001hi my name is Jenny Hayes my name is Shannon Adams hi I'm Steve Hiner my name is Nate Winslow hi I'm Scott Roberts and I'm the proud principal at lewood elementary and I am the proud principal of Stanley Elementary I'm the principal at Lakewood Middle School Welcome to our school and I'm the proud principal of Harmony Middle School and I'm the proud principal of Blue Valley Southwest High School [Music] when I graduated from college I was a kindergarten teacher in Northwest Arkansas it was probably the hardest job I've ever had in my life my husband and I decided to move from Northwest Arkansas back home to Kansas City where I'm from and at that point I was hired to be a sixth grade teacher at Overland Trail Middle School and Dr Jessica danne and Phoebe
002Lewis were my principal and assistant principal and it was from that moment after I I saw their leadership and what they were doing for kids that I fell in love with teaching all over again and it was actually their passion that inspired me to go on to want to be a principal I grew up in a really small town um it actually wasn't even a town I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere and it took three schools to make my high school so everybody knew everybody coincidentally that's what I love about Stanley Elementary is we're kind of a small town um so I feel like I found the perfect place to be a principal and I I think the big reason why I stopped teaching and started principaling was because um
003I wanted to be more helpful to more people so I felt like instead of just um helping the students in my classroom I could help more teachers and more students um and I hope that I have something that our students may or may not know about me is that I have a vast collection of fun socks and before I share these socks with you I just just want to share the why and the why is it gives me an opportunity to connect with our students in a different way I actually have kids throughout the day they'll ask me hey Dr hinar what kind of socks are you wearing today all of our principles in Blue Valley are wonderful they're great they're enthusiastic I think anytime I talk to a different principal or colleague I learn
004something and I think we're very collaborative in Blue Valley we've got each other's backs we work well together and that really makes being a principal in Blue Valley the best we talk daily we collaborate we truly C- labor on a regular basis and that's not just at the high school level that's with our middle school and Elementary colleagues um it's just something that you know these are the best people I've ever worked with and I and I have been so fortunate throughout my career to work with outstanding administrators who challenge me who support me but you know that we can have a true collaborative culture what brings me joy at lewood elementary school starts every morning when I get out of my car there's sometimes even some cars lined up ready to start the day
005it's the tiny humans that walk through the door that want to greet me and when there are 600 tiny little humans that think you're the neatest person on Earth really just cannot make you do anything but smile and enjoy your [Music] day [Music] hello my name is Officer Garcia hi my name is Trevor Burgess I'm Dave ryall I'm chlo and Rizzo my name is Nate Schmidt the thing that keeps students safe in our buildings is knowing that they have somebody that they can confide in if uh something comes up and they don't know where to go if they have someone at the school they they feel comfortable reaching out to and telling you know this um I feel threatened by this that's super important and continues to play the the greatest role in keeping our
006school district safe it's important for students to feel safe so they have an envir environment that they can feel comfortable in an environment to to learn in and it's it's not just education but it's building uh positive and trusting relationships uh with the adults in the building you know here at our school we have, 1650 students and over 200 staff members uh it's imperative that everyone feels that they have a place in our building now I started in law enforcement back in 90 1990 I guess and when I came to Overland Park in 2002 I got put in the Dare unit in 2003 so I work been working with kids since 2003 and that was elementary schools at that point and I just I enjoyed it so I stayed in the schools ever since we
007are your cops and we care about you I've helped as many staff people as I have students and keeping the lines of communication open uh with everybody that's on the team and that is you know families that's students that's staff that's Administration is this is a community where we want to Foster um a culture of safety a lot of things in police work is reactive something happens and we react to it this is proactive and we try to tell the students that we're here for you guys we are trying to be proactive in your life having a safe school is very important to me um um I have a daughter in the district and I want her to feel safe in order for her to feel safe all of her classmates need to feel safe
008and they need a place to go whether it's me making it safe another teacher um an administrator we all need to come together so these kids can feel safe one of my favorite Parts about the job is to be able to coach the students um and have them see me in in a in a different light and I take um an interest in each one of those players and to be able to hold them accountable and help um build them into strong men and women there's a couple things that come to mind um when what's rewarding for me uh actively working and on duty it is when people come up and say officer Garcia you're always here thank you so much for your service thank you so much for protecting us um thank you so
009much for sacrificing time away from your family to be here the fact that the community recognizes that is so important to me because we do give a lot we give our heart and soul to this position and protecting our students and staff so to build those those positive relationships with your students and even a decade later they remember you and they want to reach out to you and ask how you're doing or invite you to their private events that's where you truly know that you've made a difference uh and you've impacted the lives of [Music] someone all right it's 6 o'clock uh I think our teachers might dream of rooms this quiet so uh in honor of that let's go ahead and do the Pledge of Allegiance um officer reyal if you'll lead us please
010to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all right uh next up we're going to move into Awards and recognition all right good evening so as some of you may know you know we start start off board meetings recognizing staff and students across the district who are doing exceptional things so it's fitting that we start this meeting off by recognizing everyone involved in the educational experience at Blue Valley next week is American Education week it's a week dedicated to celebrating public education and the employees committed to ensuring every child receives a quality education we'd like to kick off the celebration a little early with a proclamation from our Board of Education president all
011right so um a proc proclamation in honor of American Education week whereas public schools are the backbone of our democracy providing young people with the tools they need to maintain our nation's precious values of Freedom C Civility and equality and whereas by equipping Young Americans with both practical skills and broader intellectual abilities schools give them hope for and access to a productive future and whereas education employees be they substitute Educators custodians teachers bus drivers or Librarians work Tire tirelessly to serve our children and communities with care and professionalism and whereas schools are Community Lynch pins bringing together adults and children Educators and volunteers Business Leaders and elected officials in a common Enterprise therefore be it resolved that Blue Valley School District declares November 15th through 19th as the H 100th annual OB observance of American
012Education week thank you president tying um you know our recognitions for tonight just don't start here or stop here with American Education week we have a whole evening of um celebrations and we'd like to start off um with Colleen zinc this evening we are happy to recognize her the dyslexia specialist with blue valley Colleen would you please come forward now Blue Valley strives for students to accomplish their learning goals through experiences that value learning as a uniquely individual ual and recursive process for the first time this year all students K through 12 were universally screened in literacy blue Valley's dyslexia team goes above and beyond to ensure students and teachers have what they need to thrive Goen a member of that great team has earned certified level status in the Academy of Orton Gillingham practitioners
013and Educators it is certainly an asset for Blue Valley to have a consultant with these credentials and expertise in the area of dyslexia Colleen is accompanied by her husband Ward tonight so let's please give them a round of applause takes a great husband supporting [Applause] her and we'll take a picture so Colleen I can remember a couple years ago when uh Jennifer and I were having a conversation about training our uh reading specialist and some of our special education teachers who we are starting with uh on the Orton him method and and I learned firsthand how involved that was and so the fact that you and I know how involved this training is and so thank you for being willing to do that and being willing to support our teachers and our um at elementary
014middle and high school because I think you're going to be a GameChanger for us in the area of literacy and what our teachers can do so we are so lucky to have you and we appreciate all that you do so thank you very much congratulations it is also an honor to recognize another group that helps to ensure a transformative educational experience for students would Jill Bergie Jennifer Smith and Holly mccardy come to the front please so these three here are here today representing blue Valley's groups of instructional design coaches or idc's as we call them the instructional design team partners with Educators to cultivate student centered future ready and personal learning experiences for all students Dr Maran I know you wanted to shed some light on the amazing work that they do so take it
015away so I have had the privilege of being in uh 22 schools in the last month and my goal is to be in all of them by the end of the month but as I've been in those schools and I've talked to principls and I've talked to teachers uh one thing that has come up many times is the support that you all are giving whether it's with the new uh resources at elementary around phonics I hear that all the time uh from the elementary buildings at the middle school I hear about the the PLC process and helping to look at data and to figure out where our kids are at so that we can accelerate them forward and then miss math over here I hear uh in almost every building um about the support that
016that you are leading as we really are trying to transform our math education and you all are up here um really as a representative of all of of our amazing instructional design coaches who are in the building in the trenches supporting our teachers uh so that they can and do better things for our students so thank you for all that you do uh we are so lucky to have you and we appreciate you all very much congratulations and we're going to take a picture all right we have yet another great group so this week is celebrated across the nation as school psychology week we have some representatives from our school psychology team here with us today with jacn Johnson Todd McCarthy and Emily Waters please come forward our school psychologists work directly with students and
017are trained to handle a variety of situations they also work hand inhand with Educators and administrators to create inclusive and vibrant School communities Dr merrian has a few things to say about their work so Blue Valley is very lucky to have school psychologists um in all of our building so as I think back to my 23 years in the district I first started as a counselor and we were able able to partner with our school psychologists our school psychologists are vital in the IEP process for our special education students to provide the testing and the resources that they need but they they go above and beyond that they are resources in our buildings uh for our staff for our students um and provide that support they're a vital Link in the uh mental health teams
018that we have in every single building and so these three Representatives um Elementary of middle and High School um are here to represent all of our school psychologists during this National week that highlights the work that they do and we're so appreciative that we have you and feel very lucky that blue valley has been able to maintain really high quality school psychologist they're not easy to find is what I would say and that some of our neighboring districts have not been as lucky to be able to be fully staffed so thank you for all that you do um thank you for supporting our students most importantly um in our staff so that we can support students [Applause] congratulations all right so we have a couple more left to wrap up our recognitions tonight it's also
