LSR7 Board of Education Meeting - 11/17/22

001Go ahead and call our meeting to order this evening. Good evening. We'll be calling our meeting to order please. Thank you. And we'll start with our Pledge of Allegiance. And for our Pledge of Allegiance tonight, we have several students that will be assisting us in leading us in the pledge. We have Lucas Bure, Annalise Asad, Kennedy Johnson, and Berg Walker. Thank you students. Welcome this evening, everybody here in the room and those folks that may be watching from home or somewhere else. I do want to take a minute in celebration of Veterans Day. I'd like to ask our two board members, Board Member Eslick and Board Member Marshall and anyone else in the audience that is a veteran or serving active duty to please stand and be recognized. I want to thank you both and

002anyone else in the audience for your service. Thank you. And carrying on that thankfulness theme, I want to note that as we're coming into the holiday season and getting ready to have Thanksgiving, I just want to take a pause for a moment and thank each of our board members. I appreciate each of you so much. I learned so much. from each and every one of you and I appreciate our collaboration and our discussions and our hard work and service. So thank you very much. I also want to thank Dr. Buck and all of his administrative team as well as all of our staff at the LSR 7 district. I want to thank our students and I want to thank our parents and families and community members because we all are working together to lift our

003LSR 7 students up. And I'm thankful for the hard work across our community to that end. So thank you very much. Moving on now to our adoption of our agenda, do I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda this evening? I move to adopt tonight's agenda as presented. Second. All right. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Moving on to... Item 2.01, our superintendent report, Dr. Buck. Good evening, everybody. Thank you, Board of Education. Appreciate you, too. And I hope you have a wonderful holiday break ahead and you get to take some time to refresh and be with those you love. We've got several things I want to talk about. Some are written on here and some are scratch notes on the bottom of

004my sheet of paper here. So it is American Education Week, and we are very grateful for everyone who helps our young folks become people we'd be proud to call neighbors, adults. And we have a very good district. and people do a wonderful job of that. And that's all 2,900 plus employees. So thank you for all you do. It's greatly appreciated by our community. I can tell you as a parent of three kids in the district, it's very appreciated by me as well. If you go downtown, you'll see some artwork by our middle school and high school kids in the windows. So kudos to them. And it is pretty impressive. So if you go out for the lighting ceremony tomorrow night, you might see some of that. And that's our kids that did that. So thank

005you for that. We hosted recently. our first ever realtor builder luncheon breakfast i'm sorry realtor builder breakfast we had over 100 folks involved we kind of gave a district update as well as some information to help them do their jobs and we also know that when you're moving into community sometimes those are the first folks you meet so we want to have them available so they could say you know what activities are available to elementary kids to middle school kids high school kids and so on so forth so it was very well received and it was not like having folks walk out saying you just helped me do my job so thank you for them for partnering with us will continue to increase our different levels of engagement with different groups as we go along.

006Kudos to the PLMS cross-country team. They've raised $11,000, over $11,000 for Pro Deo Youth Center with their Lapathon, so kudos to them. Thank you to our staff who hosted and coordinated the Community Resource Expo. at Summit Tech Academy the other night. And if you want, our fifth speaker series of the year is also done by our special service team. And if you can't see any of those live, you can always see those on YouTube. I also encourage you to follow our podcast. We have over, I think, about 20-something episodes now, and there's some incredible things on there. So please find our podcast and all the place you find podcasts. Including you can find them on our YouTube channel and our on our Facebook page as far as post I want to also add a couple

007things fall sports have mostly wrapped up We had a huge success in various places. We still have one team going, though. And so tomorrow at 11 o'clock, right behind us, the buses will roll. Lee Summit North will be heading over to DeSmet as they're one of the final four teams in football. So if you want to come over and cheer them on as they drive across the state for their game, you can travel over and watch. Misha sets the rates for those. It's $8 to enter. Or you can go to Misha's website and stream it for $10. It costs you more to watch it in the warmth because I do think game time is 23 degrees. So, but $10 if you want to live stream it. I want to thank the third graders at Longview

008Farm Elementary. They had several of us out at Longview Farm did to read to various grade levels, but also not only to get to read third grade, I got to watch them be FBI agents yesterday and solve the crime of what happened to Principal Hassler. And it was very cute and they did a great job. We had a groundbreaking at Miller Park. Thank you to all the board members are able to attend I know you don't want to attend every single thing and it's hard because there's so many things but it was very nice What a great celebration for a much-needed project I want to thank my superintendent councils and we met this morning Greenwood enjoyed learning about what class pets you want to have. I don't know if a cheetah really needs to be

009in a classroom, but it was very cool to learn about. And then last thing I want to say is around the Missouri School Board Association, which I know many board members are going to talk about. First off, kudos to Trail Ridge and their broadcasting team. They did awesome. Now I did the awesome. They met with the keynote speaker who is an astronaut and the keynote speaker mentioned them in his speech. So that was pretty cool. Kudos to the Summit Lakes Choir. They came and performed, did an outstanding job. And I want to thank the three board members that presented. So board members. Sparks, Marshall, and President Campbell, you did a fantastic job in your presentation. You represent our district well. I was very proud to be in Lee's Summit and hear all the great things

010you shared and the great Q&A discussion that was afterwards. It's always a good presentation when you have a long line of folks coming up to talk to you afterwards, and you guys had a long line of people staying afterwards, so thank you. Thank you, and we do have a couple of presentations around the MSBA so a few of our board members that Completed their certified board member training, and I know you completed it quite a few months ago But we now have your pins and your certificates so acknowledging board member Eslett Education is a part of this district and it's also a part of being a board member. And so celebrating those moments when our board members take that extra time to educate, to become better board members is really important. So congratulations and thank

011you for your service. All right, and now we'll move on to item 3.01. Our spotlight school is Hazel Grove Elementary. And for this presentation, we have Lucas Bure again. Annalise Asad again and Kennedy Johnson and Berg Walker and thank you for joining us this evening. Good evening everyone and thank you for having us here tonight. We are pleased to be here. My name is Lucas Berhey and I am a fourth grade student. We are from Hazel Grove Elementary. I'm Berg Walker and I'm a fourth grader. Hello I'm Annie Asad and I'm in third grade. And I'm Kennedy Johnson. I'm also a fourth grader at the Grove. Tonight we hope to share with you some of the ways that Hazel Grove Hawks help kids and adults feel like they belong. One of the ways we build

012community at our school is with our hawk family nest. These families consist of a small group of students who are in kindergarten through fifth grade. They are assigned to a staff nest leader. The students in the nest will get to be in the same nest for the entire time they are hawks at the grove. We have nests to give our hawks opportunity to feel connected to our larger school community. It gives kids a chance to bond with students from across grade levels and have a greater sense of belonging. Hawk nest families meet every month for their community building time and time to collaborate together to strengthen our relationships and to reinforce our monthly character traits. At the Grove, we also have Hawk Heroes of the Hallway. Hawk Heroes connect adult volunteers, moms, dads, grandparents, aunts,

013uncles, etc. to school activities. Our Hawk Heroes sign up for a full day and they get to spend time... supporting, I can't say that, in every grade level, helping with arrival and dismissal, and volunteering in special classes. Hawk heroes also get to eat lunch and play at recess with their hawk son or daughter. This program lets our hawk families build stronger relationships with our school families. We love our heroes. And tonight, you will learn about one of our newest projects, Hazel Grove Labs. In fact, you may have heard about this program on the most recent episode of LSR 7's Summit Up podcast. Lab stands for leading and belonging. Lab groups help fill leadership roles throughout our school. Each student in third through fifth grade narrowed a list of eight lab clubs to match their interests.

014Students then received their lab assignment. HGE lab clubs meet monthly and also do work throughout the week. Students in labs are able to work across grade levels and make new friends. Labs are not only helping our students increase their feeling of belonging, they are also helping us empower our students' sense of leadership, ownership, and responsibility. Because we are Hazel Grove Hawks, learning and leading everywhere, every way, and every day. It's a great day to be a Hawk. Make it a good one. Stay kind and Hawk strong. Please enjoy our lab video. Thank you, students, and thank you, Principal Kristen Merrill. We've got a video. So, HOP mentors will help a kid of any grade with their day and if they need a friend, and we even help them just getting ready for their day. Nice.

015And what is one of your favorite things about being a HOP mentor? Just, like, meeting new people since I'm new here and not feeling lonely. I'm like a mom and I have no friends. And what's your favorite part about it? My favorite part is that I live here since kindergarten, so I love seeing how some things never change in all of the grades. I'm Courtney May. Courtney and I have worked hard at the Kids Like Our Building belonging group. Which one are you in? I am in library. Can you talk to us about some of the work that librarians do? We stay at work, we organize it, and we help out at library displays. Great. I know sometimes library books don't always get checked out. How do library leaders help with that problem? You talk

016about the book, and then you do a summary about it, so they can read it. Excellent. So it's kind of like a little advertisement for the book? Yeah, I'm kind of soon. I know you're both part of the lab group, Learning and Belonging group of Clean and Unified. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that group does? So in our lab, we put up our intake down art in the class, I mean in the hallway. As it's here, once we get up, we write down tables, we pick up food, and we can see. And it helps Mr. Rowan and Coach P. That's it. And we're proud of the peer-to-peer lab. My job in here is to have the people go and I teach them math, and reading, and I also help to

017make fun of them by teaching them how to make math. I also help them with writing, and every day, for every meeting, I go and help them. spelling the letters in your name, and spelling the letters in the alphabet. Abby, a lot of the labs at Hazel Grove are good for student leadership, like our Grove Communications, where they read assemblies and daily announcements. Our Hawk Patrol that meets kids every morning and keeps them safe at arrival and dismissal. How do you think labs help our kids? Thank you Hawks for joining us tonight and now we'll move on to item 3.02. We've got our spotlight school Lee summit high school. And tonight we'll be joined by Elaine McDonald and Zach Nielsen, Lauren Berry, Micaiah Clayton, Bentley St. John, Quinn Martin, Aaron Mokshieveski. Hi, my name is

018Quinn Martin. One second. Good evening. Thank you all for hosting us this evening. I just want to give you a brief introduction and then Quinn's going to take it over from there. A few months ago. The board approved the purchase and installation of digital video scoreboards at each of the three high school stadiums. And with our scoreboard at Lee Summit High School, we've been able to highlight our athletic teams, our activity groups. It's been a really great experience through there. But one of the things that I wanted to be sure that we spotlighted was the curricular impact that that has had within the school as well. So tonight we have members from two different programs who have been collaborating since the start of school to create and produce the content that you see on those

019scoreboards at every home event. So we have members from our sports broadcasting team. which is part of the English language arts department and led by mrs. Elaine McDonald and then we also have a member from our sports entertainment and marketing course which is a part of our business department led by mr. Zach Nielsen and English language arts and business don't always have an opportunity to overlap but this group has poured many many hours into creating some really really great content for those scoreboards and so I wanted to highlight the work that they've done this evening so they're gonna show you some of the things that they've created all right my name is Quinn Martin and I'm a senior at least in high school I'm really cool sometimes these are some of the graphics I've made

020for our football team here's some more Yeah, I use Photoshop and After Effects. I use After Effects for this. These are some animations that we play after we score. All right, I'm Bentley St. John. I'm a junior. These are some of the graphics, and I've also made some hype videos for soccer throughout the year. Oh, hang on. Sorry. The one on the right, yeah. The next slide. Yeah, I played that one. Okay. The things that I've made throughout the year. And where would we see that, Bentley? Oh, that goes on the scoreboard for every soccer game. I'll move so it's a straight line. So I'm also in Mr. Nielsen's class making some of the graphics. But we do quite as, I don't know what the word is. Yeah, it's not footage. It's just base stuff

021like this. It's, well. A lot of it is templates, but it's very fun to do in class. And then I also got to run the scoreboard at some of the first games, putting the things that we all made onto the board and broadcast them during that. And that was a great experience to get to do, and I thank Mr. Nielsen for that. For us, ours were less intricate. Ours were less intricate so it maybe took a class period but we did work together quite a bit and had a bit of a conference for each one. My name is Lauren Berry. I am the sports director for Tiger Broadcast, and I'm more in charge of just kind of telling the guys, be like, hey, you're going to do this today, or you're going to make this.

022But I also do make stuff for the soccer team. These ones say that they're videos, but they don't have sound. They're just small little intro videos that Aaron would put on loop for them, and I kind of just make some of these things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I make a lot of graphics. These were their senior night graphics that I made. I had ones for every single senior. There were like 14, but I only decided to put two on there. It's too many to put 14. I also post for the social media. So I post what all of the other people are making just because we obviously want to show what we're making. We don't just want to keep it to ourselves. These are some that I've made, and I know Micaiah makes a

023lot of them too. And then I also make hype videos and reels. So these are the last two things. Where would you use that, Lauren? Where would you use that? That would be either posted on the scoreboard or I also post that on mine but obviously it posts them on the scoreboard because we just want the people to be kind of hyped up about the game and not just kind of sit in there like oh the game started We want them to see something before from like the last game. Micaiah was better about doing the Every single week she would be like oh I'm gonna make this and it was showing the highlights from the last game. So that's where we see this mostly I'm Akai Clayton. I'm a senior. Most of my fall was

024consumed by football, but I still do a little bit of soccer and volleyball, so here's some of the soccer. Shout out to our soccer team. Six consecutive conference titles, so go them. And then the next is some of the football graphics that I've made. They take forever, but I love how they turn out so and then I do a lot of the like Lauren said stuff for the video scoreboard It plays before the team runs out. So it's just kind of cool for everyone to see like my work up there You could have kept that quiet Okay, so curriculum-wise, the cool thing that the video board will do for us is give us an opportunity to partner with community members, specifically businesses. So what we didn't get to do it this fall, it was a

025very quick turnaround when the board got up and running. But the vision is to actually have kids calling on businesses, creating graphics, getting the real-world experience. And it was a little bit hectic at the beginning. I've never done anything like this before. But I was so happy to have the kids, especially it was great. These three in the middle, we share a student. So we got to collaborate our classes together. And in the future, the opportunities are endless. I know that it made a huge difference to Coach Thomas. He would always text us and say, hey. You guys made this environment so much better. But it was the kids doing the work, obviously. And then also, too, another cool thing, like Anastasia's, our musical, they gave me a graphic at the beginning of the fall.

