Lawrence Public Schools Board of Education Meeting | June 9, 2025

001Is there an approval of agenda? I move the Board of Education approve the agenda for the June 9th 2025 board meeting. I second. Byers? Yes. Cadu Blackwood? Yes. Yes. Franklin? Yes. Gordon Ross? Yes. Jones? Yes. Kimball? Yes. Motion passes 7-0. Okay, we're going to move on to the report of the superintendent of schools. Thank you, Madam President and members of the board. Those who are joining us in person and remote, welcome to June. We had our final commencement ceremony Thursday a week ago, and we can see here our adult ed graduates, their family and staff. and staff. It was such a joyous occasion. The two graduate speakers, Chase Simpson, who earned his GED, and Joseph Johnson, who earned his high school diploma, shared their personal inspiring stories about the interruptions that have occurred in their

002education and the obstacles they overcame to reach their goals. Both are employed and looking forward to brighter futures for themselves and their families. There were 19 graduates that participated in the ceremony that evening. In total this year, 29 adults completed their GED and 33 earned high school diplomas. 16 from LHS and 17 from Free State. Special thanks to Mark Pruitt and the teachers and staff on our team who assisted these students in crossing that line of graduation. I wanted to give just a few remarks on special education services and supports in the district. This is just a portion of a public statement that we're issuing this evening and folks can read the full text. Just want to share a few remarks. Lawrence Public Schools takes very seriously our responsibility to serve students and to meet

003their individual needs. When parent concerns are brought to our attention, we engage directly with families to problem solve. Our staff of 1,550 professional educators, support staff, and building and district leaders provide high quality special education services in compliance with all state and federal requirements. We serve approximately 2,430 students on an individual education plan. These students are eligible for both special education and gifted education services. Of course, as is true in any endeavor, there may be times when parents disagree with specific details of their student services. Our staff values that feedback and we use The IEP, the Individual Education Program, and IEP team process, which by law includes the parents to resolve those concerns. So the IEP is the written plan for the child's special education and related services. The team that decides what to include

004in that plan is made up of school staff and parents, and when developmentally appropriate, students sit in on their IEP meetings and plan. The IEP team makes decisions about services together based on the unique needs of each child. If parents have a concern they feel has not been resolved, federal law provides both informal and formal methods to work through those concerns. And that includes a formal complaint process and due process. Our special education team uses every complaint, even those determined to be unsubstantiated, as a learning experience for making systemic improvements. And I want to just share that the superintendent's leadership team uses every one of those situations to see what improvements we may implement even if the findings are unsubstantiated. So just to clarify a formal complaint was filed this spring that IEPs were not

005being met. The Kansas State Department of Education's special education investigator determined that there were no findings. indicating that students' needs are being met and IEPs are being implemented in Lawrence public schools. Of course, as a community of learners, we are always striving for continuous improvement. So I would just offer for anyone in our Lawrence community who has concerns about their own child, our doors are open. Please reach out. call us or email, our team welcomes the opportunity to hear from parents, to discuss with them their child's educational experience, and to work together through any difficulties that we may face. So I just would encourage folks to reach out to us anytime. concerns arise, don't wait. Reach out to us early and often so that we can support. This statement is actually longer and involves a

006lot more, but those are some salient points that I wanted to bring forward to the superintendent update this evening. Now, even though school is. out. Our students and staff have continued to compete in extra and co-curricular activities. They've been busy, so many of us enjoyed getting to be a part of the Free State Baseball win. They won the state championship over at KU. It was truly a great event. Congratulations to all the players and coaches, including head coach Mike Hill for such an exciting to their season. Our students from both high schools have received recognition for their accomplishments in musical theater this year. Starlight's Blue Star Awards honored Lawrence High's production of Hadestown Teen Edition with its Outstanding Orchestra Award and nominations for Outstanding Performer in Supporting and Lead Roles. Free State's production of Footloose

007earned the Outstanding Performer in a Supporting Role Award and the Junior Rising Star Scholarship. We join both theater troops and the students and staff listed here in celebrating these amazing accomplishments. Free State also continued its winning at the second of three national speech and debate contests this summer. National extemporaneous speaking champion, Onwin Williams, picked up the national runner-up award at the second tournament, the NCFL in Chicago, where 413 schools competed. Our other student honors are listed here on the slide. Overall, the Firebirds won a top five sweepstakes award, scoring among teams with the highest total points across all debate, public speaking, and acting categories. Again, the Lawrence Red and Black award-winning yearbook achieves another honor. It was named among the top 1% of yearbooks and featured in the anthology section of Varsity Yearbooks Portfolio Volume

00830. This is a showcase celebrating the most exceptional yearbooks in the country. printed by Varsity Yearbook. This is the third time that LHS has received this distinguished honor for their yearbook. The co-editors and their journalism advisor are acknowledged here. We know that many other students spent many hours contributing to this yearbook, and what a tremendous honor. Our track and field athletes have been out also. They are pictured here, Free State sophomore Sadie Reynolds and her gold medal. She is the 6A Girls State Discus Champion. She bested competitors by over 20 feet with a winning mark of 151 feet. two inches. Sadie must have been at full strength that day because that's a 13 feet improvement over her personal best. So she hit it out of the park that day. We're also proud of the other

009students listed here who placed in the top eight at the state level. We've watched Nathan Kramer, a photographer with Free State. I've enjoyed watching him over the year snap photos of us during school board meetings, and he posts many wonderful photographs. Nathan shared these beautiful photos of fifth and sixth graders trying out woodwind, brass. and string instruments during our summer novice instrumentable music exploration program last week at LHS. Special thanks to our music educators who make these opportunities possible during the summer for our students. We have free meal kits. We've been talking about this throughout the spring, but just want to make sure folks don't forget, despite the pouring rain and thunder, last week. The meal kits were distributed right on time. We appreciate our school families for their flexibility and willingness to get a

010little wet in the process of pickup. Our second meal kit pickup of the summer is tomorrow morning. Our families may choose to stop by Woodlawn from 1130 to 1230 Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays this month where their children can enjoy a healthy delicious lunch at no cost. Our nutrition and wellness director, Julie Henry, and her team do a great job with the summer meal program. We are so excited about next weekend. Underground railroad tours, a parade, the Kids Zone, live music and food vendors are all among the activities planned for Lawrence Juneteenth celebration next Saturday, June 14th in South Park. We enjoyed a fabulous time, several members of the board and I at the Lawrence Pride Parade last Saturday. And many thanks to member Franklin who organized our group. No easy task, I will say in

011reference to myself. How wonderful to see such a strong turnout. On the left, there are two LHS grads who recent, just this year, who've already earned their spot on the KU cheer team. And that parade was their first official event in their new role as KU cheerleaders. I will report, because we marched behind them, they did an extraordinary job on their first event. We will continue our parade Saturdays as we look forward to marching again this next Saturday in celebration of Juneteenth right here in the KU. Lawrence. I appreciate President Jones, past President Kimball, and member Byers who have filed for re-election to the Lawrence Board of Education. We just want to make sure that our community is aware. You are to be commended for your willingness to continue to serve our community schools. We

012also want to sincerely thank candidates Chris Topher, Niles Enneking, Matt Lancaster, Pam Shaw, and Molly Starr for their interest in school board service. Seven candidates is a robust turnout. However, it does not trigger an August primary election. So we're just giving a heads up. District voters, everyone in our community should make a plan. to stay engaged throughout this time, stay informed, and to vote in the November general election. We want to take a moment to officially welcome in our staff news, she's right here on our right, to officially welcome Ms. Nikki Nauman, board clerk and executive assistant to the superintendent. This is her first official board meeting. Welcome. Miss Nikki, we're so glad you're here. You may not know it, but Ms. Nauman has a long history with the Lawrence Public Schools. Having begun her

013career years ago on the Food and Nutrition Services team, spent some time at Quail Run and a few other stops from folks who recruited her away from us. But that's okay. We recruited her right back. So we are proud. She is the proud parent. We're proud along with her of a 2025 Lawrence. high school grad and we are delighted to welcome her full circle back to our LPS team beginning this evening. Also, you may not have heard yet, members, this is hot off the press. We are delighted to share our congratulations with Dr. Jana Craig-Hair, Executive Director, Curriculum Instruction. She has just been announced as the incoming superintendent of St. John Hudson USD 350. We know that Jana's leadership will certainly add value there as she moves to a new and exciting district leadership opportunity.

014And I have promised my and our support as she moves into that new venture. She could not, I don't think, is she with us? No, she is. actually in the new superintendent's orientation sessions this week. So we don't get to have her with us, but we're so excited for the impact that she will have. This is just another reminder that our district buildings and offices are closed to the public on Fridays. Just a reminder, that is to allow folks to take their earned... leave. Folks don't get a free day just because we're closed, but it does help us to have our folks take days in common when that's possible. And also we have a closed buildings on Juneteenth, the federal holiday, and then July 4th, federal holiday for Independence Day. Thank you members for the

015opportunity to share this report and for the honor. to serve in the Lawrence public schools. Thank you. Thank you. We'll move on to the report of the Board of Education. President, I am going to keep my remarks brief as Shannon is going to provide us an update on the school finance formula developments at the state level. So to make space for that, I will quickly extend my congratulations to the adult ed graduates and to all graduates again this board meeting for the 2025 school year. My gratitude to the board colleagues who marched in the... Pride Parade on Saturday. I look forward to joining you next week at the Juneteenth Parade. We have a board retreat on June 24th. The agenda is coming together and should be out to you this week. If there's anything that

016you would like to ensure that we discuss during that time, please shoot Nikki an email and we'll see if we can get it included on the agenda. To Nikki, just congratulations. We're really grateful that you're here and welcome to the USC 497 Board of Education crew. I do think we have, I also want to extend my gratitude to Bob and Shannon for filing as a candidate. And then I do believe we have another candidate here with us today joining us in the audience. So I appreciate all of those of you that have. Been willing to file and look forward to running alongside with you and doing what's best for USD 497 And so happy to meet with any candidate as are all of my board colleagues. They have agreed to extend their time. So if

017you reach out to any of us and we'll also be reaching out to you all to schedule time for us all to meet and talk about doing good work for USD 497. Okay, we'll move on to board committee reports. So we'll start with... The Equity Committee? Yeah. The Equity Committee met actually last week, and actually we had a robust discussion, and our main focus right now is increasing membership in the group. suggesting that a lot of the other district committees should be a part or be invited to Equity Council as well. And actually, I think our last meetings have all been very well attended and very robust discussions. I'll open it up for other committee reports. Go ahead. So on the third, as my role in the Schools Foundation, we had a LEAP committee meeting.