019an honor to recognize two staff members with distinguished service and excellence and education Awards these special people go above and beyond each day in our schools and across the district would Shel Shel Shelby excuse me Shel Shelby Meer please come forward with Katie bonman sorry Shelby in we are excited to recognize Shelby one of our behavioral techs with the distinguished service award Shelby has been with the district for four years though Katie you know very well how our Behavior technicians play an important role in a system of ongoing fluid support to meet the diverse needs of students increase equity and Foster the development of well balanced happy and healthy students so tell us a little bit more about why she's so special um we quite simply could not do what we do in our lift
020program at Blue Valley West without Shelby and our other RBT she is instrumental in providing support daily to our students teachers and other PA professionals and to ad administrators um as we work to support students increasing their communication abilities um their ability to be in inclusive settings and to really experience all that it means to be a Blue Valley West student we couldn't do it without Shelby and and we're grateful for you thank you that's so sweet if you would like to say something or Tanya either one I'm okay so I recently was able to be at Blue Valley West and was in the lift classroom which is a busy classroom uh there was uh lots of things going on in there and so I got to witness firsthand just for a little bit um
021how you interact with the students and and really help uh the adults in the room to know how to interact with those students so that they can be successful and I could not agree with Katie Moore that uh people like you help us all of us so that we can meet the individual needs of those students on IEP so thank you for all that you do congratulations I know that I think CJ your husband is here and your daughter right I think I hear her Maya Maya can you give a wave for Mom oh all right we have one final recognition would Heather Fredick Frederickson please come forward with your principal Susie Martin [Applause] we are excited to recognize Heather who's a special education teacher at Liberty View Elementary with an excellence and education award
022this school year is our 22nd year in the district we're proud that our special education Educators continue to provide personalized learning experiences that enable students to make continuous progress in school while building trusting relationships with them Susie please tell us why Heather is so deserving of this award I had to prepare something because you are that important to our school and to our community when I think about Heather I think about this a staff member who embodies the values and vision of Blue Valley School District Heather puts students first and foremost and she does this with rigor and ease at the same time she's passionate about building relationships with students and their families to support our special education learning she's self-driven learner who never hesitates to try out a new method or connect with a
023student unique with a unique interest and also meet a student at their level of need she influences the work of her colleagues and her partnering teachers to build the best learning program at our school Heather our district shines and aims to put education Beyond expectation every day you dynamically impact the lives of our students and you go far beyond our expectations it is with great honor that I honor you with this excellence in education award congratulations so okay thank you so much Susie thank you Dr Maran for um this recognition I also want to thank my family who is here with me tonight and um family that's also watching um I have parents at home so hi um and they're so proud um but also I want to also say I am so blessed to
024have um co-workers and friends and students and parents that have supported me um and I learn so much from all of them and the experiences that we've gone through together have made me grow um and so I'm just thankful that they're there to listen encourage and support thank you awesome thank you and I think our family's right here so we want to give them a shout out have a couple children here and husband so we we uh as a district want to thank you for your many years of service to Liberty View and for again continuing to meet the needs of those students you know it's not lost on me that we continue to honor our special education teachers who work so hard to work with some of our most struggling students who um need
025that extra champion and you are that person at Liberty View so thank [Applause] you all right that wraps up recognitions so blue Valley's uh known for having the very best Educators and staff around and it was an honor to highlight all of our special people here tonight um usually there's a time in the board meeting where those that were here for the recognitions only we want to give you an opportunity to escape and not wonder when can I slide out but of course you're also welcome to stay for the regular part of the Board of Education meeting if you'd like to join us and congratulations to you all all right we are going to move on to public comments now so welcome to those that are in attendance uh to address the board or listen
026during open Forum open Forum provides a time for individuals to address the board in an effort to ensure an orderly efficient effective and dignified meeting open Forum will be provided for up to 60 minutes in an effort to give as many individuals an opportunity to speak as possible during the 60 Minute open Forum the board will enforce a 3 minute limit per speaker and after 60 Minutes the the board will close open forum and will proceed with its agenda for the evening whether you plan to speak or just listen we're glad you're here because we care about your opinions and concerns of our patrons if you do not have an opportunity to address the board during the meeting you may address the board by email communication a few reminders about open Forum that will help
027our speakers to have a constructive and positive experience when discussing items with the board when making remarks please be civil and use respective a respectful language please limit discussion to relevant business of the board tonight discussion of matters related to specific student or employee is not allowed instead comments should be submitted in writing to the superintendent please remember to limit your comments to 3 minutes and avoid repeating the concerns of a previous speaker and if you have questions that require response someone will follow up with you at a later time on behalf of the board I welcome you and appreciate your interest in Blue Valley as we strive to provide the very best education possible to our students when your name's called uh please introduce yourself before beginning your remarks and as a reminder we
028uh ask that all remarks are limited to 3 minutes so first up tonight is Sloan heler good evening Dr mergan Dr colier members of the Blue Valley School Board my name is Sloan heler and I am a parent of two Blue Valley elementary students my concern tonight is uh really the misinformation war that we are seeing here in Blue Valley my belief is if we don't stop this misinformation War immediately we are going to see damage that we won't be able to repair there are powerful individuals and groups that are targeting our families with lies about our schools our teachers and they're doing this for their own political and financial gain no we are not teaching law school level theories like critical race in kindergarten let alone 12th grade no teachers are not being directed
029from the district to shame white children for their skin color and yes children can and do get very sick and even die from covid-19 without proper mitigation measures in place those are the facts yet lies are being spread to get families upset and out to the polls the people behind these lies don't care about our kids they care about themselves as a district committed to educational Excellence we need to find a way to set the record straight and I believe that that needs to come from the very top we can afford another year of lies and threats and political circus it is time to get back to our kids and get back to education thank you thank you very much uh next upep is Jason Anderson thank you hello my name is Jason Anderson I'm
030the parent of an elementary school student here in the district like most residents I I very much look forward to a time when we're not talking about masks and vaccines and Public Health and I do think that with a bit more perseverance and a little bit of good luck we're you know we're getting close to that goal um but we're not there yet covid vaccines for elementary age children have only been available for a week and there's a five-week timeline from the moment a child receives their first shot to when they've achieved full immunization from from that process that means that any children who received their first dose during the first week of availability won't be fully immunized until mid December T case so if you're spoken with any other families that have children under
03112 who've been trying to schedule immunization shots you know it's been a bit of a scramble to find appointments people are trading information everywhere know who has openings CVS Walgreens pediatrician and so on it's reasonable to expect that the scheduling bottleneck will continue for the first few weeks which means the best case scenario is that for those families who feel any sense of urgency about vaccinating their households they won't be be able to fully accomplish that goal until after winter break basically now I acknowledge that not all elementary students are going to receive a covid vaccine I'd be surprised if even have to um we usually only see maybe two-thirds of children receive a flu shot but there's a substantial population in the district that believes their families need this vaccination opportunity either because of
032the risks of other family members that have health conditions or because of risks to their children we are almost there let's just hold us strong a little bit longer and then we can have a reasonable discussion in January about how we transition from a pandemic response to an environment where there's this new endemic disease called covid because we will need to talk about emic covid and what will be an appropriate response to co cases in classrooms where all of a sudden you find out the entire classroom's been exposed a year from now two years from now three years from now the so what what is the appropriate response in that situation those are real ongoing challenges that our community and all communities will have to face long after masks have been retired from school policy
033we're not going to have covid dashboards or drive-thru testing centers forever we're eventually going to be in a place where there's a much longer lead time between someone spreading covid in a classroom and anyone becoming aware of the risk so those will be challenges for the next several years that will face this board um how to live with the new disease and what is an appropriate response in those situations without all the extra resources that we've had to work with these past couple of years in the meantime we have vaccines and boosters for those that choose to use them please give us an opportunity to finish that process thank you you Jason thank you Jason next up Melissa Jenner Jenner hi good evening Dr meran and members of the board I'm Melissa Jenner I'm a
034local physician in Mama four three of which are here in the district and I'm here today as a private citizen um I'm speaking again today to thank the board for your leadership in these unprecedented times during the covid-19 pandemic uh your decisions to support Universal masking has kept our children safe healthy happy in person and learning since August I'm here today to urge you to continue Universal masking in grades in all of our schools I understand that we're all tired of Co I I don't know if there's anyone that's more tired of Co than I am um I I as much as I love seeing all of your faces every month um I'd like to stay home on a Monday evening um but we have to use our knowledge of this disease and its patterns
035to realize that we are likely on the cusp of another search uh Europe has been our Canary in this Coal Mine in every single surge for the past two years and the cases in Europe are at record numbers once again many Physicians and epidemiologists are sounding our warnings uh please just stay the course vaccines were just approved for ages 11 or 5 to 11 these children have will not be completely protected until dece the middle of December at the earliest we need to play offense against this disease many families including mine still have children in our households that are too young to be immunized and we also have high schoolers again we need to play offense removing masking in high schools right now as we're likely to enter another surge will just lead to us
036playing defense as the cases rise please just let us get through the holidays without huge quarantines and isolation events we are so so close to having vaccinations available to our entire student population our early childhood students will likely have vaccines available to their age group in very early 2022 I'm confident as a physician that we will be able to safely have mask optional by Spring the light is there the light at the end of the tunnel I can see it um but we need to follow these warning signs and the disease patterns listen to The Experts um who are saying that the time to remove masking in schools and make it optional for a portion of our population is not not now um thank you so much for your time and service to our community
