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. All right. We'll move on to 6.02, which is cardiac emergency response plan. Yeah. So at the last board meeting we presented board policy EBBG which was the first um first stage of this particular process. We shared at the last board meeting that there are two things that
039need to be in place for this upcoming 202526 school year. One is to have a board policy in regards to cardiac emergency response. The second one is to have a plan to make that operational. And so the plan was put together um on behalf of the emergency operations uh team as well as our school nurses uh working collaboratively together. All of our principles are back this week and later in the week when we all come together and have a back to school meeting. We'll be going through the plan and we also will do a tabletop exercise to kind of make that operational moving into this upcoming school year. So we're bringing this plan to you tonight as well. Uh it'll surface later in the agenda. We've got the board policy that we had talked about
040at the last board meeting. We've got the plan. Once it's board approved, we are in compliance with the law that will be in play for this upcoming 2000 or yeah 202526 school year, which makes us compliant. Most importantly, it also keeps us all safe. Hopefully, this is a plan and a policy that we'll never have to implement, but if we do, we absolutely want to make sure that plans are in place and teachers or those that will be a part of this plan responsible for implementation know exactly what to do. questions or comments. All right. If not, we'll move on to 6.03, which is board policy updates first read. Yeah. So, we can thank KASB Legal Council here. It's summertime and so they have sent the new wave of uh board policy updates. None of
041the five that you see here um are substantial. Um there are minor tweaks. Uh one elimination of a policy because it can be embedded within another. Um, anytime there's a board policy recommendation that is of significance, we will stop and we'll just have one. We won't do that as a batch and we'll actually dig into it. But these are minor tweaks and they just streamline uh the current policies that we have in place. I really don't have too much to add on any of these five. Any questions or concerns? All right, that brings us to the end of items for discussion. We'll move on to section seven, which is action items. Um the first thing on that is 7.01, which is board policy EBBG final read. And we just talked a little bit about that
042as um with the policies. So if there's not any discussion, I'd entertain a motion. I would uh let me find it here. I thought I had it. Um would move that the board of education approve the cardiac emergency response plan as presented. Second. It's been a motion and a second. All in favor? Motion passes 5 to zero. Oh, I did 702. I'm sorry. That's okay. Supposed to do. Yeah. So, we just passed 702. Is there is there a a motion for the actual policy then? 7.01. I would move that the board of education approve board policy EBG as presented. Second. There's been a motion and a second. All in favor? Motion passes 5 to zero and we're to 7.03 which is Wash Burn Rule High School Athletics final read. I'll move the board of education
043approve athletic apparel and equipment vendor BSN Sports. Second. It's been a motion and a second. All in favor? Motion passes 5 to zero. We're on to section eight, which is communications. Anything? Uh, none this evening. All right. And we, the chair would now move that we go into executive session at 7:05 p.m. to discuss students pursuant to the exception relating to the actions adversely or favorably affecting a student under coma. Uh, personnel matters pursuant to the exception of non-elected personnel under coma. and to discuss budget pursuant to the exception for employer employee employee negotiations under coma for 20 minutes. The open meeting will resume in the boardroom at 7:25 p.m. Second. There's been a motion and second. All in favor? Motion passes 5 to zero. We are in executive session. We are back in open
044session. Um, I'd entertain any motions from executive session. I move the board of education approve out of district students and transfer requests as presented for the 25 2026 school year. Second. There's been a motion and a second. All in favor? Motion passes five to zero. Motion to adjurnn. Second. A motion and a second. All in favor? We are adjourned.