018It was an initial meeting to begin looking at all aspects of our LEAP program. We discussed an overview of the program as it exists today and began reviewing the paperwork used to sign those up to participate. We're also creating lists of potential businesses to target to recruit, and our next meeting will be on the July 15th. And then for policy committee, we do have a policy up for first read tonight. Board policy BDA, developing, adopting, amending, and repealing board policy. This involves some technical grammatical changes for ease of use in alignment with KASB. Policy adoption numbers one through six is unique to USD 497 and not NKASB policy. It existed prior to this update and was kept as the committee felt it was important to lay out the procedures for policy adoption. Okay, other committee

019reports? We did have a negotiation meeting on last Thursday. We just talked about the new plan time for the teachers that were putting in there for the second plan time, a discussion on salary and things like that. Our meeting was also kind of robust, and it was going into hour three, and we still. was trying to iron some things out and so we have another meeting scheduled for this coming Thursday at 9 a.m. to continue discussion on what we was talking about. Okay. Thank you all for your work on that and the whole team. Other committee updates? This is Carol. I don't have any committee updates, but I do want to say that I want to thank everybody who filed for office and I thank you for your... commitment to this community where I'm proud

020that I grew up in and I'm also was honored and privileged to participate in the Pride March this weekend with you all and I was I felt really great to walk in community with our neighbors here and as Pride Month begins I'm proud to continue the work of making Lawrence, Kansas a place where LGBTQ to us plus students our students and neighbors are seeing valued and free to live as their authentic selves and to those of you who are out there living your authentic selves I am proud you're proud and I just want to say that in light of what's happening in Los Angeles I want to say that our state and community is stronger because of our immigrant and refugee communities and I will support them as an indigenous Native American and I will

021be the first one to say I will not let a government entity allow or disallow what my children can and can't read or love who they can and can't love. Thank you. Appreciate that, Carol. Okay, so we're going to, that's a good entrance into, are there any other board committee reports? No, okay. So we'll move on to board commentary. Carol kicked us off there a little bit. And other folks? Okay, go ahead, Shannon. Great. I'll start with the personal. I wanted to congratulate the graduates from the Adult Ed and Diploma Completion Program. That is always an honor to attend their ceremony and to recognize their accomplishments and to hear their stories. So thank you. Also, thank you to the Coalition for Collaborative Governance for an invitation to attend a community conversation. at the Lawrence Public

022Library this last week about the Lawrence City budget. It was very informative and it was a thought-provoking event and I appreciated being invited to participate as a member of the community. So for the board, I wanted to give you an update on the June Education Funding Task Force meeting that happened last Tuesday and Wednesday, the third and fourth. just out of the gate. The upcoming meetings for that committee, they will be meeting from 12 to 4.30 the first day and then 9 to 4.30 the second day on July 1st and 2nd, August 13th and 14th, which is different than what they had originally announced. That's a Wednesday and a Thursday instead of a Tuesday and a Wednesday. And then September 2nd and 3rd. The committee or the task force continues to focus in great detail

023on the weightings that are within our current school finance formula and the June meeting was focused on several weightings in particular. The high enrollment and low enrollment weightings, transportation funding and bilingual weightings. Several task force members have voiced support for simplifying the school finance formula by eliminating some weightings altogether and adding that money to base state aid. And while that sounds nice, the models that were presented using that approach that were provided just for discussion so that task force members and the public could see what impact that would have really. demonstrated a point that both that all the staff or the legislature repeated over and over which is that one small change in some aspect of our formula whether it's in the base state aid amount or in a weighting amount has ripple effects throughout

024the formula because it's very all the pieces of it are very connected together so you change one of those things and there's a ripple effect and it ultimately ends up affecting not just the state aid but also local districts local option budget authority so the how much we can levy in local property taxes and it also then affects the Supplemental state aid calculation. So that's the equalization that happens with state aid We don't get a lot of that because we're a high property value district, but It has ripple effects. So it's it's very complicated the task force members delved into the history of all of those weightings and including some cases how they came to be, how they've changed over time, the consideration that the Kansas Supreme Court has given to different aspects of those

025weightings in the different decisions that they've made on school finance. I thought it was interesting just to share a factoid. This really gives you an idea of the breadth of diversity across our school districts in terms of size in Kansas. So every school district in Kansas either gets money for low enrollment or high enrollment depending on your size. So everybody gets an enrollment waiting. We have, as of July 1 this year, we will have 285 school districts in Kansas. The median school district size is 500 students. The 50 largest districts in Kansas educate 75% of our public school students. These 50 smallest districts in our state educate 2% of our students. So there's a very, very wide range in district size across our state, with a large majority of those districts being... a lot smaller

026than Lawrence Public Schools. The task force, as their discussion progressed, seemed to have an interest in retaining the low enrollment weighting in some form, but looking at whether the high enrollment weighting should be changed or done away with. They also spent a lot of time revisiting a number of issues related to the transportation weighting, which is not really a weighting. It's basically money that you get that doesn't reimburse you for the cost of your transportation, but you get for each student who qualifies. And there was some interest. and this is I think a positive thing, amongst the task force members at looking at how other states do this differently because in some states they tier funding. So for example, you might get funding for elementary school students who live one mile away from their school

027or more rather than two and a half miles. And then as the students get older, they have different metrics. And some states do things like providing funding where there are safety hazards. So busy highways, no sidewalks, that sort of thing. So there are some different models out there and the task force seems interested in looking at those. Also, there were lots and lots of questions about the bilingual waiting and some discomfort among some task force members about the fact that some districts get funded based on how many hours of service are provided. And I know that's how we do our request for funding from here. We typically are funded that way because we do a good job of record keeping on those hours of service versus just basically a per student. amount. They spent the

028second day of their meeting answering questions from the two kind of overarching questions from one of the task force chairs. Basically asking task force members how comfortable they are with proposing to do things differently and also what are the top one or two things that they want to be sure that's included in the new formula and make sure that are funded. And there were some themes that emerged from that conversation that I wanted to share. There were a couple of task force members in particular who really had some very negative things to say about graduation rates as a measure of student success. In fact, one task force member, Representative Christy Williams, basically said she thinks they're completely meaningless. I would disagree with that. I think lots of people on the task force disagreed with that,

029and one of the task force members... from KSDE pushed back pretty soundly on that claim because they are a measure of student success. From a more positive perspective, one of the task force members, Representative Scott Hill, shared that he would like to see accountability measures in our system focus more on growth over time rather than on a single test on a single day and a single measurement. I think there's a lot of, Task Force members haven't wrapped their heads around what an accountability system would look like that measured growth rather than the way that we do it now. Multiple members voice support for, and this is another controversial one, third grade retention for children who aren't reading on grade level. Unfortunately, certain Task Force members continue to misstate the the meaning of our Kansas assessments

030because our Kansas assessments don't make a determination about a student being on grade level. All the questions on the state assessment are grade level questions. So the test is not designed to be used to say a student is or is not on grade level. But that being said. This is a conversation that I think is gonna have legs because there's lots of agreement on the task force that literacy and particularly K through three literacy needs to be incentivized within the school finance formula in some way. So whether that looks like third grade retention or whether it looks like providing money for additional interventions or summer school, that was another thing that was brought up in the conversation. It's hard to say what direction that will go. That would mean putting more money into the formula

031in order to pay for those things. And it remains to be seen whether there's an appetite for that or not amongst the task force members and then the legislature afterwards. Some other ideas that have been shared as priorities, setting a base teacher pay for the state, increasing... and also making adjustments to special education funding, teacher recruitment and retention, enhancing the base state aid as the foundation of the formula, retaining the inflation adjustment, figuring out how to better support early childhood opportunities within the formula. So the next two months of meetings, the July task force chair Renee Erickson told those in attendance that the July task force meeting will be focused on Evaluating the at-risk weighting, following up on discussion of transportation and bilingual weightings, and getting an update from KSDE, the state board member, representative,

032and superintendents that are on the task force regarding feedback about the task force work from their stakeholders. The August agenda was announced that it will be solely focused on special education funding, so that will be a really important one to keep an eye on. Thank you for letting me share a little bit longer update. I think it's important for all of us. be aware of the conversations that are happening around this absolutely critical work that is ongoing and will greatly impact our district and all districts across the state as it unfolds. Thank you. Thank you. Shannon, you might have said this, but just for good measure, can you say the ways in which you would recommend that board members and community members stay up to date on the happenings of this? Yes. A really important

033committee. Yes. So it's a little hard because, unfortunately, the agendas for these meetings are not coming out more than just a day or two in advance. But there is a place on the Kansas legislature's website where you can look at committees and task forces. And there's a listing for this group on there. And all the documents that have been presented to the committee are available on there. All of the meetings are live streamed on the Kansas Legislature's YouTube channel, and so you can go into the legislature's YouTube, and if you look at the playlists, you can find the playlists for the Education Funding Task Force, and you can watch videos from their meetings. In addition to that, Kansas Legislative Research Department, KLRD, has a landing page for the task force that links you back to

034the legislatures. page, but it does list the task force members. And so that's another way that you might be able to find information. And then there are various news outlets that follow legislative work in Topeka more closely that are writing up. information about these. Some of them are subscription only, but like the State Affairs, Kansas Reflector, Topeka Capital Journal are some of the places that have been writing articles about some of the task force work. And I saw one of those was picked up by the Lawrence Times here and reported on. So those are some of the various ways. to follow what's going on. I appreciate that. Or you can ask me because I'm attending all the task force meetings and I'd be happy to share further details. I've seen, I've also seen quick updates

035from the LEA that have been helpful on their social media platforms and a couple other regular, a couple other platforms. I mean a couple other. advocacy or organizations for public education. I'm sure we all follow but Kansas PTA and game on for public schools are following some of the work as well as there's they're doing some good work following the state boards work on updating state assessments and the state assessment cut scores. So in fact, they posted some new information just this week that I would recommend the board members go take a look at and it's really helpful. Okay, thank you so much. All right, so we're still on agenda item 1.6 board commentary. I'll start at the end. Go ahead. Just briefly, I also attended the adult ed graduation and wanted to say congratulations

036to the students. It was so incredibly moving to hear their stories and so many of them had overcome adversity and still wanted to complete their educations. Mark Prutentine did a fantastic job with the ceremony. And then thank you so much to Yolanda for organizing us walking in the Pride Parade. It was so much fun. The rain made it even more memorable. And it was great to see all the people out in support of the LGBTQIA plus community. And happy Pride to all. So thank you. All right. Other board members? Yeah, just real quick. Last week I had an opportunity to attend the F&O Summer Barbecue, which is one of my favorite things to do. So that was fun to go spend some time with F&O staff, celebrate them and their accomplishments. Also attended the adult