037and I I thank you for continuing to follow Health experts um thank you for time thank you Melissa uh next up Amy Thomas good evening I'd like to ask you to follow the OA school board's decision to make masks optional immediately for all grade levels let's use data real data not emotions the Delta variant is waning in in Johnson County it has been on a downward Trend since September 1st with the entire County at a 4.9% positivity rate and declining children ages 0 to 19 account for 2% of the total hospitalizations they account for zero ICU cases and zero deaths in the Johnson County area children are recovering nowhere else in the entire State requires our children to be masked they can go to indoor play places such as event uh main event Dave and
038Busters Urban Air where they're crawling all over each other they can do indoor sports where they're sweating all over each other and still the county remains at a 4.9% and declining positivity rate I find it ironic that the board members from all across the state of Kansas met indoors unmasked for an all day meeting Side by state side at sitting at Round Tables yet our children remain masks 8 hours a day that was just Saturday some of you were there for those of you who those of you who were not I'll fill you in what we learned is that the Kansas state test scores are down 20% and schools without masks who had in in-person learning while we were virtual scored far better than blue valley that includes Garden City and Dodge City both of
039which are 6A schools who are currently unmasked with no Co um tracing the learning loss is atrocious and mask contribute to this loss I ask that you please move to make mask optionals immediately secondly I'd like to address the pornographic books being made available to in the district to all Blue Valley High School students all boys aren't blue and Lawn Boys by John by Jonathan Evon let me be clear my issue with these books is the graphic sexual explicit nature not the fact that they portray gay men I have many gay friends who I love dearly that has nothing to do with this I would not approve these books if they were a man and a woman Lawnboy States what if I told you I touched another guy's dick what if I told you I
040sucked it I put his dick in my mouth it was in fourth grade it was no big deal all boys aren't blue he reached down and pulled out my dick he quickly went to giving me head his body felt great in my mouth we both got up and went to bedroom where we got completely naked for the first few minutes we dry humped and grinded what part of these books is educational we cannot have to kill mocking bird or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but this is okay what world are we living in this is worse than a rated R movie which requires people to be 18 to enter this graphic detail would never be in a rated R movie it's pornography and I ask it be removed immediately from our libraries thank you thank
041you Amy uh next up Cindy holer hi there good evening uh Dr Maran board members so good to see you um once again thank you so much for your service um thank you for your commitment to education and ensuring all of our kids um are safe as we start to close in on the end of 2021 I would tell you it feels to me and probably to you that parts of this past year have been upside down upside down the respect that things have been different as far as how we've approached business and how we've looked at things upside down respect to the fact that healthc care experts have been disrespected and vilified Schoolboard members unfortunately being targeted and harassed at different times and upside down the respect where working for the common good which
042has always been a principle of kons and our great country has been kicked aside My Hope though is that as we move forward and hopefully through this pandemic is that we make a return to certain things that we make a return to civility that we make a return to understanding scientific research has standards and processes typically requiring years of work unlike a Google search My Hope Is We also make a returned understanding that Liberty was never intended to be held hostage for personal self-interest finally I hope we move forward in important areas ensuring we continue to provide an excellent education to all students fully provide the tools our students need while being supportive to our teachers and our staff and importantly I hope that that we see that reasonable people whether elected or just regular
043citizens find their voice to lead our communities forward I ask you to continue following science and listen to The Experts and making important decisions and finally I thank you for your service and your commitment to our students and what is hopefully our very last upside down year thank you thank you Cindy next up is uh Laura couch okay hi my name is Laura couch I'm a former teacher and a mom of four kids in the Blue Valley School District what are we doing do we even know is our end goal to all be vaccinated to make Masks part of the dress code Forever are we going to hire contact more contract tracers and get daily PCR tests to stay in school from now on this is coming with a new test to stay protocol that's
044being rolled out after 18 months it's time for some clear answers my son just finished his third quarantine at the end of October he has a ma medical mask exemption a medical doctor has said my son should not wear a mask you may disagree with that but that's okay because you're not his medical doctor or his parent he has been discriminated against and has lost much needed education because of his medical condition he was exposed to an adult at school who was fully vaccinated and masked my healthy son who is a full year behind academically had to come home for n days because of this exposure the obvious question is how does a masked fully vaccinated adult get covid and then potentially pass it on to my child if the masks and vaccines work if
045the safety if the safest P safest person in the school is sending my healthy child into quarantine then how will this ever end please make this make sense and give us some answers I actually called the health department on this and they couldn't give me clear answers you both are losing your credibility because none of these policies make sense at this point Common Sense would be to contact the district or states that have had success dropping the co mitigations I have actually heard that Spring Hill has the best numbers in the county it's time to stop getting tied up with red tape and start finding Solutions and off ramps to these protocols for our students you haven't told us how does this end what do we need to do to make this end everything else
046in our community has gone back to normal except for our schools who have the least vulnerable population should we go to a few or should we get a few restaurant tables in the school so that we can walk in take off our masks or maybe our kids could play basketball and soccer while doing math and reading so they can take off their masks after 18 months it's time to treat our children like students in a school and not patients in a hospital we need to stop masking testing and putting healthy children in quarantine I would love for you to Prov provide the actual clinical peer reviewed data that shows these quarantine protocols decrease severe illness or death not because the CDC or Jo Johnson County Health Department says so show us the actual studies our
047kids deserve to be kids to laugh and smile at each other and give high fives and hugs they deserve to partner up and sit next to each other to see their teacher's face and how she is pronouncing her words they deserve to see if their Friend Is Sad happy or confused and then be able to help them they should not be scared of each other in assuming everyone is sick at all times or if they do have a sniffle that it's co there are obvious social emotional and educational harms from the current Blue Valley covid protocols you can see that these rules are hurting our children and you continue to go by them you have the power to stop this now do the right thing stand up for our children stand up for our teachers
048thank you all right thank you Laura next up is Nathan Bronson good evening my name is Nathan Bronson and I'm a junior at Blue Valley North thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak this evening and more importantly thank you for making the difficult decision to require masking at the high school level it is hard to dispute the data your action has prevented the spread of covid-19 in our schools I fear that overturning The Mask requirement tonight would be premature vaccination rates in our community remain well below the threshold necessary for herd immunity and is the older brother of two Elementary School aged sisters who have not had the opportunity to be vaccinated I ask that you keep the masking requirement in place for us at the high school level at least until the
049new year our masking protects others who have not yet had the opportunity to be vaccinated as we have seen throughout the pandemic letting up early allows the virus to grow stronger and surge again I know that you are in a difficult Place pressured to remove the mask Rule and I know that many of my peers won't be happy that I'm here speaking in support of the rule I certainly do not enjoy wearing a mask every day but I understand that when I when my classmates and I do so we are helping curb the spread of a virus that at its best disrupts the continuity of our education at its worst this virus causes hospitalization creates permanent ailments and kills I want to reiterate I'm not asking you to implement a permanent mask mandate I'm only
050asking that you do not overturn the current rules until our younger siblings have time to be fully vaccinated I hope you agree that during this time masks are an appropriate Safeguard to ensure a safe inpersonal inperson educational experience for all of us again please keep the mask order in place at least until the new year thank you thank you Nathan up next is Annie wishner good evening my name is Dr Annie wishna and I'm the mother of two Blue Valley students grades 2 and five and I'm a local physician and I'm here tonight as a private citizen I really just want to thank this board not only have your masking policies successfully kept our children in schools this fall I also believe this board Bears direct responsibility for reducing the rate of covid spread in
051our community by mitigating the risk at schools you haven't just kept our kids healthy you've kept our entire Community healthy I know that as covid rates go down the question of when to stop masking naturally comes up I Echo the other speakers that right now is not the time it is still too soon rates are down due to masking requirements without them they will go back up and we risk quarantining large groups of students which nobody wants the Johnson County order still recommends masking for kids younger than 12 the vaccine has been approved but young children still have not had the chance to have the vaccine to become fully immun immunized and our high school students are not you know vaccinated at a high rate most importantly I would urge this board not to make
052any decision without directly involving Public Health experts the board should work with our partners at the Johnson County Department of Public Health to determine criteria for when it is safe to remove masks in schools and when it may be necessary to put them back on it's imperative unfortunately to realize that covid is an everchanging entity we may have new variants in our future rates will likely e and flow over time and we all need to be flexible so that we can respond appropriately but we should involve the experts in those decisions again thank you for all you do for our children and our community please continue to follow the brave path you have set to keep our children and our community safe thank you Annie up next is Greg Williams thank you for the opportunity
053Greg Williams uh father of a elementary school student in Blue Valley uh I don't have much to add on what uh what the doctors and others have said I think the masking policy obviously is working we thank you for your leadership uh my 10-year-old was was fortunate enough to get her first shot on Saturday so she's going to get her second shot on November 27th and be fully vaccinated I just looked it up on Saturday December 11th so I think and she was you know obviously one of the first to get get her first shot so uh this these next two months are going to be critical to get our get our kids vaccinated and come back after the break and we'll see where we are and I just want to take take this time
054to thank all the board members for their service but also the the the the retiring ones Miss over uh Mr sites and Miss Benjamin we thank you for your service and appreciate you and we'll miss you but thank you thank you Greg uh Jeff Nestle thank you before I begin though Amy it's really good to see you back here again thank you I appreciate that it's good to be back thank you uh thank you my name is Jeff Nestle and I have a son who was a senior at North I also want to take this opportunity to thank the three retiring members of the board for their efforts I know Michelle Stacy and Mike have especially over the last couple of years faced threats to both their family and friends by ignor ramises and yet
055continue to do what is right I also must commend the other members of the board who have faced the same idiotic but real threats and though I may not always agree with their positions I'm looking at you Tom they always have shown courage and Leadership just by their presence at the meetings so while I praise the remaining members of the board I must also offer them my sympathies as they're going to be joined by two new members who by campaigning not only have shown little capacity for leadership or an understanding of how our schools work but also prayed Upon A fearful ignorant and yes frust ated voter during this past election cycle they have done this by lying about what is being taught in our schools and accepting support from an out ofate pack who
