Board of Education - 10/24/16

001We need to call back to order the regular board session for the October 24, 2016 Board of Education meeting. Do a first order of business as approval of the agenda. I'd like to move approval of the agenda with an amendment, please. I would like to amend the agenda to move. the superintendent's report followed by the report of the president of the Board of Education to immediately after the special recognition that we have on the agenda this evening and right before recognition of audience. Any discussion? Do you have a second? I'll second. All right. All in favor? Aye. Okay. So the first item is the special recognition, the Lawrence Horizon Award winners, Mimi Lapiana with Hillcrest and Kelly Stolt from West with Kyle Hayden, Superintendent. So at this time, I'd like to ask this year's Lawrence

002Horizon Award winners, Mimi Lapiana and Kelsey Stolt, to come forward, please. So I was excited to honor these two outstanding teachers with the district's Lawrence Horizon Awards at the end of September. One of our elite partners, Trudy Credit Union, joined me to present them with a $250 check for each of them. The Kansas State Department of Education developed the Horizon Awards to recognize exemplary novice educators during their second year of teaching. We also have nominated Mimi and Kelsey for the Kansas Horizon Award. I'm going to talk a little bit about them so they get to stand there and listen to us praise them. They've done this once before, so now it's a little bit more public. Mimi Lapiana is a second grade teacher at Hillcrest Elementary School. Principal Tammy Becker says Ms. Lapiana has been

003one of the strongest first year teachers she has ever supervised. She provides an exceptional learning environment for her students. It's obvious her students enjoy coming to school and they have a strong bond with their teacher. A colleague shared that Ms. Lapiana began her career with an extremely diverse and large class. She welcomed the challenge and responsibility like a professional. As the year went on, she eagerly accepted the knowledge and help of her peers while bringing innovative ideas and youthful exuberance to her students and team members. She goes above and beyond as an educator, and colleagues predict Ms. Lapiana will be a positive teaching force for a long time. I think I can stop there and applause again. Kelsey Stolt is a functional skills teacher at West Middle School. Former principal Myron Melton said that what

004Kelsey did to create a culture for learning in her first year of teaching was unique. She created a community of support for her kids that includes students, parents, teachers, and paraeducators. As a result, the supported group of students feels connected to their school, they are strong self-advocates, and they are excelling academically. A colleague says that Kelsey's classroom is full of active, engaged, and happy students, all caps, who are achieving beyond what many of them thought possible. They're eager participants not only in her classroom, but in their general education classrooms as well, as they have the support skills and confidence to be successful. I want to thank Mimi and Kelsey for choosing to teach not only in Lawrence Public Schools, but just teach in general. We appreciate the immediate positive contributions they are both making to

005our school community. It's my honor to congratulate them again as this year's Lawrence Horizon Award winners and introduce them to the board and the public. Congratulations. Okay, our next order of business is the report of the superintendent. So my report's a little bit different tonight than what it typically is. Usually I'm talking about a number of different things, but for this report... I plan to write a letter in regards to the equity report to kind of preface the equity report we had tonight and follow up from the last equity report we had at the last board meeting. And for other reasons, obviously, I think it's timely, but I want to start the board meeting with that. Marcel also has a letter from the board that he wants to share. So bear with me as I

006read this. Dear Lawrence Public Schools staff and community, the Lawrence Board of Education's Excellence, Equity, and Engagement goals serve to raise the achievement of all students while closing achievement gaps. To accomplish these goals, significant systemic change is needed, including reflection on personal beliefs to align them with the district's expectations and improve educational practice. Approximately 10 years ago, Lawrence Public Schools began an intensive focus on eliminating racial achievement disparities. The school board contracted with the Pacific Education Group, PEG, to provide training and technical assistance through its framework for systemic equity anti-racism transformation. Foundational to this framework is the Two Day Beyond Diversity Seminar. The board intends for all USD 497 employees to participate in Beyond Diversity, learn how to use courageous conversations about race protocol, which includes the compass, four agreements, and six conditions, and deepen

007their understanding of institutionalized racism and its impact on student learning. Since 2009, more than 1,500 teachers, support staff, administrators, board members, parents, and community partners have participated in Beyond Diversity. The district has developed and the board approved an educational equity and excellence plan and yearly equity goals. We created a district equity leadership team, school equity teams, and a staff of color support group. We hired an equity facilitator who, along with a teacher, received training in order to lead Beyond Diversity workshops in-house. All secondary schools and some elementary schools created student equity leadership teams. The district uses an equity lens to recruit, hire, and develop and evaluate personnel to improve our curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices. Some of our equity goals for 2016-17 school year include continued Beyond Diversity training for all staff, teacher professional development

008around culturally relevant instruction, consideration of enhancements to our discrimination and harassment policies, and engagement of our parents and communities of color in authentic and purposeful ways in which we can raise student achievement. We all We will implement student supports recommended by an LGBTQ plus task force, form an advisory team to solicit input from student groups, continue LGBTQ plus panel discussions, and provide professional development for all staff around those issues. The district also will continue to address equity in technology access, facilities, and resource allocation. Finally, I want to express my own personal commitment to this work. Equity is a fundamental value of mine. I believe all children, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, background, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, or gender identity, deserve a high-quality education. The district's equity journey is a personal

009one, but it's not optional. It's my expectation and the intent of the board that each employee commits to develop knowledge and skills and works to identify and eliminate institutional racism. Lawrence Public Schools must continue to improve by engaging our school community and providing a student-centered system of supports so that all students achieve, succeed, and graduate future ready. With commitment, professional development, and support, we will work together to achieve these goals and live our mission. Lawrence USD 497 is a learning community committed to ensuring educational equity and excellence so that students of all races and backgrounds achieve at high levels and graduate prepared for success in college, careers, and life in a diverse and rapidly changing world. To add on to that letter, I have high expectations for myself for our staff, and for our students,

010and for our entire educational community. I believe we can do better. There's always room for personal and professional improvement. Thank you. Thanks, Kyle. And now I want to read a letter from all the board here expressing some similar sentiments here. Dear USD 497 staff and community, the Lawrence Board of Education shares our community's concerns regarding institutional racism and other social injustices and stands in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, LGBTQ and women's rights efforts and other attempts to bring these important issues to the forefront of public discussion. We know that public schools, as major institutions within our society, have historically helped perpetuate the institutionalized racism and other social injustices that exist within our society, something that still continues to this day. Recognizing this, the board and district began a journey almost 10 years ago

011to address this within Lawrence Public Schools and we invite the community to review the history of that journey on the district's website. The district has made progress due in large part to the equity champions we have at the building and district levels, but the board acknowledges more work is needed to dismantle the institutional aspects of racism and other inequities, obvious and subtle, that still exist within our own district and community. We recognize that there are students, family members, and staff who still do not feel safe to be who they are or to speak out when they or others have experienced injustices, and that is not acceptable. And so the board continues to view equity as a fundamental priority. Toward that end, we annually establish excellence, equity, and engagement goals to reduce social injustices within the

012district and eliminate racial and other achievement disparities. We believe that everyone deserves a safe space to learn and work within, and that all students have the ability to learn and achieve at high levels when given a level playing field. The board also recognizes that the diversity among our student body, school families, and staff strengthens our community and adds richness to the educational experience. Therefore, we've committed to enacting systemic change to create safe and accepting environments to raise the achievement of all students and to close the achievement gaps. The board monitors the district's progress on its goals through regular staff reports during twice-monthly meetings. These public meetings are held on the second and fourth Mondays of the month at the school district office, 110 McDonald Drive. We invite the community to review board agendas, attend public

013meetings, Watch board meeting broadcasts or video archives. Read the district's quarterly newsletter in the Lawrence Journal World. And visit the district website for more information. More information about our equity work. Board members also invite staff and patrons to contact us individually with any questions, concerns, or feedback about how Lawrence Public Schools seek to prepare all students for college, career, and civic engagement. The simple fact of the matter is the board's current makeup necessitates we receive feedback and insights from those students and community members and families who've lived the various social injustices that still plague our community. We want to reiterate that our goal is to provide Lawrence with equitable learning environments where all students, school families, and staff feel safe and accepted. We have this goal not just to improve the educational experience and lives

014of marginalized students, staff, and student families, but to generate greater overall awareness and empathy regarding inequity as our students take their place in the larger world. Our schools are on the front line for creating the change needed to stop the perpetuation of institutionalized racism and other social injustices. We ask that staff and the community stand with us, stay engaged, and help steady us when we occasionally stumble along the path towards equity. Thank you. Okay, next item of business will be recognition of the audience, but there is a statement I'd like to make first before we do that. Just kind of a general reminder, I guess, of protocol with respect to this. The board appreciates patrons taking time to talk to us about policies and procedures. We set aside this time every meeting to hear from

015the public. Your comments should be directed towards board policies or the procedures our administrators establish to carry out those policies. This is not an appropriate time or place for patrons to make comments of a personal nature about any specific district employee or student. Persons making comments which violate the privacy rights of district employees will likely be asked to terminate the remarks. If a patron or parent has a concern with one or more employees, the board will refer that person to the appropriate employee or the superintendent. If the board refers your concern to an administrator for investigation, the board will hear about it in a future meeting, and you can expect the superintendent or another district employee to make arrangements to meet with you at the appropriate time. Feel free to share your concerns, your frustrations,

016but we really ask you to refrain from using personal names for privacy reasons. Thank you for your time to discuss district business with the board. And again, if you have specific concerns, write them down, send them to us. We'll forward them to Kyle, and those will be addressed. So the first person we have is Gary Schmidt. Good evening. I'm Gary Schmidt. I'm the education chair of the NAACP. On October 19th... A parent of a child at South Middle School filed a complaint that a teacher had made racist comments during a class. Superintendent Kyle Hayden suspended the teacher in question with pay and indicated that District 497 HR office would initiate... an internal investigation beginning on 10-20. We understand that details of the investigation cannot be reported on until completion of the investigation in order to

017protect the accused. However, we would like to request... further details on the nature of the process of the investigation and an indication of a projected timeline of this investigation. In addition, we would also like to know what safeguards are in place to protect not only the accused, but the students bringing these accusations. Such complaints are cause for concern in and of themselves, but within the context of lagging graduation rates for black students within the district in comparison to all other racial and ethnic groups, it is of even greater concern. Thank you. Thank you. I should also reiterate that the public comments are not, we don't have a back-and-forth discussion, and typically we have three minutes, and Janice will time you. So the next person is Natasha Neal. That's crazy you said that, because I was

018just about to talk about how these meetings are ran. I didn't mean to the city commission me in, and the way you guys run your meeting is so secure tight it makes no sense. First of all, Janice, is that her name, holds the sign up. You telling us that. We're here to talk about our children. Y'all giving us time frame. Just like when we came here the last time to talk to y'all, maybe two of y'all commented. I remember you said it at the beginning that y'all was going to do the meeting differently. Y'all was going to interact with us because at the commission board meeting, they do that. Like, we come up here to talk. We're not just talking to people that are staring at us and don't have nothing to say afterwards. And

019just so you know, you probably thought I was going to come up here and scream out names. Not all of us came here for that either tonight. But like I said, I don't like the way y'all run these school board meetings at all. And then I get the blank stare. I'm done. Thank you. Next item of business is the consent agenda. Consent agenda items are those that are considered routine and are adopted by one motion unless any board member or the superintendent requests that an item be removed. The item or items removed are voted on separately. Do we have a motion? I have a motion. There aren't any retirements. Okay. I move Board of Education adopt the items listed on the consent agenda. Second. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Next item of business is

020board commentary. Does anybody have anything they want to share? Go ahead, Vanessa. Yeah, so I would let anyone know, if you're interested in having an in-depth conversation, I'm more than happy to meet with anyone individually at any point. So typically our – I know it's structured a little bit odd, but typically our meetings are just for the business that we're going through and it's a set agenda. But you're welcome. I mean, we're public officials that have our information, phone numbers, email addresses published, and we're happy to meet. individually with anyone. So, I mean, I do have a question about the gentleman who asked if we could shed some light on the overall process of an investigation, if we could maybe do that. I think that would be a good place to start. Yeah, please. So