037ed graduation. So as my colleagues have done, congratulations to them and all of our graduates. was not able to attend the negotiations meeting on Thursday, but have met twice in a salary subcommittee to kind of do some of that specific work. And so that work is moving forward. That's been good and productive. And then also, again, thank Yolanda for the work that she did to help organize us to march in Pride Parade and also the work that she's doing to help us march in Juneteenth as well. All right, we're going to move on to approval of consent agenda. Is there a motion? I move the Board of Education approve the items listed on the consent agenda. Second. Cadu Blackwood? Yes. Costello? Yes. Franklin? Yes. Gordon Ross? Yes. Jones? Yes. Kimball? Yes. Myers? Yes. Motion passes

0387-0. Okay, we're going to move on to agenda item 4.1, update of the 2025-2026 meal prices. And Julie Henry. Hi, Julie. Welcome. Julie Henry is Director of Nutrition and Wellness, and Dr. Swift will be assisting. Thank you, Madam President, members of the board. And we have Julie Henry with us, as well as Cindy Frick, CFO. We all know that... Healthy food and nutrition is essential for students to learn, grow, and thrive and achieve. The critical mission that Ms. Henry carries out every day is to provide nutritious meals for our students. I'm stating the obvious, but as a longtime classroom teacher, I know the importance of nutritious food, and for some of our students, it may be the only healthy meal. and for some, perhaps even the only meal that they have during the day. So

039we take this work very seriously. I appreciate the opportunity this evening to just take a few moments to talk and... have Julie share with us the rationale and the information behind a proposed price increase for our lunches that has become necessary in order to keep our food and nutrition part of our organization self-sustaining. That's very important so that our general fund dollars can be dedicated as much as possible to paying our staff to our salaries. and benefits that are so essential also. So we've asked Ms. Henry and Ms. Frick will be helping her to just review with us. the information we need to know to better understand the request for the 10 cent addition. That item is not on for a vote this evening. We wanted to take a little time just to share the

040information and make sure that the members have the opportunity to ask their questions and that the community can hear all of this information. So I appreciate you being here this evening. Ms. Henry, we'll give it to you. Absolutely. Thank you, board. Hello. Thank you, Dr. Swift. I appreciate the opportunity to come up here and share just a little bit about meal prices, how we set meal prices, how we think about meal prices as we go forward. So level setting we get reimbursement from the state and federal government for each full meal that we serve the amount that we get from the state and federal government depends on the students free reduced and paid status when a student Qualifies for free meals we get free meal reimbursement, which is enough to cover the entire cost of

041the meal Reduced price meals. It's all but 30 or 40 cents depending on breakfast or lunch And then there's the paid meal price that we get. We get a small reimbursement, state and federal, for paid student meals, but it is not sufficient to cover the entire cost of producing the meal. Okay, so when paid meals are not high enough to cover, paid meals plus the reimbursement plus the paid meal price isn't enough to cover the entire cost of the meal, then we are losing money on those meals, which means the reimbursement that we're getting for free and reduced price meals, we're using that to pay for paid student meals instead of using that money to improve the quality of our food. that we are trying to serve to all of our students. So this is

042why when the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 was passed, it included a paid lunch equity requirement. Some of you who have sat on the board for many, many years have heard of the PLE and the paid lunch equity requirement. That plays into this, and it's because of historically needing to make sure we are raising the paid meal prices accordingly. So the paid lunch equity requirement requires that we annually evaluate our paid meal prices in comparison to the federal requirements and adjust our meal prices accordingly is pretty much what it says. So USDA says that for this next year, our weighted average price for a paid student meal should be $4.01. This past year, our current weighted average price is $3.08, and that's weighted, so you have your elementary, your middle, your high school prices.

043We feed more elementary paid student meals than middle or high school, so it's weighted based on the percent of meals at each grade level that you serve, which is why it's $3.08 instead of a standard average. So what we're proposing is this $0.10 increase to only the paid. meal prices, the free and reduced will remain free and reduced as they always have been, of 10 cents at each grade level in order to get that weighted average price of our meals up to $3.18, which is still below the $4.01 that USDA recommends in order to fully cover the costs of producing a meal. So on this chart what you'll see is the meal cost this past year our all-in cost to produce a meal was $4.75. That's food, that's labor, that's health insurance, that's paper goods.

044$4.75 is what it costs for us to produce a meal. Our free reimbursement state and federal is $4.86. Our reduced federal and state reimbursement is $4.46 and then there's a 40 cent, the parents pay 40 cents. to make that go up to the $4.86. Our paid reimbursement, state and federal, is $0.85. So when we have a weighted average paid meal price of $3.08, our revenue that we generate from that paid meal is $3.39. So that means we're $0.82 short. We're losing $0.82 on every meal that we serve to a paid student. And as Dr. Swift mentioned, what this does is this. puts us in a deficit trend in our food service fund, which if continues and sustains, at some point the district general fund will have to step in and cover. And we do not

045want the district general fund to step in and have to cover because we want that money to be going to the classrooms and to the teachers. So the food service fund, our department goal is to be self-sustaining. We did have a couple years where... we were on a positive trajectory. That is because of COVID meals, because all schools had universal free meals, and they were reimbursed at the federal free rate for summer food service meals, which is a different federal funding pot and a different price point, which generates more revenue than regular national school lunch reimbursement. So that was a fluke of COVID. That is not a standard trend, and we're kind of back on the standard trend again. So looking at historically, now when we're talking averages, because I'm going to quickly compare us

046to neighboring districts, because I don't know our neighboring districts weighted average meal prices, because I don't know what percentage of elementary, middle, and high school, we're going with a straight average. So elementary price plus middle price plus high price divided by three. So we were before COVID at 290. I need glasses for that, $2.90. Then we had two years of universal free meals, which was fantastic. So we didn't have any meal prices, which was great. And now then we raised it to $2.95, $3.05, $3.15. And so what we're proposing is an average, when we're talking straight average, of $3.25 for lunch and $2.18 for breakfast. Looking at the surrounding districts, this past year we were higher than a lot of our counterparts. The reason why is a lot of them have not increased prices since

047COVID. When I was talking, I called all these directors just today to make sure what their boards have approved or are planning to approve. And you see that Blue Valley is going up 30 cents. DeSoto is going up 20 cents. Auburn Washburn is going up 40 cents and had a significant increase last year as well. They're catching up by doing a large price increase in one year, whereas we have, as you saw in those last charts, have been just steadily chipping away at it and hoping that that... is less dramatic of a change for our families and more manageable. We always do want to encourage families, every family, to fill out a free and reduced meal application. It's vitally important. We know there are families out there who qualify for free and reduced price meals

048who aren't filling out the application. We're happy to meet with them to help them fill it out, to help them fill it out over the phone. Whatever it takes to help families fill out that free and reduced application because we want everyone who does qualify for free and reduced price meals to qualify for free and reduced price meals. We'll go on to the next slide. So what the proposal that we're bringing to you today to be voted on I believe next week or next next board meeting will be a 10 cent increase across the board elementary, middle, high for breakfast and for lunch. With an adult meal price increase of 10 cents as well adult meal price as a like side note You know a strict at the bottom we're required by federal law to

049cover the entire cost of producing the meal for adult meal prices So that's why it's we're hitting 510 that's With what we're projecting of our food increases for next year, that should be fine. We do not know what the federal reimbursement rates are for next year yet. They will not be released until mid-July. And obviously, we don't know what the future holds for food prices and supply prices for next year. So we're, you know. making the same educated guesses on our family grocery budget for next year as a standard household would. So at that time, with that, are there any questions I can help answer? So just to... Before I open it up to questions, I just want to remind the board that as part of our legislative priorities this year, and I'm guessing likely

050next year, we did advocate to provide universal meals free to all students, and we'll continue to do so. I also want to just clarify that when a family fills out a free and reduced lunch form, it also qualifies them for fee waivers, correct? So they fill out the free and reduced... price form and then if they qualify for free and reduced price meals they have to fill out what's called a consent for disclosure form because the data that we receive we are not allowed to share with the financial office unless that form is filled out. So there's one additional form that has to be filled out by federal law because we have to protect that free and reduced data. very purposefully and confidentially. Okay, thank you. Okay. And then now, just a second. I'm going

051to open it up to questions. Start on that end. Who has questions? Can you? Okay, well, GR, we'll start at you. I just have one. Because it's one that I... I tend to bring up all the time. So for free and reduced lunch and then for fee waiver, I always just, it's less of a question and more of a statement of just for the public as a reminder that there are more reasons to qualify for that outside of financial. Absolutely. And so if you would go into some of those other reasons why people might qualify just in case they're not aware. Absolutely. So you can qualify based on income. So that's the free and reduced application. You can also qualify if you qualify for food assistance, temporary assistance for families. If your kid is in

052Head Start, if the family is declared homeless, migrant, runaway, foster children. Some of that data we get directly from the state and we're able to qualify that way. But let's say you just qualified for food assistance, you can fill out an application, mark that on the application and it'll help us process it faster. And we always say if you're not sure, fill out the application because we are happy to process more than, you know, to make sure that we're catching everyone who needs that support. We don't want anybody left out. So I would just emphasize that includes unhoused families that would qualify under McKinney-Vento as well. Thank you. Yeah. And just to clarify that if the board opted to... offset some of the cost it would have to come through general this is a question

053for Cindy it would have to come from the general fund you cannot use capital outlay dollars for this expense. Correct it wouldn't qualify for capital outlay and so we would need to transfer money from either general fund or our local option budget our supplemental general fund into food service. The buckets that we talked about right now we just have food service income less expense. our balance is declining and so it may get to the point where we have to transfer money over from general fund. Okay. Other questions? This is my last question. We have historically had families who have carried a debt and then we have had assistance from the community to help. Can you just talk about that since we are in conversation about this right now, what that's been like for families? Do

054you remember? Is it 22,000? We had so we have a meal support fund where we take donations. We take donations all year and then we gift out of that fund in December and then in May to families that have negative account balances that have been unable to pay off those meal balances. We have a committee that looks at them. We prioritize families who had a negative debt and then qualified for free meals or families who were accumulating a negative debt and qualified for reduced price meals. So putting in an application helps. us determine who can who can get a who might get a gift from the meal support fund. We do have donors who donate to a specific school. So we've we had a large donation to Lawrence High this year to Sunset Hill to

055West and those funds go specifically to kids only at those schools. So we do honor specific schools or district-wide meal support fund. If folks wanted to make a donation, what is the process for them to do that? So they can reach out to the Lawrence Schools Foundation, or we are going to be getting the link on our website back up and running. It was from a previous, every year we have to reset those, so we need to reset the next one for the upcoming school year. And just to GR's point, when you are a family that fills out the form for free and reduced lunch, that's based on your income from the year prior. But if a circumstance comes up, you can become eligible within a period of time, correct? Yes. At any point that