056targeted our district among others Nationwide and whose leader said in the response to a local resident and I'll pass on using the exposive here F you we're taking over school boards whether you like it or not Charming since four out of five Republicans still believe the big lie that Trump won the election it's not surprising another big lie that CRT was being taught in our schools became an issue in this election the other big issue of course was mask and science will probably take care of that due time what will these new members do when they realize their big issue is not really a problem will they work with the board on issues such as budgets and Staffing or will they bombastically continue their misinformation campaign to fuel those who honestly don't know what's occurring
057in our public schools to stir up the minions I really don't know the answer to that question what I do know is that at least one of these individuals will probably continue his bigotry against certain students picking on others who are seen as different is what a bully does best and cherry pick facts to fit his own Twisted scenarios as for the other new member I don't know what to expect she refused to appear at any Forum where there would be independent questions and for all I know she may be as deep and have as much depth as a Smurf waiting pool because of this and for the remaining members you have both my thanks and my condolences thank you Jeff next up is Brook Lou hi um my name is Brook Lou I'm a
058mom of four I'm also a PA thanks for allowing me to speak today um I understand that there are efforts at the local and National level in regards to vaccinating children 5 through 11 for the covid vaccine there is a difference the vaccine is not approv D it's still under eua so there's a difference okay um there has been no proper animal trials or peer-reviewed data yet the push for these vaccines continues in our community so I would like to know does Blue Valley intend to mandate the covid vaccines in the near future and if so when to be able to attend school um I don't know can anyone answer that or does does it have to be through an email no I mean this is your opportunity to speak to us so not a
059dialogue but just an opportunity for you I don't ever get my emails responded to so they don't anyway um so on November 23rd 2019 the who which is the World Health Organization came out with an article that said considerations regarding consent in vaccinating children and Adolescence between six and 17 years old they wanted to say that there's a three approaches to obtaining informed consent for a vaccine number one is written number two is verbal and number three is implied consent so implied consent means that parents are informed of the vaccine through social mobilization communication including letters addressed to the parents but subsequently the physical presence of the child or adolescence with or without an accompanying parent at the vaccination session is considered implied consent so my question is is blue valley planning to administer covid-19
060vaccines in the Blue Valley schools are you guys planning to set up clinics vaccine clinics in all the schools um if so how many are there going to be just a few or are you doing them in all of the schools um and if you are planning on administering covid-19 vaccines in the schools how does PL Valley plan on getting consent for these vaccines is it going to be written verbal implied consent I think these are all legitimate questions that blue valley parents need to know um I know you like don't don't like to compare other school districts but sha Mission has already sent out an email to parents in regards to whether or not they want their child vaccinated at school or if they're planning on getting it at their pediatrician's office so if
061it's been being discussed in shaie Mission more than likely it's being discussed in Blue Valley and OA um so we need to know as parents in my opinion public schools need to stick to education stay out of medicine thank you thank you Brooke uh Lisa Gabriel hi I'm Lisa I have four kids that have gone through the district I feel I've been very supportive of teachers and staff over the years volunteering in many different capacities however my feelings have changed I have found that the schools are not being transparent with parents and they're pushing their own political agenda parents aren't even allowed to be at the schools now it reminds me of the character Napoleon in Animal Farm by George Orwell which is a book about communism Napoleon aore isolated puppies from their mother so
062he can indoctrinate them and make them loyal to him for when he forcefully took over the farm one lack of transparency is I've received conflicting information on who has access to the girls restrooms and locker rooms at school originally I was told that um trans transgender boys do not have access to them and then lately I was told that they do and it's on a case-by casee basis but I'm mainly here today to talk about CRT which the Kansas Board of Education and the Blue Valley board denies teaching for those in new to critical race Theory it is asserts that racism is present in every aspect of life everyone must under must be understood in terms of social groups you're either an oppressor or oppressed and there are no individuals it's the opposite of Dr
063King's teachings which is what this generation of parents were raised on to treat people based on their character not their skin color in April this year at lewood middle school this power flower was given out in our child's Flex class by a science teacher it's right here but since you can't see it I made it bigger while the students while the students were grouped at their tables he asked them to identify different social groups in each category then decide which groups would farare better or worse in lewood the ones that would do better were to be listed on these outer pedals the ones worse on the inner pedals and then they were asked to identify which ones they belong to some examples are sex race ethnic group denomination their geographic region religion I get you
064get the picture this is clearly CRT and nobody wins exercise it makes all the children feel bad about themselves and ruins their friendships how is this not bullying this has got to stop this fall at bvn high school we were sad to see the list of books chosen by our freshman honors Ela teacher clearly they were indoctrination books the title was the hate you give which spells Thug It promotes Marxism via the Black Panther 10-step program not to mention its anti- police and plentiful and racist remarks towards White children this in addition to vulgarity sexual drug and alcohol references remember these kids were in Middle School just a few months earlier of course it continues on to college KU offers an angry white male studies course how is it not racist racist is the same
065whether um we Can't Buy in that racist is only racist if it'ss minorities it's like a coin thank you uh next up is Bill mck want to make sure I say this correctly Bill MC Mahone McMahon okay sorry my apologies no you're fine I just wanted to mention first of all I've had covid and been fully vaccinated um and I've looked for any kind of evidence that masking helps all of the evidence out there in fact suggests just the opposite the masking hurts and actually promotes the transmission of covid so I think in your heart of hearts everyone knows how silly it is at this point it's become a uniform um sometimes bad circumstances can actually have some unintended positive consequences also I believe it as a parent I believe that most parents used to
066believe that school boards and most teachers had as their utmost goal to instruct our children teach them critical thinking skills and have a strong base from which they could achieve great things well as tens of millions of parents have now found out that is far too often not the case what has supplanted a solid multifaceted education is indoctrination put simply a curriculum engineer to create AG grieved victim groups or guilty privileged groups that all need rescue or atonement that can only be found by aligning with and voting within one desired political party so now millions of parents have become aware they have become a strong force and will reconstruct School boards all over the country so their children can receive an education instead of an indoctrination into a political party finally a couple of weeks
067ago local news outlets aired a story about an incident in the girls restroom at V Valley North High School they reported that the Overland Park police were called in why haven't the parents of Blue Valley North students not been notified of the incident or informed as to what happened thank you Bill uh Dr Joanna [Applause] fle hello I'm Dr Joanna fle um I live in the area as well as I'm a parent to three children in the Blue Valley School District in Middle School into an elementary and I also work in the district and I'm here as a private citizen I wanted to thank you for uh sustaining The Mask mandate and I think that that has decreased uh our numbers and substantially helped our hospitalizations so we thank you as Physicians my husband and
068I he's an ER doctor and we would like you to continue the mask mandate the reason why is because our children are Elementary in Middle School have an 11y old she just got her first vaccine on Saturday as did my other two younger children and they will not be fully vaccinated until the middle of December we're like a lot of other families in the district and we want to see the opportunity to have our children fully vaccinated before they are exposed to the virus to be quite Frank and so we've seen firsthand what the back what the virus does to the body and to Children there's long-term consequences I would like you to look at the data not from lay people that have presented their misguided data here but at our epidemiologists and our Public
069Health experts that help guide thoughtful decisionmaking and processes and implementation of when we should take our masks off and I do think that that will be there will come a time when that happens and I do think that our numbers are decreasing but at the same time it is premature to mandate that high school or Elementary Middle School students discontinu masks I think that we should give everyone the opportunity and the freedom of choice to have vaccination available for everyone and when that happens then look at the epidemiologist and turn to them and say hey is the guidance at this point I did want to also thank you for the testing other people have mentioned that here and I actually had the opportunity recently to participate in that with my children for um opting in
070and to testing so that they can remain in school and so that was something that my children were they didn't want to be behind in school any further so thank you for implementing that and I think that was a very thoughtful practice and um again I really appreciate you being on the board and I don't want you to take anything that is said here but look at the data yourself you guys are intelligent people and I appreciate everything you do so thank you so much thank you Sheila Alber good evening I'm Sheila alers I'm the mom of two students here in Blue Valley um I have a sophomore at blue valley Northwest and I have a sixth grader at Lake Wood midle um first of all thank you for your continued leadership um during this
071difficult time um and I'm really here because um I agree with most of the speakers this evening that there is a light at the end of the tunnel here that we're going to be able to remove masking here sometime in 2022 but to ask you not to remove Universal masking until our younger kids are able to be vaccinated I know just among my own friend group um that there most of my friends have made appointments for their younger children to get vaccinated many of them are towards the end of November then it's going to take till January till they're fully vaccinated and I think that's the time in which we talk about taking Universal masking away and and move um continued um in a continued normal manner I also feel the need to um kind
072of Express the fact that um my both my boys are having phenomenal year they've made connections with their friends they're participating in their activities they're having um their their academics are going extraordinarily well um I think they see masking as just you know a minor inconvenience but the rest of their lives are perfectly normal uh and I think when adults model that hey this is not a big deal and we can live through this small inconvenience to keep everyone healthy kids adapt very quickly thank you so much yes thank you Tamara sailor James good evening I'm Tamara Syler James and I am here to talk about dirty books and dereliction of Duty uh we're all aware of the controversy that's been swirling about books that have shown up in school libraries all around the country
073uh I did my own due diligence I was thinking surely not in Blue Valley but to my dismay I have found yes in Blue Valley um we've already heard about two books uh that are in our school liaries and I could actually confirm those quotes because I've seen those books myself I've also seen so-called young adult books that put words in the mouths of teen characters that are so nasty they would violate the Blue Valley student code of conduct uh I've seen a picture book for elementary school students about whiteness that calls whiteness a bad deal and suggests whiteness is the work of the devil there's also a novel about a girl abducted by a man at age 10 held captive and repeatedly raped by him for years until he tires of her and craves