021from a process standpoint, with an investigation, we need to have conversations potentially with students. with other staff members that work in the building. Obviously, as school is in progress, we want to make that as least disruptive as possible to the educational environment because they are there to receive an education. So that is a challenge, obviously, within the confines of a typical school day. So that was going to take a little bit of time. Obviously, during the process of an investigation, there could be unexpected things that surface that could cause whatever would be a ripple effect, potentially, of prolonging an investigation. Out of fairness and to all concerned parties, the district has to be very mindful of the process. and do such in such a way that you mentioned protections, that protections exist for every student,

022for every staff member within the building. So it's difficult for me to pinpoint what a timeline would look like, but that would be the process that would be included. and obviously with the mindfulness of trying to maintain a solid educational environment for our students at all times. I'm sorry if that's too general. I just want to reiterate what Vanessa said. We're open to discussion. I will stay after the meeting tonight if there's anybody who would like to talk with me after the meeting. You can email at any time or call our phone numbers and our emails are on the website. It's part of what I see as my role as a board member is to listen to community members. So it's not that we don't want to hear what you have to say. It's just

023that we ask. that we'd be able to get the business done during the meeting, and that's why we have a particular setup that we use during our meetings. And so I thank you all for coming this evening, and I hope that you do take advantage of those opportunities to communicate with us, to share what you have to say. I will reiterate that as well. I will stick around until afterwards and happy to talk with anybody. And again, just as has been said, call us, email us. Set up a meeting. We can talk in person at some other point, too. If you can't, this doesn't work tonight after the meeting. But, yeah, this is historically how the board meetings have been structured. They're structured in this manner just to get the business done and to try

024to change it on the fly at this point. We can't do that. So anybody else have anything else? So you said that anyone? Yeah, we typically have sign in. Can I ask that you come to the microphone? That way people that are watching at home can see and hear what you have to say. This is not a typical meeting. We are not here for a typical reason. We're here because racism works the way it works, and it has a historical narrative that follows it. So this is not, the people that are here right now don't have time to be here for this today. We're here because this is important and because we prioritized our children as we said inside the school. The reality is that if you can't adjust, then you are perpetuating the exact

025thing that is problematic throughout the school district, throughout our school systems. If we can't make adjustments because people need to be heard and people need to be present in the moment and for you to hear the pain and the realities that we're going through. then you're not really here for it because none of y'all look like us. Do you see the people that you're telling we don't have time for, we got three minutes for, don't look like y'all. Don't live like y'all. This is important. We prioritize the people that we need to prioritize here in Lawrence. And I don't care about the way that we've done it before because racism will continue if you don't stop it. Now, why did we elect you so that you could serve the community? And if you don't serve

026the community in the times of need, especially when there is an open investigation, y'all, I worked in child welfare. I know how these investigations work. And I know how they don't work. And this is not working. Because the people that are experiencing emotional trauma, secondary trauma as well, are right in the back of the room. Pushed out of the room. Understand this is the space that we feel that we have in the back of the room, outside of the room, because we're not welcomed into these spaces to be heard for the way and in the intensity that we need to be heard. Now, if you think interrupting a meeting is problematic, try being a black child in this school district. Try being a black child with any intersectionality in this school district. We feel the

027silence just like this every day, every day. And these individuals that are here in the back are grown-up children that were not served either. And we're here to stop this because this is unacceptable. If this was your children, y'all would be throwing a fit, right? But these are black and brown children. And if we don't acknowledge that, then we're playing games. And I'm not here for that stuff. We showed up to be heard. And this is how we be heard. You invite us up here and you say, I want to hear you because you deserve to be heard. Because this is problematic. And we can stop what we're doing to hear you and to serve the children, right? Because we're not here for the parents. We're here for the children. And we seem to have

028forgotten that. Because these protocols are set up to marginalize and silence individuals as well. Don't keep me out my child's life just because protocol. says that's cool. It's not okay. And we're not here for it. So I'm giving you an opportunity right now to hear the people that took time out of their day to show up. And I can also tell you that in any compassionate conversation, to hear nothing and to be invalidated by not being acknowledged after we pour our hearts out is absolutely unacceptable. I didn't come here to talk to a wall or else I would have stayed at home and recorded a video. So don't treat us like we're not people and we don't we don't need these things we deserve validation just like our children That's why we're here. Yeah, because

029at this point nobody had signed up. So if there are other people who want to speak All right, my name is Trinity carpenter and I'm a senior at the University of Kansas And I am, by all accounts of the principal, the first person that actually called the school and informed her that these things were happening with Mr. Cobbs. And I'm really bothered by that. Can we please not use personal names? Say that again? I'm going to ask you not to use personal names. Yeah, for the investigation. If you could please not use personal names, but feel free to share everything else. Yeah, I appreciate that. I was informed by the principal that this was the first report that that individual ever had, and I now know that's not to be true, that he was actually

030suspended last year for sexual harassment with pay as well and returned to work. I also know that there's many accounts, and no one has displayed shock once they heard who the person was, not one individual. And it makes me pause that our entire... Super like the people had to be aware that this was happening and with that being said I'm upset at myself because the first time I heard it, it sounded so outlandish. I didn't believe it. The second time I heard it, I paused. The third time I heard it, I paused. The fourth time, I was just outraged. Four independent black children came to me and said that this is the experience they were having in that classroom. And with the principal's words, why was this being discussed in a class for ancient civilization

031in the first place for social studies? And with all that being said is... We've showed up to these school board meetings talking about systematic barriers that hinder our children a whole lot. I've been involved in them conversations. I've heard the energy and pain that people's poured into, like, let's address our children. Let's address the quality education our children is getting. And unbeknownst to us, the whole time our kids were getting mistreated in the classroom. And with that being said, like. If you guys don't think we're going to show up for our children, you far mistaken. And the fact that the principal can say within personal conversations that he actually verifies any of that is a problem for me. And also, if you think the outcome of him showing back up to work with suspension, with

032pay, like you guys did last year, is going to fly, absolutely not. And I just need you all to know that. I'm a person who do take education very seriously. I do take disparities very seriously. I'm a senior in the social welfare program. Students of color, I know there's a reason all these disparities exist. And the fact that I'm learning that not just one educator, but multiple educators in this city that they think, and they've even documented in an email that they think white people are genetically superior than their counterparts is a problem for me. Because we are all taught biological determinism in higher education. We were also taught it was faulty logic. We are also taught that it came from social Darwinism and field eugenics. We was taught all of that. And so the

033fact that another educator at the Lawrence High School was allowed to document this in an email, and I was told it went to the superintendent himself, and that another teacher sat in a meeting and watched this female teacher be validated is very concerning to me. The fact that my inbox and my email has exploded with parent after parent. saying that they've expressed these concerns, this individual that most of us are here for today had been doing this. He had a reputation for this. People knew about it. It's very concerning for me, especially when I have a principal tell me that they were completely unaware. And when I have a student telling me no because a student got sent out of class for calling the teacher racist, meaning if a student is sent out of class

034for calling a teacher racist, Was that never explored? And like, no one really can give answers. However, what I do know, like I've said once, and I just need y'all here to, again, there's anybody in the city I'm willing to show up for is our children. And I need y'all. To do the work that y'all say you care so much about. We can sit in meetings and preach to ourselves about the importance of these things, but if y'all not taking it seriously, you're not taking it seriously. And it comes back to the fact y'all just came up with some goals, right? Nowhere on them goals was that the achievement gap between black students and their counterparts in the city is awful. Like, that's what the numbers reflect. And it's not being addressed. And it's not

035being addressed with the same urgency that the community is asking you to. So you guys can attend conferences. You can explore the research. You can do this. But we need actionable things at this point. And this is the first step. The first step is showing action with the teacher you just suspended with pay, which equates to a vacation. If anyone's unaware of that, yes, it's in their contract. But I hope you'll follow example of other people that follow protocols of contract. but also release people from their positions when they cause and harm the children of color, specifically black children. The fact that these conversations was ever said and that he explained to the principal that these conversations came up based on a conversation about the political debate speaks volumes about the state of the nation

036and the state of this city right now. Because racial tensions is real and that's what's happening right now. But two things I wanted to bring up. I know you guys just read lovely letters about equity, and I'm glad we're able to speak now, but you were getting ready to shut us down when you were just talking about equity and your passion to make sure that happens. So that was one. And then two, I've been to two of these meetings within this past month, and I've never heard that statement read until today. I'm kind of frustrated about that. That kind of blew me, kind of, for lack of a better term, pissed me off. Because I never, in the two times that we were, in the past two times that we were here, I never heard

037that statement read. But I feel like you guys knew why we were here and why people were here, and then that statement was read. So those are the only two things I had to say. I'll be brief as well. My name is Kim Nixon. I'm here because I'm a concerned community member. I heard you read the letter of solidarity with Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and LGBTQ and women's rights efforts. And it's very well written. I really appreciate the sentiments in there. And I believe that you do want to. live up to those things. And I just want to quote you one sentence and just talk to you about what's going on tonight. The simple fact of the matter is the board's current makeup necessitates we receive feedback and insights from those students, families, and

038community members who've lived the various social injustices that still plague our community. I really like that statement, and what I'd like to point out to you respectfully is that Those members of the community are here tonight and wanting to talk to you. And I understand that you have structures, but perhaps it's time to think about setting aside time for this conversation. Maybe it would be helpful to consider that at the next meeting. Maybe it would be helpful if perhaps at the next meeting someone could provide us with more information about setting a timeline for this investigation. I understand the need to not interrupt the educational process, but it seems to me that it's already been interrupted by a teacher making racist statements in class. From my perspective, the best thing that could happen is for

039the school to respond by asking those students what they saw and heard, pull them out of class. No one's going to die if they miss 20 minutes of social studies. I think that they would learn a lot from that experience, and I think that you all would too. I think that that's the information that we need. And again, I respect that you have procedures and policies, but it seems that they're... there to protect the status quo and not to really support the goals that are right here in this beautiful letter that you wrote. I appreciate all of you as being members of the community who are spending time working to help better our educational system, and I hope that you will listen and consider these ideas. I don't know, I can only speak for myself,

040but I would love to hear, here's a date by which we will have interviewed some students. Here's a date by which we will receive, and I know that it's an ongoing thing and it takes time, but giving us some kind of a timeline. Is it going to take weeks, months, a year, two years? I think that maybe, I mean, I would feel placated by some of that. Not entirely placated, but it would help me to feel like, okay, they care and they're doing something. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. I think there may be some confusion as to the public comments open to anybody that wants to talk. The typical procedure is just sign in and then we read your name and you come up and talk. Anybody is open to do

041that. Are you Wendy Smith? I am Wendy Smith. I'm a parent to my kiddos over there in the corner. Proud to have her with me. I enrolled her at Pinckney last year, first time. She was in a private school beforehand. Private school, you just write a check and pick them up at 5. That's about it. But I didn't want her to grow up that way. Not that the private schools in Lawrence are bad. It's just I wanted her to know more people. And I wanted her to have exposure to... downtown and museums and people from the neighborhood, people that she ran across all the time in all places and not just in fancy places. So then, it's his fault, I got a little woke up and I realized that I met a whole new group

042of friends and it's really unfortunate that they have... You guys are standing back there because you really should be, like, right up front and have the front seats because they're the ones not being served well right now. I'm just learning all this myself as to what I'm a little naive in that I thought, you know, like the parents would have a concern and then we would take it to you guys and then you all would do something about it. But what I keep hearing is that that's not how it goes. And so... I also think that if you have the time to write a statement to limit speaking and language, then you have the time to, which you have done, break tradition and make the people have time to talk, right? So I feel like

043maybe one thing we could do with these meetings is to not have that closed off. You have to follow all these rules thing. When a child is getting broken, There's really no rule that should stand in the way of hearing about it like you should be burning down the phone lines to find out like we did who where how and how do we make it stop so What's frustrating is bust your hearts your your reaction is always the same and as a white person I get it you say come talk to me. I'm open email me call me there My friends are tired. They're beyond tired and they don't want to talk to you. To be quite honest, they do want to come here, right? They want to be in a safe environment because we're

044all here supporting. Then they want to be able to speak up. But do they want to pick up the phone and call you when they're tired all day long and have a discussion with you about how something so damaging was said to one of their family members today? And they know damn well that that's not the first time that was said, that they know that that's indicative of constant. and pervasive systemic racism that's not getting changed. See, it's just, I'm a black and white kind of person. That sounds bad when I say it, but what I mean, like on or off, like are you here for it or are you not? Do you care about your schools or do you not? Are you here to help make the schools run better or are you not?