026It was probably like the second football game. And I put it up there, and it was kind of a test to see, like, are people really looking up there? You know, it's not just. And I got an email that said they received a ton of text messages, said it looked great. got donations. So it was really cool to see that working. And then also the kids can see like sponsorships. So the possibilities are endless really with the video board. Elaine McDonald here from Lee Summit High. And I will always be the first to tell you that I have one of the best jobs, flat out. Period. I'm going to try not to cry. The kids already know that I value them like none other. We are very, very, very fortunate to have kids that I

027have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to try and make it without crying. What you're seeing here is amazing talent. And I don't think a lot of people understand the amount of work that goes into what they do. So we're looking at, oh, that's so cool, or you get chills. But it took Micaiah, she filmed the game. She had to look through all of them, had to look through all the clips, had to pick the ones that they wanted to choose. And that takes time. That takes... Yes, and I won't let them use copyright music because it's against the law, and I would like to stay in my job for a couple more years so I can get my kid through college. And that's a frustration, but they go with it,

028and they listen. And so that, to me, is what I love the best about the video scoreboards and my job and whatever. We do other things as well. I would also like to just say thank you to... the folks who had the video scoreboards and Carrie for letting us and admin that are here to collaborate and actually get together and try to learn this and then try to get the kids on board because if we don't have that support, then we're not able to help them. Now, I will say it was a little bit stressful. We were like, what the heck are we doing? We have no idea. But again, the kids see the vision. The kids know what's up. The kids know how to do it and they want to do it. So that's

029the key. And so we need to continue to have that support for them and for us. That would be amazing. And I actually look forward to learning more. There's some couple graphics on there that, you know, that Nevco, you know, made for us. And we're trying to learn. Quinn even asked the other day, oh, can I learn how to do it? Quinn already knows about After Effects. Let's get that boy going. So that means how about let's get that teacher going so I can teach somebody else when he graduates, which he will this year. So Micaiah and Lauren are killing it in sports. And Bentley, first year, honestly, he's already taken it by the reins. So appreciate your support and look to do more in the future. Great work. Thank you students. Thank you teachers.

030Thank you. Dr. Harrison You know that I know board members will share this comment, you know when we talked about approving the funds around those scoreboards part of that was what are our students going to get involved with where's the learning going to be and Seeing those words come to this vision and you guys executing on that amazing amazing job. So, thank you All right, so how awesome to have little ones and big ones showing all the amazing things we have and the future we have. But now we have another recommendation or another spotlight. And I'm going to ask two special friends to come up to the podium to actually give it. And that's going to be our co-chairs of our citizen advisory committee, Elaine Blumel and Stephen Hill. So they're going to come up

031to the mic and we're going to honor somebody who started teaching kids in our district back in 1962, but has continued to serve our district in many ways. And so I'll let Elaine and Stephen take over from there. It's nice to see all of you tonight. It's green. I'm just not talking in it right. Is that better? Sorry. It's really wonderful to be here tonight, and I am so excited. And Steve and I have been looking forward to this for quite some time. So before we get started, Judy, would you and your family like to come and stand right up here in front of us so that everybody can look at you while we talk about you? That's good. Thank you. This is your life. Thank you. This evening it is an honor for Stephen

032and I to celebrate the contribution that Judy Noland has given through a lifetime of dedication and service to the Lee Summit R7 school district. In 1952, Lee Summit R7 superintendent, Dr. Bernard Campbell, established the Citizens Advisory Committee to help with the passage of a bond issue to build a new school. affectionately known as the CAC the organization continued was reorganized in 1997 and through succeeding years became more structured and broadened its role to research important and relevant education issues Judy Noland has served and supported the district throughout the CAC's evolution as a young kindergarten teacher at Mason Elementary Judy was approached by Dr. Campbell to be part of the group because of her passion for students, especially our youngest learners, and because of her passion for public education. She has continued to serve the district

033in profound and positive ways ever since, and she is an example to all of us. Not only has Ms. Nolan served the district as a teacher and volunteer, she has played an integral role in the foundation and development of the district's parent as teacher program. My children went through that. Which empowers parent educators to help and serve families with prenatal through pre-K children. In office at the Great Beginnings Early Education Center even bears her name. Hundreds of patrons throughout the community have dedicated their time, energy, and talents to the CAC in recent years, but few can say that they have devoted more than five decades of service to this special group. In recognition of 50 years of service to the Citizens Advisory Committee, tonight we recognize and celebrate Ms. Julie Nolte. You want to use

034this one? Judy, this plaque doesn't even begin to say thank you and everything that we think of you and everything you've done for the district and for our young kids all these years. You're such an inspiration to all of us. I want to thank you personally for always helping us at CAC remember to consider our littlest learners as well as everyone else in the district. And you've always been such a light for us and an inspiration. So this says, an indelible mark presented to Judy Nolan in grateful appreciation and distinguished recognition of hard work, dedication, and service to the Lee Summit R7 School District. And we're so, so grateful for your help. We're lucky to have you. Do you want to talk? You said you didn't want to, but do you want to say? Just

035say two words. I would never pass up the opportunity to talk. I just wanted to tell you that I first started teaching in 1962 at Mason School, the kindergarten class, and I was there five or six years, maybe seven. I can't remember. But kindergartners are so fun and so funny to teach. That was amazing, and that made me really love teaching. So I'm so glad I had the opportunity. Thanks. And thank all of you for coming. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And also, thanks to Stephen Hill and Elaine Blummel. You all do a great job with our CAC committee, and thank you for your leadership as well. Moving on, we'll move now to item 3.04, our board priorities metrics update. Dr. Christy Barger. Good evening. As you know from previous board meetings, we

036have scheduled a review of data at each board meeting in an effort to provide the most timely and appropriate data to the board as data is released. And that we consider to be right time to metrics divided across the months as this chart indicates and we've seen before. When we think about the data on our metrics chart for November of 2022, the district metrics that we'll be taking a peek at tonight are the disaggregated advanced studies data, including IBAP, EOS data, and then we will be doing both a quarter one CSIP update and a specific equity plan update as well. So the first set of data when we think about the metrics was with regard to our weighted course enrollment for this year. This is a heavy chart, so let me walk through what's on

037this information. If you look to the upper left-hand corner, You can see that we have weighted courses in grades 8 through 12 and our total student population when only considering grades 8 through 12 is 73 20 students and 58 19 of those 73 20 students are enrolled in at least one weighted class 79.5% if you look to the bottom with that asterisk if you start to removing students who are non-residential STA students that takes it down to 77.7% When we then begin to look across the way, we can see the disaggregation across male-female, across our racial groups, free and reduced lunch, and IEP students. So you can see that in terms of numbers, and then you can see the percent of weighted enrollment students that each of those represent. When we look at the percent

038of weighted enrollment students each one of those represent and then we can compare that to the percent of overall students in that range so when we look at the percent of the 51 80 not 58 19 enrolled students and weighted courses in comparison to the 73 20 enrolled students in those age ranges you can see the difference in percentage of distribution so for example we are a little bit over in terms of female representation and slightly therefore under in male representation because those are the two groups that are measured. Obviously it doesn't work exactly that well in the groups that are not just two groups. It distributes across multiple groups. As a look, and this is a lot, but really just as a look to see where those enrollments are. This distributes the same data,

039but instead of looking at it at a district level, it looks as a raw count of enrollment in weighted classes across subgroup and is listed by each of our secondary schools where weighted classes are a possibility. In addition to weighted classes, we work at our high schools with a program called Equal Opportunity Schools, or EOS. EOS... a survey that students work that works with students and develops profiles of students to identify the students with high potential to achieve an api p court IB courses but who may need some support or encouragement or may need barriers removed to enroll in api be Data is generated then based on the enrollment in the APIB courses categorizing students by race and income status grouping and participation goals are then set based on medium high income majority student group

040participation. So before I move to the data it is important to note that EOS only looks at AP, IP, IB enrollments, does not account for things like dual credit and some of the other weighted courses that you would have seen in the previous data, thus the need to look at the two data sets separately. When we look at Lee Summit High School, this will be a good starting point to determine how to read the chart. So if you look to the far right, you can see that they have white is that far right column. The second column into the left is multiracial and additional races. Then there's Hispanic, Latinx, Black, African American, Asian. These demographic groups are identified by EOS. You can see that the goal participation rate for enrollment is set at the medium

041high income of the majority group. So for Lee Summit High School, the medium high income majority group would be white. So you can see that the goal rate is at 40% because 40% or 217 students at Lee Summit High School who are in the medium high income level and are white are enrolled in an AP or IB course. Then what it does is it uses that mark across the other groups and identifies the gray lines where you would be essentially noticing a gap, an actual raw count of students who wouldn't be necessary in that particular student demographic group to reach that same mark. So using this example, if we look at our white students, we have 40%, obviously that's the even mark. Then we can look to see that we have 27% of our low-income

042white students enrolled in one of those courses, and it would take 10 additional students in that category, that's why the gray is listed as 10, to reach that mark. You could see, for example, with Hispanic low-income, it would take five additional students to reach that 40% mark. Or low-income black students, it would take 14 additional students to reach that mark. The actual raw numbers are represented in the chart below. So this represents the Lee Summit High School data. You will note as I move to other schools that those percentages and rates and goals are going to differ between our high schools because they are set by the enrollment participation rate at the given high school. So when we look at Lee Summit North, that goal participation rate as identified by EOS is 45% and you

043can see that in our Hispanic Latinx, we actually are over. So that's great. Asian, we are over. You can see that black, African-American, and both medium, high income, low income, as well as our multiracial, additional racial, and our white, low income have places where if we wanted to reach that same participation rate across the demographics, we would need 15, two, nine, 22, and 19 students respectively in each of those groups. Looking at the Lee Summit West data, the goal participation rate is 22%. You'll note that that is noticeably lower. There is a significant enrollment in dual credit courses at Lee Summit West, which again are not reflected in this demographic or data and sometimes compete for student enrollment. Using that 22% then you can see and actually it's almost to the heart where the numbers

044overlap each other You can see that we would need five students in that low income white Two students in the low income multiracial to reach that 22% and again set by that medium high income majority group marker US surveys are being given Lisa West I know they're being given right now and they not only identify characteristics about what would prevent a student from enrolling in an IB AP class They also ask questions along the lines with regard to do they have someone or which teacher they would identify with as somebody who could help them and support them and advocate and removing barriers so it does a really nice job of Identifying and creating a nice profile of the student so that the staff can say wow this kid I would be great to get in

045an IB class and we just need to work with this staff member who is their advocate to take down some of these barriers. So then the second piece of the metrics that was on the November update is the CSIP update. So as you know, the CSIP is a hefty document and what is remarkable to think is that when we come to the end of the semester in December, we will be one half through our entire completion of our CSIP. So we felt at that point in time was the time for me to generate or for the group to generate a comprehensive report and paper that I will upload with metrics and measurements and numbers. But what we did do for the purpose of this update is create some quick highlights of actionable items that have

046happened this quarter. moving forward to each of our action steps and then knowing that that quantifiable data will come at that halfway mark when we share out, I think that's scheduled in January. So the goals that we have for goal one would be that we would provide high quality experiences with access and opportunity for each student. And you can see that we have action plans 1.1 through 1.6 included. Inquiry model framework, database instructional decision making, real world learning and career pathway expansion, curriculum resource and instructional support, extracurricular and co-curricular opportunities, and then enhancement of the portrait of a graduate. When we look at that instructional model framework, we can note that in addition to the work that was done with principals last year, we've had assistant principals, 40 leaders engaging in three sessions focused on

047this inquiry learning. We also have inquiry cadres with 52 participants. participants participating in six days of learning with the intent and visiting classrooms with the intention of growing and developing their Understanding that will eventually be shared with the whole staff next year and we have curriculum leaders who are marking inquiry points in curriculum documents so that all staff can see where inquiry exists in their existing curriculum documents an Action plan 1.2. Dr. Wright has provided a number of dining with data opportunities around NW in EA and MAP, which are optional leaders opportunities to come sit together informally, discuss and collaborate around district data. She has also created for each building leader a building level data report that is designed to support building level decision making around each individual student and student need. And then we've

048presented last time we were together on that data driven MTSS process. As we consider action plan 1.3 and real world learning, November 8th professional development, the morning for the entire district of certified staff was focused on real world learning and or RIASEC to great feedback that came back to that professional development. So much credit to our career team who put that together. We've had additional resources added and a career curriculum rolled out. That is a K-12 career curriculum brand new to the district and excellent, well-developed and detailed. including lessons that have been developed by the career navigators that are very plug and play for our teachers. And in addition to that, this action plan calls for marketing. And I would say that Ms. Booth and her team are exceptional at marketing and work very closely

049with Katie Bergen on that program. Action 1.4 is curriculum resource and instructional report. And again, we have a curriculum team looking towards creating aligned curriculum documents across disciplines so there is consistency in those curriculum formats. Again, those demarcations in our curriculum guides are about where social and emotional learning, real-world learning and inquiry opportunities exist within those documents. It is important for our staff to be able to see within their existing curriculum where those things are. Those are not add-ons. are embedded into what is expected and what is already in their curriculum. And that we are working through the curriculum management plan this spring, including timeline, resources, and then inclusion of diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments. 1.5 is extracurricular and co-curricular and last year we had hoped that to use that as baseline data But the

050reality is that as we moved our sixth graders and opened a fourth middle school and had a whole bunch of new opportunities Present through D leagues and then a whole lot less sixth graders to engage at the elementary's and clubs We've decided that it's more appropriate that this become baseline data We are collecting that for the first time through power school and we will have a complete report for that in the February metrics report Portrait of a graduate, a digital portfolio template has been rolled out to all staff at secondary level and is part of that spiraled career curriculum that most of our secondary students are accessing via advisory. And the portrait of a graduate has been added as a component of course development. So when a new course is being developed or recommended, it

051has to indicate how it aligns to our portrait of a graduate. That takes us to goal two, which is fostering a responsive and caring and inclusive environment, including recruiting, hiring, and retaining and promoting diverse staff. Action plan 2.2 was removed during our 2022 revision, but I left that there to denote so that the funky numbering didn't throw us off. Action plan 2.3 was about student voice. 2.4 was about professional learning. And 2.5 was about student and staff wellness. We didn't go into detail here with regard to recruit, hire, and retain and promote a diverse staff, largely because we had a comprehensive work session on that recently and felt like that had been addressed pretty clearly and recently with the Board of Education. Again, removed 2.2 in the June revision because it was a bit duplicative.

