001I would like to call the school board meeting for Tuesday, May 19th, 2026 for the Des Moines Public Schools to order. Ms. Rios, could you please take the roll? >> Yes. Ms. Alonso? >> Here. >> Ms. Campos? >> Here. >> Mr. Dix? >> Here. >> Ms. Hopkins? >> Here. Mr. Howell? >> Here. >> Ms. MacRae now? >> Here. >> Dr. Mayberry Mace? >> Here. >> We have quorum. >> Thank you. The first item of business is approval approval of the agenda. May I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda? >> I will move. Dix second. >> We have a motion by Howell and a second by Dix. Is there any discussion or does anyone have any questions? Board members, please cast your votes. The vote is approved 7 to 0. Next on
002the agenda is public forum. Ms. Campos? >> We will provide speakers at the forum an opportunity to address the board for up to 3 minutes regarding items that are not on the board agenda up to 5 minutes for agenda items. If anybody wishes to speak during this portion of the business meeting, please email [email protected]. The same speaker protocol applies to all individuals who wish to address the board. Speakers will be called individually and asked they state their name and their zip code prior to providing comments. Students and minors do not have to provide their addresses. Guests of the board are encouraged to speak matters related to the programs, services, and operations of DMPS. Please consider that Iowa law prohibits us from discussing specific employees or their job performance. We ask that all speakers to We
003ask all speakers to avoid references to personalities or character attacks as those type of comments do not contribute to the purpose for which the public forum exists. The use of inappropriate language will not be tolerated and individuals doing choosing to do so will be gavelled out of order and asked to excuse themselves from the premises premises or be escorted out by district security. As a reminder, the board and public the board will not engage in discussion with public forum speakers. It is our obligation to discuss only matters posted on the public agenda for the sake of transparency and opportunity afforded to all community stakeholders. Matters requiring attention will receive appropriate staff and or board follow up at the time after our meeting. Thank you for your participation. We appreciate your feedback and input. >> Thank
004you. Ms. Rios, do we have any speakers for the public forum? >> Yes, we do. First up I'll call Eris Hawkins. >> Good evening. My name is Eris Hawkins and I'd like to address recent incidents involving my daughter who attends a Des Moines public school. These incidents have caused me to have concerns for her safety and that of others. And I have written a letter to complete these incomplete detail and have made a copy of each for each school board member to review as I cannot be sure that these are truly being addressed by admin. Tonight I would like to highlight just a few. The names, the dates, and the schools are disclosed in the letter as I this is a public forum. On May 12th, my 5-year-old daughter told me that after being told
005that it was time to dump trays at lunch, she took took one last bite of her food while standing at the garbage can. In a frustration, lunch associate squeezed my daughter's cheeks to remove the food. Upon reporting this to the school, the principal ensured that footage of the would be reviewed before speaking to the associate. Um later that night the principal admitted that she had already spoken to the associate before finishing the footage. Students call this woman Ms. Redacted and I was unable to get anyone to tell me her full name as the principal said she felt that I would resort to harassment. I believe the safety of this woman is more important to the principal than my daughter's safety. This associate approached my kindergartner during lunch the following day to confront and intimidate her.