074a substitute victim unbelievable I could go on but I've only got three minutes uh I'm well aware that this board has policies to follow for challenging instructional materials my concern however goes deeper than any particular book it goes to the heart of how you run the district and select your instructional materials as I see it there are two possibilities the first is that no one actually reads the books that go into our children's School libraries if that's the case that's a dereliction of your duty that would mean you rely on third-party reviews or Publishers or inside the education Bubble book list to tell you what to purchase for our children but we rely on you to exercise your best judgment and we don't expect you to delegate that responsibility to unelected unaccountable third parties the
075second possibility you do read them you do know what's in them and you think they're just fine frankly that's even more disturbing in the eyes of our kids what you choose to put in their libraries and in their classrooms carries great weight and Authority I think you're abusing your Authority and disrespecting our children by giving such books your stamp of approval my husband and I have four children and we have entrusted them all to the Blue Valley schools and over the years we have perhaps naively come to expect better of this District thank [Applause] you thank you Carol be bomb hi hi uh my name is Carol burn bom and I'm a resident of the district I have a child at uh Prairie Star Elementary and also one at prar middle school and I also
076have been a teacher at Blue Valley West for the past eight years um I'm here today to share my story and to full and I fully realize that I'm not going to be changing many minds but I'm here to ask you to please continue the mask mandate for K to2 students and staff we just aren't there yet last Sunday my 10-year-old daughter woke up with not feeling well and of course she unfortunately tested positive for covid she is the only person in our house who's unvaccinated and has been impatiently waiting for her turn for a vaccine she is now on day eight of Home isolation and has had a fever congestion coughing and very much very tired it's not been an easy Eight Days by any means she was devastated by her positive test especially
077since we don't know where she got it from that means that yes there is community spread in Blue Valley Schools masks are the easiest line of protection for those in our school Community I also want to express my concern for those students and staff at all School levels who I know are still worried about covid they may have younger unvaccinated family members at home like me or have friends family members and co-workers who are imuno compromised I see them every day wearing their masks perfectly worried about sitting next to classmates with Mass exemptions and refusing to eat in the lunchroom we need to recognize that their health both physical and mental matters too we are close we're so so close as of last Wednesday our 5 to 11 year olds are finally able to access
078covid vaccines but finding them is proving difficult for those who wish to do so and we need a little more time to get those Elementary age students fully immunized do I think we're going to get to a point where we don't need masks absolutely but we're just not there yet thank you for your time thank you Carol Jenny Cox hi my name is Jenny Cox I have a daughter that we adopted at Birth she's now a teenager and she's biracial a beautiful mix of black ethnicity and ethnicity she's like millions of others in America so it's come to my attention that there is a teacher training here in the Blue Valley School District diversity Equity inclusion training there's a lot going on in this training um that is super disturbing but today I'm going to
079focus on page nine of the de eii training White Privilege types of um White Privilege so types of privilege and then this is the sub category of white privilege um so some points in here White Privilege benefits white people at the expense of people of color if you do not have white privilege you may experience being treated differently and not seeing yourself catered to by the society you live in while the existence of white privilege is always present and noticeable to those who don't possess it white people may notice their advantages so for example a white person does not need to diligently search for products that suit their skin Band-Aids tights or makeup I mean I know I've gone into Target and couldn't find my color um but then I see tons and tons of
080different choices for all colors up there right and um a white person will never will not ever understand what it's like to turn on the TV and find that nobody looks like them on their or their family a white person is not followed in a store and doesn't have to fear the people or feel the have to fear the police so some of the above there's some facts in that but the point of the training that it's making is that people of color and others don't feel this way so here's where I need help I'm guessing I wonder where the evidence is I mean where's the evidence that exists the Le on the level that justifies a teacher training I'm sure that you have in your possession Ironclad Rock Solid research and I love facts
081I love research as I'm sure that you do and I would love to see the info so I emailed you prior to the meeting each of you asking for this info and you Al so you have and you also have my address on file and you can send the evidence there or email me either way um I asked my daughter what some of her thoughts were about her experience in relation to the points above and so this is what she kind of said um I don't agree with with the points because there's not been there's been a black president black seniors black company owners on and on I've never had trouble finding stuff for my skin if you're talking about makeup there's a huge variety I've seen people of color on TV it's not true
082I've seen black newscasters actors actresses and I've never felt being fallen into a store because I'm black she says that's the stupidest thing she's ever heard and um she doesn't fear the police and then she told me this last year she hates conversations of 2020 she likes the conversations of 2019 much better she doesn't understand why all this is being brought up again she says why we come such a long way in America and people are wanting to bring it all up again why she asked where does all this leave me where do I fit in half being half black and half white thank you for your time thank you and our last speaker is Wendy Connelly good evening Dr merrian and the board thank you for um allowing us to be here and to
083speak and I just appreciate your leadership so far this year and all that you've done to protect uh our kids and the staff members I am a former staff member in Blue Valley and I have two kids who attend Blue Valley Schools um but I want to read a statement on behalf of another staff member who can't be here it's Senora SFL at Blue Valley High and she writes as as a teacher who is in active cancer treatment and seriously immuno compromised for two weeks per month the idea of making masks optional for high school right now makes me incredibly uneasy truthfully I'm not sure that I can continue coming to work if students are not masked in my classroom I know that I am not the only adult employed in this District that either
084has personal health issues or immediate family members with health issues there are many reasons someone may not be able to get vaccinated or even uh vaccinated not able to mount a significant response for protection this is this not only includes those with health issues but those who have family members at home including children not eligible for vaccination and elderly family members this will also put students at risk last year last year students had the option to stay home to protect themselves or others but this year they are almost all present in school School masking is working to protect students and staff it is not only working to protect against covid but from things like the flu and even the common cold that normally could cause havoc on a school leading to multiple absences from class
085furthermore masking allows those students who may also have health issues continue to participate and attend in a conventional non-virtual manner the education of students is of utmost importance but the health of the educ ators is Paramount to deliver this education thank you thank you Wendy that wraps up open forum for tonight on behalf of the Board of Education I'd like to thank our participants we appreciate that each of you took the time to share your thoughts with us please know that the board and the District administration took notes during open forum and will follow up as needed with participants we are going to take a five minute break uh to give our live captioners um a few minutes uh for themselves El so thank you we'll be back in 5 I looked up and I
086thank you you as well oh I should turn on you're are we good okay all right we're ready to get back to it um I'm going to go ahead and call the meeting to order um and we are going to receive reports from board advisory committees I'll start I will start with the diversity equity and inclusion the diversity equity and inclusion committee met uh last Thursday November 4th via Zoom um the meeting began with a welcome from me and then an overview of the agenda which included information uh regarding our Blue Valley District diversity team as well as an overview of professional learning in Blue Valley Jennifer Smith who coordinates our diversity team and who you saw here tonight as an instructional design coach uh went through a history of the diversity work in Blue
087Valley which began all the way back in 1983 when Blue Valley adopted a non-discrimination policy when all the way through the different legislation that's come out uh from Topeka uh as well as um the different trainings that we have done within the district we also were able to hear from some diversity Club sponsors at um both the high school and the middle school and we heard a little bit about um what that diversity team has done over the years finally Kelly Wessel the director of professional learning ended the meeting um by sharing uh with the Dei committee exactly what professional learning looks like in Blue Valley the amount of time that we have uh because that's where um all of this work with our teachers would be done the next meeting of the diversity equity
088and inclusion committee is on Thursday January 6th excellent thank you uh next up curriculum instruction good evening the curriculum and instruction board advisory committee met on October 13th during this meeting commit committee feedback was gathered regarding input into how Federal relief funds might be spent to support teaching and learning in Blue Valley Schools Dr Kelly wle provided a presentation explaining the context of social emotional learning in Blue Valley she worked to distinguish between social emotional learning mental health and well-being she demonstrated the ways in which social emotional learning is organically woven into instruction or interaction with students Jennifer Smith instructional design coach and District social stats coordinator presented on the district social studies program highlights and the instructional approach the mission of the standards in this content area specifically social studies government and history are
089intended to prepare students to be informed thoughtful engaged citizens as they enrich their communities State Nation world and themselves finally Mr Adam wesle presented the proposed High School course changes of which you will actually hear more this evening the next board advisory committee will meet again on November 10th thank you Dr CER uh Student Activities up next I have several so I'm going to run right through three different committees okay um the primary purpose for the October uh 2021 Student Activities Committee meeting on the 21st was to discuss sportsmanship and develop an action plan to promote positive sportsmanship for spectators Blue Valley recre Representatives shared the concerns that they have regarding a decline in spectator hansip they are working with caps to develop a student made video to inform and hopefully improve upon spectator Behavior
090Blue Valley administrators also shared their concerns over spectator Behavior which they believe contributes to the shortage of officials there will be an ekl sportsmanship Summit with the goal of aligning all the schools on this topic and I believe that is this week further uh Casa has added a new rule to assist in the reinforcement of spectator sportsmanship Middle School school and high school administrators provided athletic and activity updates noting that participation has increased across the district the next committee meeting is scheduled for November 18th the finance and operations board advisory committee met on Thursday November 4th the meeting began with several administrative and Board of Education updates Kelly a executive director of curriculum instruction and Innovation presented information related to the curriculum revision and resource adoption process additionally information was shared about how resources are