052From a student voice perspective, we continue to use panorama surveys as is called for specifically in Student Action Plan 2.3. And then we have extensive D teamwork, which you will hear a little bit later about and have heard about before. Action Plan 2.4, Professional Learning Operatives for All Staff. Well, there's lots to celebrate, and I would love to stand up here and talk about this because this is really where a lot of my heart and passion is. This was the written report that you received this evening, so we felt like that was probably a pretty comprehensive look at Action Plan 2.4. Sarah certainly talked a little bit about action plan 2.5 from a staff perspective a little bit earlier this evening but it's also good to know from a student perspective that we currently have

05379 students and our 12 students receiving therapeutic services through Burrell and an additional 60 students students who will begin services once factors such as insurance are addressed so certainly that is a partnership that is serving our kids well from a perspective of wellness By this time last year, we had 49 long-term suspension hearings. Since we have reviewed and revised that process, we have had, at the time of count, we have had 18 long-term suspensions on that same date. So from 49 to 18 with some review of process there. Staff members are continuing to work through trauma-informed care and social and emotional learning as we look to developing lessons and building them into the curriculum as mentioned before. And then board policy ADF has been reviewed to merge student and staff wellness. It has been to

054the board's policy review committee and is in the process then we'll go back to SLT and eventually to MSBA for review and then to the board eventually. When we look at goal three of four, that's comprehensive communication, business and industry partnership, community outreach and support, and customer service, we can see that there's been quite a bit that's happened in Ms. Bergen's world, including communications around CLIMB. Creation of internal feedback loops that are very communications focused. Then there's the effective tools and services. And then, you know, things like the newsletter segments, the summit podcasts, really focusing when asked, AVID, that marketing plan that we talked about the career team being great with, part of this goal three work. This is really hard to measure a standalone because this is what is our marketing and our communication

055of all the other areas of the CSIP. When we look at our business and industry partnership, the career education department continues to add market value asset opportunities with business partners. So far this year, the district has had students and businesses partners connect with over 20 experiences with whole classes. That excludes those one-on-one experiences. We're talking about whole class experiences. We've rolled out that career curriculum, and there is a link in the document, and if you have it in PDF format and need it more live, we can get you a link to that entire career curriculum. And that we worked very closely with the Lease Summit Workforce Alliance and continue to work in our advisory teams for each career technical education area. As we begin to look at community outreach and support, we have Diploma Plus

056work happening with a campaign. We have the following external and internal leadership interactions, things like the speaker series, the real estate breakfast that Dr. Buck mentioned, the high school and middle school athletic and activities strategic planning processes, and then internally thinking about the ballot speaking tour, the prats that are going on to serve and make some decisions for our students, as well as an aspiring principals academy. We also have a very targeted focus with regard to EL support, with regard to ensuring that our communications are reaching all of our families, including those for whom English may not be their primary language or language at all. And then we look to excellent communication. Try that again. Excellent. Customer service. And we talk about effective tools and services, things like Peach Jar, which provides opportunities for organizations

057to reach our staff and families in a way that is consistent and that we continue to utilize things like student focus groups and scope surveys to determine that we are meeting our community's needs. Which brings us to goal four, which is stewards and leaders, which the first... fund balance the second is capital project and long-range plans and the third is the technology infrastructure and this is a place that you'll probably hear a little bit more about on a regular basis and some of the others just as a result of finance committees and monthly finance updates but when we look at action plan 4.1 we know that budget updates are provided monthly via the Finance Committee reports we know that business services is working with building and department leaders to finalize zero based budgeting for full

058implementation in 23-24 and that we know that Mr. Holder, Dr. Shelton and appropriate SLT leadership will meet and review the budgets and determine how to best guide decision-making around budgets moving forward. We also know that we have as discussed earlier this evening had a good feedback loop as it relates to the Prop C waiver rollback and or district levy bond transfer. When we look at the 4.2 goal of a capital projects and long-range plans We know that a long-range capital improvement plan is continuing to be developed much credit to dr Shelton who is working with each department and building leader to identify needs and wants for their buildings or Departments and then is developing a long-range capital need identifying what the needs are Looking through those one-on-one requests looking through the demographic work and then

059really thinking through bonds levies transfers all of the funding sources that might be available in order to meet as many of those capital needs as we can as quickly as we can. And then that brings us to Action Plan 4.3, the technology infrastructure. Action Plan 4.3 will be highlighted in the technology's annual written report. But in addition to that, the interactive flat panel installations wrapped up this fall, continuing to contribute to the learning and utilization of technology. And that we know that technology and instructional technology have been gathering stakeholder feedback around device selection, which I believe is a conversation for later this evening as well. So with that, I will hold on questions for a moment because the next piece of data is going to be presented by Ms. Sanders, and then at the end,

060we'll open it up for questions on the whole presentation. Thank you for the opportunity to give an update on portions of the LSR 7 equity plan. So there are two goals that I'll focus on this evening, and that's goal 2 and goal 5. So I'll get started with goal 2, and that's professional learning and development. And the focus that we really, well, the focus this year was really to increase the number of equity-based professional development opportunities for all LSR 7 staff, and then to ensure that we have participation in those activities. So the first thing we'll talk about are the district dignity sessions. We currently have 55 trained dignity facilitators, and we have completed six out of nine training days, so we're super excited about that. 28 of our 34 buildings have completed session one.

061There will be three one-hour sessions. December 2nd is when session two will roll out for the majority of our buildings. We have 75% of nutrition. services, purchasing and distribution that have received three out of the three hours. 100% of BAS have completed two of the three hours and SLT completed two of the three hours. We are in the process of coordinating training for all staff members in this building. Transportation, we are coordinating those days and actually technology is going to participate in the SLT. SLC days. So we're super excited about this opportunity for all of our staff members and I'm going to share with you some feedback from the survey that's embedded in the session. So after participants go through the facilitated session they have the opportunity to fill out a five question survey. We

062probably have roughly from 1,200 staff members, 1,200 to 1,500 that have participated. And so this is sort of old data because we had to upload it last week. So it says that we have 598 responses. We're now up to 639 responses. And what we all know about feedback surveys is people usually only give them if they really love it or they really hate it. Fortunately, our staff has been very forthcoming with giving us feedback to ensure that we are headed down the right path. So what I will say in crunching these numbers, the first question is, do you feel that the LR7 dignity sessions directly impact you and your position within the district? And so how it's a ranking or a rating scale, so it does not impact or greatly impacts. And so we look

063at sort of four and fives as our gauge, and that's 85. 4.6% of the staff members said that they feel that it greatly impacts, and that's 534 staff members. And then when we look at the next question, which was how did the Dignity facilitator support your learning of the Dignity content during the session? This overall percentage was 94% impacts, greatly impacts, and that was a total of 602 staff members. and sort of reading. We also have a question that is open so staff members can just share freely. One of the pieces of feedback or theme that kept coming back up was how in how great they felt having someone in their building facilitate this work on their behalf. It allowed them to feel honored and safe and valued and validated in their experiences. So that

064has probably, for us, been the biggest benefit to move into the format that we have, and that is training our facilitators to do that work. So then we'll go to... The second part of plan number two, which is our dignity plans that live in all of our buildings and the majority of our departments. I had the opportunity to do my first site visit actually last week and it was with our instructional operations team. So our instructional operations team has a dignity team. They came together and created a plan. And so upstairs, the way it sits is there's so many sort of smaller departments that sit together in a long hallway. And there's cubicles and offices. And their focus was really how do we bring this whole group together? And so they have a really... detail

065plan and so they had their first lunch and learn together as academic services on that side and The best part about it is they brought in Alicia Colon, our ELD, our English Language Development Program Coordinator in to talk about what does EL services look like in our schools right now? And what does that population look like? And that was very informative to them and started to create this partnership to ensure that as we proceed with making curricular decisions that we have Alicia in the room so that we are ensuring we're making decisions on behalf of all of our kids. And then, so that was a beautiful sort of opportunity to see that come together. Those happen quarterlies and they have other things that they do too. But we're able to meet in on those plans.

066I get to see it in action. I get to follow up. What did you revise? What did you keep? And then how you're moving forward. And I am collecting data on that to bring back to the board in the January work session as a mid-update. So I'll be able to give you all an update on where we are as a district. And also this is something cool that's out there. So you heard a little bit about it for Hazel Grove, but there is a podcast out there for Hazel Grove's lab groups. And those lab groups was born out of Hazel Grove's dignity plan. So that was one of their treatments to minimize that dignity gap when they looked at their panorama data. So I just wanted to highlight that and actually was able to listen

067to it. And it's amazing. So. The next thing are dignity stakeholder sessions. And so I have the opportunity to facilitate those. And I did want to give a quick update on sort of our numbers this year. We had our first parent D team. We had 31 parent participants sign up. We had 20 show up for that first meeting. And it was a rainy, cold night. And it was Thursday night football, too. But we had a great time there at that session and look forward to the upcoming sessions. coming sessions we have currently a 15 student participants it's high school only I got a parent email saying what about middle schoolers and I said if I could like clone myself we will have middle school right now so the goal is to bring middle school on

068next year but but this idea that students have a voice and are able to participate and we're excited to bring that group of students to the board at the January work session Then at our staff D team we have 14 staff participants and this was a lot lower than last year and I'm wondering if that's due to the fact that we're now having those dignity sessions in all of our buildings and so staff members are able to connect to it Yep, and so we have a session each quarter so we have two more upcoming sessions next semester and then Goal five is parent and community engagement and really this idea of equity community forums with the intention to listen and learn. And so we are kicking off our dignity discussions in the World Cafe format.

069It's open to the larger LSR7 community, so you don't have to be a parent. As long as you want to come, you don't even have to live in Lee Summit. But if you have a vested interest in what happens in our district, you're more than welcome to come. It'll be held December 4th. at Pleasantly Middle School. We were able to bring together a community planning team to help sort of hone in on the questions. So in the World Cafe format, you start with one question, and then you have people in tables to talk, and then you do a harvest of all the information that came out, and then you pose your next question, and they kind of all rotate. So we're very excited about that. Initially that group was just going to plan the questions.

070They got so invested they were like, well, could we be table leaders? Absolutely you can be table leaders. So we'll have table leaders that will keep the conversation going and keep participants rotating. And then we'll have another one in the spring to follow up with that. So that is our update on the equity plan. So then we're open to questions on any of the metrics, either equity plan or otherwise. Board Member Sparks. I want to say thank you. Thank you for putting it all here in one place. Thank you for being detailed. This helps so much with the progress that we're making here in LSR 7. Thank you. Any other questions, board members? I just have a couple. Equal Opportunity Schools, is that a federal, a state, an LSR 7? It's a vendor, and so

071it's someone that we contract with. They work across the nation, but it is a vendor that we contract with. Great. Thank you. And then inquiry, I know we talked several points, and we've talked about that. Inquiry cadre and can we just talk about those terms and maybe what what that means? Absolutely. So one of the charges with the CSIP is to begin thinking about an instructional framework If you think about an instructional framework that works in kindergarten and works in AP chemistry They may not always be exactly the same thing. So over a number of years five six seven years What the district ended up landing on is that inquiry is something that is true in all grade levels and all contexts and can be developed. big scale and little scale within lessons. And so

072largely under the guidance of Dr. Janeway who did some professional learning about inquiry, we have done some collective learning about that and what can it look like in our classrooms. So both inquiry and then in a couple of content areas, the way we've utilized our professional development funds is that we have a teacher from each building who is an inquiry rep. Maybe two two I'm getting the two back there from two teachers from each building I was doing the math there and And then a teacher from each grade level in each in each of the content areas and they get together in small groups We study inquiry there were two days of deep learning in the summer. They get together, they read, they learn. And then there is a lab setting in both the inquiry

073cadres and then also the contents where that small group of teachers goes and visits classrooms, their peers, where one of their peers who's also in the cadre is doing something inquiry-based. How did it go? What did we see? They come back and they pull on it together. So it's collective learning in our own spaces, very embedded professional development. Thanks. I remember you sharing this with us at the summer retreat, but thanks for those reminders on definitions. And then if I could just ask, also with Burrell, can we talk a little bit about what those services are for maybe anybody in the room that hasn't heard of that before? So Dr. Segan coordinates that alongside Ms. Sanders, so I don't know whether Shelly can answer those questions or whether we want to bring up Dr. Segan

074to ask the questions, whatever works best. So last year we had the opportunity to put out an RFP for school-based health, and we had two vendors that applied, and through the RFP process, Borough was selected. Before last year, Borough primarily functioned out of the Springfield School District, Nixa Springfield area, and so with the partnership that we established, they kind of... Transitioned here they are have it currently expanded to a few of our surrounding districts But what they do is they're able to come into our schools And provide therapeutic services for our students at school. So parents don't have to take off They don't have to go out and get on a waiting list and do all of those things The referrals come from our school buildings And then burl takes it from there. They have

075a scheduler that will reach out to pay parents, we're sort of working out the kinks to ensure that even in that intake process, it is still a collaboration between the school and Borough because Excuse me, oftentimes we are the ones that the parents know, not Burrell initially, so to continue that partnership. And then once that intake is completed and they have been placed with the provider, that provider will come on site to see them. Burrell also provides crisis services to students, so if we do have students in crisis, they will come and provide those services. Our plan is to bring five more elementary schools online second semester. And if a parent felt like they wanted some mental health services with Burrell, who would they contact at their school to talk about that? I'm going to