056your income changes, you are eligible to reapply. And then once you qualify for a year, that qualification holds for the remainder of the school year. So let's say you lose all of your income and jobs in October. That free status, because you don't have any income, will hold all the way until the next school year, even if you do find a job. in that meantime in order to help you get back up on your feet. Okay. And then just to reiterate, we feed every student that shows up at our buildings regardless of whether or not they can. Correct. Yes. Our policy is if a kid wants a lunch, we feed them a lunch. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? This is Carol. Not so much as a question, but a comment. I do know that

057personally at Dillon's, you can select a charity, if you will, if you want your contribution to go to. So I selected Cordley Elementary. And in turn, I saw where Dillon's donated over $1,000 to the Cordley Lunch Fund. So that is another avenue for folks to look at if they are interested in helping local schools that way. Can you say again how you did that, Carol? Oh, yeah. The Dillon's app. Oh, okay. You can sign up as a community. Where you want your contribution to go to, you can sign up there at Dillon's. Thanks. Go ahead, Bob. I'm right now just struggling a bit to understand the why. And not so much that I'm opposed one way or the other, but more my question is, as I'm listening, we have a federal requirement that we cannot

058supplant the free and reduced lunch to finance the paying lunch people. So when I'm listening, I'm saying, okay, so then really what you're telling us is from a federal standpoint, this is a you got to do it. You either got to do it or you come up with the money from somewhere else. Because I'm sitting here going, okay, I don't understand the choice. I don't see a choice. So this is where you're going to get me way into the policy weeds, which I love, but I'll try to keep it really brief. When the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act was enacted, 2010, that was the requirement. So they passed that into law and said, you've got to meet this standard. Really quickly, districts across the country were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we can't increase prices. dollar

059on families in one school year. So then the USDA said okay $0.10 per year until you meet that threshold. If you don't want to hit that floor of $0.10 per year, you have to use non-federal funds. And that was true until 2013. So the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 made it so that if your food service fund has a positive balance at the end of the year, you can request a waiver from putting that general fund money. back in. And in the state of Kansas, because of Kansas cash basis accounting laws, all food service funds in Kansas always have a positive balance. So every school district in Kansas technically doesn't have to put those General fund dollars into it to make up that 10 cent floor even though that was the purpose of the federal

060law back in 2010 but as you could see from the price of the meals versus the price to produce the meal versus the price to That you get for a paid meal like we're losing money on those and at some point that's going to result in a general fund transfer even if you don't do it as a result of the PLE Does that make sense? It makes sense. Okay. It makes sense. Basically what you're telling me is basically our choice is don't do it and pay it out of general fund or do it. Do it. Because if you don't do it, what happens is then you affect your ability to pay teachers and things like that. And that's what you're telling us. Which makes it more understandable. Right. And this is Carol. I echo your

061sentiments and frustration. And we sat here and listened to countless hours of Shannon's reports of about Topeka not fully funding our public schools. And this time about this time last year, we sat here and we listened to reports about the star bonds for the emergency meetings over at the Kansas State House, where our legislators were more interested in funding a dome stadium and luring the chiefs over. And that will, if they were to come over and they have until June 30th to decide on whether or not they want to come to Kansas, that will cost Kansas anywhere between $2 billion and $3 billion to fund a stadium. So we are dealing with a legislature that is more interested in funding a stadium than, you know, in supporting our kids. Thank you. So looking at the

062chart that's kind of tracked the food service ending fund balance. So, you know, we went up with the COVID money and now we're going down. So from what I would see that in two years, we would be out. So I guess my question is, and I'm not saying I want to do this, but my question is, is 10 cents the right amount? So there are multiple levers that we can use to try to level that out. Our goal is to be as... perfectly neutral budget-wise as possible. We don't wanna make money, but we don't wanna lose money. We just wanna break even every single year. So meal prices is one lever we can pull. We're also analyzing the cost of every single entree. We're looking at that over the summer. Pricing that we can get.

063Can we change anything with our menu? The challenge is we want to improve the quality of meals. Higher quality entrees cost more money. So how do we negotiate that? We look at meals per labor hour per kitchen, and there's an optimum efficiency for a kitchen. So we're always looking at are we overstaffed in a kitchen? Are we understaffed in a kitchen? Where can we move our shift people? Are there ways we can generate additional revenue in the food service fund through like a la carte sales? So that's where bringing in additional... vendors at the high school level to sell all the cart things we can we can set prices on those to generate revenue so we're generating off of additional sales but not off of free and reduced price meals so Yes, your concern I

064feel like is accurate and we are also looking at other levers that we can pull to try to sustain What we're doing even if we don't only raise meals prices 10 cents will do as much as we can to pull on those other levers to make sure we're neutral. Have we ever considered like centralizing meal production? I know they do that in Olathe. So, ooh, there's some history to this that I don't know. At one point, we did have some schools that produced and shipped out to other schools. We have never had a central kitchen like Olathe has. That facility is huge. It would be an interesting consideration. There are pros and cons to that, and there are costs to that. And then some argue that the quality of food declines when you cook it

065in a central location and then ship it. out to a location, but there are cost savings potentially available, but you need to have the facility to do that, and those facilities are expensive. And then just building on a little bit about what Carol said and to Ann's point, the last thing that I wanted to talk about was something we talked about a few meetings ago, which was some cuts we had to our ability to purchase food. Is this kind of going? in a different direction, but it's an opportunity to have this discussion. You've done a lot of work, like extraordinary work, trying to improve the quality of the food that we have in our buildings. In particular, one thing that you've done that I am really grateful for is to work with our local producers.

066That has been more, it's become more challenging. Can you speak to that? If you don't mind. Yeah, absolutely. So two pieces to that. One is we do really value our local farmers and our local food procurement. And we want to maintain that purchasing. The challenge is our local products are generally more expensive. We feel like they are the freshest. They are the most delicious. Once again, higher quality products than what we get shipped in off the back of a mainline distributor truck. but they do come with a price tag. So when you start looking at what levers can you pull to make sure you're breaking even, That's one that is in the mix. It's not the one that I would pull first. There was the local foods for schools, which was a federal program that

067gave us about $86,000 over the last year and a half for local beef. We were able to utilize that money and we were anticipating that that funding through USDA would be renewed and then in the last six months, three months, that... funding stream was taken away. So we use that to purchase local beef. We're bummed that it's not there. That means that we just have to go back to our mainline distributor to purchase ground beef, which is not as high a quality and doesn't support the local agriculture or the local industry as much as we would like. But we have to, once again, balance the cost of the local food versus the cost from the mainline distributor. Okay, I appreciate that. I don't appreciate that, but I appreciate it. I understand, yeah. Other questions? Okay.

068Okay, so we will take a vote on this at our next meeting. Perfect. Thank you for spending time with us tonight. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Okay. We're gonna move on to agenda item 5.1, which is our equity update, the 2024 annual graduation report. Dr. Swift, I believe you're gonna lead this discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. I'm really pleased to be able to bring kind of on our new rhythm of equity reporting, taking opportunities to zero in on particular components of how we measure whether we're living our mission of equity. And nowhere is that more clearly seen than in that culminating piece of data, which is our graduation. I appreciate all the administrators who are joining this evening representing the work that goes on in the district. My job is to open

069for them, and I'm excited that they're going to be able to share great work with you. I think you know them. But they'll say their names as they come up, so we'll save that time there. But there they all are. Very proud of that group. I know you've probably all heard about Sonny and Gizmo, the big bear bald eaglets who have taken flight for the first time. This scenario is really about three eaglets and unfortunately one did not survive but two of them did. They are now three months old and I think they have millions of followers on their cam. Everyone has eyes trained on when they might fly. The big bear society that kind of watches over them and caretakes the area. I love the quote that they shared the other day. First of

070all, Sunny flew first in case you haven't been following them. And so then everyone was trained on gizmo. And the quote was, she will fly when she's ready. And so I just wanted to share with you, you have to see this to fully appreciate it. Here goes gizmo. And that's how it goes. Our eaglets take flight not after 12 to 14 weeks, but literally after 13 years with us in public schools. We feel like when we look at big batches of data that it's important for all of us to remember the faces and names behind those numbers. And so I asked, I had the opportunity over previous weeks to visit with members of the class of 2025. And tonight at a couple of points in this process, we'll share with you their voices and their

071experiences, because I feel like that's the best way for us to keep our eyes trained on the goal of having our eaglets ready to fly the nest. Here they are. made my high school experience so significant and I think what makes a lot of other high schoolers experience so profound is the fact that everyone finds something and then you're left with skills, passions, and potentially something that you want to spend the rest of your life doing. So I sort of think that that transcends, you know, just the high school experience. Your experience at Lawrence High School is defined by what you get involved in, not just through your classes but also through either sports or clubs that you join. Sports in particular is something that has changed my life especially coming out of COVID when

072I was almost depressed in a way very mentally fatigued and physically fatigued as well. Sports really helped me to dig myself out of that trench and really express myself again. I would say the 3C experience is very inclusive and full of community. Our Firebird spirit is very strong. It's really about finding whatever fits you in and really gives you the experience that you're looking for. Harvard was the one thing for me that I just took a shot on. You know, I joined it because I thought, why not? And it really gave me so many opportunities I didn't think I'd get. Honestly, it's taught me so much. It's helped me do so much. It's allowed me to do so much. It's amazing. The Lawrence High School experience, there really are a whole bunch of different nooks

073and crannies to explore, a place where you can go to really discover your passion. I transitioned to LVS in eighth grade and at the same time I started pre-professional ballet training. Because I do ballet again I do it six days a week, four and a half hours or even more a day. So all of my high school has been virtual as well as eighth grade. Overall my experience with LVS was wonderful because it allowed that flexibility but I think It just feels very rewarding, I would say, knowing all of this is coming to an end, I guess. And those are the voices of the class of 2025. Their voices reveal our work, and the data reveals our work. So as we work through the progression of the data this evening, I just want to share

074that I believe very deeply that the better we know our data, And the better we listen to the voices of our students and families and staff, the more informed our work is on the ground. And so the administrators will be coming forward and sharing some of the work that they do on the ground. It doesn't happen by accident that students graduate in four years. They graduate in four years due to very focused and determined work. Rather than burying the lead, I'll just preview what you'll see this evening. And that is you'll see a couple of celebrations. One is that over time, actually over a 10-year period of time in the Lawrence Public Schools, the four-year on-time graduation rate, that trajectory has improved. What we'll see is a big upswing around COVID. And then we're now