045Are you here to, so I just get confused on what we're here for. So I appreciate that you did open it up and say, come, let's talk, and I hope that more of my friends, or not, whatever. You don't want to come up here. I will because I will always open my mouth. But you get scared. You see, I see it. You get scared and you do this. Don't do that. Ask questions. Stay late. And don't. Flip and ask us to join some committee or a task force. Please do not say task force because that says time and energy and it says and it's time and I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. It's just like let us come up and ramble. Did not get my paper turned in, but I got it right

046here. Hello, my name is Ursula Minor. I'm president of the Lawrence Branch NAACP. What policies and procedures are in place to evaluate whether employees at USD 497, particularly the district's administration, certified and classified personnel are making adequate process in the equity work and if the policies and procedures identify any persons who do not see benefit in the effort. to making adequate progress. What do you do to notify constituents, stakeholders, parents, and community members not about those individual personal matters, but the overall progress of this endeavor? I am speaking to the equity, policies, resource allocation, access, and identifiable behaviors that are displayed and go beyond courageous conversations in USD 497 buildings, grounds where students spend their days up to graduation day. So we need to know the policies. I know a gentleman had asked about the

047policies and procedures when a teacher is identified as having issues. Are those on a website? Can we see those? Where are they posted at? Out of curiosity. So if you are interested in... I guess knowing about evaluation procedures and that process, it would be found in the master agreement contract, which would be on our website. I don't know where that is exactly as far as navigating that, but I have a hard copy on my desk, I can tell you that. Well, you could email any one of us and we could send you the document directly or give you a hard copy. That would be easier. Julie? Can you get information and we can email it to her? Okay. Thank you. My name is Mitzi Robinson. I'm a parent. These are my five children. I have

048six in the school district. It is my wish to be heard in front of the board that you would hear me out when I say, in your proceedings involving the matter of racism that was... It happened at South Junior High or South Middle School. I went to South Junior High. My kids went to South Middle School. I have three more to put through there. I've got a student of the month for Lawrence High right here. I've got a 4.0 honor roll student. I'm a single mother. I work two jobs. We talk about not having time to be here. I can't afford to be here. I can't afford to live in this city, but I do because of the schools. That's why I'm here. That's why I work two jobs 70 hours a week for these

049kids. My children, I'm 100% full-blood Native American. Their father's 100% Pacific Islander. He's a Filipino. My children have already a hard enough time trying to identify culturally where they stand because they're away from our tribe. They're away from their island. And for them to be subjected to racism, the remarks, cultural harmful remarks. their young minds when they're trying to decide who they really are as young people it is my wish that the school board would put it all of that into consideration not just my kids but every other child in the school district thank you shocked to hear this happen itself I went through my whole middle school career as much as I'm glad to know that this is happening I just, I don't know why it didn't happen sooner. I won't name anything specific,

050but I've had a lot of distasteful experiences at South regarding racism, and I just wanted you guys to know that I've reported this many times. This never happened. The things that the teachers said, to us. It impacted us, my Native American friends, our little community. It made us insecure. It made us feel unsafe. And it was a gateway for other students to reiterate what those teachers were saying. I wanted you guys to know that it's not the first time it's happened and I'm really disappointed that This is just now happening, and it didn't happen sooner. Would anyone else like to share? My name is Andy Bricker. I'm a teacher at Lawrence High School. And I was going to speak after the PEG presentation, but I'll just go now. I just want to say now you

051know. You know this happens in our district because you've heard it, and you know it's not an isolated incident. So I believe that accountability at the administrative level is a great place to start. principles or assistant principals whose equity in their building is in shambles at this point after 10 or 11 years of working with PEG, it's unacceptable. So I really believe we need more administrative accountability in all the buildings, including this one. I heard and appreciated Kyle Hayden's letter. I heard alignment of beliefs, significant change, anti-racism. I presented at the 2011 PEG conference and the district has paid a lot of money and invested a lot of money in me for me to be here to say this right now. And I promise you everything I'm saying right now is fully in line with

052the protocols and the conditions and the agreements of Pacific Education Group. This is what I've been trained to do. So this is not outlandish. I'm not calling anybody out. I'm telling you the truth about this district. And I've said it to multiple administrators this year. And I've been directly silenced more than once. And I've been indirectly silenced. So it does happen. And I also heard in the letter from Kyle Hayden, and I appreciate this too, that all employees are expected to go to Beyond Diversity, the two-day training. It's crucially important. It's also important that... No one will be able to opt out, which they have. And we don't just decide not to send somebody because we think they're going to be totally against anti-racist movements. They need to go anyway. And I hope that each

053of you take the opportunity to go too. I don't know if everybody on the board has been or not. I hope you do. And thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? I just want to say last week or last meeting I said something similar, which is thank you for coming and thank you for speaking to us. I've heard from a lot of people in this community that have talked to me directly, particularly families of color, that they feel very uncomfortable going to their administrators in their districts and that they don't feel comfortable talking to even board members or anybody because... It doesn't feel safe to them and that they feel like there might be retribution against their kid in the school or whatever. And that that is that's unacceptable. And we've we've been talking about that

054quite a bit, especially over the last few weeks. And again, I mean, to the point of sort of standing there by us and helping us as we stumble, I would say, please do that, you know, and come here and call us out and and make us listen. If you feel like we're not listening, you know. I would extend the same thing. I'm always available to talk to anybody, and I have talked to some of you, and will continue to be there for that. But sometimes there's things that you'll bring to our attention that we don't hear. So things don't just get filtered down to the board the minute you say them to anybody in the district. We hear about them when you tell us directly. So that would be my main thing, is if you

055want us to know something and you want to make sure that we know it, you need to tell us. You need to send an email to us, because otherwise we may not hear it. The police aren't the only people that have power over us. That's why we don't talk to the police and that's why we don't feel comfortable talking to you all. It's because the power and what we have to lose is very real. We don't have time to just take off for lunch. We've got 15 minutes for lunch to come down here and talk about these things. And also, another thing that needs to be pointed out is I'll be damned if I have kids come up and cry. So that these things can be heard ever again. That needs to never happen again.

056My children owe you nothing. Owe you nothing. And that's the problem when representation isn't real, right? When y'all don't live the things that we live every day. When we don't feel like re-traumatizing ourselves by processing through this again with people that don't necessarily care or are paid to care or still don't care. So at the end of it, we feel silence. We feel all this noise. I'm tired, I'm tired, and we're tired. And for people to have to come down here and plead and let you know that they reported this sounds a lot like rape culture to me. And I know that that's not okay, right? But the reality is that we don't prioritize black and brown children. We don't prioritize indigenous folks. We don't prioritize queer and trans folks. We do not prioritize those.

057We prioritize the money. And let's be real, we treat kids like money. That's why we cut down on recess. We put them in more classes so they can pass these tests. Y'all are failing this test. This test has been failed. And if you think the 60s are any different than right now, they're not. We are being systemically lynched. And we will continue to be until you all say, hey, you know what? It's not okay if your child gets called a nigger. It's not okay if people use the F slur for indigenous folks. It's not okay if people use the F slur for queer and trans folk. That's not okay. And it's not a one-time thing where we go and talk to them and we tell them, hey, that's not okay. It's a zero-time thing where

058that has never been acceptable here. I'll be damned if I've ever had anybody stand up for me and tell me, you know what, that person did that to you and that's not okay. It was, hey, just wait for the process to happen. Well, I tell you what, I'm a product of the process and it didn't work and that's why I'm here and that's why we break down these systems that decimate our families. We need to stop treating people like they are less than worthy of all the time. And that means radically prioritizing those same individuals. Just because they don't have the words for it doesn't mean that they don't have the feelings to go with it. There is nothing that will ever be acceptable about neutrality or telling people to just, you know, deal with

059it. Because let me go ahead and talk about rape culture again. That is very real. Go ahead and just follow the process. Then we get Brock Turner's. Then we get things like that. But do you notice something different about the way that I look and the way that Brock looks? My story will never be the same. These children's stories will never be the same, even when they report the same crimes. And we need to be real about the emergency language that we're using, because this was a crime and this is an emergency. What happened to those children will continuously make waves in their self-image, in their identities, and in their ability to learn in a system that doesn't barely even teach them about who they are. So if we can't be real with that stuff,

060each one of you by name, just imagine that I'm saying your names, right? We are tired of being hashtags. Don't nobody say your name like they say our name on the media. That should be enough right there. But if it's not, understand that we are tired and we are not okay with this anymore. If you're going to act like you're educators, you better educate our children. We don't need to be coming in here and educating y'all about the stuff that we have lived and that y'all just never asked about. At the end of the day, I'll do anything for my kids, anything for my extended family, anything for my folks. Y'all need to just do something, and you know what it is. So let's make that happen. I hadn't actually, my name is Christina Lindell.

061I hadn't actually planned on speaking tonight, but I kind of wanted to jump on one of the points that Caleb has made. A lot of the comments that you have heard tonight have been regarding the investigation into the individual who made racist comments. But I think it also, and not at all to diminish the seriousness of those comments. Those are, in my opinion, enough to have this person removed from the school system. But this is also someone who has been called to the mat twice now for sexual harassment. And as a woman who has experienced sexual harassment and sexual assault, there are so many women behind this bench. Statistically, one of you has been sexually assaulted, at least. It is absolutely unacceptable to me. that you have young girls coming to you saying, this male

062teacher, this person who has power over me, who I see every single day of my life, for you to tell those girls previously that essentially you don't care. This person still has a job. You've had girls come and say that he has sexually harassed them before, and he still has a job. Sorry, it's too much detail. I just can't have that much detail. I think that you should probably let her share her story. Can we share in a manner that's not as much of the detail? This is not details. I haven't given any names. It's not that we don't care. It's that there are legal things that we have to abide by in order to protect the district from being sued. And so we care. What about protecting the girls from a pederast? I mean...