076have to get back with you with that. If the parents want service or if the kids want service? For their kid. Oh, for their student, yes. They will reach out to the counselor or the educational therapist. But, yes, absolutely. If they have concerns, the counselor is a great place to start. The other great thing about our district is we have internal staff that also provides services for students. The benefit to Borough is that these services extend through the summer months, whereas our staff are off contract, Borough will continue to see students through that summer break and holiday breaks. And thanks. I'll just echo Board Member Sparks. Thank you. Having all this data in this concise format is very helpful. Thank you. Board Member Sparks, did you have another question? I got so excited about y'all

077job and what y'all did, I forgot to ask my questions. I'm going to piggyback off of one question with Burrell. Are they actually meeting the requirement, the need for our buildings, or are they understaffed to where also we need to possibly have, look at other options? So remember we talked about earlier this whole staffing thing that's not just in schools, but it's nationwide. I would say that Burrell is in the same situation, right? We're trying to onboard staff. We have two... new staff members that are being pipelined through Borough to try to increase their capacity. And our RFP, it did say they would staff us with five to 10 licensed therapists. We have not gotten to that point. And part of it is staffing and also that they expanded. They are now serving Green Valley,

078Independence. So they're also expanding too. We are always open for conversations to ensure that we are maximizing the number of students that we can serve. And so Dr. Segan sent me an email earlier that's already making sure that we stay on top of student need and we don't let it lapse or us being able to serve students. So we are exploring some options right now. How many do we currently have from them that we're utilizing? How many who? You said we haven't reached the mark of like five to ten. Yeah, so we will be at three. Yeah, we'll be at three and two are licensed and one is provisionally licensed in December. Okay. Thank you The other question that I have is I'm not gonna go through every single one of these goals or go

079down to the equity plan But how are we monitoring and then adjusting? What what different things are we looking at and then how often are we doing that monitoring and then saying if we need to make some adjustments? So formal adjustments in the CSIP come each year we talked to that at work session, but I would say Tweaks and pulls are happening pretty regularly. Each of us who are champions, so each of these stakeholders or each of these action steps and goals have stakeholders attached to them. And each of those stakeholders, for the most part, have teams. So I would say, for example, when it comes to looking at capital projects, Dr. Shelton would be looking at that on a pretty regular basis with Kyle Gorel and others. When it comes to some of the

080instructional things, for example, real-world learning, Shannon Booth would be with us. would be the champion and her team and they may come back to me and say, oh, we thought we were gonna do this and the CSIP said we should do this. And actually there's some thought out there that perhaps we should think about coming up a layer in our CSIP approval to allow a little bit more agility in some of those action steps so that when we need to pivot, we can pivot a little more on the fly, but certainly we're tweaking as we go. All right, no other questions. Thank you very much. Great update tonight. And now we'll move on to 4.01, our public comments. Board Member Murdoch, would you like to share? Absolutely. For those who are speaking tonight, we appreciate

081your attendance and willingness to speak to the board. Please remember that while this is a public meeting, this part of the meeting does not contemplate a conversation between speakers and board members. The board does not respond to public comments during the meeting, but may ask clarifying questions. Your comments will be noted by the board, and if appropriate, we will direct the subject to the administrators who are responsible for that particular subject matter. Pursuant to board policy BDDH, we will be limiting all comments to no more than 10 people with a limit of three minutes each. Your allotted three minutes will be counted down on the screen. Please conclude your comments when the timer expires. Only those who have signed up prior to the meeting will be allowed to address the board. Please refrain from using

082the names of any students, staff in your remarks. Remain respectful and ensure your comments pertain to district operations. We also ask all audience members to remain respectful. Lastly, when your name is called, please go to the podium and clearly state your name and organization that you represent, if any. Thank you. And now we have Heather Crane, followed by Ron Freeman, Becky Bickle-Hopt, and then Christine Bushyhead. So Heather Crane. Good evening. Heather Crane, professional educator and former NEA president. I'm here again this month to ask the board to hear the appeals of our veteran teachers who are not on their correct step, but were promised to be moved to the correct step to match their years of experience. This issue has been obscured by administrative claims in an effort to provide excuses as to why administration

083can't pay these teachers what they have earned and deserve when it is merely the difference between can't and won't. May 6, 2021, at the one hour and 18 minute mark during the board work session, Human Resources states, quote, for those teachers whose years do not match their step placement, phase one would move these teachers towards their years of experience matching their step placement. Phase two would be the complete transition, unquote. May 19th, 2021, 52 minutes into the LSR 7 Finance Committee meeting, the superintendent states, quote, by the end of phase two, everyone's years of experience will match or exceed their step, unquote. On October 31st, 2021, December 9th, 2021, March 10th, 2022, there was written correspondence from Team Lee Summit and the R7 Messenger to all employees that stated the same. March 16th, 2022, 52

084minutes into the Board of Education Finance Committee meeting, the Assistant Superintendent of Business Services summarized the proposed compensation plan, quote, the implementation of phase two will allow those teachers who are eligible, who continue to be employed in the 2022-23 school year, whose years experience do not currently match their step placement, that it will match after phase two is implemented, unquote. During the March 17, 2022 Board of Education meeting, a board member clarified, quote, there would not be any other type of situations where we are bringing people to their appropriate step because we would have done that with phase one and phase two. Correct? Unquote. District officials responded, correct. Our board voted to rectify this inequity with our veteran teachers, and it appears that you are not being heard. We, the teachers, cannot understand why what

085you previously voted on and approved is not being implemented. There are several examples where veteran teachers are two or more steps behind newly hired teachers because they are loyal employees. Do you see the inequity in this? Where is the dignity and compensation for these veterans that have devoted their careers to the students and families of LSR 7? Please take care of the veteran teachers who have kept this district afloat and deserve to be paid what you are paying newly hired staff with the same years experience I am asking the board to please ensure our administration resolves this issue So these teachers do not lose any more of their livelihood and their retirement funds they deserve. Thank you Thank you. Next we'll have Ron Freeman. Hello. I'm Ron Freeman a concerned citizen In his sermon, Loving

086Your Enemy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already void of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that. So much truth in these statements. Compared to what Dr. King faced in terms of beatings, fire hoses, German shepherds, being denied access to restaurants, to hotels, and having no voice in court whatsoever, we need to reconsider our aim. Labeling a community racist is reckless and harmful to the education of our children. In a world desperately in need of advocates, you've set a course that views many advocates as adversaries and encourages defiance to their authority. Kids are taught to presume educators and administrators, by virtue of their skin color, are predisposed to be

087against them. When the truth is, the vast majority of educators walk through our doors with love and compassion for all students. They simply hope to aid in those students' positive development in their journey in this life. But in too many instances, we actually return hate for love. One former beloved coach and teacher was reassigned in disgrace and labeled a racist simply for doing his job. All of this in the name of racial justice. Where is the dignity? To paint a teacher and to handle them in this manner shows no dignity and no respect for those who give the most in terms of helping our children. There are many voices devoted to creating an atmosphere driven by racial division that labels a person racist just because of the color of the skin. It perpetuates the notion

088that every one of you of the Caucasian persuasion look at people like me and don't want us to succeed. Which of you is guilty of this charge? Which of you hopes I don't succeed? I'll answer that for you. I don't believe any of you feel that way. But we have a policy and an approach right now that labels every one of our educators somehow as guilty of this violation. This approach has been a weapon against teachers for three years now. No wonder morale is at an all-time low. This district has produced many success stories in terms of minorities. It educated people very well, very effectively, my own daughter being one of them. Perhaps instead of undermining educators with racial divisiveness and working against them, we should build a community of advocacy where stakeholders, including teachers,

089students, and administrators, are supported and help them move forward. Thank you very much. Next we'll have Becky Bicklehop. Good evening. Thank you for serving on the board. My name is Becky Bicklehop and this is my 27th year teaching and 15th year at Summit Lakes. I am one of the teachers that was not granted all of my years of experience with phase two and filed agreements earlier this summer after moving through the HR steps and meeting with our superintendent. I must admit, as I sat at convocation this year and saw all of the excitement and listened to leaders talk about supporting teachers, my heart was very heavy. Our superintendent told us that he did not read our grievances. And then when we appealed to the board, you voted not to hear the grievances. I can't imagine

090a parent reaching out to me about an assignment or a student's score not responding to them or hearing what they are frustrated about. I'm here tonight to ask you to please listen to why we are upset. I was hired in the fall of 2008 and granted 10 of my 12 years of teaching experience. In the fall of 2012, I was starting my 17th year when LSR 7 moved from the numbered scale to letters and was placed on step Q, the 17th step, and thus was given all of my years of experience and paid for those years up until this fall. Over the past 10 years, we were frozen three times. With phase one, I was given an extra step. then not granted phase two when my colleagues were given multiple steps with phase two to

091make up for the frozen years. I questioned human resources and was told that because when I was hired in 2008 the district only honored ten years and that is all they are allowing me to use as my years of experience. But the last ten years you have honored all of my years. Now after teaching here for 14 years you won't honor my 12 years in another district? It just doesn't make sense to me. A teacher hired this year is allowed to bring in 24 years and placed on the 25th step. It's an inequity amongst the teaching staff and it's penalizing those of us who came to Lee's Summit many years ago and have been in the classrooms with your children. I have truly loved my years of teaching here. It's truly the best place to

092teach. But this situation makes me sad for my family and my colleagues in the same position. I'm asking you to now make this correct. Those of us who are not granted Phase 2 because of the years given when we were hired need to be granted those years of experience. This not only affects my yearly salary, but my retirement benefits for the rest of my life. As a teacher, I've had parents question me about tests and assignments, and over the years, I have made mistakes, and I fix mistakes. I believe a mistake was made when our years of experience from other districts have not been honored. Teachers believe in equity and fairness. Granting me my years of experience is fair and equitable. It was the promise that we all heard. Please support me and these veteran

093teachers by granting us phase two and honoring our years of teaching experience. The years when we were starting our careers and the many years that we have given to Lisa. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Christine Bushyhead. Good evening. My name is Christine Bushyhead. I'm a resident, a business owner in the R7 school district. According to Cobb and Cronopal and Belonging, the foundational reason the current approach to equity is not working is the non-inclusive, non-welcoming climate that is inherent in our school system. Or is it the work failing because the program separates and divides people, encouraging students to identify and label their differences and lean into them without any direction except angst and fight? There are more constructive, community-building, and lasting approaches. In trying to understand the majority of this board's latest decision to

094double down on the divisive approach, I thought, well, maybe you haven't been exposed to other resources. So I love exhibits, and here we go. There's always the pro-human approach of fairforall.org. It's amazing articles, opinions, and programs to help. I have a handout of the board of advisory that I'll hand to give to you. The colors are a little uneven, but it reads. And I also have mentioned in the past that there is a huge movement by most consultants in this area to empathy work. And there's a lot of information about that. So let's talk about this. Courageous Conversations About Race, published in 2006, was the guidance we used in 2018 to start our equity program. We're now hovering in belonging. In the meantime, titanic shifts are happening in equity leadership conversations generally, and education specifically.

095Radical Kindness by Santorum Aro, foundational in respect and compassion work. Dare to lead, Brene Brown. Vulnerability, shame, empathy, leadership, powerful. Reframing the Path to School Leadership by Bowman and Diehl from 2019. Very strong. I was first introduced to them reading their work in 2001, Leading with Soul. Bowman is a professor at the Block School of Management and Diehl is a prolific resource in education. Mission Possible. This is the success academies in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Upper West Manhattan with unbelievable 82% in math and 76% in ELA accomplishments. And the latest, Radical Empathy and Leadership by Ian Roberts of Lively Paradox. None of these resources are the end-all, be-all. And they shouldn't be. But their content... is important in the message of respect and empathy, which is powerful and more sustainable than what we're doing right

096now in the long term for our students now and in their future. I encourage you to expand your vision, challenge yourselves, and as soon as possible, bring empathy as the focus of your professional development. Thank you to our public comments and we'll move on now to item 5.01 board reports and meetings attended and I think this evening we'll start with board member Oli. Thank you. Okay since our last board meeting I've attended the state of the school address that was hosted by the Lee summit chamber. That was an awesome opportunity to hear about surrounding district as well as hear from Dr. Buck about some of the amazing things that we're doing within our district. Along with my fellow board members, I attended the MSBA conference. I want to give a shout out to Trail Ridge

097Elementary's broadcasting team that was there along with the Summit Lakes Choir as they did excellent in their presentation representing our district. We took a tour of another one of the elementary schools, Highland Park. And then also I attended the Lee's Summit West Robotics Team Titanium's Burgers, Beakers, and Bots Science Carnival. This was a fundraising event that had some fantastic tables set up to display different science experiments that were a lot of fun. I even got my hand lit on fire by one of the students. But don't worry, I'm fine. But it was just, that was something that was really cool to see the robotics team stepping up, not only talking about their robotics program, but they were talking about just other aspects of science and really engaging with younger kids. My daughter had an excellent

098time learning and seeing the fire, the noises, or the color changing, and the 3D printing, and all the kind of stuff they represented. So it was really cool. Thank you. Thank you. Board Member Marshall. I attended the MSBA conference and one of these sessions that I went to, actually it was the very last session on the last day, was called Beyond the Books. So I picked up these extra books for you all because I know literacy is very important. For my fellow board members, the class was led by a woman named Dr. Joyce Jameson. She works with Scholastic. She's the National Director of Academic Planning and Solutions Development. She's a literacy specialist. So when we came into the class she had and sorry for the scrunched up pages my daughter was packing these up for