075kind of hitting a new baseline, but it's at a higher level and we're very proud of that. Secondly, we celebrate. that four and five year graduation rates have increased over time among five student groups that have been traditionally underserved. So you'll see with African American, Hispanic, multiracial, students with disability, and students experiencing poverty, you'll see an overtime increase in that graduation rate. There are also concerns that inform our work. First is that while we have an overall positive increase in four-year on time, we witness that we have continued disparities. And those disparities fall across groups of students, African American, Native American, English learners, Hispanic. students with disabilities and students experiencing poverty as measured by their free and reduced lunch status. Out of those disparities, I just want to set out that there is a critical

076concern to areas where not only do we witness disparities, but we see those disparities widening over time. And I appreciate the conversations that we've been having around how this. very much informs our immediate next steps and we'll be talking about those next steps here in a few minutes. Those two areas where we see that disparity gap widening are among our Native American students and our English language learners. So obviously we are about the business of supports. And we know that our system is getting exactly the outcomes that our system is designed for. So if we want better or different outcomes, which we do, we are looking at redesigning and increasing the level of support so we get those better outcomes. With that... We know that our supports fall into a variety of buckets of concerns,

077concerns that present barriers or hurdles that may slow or take a student off track for graduation. Not a surprise to members. You all have been around this work. for a while, but we think of that bucket of social-emotional, mental health supports, engagement and motivation of students. We were talking the other day and talking about there are some students that maybe just don't have the desire. Well, then it's our job to help them connect to a passion or a desire. So we think about attendance, academic supports, about skills, but also about catch-up, keep-up on academics in terms of credit recovery or getting assignments in. And then Mark Pruitt, Principal Pruitt, will be sharing with you more about that diploma completion. program. We have a group of students who are enrolled right now to get their final

078few credits this summer. And those students who are not able to meet that mark Principal Pruitt will be talking to us about how we connect them over to diploma completion programming, specialized programming. So Principal McInerney is here to talk to us about that welcome connection and communication. So important. Yes, thank you, Dr. Swift, and thank you for letting us present tonight. I am Amy McInerney, principal at Free State High School, and the focus of our first slide up here is about welcoming, connecting, and communicating with students and families because we know that if students feel safe in our space, they will be much more successful and more likely to graduate. And leading up to graduation doesn't just happen in the high school level. It starts back in the pre-K, those little eaglets. like Dr. Swift

079was referring to, but it does take all of those years, but tonight we'll just be sharing some of the things that happen at the high school level. So the first thing up there on the slide talks about our Link Crew program, which you've probably heard about. That is our upperclassmen who lead the Jump Start Day for all ninth graders. They do small groups after some chaos in the gym. They'll do small groups of tours. They'll answer questions and really just building that connection. That's kind of our ninth graders go-to is that one upperclassman throughout the year. We're trying some peer tutoring for math and science which again is another connection. Usually those are juniors or seniors who are going to tutor our freshmen and sophomores and again it's all about connection. Math and science is

080important but it is about connection as well. Our administrators, our counselors, and our social workers have alphabet meetings every week, and those meetings are to look at attendance, behavior, and academic data. If they need to touch base with families, they will, and students as well. We show the families that we care and that they've got a team that's behind them. The fourth bullet is probably one of the most important, I feel, in the last five years, that mental health support. We've got great social workers and counselors who help students overcome those barriers. Maybe they need clothing. We have clothing closets. We have hygiene products. We have places where they can shower. And we've got also... non-perishable food items as well. So we don't want any of those resources or lack of those resources to interfere

081with students participating or attending and being successful. One thing that we forgot to mention up there is that second chance breakfast that's been in place the last few years. That has been a huge success. Just give students another meal, whether they're on full pay or free and reduced. It does give them another meal in the mid-morning. And then last of all, ongoing communication with families. That happens all four years. Again, it's that team behind you trying to help you cross that finish line. So to be honest, the freshman... senior year in the spring we do a lot more communicating with those parents and families of students who are on the bubble because we want them to graduate receive that diploma very very important so that's that spring is really when we start to push heavily

082for them to be successful even though we've done it all four years it's now is now's the go time that is the end of my slide I think Mike is up next I'll turn it over to him All right, good evening. My name is Mike Gilman, Associate Principal at Lawrence High School. It's really nice to see you guys. Just like Amy had talked about, sometimes we often talk about the high schools and, you know, how comparison kind of deal, but really everything that she said is kind of reiterate what we do at Lawrence High. And then I just wanted to go over a few items that we kind of do here. But the main focus I really want you to understand is the student support team. That student support team is vital to what we

083do in our success in our high schools. From beginning till end, whenever we communicate with families, we introduce our counselors. We do our social workers, our RAP workers. Everybody is a part of this whole entire system and families are super supportive whenever we start reaching out to that. So we really highly encourage parents to always reach out to us. If we get caught in a situation where we're losing a little bit of credit, so we may have failed a class and so forth, we have an Odysseyware program we do for credit recovery. Our student support teams will come in and identify students at those weekly meetings to decide and kind of decipher what we need to do with our students to make sure they're on the right path to recover some of those credits they

084may have missed or they need to earn toward the end and to recover some of those credits to graduate. After school tutoring we have the Chesty Academy at Lawrence High School. It's an opportunity for kiddos to go to a tutoring session. We have the University of Kansas students that come in at lunchtime and have different tutoring opportunities for them as well. So that works out really well for us. Students try to take advantage of that but with that small window of lunchtime we try to get them in and out as fast as we can but also support them where we need to. Summer school, we're in the midst of summer school right now as it stands. We are doing extended summer for these students that didn't quite pass their class, but almost. We have that

085opportunity for them in the summer to really kind of push ahead and try to get those credits earned as soon as possible. So we had a great amount of kids recently come in, pretty excited about getting their stuff done, and they know that's really important to their information. AuditSaware, like I said at first, also is an option for them to use. So a quiet time, come into our building, recover those credits during that time. So that's really cool to see. And then I'm going to pass it on to Mark here in just one second, but this is part of that student support team that we have. have these layers to help us to the next level. So if a student is not being supporting, you know, having that support that they really, really need, we

086try to find them more support. So we reach out to our academy, Lawrence Virtual School, C-Tran, all these different options that we have. But we're in constant communication with all administrators across the district. I know sometimes Amy and I, we talk about students that transfer from us to them, and we have that conversation to make sure they stay supported at all times. I'll turn it over to Mark. So thank you so much. Hi, I'm Mark Pruitt. I'm the principal of the College and Career Academy, as well as the Adult Ed and Diploma Completion. So I want to share a little bit of a specialized program that just as part of the layers is the College and Career Academy is designed for students who they maybe just don't quite fit in at a big, large 6A

087high school. Students who tend to be more internalizers, they pack stuff in. Big high school. There's just too many people too much noise too much going on the academy provides an opportunity to be in a smaller quieter space I talked to several graduates that were Talked about the opportunity that being at the academy was the difference between them staying in school and graduating We're just saying it's too much and dropping out. So we provide those different opportunities for students to find a niche, find a group, and connect with teachers, connect with each other, and finish school. Then another important part is the Career Tech Ed pathways. While I'm at the College and Career Center, most of our pathways are actually located in our high schools, and then we have some that have specialized facilities like

088a large commercial kitchen or a large weld shop or an auto shop. But for a lot of students, finding that career connection through CTE pathway becomes their hook to staying in school. They have a love of working on cars. They can put up with getting through their core classes because they want to go work on cars. I'm reminded of a student that I knew at Lawrence High that was kind of adrift and kind of bouncing around and frequently in trouble, found his niche in a career pathway and has just torn it up academically to get stuff done. in his core classes, but is also connected to local businesses. So when he graduates, he will step into a high paying job. So it provides those opportunities as well. And then I want to talk a little

089bit about AVID. I know that you saw the student from Free State talk about being a part of AVID and the importance that it was for them. I want to talk a little bit about AVID schoolwide. I was at Lawrence High when AVID launched, what, 10 plus years ago, and I've seen the importance not just of the students who are in the AVID elective, but the powerful and robust professional development when you have AVID school-wide. So it benefits not just the students who are in the program, but it benefits every student in the school. And so it provides those key academic soft skills. opportunities to see some hope and visit campuses and realize a dream while also building those relationships. I am going to turn it over now to Zach to talk a little bit

090about the LVS program. Hello, I'm Zach Harwood, principal at Lawrence Virtual School. Yeah, I'm just going to speak really quickly about some of the things we are specifically doing to support students at LVS. You know, basically all of our supports are built around the idea that a connected student is a successful one. To that end, kind of our tier one support is our homeroom model. Every student who comes to LVS has a teacher. If you're in the high school level, it'll be the same teacher for all four of their years that they meet with one-on-one at least once every other week. We have plenty of students who meet more frequently than that, but the idea is that that is their go-to person for not necessarily like curricular concerns, but help navigating a system or help

091with other problems. This year, with the addition of our Dean of Student Engagement position, we were able to start offering extended online support two times a week for two hours, as well as some in-person support that is currently here at the ESC where students are able to come in twice a week. for two hours just to have some of that structure that virtual school I think kind of naturally lacks. Another thing that we've been really or that I've been really excited about recently is figuring out how we can plug into other programs, other schools within the district. I think we have a lot to offer students. We've had some really, I think, some successful partnerships with Jenna and her students. And then in the future, looking at how do we plug in to the academy,

092both so that they can have some of the, you know, the classes, the offerings that we have that they maybe don't, as well as can some of our students, you know. get some of the structure and support that they have there. So I'm really excited to keep developing those partnerships to benefit every student district wide, not just the LVS community, but to provide new things to them as well. I think I'm gonna turn it over to Jenna. Good evening. My name is Jenna Viscomi and I'm the administrator at Community Connections at Pinckney. I'm going to talk a little bit about C-TRAN and Project SEARCH. Some of our little eaglets require more than 13 years of learning and engagement and those are our students that we serve through C-TRAN and Project SEARCH. So to ensure students

093with disabilities graduate and reach their positive post-secondary outcomes, we provide tailored support that addresses both functional academics and non-academic needs. This includes implementing individual education plans that set clear, achievable transition plans and goals. We support strong collaboration amongst our staff and families ensuring consistent communication and early intervention when the challenges arise. Additionally, we have a strong and supportive school culture that promotes high expectations and celebrates diverse abilities which empowers our students to stay engaged and reach their post positive or their positive post-secondary outcomes. We're going to share the video. Is that okay? Yeah. Right on. Project SEARCH is an international work experience program that was started in 1996 at Cincinnati Children's Hospital by Erin Riley and Susie Rakowski. This Project SEARCH partnership was created to not only intentionally represent diversity within the workplace, but to