063Go ahead. Go ahead. You wouldn't be sharing that. Say that. Right. The other... my baby to sit in this man's class every day. And what Caleb said is very clear. It's against the law. Discrimination is against the law. And no one knows. That's what the Civil Rights Act was created for. Because we cannot trust white people to treat us correctly. There's actual legislation protecting us at a federal level. Not only that, there's also Title IX. You guys are a public education system. For all that to be overlooked and people to talk about legalities now, you should have talked about legalities before you had us keep sending our children to the damn middle school. Like, how about that? Protect yourself from getting sued from us. How about you do that? So, ignoring the fact that I'm

064completely floored and kind of disgusted by all of that exchange that just happened on this level, not Trinity. In addition to the fact that you have girls who are feeling unsafe, I have a three-year-old son at home, and I have another son who's due in April. And I am trying so hard to instill in my boys... The concept of consent, the concept of women being equal to men, and Caleb was right on when he brought up rape culture, and things like this perpetuate it because you're not just making the girls in these classrooms unsafe, you're also providing a role model to the boys who tells them that it's okay to treat women this way, and that is not acceptable. So I just want to reiterate that you're not just hurting one subset. of the students

065here, be that along racial lines or along gender lines, every single student in this person's classroom is being hurt by this in one way or another. And if there aren't drastic measures taken, the community is going to be very, very upset. So I just wanted to throw that out there. Anybody else? Any board member have anything else? I just want to say, again, thank you for sharing. I hear you saying that you don't feel like we're listening. I am listening. We're all listening. You've been heard. And the values that we... stated in the letter that we shared at the beginning of the meeting. We shared it at the beginning because we wanted you to know that those are values that we all share and that we all sign that letter because it is a statement

066of policy and where we are at and what we are trying to live out in our roles and what we do for the school district. So thank you. The reality is that it's your job to listen, but evidently it's not your job to care. So that's why we have to disrupt things, and that's a problem that will continue to perpetuate unless you fix it. We've got to take our babies home. And we encourage you to see what's going throughout the year. Come back, stay in tune a little bit with what's going on, see if we're making progress. Action. We want solidarity letters and more. Right. And so. Protect our children. Okay. Okay, we'll move on to first board report. District Equity Focus Part 1. Oh, sorry, Part 2. With Angelique Nedved, Assistant Superintendent, Teaching and

067Learning, and Kevin Harrell, Executive Director, Student Services. Good evening. Angelique Nedved, Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning. And I would like to personally say that I appreciate you sharing your truth tonight. I'm honored by the stories that you shared, and I'm very humbled by the experiences that you have provided in this space. Tonight's board report follows part one that you heard two weeks ago. That particular one focused on the district's goal of recruiting, hiring, and retaining staff of color. Tonight's board focus report will highlight a broader view of our equity work over the past decade, particularly highlighting specific points along our journey, but also recognizing that we have a lot of work to do. and that we are committed to continuing to improve. Kevin Harrell, Executive Director of Student Services and Special Education. And again,

068that was difficult for me to listen to, so I do have three girls in our system, and so equity work is pretty important to me. And equity has been part of our school district goal for the last six years, and as you can see up here, these are the goals from last year. And so obviously we need to continue our work. I wanted to take the opportunity to say that as Lawrence Public Schools has gone through this equity journey, it's been interesting. When I first came to Lawrence Public Schools, I think I was only African-American staff in the central office. And it's changed a lot since then. But I was there at the initial discussion when Dr. Passman looked at our data and said, this is unacceptable. What are we going to do? And sat

069down with the local NAACP to have those conversations about what needs to be done for our students of color because of the disparities. And so I want to make sure to acknowledge that, that it's been an interesting journey. We made a lot of progress, but clearly there's still a lot to be done. We have a district equity leadership team, which is made up of our superintendent, assistant superintendents, executive directors, building level principals, facilities, operations, and HR. And part of the role of our DELT team is to really work with our buildings and to lead the district equity work guidance as we go through this process. And when we started talking, excuse me again, sorry, the discussion about courageous conversations, we first started that, those conversations hit me. And again, I want to say that this

070is an important topic because I've had, as my children have gone through large public schools and working through these issues, and it doesn't stop. And if you've been through Beyond Diversity, some of the conversations we have about... Often we say education is the great equalizer, and the reality of it's not. And so it really does take educators also to help our system. Kevin's comment about education being the great equalizer, I've heard it also stated that education is the key, but part of the struggle is the lock keeps getting changed. So another highlight we'd like to share are the tools and protocols, and you heard some of our staff utilizing those tonight when they talk about the four agreements, the six conditions, or the compass. And as we've had staff attend Beyond Diversity seminars, even some

071community members, we've learned how to incorporate these tools. So getting started with a set of intentional tools can guide a conversation through reflection and deeper dialogue versus having some discourse about a topic such as race without these tools in place. The tools are applicable across multiple topics, not simply for conversations focused on race. And because of this, what we've seen is an adoption. in many of our buildings for a variety of teams. For example, our secondary math team comes together and talks about curriculum or we have a graduate level course that we're offering through Baker University on mindset. These classes and these groups are grounded in our tools and our protocols as they launch into their work so they can have open and honest conversations. We're seeing it across multiple buildings for a variety of

072teams. You may know about our CI3T teams or our building leadership teams. So the tools are finding their ways into other avenues in education versus just talking about race. I'd like to highlight now our Martin Luther King celebration. And I specifically have picked three pictures up here to show you. Our goal was to engage a vision of racial equity beyond simply black and white. We've added the perspective of our indigenous individuals, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern perspectives, all so we can find those tie-ins to Dr. King's work to connect our students, our staff, and our families. I'd like to highlight that this celebration has expanded quite a bit from its inception. We include our community partners such as City Hall, KU and multiple groups from campus, the United Way, our local NAACP, Lawrence Public Library,

073Boys and Girls Club, Haskell University, and even our building E-Team members. All of these individual groups are on our planning committee and play an integral part in the celebration and the event. We've also added a community liaison position who happens to be a retired staff member who bridges... The work between our committee members with the planning to ensure a successful celebration as well as seeking out a variety of events around our community to make sure that we are continuing to incorporate multiple perspectives. A little bit of background about what the celebration used to be. Prior to our enhancements, we used to take groups of students and task them with an event. It may have been a can drive or we're going to make blankets or we're going to collect items to give away in the

074community. In honoring Dr. King's work, our schools would come together and do an even better job of representing his message. So a few results. We've had more than 1,500 school board members over the past nine years attend our Beyond Diversity seminars, and that includes our administration, certified and classified staff, as well as community members. Our graduation rates, while yes, they are not where we want them, We have closed the gap, and we are narrowing the racial achievement gaps that are out there. More students of color are enrolling in our advanced placement classes. We are also talking about our culturally relevant rubric that we created to use as a lens by which we review all of our instructional resources beyond just simple literature. So what do we see happening next? This year... As evidenced in our

075board goals, you will see a focus on culturally relevant teaching as we incorporate some workshops in the spring for our staff to take the specific strategies that they are hearing about and learning about and becoming more effective with in their classroom. We're also talking about individual groups bringing together... task forces, as well as forming advisory committees to solicit input from student groups and their voices being heard. For example, LGBTQ plus community. You'll find staff engaged in careful consideration of enhancements, as you heard in the letter around discrimination and harassment policies, as well as increasing that cultural relevancy in our classrooms. While this information has been focused on our equity journey district-wide, we think it's important to share what it looks like and feels like from a building perspective. So we've invited one of our elementary

076schools, a staff member as well as an elementary principal, to share what it looks like at an even more discreet level at the building. Hello, thank you for having us. I'm Joni Appelman, the principal at Deerfield Elementary, and this is Diana Bailey, one of the fifth grade teachers at Deerfield. And we wanted to share with you just a few of the things that we're doing to initiate and sustain and deepen our conversations about race at Deerfield. Since the beginning, or since we began our focus on equity as a district, our goal was to make conversations about race and equity an embedded part of every discussion that we had about student achievement, curriculum materials, discipline, attendance, and most of all, how we respond to students and build relationships with our families of color and our students

077of color. We also wanted to think about how we begin to transfer that information that we were learning to our students. So how do we get them to think about their own racial identity and use the agreements in the compass in conversations that they're having? How do we help them put on that equity lens when they're choosing their own reading materials? And then how do we begin to start to talk to them about microaggressions? We found that over the past few years that in order to deepen our own understanding and have this embedded and fluid transfer to our students of this information that there were a few topics that we had to kind of constantly keep bringing up with our staff. So at our last E-Team district meeting, we decided to make what is a

078TAC presentation, which I think you can all see. And I think you can interact with it, and it won't. mess with ours, I don't think. But this TAC presentation is a web-based presentation tool. We can embed videos, articles, PowerPoints, and ways for the staff to interact and give feedback. So it's a live link that we can change at any time. We can add to it. The creators of it can add to it. So if teachers have ideas, we can add those into our TAC presentation. So once they have the link, they always have the link. And so Diana is going to run through the TAC and then maybe give you a few of the activities that she does in her classroom. Hi, I've been on the district's E-team, or my building's E-team for six years.

079And I have to say that I'm in my feeling corner right now after everything. And then being up here to present is a little overwhelming tonight. But I do... think that we're doing a really good job and at Deerfield and putting this in the forefront constantly and practicing all these protocols. So we decided how could we kind of push that a little bit more and make sure we're holding the staff accountable. So we began to develop this tack, and some of the important parts we thought were the history of systemic racism, protocols, racial autobiography, microaggressions, the equity rubric, and cultural responsive teaching. So how we thought we could get the staff to interact more and work through this is Joni kind of numbered them so that we could kind of say. as you work through

080where are you at. But also there are Mentimeter little buttons where you can go and take a vote. You can then practice using the compass as well as we're also teaching our students to use the compass. At the very beginning of the year at our building, we teach the kids about the compass, and we have tents in the middle of our tables and all the rooms to kind of keep that in the forefront and use that as a starting point for courageous conversations or things that happen in the class. So they would click on this Mentimeter button where you are on the compass, so you guys could all click on that. I would take them then to vote. So where are you on the compass right now? You just would choose one of those. We're

081going to go ahead and do the corner. And then you just submit. And then back in the equity. you can go and see what people are voting kind of in a live time and just kind of see where everyone feels. And so it's a place for us on the team to kind of see where our building is and how they're feeling after they go through parts of this journey, I guess, if you will. We also have a Padlet that we'll embed in there. And I wrote something earlier today. Just if after you watch something that you could do so another way that you can be talking with other staff members And just kind of be putting your thoughts in as we go through this this equity journey then we have on our protocol That next

082the racial autobiography and we've tasked our staff to also write their racial autobiography by the end of the year and share it with at least one peer because we feel like that's Really important to understand where you have come from and how we are presenting ourselves to our students So then we just embed it's great because there's documents here guide why you would do it Things like that for all for all our staff Then we have, we've started to embed lessons as well. So we want to remind them, of course, of the four agreements and six conditions. This is also an ongoing, not all of our stuff is filled in yet because we kind of just started this. But there will be a button then in several of these where there will be class lessons

083so that as they're learning it, they can then go interact with their class. And so one of them that I've used, does it, further down, does it have a? classroom activities. So this one I think is empty right now, but we've put the compasses in here. But then we'll also have lessons for them to interact. For example, I did a PowerPoint with just spiders. I started out with just spiders to teach fifth graders, and we showed, you know. I don't like spiders, but scary, scary spiders. And where would you be acting, feeling on the zone? And then I show them Charlotte's Web. And a lot of them had just read the book in fourth grade, and they felt very different about that. And so we kind of just talked about how you could utilize that

084than to have a conversation with, you know, your peers at the table and things like that. I'm just going to go close some of these out. Okay. Okay. And then... Microaggressions, this is what is happening. And so this is really important for us to really identify these microaggressions that are occurring and then what to do. And so we had a great idea to also, in one of those padlets, to share if we're seeing these microaggressions, if we're hearing our students, how are you using the compass, how are you addressing that, and share that so that if... I run into something where maybe I'm uncomfortable or I've heard something, I can go and check with my staff. I maybe don't even have to leave the room. I could check a resource of, okay, how do I

085take this teachable moment and make it a teachable moment and use all of the protocols to work through it. So we're really hoping this is a great resource for the staff. And then more activities. We've really been using the equity rubric to work through. Like if I'm going to read a book or a small literature group book or something like that really looking at it through the equity lens and walking it through the rubric and seeing if there are even microaggressions within that that I'm teaching and maybe that doesn't mean that I have to take that book and completely throw it out but how can I then supplement that book and make sure I'm giving multiple perspectives and not allowing hidden micro Aggressions or messages take hold and so it's just really to be more

086thoughtful about what we're putting in front of our students at all times and then this last part where We're going to be doing a book study on culturally responsive teaching and so we've kind of started to build this out so that We can put our ideas and thoughts for this as well Oh, yeah. And then we can, through staff meetings, we can work through a couple scenarios and talk out some situations and practice using the protocols and things like that. These ones wouldn't necessarily be shared with the students, per se, but probably depending on their age group, you could also do that. And then we have the Hot Topics button. This is a great article, by the way, if you want to click on it and read that. And then, again, we always have the