099me today, but she got the job done. She had a list of books just kind of out there and just asked us to pick whichever book speaks to you based off basically judging the books by its cover. And this sheet here tells you kind of a little bit about maybe your characteristics and yourself based on what you picked. And it also gives different types of connection prompts. So if you try it with your children or young people on different ways to use books as mirrors as well. to connect with young readers and introduce them to reading that they can enjoy so then they will become stronger readers. And the great thing about this, too, their contact information is still on the app that we used. Any books that you see in there that you're interested

100in and want to check out, they will send them to you no matter where you are. So I picked those up. I thought you all would enjoy those. Thank you. Nice present. Thank you. we'll move over to board member sparks I had a very easy month I had the policy committee meeting and in that policy committee meeting we went so long we didn't even get through all of our policies so we're gonna be able to pick back up with dr. Carlson and my colleague Heather slick I'm also we did I attended MSBA with my colleagues. It was an honor to be able to present with President Campbell and also Board Member Marshall. I do think we did a great job, Dr. Buck. And we did have a lot of questions. And basically our presentation was

101over an equity toolkit that we did that was led by... Janice Tilley, she's a great friend of ours, and she basically are helping other districts. And I say that like that because we have already kind of been doing the work for some years now. But there's other districts that are just now starting to do the work, the equity work. And so we was able to share so much of what we're doing here in LSR 7 and how it's actually impacting our students. And I think we did a great job. And I would also like to. I thank board member Campbell for helping with the slides of kind of constructing them. You did a great job and you helped us make, you made us look good. Also, and then last but not least, I also was

102able to be part of the panel also with uh... port of vice president richie and also board member marshall uh... and that was teachers academy uh... the fun part about that was There were middle school students. The last time we spoke, we were talking to kids that were actually in the Grow Your Own program. This year, we were talking to middle school students. And so I appreciate the fact that our middle, we're trying to identify students that have those leadership skills or even just have the desire of being a helper and wanting to possibly potentially be a teacher and to help that pipeline going through the Grow Your Own program. And so Ashley Turner is doing a great job with that program. There was lots of... students and then also Holly Donner teacher of the

103year she did a wonderful job with her presentation for the students also and so that was great to be part of thank you remember Murdoch thank you I don't want to double up on what everybody is saying there so I'll just add that I was able to go to an activity near and dear to my heart which was soccer districts between Lee summit and Rockhurst and and that's all I'm gonna say thanks Thank You board member Eslick Oh, thank you. Okay, so I also, I'm not going to repeat what some of the others said. Attended an MSBA conference, board policy committee meeting with board member Sparks. I attended our Lee Summit Ed Foundation board of directors meeting this week. Just some highlights from that are actually just some events that are coming up. little plug

104for them there's a new program that the education foundation received a grant for, or a donation for rather. It's a student-led grant opportunities and this information has been put out to all of the building leaders. But it's an opportunity for students to apply for up to $1,000 of grant money to fund an initiative in their schools. So they write the grant proposals for what they want to do and of course it has to be something that's academically driven in their buildings. But it's a great opportunity for the students to be able to put that proposal together and present. So there's 10 scholarships available. So that application process is open and it closes on December 1st, excuse me, December 9th. So there's still plenty of time. So just want to throw that out there for the

105Ed Foundation. And also peak grant applications are posting on December 1st. So those are some of the highlights. Excuse me, whoa. Okay. i also attended the chambers state of the school's address and it was really great getting to hear dr buck share so many great things that our district is doing with the community so that was really fun We have been doing school visits, board member Foley and I. We visited Highland Park this last month. Normally we try to go once a week to a school, but we had some other engagements this past month, so it's been a little challenging. But this week I did get to go and be a guest reader at Longview Farm Elementary, and I got to read in four different classrooms, so that was pretty fun. Two kindergarten classrooms, a

106second-grade classroom, and a third-grade classroom. So it was really great getting to engage with those kids. That's all I have. Thanks. Thank you. Vice President Furchy? Well, thank you. The first, well, my only report for the month is actually coming from the Struggling Readers Parent Team meeting. We had that meeting on October the 25th. And the team, first of all, heard a multi-tiered systems of support overview from Sarah Rostick. and an update was given on the summer board presentation by the parents on the struggling readers parent team that we received so they were reporting to the rest of the group about that the remainder of the meeting was spent in preparation for the district-wide parent meeting at mic that will take place on december the 13th now this meeting will be specifically for parents who

107have recently been notified that they have a struggling reader and the meeting is designed to help those parents understand how their child learns to read an LSR 7 and specifically the science of reading what happens when they struggle which is your multi-tiered systems of support the difference between a 504 and an IEP and how to best advocate for their child The new website created by Parents of Struggling Readers will also be unveiled that evening. So this is a group that just started last year. It was a process action team, and they really accomplished a lot with the leadership of Eric Flack, Dr. Flack back there. Thank you. And they are moving along, and the parents are excited. They are very excited about being able to create the opportunity for these parents of struggling readers to

108hear more about what they can do and how they can support their child and get more information so they don't feel lost in searching for answers. So I really appreciate that. That's been a great group to be a part of. Meetings attended is just real quick rundown, State of the School's Address at Longview. attended the October 26th community outreach meeting for Lee Summit Educational Foundation. On October 29th, I worked the drug take-back day for Lee Summit Cares at John Knox Village and took a lot of drugs in that day. That was a good one. November 2nd, we went to, I didn't take drugs. That was a good clarification, by the way. Yeah, we received them with a police officer in the room. Yes, it was great. We had a police officer in the room who

109packaged them up, boxed them up, and gave them to the DEA to destroy. Okay, so I'll be specific about that process. Thank you very much. Okay, thanks for laughing so I could clarify that. I did not take any home. In fact, I brought some and gave to them. All right. November the 2nd was the LSDC lunch at the Stanley, and I felt that very helpful to go to that LSDC lunch to hear about some development issues and how they process through those applications and things. November 2nd was our Miller Park groundbreaking, which was great to see lots of board members, but so great to see all of those kids who are at Miller Park and the staff members there. They were so proud, and they all grabbed shovels. helped to break ground and that was

110very heartwarming experience. Also November 2nd right after that we rushed back over here President Campbell, Dr. Buck and I had our board leadership meeting and then the next evening I drove all the way down to Harrisonville for the Cass Career Center's open house night and that was so cool and I've got to say if y'all get invited next year to that go. because you want to see what our Lee Summit kids get to do at Cass Career Center. They're in the fire safety program. They're in the law enforcement program. There's nursing also offered in addition to what we offer up here, agriculture, just a lot of opportunities for kids who have other interests outside of what we offer here. Yay, Cass' career. They were really great hosts that evening. And then, of course, then the

111next evening, we all headed down to the Missouri School Board, or the next day, Missouri School Board Association Conference in Kansas City. And I just want to echo, our Trail Ridge kids hit it out of the park on Student Showcase. They were great. The news crew, so proud of them. And, of course, I was a very proud mama to watch. the Summit Lake singers sing for the delegate assembly. Right before the delegate assembly, they sang two songs, plus a really cool version of the national anthem. Really love that. So we really, I mean, to top it all off, my favorite session of the whole conference, really outside of the big keynote speakers, Jackie Joyner-Kersee was awesome the night of the banquet. Olympian speaking about her experiences. She was awesome. But I was so very proud

112of these three people up here on the dais, our board members presenting for the equity toolkit. They were just so professional, and that PowerPoint was fantastic. It documented our equity journey and it was just really great. Couldn't say anything better about it. Very proud of you guys. November 9th, I assisted with Sewing Day at the Prodeo Youth Center and helped some kids learn how to sew. That was fun. And then November 15th, served as a panelist for the STA's board service along with board members Marshall and Sparks. And that was a lot of fun too. and tomorrow we get to go read with the long view kids so that's going to be great too i'm like oh my grandson doesn't know it but i'm don't tell him that i'm going to be reading in his

113room it's a mystery okay thank you vice president fridgie um a couple of items that i'll share around the msba com conference again just reiterating so proud of our slms choir and holly dawn directing that our trail ridge broadcasting students their teacher aud aubry shortino principal kevern and assistant principal campbell so proud to have these folks representing our district at that msba conference with students from across the state and board members from across the state getting to see our students in action. That was fantastic. And I appreciate so much board member Sparks, board member Marshall, the job that we did in presenting. that was also presenting the hard work of all this board being a part of those equity toolkit sessions and dr buck you and the administrators that we had joining each of those

114sessions fantastic and it's due to the hard work in this district shelly sanders dr barger dr shelton and all of your teams around all of this equity work including our many community partners in this that we were able to present all of that great information of where we're moving the needle in our district and how we're making good change around all of that so great work and that made it easy to present the benefits because of everybody's participation and and hard work so thank you on that one session that i attended that i loved really focused on two-way communication which you know i think many districts are challenged around We have lots of ways to get information out, but how do we engage and have two-way conversations? Shelly, you mentioned something earlier tonight. There were

115some great ideas in this presentation, and as a board, I'd really like for us to think about and talk about some of those options in the future as well. So I'm pretty jazzed about that. Yeah, I got pretty excited after that session. Participated in the league. lee summit workforce alliance subcommittee work around the medical programs and that pathway for our students to medical fields and opportunities engaged with business partners out in the community st luke's m lee summit hospital and so that was a great opportunity and great discussions and i'm really excited to see those pipelines for our students as well. We had a meeting with the city to talk a little bit more in depth about Discovery Park. Also, Dr. Buck and Katie, kudos on that LSR7 Realtors Breakfast. That was awesome. And talk

116about engagement. Every person in that room was engaged and asking questions and it was just, it was a great morning. The Miller Park groundbreaking, fantastic. I think almost every staff member was there and ready to dig in and just get that work going. I attended the DESE Blue Ribbon Commission presentation at Fort Osage. The Blue Ribbon Commission with DESE and our State Board of Education have have a commission that are engaged around teacher recruitment and retention. And so they have been doing surveys, they've been digging into information around our state in what people are doing to help with teacher recruitment and retention and what our state looks like in comparison. Great information, they have laid out a plan. Some of those things I'm excited to say our district is well ahead of. Some of those

117things I'm really looking forward to engaging with our legislators and talking more about as a state and as a school board how we can get engaged around teacher recruitment and retention and make positive change. So I was really excited to hear an update from that and more definitely to come from that group. And so the last thing I'll just make a note, oh, Dr. Buck, great job on State of the Schools with the Lee Summit Chamber Luncheon. And also around the webinar on special services, I was able to sit in and as Dr. Buck mentioned, if you didn't get a chance to sit in on the webinar, the really cool thing is with that being recorded, take some time because Dr. Mathis and her team did a fantastic job of walking through. what our district

118provides, what services are available, what under the state, the state of Missouri, we are allowed to provide and then what we do in addition to that. So fantastic information and clarifying also where those services at Miller Park, I know we've had questions about what is Miller Park and what do they do there, but where special services are really advanced at Miller Park. So we have the RISE program where if our students need a little bit more intensive social emotional supports they can go to rise get in some intervention and work there and then possibly return back to their home school at some point with the flight program and life skills. We have those in many schools, but some of our students need a little bit more intervention around that. And then with the great program,

119so our students that are 18 to 21 around home and healthy habits, whether they're going to maybe advance to living on their own or living in a group home or just living within their home and what work they can do and accomplish there. And so it was great to hear about the programs that go on in all of our buildings across our district around special services, but also some of these more advanced services that many districts don't have in-house, and I think we are fortunate to have those as well. So kudos to you and your team. That was a great webinar. And I hope if you didn't get to sit in, you take a few minutes and give it a listen. It was awesome. So that is it for my board updates, my board reports.

120And now we'll move to item 6.01 on the Finance Committee report. And a few of these things we've already talked about. We reviewed the contracts less than 15,000. and talk through a couple of those things. Some of the E-pass information was shared about what they use in high schools and a little bit more definition around E-pass and how that's used so students can get a pass outside of class and sometimes how that's monitored when needed if a student maybe needs some additional supports around that. Also in our contracts greater than 15,000, a couple of items that we'll be voting on tonight. the Conaca Minolta, this is kind of the phase two around our printers and so the schools that like Great Beginnings that will be at Paradise Park, Lee Summit High School, all of the

121rest of those schools rolling out around the bond projects and then the printers that will follow them for implementation. So that contract is on there. Also of note around those service fees those will not kick in until the printer is there and it's operational and it's running and so even though we're approving that tonight know that we won't be paying a monthly service fee for that printer that's going to be at great beginnings paradise park until it's really there and working so great information on that we talked in our work session earlier about the employee well-built well-being service contracts that are up for renewal so appreciated sarah mcmillan sharing a little bit more detail around that and i think important as we discussed in the work session it's about our teachers and our staff and

122all of the supports that we work hard to make sure that they're provided including some of these well-being opportunities also and then one item of interesting note the grand teton science camp trip summer of 2023 that our students get to get go on and I'm jealous because it looks amazing um but that will not be a cost to the district the students pick that up there may be some very minor costs where we assist with some of the teacher meals around that but it's a very minimal cost. Most of that is approval of the contract and then it will be the students pay the fee that will then attend. But it's all science-based learning for those students that are interested in going into those science careers. So really excited to support that. And then a

123couple of additional items, again, around special services. We know, talking through some of the Miller Park opportunities, that some of our behavior technicians are a little more specialized that work at Miller Park, and staffing those openings has been a little bit more of a challenge. And so we have a couple of contracts that will be coming up for a vote around hiring for those. I think Dr. Mathis. did a great job during the finance committee meeting around sharing with us the importance of the reason to hire this person is because they do have more experience when they walk in the door. And so that's beneficial so that the staff at Miller Park doesn't have to bring that person along. As a temporary person, they'll be able to walk in and just hit the ground running

124in those roles. We then walk through the bond budget. and then we'll talk about the transfer of funds and some of the other items. Does anyone have any questions for me about the items that we hit in finance committee? Board Member Sparks. Not necessarily for you, but I'm in support of 7.08 and 7.09. However, I did have some questions around those two, so I didn't know how you wanted to do it. We can pull it from consent, or I can just ask my questions, but I am in support of it. Okay. I think... I think just questions. If you feel supportive of leaving them in the consent agenda, okay. Do we want to ask Dr. Mathis to come up for questions? So after the finance committee, you did it. Board member Eastlake asked a lot