091selected the distribution density and budgeting practices Jake sodnik director of facilities and operations provided an update on ongoing Construction and design projects including the Blue Valley High gym and Performing Arts editions the blue valley Northwest gym Elementary 24 and Logistics Center Jake sodnik and Jason Gillum Director of Business operations presented the bids and contracts on the consent agenda for the board approval this evening the next meeting is scheduled for December 9th and third the meeting uh the first meeting of this school year for the facility planning committee was held on October 28th in this room the meeting began with a welcome followed by Committee Member introductions I reviewed the work of the committee from last year and gave an overview of the responsibilities and the goals of the committee assistant director of planning and operations
092Eric palum walked the committee through several documents that the committee uses to guide their work including the current enrollment facts District growth and enrollment factors and enrollment projections for the next 5 years the committee reviewed the status of each School relative to the work of the committee and agreed to further review a handful of school schools that are projected to exceed 110% capacity within the next 5 years the second meeting of the facility planning committee occurred on November 3rd assistant director of planning operations Eric pollum reviewed two items with the committee School utilization analysis and then enrollment projections with and with without the use of mobiles the committee reviewed and discussed several schools are projected to exceed 110% capacity including Cedar Hills Elementary lewood elementary Overland Trail Elementary wolf Springs Elementary Aubrey bin middle and
093Oxford Middle the committee came to consensus to closely monitor the enrollment but take no action on boundaries at this time at every school except for wolf Springs Elementary as part of the discussion the committee members took into consideration blue Valley's boundary and Criterion process and the tools the district can use to um monitor enrollment the group then reviewed two boundary change scenarios to relieve the growing enrollment at Wolf Springs and move students to the new Elementary 24 that's tely scheduled to open in August of 2023 the next meeting is scheduled for this Wednesday November 10th Kyle can I ask you a question um so can you just slower how many schools are expected to be over capacity projected over capacity I I was trying to get that I'm sorry there were six schools that I
094mentioned okay um all but one of those schools the projection for exceeding 110% capacity happens in the fifth year okay so it's not current perfect thanks thank you appreciate it and then Dr Schmidt uh for health and wellbeing good evening um the health and well-being committee met on November 3rd uh via Zoom um this meeting the the committee on the first meeting had asked that we get together a panel of principles to talk about transitioning back to school and what some of the challenges or what some sort of activities that they participated in uh Laura Leu who is a principal of Cedar Hills Dr Steve hinau principal of Lakewood Middle and Scott Roberts principal of of Southwest Blue Valley Southwest all joined us uh for this meeting all three principles discussed the plans that they
095took uh in order to reintegrate these students who for many of them had not been live in person for over a year and many others had been attending on an every other day basis uh they discussed preparing the staff to engage students and to create a supportive and safe learning environment while each building had the autonomy to plan events to meet the needs of their students each discussed having both in-person and virtual options for their school communities uh during the session Dr or Mr Roberts and all the other principles concurred that they had a need to recreate and reestablished the culture and Community within their schools they moved events outside they um they needed to remember that they had two classes of kids that hadn't really engaged in the community before and it it was
096really interesting uh because they all said that their attendance at their after school activities were far greater than what they had been in recent years and so I think there was a pent up demand and kids were very excited to get back to school um all principles discussed that uh the year has been a bit of a challenge you know some kids needed to learn how to do school again uh they had gone from May doing doing school virtually and being able to take a break whenever they wanted to now you know back to the more Traditional School environment uh and then also just a reminder that you know some of our youngest students hadn't been out of their house for several years you know so so you might have a three-year-old that was coming
097to kindergarten and with a group of other students and so they talked about how they were working with their staff to meet the kids where they were at that point the next meeting is January 26th and and we are looking forward to meeting in person at that time thank you that's great thank you so much next up on the agenda is to receive reports from board members and the superintendent uh Patrick you want to start us off okay Stacy uh sure I'd like to uh just start by saying thank you uh to all of our staff uh in light of American Education week coming up they have done an amazing uh fantastic job this school year I understand that it's trying there's a lot going on um that they're dealing with but I do appreciate
098their patience and perseverance um also to our community thank you for the 25% that showed up and voted um that's always wonderful to see would love to see even more participation obviously in the future um but thank you for getting out and um taking the time to vote it is super important the work that we are doing here in the school district and also uh just some of the Committees that I get to sit on you guys have all heard the recap so I won't bore you with that exactly um word for word but I would just say that it it continues to be a highlight of serving on the school board is being able to sit and hear from patrons and specifically some of the students that sit on the Committees they are so
099incredibly um informative and um engaging it is uh exciting we were discussing uh the sportsmanship initiative at Student Activities and some of the kids had come up with some great ideas and and really they're the ones at the heart of it that are dealing with it and so to be able to include them in the uh problem solving was uh it's it's encouraging to see so I do really appreciate all of that and um really just again I don't think that I can say thank you enough both to the community to our staff and to our students so thank you thank you Stacey Mike well first of all I'm not sure I can uh top Stacy's thank yous um I did attend the Kansas uh uh Association of school boards um annual conference this week
100uh weekend and uh there are some rather significant differences between the adults that are vaccinated in that room and some of our schools so I want to make sure that everyone's clear about that um there were about 400 attendees um which is a bit of a surprise uh in terms of organizational things um the new president Brad bergsma from Goodland uh assumed the duties of President of kasb uh art Gutierrez of Cora was elected the president elect um the main speaker was from my hometown uh and uh spoke very kindly of Philadelphia we also had a board meeting a KB board meeting and um I just want to report that ksb is in um good uh Financial shape I'm sure Michelle's going to talk a little bit about their legislative um agenda or maybe not
101um but we discussed briefly um finally whoever takes the um KB vice president position on the board of directors just recognized that Goodland Kansas is about as far away from Overland Park as you can get and still be in Kansas so whoever um decides to do that it's a long drive and that's all I have thank you thanks for the good selling point Tom you're up next first of all thank you Madame President good to have you back thank you like I said good to be back awesome um just a quick it's been a great fall for our bands and Athletics and correct me on a few others Dr Moran as you come on down just uh um tons of good things going on state tons of state champions uh and a few more things
102coming up so just been a great great fall and great crowds it's been an absolute blast um I'll start plugging to Blue Valley Ed Foundation battle the bands is back in action ction in person February 26 at RC's I think I read that which will be fun and then also congratulations to Shane DeWalt Blue Valley Rec commissions our new executive director there so welld deserved and excited that he's assumed the position over there so that's all I got thank you thank you Jody almost last right um so um just wanted to highlight a few of the things Tom actually let me set in on a A Student Activities U meeting I let you you let me um and it was it was so nice I I really appreciated it um some really great brainstorming with
103the group on on um how to how to work with uh participant Behavior or not participant parent or spectator there we go behavior um which has been a real issue um with blue valley wck and I know a lot of the other um Youth Sports organizations not just within the schools but outside of so um that was really a a great dialogue to have with all the people in the room uh let's see here um I to reiterate what Tanya said Dei committee um wow um diversity we've we've had a non-discrimination policy in Blue Valley since 1983 um so you know we talk about you know kind of being ahead of of so many things I think that says a lot that that we were thinking about including inclusivity um with with all of our
104students I the goal is to have all of our kiddos feel safe and welcome in in our schools so um I wanted to highlight that um I know Tom usually covers a lot of the sports stuff and and uh I had the great opportunity of attending uh performance at Blue Valley North clue um Blue Valley Southwest waiting for gdau late night at Blue Valley Southwest the talent show um Aubrey Ben's Rock of Ages Middle School wrestling meet over at Southwest which was absolutely fantastic I'd never been to one um so there's a lot of great things going on and I can tell you from what I'm seeing our our kiddos our students in our district are so incredibly talented I am so impressed um you don't need to drive downtown necessarily to to catch a
105show we've got it here and it's fantastic so kind of a plug for that um I also attended the kasb uh State Conference in Overland Park which was uh nice and close um but uh there were fantastic keynote speakers absolutely amazing principal l which is the one from Philadelphia was absolutely amazing speaker has a fantastic story um the uh second to youngest family of six boys and single mom um and he's done amazing things so um just a really really fantastic story um and I was also able to meet some beautiful beautiful um administrators and board members from across the state of Kansas um and we were able to have dialogue and share ideas and um it was just a really fantastic experience and I I appreciate you trusting me to to go and sometimes
106sit by myself Mike so I think that's all I have have you ever been a good one uh I have driven to to Colorado okay right so it's hard to miss right pass through yeah okay Michelle um I too was at the KB conference this weekend I attended a legislative platform meeting for the Kansas Association of school boards and our um our job was to get together as representatives from the different regions of Kansas and um come up with a legislative platform that um our Kansas Association of school boards can use to help make decisions on how to um how do I say this promote um or uh encourage not to promote uh certain legislative action that could take place up in Topeka um that would affect our schools um it's it's interesting it's a
107terrific bunch of people um and as Mike just joked Goodland is as far as you can get from Overland Park and that's one of the I I think it's one of the beautiful things about Kansas because we are one big state with so many different districts with many different issues and many different populations so um to work together with other uh members to come up with a legislative platform that kind of meets everybody's needs is a challenge but it's um one that everyone has been so wonderful about so um so we're still working on it um and and it will be ready to go to be voted on by the delegate assembly in December so excellent Dr m okay so buckle in because I have a long list so first of all um as I
108told you at last meeting my goal is to be in every single building and program within our district all 39 of them between October meeting and the December meeting so I'm holding myself accountable I've been in 22 schools um since our last board meeting and it has been awesome it has reinvigorated me I have had um some adorable uh kindergarteners give me tours of their buildings uh to show me I've had fifth graders who uh were um leaders elected leaders of their class who wanted to interview me for a paper they were writing I've seen um the phonics new phonics materials in action talk to our teachers who have shared the struggles with it but how incredibly uh it's game-changing for our students um I've seen our Middle School um programs I've seen special education
109I've seen things in high school but it really has been pretty incredible to see the things that are happening in our buildings every day we have had an unprecedented I believe fall season this is what they call dead week um in between sports and so uh wow I can start with um all of the different activities we had a golf state champion in Blue Valley West Julia um mismer and I'm sorry if I mispronounced your name Julia but has been a four-time individual Champion um we had tennis we didn't have anybody as a champion we had several teams who placed in tennis volleyball I went to two weekends ago and spent and if you like volleyball it was topnotch um it ended up in the championship game Blue Valley West against Blue Valley North so