087place for them to share their thoughts on the article. or on the scenario that we have. Can you help me understand really quick? So I know you have an e-team at your school that meets it that put this together. Is that right? So then do staff interact with this kind of during their own time, or is it during a professional development day, or do you do it during the meetings like on Wednesdays? Can you tell me a little bit about that? All of the above. Our plan is to go through this with staff to lead them through it, but there are some things like these videos, and if you haven't watched these videos, This was, I think, eye-opening for their author's library talk. There's three parts, so it's three hours long. So some of that

088will have to be done on their own, but we want to start the conversation at a staff meeting and then follow up at the next staff meeting and then go on to the next thing. Obviously, we have some staff members that want to really just dig in or they're beyond. They've already seen these videos because we saw them in some of our e-team training. So they could go on to the next. you know the next topic which is their racial autobiography but we'll also do that as a staff and then follow up any questions for us is this something you're sharing with other elementary schools or right now is this the only place this is happening um yes Yes. Yes to which question? Yeah. So right now it's only happening at Deerfield. Well, right. We

089just created it at Deerfield. Schools are, I know that when we have district and principal meetings, that's where we get a lot of our ideas because everybody's doing things. They just do it a little differently. We just found that the TAC was just kind of a way to kind of keep a running list of things that we felt were really important to put in front of our staff. Over and over and over again. So and all of our buildings they do something and it's not it depends on what that building needs at the time So this is something Deerfield does but I can guarantee all of our buildings are doing something and maybe different some are further along some may not be as far along It is it's public so you have the link and

090you can check it every once in a while We'll be adding things in there. So yeah How does staff accountability work at that level? I mean, I know reviews and stuff like that, but I mean like the teachable moment, this thing that you catch somebody, you see something that's done that maybe you want to, you know, that could be a teachable moment. Well, that's where a lot of the padlets come in because we want to encourage staff to use those to put their ideas down. Sometimes they're not as open and willing to brag on themselves or toot their own horns, but we're trying to encourage them that this is important and what you're doing in your classroom could be done in the classroom next door. We use the equity work as our norms for our

091staff meetings as well. So it's really, it's always in front of us. And we are having those courageous conversations at Deerfield, and they're coming up. And so, I mean... It gets scary. I mean, something will come up in front of you, and you're first, do I teach this time? Do I want to ignore that? And it's not that anybody would ever want to ignore it, but it's very new to be talking about this with 10- and 11-year-olds. But I've found that once we have introduced that compass to these kids, they can utilize that, kindergarten up. And so then it becomes so much easier because we can just start by saying. Tell me a little bit about where you're coming from. Where are you on the compass now? And it's just a starting point for us

092in teaching the kids that, you know, the DENT, well, we use it as an acronym, DENT, but staying engaged and accepting and expecting multiple perspectives and things like that. And so I think the kids, I mean, I would imagine the kids I'm going to be seeing in the next two and three years, it'll be less me teaching and more of just that's what we're going to do. Any other questions? Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next we have an update on classified employee study with Anna Stubbefield, Assistant Superintendent of Educational Support, and David Cunningham, Executive Director, Human Resources and Legal Counsel. Could I ask a question before we go on to the next subject? Is there a clear person in each building that the students know they're supposed to go to if they have a

093problem? I just keep coming back to this issue that people are not comfortable talking about what's going on, and it's just really gnawing away at me. And so what I'm curious about is how do we as a district get better at even hearing the stories, let alone what we might do with that information? So, you know, we had a young student come in here and talk about a personal story. Who was that reported to? Did you hear about that story? Or, you know, I mean, at what point do we... Do the students really feel like they have a place to go? Well, first and foremost, it would be the classroom teacher. But what if the problem is the classroom teacher? Then you would be the building principal, assistant principal, or the counselor. As the policy

094committee has talked about microaggressions and other kind of expanding our anti-discrimination, anti-harassment language to include more, I think it's clear that... that training for staff and students around that is necessary. And so I wonder if, I mean, maybe, you know, you don't like put it in a handbook because no one reads that anyway, but like if part of that, like every year for students is, hey, this is the process and we care about what you have to say, you know? I mean, I don't know. I think that there are some structural things that we could do to make it more likely that kids know we're listening and we care. And I think that possibly that's something that we need to put on a future agenda item to talk about. I also wasn't exactly, like when

095you asked if there were any other questions, I thought that was just for the building. I did have a couple things on the diversity topic that I wanted to ask real quick, if that's okay. I do think the... We used to do quite a bit of board professional development around Beyond Diversity and around the Pacific Education Group. I think when we first adopted that initiative, it was really important that we had buy-in at the board level. And then we codified it kind of in our system, and it became part of our ongoing goals. But I think that there are a number of board members who have come on since then, and we don't do that anymore on like a pre-session, work session around diversity. And I think that... we've lost something as a result of

096that. And I also think, I know I've gone through the Beyond Diversity program, but it's been a while ago, and I'm not sure how many board members have, but I do think that that's an important thing, and that that would be an important gesture we could show to the community if all of us go through that same training that we're asking all of our staff to go through so we have a common language. And I know two days in the schedule, if you're busy and working, is challenging, but I do think that it... it's worth it and it's good. And I think that it would help us as a board all be on kind of a unified page as we're trying to advance work that is hard and important and critical. The good news is

097that we actually talked about this in the last agenda setting about this topic and maybe one or two other things. We have two sessions scheduled, December and March, pre-board meeting work sessions for the board. Oh, okay. Specifically focused on equity work. Okay. When are Beyond Diversity scheduled? Has that been – are board members welcome to – are there spaces available? I would talk to probably Danika about that as far as the schedule, but we can get this – I can get the schedule to you, and we'll find space. Yeah. Okay. I challenge every board member to do it if it's at all possible, and not just a couple hours because I think that that would, going for a little while would send the wrong message, I think, to the staff that we're requiring to go

098and to get behind it. So if you can't go, you can't go, but if you can only go for a little bit, I don't know that that is the right thing to do. So I don't want my comment to get lost on if we can talk further and maybe, you know, like Vanessa suggested, it's a future agenda item, but I definitely think that we need to discuss this notion in more depth about the fact that people don't feel like they have a safe place or that they are telling their stories to deaf ears. Yeah, I totally understand. And I think if I had an issue, I'd be like, well, of course, I could email it, I could call someone, I could do all of these number of things. But that comes from a place of

099white privilege where I've had access to all of that stuff. I mean, people don't always listen to me, but I've had a pretty good record of being able to talk to people and have them respond. And I'm not afraid. But I promise, if my whole life growing up I didn't have that experience, I would stop talking. I would. That's the reasonable thing to do. And so I do think we've got to figure out how we can make it to where we are, getting the information that we need in order to do a really good job for our constituents and for our students. And yeah, I'm not really in my thinking quadrant at this moment, but we've got to get there and we've got to work with it and not just let all the... like bad

100feelings about it. So because I have a, I have a son who's been challenging to say the least. And I have been a huge advocate for him in the schools. And now he's a sophomore in high school and it's, it's been hard. It's been really hard. And I've hit roadblock after roadblock with my, my white son and my white family. So I can only imagine if, if, if the situation had been different starting in kindergarten with all the problems that Elias has had, I can't, I can't really. I mean, obviously, I'm also in the feeling, Quadra, I think we all are, but it's just not acceptable to have people feel like they don't have a safe place to go and nobody's listening. So let's put it on an agenda, upcoming meeting. Yeah, I'll need some

101help as to what that looks like or what you're asking for. Let's have a discussion during the next agenda planning to start that. I just think if we can't admit that we're not doing this well in every building, then we're doing it differently in every building, too. I mean, that's the fact of the matter. We might be doing it much better in some than we are in others. But, I mean, if we cannot look at it with a clear eye and an honest eye and say, you know what? this isn't working, we need to switch gears here. Or this person that we have in that role is ineffective, so maybe we should put somebody else in that role and take that particular thing away from them. You know, not firing people, but I'm saying, like,

102if you have a certain person who's your go-to in a building and it's not working out, families don't trust that person, that's a problem. And I know you guys can identify that stuff. We'll have a discussion during the next agenda planning. We start that process. You guys think? It's an idea. Maybe we can start thinking how this plays out in terms of what that discussion looks like and what the potential solutions are moving forward. Sorry. You're up. Actually, it's going to be Dave and Kathy. They're going to do this presentation regarding the findings or what we found with our classified employee salary study. Thank you. Okay. Dave Cunningham. So I wanted to kind of just do some background, and Kathy's going to get into numbers, which probably makes a lot of sense in the way

103we structure things. So our board goal was to gather and report comparative information on salary and benefits, look at evaluations, and then take some steps towards addressing. anything that we might find. So to start off, we thought we would give you kind of a snapshot of what exactly do our classified folks do. Well, they support all of these buildings and the things that go on in those buildings so that our administrators and teachers can focus on instruction and students. For example, in HR, our goal is to make sure that people don't have impediments that distract them from what they're hired to do. So that's kind of where, whether it's a food service person or a custodial person or an administrative secretary, administrative assistant, we want them taking care of those things to support the education

104that's going on in those buildings. For purposes of this report and to some extent in the survey, or not survey, but the study itself, we kind of break it down into categories. We have five broad categories that we're going to talk about today. When Kathy gets into some of the specific numbers, you're going to see that broken out a little more finely into groups. But generally speaking, you can think of 695 FTE, which translates into 860. people broken down among those five different categories. The majority of those folks you're going to find are in the instructional services, paraprofessionals, coordinators, people that are doing more direct instructional support in the buildings. You can see maintenance and administrative services and technology and so forth are lesser percentages of the total. And again, that's 507 people, not FTE,

105so 59% of our classified staff are doing something more directly related to instructional services. Now, this is not the first time that we've done a classification study. Back in 2000, the district began a whole, actually, I think it took almost probably five years to get everything done. In that time frame, kind of those five families that I referenced on that other slide, they all sort of had their own job descriptions. There was no coherence or consistency across the district relative to job descriptions. So they began a really extensive analysis of what are job descriptions, what should they do, how do we update them, and more importantly, once we have them and adopt them, how do we evaluate the level assignment, which translates into what we pay people. So they went through a whole rubric and

106hired educational management systems to help with that. And they developed a methodology for evaluating and weighting the complexity, responsibility, knowledge, working conditions, and skills performed in terms of what's the consequence of error and so forth. And then developed a system for determining. how we're going to pay folks based on that. And the key point of that was the internal equity. So that when we say this particular job is at a level 12, we know that there is consistency for everybody on level 12 and that there are reasons for other groups or families to be less than 12 or more than 12. And because they did a good job of getting that foundation, when we move into the current study... What we discovered was we're updating job descriptions, but we're tweaking. We may have added responsibilities

107over time or taken some away, so we're now tweaking in the current classification study as opposed to reinventing everything. And we've discovered that with the... Can you go to the next one? We've discovered that with job descriptions being relatively current, that when it came time to look at the numbers, it's not going to take as much to move us forward as what we might think. But what did we look at? of our market study after you look at job descriptions and that review actually included a host of people, supervisors, employees, where we would get into small groups and talk about what they were doing and different nuances related to their current tasks and so forth. And so you kind of build that job description up and make sure you're covering everything. So once you've done

108that, you move into what EMS did, which was the actual market study. We did the job description review and reevaluated that with their assistance, but they did the market study, and those are the school districts and the local businesses that we looked at for determining our market as it relates to compensation. And then the final component is to look at the salary study, the schedule itself, and see what changes in the schedule. And we currently have, and Kathy will get into a little bit more detail here, we have a placement schedule. So in the past, when they put that together... The idea was that you might move across horizontally every year because your levels were vertical in that schedule, but funding issues kind of intervened with that and became more of a placement schedule, and