125of questions that I had. The questions that I did, additional questions that I did have is, at what point did we realize that we were short staff in this area to where we need to outsource these employees? And then my next question is, is it more so the need of from the students? There's more students that's needed in this resource, or is it that we're just understaffed? So at what point is a tricky question So this year we have had a different type of hiring As they, I believe it was discussed in the work session about difficulty staffing in a lot of organizations. And so when we started the school year, we started with more openings for paraprofessional positions than we've had historically. Over the past couple of years, we've had a harder time filling

126those positions as quickly as we have in the past. Typically, we would see a flow of applications come in for our postings, and that kind of started to decline over the last year or so. I will say when we started the school year, we did start with some of those positions unfilled and we're working with Kelly Services to try and staff those vacancies, trying to pay long-term sub rates for vacancy positions that we knew we had, things like that, continuing to review the system for new applicants and interviewing as quickly and as often as possible. for those positions but we were not able to find I will say some of the some of the candidates applying weren't coming with the same level of experience that we're used to seeing for the paraprofessional positions as well

127specifically at Miller Park Center so we started looking at When we were having difficulty filling those positions even through Kelly services with substitutes what might be some other options? at flight at Miller Park Center all of the students in that program do require one-to-one adult assistance And so that is a higher priority when we look at hiring practices We need to hire for those one-to-one type of positions for adult support needs so that we can make sure that we're ensuring their needs are met. There wasn't a time where we weren't meeting those needs. It just might have been a teacher was helping to fill that role, or a behavior coach that was working with another student might come over because somebody's absent that they were scheduled to work with. So we did some creative thinking

128and strategizing to try and cover vacancies throughout the semester. But last month, I just... in terms of when, I don't remember the exact date, but started looking at are there some other things that we can do because I was getting emails from some contract agencies not only telling me about related service providers such as occupational therapists. or speech and language pathologists that they had available, but I started seeing we have paraprofessionals that might be available to work for you and registered behavior technicians. So while our paraprofessionals are very skilled and work really hard at... the intensive rate of pay at Miller Park Center, they are highly trained to work with that specific population. And so that's why we started looking at registered behavior technicians to help us fill those so that they can walk in

129and hit the ground running as Kathy described. We're prioritizing those positions and we're getting there. We're still hiring. We've hired a couple of positions at Miller Park Center while we've been in the process of getting these contracts going too. And then my plan is to help to continue to fill some additional adult support. One-to-one needs first priority that we still have vacant across the district. Other people are supporting those students, but they are not necessarily the people who are hired for that particular position, and it means that they're not supporting a program in its entirety while they're focused on helping to support that need. Just one more follow-up question. I know that one vendor is providing two individuals for us and one is providing one. Is there additional that we need, but they're just not

130available? They are both still actively seeking candidates, so they will send me a resume when they have somebody for me to talk with. We have one that was supposed to start on the 28th. If fingerprints come back, she can start on Monday, so I'm going to work on that tomorrow and see if those have come through. But otherwise, we're just trying to fill them as they come in. I've interviewed almost everybody that they've sent to me to see if they might be a fit. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, so moving on, thank you. Moving on to item 6.02, I move to approve the transfer of $3,777,557.33 from the general fund to the special revenue fund. Second. All right, all those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. Motion carries. I'm

1316.03, approval of the treasurer's report and payment of the bills. I move to approve the treasurer's report and payment of the bills. Second. All right, all those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Now we'll come to item seven with the items of decision for consent. Do I have a motion? I move to approve the consent agenda as presented. Second. All right. All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. Motion carries. And now we'll move on to items for decision. And the first one is 8.01, the employee well-being services contract. We discussed this in our work session earlier. Can I get a motion on that? I move that the Board of Education approve Beth Harrell, LLC, Core Balance Yoga Center, Dr. Zachary Jameson, Hy-Vee, Megan's

132Yoga Tribe, Mindful Momentum, Myocore, and the Zen Zone for employee well-being services. Second. And do we have any discussion on that item? All right, no discussion. We'll move to a vote. Mrs. Merck, can we do a roll call vote for these, please? Board Member Murdoch. Aye. Vice President Ritchie. Aye. Board Member Marshall. Aye. Board Member Sparks. Aye. Board Member Foley. Aye. Board Member Eslick. Aye. President Campbell. Aye. All right. Motion carries unanimously. We'll move to item 8.02, the Cooperating School Districts of Greater Kansas City Legislative Platform for 2023. Can I get a motion? I move to approve the 2023 legislative platform as presented. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Do we have any discussion on this item? Board Member Eslick. Yes, thank you. So I had requested to pull this item

133so that we could discuss or so that I could ask some questions and express where I'm kind of a little gray. So I kind of looked through our past board meeting documents just to try to see if we had a legislative platform as a district. I didn't find one any more recent than 2019. So my curiosity is, well, why are we not doing that anymore? Because when I look at this legislative platform, it just leads me to question why we don't have our own as a district that's developed by our district with input from our district stakeholders on what's important to us. So that's kind of where I get hung up with this particular item. I think that's a valid question. Other? Questions or discussion around this? So we have the MSBA legislative platform. Board

134Member Sparks and I are delegates. And so that was just approved recently. So we would also be advocating for that legislative platform as well. This actually comes, I think in board questions, we got the response that this is put together with the greater cooperating school districts and administrators, superintendents that are a part of that group. put together, but I think if your question is do we as a district want to have an advocacy platform that we look at, I think we certainly could. Would we wanna think about a board committee that, board appointed committee that might look into that? I think that's an option. I think that's good for discussion. Board Member Murdoch? Think a little bit of institutional knowledge on this one is also good here in terms of single district legislative platforms are

135typically going to be really rowing upstream as opposed to having more of a strength in numbers kind of thing in terms of developing what are the priorities as not only the Kansas City region right which is where many of these legislative priorities come from but also these priorities and how they interact with the rest of the state and what those priorities are going to be coming towards Jefferson City for the upcoming legislative session. So I think we could do something as a district. What I wouldn't want to have happen, though, is us to get essentially lost in the shuffle of having priorities that then are outside the realm of especially comparable school districts to us here, the large school districts or what the state as a whole is trying to advocate on behalf. It's no

136secret, right, that over the last couple of legislative sessions in Jeff City, it's been a fight. There's been some good pieces of legislation. Like I noted on one of the questions, I guess it was you probably who did the questions, I don't know. But one of the great questions is, is why didn't we have a literacy platform, right? Well... I think one of the great responses to that is one of the good pieces of legislation, or at least parts of the legislation that came out of Jeff City last year was Senate Bill 681, which actually has some really great literacy components that bring districts together. And those are the kinds of pieces of legislation and then these kinds of advocacy positions that I don't want us to lose where we actually can bridge gaps, step

137across the aisle with maybe people who don't necessarily agree with us on a lot of these things. bring the collective action of Kansas City and the districts here along with the rest of the state along to promote things that are good for public education. Okay, I appreciate all that. That's very helpful to me. So to add to that then. Is there a mechanism as a district we are using right now to help bring up maybe some of the, I've reviewed this legislative platform, but I would like to add this priority to see if we could encourage that advocacy through these mechanisms. Are we doing that right now so that we don't have to duplicate efforts? I respect that. And so that we're maximizing these organizations that we're using. Is it just one person who's saying,

138yes, this looks good? Or are we leveraging some of our experience in the room to help push? So I think, I don't know if we, that's a great question. So let's put that question out there. Dr. Buck, do you want to speak to it a minute? But we have other folks, I think, that want to weigh in and have questions as well. I think it's a great point that there probably isn't a current mechanism. I know the boards are invited two times a year with the Greater Kansas City CSD. for legislative sessions and maybe that's something to bring up at the next one because I don't think there is can I clarify I didn't necessarily mean me I actually meant our experience not board members I mean like our admin our educators the people who

139are you know that's what i meant sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you i do believe a lot of them uh in the room have organizations they also have their own platforms um you know our teacher unions will have their own platforms they go and they have their own lobbyist district doesn't have a lobbyist um you know if you belong to principal associations they usually have a legislative platform so there there are many platforms out there so It is odd to me that we have one particular one, but it is a metro one. But as far as voice from board going into creating this, you're right. I don't think it's there, and it might be something to bring up at the January meeting, I guess in January, when we have a legislative meeting with the

140greater Kansas City comprehensive school districts. I think that's a great idea. And engaging Heather, to your point, engaging admin and Dr. Buck in what we might like to share with them, I think that's a great idea. All right, Board Member Sparks. I'm just going to show or add that I would like to support, again, that historical aspect. And obviously we know that, you know, it's greater in numbers. But I would like to see us, if they're not willing to add something of literacy or something of that point through these other platforms for us as a district. to say this is something that we care for so that when we go as a board to jeff city then we're having these conversations with those that actually govern over the areas that represent lsr 7. and so

141i would support actually having those conversations as a board of saying this is what support we need here in our district I think that's a great idea. Vice President Fritchie. Thank you. I do like the idea of talking to the cooperating school districts and asking them if we could perhaps do some preliminary work to the platform so we could offer suggestions from the school districts. I don't know if they want to send that up through our superintendent to go to them or what, but it would be helpful to have input. I did want to point out some more of that historical knowledge. uh... that uh... each of the school districts that we are each of the entities that we deal with uh... the cooperating school districts and msb a uh... they each have legislative advocates

142are lobbyists and so that's the advantage of working through them is that they have someone to advocate for you know the wishes of our area or state you know or are our school boards and our schools. So, you know, Steve Correll represents us from the cooperating school districts of Kansas City. He is a former legislator himself. He knows how to navigate Jefferson City. He's very thorough in his reports to us. If you attend those cooperating school district meetings, which I highly suggest that we all do attend those, because you can gain a lot of information at those meetings. And then you can establish also... relationships with other school districts and those people in the know and it helps us to be able to share those concerns and then as we go to advocate we can

143all kind of be on the same page. The other thing is you know I don't know a few years back when I was an MSBA delegate I know they sent us the advocacy platform prior to the convention that we were going to vote on it and Do they? Okay, yeah. But yeah, so if we had any ideas, we could submit those to you all. So I don't know if we did that or not, if anybody did that, submitted those. But anyway, so there is an opportunity to do that through MSBA too. We didn't have anybody reach out this year. But that's an avenue going forward. So I'm hearing two things. I'm happy to reach out for our board to the cooperating school districts to see how we get that mechanism for input. And number two,

144maybe ahead of our legislative days with MSBA, we meet as a board either at a work session or maybe a one-off session and talk about what advocacy positions we might have in addition to greater cooperating and MSBA that we'd like to take down there to Jeff City with us. Does that sound good? On a funny note, Steve Carroll. Not Steve Carell, though he would be a cool advocate to have, by the way. Would you have to go into the office to talk with him? Okay, that's great. I stand corrected. But he's still a great, yeah, all good. Great discussion. Okay, so with that, are we ready to close discussion? Okay, then we have a motion and a second. Can we get a roll call vote, Mrs. Mert? And the motion again was to approve the

1452023 legislative platform as presented. Vice President Fritchie? Aye. Board Member Marshall? Aye. Board Member Sparks? Aye. Board Member Foley? Aye. Board Member Eslick? Aye. Board Member Murdoch? Aye. President Campbell? Aye. all right motion carries unanimously and now we'll move to items for presentation 9.01 on our chromebook replacement dr whaley absolutely dr hutchinson's going to join me too when she presents the instructional recommendation i want to come tonight to talk about where we were in the chromebook replacement status Just give you a couple facts and figures as we go through and then Melanie will talk about some of the feedback she's gotten First might be wondering why there was a fall 2019 lease and a 20 or a December of 19 lease If you go back to the end of our first four-year cycle with Chromebooks

146They were obviously four years old and we took a recommendation to replace all 18,000 at once. And leadership at the time wanted to do a deeper dive into what might be the correct device for different grade levels. So the initial approval was grades nine through 12, which quickly grew into grades seven through 12 shortly after that. And so those were leased in fall and deployed in August of 2019. So while that was going on, a deeper dive into the elementary side was taking place. Previous leadership was leading that work, talking with elementary teachers, parents, students, and it came back to going with a Chromebook. And so those came along in December of 2019. So that's kind of why the split occurred. So obviously everything basically is due for replacement this August, August of 23. So

147right now we've got 18,600 devices. That's a lot. That does not include loaners, extras, staff devices. So a lot of people may not realize we've got 300 to 500 staff using Chromebooks as their primary device. And we've lost 815. When I say lost, it's either through true loss, stolen, end of life, so they were destroyed, run over by cars and things like that. To kind of go through tickets and claims, this one's kind of interesting. Typically, we have patterns in the data. There is no pattern here, and the reason is 2020 was a really weird year. We had 12,600 tickets, roughly. That's because we had a lot of kids from March to May at home, and so they needed a lot of support. Our claims to Dell were down, though, because they weren't here to

148make claims, plus they were brand new, so they didn't really break. And a lot of kids that may have damaged them accidentally didn't make a claim or they didn't let us know until they came back. And so kind of the August-November column of 2020, trying to compare like for like. So August through November of each year, because that's kind of where we are right now this year when we get to FY23. So the next year, 2021, came back out of closure, had a lot of tickets, had a lot of claims. And then we kind of jumped to 2022. And so this is where it also gets kind of odd. Usually you see an increase and there is one there, but it didn't increase as much as we thought. We don't know why. We know a

149lot of kids got in the habit of just dealing with what was broken and not really turning things in. Also, somewhere in here, it was actually after 2020, we also let kids not turn them in over the summer, so they held on to them. Not a whole lot of breakage occurs over the summer, believe it or not. but when it does we don't get notified of it so kids will come back to school they're used to having a broken you know palm rest or things and they just don't claim it so that's kind of why the numbers weren't as big as we get to 2023 We only have 1,060 claims so far. That's low. It should be a lot higher than that. There's a little asterisk, a double asterisk out to the side. Because of