110we drove three hours to um have two Blue Valley Schools uh duke it out but shout out to those two schools because it was um pretty amazing weekend uh I just got back this weekend from um Witchita I did not go to the kasb conference because I was supporting blue valley Northwest in 6A soccer and Blue Valley Southwest in 5A soccer and the timber wolves were Champions uh they defeated Mae uh and that was awesome and then uh blue valley Northwest kind of lost a heartbreaker 2 to one in the semi-finals to wasburn rural but they ended up in third place we have um football still going on we have three teams uh still playing m still has a couple weeks left we have bands uh we had the same weekend we had volleyball we
111had our bands at um competition and Blue Valley High School was a grand champion but southwest and west were both in the finals on that night um theater uh so I too went to Aubrey B's Rock of Ages and I've been singing 80s Tunes ever since have gone to clue I'm going to Blue Valley High School's musical this week on Thursday evening um Oxford Middle School has a musical this week so just amazing things happening and then finally I want to give a shout out to our unified bowling teams um so unified bowling started two years ago Mark is that right right so we added that two years ago which is our um special needs students bowling um with some peers it is phenomenal and so that is going on right now and is um
112got a couple weeks left but that's pretty exciting if you have an opportunity to go to that want to give a shout out to our amazing Educators next week is American Education week and um we could not do what we do without every single person in our buildings making a difference and then finally this Thursday is Veterans Day and so um we have different things going on in our buildings and sometimes we're not as able to do the big assemblies that we've done in the past um but we do want to remember all of our veterans and celebrate um those great uh men and women who have served our country so that's my report I will also add that Overland Trail Middle will be doing Little Mermaid Jr this week and I look forward to
113the sing along um and when I attend although my son is nervous about that so okay um I'm going to go ahead and move forward with approving the agenda for our meeting tonight is there a motion sure uh I move that the Board of Education approve the agenda for the November 8th regular Board of Education meeting as published thank you st or motion by Stacy second by Tom all those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes 70 all right next up consent agenda uh do I have a motion for tonight's consent agenda I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda for the November 8th regular Board of Education meeting as published second thank you Tom a motion by Tom second by Michelle all those in favor please raise your right
114hand and as we uh thank 70 thank you as we move to the agenda thank you all as I uh reacquaint myself with leading these meetings so and thank you I should thank Michelle Benjamin who signed up for uh a VP role not knowing exactly what was going to be happening to me this year so thank you Michelle you have done an awesome job and I'm extremely appreciative glad to have you back all right uh let's move forward with some new business uh first up is our Co update so Dr Schmidt is going to make his way to the microphone and he's going to lead us off and give us um some basic facts around Co kind of what's going the state of the uh district and where we're at and then I'll jump in
115towards the end before before again I really have to defend [Laughter] Goodland off chance that she's watching this um I I need to say the the drives well you get used to the drive after a while so anyway it's not so bad okay so the co update uh for this week every every week we've kind of been giving you the numbers and what it looks like over the last month um looking at the co dashboard for this uh uh this last month you can see that we took a pretty substantial dip and we've had a couple of weeks where that numbers crept up just a little bit but our overall trend is still very much on the downward way and these are positive cases uh next you can see is broken out by staff and
116and students and the exact same um data story is is told there uh quarantines you notice a significant drop off on quarantines I think um while we we started the test to stay on the 1 we we kind of did a soft start a couple days before because we had some students that were going to be eligible for test to stay and so we got them going and it really sub significantly cut our number of kids missing school and so uh I feel really good about that decision and um moving forward with that um another area that I thought the board would be interested in a data point on vaccination rates you know right now in if you're over 18 74 almost 75% uh of the population eligible population has at least one vaccination 62
117and a half are fully vaccinated but then also our 12 to 17y Old population is lagging but is starting to gain Steam and so we're about 60% fully vaccinated and 67% with at least one vaccination of course 5 to 11 we don't have any data on that yet um I know vaccinations are available now uh but not readily available yet uh I know that those are from what I understand over this next two weeks they're really going to be ramping that up and it's going to be available in a lot more locations um this is a new data slide that I thought would be appropriate because it it takes a look at Johnson County as a whole and to give you a better idea of you know what's happening to cases what's happening uh with
118hospitalization what's happening with deaths and and what I did is I I just isolated this down to the very beginning of the school year to currently and this kind of gives you a snapshot of of where we've been going uh with Co overall once again feel good uh but there are a couple of things that we we're going to want to watch over the next uh few weeks there have been some new developments uh and and this isn't Blue Valley of course this is a larger Community First of all the uh they fully approved FDA fully approved the vaccination for 12 plus and that took place in August 23 uh the age 5 through 11 is an emergency use authorization and that took place on November 3rd and like I said it's available in our
119pedi pediatrician office and many of our um pharmacies uh but but I know that those appointments have filled up fast and that that'll become more available going forward I also wanted just to highlight um something that I learned about Merc has a new covid uh antiviral pill that has been approved for emergency use that has cut hospitalizations and um deaths uh by over 50% in in the trial and the reason I put that there is one of the reasons um one of the things that's very concerning earlier is the number of hospitalizations that were taking place and I think we have some good news on the horizon as this comes available and then I also heard that um fiser has uh an even more effective pill form uh of treatment uh but there's no word
120on when that's going to be coming into into play Mark excuse me I noticed you didn't pronounce that um uh uh remedy uh Merk's new covid-19 antiviral I notic you didn't pronounce it would you please yeah you're you're you're correct I did not but but uh Mike I appreciate uh you calling attention to that I I know appreciate it um once again exclusions from school you know following the recommendations if you've been a um if you've been close to a presumed positive or positive case within six feet um then you're considered a close contact and would need to quarantine and I I say all that just to highlight you know that that we really are all of our efforts with testing are about keeping kids in school and keeping kids healthy um because I know
121nobody wants to go back to the days of virtual education uh that's that's kind of our um one of our driving forces um and so that leads us to our Drive-In testing clinic I think this has been a tremendous success uh for us and and I've heard repeatedly received multiple emails just you know appreciative of being able to get in and get a get a quick covid test um you know both from staff and also from parents that have been able to do that and then also the expanded hours have been very helpful as well uh we started we had our first Sunday um testing CL I and I understand 60 people were tested during that uh 4-Hour period we got a little bit of a late start because of a mixup on um letting
122people into the building but I think we've got that ironed out now and ready to move forward uh and I just want to clarify one thing you do not have to be a close contact in order to take advantage of this Drive-In Clinic um if if you just want to check for your own peace of mind or to take a a child or or an immediate family member that lives with in that family this is open to to all of those families and individuals and I just want to clarify that based on a question uh that that I heard from a patron hey Mark since uh for those who didn't uh maybe listened to our last board meeting can you tell us again where that's located uh yes absolutely it is just um east east
123of here it is to the east of the Caps building or to the west of the Caps building yeah to the west of the Caps building uh it's an old Medical Arts facility and there are some large signs that that direct you over there but once again please remember to call and make an appointment ahead of time they surge their staff in order to accommodate the number of appointments that they have I do want to say I my family has taken advantage of it and it was so smooth and they were so nice and so helpful and the results came back within in I think less than 10 hours which was phenomenal and it's the PCR test so it's the most accurate and sensitive as you can be so our negative tests were very well
124received um so uh but so kudos to mod labs and to you and your staff for helping to organize and collaborate to get this available to our community you know like any any new setup it takes a little bit to work out any kinks and I've been very thankful that mod has been very accommodating and they have been uh solution oriented and any any kind of Kinks such as not having the building open uh they worked right through and took care of our patrons easily so our T Test to stay once again uh exposure of this information I just wanted to point out during that first week or actually the first three days we had 25 individuals that took advantage of that option and um I didn't have new data to update this slide since
125then but I I know it was many many more um and and so we're keeping kids in school on that front so these are our testing rates that we that we had uh each week you can see the number of test given has gone up significantly with each passing week um I do want to point out that uh you know we had a pretty significant bump in our positive rate or the number of positives we had in that last week uh four of those were parents and so I was glad to see that our families were taking advantage of this service as well as as our students um and so once again we will be watching uh moving forward as we go forward with that and that I'm handing it over do you do you
126need this yeah um well maybe I do yeah sorry uh does anybody have any questions for Dr Schmidt before I take over I I actually do just have one quick one just because I'm not aware of any conversations but I'll go right to the source are there any um plans to begin vaccinating our students here in Blue Valley um no uh we you know right now our nurses and our staff are just taxed um and so adding another another event or another something like that uh would just be way too much um in addition to the in addition to that um we would not have the authority to do any kind of vaccinations unless we had parent permission and in fact we made the decision that that even if there was a site on our
127campus the parent would have to be with the student and even signed consent wouldn't be enough and that would only be done with like Children's Mercy running the clinic okay perfect thank you but there are but to clarify there are no plans to do any kind of vaccinations okay perfect thank you I I'll ask one one more followup are there any plans to require our students to be vaccinated you know um I appreciate that there's a list of vaccinations that are required by the state of Kansas and so uh we only we only uh enforce those that are required by the state and I do not anticipate covid vaccination being required by the state anytime soon that has to go through the Kansas legis thank you Mark anybody else can you ask your question again
128Stacy just for full clarification I'm just kidding I appreciate you asking that I thought we had covered that months ago that we were not doing that so okay um so what has changed since August when we were here in August um we had a a at before school was starting um our community covid numbers have decreased uh Dr Schmidt showed you that slide where our overall numbers have decreased increased uh Community vaccinations have increased um we we know Community vaccinations have increased we don't know about our staff we don't know about our students remember because we don't ask that information um but we do know within the community and and we know within zip codes um about where there are um Blue Valley isolation and exclusion numbers are relatively low um we've watched that we