109we would add a percentage to a person's individual salary and maybe add money to the schedule itself depending on the year or the amount of money that was available. And so you have to evaluate that schedule and determine what it's doing for you. And ultimately what you're trying to do is hire people and retain people. And so as we began to analyze the specifics of job descriptions and salary schedules, we took a look at our turnover history, and not surprisingly we saw some numbers in the 20% range for custodial food service. Those are typical areas where you're having some high turnover. Also remember that these numbers don't include vacancies, and we do have some current vacancies, and we're currently using some temporary staff from agencies to fill some critical needs as well. So that's not

110going to be an exact number when you factor other components in, but this gives you a general idea of kind of where we have some areas that need attention. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 37 to 40 vacancies right now. It's also an opportunity now to go back and reevaluate how long have they been vacant, what are we doing to fill them, and those kinds of things. So as we look at turnover, we also took a look at, well, what's the longevity? And we discovered 59% of our folks have been with us for four years or less. and it has some individual breakouts by those families. And it's telling us that, frankly, it gives us some opportunities as we look at this new salary schedule that we're considering and how we can implement that

111without creating additional problems. If it reversed and we had 59% of our people that were 10 or 15 years, and then you start trying to implement a salary schedule, a new one, it becomes much more complicated and costly. So the way in which this is going to allow us to organize things seems pretty logical. I think we're going to be able to honor our existing staff with longevity and help with our turnover rates, our retention rates. And so overall, it's... We're finding some solutions here, but it's all in the numbers. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Kathy. Kind of as we move then from kind of the history of where our employees are, some of that longevity, some of that high turnover, and get into the market study kind of piece

112of what EMS did. So they did do a benchmark study. So not 100% of every type of job was compared to market. but they did a benchmark. And when you look at the, and they did it at the starting salary. So it's not, you know, if you're here 15 years, your benchmark, it's the starting salary of that particular job group. They benchmarked about 40 jobs. That represents about 554 of our 860 employees. So that's a pretty good percentage of. Again, it's the benchmark of the starting and not, you know, taking into consideration longevity. Several of our areas are below market that will mirror where that high turnover is, and a couple of those that you can notice, food service and custodial. So these levels here represent a proposed placement schedule, not where people sit today,

113but the salary is their current start. And the job groups are a little bit further broken down. But this is only representative of kind of the levels and groups of the benchmark. So we have more levels underneath food services and maintenance, but these are the ones that were benchmarked. The first column here is the starting salary on our current salary schedule. And the market start is what was the benchmark start. And then this is kind of the percent from market. So if you look at your custodians, our current salary is $9.90. The market salary. when they benchmarked it was this so we're basically 12.93 below market again an area of high turnover food service is another area of high turnover and you'll see that some of that is is definitely below market um our paras

114are not necessarily below market they are high turnover but there could be other factors for that nine month position it could be staffing ratios it could be some other things that are playing into that So that is not a position that is necessarily below market. We did have a little bit of a below market in our special education, and you'll see kind of the proposed levels kind of going forward is maybe there's a little separation of that because the market for that group was a little bit higher. looking at special education paras tend to be dealing with autism, kids, feeding tubes, some of those things that maybe have job functions that have a little different level of weighting than the instructional paras. And that was evident in the benchmark of the market. There are some

115that are not necessarily below. For example, some of the trades tended to not necessarily be below market. And so you'll see a little bit of that. in this particular slide. The next slide. is taking this information that they did with market and they proposed a couple of options to look at going forward in comparison to what we currently have. So the next slide, the first column is kind of what our current salary schedule looks like. And as Dave mentioned, it's more of a placement schedule. The very starting salary is at $8.57. And then there really aren't horizontal moves or steps across other than for placement purposes. The width of it from the beginning to kind of the max end is about 40.56%. There really aren't steps to move across because it's a placement only. So

116then if there's a 1% increase in salary, everybody gets that 1% of current. Vertical, these are your levels going down. So as a job might wait out with higher responsibilities, et cetera, those are levels kind of going down. The current salary schedule is about 3% between those levels. And again, the annual change would just be a percent increase. So what EMS proposed was a step schedule or another range schedule, but they're looking at starting it at closer to $9 an hour because that gets you that much closer to some of those market changes. They proposed on a step schedule about 2.5% going horizontally across the schedule, the width being about 40%. 15 would be the number of steps. to go across before you maxed, the vertical would be going down four, so increasing a little

117bit of those going down between levels. And looking at a step schedule would mean you could potentially do a horizontal move. You could do a horizontal and, change the $9 to $9.05 or, you know, that way. So it could be increased either direction or both in a year. The range, again, would be just starting kind of like we do now but with a higher start and kind of the similar factors going through. Any kind of questions on that? Those are kind of the typical of the two types of schedules you might see for classified employees. So looking at that and thinking about do we do range, do we do step? How do we place our current employees on the schedule? What do we want to look at when we hire somebody new? How does that

118get placed into it? And how do we deal with employee longevity? Based on that and looking at some of the... proposals and options, we kind of liked the idea of a step schedule, but maybe a little bit different than what EMS. Plus, we were also looking at what financially can we kind of afford in getting us to market. So you'll see that the first column, again, just starts over with our current schedule. The second column shows that step schedule of EMS. And then what the district has kind of threw out there for comparisons is sort of in between of about an 880. start making the steps a little closer to 1% going across versus a guarantee, you know, the two and a half percent can get costly. And that's what happened the last time we

119tried to do this. They were so far apart that when we couldn't do that level of a raise, then everybody got stuck behind and it, we couldn't keep up with it. So therefore it became more of a placement schedule. So if we wanted to do a step schedule, it needs to be something we can afford to do going forward. We did extend the width of it. So instead of 15 steps, we went across to 26 and then kept the 4% and kind of what does that look like financially for us? Where does that help us get to market? And what does that possibly allow us to do going forward with flexibility of options? And so that's kind of where we... We started and kind of what our numbers will show for today. So in looking

120at that, I'm going to first show you what that 880 would do to some of those same job groups for market. So looking at that, this is sort of that same graph or chart that you saw before. And if we were to place them on that 880 step schedule, you'll see that our food service workers, we can get them. This middle column here is our proposed start compared to the market. We dropped it pretty well. So you can kind of see where we're getting closer to market. It doesn't get us there. EMS's step schedule of the $9 also didn't get us there, but it's something that gets us closer in all areas, and yet we know we still would have work to do going forward. So does that kind of make sense, kind of our

121staging thing? So looking at costs then, what would it cost us to do some of this? When we looked at placement, before we go to the next slide, when we place somebody on a schedule, we look to not make anybody lose money. Okay. We also placed them to the closest step. So for some, it might be two cents. If you were really under market in an area, it could be three, $4, you know, so there's a range of where people end up getting placed based on either a starting salary being below market or just my next step kind of into the schedule. So there's a range of where people get as far as an increase as you set them in the schedule. Then once you get them there, there's that consistency of increase and that's

122typical of any. type of schedule that you would go to if you're going to do it into like a step schedule similar to your teachers if you think about the teacher salary matrix so if we look at that the placement cost of ems and you have to remember they're starting at a nine dollar rate which is a lot closer to market than our 880 proposal it would cost about 384 000 to place them into the salary schedule The placement into our proposed 880 would be about $200,000. So the cost to place 100% of our people to market would be about $500,000 because it's another $117,000 approximately above the EMS suggested kind of placement cost to just get everybody into the schedule at a market rate of a start. The $200,000 does get us pretty close.

123You saw from the slide before we would know then that we would have to work on probably changing the $880,000 up a nickel kind of thing going forward. Maybe some levels would need to get adjusted, but we're a lot closer. We're kind of somewhere in between, and then potentially something affordable is kind of what we were also... looking at to give you a range of what that cost could be versus what maybe we can start with and move through. And that's not inconsistent from the previous study because we were only able to get people to win two or three levels of where they would have been had we gone fully to market in the last study. So it's not an inconsistent theory that we're applying here. It's comparable to what we had done before. I

124think what I also want to... The state is to piggyback on that is what's left from the first study that we kind of had to kind of not completely implement because of just financial circumstances this basically 500 if we were to move everybody back to market is really about what was left to do had we went ahead and finished the study the first time. What that tells us is the integrity of those job descriptions, the analysis that we did, and the continued placement in that system that was developed at that time kept everybody kind of the same level below market all the way through. So for us to finish getting to market, The cost is comparable as it would have been back then because we've moved forward as people have gotten raises, but we haven't

125got it all skewed again. So it's really just finishing what was started potentially with the cost kind of thing. The two-schedule difference, if you then place them, that one-time cost, thinking of, okay, we want to give people an increase, the 1% on the 880 schedule would cost about $142,000. On the $9 schedule, about $400,000. A nickel increase, so 9 to 905, where everybody wouldn't necessarily move, but just got that nickel increase, would be $114,000 on the step schedule that starts at 9 and goes to 905, versus the 880 to 885 would be about 68. And it increases as you get. A higher starting salary, it increases going up. So can I have a question? The horizontal movement, the 401 number, is that at the 2.5%? Yes, because you're moving across at 2.5%. Neither one, I

126mean, doesn't consider anything to somebody who's off the schedule. So if I'm off the schedule, so EMS's was at 15, ours was at 26. By the placement that we did, I think it's probably important to state that only about 90 would actually be off the schedule. So that's of the one when we extended it to 26. The other thing is that we were worried a little bit and wanted to look at, okay, you moved everybody into column A, which is that starting market, like right at the bottom of the starting. who are those people? Is there longevity in there or is it just those? So it turns out that you'd have 272 of that 860 in column A. Out of that, 247 are zero to two years. So you're just getting those starting people into

127that starting mark. There's only about 25 in that first few columns that have longevity over the two years. It feels like we're kind of our proposal would would kind of get people into it And not necessarily have some of the worry we had with some leapfrogging kind of thing not to say it's perfect and there will be those spots but but it felt like a good compromise when we evaluated this sort of as a whole and in pieces and Kind of extracted and pulled together and just tried to find a balance that we could propose and the other piece of this that we we looked at a little bit is you know there was some dollars set aside in the budget additions and of about 52 000 to maybe help with implementation you can see

128that putting people into the schedule is a little bit more than that um you know with another 48 000 you probably could do half of it for half a year and then build into the next year roll the whole thing into next year and kind of use it as part of the new pool of dollars so there's some flexibility that that we can consider as we kind of finalize what this might look like and potentially come back with something to the board. But this was sort of kind of giving you an update of where we are, where we've ended up, and the kind of dollars that it would take. And so then as a result of this and kind of giving you this information, I don't know if you have any questions before I'll turn

129it back over to Dave. And he's just going to touch a little bit on the job descriptions and the evaluation for classified. I guess I had one question about process. Was this something that the Finance Advisory Council was going to look at, and is this going to be? I mean, I know we're having a meta-discussion about, like, cost savings and how to get out of a deficit spending kind of situation. So is this part of that conversation, or is this separate from that conversation? That's probably a Kyle question. Well, it's starting with a board report. And where it goes from here, I think I'm going to look for a little bit of direction from you. But we can have some conversation about process and timeline and, you know, what considerations we want to make. It

130kind of flows into those next steps. So I'm going to turn it over to Dave, and he's going to visit just a little bit about how then some of that job description turns into the evaluation system. Thank you. So we currently have a rather generic evaluation form for classified staff, and while it can work and provide valuable feedback, the evaluation system is not tied to their job description. And so the direction we've moved is within the system that EMS provides us, we have function descriptors in terms of what people are doing and what we would expect them to do. And they have kind of an electronic system that won't work well for us, but we're going to take these job descriptions then and utilize that. as our evaluation so that we would create an electronic

131version of a job description, have a fillable PDF, we'll have a rating system, probably one to three, and then comments. But then the evaluator, the primary supervisor, can go through and look at each of the job functions, and here's the job description the person is supposed to be fulfilling. How are they doing? And so it allows us then to break out those generic kinds of things about timeliness and those things from the actual activities, the job functions that they're performing. And we think this will be a valuable tool for both the employee for development purposes, but also a tool that will help the primary supervisors focus on their specific job descriptions. And then the final thing I would say is that we did look at benefits as well. We are pretty comparable in terms of

132offering a range of benefits to our employees. Certainly, the plan design for each entity is going to be a little bit different. And if you were to get into specifics on those, you would find some that are richer than ours and some that may be comparable to ours. So I don't have a table to show you a comparison of plan designs. By and large, we're all providing essentially the same kind of benefits, both on a paid basis and a voluntary basis. That's it. Does anybody have any questions? Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, so I think part of the discussion will be, first of all, if you remember the end of last year when we put together our budget plan, we set aside about $50,000, a little above that. to go towards enhancing classified study, or classified

133salaries. And we've held that money. We didn't use it because we wanted to get through this study. So that money is sitting there. One of the conversations we've had is around, okay, if we just dealt with the placement issue. we're really about halfway there with that $50,000 because if you were looking at a six-month implementation beginning January 1, because five, six months is already going to be gone here pretty soon within our fiscal year, that you would be looking at another contribution of about $50,000. And so that would take care of the placement issue right away. So that's part of a conversation I think I'd be interested in hearing the board have. Obviously we can share this with the Finance Advisory Council in November, give them the same information. and get their reaction to that.