150supply chain issues, which, again, you've heard me talk about it a gajillion times, we can't get LCD screens, we can't get system boards. And inside a Chromebook, if you break a component, for instance, your audio jack, your power button, anything that's electronic or connected to electronics, that's all part of the system board. So we've kind of said we're just not going to submit claims for some things because by the time we turn them in, Dell gets the part, they come back. It's just a lot easier to switch our model, and we're just replacing the kid's device at the moment. So that's kind of where we are. Snapshot of costs, just because it's interesting to me anyway. That first year, we didn't spend anything in batteries because they were new. So the first year of a

151Chromebook, the warranty covers the batteries, so that's why that's zero. Chargers and parts in that first year, we kind of try and jump ahead and we try and anticipate what might break on a device that's not covered by the warranty or accidental damage. And so we kind of order parts ahead. So we've jumped to 2021. There's a big spike in chargers. It's kind of funny. Students came back from closure and they realized they didn't have their charger. They might be using a brother, a sister. They might be using a USB-C charger. from somewhere else in the house so that's why the big the big spike in cost in 2021. both 2020 and 21 also brought with it buildings wanted to provide chargers for the kids in classrooms and things like that so they would reach

152out to us and they would say hey can we buy some chargers just having our school and so that's also accounted in those costs the reason for the big drop in 2022 when we dropped to almost nothing with chargers is because we deployed we had some extra stock sitting over at the warehouse basically to anticipate growth or lost devices or devices that you couldn't replace. So we took those out of the boxes and took the chargers also. And so we put those into circulation to help save costs. So that's why there's a drop there. And then the concerning number 2023, that's a big jump. So, that take all four years, you know, we tried to cobble together and replace and if we have some sitting in a box, we'll go ahead and use those before

153we spend the money on them. But I will say in the last three to four months, we've seen a lot of damage. If the charger breaks, it's still covered under warranty. So for instance, a student hands us a pristine charger cable and cord. Dell will determine that that's just broken. It's under warranty. However, if the pins are bent, it's been chewed on, it's been dropped, it's been damaged, things like that, that's when the cost would be associated back to the family. So we've seen a lot, a lot of charger claims, especially this year. Batteries, of course, as the device ages out, you hit that fourth year. Just like your cell phone, it seems like your battery gets worse and worse and worse, and that's where we are year four. So I made a note at

154the bottom, 204 battery requests doesn't seem like much, but any time we pull a device in for service, our techs kind of look just to kind of give us a pulse check, and they're finding a lot of the battery health. You can also check it on your phone. They're sitting about the 80% to 90% range, and that's going to pull about less than eight hours of usage. So it's kind of interesting. So as you decrease that battery time below what would be a full school day, it creates kind of a burden so you know and that's assuming the kids on the device all the time but it can also depend on what they're doing are they streaming are they in a class that does use it all the time lots of students charge their phone

155off that device so of course that decreases your time so those are all things to kind of consider so i'm going to turn it over to dr hutchinson she's gathered a lot of feedback from students parents teachers and she's going to walk through that really quick before i come back Thank you. So this current device feedback was, a lot of it was garnered through our technology reps. I represent instructional technology for the district. And so with that, at each building, we have what we call a tech rep. So each building has a representative that kind of serves as a liaison between instructional technology and their building. So we had an automatic audience. to kind of start that gathering of information. So what we did was ask our technology reps to go back into their buildings

156and gather feedback from their staff, but also from their home room class or their advisory class, because we were looking at grades three through 12. In that, we had about 441 students we gathered information from, and just some of the general questions we asked. We asked some drop down questions, and there was even a chance for them to type in some answers. which were very fun to read. So the first question that we had was how does the student prefer to use their Chromebook? And basically that was when we talk about a laptop mode. This is your traditional laptop mode. Basically 81% of kids use this in the laptop mode. The tabletop mode is when it's tinted so it's folded over and they can use the screen. Then we also had tent mode which is

157it's backwards so upsetly it looks in a triangle and then tablet mode We found that tablet mode was often most used by the elementary school teachers because they could fold it up and the kids could carry it around When we moved on to how students prefer to answer questions on their Chromebook, students have several ways they can answer. They can type questions, they can do a visual recording, or they can do an audio recording, all of which they can do on their present device. So we gave them an option, what's your best way of how you want to record your answer? Overwhelmingly, it was to type their answer, so that was an important piece of feedback that we gathered from them. Again, this is third through 12th grade we were looking at. When I use

158my Chromebook, what are the tools that I like to use? We're very fortunate that we work with Kelly Moore, who also is in our assistive technology department. So we have a lot of options for our kids when it comes to things that they can use in order to get their voice heard or a project conveyed. Several use voice typing, text-to-speech, where it actually reads it aloud to them. So all of our Chromebooks have that feature. Talked about largely, I know in some of the groups that we've, in the parent group we spoke about, screen magnification. So if something's too small, it allows them to blow it up. That was a feature that they used across all grade levels. Another one, closed captioning was available in all of their Chromebook as well. And then some kids

159just wanted none. They didn't use anything. So that was kind of their feedback. When it came from desired device features, so we asked students, teachers, and I went to a pair of group, Dr. Flack let me come into the struggling readers group and so I got to ask them a lot of questions because those are also a group of students that might use some additional features. So it was important to get that feedback. Students, hands down with a longer battery life, if you've, the struggle is real if you have Chromebook that is ready to die if you're a parent of someone you know like you get the phone call I forgot my charger in your car or house or in a locker So that was the number one thing for students was a longer battery

160life the download speed It was also something that they spoke about a bigger keyboard or a sturdier design As some of them referred to the current ones are a little heavier. They're also four years old And then a better quality camera they wanted to They said some of it wasn't as clean as they'd like it to be from the high school kids. Teachers, they enjoyed the ability of it to be convertible, all four modes, because they use all four. The tablet mode, again, was mentioned more regularly by those elementary schools. And then also, they like the ease of everything being web-based. And then the ability to use Clever. It necessarily doesn't have to do with the Chromebook itself, but it's allowable. So those programs can run on that. requested a longer battery life. That was

161a big one. They were having an issue where presently if it dies there's a whole function you have to do in order to bring it back to life and that caused a lot of headache in some of those classrooms. The availability of continuing to use those C-type chargers because they have put money into those chargers already in buildings so they said that would be nice to continue that. They like the durability for the most part of the Chromebook itself. And then they just mentioned like the camera, the glare from the screen, if it was an anti-glare, it could be a little distracting. Parents, again, battery life, continued to have those accessibility features. That was important for that to be on the new device. Also, again, a more durable keyboard. Some of that comes from when

162we talked about... replacement parts after four years we had kids I was at Campbell before I had this job I can't tell you the amount of times I had a you are missing four letters how are you type it's fine you're missing four letters go turn it in it's okay but they didn't know how long it would be till they got a new one so again a more durable keyboard and then also some of the older students the parents had said well it would be nice if it was slightly larger so that was the more specific feedback we got from those groups The newer Chromebook features in some of the models looked at, they do offer some anti-glare, a little bit larger screen size. Making sure we're looking at Chromebooks like parts for repair. We

163know we're in a shortage. How are they regionally available? Are they cheaper to replace or at least more durable, lighter in weight? Some of the newer ones are. And then also making sure we have the same convertibility as the previous models and we're not losing any features. because our teachers have become and students have become dependent upon it. And we saw in that data that they use all of them. Also, again, the newer model would help with the things I had mentioned. So speed and processing, keyboard durability, camera quality, and then that 10 hour battery life. So some of those considerations that we looked at from the feedback we got from students, a bigger screen size so that the difference of an inch of screen size. is a lot of money. It's not necessarily cost

164prohibitive. I can let Dr. Whealy go into a little bit more of that if you have specific questions. The faster processing that kids had mentioned, especially in high school and in middle school, is also based on what they're downloading and the downloadable content and the network speeds that we have. So it wasn't just the device itself. Again, durability, age is a factor in those. And then looking at a three-year replacement versus a four-year replacement on a device. And then some of the also the milk run service. I'll kind of let Dr. I'll let Dr. Whaley talk about that. So the three versus four year, this is our second rotation with Chromebooks. I think we and a lot of other districts where you could traditionally run some devices four years like an adult device, that makes

165sense. They're just not as rough on it. When you have a student device that's being used quite a bit and taking home in backpacks and smoosh between books and things, it's going to be a lot better to take that three year look. And if you went back to those charts, you did see an uptick in parts and batteries and things on that fourth year. Milkman service is something that's fairly new. That's something we would really recommend with the next device that's chosen. And what that is, is it's just like the old school, you know, milkman that would drive around and drop off and pick up. So basically, Chromebooks that were broken would come to a central location, they'd be put in a crate, a company would drive through, say, every Wednesday, they'd return your repaired

166ones, and they'd pick up your broken ones, and then the cycle would continue. That's going to really help our techs out. As you know, we kind of re-organized the tech department, and they are spending a lot more time helping the staff with all the new technology in the rooms and things like that, and they don't have as much time to take apart Chromebooks and fix, although most companies are offering an option that we could also self-repair. So that's there. Wrong key. So here are our options. And again, this is just informative tonight. We can replace all, replace six through 12 devices February of 2023, which would be very soon. In the past, we would have taken this to the board somewhere in April or May. We'd replace all 18,000 in August. But we do have

167an opportunity from one of our vendors where we could have a pretty substantial cost savings if we made that replacement now. That would also allow us to take the 6 through 12 current devices and use them as spares for the K through 5 kiddos right now, and that would get them through until next December. And then, of course, in that December 2024 timeframe, I said 2024, it should be 23. Sorry about that. December 23, that's when those would be replaced for grades K through five. Or we can simply wait, replace everything fall of 2023. That'd be all 18,000 at once. And no matter what we do, all options will consider leasing versus an outright purchase as we've done in the past. So again, a lot of information, gonna open up to questions. Board Member Sparks.

168You mentioned a substantial cost savings. What are we talking? About a million dollars. Really? Thank you. Vice President Fritchie? Just a quick question. What are the advantages of purchase versus lease? Yeah, very preliminary numbers. So a lot of companies realize, obviously, there's a market and resale. So I'm going to make up some very, very rough numbers. If we were, I shouldn't say make up. I've been working with a couple of companies that have kind of talked us through this. If we were to be around, say, for ease of numbers, a $4 million price point of an outright purchase, we'd take that out of a fiscal year and we'd be done. If we were to lease over three years, we would actually make three payments that would total about $3.85 million. Somewhere in there, it would

169actually cost less. The reason being, the company will take those devices at the end and they will resell those. So it makes a lot of sense for school districts because it's a way to dispose of the assets at the end, have a little cost savings, because usually when a district's done with the devices, you're pretty much done. The devices are tired, too. If I can add to that, that's if we go to a three-year cycle, which we are strongly advocating for because this fourth year has been painful. And it's impacted even for NWA assessments, for example, we're really kind of worried about our functionality when we get to map testing in the spring. So that's if you have a three. If you went to four years, they're worth about a dollar right now. So there

170wouldn't be a cost savings to lease them if you're going four years. But if you do three years, they can try to resell them. And we can have the option to buy them. If we thought, oh, wow, this really can last four years, I'm doubtful, but we could. Board Member Murdoch? More comments rather than questions, I suppose. A few things. Number one is, you know, four years ago we did this same exercise. Hold a few questions from that particular time frame Thank You Linda by the way for finding those so just for my fellow board members These are some of the exact same questions that I asked four years ago What what is the need still for our K and one grade students to have Chromebooks that go home every single day? so I believe

171when that was asked also it was kind of brought up like why would they go home. Some of the reasons they do go home presently, they're used at varied rates to be very honest, but like additional support. We have some kids that will actually do practice at home. Sometimes it's also the only device in a family. So just some of those things. Now looking at also the cost of keeping them at... locations, then you're also purchasing like basically like the computer, the big carts and the charging cords so there's additional cost with keeping them potentially at in placement of keeping them. the classroom so it's kind of just weighing both those options is there actually an additional cost to keeping them in the classroom and charging them it would cost more than giving individual charges

172than the replacements that we end up having to do because of yeah so just take the classroom for instance it wouldn't have 30 outlets so you'd have to you'd have to buy a cart for each k k12 class or k1 classroom okay um One of the other questions, and I respect that we're talking about, obviously, Chromebooks here. What other options have we considered from devices, from a device perspective? Understanding, obviously, high school students have many programming needs, that some devices run significantly better than Chromebooks for what they need. Yep, that's a great question. So, in no particular order. So, let's say we were to go to a Windows device. By doing so, you add a substantial cost, not only because of the device, but also, for instance, our endpoint protection. For our staff Windows computers,

173we're paying $60 a year. And so 60 times 9,000, that starts to add up very quickly. Again, in no particular order, we've invested a lot in going web-based. Teachers have. Technology has. If we were to switch to a model where you've got an actual computer where you can install software, that's just a totally different environment. So we're talking. group policy setups for different levels of kids software installs malware it just adds a totally different level of support on our end the other thing is If we switch to other brands, so let's say Apple, that's a very expensive product. We could switch to tablets at the younger grades. We've considered that. A lot of our teachers, the last time we did this, weren't a fan of the tablet because they felt like even though the students

174were younger, they really grew from grades K through 2, and what they could do with the device since they had a keyboard, it was more of a computer. So we have considered those things. Do you want to point out to everybody? If a student does have a need for a, you know, more performance in a machine, we still have labs. For instance, our publications labs, so the students we saw tonight with broadcasting, they're using Macs in a lab setting. Our project lead, the way classes are using Dell Precisions on a Windows machine. So some of those classes, we do have upscale devices that don't just use Chromebooks. And then finally... We're in our third year. We did purchase VDI for all students a few years ago, and that allows you to reproduce a Windows desktop