006Per the principal the cameras only go back so far and no incident report was ever written. On April 9th my daughter reported that to me that a classmate told her she had a knife in her backpack and it would end my daughter's life with it. My daughter did not report this incident until 2 hours after school ended. I called and left a voicemail. I did not receive a call back. In person and over the phone both the principal and vice principal stated that this child was incapable of saying or doing such a thing and initially did not want to look into it further insinuating that my daughter was lying. When I asked about protocol I was told that there would be three separate conversations to compare stories. I had to ask if anyone would be
007checking the child's belongings to ensure the safety of all students. I do not believe that this child's parents were ever notified and per the principal no incident report was ever written. On May 14th my daughter fell from the slide during the class last recess at the end of the day landing on her arm. No teachers or staff were watching at the time. Another child had to help my daughter get up and help her get to the teacher. She was sent to the nurse who put a band-aid on her finger and sent her out of the door. My daughter came to the car crying. An x-ray showed that her wrist is fractured. No one ever called to tell me that my daughter had fallen or visited the nurse. No school incident report was written um until
008the fracture was disclosed to the school the next day. These are just three of seven concerning incidents that took place in the last 2 months including dealing with a bully at school. Bullying as well as constantly being invalidated when speaking up after being mistreated whether it's from teachers, admin, or children can have a lasting impact on a child's emotional development, self-esteem, and academic success, especially when it goes unaddressed. All children should feel safe at school and one of mine does not. As her mother, it is my job to advocate for her to make sure her side of the story is told accurately and not misconstrued. I also will not be bullied into being silent or boxed in by the school limiting the information that I receive. Thank you for listening and investigating these concerns. >>
009Thank you, parents. >> Next speaker is Natalie Edwards. First Carmen Young. Is it off the stand? No. Um Galina Eggen. >> Hello. My name is Lena. Um I'm here tonight as I'm a parent of multiple children in the school district and I have growing concerns regarding um student safety, fairness, communication, and support of our children. Um I want to begin with saying that my family has been part of the school district for many years. Um we've experienced concerns before, but uh this year has been especially difficult compared to previous ones with the number of issues that have happened, concerns, um the way it's handled with the school. Um Um this is why I felt it is important to speak tonight. Um with my second grader, uh he has for faith he has faced repeated situations
010where um he needs or his needs seem to not be met, fully understood, or appropriate um appropriately supported within the classroom. We've had issues with his um his teacher just not um being able to address conflicts between him and another student. So she'll have other teachers come in and um it just didn't go well. So after 3 years of uh 3 months of finally begging, she moved him they moved him out of the classroom and we haven't had any issues since. But he has fallen behind since then because he was removed from the classroom so many times because of conflicts he had with another student that they couldn't seem to resolve. Um beyond that, I have an older child as well and um we've had concerns regarding consistency on how um his safety and the
011disciplinary actions that are taken at school. The fifth grader or my fifth grader reported he was physically shoved against the bathroom wall by another student. No staff member was present, which I understand that girl staff cannot go into the boys bathroom, so they limit it, but another student had to intervene to get that child off of mine. When my child went to the principal to tell them this issue, she didn't feel that he was really upset, so it was let go and she didn't do anything to the student. So, I messaged her, went to a PTA meeting that evening where she told me that the reason why they didn't do anything to the other student was because he came from a one parent home, so they were working with that parent. But another instance, my
012child was suspended when he never even touched or said anything to a student, but he was suspended because in school suspension wasn't possible because they didn't have enough staff at the time. We've also experienced concerns with staff's interactions toward the student. One teacher still told my elementary age child that he was gaslighting her. So, when he came home, I had to explain to him what gaslighting was cuz he had no idea. He didn't remember why he was set out during recess. That's why she told him he was gaslighting her. He just didn't recall. Additionally, we had repeated issues during recess, specifically while they play football. I don't know why the school has plays football during recess. The teachers did say that they thought that it was crazy that they allowed them to, but every day