134But ultimately, I'd be looking for the board for whether you'd want us to play that $50,000 and we set aside now, and or would you want us to contribute another $50,000 to make that happen sooner rather than later? Are we talking about it now, or do you want to wait and talk about it later? I do think these positions are... like so important for our district to function and I know everyone knows that and I do think being below market in a community that also competes with the University and with you know districts around us like it does seem as though it should be a priority for us to get Staff as close to market as we can and so I you know like everything it's like a very worthy goal And I wish the

135legislature gave us enough money to do this work because it's frustrating that we don't have it But yeah, I mean, I do think it is certainly a priority. Well, it likely impacts turnover, which impacts efficiency and productivity. Just having to deal with the larger turnover rate. Right. I would be interested in hearing what the financial advisory council says, but I think it's something we should consider. Yeah, I think we should. I like the two-part fiscal year approach. I think I would be much more comfortable giving you a firm answer. First, who's being a member? Because I think that will really, in terms of what is my comfort level with making this decision versus where else are we going to cut or not cut it? It all really depends on that. We have to feel it's

136supposed to be there. To piggyback on Marcel's comments, I think the thing we are contending with a little bit is open positions have been open for a long time. and using manpower consistently so they're not our employees. And then also the amount of turnover when you have over 50% of your employees that are not here longer than five years, you're constantly hiring and training. I mean, you're spending. So your staff, your administration staff, that's what they do. It's just a fairly nonstop thing, especially in some of our positions. So it's costing you. Every day. With manpower, we pay them. So those employees probably aren't getting. It's a markup. Yeah. Well, I mean, I just think back to my daughter's elementary experience and the custodian in her building was a person that all the kids loved.

137And he helped with so many things, you know. And so saying that that position, making sure that we value those positions for all that they do. I mean, it's really important to make our school a safe and welcoming environment. And those types of relationships happen after they've been there a while. Right, right. Okay, everybody, anybody else? Any comments? Okay. So next is update on Learning Forward Future Ready at the high schools with Jerry Kimball, Assistant Superintendent, Innovation and Technology. Kyle, what is our room on here? We're having, does it, is? It's ITC. Is it not popping up for you? There we go. Are we still? I'll let you work on that. October 13th marked the halfway point of our pilot project already. On October 13th, we took our devices from the two high schools and

138swapped them. Lawrence High had the MacBooks, and Free State had the iPads. And so as we have gone through this process, we've also trained the teachers in each building so that they are prepared to teach effectively with the devices. have four teachers, two from each high school, and they're going to talk to you about what they're seeing and what's going on. I think you're going to hear, we know one thing for sure, there's no perfect device. So that's about the only thing we know for sure. Later this week on Thursday, we are going to take a trip to Shawnee Mission Northwest to see a high school that's one-to-one laptops. We're also going to Lansing High to see a high school that's all iPads and no lockers. So we'll be interested to see how that all

139works. So we will have a lot of questions. Tonight I have Chris Johnson and Kelsey Book from LHS. Other Straderman and Andrew Davis from Free State High School. And I believe Chris is our first speaker, so I'm going to let them do all the talking. Good evening. My name is Chris Johnson. I work at Lawrence High School, and I teach social studies there. To kind of give you a background of how we made this work at Lawrence High School and throughout the district, we have about... There we go. 250 total students at Lawrence High going through the program. You can see up there on the screen the different classes that were piloting the MacBook Airs. It was a range of all grades from 9 through 12. Me, specifically, I teach U.S. history, which is 11th

140graders, and then I teach U.S. government, which is seniors. I just piloted them in my U.S. history classes, though, for the juniors. You can also see we had a math teacher, English teacher, fine arts, which was our band director, Mike Jones, an ESL teacher, science, which is physics, I believe, and pre-med, which was our elective that we chose, and then a special education teacher also. The positives, and what I did is I took a survey of all the eight teachers. that were piloting devices directly in their classrooms, but I also sent out an all staff email. and asked for comment, positive and negative, from all the staff members at Lawrence High because a lot of these devices were going into other individuals' classrooms and they experienced those in their classrooms. So I wanted as much

141information as possible from all the staff at Lawrence High, not just the eight teachers and not just me, of course. I wanted a lot of information. So I kind of compiled the positives and negatives. This is just for the MacBook Air laptops. You can read through them. Just a few highlights. Help students finish assignments more quickly. Increase paperless assignments, which I thought was really interesting. We're kind of in that discussion within education about paperless assignments and using less paper. And so that definitely was a great tool that helped us use that. It helped with research. I got a lot of those comments with research, organization, note-taking, and typing essays. A special ed IEP student, their teacher shared with me that it helped them cut down on behavior problems. It had them have a device. It

142was their own device. They could log in. They didn't have to wait on a device, and it really was theirs, and they owned it, and it was personal to them. It works really well with the Google applications, Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets. It's very easy to share those things back and forth between devices with those applications. iMovies, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and iBooks were all used throughout the school to help engage students in content on the MacBook Airs. And then lastly, the Blackboard learning system, which a lot of our blended learning teachers use in our district, works... in my opinion and other teachers opinion a lot better on the MacBook laptops. I think it has something to do with the app, not just the learning management system itself. I just believe that the app is

143still being worked on and worked through. Some of the negatives was the mobility. You can't really take the laptop around as much as you can to areas. I mean, you can carry it, but it's not as mobile. It's kind of clunky, I guess you could say. The use of the camera, when you look at a MacBook, the camera is only on one side and you can't flip it. So if you'd like to take a photo of something in front of you, you'd have to turn it around. something of yourself or something that was happening. It was easier, but just the multiple uses of it was difficult. There's a lot of update problems that you had with Adobe Flash Player, Java, and other applications that constantly needed to be updated through self-service. And knowing how to

144do that and learning how to do that was a little bit difficult for a lot of teachers and a lot of students. On the other end, we had a... IEP student and a behavior special ed specialist say it became it could be it was a distraction and what they used was a lot of his students did not have a device or internet usage at home so when they got to school and were able to use a device they would use it more as a I guess, a gaming toy just at school. And they would take it home. And he kind of wanted to express that it was more of a issue with not having internet or not having a device at home. And then when you get something, it kind of is something that happens

145throughout the process, I guess you could say. And then Bulky felt like... Some of the kids shared they felt like they were going to break them. We didn't really have any that were broken. I believe we had one or two screens that might have been broken, but the other students took really good care of it. And then lastly, accessing online textbooks, finding the right programs to do that. And sometimes, like it was predicted, students forgot them or forgot to charge them at home. So overall, you know, there's a lot of positives and negatives and I think the students really positively liked having a laptop or a device with them at all times. A lot of them took them home, a lot of them, we obviously use them in as many classes as we can at

146Lawrence High, so overall it was a very positive experience. Thank you. Hi, I'm Kelsey Book. I'm also from Lawrence High. I teach English. Like Chris said, we tried to kind of cover a wide array of classes that we have. When we initially picked classes, a lot of people were choosing the junior and senior level classes, so I decided to roll this out with my sophomores to get a little bit of a wider... view of the students and I think that it was really successful in most cases both of the IEP students that Chris mentioned were students of mine which Crazy how that worked. The first one, he really did show a huge improvement. This was not a student that I had as a ninth grader, but I knew who he was. I have been kind

147of tracking him on Skyward through his other classes, comparing them to where he was at last year, and having this MacBook really made a huge difference for him. He is passing most of his classes at this point, whereas last year he really, really struggled. The second one, we just had to... come up with a way for him to manage his time well, which ended up being he left his MacBook in my classroom. It had his own designated area. I have lockers in my room, so it could be locked in there where other students weren't getting on and running the risk of potentially breaking his device. So he knew where it was. He knew the combination to the locker, so he could get it during class time when it was OK. So I just wanted to

148talk about this. All right. Chris brought in the staff feedback, so I decided to talk with students. I tried to talk to students that were not just in my class that were piloting this. So as I saw other students coming in with devices from other classes, I would ask them, and I asked several other teachers to talk to their students as well for me. So I just have a little bit of feedback for them. Whoops. There we go. Okay. This is an Adobe Spark page, similar to what we saw with the TAC page earlier. It's something that I actually used in my English classroom on the MacBook to trick my students into writing essays, which in an English classroom is one of the best things you can do. I had most of the students turn

149them in, a way higher percentage than normal. So that was great. So just some actual student comments on here. Again, we had these for the first nine weeks, so here's some specific student feedback from various classes. I think that the computers are a good option if you want to do blended learning. While sometimes there are problems getting to certain websites you need and not everyone has internet connection at home, access to the Google apps made turning in documents easier. I really utilized Google a lot in my classroom. I look forward to trying out Apple Classroom more on the iPad this nine weeks. Once it gets set up, I know we're not there just yet, but Google Classroom works really, really well on the iPads. I had a pleasant experience with the MacBook even when I

150would yell to the sky that I hate Macs. This kid was adamant about that too. It helped me in both history and German. It loaded everything fast so I wasn't sitting and waiting to get on the internet. He even showed me specific websites that he learned for his German courses and I don't know what any of it said. I don't speak German myself but he seemed to really be enjoying it and excelling in that class. The MacBooks are nice to have for research and to use at home, but they are kind of difficult to find apps on, which is true, and to figure out how they work. Most teachers don't spend class time helping us figure them out. I think one of the things is a lot of the teachers still don't know how to

151use the MacBooks themselves, so that will be something that we'll have to consider, hopefully through some professional development that we have coming up, hopefully this summer. This one I really liked. Heather Lee, one of our teachers, sent me a lot of feedback from her students, and this one was great because a lot of times she's the ESL teacher, and a lot of times her students kind of struggle with writing essays. So this kid loved the MacBook because he can type essays, take notes, and translate all of his information so he can understand information presented or given to him in class. These are kids a lot of times that need all the hands-on help that they can get because English is not their first language. And so hearing that they find success, I think, is a

152really good story for us to bring in. Another kid just enjoying having it. He was able, this one told me that he was really excited to be able in other classes to pull out his computer instead of having to wait in line for the one that was going to work. Our computer carts are getting kind of old. They take a long time to load up. And he was on it and ready to go just every time. And then finally in our special education department, Chris kind of talked about the good and the bad and how they can, you know, like we have to weigh those options with them. But this student really liked the ability to work as a group, even if, you know, it was a day that he couldn't be in the class