175on your Chromebook. That's just a matter of if we find ourselves lacking in resources, resources being memory and processing speed, that's just a matter of putting more resources towards it to get that back up to performance. So it just depends on how many kids are on it at a time or what they're trying to do. Okay, that's that's good information and then you know that this other question is coming here so in 2019 I asked I asked a question that said are we concerned about screen time of kids within the classroom and how much are they using devices and I'm gonna expand on that just just for a second here in terms of what this question is going to be related to the Chromebooks that we're using here because the answer we got in 2019

176and first off for my other board members here just so you know the people who gave the answer are not here so don't hold the answer against them okay so no literally nobody in this room gave this answer but i was concerned because the answer that we got was screen time is not an issue for schools and districts in relation to teaching and learning among our students and in the next paragraph we got research shows that screen time is a problem and that was the answer that we got in 2019 it was a much longer answer but that those were the two things which didn't jive together So my expanded question this year, four years later, is going to be how much time are we actually on devices? Are we over-reliant upon devices? And how

177much are we tracking to make sure that kids' screen time is effective screen time versus play screen time? Yep. So I'm going to let our structural person answer. Then I can offer an answer too. You can offer something right now. Think that and to be honest that varies by grade level and by student I mean as far as like what screen time a student is getting so whereas Like a k1 often comes up right kindergarten first grades like how often are they you know face to face with the computer solely? And I'll tell you it varies it varies based on curriculum it varies based on you know What what the day looks like it varies based on what subject matter we're in so are there still sinners? Yes, are we still using MTSS with? using

178it as an NWA screener potentially? Absolutely. But then do we still have our MTSS people doing hands-on manipulatives? Yes. So I don't have a definitive two hours and 27 minutes. But I will tell you that we try to make that screen time meaningful when it happens. And it is not a substitution for a person because sometimes the biggest glare on poor instruction you can do is to add a Chromebook or any device really because it's just a device. It's not a person. So really that comes down to how are we effectively as classroom teachers. So largely, and then when you get into older grades, yes, our resources, like a lot of our math resources come via instruction on a device because we now have resources that are all virtual. So yes, there is a larger

179amount of time in our other grades that depend on their devices for that virtual resource. But again, we still have like an algebra, they still have consumables. We still have all those things. So I know it's not an exact answer, but hopefully it's a more... gives you a better picture of what that day potentially looks like. It's fine. Yeah. I'm more just bringing up the concern of efficiency versus just having it in front of you, which now I'm going to sound hypocritical with my last question, just so you know. And this is my last question. Especially for older kids, how well do the Chromebooks interact slash adaptability to their phone apps that allow them to coordinate, obviously, multiple things? As kids are addicted to their phones, I'm not advocating that. I'm saying a lot of

180times they have them, especially on road trips and stuff, as they're going to different activities and needing some access. Is there much functionality between a Chromebook and some of the stuff that we use on a Chromebook versus what they can do on their phones? A lot, yeah. So a lot of what we do, so Google Apps or Google Workspace for Education, the name has changed three times, so I think it's going to change again. So all of our Google stuff, Schoology, it's all web-based. It can all be done on a phone. with caveats. So your social media only for 9 through 12. So our younger grades don't have access to social media. Younger grades don't have access to Hangouts. So there's some restrictions there. But in general, being a web-based tool, pretty much anything you

181can do on your phone, you can do on a Chromebook or any machine for that matter. Okay. I appreciate the presentation. Thanks. Board Member Eslick. Thank you for the presentation and thank you for those questions because those were great questions for the history I had some numbers questions, so I'm looking at slide 11 And I'm just trying to break down some of these lines that to me logically would seem like they would be incidental to like something that happens like accidental damage and Milk run repair so the way this rolls up. It looks like it's a one-time cost Yes. So it is a one-time cost. So the information, again, it was provided to the board as preliminary information. So if you were to take the entire line and go to the total, that's the four-year

182cost for each device. Three-year cost. And I just want to point out, slide 11, the crowd is saying is different than slide 11 you're saying. We took that one slide out because he's still engaging other companies, and we don't want to give away. Oh, well, we'll go prices right. We don't want to do prices right here. So we're just sharing that one with you at the board because he's still working with vendors. Okay, that's fine. Well, I'm glad I didn't read anything then. I just wanted to better understand if this was something that was going to recur. In our finance meeting, we kind of talked about those incidentals, like the chargers and things like that. And I know you're still preliminary, but at some point, can we see what that negotiation is going to look

183like as far as what we can do with those? Just for the benefit of anybody who didn't watch the finance committee meeting, my personal experience with the Chromebook recently was my son broke a charger and it was $31. And I could buy it for $10 on Amazon. But I had to use, I had to buy the district's charger or it would void the warranty. So my concern was just earlier this year, we got rid of a Chromebook fee of $25 per student per year. That was a planned expense that everyone would know about only to then hit up our parents and families with a surprise $31 broken charger fee. So, and that's not me being critical of you, please. That's not at all. I'm just saying. It's something to consider as we're looking at our

184contracts is those incidental fees when something breaks, which is going to happen. I'm glad you asked that question. With any of the vendors we've looked at, the current price of a charger is going to cost us between $30 and $40-something. We have asked the vendors so far, do you have to replace with a manufacturer-provided charger, or can we use a USB-C, any charger? One vendor's responded back, that would be fine. Not heard back from the other one yet, so we did ask that question. A key difference, what you're seeing here, right now we get, under our accidental damage policy, we get one accidental damage per year per device. So then the next year, you start over again and you can damage that device again and get it fixed. The other vendor that we've not had

185before, those accidental plans allow for unlimited incidents per year per device. That's a big difference. So obviously we'd have to navigate. We don't want a student to say, well, I can break it 10 times in a year, but we can navigate through that, and that's going to save us considerable costs too. So there's that as well. And Dr. Whaley, that does not count the charger, correct? It does not. Well. No, it does not count as a charter. I didn't want to give false hope because I also paid $31 the same day that Board Member Reslick did. That $31 never covered. And it wouldn't cover the battery after the first year either. Obviously, companies know what's going to break. So, yeah, absolutely. Board Member Sparks. All right. For the record, I've never paid $31. Nor have

186I. Never. So far. So far. But my question is, what is the time frame then that we need to approve something like this if we want that million-dollar savings? So if we want to move forward, I'd reach out to the vendor and say, hey, looks like we have momentum to move forward. They could lock that inventory, and then they could get back to us on how soon we'd have to have a PO cut. So at the... I'd say the latest would be the December board meeting. It could be a little earlier than that where we might have to cut a PO and possibly ratify or talk about it. So that's the question in front of you. If he finds out he has to do it before our December 15th meeting, do you want him to

187go forward with what he's proposing and then ratify it afterwards? Or do you want to try to call a special board meeting? Either way is fine. There you go. Do you know of your marching orders, Kevin? Yep, absolutely. I do have a couple of questions as well and I appreciate all these questions because this has been good information and thank you for putting all the slides together and I know you're still gathering information for us which I think speaks even more importantly on why we'd want to have a special board meeting so we know black and white this is us this is what we're moving forward with but I did have a couple of questions and I hear historically we've learned along the way since we've started having devices and hearing some of board member

188Murdoch's questions around devices. It's clearly an ongoing evaluation from your all standpoint that you look at what other options are and Chromebook continues to be our best go forward path. That's your recommendation right. Yes. But you continue to evaluate, should we go to Apple? Should we go to, right? Yeah, always. Understanding that, you know, while cost isn't the deciding factor, it's a deciding factor. We also look at market share, like where's, you know, vendors will put their efforts into where the market goes. Since COVID occurred, you know, Chromebooks crossed into that 51, 52% market share. years ago if we look back eight, nine, 10 years ago, you used to have to reach out to vendor and say, can you make this Chromebook compatible? Well, we're working on it. Now you're starting to see Windows, Mac,

189Chromebook compatible, or Chrome OS, you're starting to see those things. Thank you. My next question is looking at some of the survey and thank you for pulling the survey information together. That was really beneficial. This question, Dr. Whaley, is really more for you because I'm wondering based on some of this feedback, Is it time to do a holistic system-wide network audit at each of our buildings to see if the wireless network needs to be evaluated? Yeah, that's a great question. We're year four of a five-year replacement, so that's going to occur. So that's on our long-term capital to start doing that. Every year we increase our bandwidth, it seems, with MoreNet. When when we hear slow processing speeds We wonder a couple things. So what's the classroom next door doing how many kids are trying

190to do XYZ? And so obviously you're really familiar with that that world. But yeah, we're We're starting to end our rotation with this network equipment. So, yeah, that's going to be coming. Okay, great. And then my last question is, and it kind of goes along with some of the questions, but where we have a student, and I hear that there are labs, and I'm thankful that we have those in our buildings for some of these specialized classes and specialized software that some of our students need to do. But is there an opportunity for a student, because I know. From my experience as a parent, sometimes that work was done at home because we had the computer set up and the memory and everything needed for some of that specialized software to work well. Where there

191is student need do we have that opportunity? To provide a student with a device whether it's a checkout or something if they don't have that Computer bandwidth and that computer technology at home. Yeah, so that's where we rely pretty heavily on VDI most likely so Depending on the course number in power school. That's what gets loaded for those students is accessible through VDI So, you know if a teacher requires a certain software package and they notify us that they want their their students vdi eligible that's automatically loaded so that's possible i will say vdi of course is you know we designed it for roughly 5 000 concurrent users i think is the number we've never hit that so one of our techs is kind of playing and learning this year more you know as possibly

192maybe if we bump up resources on vdi we may be able to change our lab computer environment to maybe a thin client to where we can leverage that more so save some costs bump up resources and then everybody's happy so absolutely that's great and so that gives students that have a need that ability to use that software at home and and not have barriers around that from an equity standpoint and then um so i think that was my last question yeah thank you any other questions okay so a little more research if we need to call a special meeting Then we will. Okay. That sounds great. So moving on down our agenda, we have the items of information are written reports. 10.01 Professional Development Annual Evaluation Report. Board Member Fritchie. Thank you. I do have

193a question for Dr. Janeway, if that would be okay. I just want to first say I have some great things to say about your report, but I have one question that I was just curious about because I've heard in the past of the concerns about some of our graduate courses and I wanted to find out what are some of the graduate courses that are now being offered to our staff? Do you have some new things being offered? Yes, so one of the changes that we've made to the program, and I think I mentioned this in the report, is that we've identified course pathways. So those pathways are aligned with some of the priorities of our district initiatives as set forth in our CSIP. And so those five pathways include effective instruction, diversity, equity, and inclusion,

194real-world learning, well-being, and I'm going to leave out one. Well, regardless. But we have courses that are aligned with most of those pathways. This year we are offering, in fact, one new development is that we've offered or we've created an entire calendar so we can project what we're going to be offering all year long, which is a really nice benefit to staff. I would say a majority of them exist this year in the effective instruction. pathway. So we have courses, we're able to provide graduate credit for those that are involved in our letters training. We have graduate credit, we have some interactive notebook courses, we have AMI courses, we have math strategies courses. So we do have a few that are new, we have some that have just been able to kind of come back

195because of the focus on more CSIP aligned initiatives as part of that content. Very good. Thank you. Well, I was just curious because I didn't know from the past that we had some concerns about some of those. So thank you for that. If anybody else has a question for her, if you don't, she could probably sit down. I'm going to give her an assist. Tech integration is your fifth one. There you go. There you go. Well, I just want to say some nice things about your report, okay, Dr. Janeway? I'm not at all surprised at the positive response to the Lee Summit R7 launch program and the new teacher academy that you have created basically the last couple of years. I've heard so many compliments about the new teacher academy, especially when I assisted with

196the bus tour for our new staff members last summer, the last couple of summers. And it was just amazing to look into this boardroom and see it literally packed. with new staff on those days. I think we said it was like 160 or something like that, yeah. So that was just amazing. And I appreciate the work that went into the coordination and the planning for professional development. For years, subs had always been a problem on PD days. And with that coordination and knowledge of fill rates, it's now more manageable. Is it perfect? No, we still don't have it licked because there's still issues with Kelly Services, but the fill rates are better because you've coordinated and planned it ahead, so thank you. I'm also happy to see the reflections of strengths and opportunities in your

197report. I think it was very honest. Knowing Dr. Janeway, since she was hired in the district, I'm sure. she'll continue to evaluate and improve that programming because she is that person who strives for excellence. And so thanks a lot, Dr. Janeway. I know she's a perfectionist when it comes right down to it. I know she is. So thank you very much. Great. Any other questions, comments on 10.01? And we'll move on to 10.02, Elementary Gifted Annual Evaluation Report. Board Member Frucci? Okay, thank you. I just wanted to say it's great to see the numbers increase dramatically this year with changes to the screening process and the addition of the sixth and seventh grade gifted in our middle schools. So that's great. The numbers are going in the right direction. And I'd love to hear more

198about how gifted projects are embedded into social studies curriculum in our middle schools sometime when we get a chance to hear that. I think that would be really cool because, you know, we just know that it's there. But I'd love to hear, like, how is it? there what are they doing that's so cool with gifted and you know sixth and seventh grade in middle school this year's theme for our elementary schools the engineering and engineering design process that sounds to me fascinating and fun I see that one of the program refinement questions concerns making connections and partnerships to real-world learning for our students in that particular program And if that's a concern, I was just wondering if we might be able to enlist some of our engineering firms that we've hired in designing renovations to

199Mason Elementary and Lee Summit High School and designing East Trails Middle School to perhaps help out our elementary programs for their engineering and design. I also wanted to say it appears that representation among our underrepresented groups has increased this year, which is a good thing. So I just like, I know I don't see Dr. Wright out there tonight, but I just wanted to say thanks for a very thorough report from Dr. Wright. Great. And now we'll move to item 10.03, building level engagement with board priorities report. No. Can I just say shout out to Hazel Grove Elementary and Lee Summit West High School. It's great to hear what's going on in each of our schools each month. It's fun to see how the different schools are engaging in the board priorities. Thank you. And last

200item on that agenda, 10.04, our bond budget update report. Any questions on that? All right. Well, then we will move on to our next item, which is our adjournment for the night. So thank you very much, everybody, for attending. And the board will head upstairs.