013there seems to be a fight or you know, an issue that in football I'm getting calls home about it. >> 30 seconds remaining. >> I'm not here to criticize any of the teachers or the administration. I'm just here to that cuz we need improvements in the school in the school in particular. I'm not sure I can't state others and stuff. I do have older children. We don't have issues with their schools, but elementary in particular I'm having constant issues with that I didn't have before. Thank you. >> Thank you, Elena. >> Thank you. >> Next speaker is Ashley Crawford. Next speaker is Caitlin Hanson. >> Caitlin Hanson, uh 502-37. Um you'll have to excuse the mask. I'm uh battling a sinus infection. Uh and first I also wanted to uh say thank you to all
014of those who who were able to attend the FOCUS graduation on Saturday. Um it's definitely one of my favorite experiences working with the district. Um today I wanted to just address some um myths and truths uh that I feel are um being uh just perpetuated uh about FOCUS and um about uh some of the aspects of um some of the things that we have to address uh based on um the state audit and things like that. So, um one myth that we have been told is that um all students referred to FOCUS have to have the same Broadlawn's uh ther- uh therapy services. The truth is that um all students are individualized with their Broadlawn's services, whether that be uh just individual therapy or um participating in group and family therapy, or not participating in
015therapy at all. Um one myth is that uh services are educationally necessary for and I'm going to use some special education jargon here. So I apologize. Necessary for FAPE to for those students to meet their IEP goals. Um and actually my visual aid here, the truth is that um the services to determine if services are required to receive FAPE and meet IEP goals. Um one way to determine that is to um basically think about if the services stopped tomorrow. Um if the services the Broadlawn Therapy Services as part of Focus were to stop tomorrow, it would definitely be detrimental to the students, but they would still have access to their education and they would still be able to work on their goals. It's just that the therapeutic element that is a voluntary um collaboration uh
016greatly accelerates their progress and is a huge um bonus, a huge part of how we get such wonderful results from our students. Um another myth is that uh let's see. Um students can be arbitrarily placed in a therapeutic program. Um and the truth is that based on doctoral studies, um educational studies, and educational um uh research, best practices for a therapeutic program is that students are um interviewed, IEP teams are convened, and that the program staff are able to um decide if students are a best fit for these different programs and that uh special education students and their families have a variety of choices um within programming within public schools to meet their needs. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Ms. Hawkins, um just to make sure that I called everyone. Natalie Edwards, Carmen Young.
017And anybody else that wants to speak with your group? No? Okay. Those are all the speakers I have, Madam Chair. >> The next item on our agenda is our district recognitions. Superintendent Smith, will you introduce our recognitions for today? >> Uh with pleasure. Thank you so much. As you may recall, a little over a year ago, we put our Agroscience program at Central Campus on pause. Over the course of a decade, enrollment had dropped nearly tenfold. It was time to take a new approach and to revitalize the program. Tonight, I'm happy to recognize some people who are making a difference in relaunching Agroscience education in Des Moines Public Schools. During the past year, our staff has engaged with Iowa State University, Lutheran Services in Iowa, Microsoft, and the Botanical Gardens of Des Moines on partnership
018opportunities. In fact, LSI is already at work establishing one of their Global Greens Gardens exactly on our site. Our staff has also been working on a new vision that engages both community partners and family in the program with the aim of allowing the facilities and grounds to be in use beyond the school day for such things as community education, farm and gardening plots, and access to a future orchard. And their work is realizing success. 30 students are already signed up to take part in the program next school year, double the number we saw when things were put on hold last year. I am pleased to recognize our director of career and technical education, uh, Tasha Brown, and some special guests with her this evening to share more about the progress being made for agriscience education.
019Tasha Brown. >> Thank you, Dr. Mayberry Hayes, for that. >> Oh, yes. >> All right. Um, thank you so much uh for this opportunity. Um, behind me I have three of our committee members that were able to come tonight and they have just been so instrumental um in helping revision and think about um what we need. So, Kim Press with the Des Moines uh Botanical Gardens. She was really instrumental um if you've ever if you're a resident of Des Moines, you know how different the Botanical Gardens are from like maybe when I was in high school. And so, what better person to help us think through this community aspect aspect of this because of all the fabulous work that she's done with her organization. She helped um recommend and take our team through a SWAT