153because of behavior issues, he could still go over to his special education classroom and collaborate with peers during that class period via the internet on his MacBook. And he really liked that. And this is a kid who it helped. in his grades and finally the honors student i decided to add one of those they just said that it made everything easier paperless was the way to go this was a student who's also involved in debate and if you know jeff plinsky at lawrence high school he wanted me to bring a prop for you so i did Each and every debate student in the past had to carry one of these you travel with a partner But each student has one of these this is not a light box There's a lot of paper in this

154one as someone who helps out with the debate and forensics team at Lawrence High this one is really empty considering what I've seen other students carry and you know I see girls in high heels and dresses just lugging these up and down stairs when I travel with the team on weekends and this and the MacBook have made a huge difference because you can just pop this in your backpack and go. So that's my spiel. Oh, you might tell them that is not a MacBook. Oh, yes, this is not a MacBook that we're using. Sorry. This is a Clam case. There were 30 of them at Free State. Maybe one of you could talk more about that. I just got 30 of them in my classroom, even though I have about 60 students doing this. So

155we had to kind of figure out who's going to get them. But it's a Bluetooth case, that fully functional keyboard. It can flip into so many different modes when you flip it like this. I can touch the keyboard all I want and it does nothing. So, yep, I just put it in there like a regular case. Andrew can maybe show you the case that they come in. But yeah, Jerry's got a clam case that she can pass around for you to see. They're really cool. Feels like you're going to break it, but I promise you, you're not. They're really sturdy. All right. There we go. Hello, I'm Andrew Davis. I'm a biology teacher and chemistry teacher at Free State High School. And I want to talk about how we use the iPads to enhance learning

156in my classroom in a couple ways. One, by encouraging creativity through project-based instruction, as well as using modeling with the iPads to help increase my students' thinking skills about more complex ideas. So to kind of start, I do want to... show a couple examples that I have here on the page, just looking at building different models that we did in class. Now, my class participated in a big ecology project where we used our Free State Restored Prairie site to study why is it important to be restoring native ecosystems? What role do these native ecosystems have? Why are they important? And trying to find a way as students to communicate this with the community. All of my students gave a presentation to our administration as well as stakeholders at the University of Kansas, both professors and

157grad and undergraduate students. just a couple weeks ago and some of the things they came up with were various models as well as websites, raps. I got conned into being in a rap video with a group of kids which got showed to the administration which was just lovely on my part because I was being evaluated that day so even better. The creativity that came out of a lot of my students was great, especially given the number of applications and things the students could use. This particular application is one that, through a lot of the PD that we did down in Austin and collaborating with teachers down there through iPadpalooza, is a model for showing interactions through an ecosystem and in this case I had a student who took a picture of us out in the

158prairie in our jumpsuits and they added a bunch of graphical interfaces as well as various pictures that they took labeling different organisms that they found out in the prairie bringing a lot of the stuff that we looked at inside Now, the big thing that ultimately led to this was being able to answer our guiding question in our project and being able to communicate with the public, not just me, the teacher, or some person who's coming in to observe why it's important to have all of these various ecosystems native to Kansas. And in this case, I had one student, they went more for coral reefs because they're under a lot of duress at the moment. they went and built an entire website using the iPad entirely to share with not just people who are their own

159age, but they designed educational resources for students through ages eight all the way up to collegiate level. and they put a ton of work into it. They went ahead and made a selfie sharing how all the stuff they did, their mission, and put a ton of work in sharing various resources that were age appropriate and guided towards what kind of learning objectives that they thought people in middle school, elementary school, and higher education might see in... ecology and specifically coral reefs. And I found that absolutely amazing as did stakeholders from the University of Kansas who were assessing various aspects of their project. Now to close out here just some takeaways that we took from this. The good, there's so much so many options here for creativity and it really makes the classroom environment so much

160richer. The portability of this thing, the camera and the drawability are the biggest things that make this a supreme tool in the classroom. Just being able to go out and take pictures and add and model and draw really adds to what we can do and accomplish outside of just typing lab reports in science class. Some of the bad things, I did have some students that no matter what we did in the class, they came in with preconceived notions. This iPad, it's not as good as that MacBook. We want those MacBooks. And that was something that I tried to fight as we went along through our... several weeks having these guys by showing them there is some more richness with that and I got some people who You know kind of talking about what might be

161the end game of having these guys There might be some balance and why these guys are preferable The ugly thing that we really had, we were kind of slowed down by our securely firewall. The general procedure for coming to Mr. Davis' class during our project was come in, log in, uh-oh, we got stopped on Google Classroom or Google Docs or whatever we were trying to do. We had to log in and go through a process like three or four times. And if we closed out and had to go back to that again at any point in the time in the class. They have to go through that all over again. And that's the big thing that really kind of caused my students over time to become a little bit more, oh, the max that we're

162going to get are probably going to be superior. And that is an issue that having that downtime to go through and understanding why that firewall is important really slowed down things in class and led to some downtime where we could have been more productive if that wasn't holding us back. I can speak to that a little bit. So if you remember when we were going to deploy the middle school iPads, we wanted them to be filtered on-site and off-site. So the filtering system we had before, we had it totally customized to meet our needs. We had everything open we needed open, everything closed we need closed. When securely came in, it was locked down tight. So people couldn't get anywhere. And the first few weeks of school, it was a nightmare trying to get everybody

163where they needed to be. So we asked them, please call the help desk, tell us what you need opened. We'll open it up. So, Andrew, are things better now? It hasn't been as big of an issue the last few weeks. Yeah, so we're kind of getting to that point now where it's getting more customized to our district, but it was tight at first, and so people couldn't get where they wanted to go. It was not a device issue, so it was both devices. It was an inconvenience. Yes. My name is Other Stroderman. I'm the science department chair at Orange Free State High School. And so I just have four different slides for you to see some of my students using the iPads, kind of what some of the projects that I did. I had 10th

164through 12th graders in AP Physics C. So this first slide is us doing a lab out on the football field, and you can see some of the students. Just exhibiting the fact that these devices are so flexible and mobile They were able to go outside long distance way away from the Wi-Fi and still able to take pictures take videos That they could add to their lab reports and presentations one of the nice things too about the iPads is that they made the learning collaborative. So regardless of how far away they were, they could be 50 meters away and still communicate and share data via Bluetooth, or they could be back in the lab and be 50 centimeters away and still share data via Bluetooth. And so the flexibility of the iPads, or just the flexibility

165of a device for data collection outside, especially Andrew was showing a great example with the Prairie that's not a free state. One of the things that I do in my classroom are whiteboard presentations. I have large sheets of shower stall board that I've been using for 15 years. And we're able to use our iPads and our Apple TV in my classroom to share our lab and concept presentations. One of the things that I liked about the iPads specifically... is that I don't do a lot of typing in my classroom. I do a lot of diagrams, I do a lot of graph sketching, I do a lot of equations. And I'm finding that difficult to do now with the laptops that we have in my classroom. And what's nice about the iPads is that there's lots

166of programs that you can use where the students can easily draw diagrams. I had students draw diagrams in different colors. It's interesting. I have some students that are very active with different colored pens, and they're pulling different colored pens out. And students that never realized that was a thing before were able to do that with the iPads. One thing as far as, you know, we keep mentioning disadvantages, but I think that's the reason of the pilot project, is to kind of point out some things that are things we need to improve on. And one of the things that I found was students bring styluses. after the first couple days of having to use their finger to draw diagrams, bring in the styluses and make things much more easy for them. They were purchasing them for

167themselves. I believe the middle school had some ways of using Warhawk bucks or kind of things like that. I'm not quite sure that's the correct term, but the CI3 tickets to get those. And the last slide is just in a lab doing, not a digital lab, but an analog lab. But I found that the iPads were amazing to do data collection. And instead of writing down data on a sheet of paper and then having to plug it into a computer, they could just plug the data directly into a spreadsheet. We used Google Sheets a lot. and the students were able to not just share their data instantly with their group mates because they were all looking at the same Google sheet. They were able to disseminate that data out to the whole classroom. And so

168instead of having, you know, 10 to 15 data points, we had 100 to 150 data points so that the students could have much more rich data analysis with the data that was collected. Thank you. Right, so... We've talked about a couple of different things. We've talked about classrooms like Oathers that use them. If we would have a set in the classroom that they could use that would be a little bit better. And then I'm not sure. I didn't know they were using their CI3T dollars to get them. I will also say I found them at the checkout counter at Walmart, three for a dollar. So, you know, we could get some pretty. cheap ones too. The problem with them is they get lost so quickly. So if we had classroom set that the teacher was

169in charge of, we might be able to contain them a little bit better. They run anywhere from that 33 cents to $160 for a stylus. You can pay whatever you want to for one. Go ahead, Vanessa. So I appreciate this update a lot. So at the end of the pilot project, are there going to be surveys for students? And what's the, I guess, formal process for getting that data? Right. So Alltech is working with some focus groups, and they will be talking to, well, they're already doing it, talking to teachers and to students. And then we have our big committee. They will come together. Terry McKeown and I have already decided we will step out of the room and let them talk about it and make the recommendation. They're the ones that have been living

170with it. They're the ones that used it. And so then they will make a recommendation, which we will bring to the board. We finish in December. We've talked about meeting early. Well, I think Alltech will have everything done. Mid to a little bit later January so the recommendation would either be at the last January meeting or the first February meeting And do the teachers that have been gracious enough to do the pilot, do they continue to have devices for the second semester? Okay, so that's the next item that we will start grappling with because we have all these devices. And the last thing we want is for them to sit on the shelf for the second semester. So we're going to let this group grapple with that a little bit too. How are we going

171to do this? How should we utilize these devices so they're not sitting? But they did they have swapped but then we did for nine weeks, but then when it's over We don't want to just take all the devices and say well, we'll let them sit here until next year. We want to use them Do you think the nine weeks have been sufficient enough to really get a good feel for both? I think I think most of us decided to do I did a unit completely with iPads with no paper at all Everything was like with iPads. They had to do everything on the iPad. They had to turn that there I usually use a 3D binder that they collect all their labs and worksheets with, and I did everything on the iPad. And it worked

172out great. I mean, it was a lot less paper for me to do it with. The grading, I don't think the grading was necessarily quicker. It was just different. But I think nine weeks was... You got it. You get to feel it. If you've been doing something in a similar way for long enough, you can sure feel the difference when it's with a digital device. Well, I just want to say thank you. Like, I imagine, like, your job already is hard and stressful, and you have a lot of new things you have to deal with all the time. And so to say, sure, I'll take on this and learn this device and figure out how to make it work for my classroom, and then nine weeks later come up with another one, like, hats off.

173Like, that's a big thing, and we appreciate it because I think your experiences and your students' experiences are going to help us make a decision that will ultimately impact, you know, high schools from now on. So thank you. I also want to remind you that whatever device they choose, we do know that there are specialized classes. We will have those specialized devices there. Some classes need a large screen to work on. Some need a PC, and those will still be made available. Their charge is going to be what's the best device just for everyone for normal, everyday usage. in most classes. One size does not fit all. And they've already had some pretty cool discussions. They're thinking outside the box. Anybody else? Thank you. You know, you asked about the data. One of the things

174that I heard a lot for state from teachers is that they didn't want just qualitative data. They didn't want just focus groups. They wanted quantitative. data that wasn't specific to necessarily, I like this device versus this device. Like what about your learning was affected by this device? What about your learning was affected by that device? And all take a kid, you did a great job with the survey that they gave to the students and teachers that was, it was detailed and involved in it. It was not just qualitative but also quantitative, which I think a lot of teachers wanted something very clear and defined that yes, this was what students and teachers prefer. So two things. Thank you for what you're doing in the classroom every day. Thank you for hanging in there tonight, extending

175your day by about three hours, and then having a short turnaround for tomorrow morning. So I appreciate it. Thank you, y'all. Thanks. Before we end tonight, does anybody else have anything they want to download after? Any thoughts or anything? Okay. All right. Second? All in favor? All right. Adjourned.