094also empower businesses to take ownership in decreasing the employment and wage gap for people with disabilities. Hey, I admit it. Work helps my mental health. LMH Health is a community-owned hospital here in Lawrence, Kansas. It became a partner with Project SEARCH in 2011 when Project SEARCH was brought to Kansas and specifically to USD 497. My name is Jackson. At LMH Health Recycling, I did the sanitation route. I pushed a big cart and gathered cardboard, trash, and linens and put them into different chutes. At Lawrence Memorial Hospital EVS services, I learned how to navigate the hospital by picking up trash and linens from all the floors. Put away your supplies and did some deliveries for Shane. LMH helped Materials Management add pulled orders, put them into totes, and put the totes on the cart and deliver

095kits to the mother-baby unit. Check the oxygen machine to see if it's good or not. On 2 North, I learned how to do lemon for the patients and I also stock supplies. At LMH 2 North, I stock the lemons for the patient rooms. The University of Kansas is an amazing place to explore jobs, learn specific vocational skills, and have new and exciting social opportunities. At Monarch Watch, I watered plants, took care of butterflies and caterpillars, packaged kits and information, cleaned and cleaned cages. I like taking care of the creatures and doing the ritual-like tasks. At South Dining, I was able to explore as many opportunities as I could, a lot more than most places offered me. Serve food, learn stocking, make sandwiches, cook in kitchen settings, the list could go on. As you can imagine,

096it's a lot, and I've never been more thankful. At KU Rec Center, I did dry mopping, recycling, vacuuming, and laundry. I rode the KU bus independently from the classroom to the Rec Center. My favorite part of age back is filters and working on a probe. I also like it because it's a career I can be proud of. Several of you were in attendance at the Project SEARCH graduation and a good portion of the KU cafeteria team was there and partners. their food and nutrition team were out to support their interns. It's not that they make space for our folks, our students, it's that they welcome and celebrate them at a level that is just beyond and it's so wonderful because of the opportunities that our students have as a result. Principal Pruitt, were you going

097to, we have this bridge, you'll see five-year data and four-year data, so this bridge to diploma completion, we want to touch on that. So as Dr. Swift talked about our Eaglet earlier that she'll fly when she's ready to fly, not all of our students are ready to fly in four years. And so when I look at the efforts that teachers put in, administrators, counselors, all of these supports, social workers. wrapping their arms around students, some are just not ready to get it done in that four-year or even that five-year program. So I am really excited that Lawrence Public Schools offers opportunities for people to slide back in when they are ready and find that success. If you'll notice, some of those graduates that were celebrated that Thursday the 29th. Some of them graduated with their

098class in a different way. Some graduated a year or two. Some graduated 20 or 30 years past their graduation date. But we had an avenue for them to come back and achieve that goal. So the Lawrence Diploma Completion Program, we kind of have two. two ways for students to get that done. The diploma completion is for a student to come in and they knock out credits using Odysseyware and it's class by class. We can provide credit for work done. We find ways to help them bridge. what they need to get done so that they can graduate. We kind of have two programs. High school age students are required to attend 20 hours a week because we know having them in a seat getting stuff done, they'll be more productive. I think of a student who

099kind of floundered through high school. Social aspects were way too distracting. Ended up moving into diploma completion the spring semester and got more credits done in diploma completion in two months than he had the previous three years. So it provides a really distilled way to get that work done and move forward. For students who are fifth year seniors and above, they have the option to work at home, but they come in to take tests. Because we know there's lots of ways to answer questions on an online format. So our kind of our quality control is can they pass the test and they do that in person. That allows flexibility for people who are working to work around their job schedules. so the the balance between being able to work and focus and The ability to

100do your schoolwork allows people to be successful Then our adult ed program is the the GED program that runs sort of separately, but again We are one of three public schools in Kansas that offers a GED program it also offers English language acquisition, so ELL support, basic education, so maybe you already have your diploma, but you need to boost your reading or math to move into a higher paying job, that provides those opportunities as well. Thank you. Thanks. So these strategies are all the work that go into achieving the data that you're about to see. And I just want to thank our administrators for taking time on a June evening to share out of the work that you do. And here are the outcomes of that work. Mr. Polk is here to share those with

101us. Hi, I am James Polk. I am the Director of Data and Assessment for the School District. Happy to be with you tonight. As Dr. Swift alluded to at the beginning of the presentation, we are seeing this upward trajectory. And so on this slide, you're looking at a six-year trend data. And over these six years since 2019, we've increased our graduation rate 4.5%. As we look at a longer scope going back to 2015, you can see that increase from 2019 to 2024. But you can also see that over that 10-year period. A couple things to note when you look at this data. COVID accommodations in 2020 through 2023, the state requires 21 credits for graduates to obtain their degree. We require 23 as a district currently. And so during those COVID years, we went back

102to the state requirements of 21. We also want to note the success of the academy program opening the fall of 2020. 2020. Those are for students that might be more successful in a non-traditional academic setting and so we can see the results of a program like that opening across our district. We talked a little bit about four-year on-time graduation and we also have five-year cohort data. In the state of Kansas we track both. So five-year cohort data represents students who have completed graduation during that one additional year. Overall our five-year cohort data is higher than our four-year cohort data and we've seen that 3.8 percent increase since 2019 and that's demonstrated visually here on this slide you can see that 3.8 percent increase A couple things that we need to know about graduation rate in

103order to interpret the data. Graduation rate is a nationally used formula. It's the percentage of freshmen who graduate within four years, and this includes a state-defined alternate diploma for students with significant cognitive disabilities. We also want to recognize that graduation rate includes four-year on-time graduates, even if they go into the summer of their senior year. In general, students count towards our graduation rate if we are the last public district in the state of Kansas that they've enrolled with. So if they leave us after their sophomore year and go to another district in the state of Kansas, they'll fall on their graduation rate. Or if they come to us after their junior year, they fall on our graduation rate. And we also want to highlight that students who qualify for C-TRAN and Project SEARCH do count

104to that overall graduation rate. Again, this slide is from last January's board presentation on graduation requirements. You can see on the left the state requires 21 credits. We currently require an additional two units of electives, and so that's where we get that 23 credits for our students to graduate on time. On this slide, you're gonna see graduation percentage by rate and ethnicity. Some celebrations since 2019, we've seen those increases in Hispanic and our white populations and a large increase, almost 8% in our multiracial populations. However, we also want to acknowledge the areas of concern as Dr. Swift stated. We have seen in that six year period, a decrease in graduation rate in our African American and Native American populations. I want to point out when you look at this slide, you're going to notice that

105the large numbers in the column represent the graduation rate of those groups of students. The number underneath is the total number of students in that group. So an example would be African-American students in 2024 had a graduation rate of 84.7%, and that is out of a total of 59 students. The reason we want to highlight that is because every student counts. in Lawrence Public Schools. And when we look at every student counting, we see in 2023 and 2024, a 12.5% decrease in our Native American graduation rate from 87.8% to 74.2%. That's a difference of three students. If we had three more Native students that we were able to support and prop up and get to that graduation, we would have been able to maintain that 87.8%. We also want to highlight our other student groups.

106We know that we have English learners in our district. Over the six-year period that we're focused on this evening, we've seen a 12% decrease in this six-year period. However, we've also seen a large increase in our free and reduced price lunch population of 9%, as well as an 18.7% increase for our students with disabilities and their graduation rate. That's depicted on the next slide a little bit more visually. And you can see over this period we've seen increases in those two student groups we discussed. We've also seen that negative trend line of our ELL students. Our 2024 ELL students represented 53 total students. If we had gotten six more students across that line and provided those supports for them, we wouldn't have seen that drop from 88.5% to 77.4%. We would have been able to

107maintain that graduation rate. May I ask a clarifying question? Yeah, go ahead. With the ELL students and graduation rate, do you count them as ELL students if they ever received ELL services or if they are currently still within the ELL program at the time of graduation? The way that we report it to the state is if they are currently classified as an ELL student. Okay, thank you. On this slide, We wanted to position the data so you could see the degree of disparity. We want to highlight the celebrations where we see where we have upward trajectory in these student groups, where we've narrowed that achievement gap. But we also want to highlight the gaps that are not trending in the right direction, the gaps that are widening. And that is specifically with our Native American

108population and our English learners looking at... that disparity gap of 13.1% and 10%. As we look at our own graduation rate, it's also important to zoom out. and take a look at what's happening around us. On this slide, you'll notice our four-year on-time graduation rate related to the state and how we compare. Since 2019, we've reduced the difference between the state graduation rate and our district graduation rate by more than half, from 4.7% to 2.2%. That's a huge celebration, but we also need to acknowledge that our goal is to be better than the state of Kansas graduation rate and to exceed that 89.5% that they accomplished in 2024. Zooming even further out, we want to look at the nation's graduation rate. Something to note on this slide, you'll notice the data is from 21-22. That's

109the last national graduation rate data that we have access to according to the National Center for Education Statistics. So please keep in mind this is not the 24 data, this is 21-22. But you'll see the U.S. graduation rate that year was around 87%. The state of Kansas was 89.3%, and this is that year we saw that uptick that Dr. Swift talked about, and we achieved an 89.6% graduation rate. We've since seen kind of more of our baseline data, around 87%, but in this year, we can see how we compare it to not only the state, but also the nation. So we know that this data informs our work, and members of the board, we have all our eyes open. We understand the assignment and that is that the work we do make the difference between

110not having a graduation and having the life choices that high school graduation brings for all our students. Those inspiring stories and I just want to give a shout out to Andrew who put together that video. Julie actually shot some of the video and there's much more of that on our podcast. If you enjoy hearing the voices of students, I urge you to take a few minutes while you're on a drive or on the treadmill just to listen to their voices. We understand the assignment and that is to overcome the obstacles and barriers that get in the way of an on-time. graduation for every child. Our goal is 100%. So as we look at the next steps, we know that our counselors and administrators, the other day I reached out through our principals, was able to

111understand exactly how many of our students who did not meet the mark just now in May that are currently enrolled in summer school. And a subset of that group, how many of those are attending their summer school classes and how many of those are not attending their summer school classes. And so here, as we move through the summer, we'll be closing that bridge. If you'll go to next steps, please. You're there, okay. Very good. We'll be closing that bridge to really get those students into that fifth year because we know every day that passes is a day that they may lose hope, move out of town, do whatever the next step is, and we want to be sure to get them to graduation our best. chance of that. Mark talked about some do it quickly,

112some do it in a couple years, some do it later in life. We right now are focused on getting our 2025 grads to do it ASAP because we know that's our best way to get them to achieve that goal. We will be continuing, as you would expect, with our incoming 10th, 11th, and 12th graders this fall. to monitor closely where the credits are dropping and how to get those made up as we go. That's the work this team does every day. I do want to share that we've targeted some additional FTE and we're working with our partners at NASS and our partners across all the high school campuses. Some of the stories that we heard Member Byers helped us at the equity advisory. We heard some stories there of students who are members of Native