020analysis that really helped us kind of like um dive into that. So, um the other person we have here is is Miss Amanda. She works with Wesley Life and so we have a partnership with Wesley for nursing. Um, she is doing all the things Meals on Wheels. Uh, she runs the hydroponics for Wesley Life and as you know, hydroponics um we have space and that's part of our programming that we've had a hard time getting launched. So, we have a resident expert of doing that. She just updated me that um her and her project is growing producing over 200 lb of food a week that is serving Meals on Wheels uh Wesley Life community Food Bank of Iowa >> But uh retail restaurants >> Lots of things. Um, and so we're looking forward to continuing
021to have her brain around the table um and helping us, you know, just understand that production piece, maybe make some connections into some organizations so that our students can can get it on that and and be a part of that and maybe have some different types of operations going. Um, and then we have Miss um Amy from LSI, um, and she uh works a lot with the Global Greens, kind of her baby. And so, uh her and her farmers two weekends ago, two weekends ago, broke ground um at the site, and we have enough plots for 45 families that have been on a wait list because there's not a lot of Global Greens, um for those of you that don't know what that is. It works with immigrant refugee families. Um, so many of them
022already have a natural part a very agrarian um roots, you know, in their cultures. And so, it gives them access to farmland. They teach them how to farm they don't already know, and then they also teach them like business and how to market. So, when you go to the farmers market some of a lot of those farmers are Global Greens farmers. And so, for us to partner with them and have something for our own families in partnership with LSI to have grounds in which they can start growing and and selling their own food, um right here with Des Moines Public Schools is something we're excited about. Once the weather cooperates, we're going to get Phil and his team out to um take some pictures and um introduce the farmers and do things like that. So,
023you can be looking forward to that. Uh we have hired somebody for the fall um to come in. They're very established. They'll be coming to us from Oklahoma. They've erected an entire agriscience program that never existed 10 years ago that is nationally recognized, and so we're very excited. And now that we have um a person coming to us or we know their skill set and like where they're at, um we're just really excited to have these people continue to support our program through our advisory board um and keep the work moving forward, but we truly couldn't have gotten to this point um without the support of these three um and a few other members that weren't able to attend tonight. So, thank you for the opportunity. >> Thank you. >> THAT CONCLUDES TONIGHT'S RECOGNITIONS. >>
024MADAM CHAIR, I'm sorry, point of order. I did miss one speaker. I'd like to call up good citizen. You may approach the podium. >> Good Thank you, good citizen 20500. This was like a last-minute decision, so sorry if I'm all over the place. I didn't prepare anything, but uh like the other speakers were saying let me start off by reimagining education. Do we need new facilities? Yes. Your reasoning for doing it, it's not going to bring in the students. It's not going to bring in the enrollments that you believe it is. We uh I've been a lot of the school boards. Not just this one, but all of them. My kids go to this one. Uh it's a lot of patting on the backs. We did great. What you do good good stuff. But, we
025need to start as a community and as as a district start acknowledging the elephant in the room. We have violence in our school systems. We the quality of education that these kids are getting is not the best. To say the least. Uh Just touch on the violence issues. My wife and I are foster parents. We deal with a lot of the Des Moines public schools with our foster kids. I personally had to break up fights feet from the front door with staff watching and the response I get is we don't clock in till 7:30. So, there's a huge issue here. And if you fix the violence in our schools and you start working on the quality of education, the quality of students coming out of our district, you're going to get those enrollments. Granted, 265
026million is probably going to help with classrooms, but if you keep going the way you are, the students are just going to destroy them and it's going to be more taxpayer dollars down the drain. Uh on a second note, uh, my wife and I, we just had, uh, a meeting today with our, uh, sixth grade daughter and, uh, the administration to see if she qualifies for an IEP cuz she's struggling with reading and writing. Uh, more writing. She can't structure sentences, can't spell second grade sight words. That's how bad a sixth grader can't spell second grade words. That's re- crazy to me. But, the response I get was, "Well, other students misspell words, too, and all McDonald's applications are online anyway." So, if the Des Moines Public School District's peak aspiration is flipping burgers at