113American tribes who... The stories are heartbreaking and we know that we need more direct support to just make sure that that relationship is strong and that we have the supports in place. We will also similarly refine our immediate action plan around English language learners. So both of those action plans with Native American students and with our EL learners. will be refined and strengthened and members will continue to update you on the steps that we're putting in. But I wanted to share this evening and the board has called on me in the past to consider the additional support. And I just want to share that we're taking that step. So I just appreciate your patience. We've gone on much longer than usual. Following this next slide is a bunch more info that is pertinent, but we

114just had to cut it off somewhere. So we'll wrap up at this time, and the team is available for questions or discussion. Thank you. Okay. I have a question, so I'm going to open it up to the board first and start with GR this time and back. Okay. Shannon? I have a couple questions. Okay. So going back to Mrs. McInerney's part of the presentation, talking about the importance of mental health supports and engagement and relationships for students, I've heard some concern in the community already about... the difficulties that Burt Nash is facing with their own budget and support for their services and wondering if there's any information for the district to share about our ongoing commitment around supporting student mental health in light of some of those concerns that have been expressed. Thank you for

115that question. We are still processing exactly what it all means. This board and our team are deeply committed to providing the mental health supports that our students need. We all know that, and yet we are working through the details of where those cuts will impact and how to minimize the impact of those reductions. Principal McInerney if you know more than we do on the ground. No, I don't have any new information. I can tell you at Free State, though, one of our Burt Nash workers left us mid-year and has not been replaced at this point. So we just are down to one. And she is very, very busy. So it would be excellent if we had two back. Also, as a parent of a free state student, I just want to share that I appreciate

116the level of communication I receive from the parent perspective. I am hopeful that the new communication tools that we are rolling out for the district helps you help families have... more even more easy access to that really important information that you share. So I just wanted to comment on that. And then the final question I had was just when you know what the timeline will be for further updates on efforts around the initiatives that we're looking at to support our students who need support. Just an update to the board on the timeline for follow-up on that would be helpful. Thank you. From a process perspective, those updates are first now going to the Equity Council for our committee for their input and feedback before they come to the board, correct? To those of you that

117are on that committee, is that correct? Yes. Yes. Okay. To the extent that that's possible. Yeah. Okay. Okay, Carol. Yes. Can you please turn it to slide 22 if that's possible? I just um Yeah, that's the one. I know 22 Disparities and rates disparity. Thank you. It is. Yeah, that's it. I don't know. There you go. There it is Thank you Unfortunately, this does shine a light on the inequities that our students of color face, especially our Native American students. This does provide a framework of where we are, what we need to do, and what can be done. But based on the framework that we're seeing, I'm glad that we're here to acknowledge this, but I would also like to ask or inquire What is being taught about Native Americans at number one engagement and

118when we were talking about our littles and what I want I would like to know what's being taught to engage our students because we just finished a no more stones stolen sisters campaign and This right here is where we go missing. It's the omission is where we are missing and I think that's we need to start here Thank you So what might that look like, Carol, for us to start to see? Okay, number one, I would like, thank you. I would like to see or hear from our students who are learning the actual. boarding school history, beginning with the U.S. policies of forced removal of our children, and when it's Orange Shirt Day, when our children wear the orange shirts to acknowledge Orange Shirt Day, it shouldn't be an explanation, especially from some of our

119admin. They've asked in a wholehearted, nice manner, they've asked, what is that? Can you please explain it to me? And so I don't mind explaining, but it shouldn't have to be something where I have to explain every time on Orange Shirt Day when it's boarding school history day. So making sure that we're being more concrete about where is the inclusion of indigenous history. Right, beyond land acknowledgement and red shirt Friday or whatever it is, and just beyond going out and performing in a gym. I would like to hear more stories about people like Billy Mills or just, again, boarding school history or maybe perhaps baby steps to learn some of our indigenous languages in schools. Thank you. Thank you. Ann? Okay. So I have a couple of questions. So I appreciated seeing the data, and

120I think this is coming at a different time, but I'd like to understand the This showed us the graduation rates, but I would like to know where there are successes in places like the number of students taking advanced classes or J-Hawk Blueprint classes in terms of representation. We used to see that data, but just to kind of understand not only where are we seeing graduation rates as the metrics of success, but where also are we seeing... opportunities for our students and their inclusion in our not only just advanced classes but also in other academic and extracurricular activities. And so because I do think when you talked about the importance, Principal Pruitt talked about the importance, I think it was Principal Pruitt talked about the importance of connecting to a For example, you made the connection

121of working on cars as an example, but the connection to things outside of academia or other... Draws for a student and those are often some of our extracurricular activities. So that is something I'm wondering about that's missing from this particular Presentation it just probably wasn't a good fit, but I would like to see it in a in a future Presentation and then I wanted to talk a bit about the 21 credit I just want to understand that a little bit more. So when you look at the four-year graduation rates on slide 22, or you can go to slide 20, and you mentioned in passing that when we increase the 23 credits to graduate, but that hasn't gone into effect. As of the 23 is in effect current for so for this year It's the first

122year though that we would see we wouldn't have seen it in the data here is what I'm saying Do we see it in the 25 you would have seen it in 2024 or 24? Okay, so When we do we know what the relationship is between? The graduation rate and the reduction of credit hours. Do we know we discussed that in our meeting with one of you want to share that? there they're sharing with us is that typically it's not that a student would be at 21 and not at 23. Go ahead guys, you shared in our meeting Thursday afternoon that for the most part students either have the 23 or they're farther short. And I can be really a bit more specific. There was a suggestion that principals would have the opportunity to provide students

123a path toward graduation or diploma at 21 credits if they hadn't met the 23. And I'm just wondering, was that extended to any students or are there any students that... you know, might have been accounted for that are not in terms of graduating. And that's exactly what we discussed is how often are we using that tool. Certainly it's at the administrator, the team, the parent, the students work together, but generally how often are we doing that? Because most students will finish with seven courses over four years. They have an opportunity to get 28. So 23. is not a huge challenge. What we're dealing with often is not that they're at 21, 22 and close. Often they're at 16, 17, 12 or 13. So it's finding those avenues to connect them to get caught up. So

124what I guess what I want to understand is that if a student could graduate at 21, you made you made the pathway for them to do that and folks are nodding their heads. The administrators have the ability to make that consideration. Thank you so much for that. And then I'm wondering, since you're here, Principal Pruitt, is there a wait list for the academy? Pardon? Is there a wait list for the academy? We did not accept everybody because sometimes people aren't a good fit. I'm not aware that we said, oh, we're full, so we can't take anybody else. Thank you. All right. And then can I, sorry, you know, can I go ahead? Okay. They have a lot of patience for me, so hopefully you do as well. The questions regarding early childhood education tracking. So

125we're expanding our early childhood education opportunities. And I'm wondering about. This is probably a leap because that's longitudinal data, but if we could begin to track just at a district level, certainly we know what that trend looks like from national data and state data, but what kind of impact that's having on student success. And one space might be graduation rate because that's what we're looking for today, but it sparked in me an interest of knowing what kind of growth we see for students as it relates to our equity work. who are engaged in our early childhood education programming. And I would be interested and would other board members be? Because we will be investing more resources in that early childhood education is sort of why I'm asking. This is it, last one. Shannon asked this

126question about the distinction between the English language learners being counted in graduation rates as those that would qualify right now. But what I would be interested in knowing about in terms of thinking about equity is again for those students who have qualified at any point, is there something that we know about them that might be important for the board to understand in terms of resource allocation or how we can better support from the board table the success of our students who are English language learners and who in some cases might also be accounted for within the Hispanic outcomes that we're seeing in terms of the graduation rates. And other groups as well. Okay, those are my asks. Other questions from board members? I don't have a question, but just to remind you that in February,

127we voted in starting with the class at Gargers in 2028. We will require 24 hour, 24 credits. Yeah. Thank you, Ann. Okay. One question. Yeah. We're trying to maintain on track with the four-year on-time graduation, correct? So when Principal Pruitt mentioned that some kids come to the academy with 14, 15 credits, during credit recovery, when are we reaching out to the students that will receive that they're not going to make that four-year without some intervention? Are we reaching out? at the beginning of 10th grade year and working to get them there through senior year? Or are we waiting until they are literally in 12th grade and now they're struggling to, and they have to go to summer school. So before we reach the extended time in summer school, are we catching them and trying to

128get them there so that they don't have to do the extended classes? I know that counselors have multiple meetings with students, so there are multiple touch points. So counselors will meet with all of the sophomores. They'll talk about course selections. They'll talk about kind of where their credits are, the trajectory to graduation. They do that all four years. In addition to that, those SST teams, as they meet and start calling in students that are maybe way behind. So students will start on credit recovery, sometimes as soon as their freshman year second semester. You know, for an English class, since you need four, we're trying to get those students caught up from day one. to continue on so that it's not something that waits till April, May of their senior year and surprise, hey, you're not

129gonna graduate. Those conversations have happened multiple times over four years and students have had multiple opportunities to do summer school and credit recovery and different ways to make those credits back. Thank you, Principal Pruitt. And I would just add that I thought I heard from you all that that can even be through an academic support class, that they can do some of that right during their school day. As a 10th grader, they can go ahead and get that credit. Okay, hearing that, my question then is do you have any ideas as to what we're missing? Because if we're sitting here talking about students who we've been working with since freshman year and we come to our senior year and they're in the same boat, my question then becomes what are we missing? Do you have

130any suggestions or ideas as to what? What's going on? That's a great question. As a public educator for 22 years, it's the one question that I ask often, is all the supports that we put in place. I mean, we just gave you a few snapshots of it, but Amy and I could spend the rest of the evening telling you all the supports we have in place. And it becomes that missing part of what are we missing in this part. And it's heartbreaking when we have those conversations in there. our offices with just kind of a give up mentality, but we remind them there's an extra step we could do. We can do this, we can do this. So those are the things that we try to really navigate as much as we can with the

131parents in full constant, just talking with all the time, having constant communication with the families and the kiddos. Yeah, it still ends up at the same point. Obviously we're missing something. And I say that because what I look at is we have the disparities we have. Absolutely. So somewhere something is not being hit. And I'm more of the let's figure that out. I applaud the work that we do. I think we do an excellent job. I'm not criticizing the job. But what I am searching for or would want us to search for is we're obviously missing. a point and I don't know what it is either. And we absolutely agree and that's the substance of our working conversation. I got some clue when I heard the speakers at the adult ed graduation and I went