027McDonald's, then I I guess we're right there. But, we're raising the future of our nation. We need to to look at this better. Uh, that's really all I got to say about that. I just have one comment about the opening statement for public comments. Uh, veteran, combat veteran. I swore an oath to the Constitution. So did each and every one of you who were elected here today. The statement you make before that public comments, saying, "Well, if you call out anybody, you have speech that we don't like, we're going to rule you out of order and kick you out." That's chilling the First Amendment, and that alone is enough grounds for a constitutional violation and a lawsuit. >> 30 seconds remaining. >> So, if from a district that gets sued quite a bit, I'm not
028trying to throw stones, but you would think you would do everything in your power to avoid getting sued, and you start out a meeting with a statement that could get the district sued. So, I'll end it with that. Thanks. >> Thank you, good citizen. >> Thank you. Those are all the speakers. >> Thank you. We will move on to the consent agenda. As a reminder to the board and public, the board will not engage in discussion or deliberation with a speaker regarding comments made to agenda items. Discussion and deliberation will remain among board members at the board table with speakers comments informing the board's discussion, deliberation, and determinations as deemed necessary. Ms. Rios, do we have any speakers? >> No speakers for consent. >> Thank you, Ms. Campos. >> I move that the board approve
029the consent items in accordance with the >> recommendation recommended action for each item on consent agenda, including bills previously authorized, certified, and approved for payment by the board secretary in the amount of $4,771,726.33. >> Is there a second? >> Dick second. >> We have a motion by Campos and a second by Dicks. Is there any discussion or does anyone have any questions? Board members, please cast your votes. The consent items are approved 7 to 0. Next, we will move on to our first review for future action items. The next item is E1 board policy updates. Board members, please uh make note of these board policies for our future action for um a vote. Next, we'll move on to other items um pulled from the consent agenda and tabled at our last board meeting. The item
030is F1 personnel recommendation. May I have a motion and a second to discuss this item. >> Dick so moved. >> Mayberry Mayze second. >> Um we have a motion by Dicks and a second by Mayberry Mayze. I'll open it up for discussion or questions. Hearing none, board members, please cast your votes. The item is approved 6 to 0 with one abstention. Next, we have our information only items. G1 is the list of bills paid for the month of April 26th and G2 is a list of new hires. Now on to items of privilege. I would like to ask if our if my fellow board members would like to share anything. >> I'll start. There. I'll start. I went to the um Howe Elementary School career fair this morning and it was so fun. So, there
031were all kinds of careers there. Um I sat next to the mayor and firefighters and bakery owners and the kids were so intrigued and it was just a very great way to start the day. So, thanks to all those Howe kids. >> I always have recognition. Um But, this time I want to focus the recognition on a group that's a little bit different and that is our community partners. I know that our teachers and our staff within Des Moines Public Schools do amazing work with our students each and every day, but as we think about our summer and who's going to continue teaching our students and supporting our students, I have to give a a huge shout-out to all of our community partners within the community that are filling some of those gaps for us.
032We as a district cannot do the work alone. Nor can the work be done in just the household of our parents. So, it's important that we have community citizens and organizations that are supporting that work and complementing that work. So, if you're a community partner and you're hearing this, thank you so much for what you're doing to make Des Moines Public Schools students better. >> Madam Chair, I just want to um sort of point out in keeping with 2 weeks ago when I talked a little bit about sort of our expectations and where we're going with reimagining education and some of the chatter about whether we can or can't do this. And I just want to point everybody back to a year ago when the going sentiment was that the AG program was getting pulled,
033it was going to get killed, and nobody was going to do anything about it. It was just going to quietly go away. And it was the hard work of the people who run the programs through Central Campus and community partners that got together and reimagined it in a better way. That's the kind of progress that we're talking about. And is everything perfect? No, 100% it's not. But when we decide we can do something, I think this community can come together and do it. And so I just want to say congratulations and thank you for putting together that AG program. It was It has been really important to a lot of people and I just think it's a great addition to what we already provide for our students and I hope it grows. I hope it
034gets even bigger and much further than we can even imagine today. And then um I just wanted to give a shout-out to Ms. Mushka. I don't see her in the crowd today and it may be because she is still recovering from her weekend. I don't know why she agreed to this, but she agreed to go with the JROTC PT team on a gladiator race. It was like 6-8 miles and the All I heard was that the first obstacle was through mud that got in most everybody's mouth. So um but she made it and she did the entire thing and she was just a great sport for doing it. And I just think it's one example of so many that we could find in the district of our teachers, our administrators going above and beyond to
035support our students and to just be there and experience these kinds of things with them. So congratulations for finishing the race. >> She's so cool. >> Yeah. >> All right. So on the reimagined education note, I have a couple dates. I think I have missed all of them. Did I miss all of them? Well, there's one left, I think. Um, so we have been having listening sessions with parents in the community about what's um, it's going to look like for Moulton, uh, Pleasant Hill that's going to go to um, Montessori, uh, and then Jackson. We do have a meeting, an open meeting for families at Coles. Uh, they're going to have a family presentation to uh, the 28th, uh, from 5:00 to 6:00 uh, in their music room to hear a little bit more about
036uh, what programming is going to come into uh, DMPS with Reimagined Education. So, if you guys can um, head over there. Also, our team, um, with Amanda Lewis, they are doing videos and little blurbs um, out to our community and our families uh, here in the next couple weeks to uh, get the word out and see what our plans are and how they're moving forward. So, just that's my little spiel. >> Thank you. I just wanted to um, say thank you to everyone that did come out to the Focus graduation this weekend. Thank you for all the work that everyone puts in every day to help these graduates celebrate that day. It was a great way to recognize their work, to acknowledge the support that families give these students, and it was amazing. Um, to
037see the smile on their faces was priceless. So, thank you for what you do. >> I'll close it out then. I'm ready to build on that um, and thank the the leadership of Focus. I was able to tour there in the last 2 weeks and see all firsthand all the incredible work they're doing leading up to graduation and learn more about that program and also shout out to Monroe and all the great work there. I got to see that firsthand and um anytime you you have an opportunity to get in any of our schools, I don't think any of us walk out feeling worse. We always walk out feeling like, "Oh my gosh, there's so much incredible work being done by all the dedicated staff and leaders there." And so, I encourage everybody any opportunity
038you get to go visit our schools um it's inspiring and it recenters you. So, thank you. >> I would just like to offer my most sincere congratulations to the class of 2026, Focus, and all students coming up this weekend. It is one of my favorite weekends to um be a board member of the year. So, thank you to the teachers and staff members who have helped you as graduates get to where you're at today and I wish you well in your next steps as whatever those steps are. So, congratulations and bravo and thank you staff and Superintendent Smith, I will turn it over to you for your report. >> Yeah, I'll just kind of dovetail right off of that. So, congratulations this evening to all of our class of 2026 and DMPS. We celebrated our
039graduates first back in January with Options Academy's winter commencement and a few more this past Saturday with All Points Academy and Focus. From Friday morning through Sunday evening, we'll be celebrating hundreds and hundreds of students at eight different ceremonies for our five comprehensive high schools along with Options Academy, Ruby Van Meter, and Virtual Campus. Our congratulations to each and every student being presented with their diploma this weekend and our many, many thanks to every teacher, counselor, principal, coach, volunteer, friend, family member who supported our students in achieving this incredible milestone. So, thank you and congratulations. >> Thank you. Um I will now entertain a motion for us to go into closed session. >> From Mayberry Maze. >> Page five. >> I move that the board go into closed session per Iowa Code Section 21.51 I,
040which states a governmental body may hold a closed session only by affirmative public vote of either 2/3 of the members of the body or of all members present at the meeting to evaluate the professional competency of an individual whose appointment, hiring, performance, or discharge is being considered when necessary to prevent needless and irreparable injury to that individual's reputation and that individual request a closed session. >> We have a motion. May I have a second? >> Second by Campos. >> We have a motion by Mayberry Maze and a second by Campos. Ms. Rios, will you please take the vote? >> Yes. Ms. Alonso? >> Yes. >> Ms. Campos? >> Yes. >> Mr. Dix? >> Yes. >> Ms. Hopkins? >> Yes. >> Mr. Hubble? >> Yes. >> Ms. Marstrander? >> Yes. >> Dr. Mayberry Maze? >> Yes.
041>> The motion passes 7 to 0. At this moment, we will take a brief recess and transition into our private session. Um board members, the time is now 6:05. Let's transition to our closed session room by 6:15. >> Thank you.