132back and got to speak with this group again about what I heard is the commonality in those stories was a separation or an isolation. And at some point, And so that connection, and that's why we're talking about an additional FTE that might go to the home, find out where the child is, you know, because I believe as long as they're in school, you all are doing all the things we've talked about. But at the point of separation, there is a vulnerability to lose contact with that child. Amy, you were going to add? Related to that would be attendance. If a child is in school, we can get them through, but we've had probably a decrease in attendance rates since COVID, and our teachers will tell you that that makes all the difference in the world

133in their classrooms as attendance. So if we had a silver bullet for attendance, I think that would make a huge difference. Thank you. Okay. Can you share to Shannon's question when the next update will be? On the equity series, we don't. The next one that's coming is attendance. I'd love to speak with you all, board leadership, as to how to schedule that. We are waiting on that data to be audited, so there's some natural. It will probably be more September, but I need to confirm some details on that. And as you go forward, and I know this is probably very similar to what you've done in the past, but just wanting to say for clarity that as you dig into this as a team and you're working collectively, as you find there are things you

134need from the board, that would come back through the equity council or through you to the board, and as quickly as we can take action, we would want to do that. Thank you so much. We also had the students. The enrollment in advanced and rigorous coursework as well as extracurricular activities, we have that as a report. It's one that will take a lot more intensive data accumulation. But that is on our list because I think it's very important. Thank you. Thank you all for coming tonight. We really appreciate your work. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to move on now to item 7.1, which is public comment. And I'll ask my board colleague, G.R. Gordon-Ross, to read. Can we do a break? Oh, excuse me. We have a request for a break. Thank you. We

135will take a break now and come back at 8.20. Thank you for your patience. We're going to move on to item 7.1, which is public comment. And GR, would you please read the board policy? USD 497 Board of Education welcomes public comments and thanks you for taking the time to talk to us about our policies and procedures. We set aside this time during our regular meetings to hear from the public. Patrons who wish to participate in public comment must email publiccomment at usd497.org by noon of the day of the board meeting to participate in person. Information provided will make it possible for district staff. or the board to follow up with you as necessary. This is your time to share your opinions. However, a public comment is not the appropriate forum for making complaints about

136specific staff or students. If your comments relate to complaints concerning students or staff, such complaints must be addressed to district staff as provided under board policy KN and GAE. The board president and presiding officer of the meeting may direct that a public comment request be redirected to staff to comply with board policy, including and or to protect the privacy of individual staff or students. If you need assistance in sharing a complaint or concern with district staff, please let the board clerk or other district staff know. Topics discussed in board comment shall be germane to the business of the board. Furthermore, comments must comply with standards laid out in board policy GAE and board policy JGECA. Comments or acts that are threatening to staff, the board, or others in attendance, including the use of language or

137behavior that is disruptive of the board meeting, will not be permitted during public comment. In addition, because students may be in attendance or watching online, members of the public will refrain from using foul or obscene language. The district assumes no responsibility and or liability for the information shared during public comment. The views expressed are solely those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Lawrence Public Schools. The board president or presiding officer will invite comments on topics not included on the meeting agenda at the beginning or end of each meeting. Comments related to agenda items are welcomed after the board has had the opportunity to discuss the topic. Limit your comments to three minutes. Patients who are unable to comply with the above procedures may email their comments, viewpoints to the

138board at schoolboard.usd407.org. Thank you. So, Michael? Michael? Am I able? Michael, we can't. Oh, you can hear me? We can now. That's the difficult thing about this WebEx thing. But good evening, everyone. And I wanted to start with just a little comment. I've said that a number of times. And I don't understand what's going on with the board. I look here. And I see a comment from Dr. Courtney talking about book banners trying to usurp an issue. I don't remember anybody wanting to ban a book. Why are you guys fucking lying to us? Okay, Michael, that's your warning. A warning? Well, scheissebunde. I don't understand that either. I get a warning at two minutes. Now, if I was in person, where would we be right now? Would you be asking the police to help me

139out? Because that's what you did two weeks ago, what, several months ago, two weeks ago, three weeks ago. You've done it for how many meetings now? They won't help you. Just so you're aware, your politic means your policies are bullshit. Okay, Michael, that's the end of the... No, that's not the end of the... I've got, what, a minute ten left. OK, uh, Carrie, hello. Hello, Carrie, go ahead. OK, four weeks ago after I spoke at a meeting, I was able to talk to and ask questions of two board members outside. Find conversation and we met our and we went our separate ways. Two weeks ago after I spoke, I had a question for you, Miss Kelly, and I decided to turn around and ask you about it in person because I think it's fair for

140me to assume that you would ignore me if I sent it in an email. Not only did you not let me ask my question before getting loud with me, but you said I was being trespassed without telling me what I was being trespassed for. Then I get a permanent trespass letter from Ms. Superintendent that says how I harassed and threatened you after the meeting with no mention of my speech I made during public comment. Do you know that I have our entire interaction outside recorded that proves your accusations are all lies? Also, if I was actually harassing and threatening you, then why in the world would a female police officer with her police dog walk away from me without consequence? I even asked the two female police officers later what I was trespassed for and

141they literally ignored me and drove away. They didn't seem to think I was an unsafe person for asking the question since they just left me there. Don't you all know that in order to trespass someone from a public property you have to actually break a law? I broke no law. Clearly what I have done is hurt Ms. Kelly's feelings by showing that the district provides words to kids this board doesn't want to hear in their own presence. The gross reality is that Ms. Kelly and her pawns have broken my constitutional rights due to the fabricated story that they made up about me to trespass me and they know it. Let me remind you of something, Ms. Kelly. You are an elected official. I can ask you a question after a meeting or even in Walmart.

142That isn't breaking the law. That isn't harassing someone. And that definitely isn't threatening. You aren't giving government, you are giving government officials a bad name. Side note, the mention that I know who drives every car in the parking lot in the unconstitutional trespass letter is absurd. I am lucky to know what kind of car I even drive myself. Something you might know and maybe you should have done your homework on is that when you silenced my mic during my speech at the last meeting to the people watching online, all of your microphones were still on. Ms. Superintendent herself has heard telling Ms. Kelly twice how the district will trespass me. So someone please answer me this in another fancy signed document. What exactly did I say that was threatening or harassing to Ms. Kelly who

143had a police officer and a police dog next to her? Because you didn't produce that in the signed letter. When I put all the evidence together, which is posted on YouTube, it appears that I was really trespassed before Kelly walked outside, but you seem to think that this narrative would villainize me and make a better story for the news, right? The fact is you trespassed me under false accusations, not knowing that the scene was being recorded and I can prove your letter to be defamatory and false. You are not a victim. You all are liars and for what? Because you got butthurt that I told you that the book concrete. I appreciate your coming and getting to hear your perspective. Thank you. Dr. Spies. Can you hear me? We can. Go ahead. Man, I gotta

144say that really sounded like foul language spoken in a different language when Michael was talking there. And you didn't have a problem with that. So why is that foul language allowed? I'm sure there's some German foreign exchange students that are listening that you gotta protect their ears for, right? What's the difference there? So my name is dr. Justin Spies. It's funny how the local Democrats bitch about Trump trying to take away power and limiting protest on campus Which he does but this past year I've seen KU the City Commission and you all start implementing changes to stifle public involvement Why is that foul language? Loud right there. So it's funny how the local Democrats bitch about Trump that B I T C H used like that is allowed but bitch in another way isn't allowed

145is that what that what's going on here? Dr. Speece So I noticed in last week our last meeting you allowed a speaker to say exactly what I just said right there without wanting him either So he was allowed to say heaven forbid I say here B I T C H and I'm allowed to say here now as well Doesn't make any sense so In order to better be able to exercise our rights at your meetings, I'm starting a petition that aims to help citizens know what can and cannot be used at your meetings here. And I'd like for each of you to consider signing it. The name of it is the Full Uncensored Communication at Meetings Petition. And that acronym is F-U-C-A-M, which is pronounced fuck'em. Dr. Spies. And so I would like to have

146you guys consider signing the fuck them petition that I'm circulating. So is it allowed to say fuck them like that? Is that what it is? But you can't say fuck them in a different way? Please do send us the petition. Okay. Thank you. You want me to send you the fuck them petition? Is that what you're saying? Yes. Okay. We can end the comment. Okay. Dr. Courtney? Dr. Courtney, just a moment. Was her comments being recorded? I apologize. Can we start reset? Can we go back to three minutes, please? Thank you. It's been 119 days since my family learned a Prairie Park instructor was arrested for assaulting one of our closest family friends and then learned that they had assaulted at least seven other elementary school students. In that time we've talked to so many

147people, both the families of those directly suspected or secondary victims of this assault, who have shared how the district's silence and or underwhelming response has added to the harm they've already experienced. To Prairie Park parents and teachers who are not returning based on the district's response to this assault. The parents of nonverbal special education students who are terrified to send their children back to school because they won't have any way to know if their children is victimized and little recourse if they suspect they are. We've heard from parents from Schweigler and Billy Mills who still hurt from the secrecy surrounding incidents at their schools and feel that a culture of silence has allowed victimization to continue in the district. We've talked to an increasing number of people. unaware of the allegations against Mr. Gridley, but

148who now want to stay informed of what is happening and are concerned about holding the district accountable to responding appropriately. We've talked to many of you at the district. Despite my last meeting with Dr. Swift and Ms. Jones, as well as my request for follow-up two weeks ago, I have not heard back. We have talked to other parents who have also talked to you at the district, who feel that these meetings have become performative to calm them down, but without follow-up, especially in terms of meaningful action. I had a very hard call today with a professional on the recommendation of a board member with the hope that they could provide advice on implementing a community assault response plan. Unfortunately, it was filled with a pervasive sense of helplessness about whether they felt anything could be

149done not only to help our community as a whole, but even whether there was data on how to even prevent assaults like the ones perpetrated in February against one of the kindest, brightest children I know. This is in frank relief to the kind of advice we've received at the national level, encouraging us to keep working. It's scary to think the board's actions might have been influenced by a similar sense of hopelessness. The district has had four months to step up to help prevent sexual assault in the future and to help heal some of the harm the incident has caused to our community. Instead, it feels like the district may be using victims as a shield for silence at the same time we hear from those same families about the harm the silence is causing. Three

150of you are running for school board again. In the campaign, no one is yet talking about what we can do to do better in this area. I fervently hope and will work to see that change, both for the benefit of survivors and for the safety of all students. I still look forward to any communication I can have with anyone on the board about what concrete steps we can do to make things better going forward. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Courtney. Okay, Dr. Swift, are there announcements? I believe we're all wrapped up. Thank you so much. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Thank you. Have a good evening.