129weren't sure how we would um how that would Fair we implemented the voluntary testing option uh several weeks ago or two or three weeks ago uh for our staff and then for our students and our community so we didn't have that available in August um we implemented a test to Stay option and this was really crucial for us it's been going just a week now uh but that really remember we we've always talked about we really need to keep kids in school we want kids in school well this allows um healthy students to be in school as long as they're willing to test uh each day uh during their um exclusion period and then finally vaccinations are now available we heard that this evening we heard from Mark for our 5 to 11 year olds
130um we know that they are just starting uh to roll those out and so nobody is fully vaccinated we do know that but but they are available and they were not available in August and we weren't sure when they would be available so those are all some really positive developments around um things that have happened in our community so what's next um so now it's time for the the board have a discussion if is there a desire to make any changes at the high school level given the changes since August the I'll talk about what we could do in just a minute but it's not recommended that we would uh do anything at elementary and middle school because that's a county mandate and um we would wait for the county to make any changes to
131that at this point um that that still exists but if if the board is interested in doing something at the high school we could look at the individual building isol ation and exclusions we could monitor those weekly uh to self-correct if a building has a large outbreak um if if that is something the board is interested in doing so here's an an option um High School caps the 18 to 21 year old program uh if it was less than 3% and that would be 3% of the entire uh staff and students within a building so we would go building by building uh we would not do this overall and do an All or Nothing in our high school program but if it's less than or equal to 3% it would be optional masking in the
132building which would mean people could wear a mask we would never tell somebody they couldn't if they chose to do that if it's greater than 3% we would Institute masking for a minimum of two weeks to um self-correct and make sure that uh we got that back in in um under 3% if after 2 weeks if it was under 3% we could allow them to uh go back to optional masking so that's an option uh there's others that you could look at as well Dr margan could I ask a question about that 3% does the does the two weeks I guess my question is this sorry this is a math question so um we have a school that has a 3% um isolation and exclusion it stays at 3% for two weeks is the two
133weeks from the time that it goes below 3% so this is the way I would Envision it so we would check on Friday typically so school um X is at 3 3.1% so they they are above 3% which would mean they need to mask for two weeks so for the next two weeks they would mask we would check them at the end of that time if they're not below 3% they would need to continue to mask for another two weeks they have to get below 3% and can I clarify the 3% includes positive covid tests and those who are being excluded for being exposed correct okay in this building by building correct Dr correct okay not overall District um it is okay to yeah I would say now now is when we jump into the
134so I I've given this a lot of thought um recently and have a list of things that I would like to just share with my fellow board members I would begin with I have always appreciated that this board was willing to work together um we have done a really good job of trying to find common ground in the past and I would really hope that we could sit and do that again today I know that we have seven very different ideas of what is appropriate courses of action to take at this point they may range from somebody wanting to drop masks tomorrow to somebody not even wanting to talk about it today and wait until spring I feel like it's time for us to have a conversation and find a place to meet in the
135middle and um knowing full well that like our community we all represent uh different ideas and and different things and at the end of the day nobody is going to be 100% happy with what happens but hopefully it's something that each of us can live with um I I I do think that is a very important part of serving on a school board is is is figuring out how to reach a solution that can be accepted by everyone um I uh would like to propose that we consider withdrawing the use of required mask make it optional mask for the older kids for the high school levels um starting in January I feel like the availability of the vaccines for ages 5 to 11 is a really really important part of our strategy that we've had
136since August um I believe our mitigation efforts have been successful we've all heard stories tonight about how school is happening the kids are participating in advents I believe that some of those and masking being one of them have led to a very successful school year for the vast majority of our kids and I feel like right now it would be too premature to withdraw um that requirement I would um I guess I would support uh waiting until January I believe that will give five to six weeks seven weeks um if it takes a week for those young kids to get in to get their vaccines and when everybody comes back after winter break um we're prepared for the high school kids to be without masks I I do really appreciate this idea of a metric
137uh the 3% uh it's really important that we have a way to backtrack if things uh turn South and and and aren't working in our favor we need to do whatever we can to protect our kids protect our staff and protect their families um so I would absolutely support requiring um some sort of metric that we would monitor on a weekly basis or or however often you would like to do that um it is unfortunate that um Elizabeth hu wasn't able to be here I would have lik to have heard what she had to say from a public health perspective and and I don't know Dr Mar if you've had any opportunities to speak with anybody from Johns County would they recommend removing masks at this point or has there been any dialogue there that
138you could report on so we've asked first of all I would say they probably would say no um I think if we have to be totally honest they would say no uh we have asked uh several times um for a metric of some sort or you know what is the what is the magic number what are we shooting for and they haven't been able to give us that um number so that that is what um if you're being transparent that is what I believe Johnson County would Health Department would say okay well um I I I I guess that's what I would like to propose to my fellow board members I would love to have a great conversation and see if there's you know something that we can all reach an agreement on that we
139feel like would be best for the community uh going forward still keeping everybody safe and most importantly um in the classroom and learning because I I don't think anybody disagrees that that's our primary goal at this point so I I guess um I I would just like to throw that out to begin the conversation anyone else want to jump in on thoughts perhaps on timing on is the board generally an agreement that we can move towards something like this I i' I'd like to just jump in really quick um I I would agree with with um Stacy's comments um especially regarding the timing we just started getting our younger ones uh vaccinations um they need a few weeks um and they're part of our community too as as you know we had one speaker say
140um he has little little siblings um in elementary school um so that's a consideration um I also think that buys just a little bit of time to get our our parents who are very concerned about taking masks down um just understanding that that you know if it if if we follow the metric that we have that that's a good possibility you know we're under that number then that's going to happen you know coming back in January so I think that in my mind from from the medical professionals I've spoken with um nobody's advocated definitely you know not masking but but that seems reasonable um with the information that I've had so and just a quick clarification I know you said January looking at the calendar um School resumes after the holiday Hol on January 5th
141fourth for teachers fourth for teachers um is that what you're thinking Janu when you say January yes after yeah the beginning of the next after I just want to clarify that so we can do what you specifically thank you Tom yeah so I'll come from the other end just a little bit and I appreciate all this I I I do you know the 3% part is is great I figure if we do have an outbreak somewhere Administration will jump in and and do the right things um if you will so you know we've talked about data um this whole year been data driven and and just the thoughts and so dive in in deeper to to Dr Schmidt's numbers in regards to high school here so Blue Valley West um three weeks of zero cases
142two and now they have one blue valley Northwest currently has zero covid cases they've had four total over the past seven weeks Blue Valley North had zero for four weeks then two now they have five Blue Valley Southwest has zero they've had three total over the past six weeks and then Blue Valley High has zero for the last three weeks and then three total over the last eight weeks if you will so 6,000 high school students we have a total of six positive covid cases right now in high school which if you do the math is a very very low percentage so I think that you know pure going by some of the data and this is from our dashboard from Friday and knowing the county numbers have gone down um showing that it's not
143spreading at least not for now spreading I'd be for moving on from the mass much sooner than January I was you know I'm I'm a sooner you know soon but would settle for or not settle with you know right after Thanksgiving follow a late as lead a little bit and start November 29th which I believe that Monday after Thanksgiving so I would like to move on for the mask in high school um that's our endgame I think Michelle that you've talked about about every month in here and so I'd be leaning towards much sooner on my end than than January I you want to chime in first Mike or you want me to I I'm just I'm going to say I agree with Tom um I feel that the things that Dr marrian highlighted that
144are different from August are significant um we even just the test to stay um thing our goal which we have all said was to keep students in class and learning um and not being excluded from school and we've done so much to accommodate that and make sure that our kids were um able to stay in school I with the low Community numbers and the high school numbers that Tom just talked about it it's hard to argue with those numbers I mean honestly it is especially when I know having a high school child that these kids are not wearing their masks outside of the school building and even in the school building to be be honest they're not wearing them properly without significant nagging um so I just it makes me hesitant to um to disagree
145with Tom I feel like it making masks optional uh at this point would be a good idea I do think that um Thanksgiving is a good compromise there um to give us a chance to let people think about it and get used to the idea and um I just that that's my thought I'm going to stop there can I just asked one question related before you jump in I was going to say or ask if you could give perspective just from talking to High School principles um I think that our High School principls uh would support uh this uh they would want to have the option of masks for any anybody who felt uh that they needed it and our high schools are a microcosm of our communities there will be some people uh some
146of our staff who won't love this uh there will be some who will celebrate it and they they probably think much like several people on the board some want to do it tomorrow some would rather wait until uh later in the year um so uh they would manage that but but they we've had some conversations with them around that thank you um first of all Stacy thanks for um thanks for giving us your opinion without um a political B I want to thank the rest of the board as well this has never been a political issue despite the um rhetoric that we may have heard and despite the accusations um this is not a political issue we've all been involved um in one thing and that's the the safety of kids that being said um
147I'm like Tom if it was up to me alone uh I think tomorrow morning we'd open high schools with a mask optional um uh opportunity um I think we're fooling ourselves if we believe that our high school kids um exhibit the same behavior um with masking outside of school that they do inside of school um because they don't and we know that in fact um it's really difficult I think for teachers to develop relationships with students when they're nagging them constantly about pulling their mask up um it's not a positive mental health issue uh it's not a positive teaching issue um and as I said if it was up to me I would do it tomorrow but it's not and also recognize that there are some rather significant [Music] um emotions on this board and
148and and that's okay we're allowed to do that we're allowed to be to have differences among ourselves um January 1st is as arbitrary as any date um or January 3rd or 4th or whatever it is um I'll be honest I I can move to the end of or to the be uh I guess after Thanksgiving whatever that date is Tom you you said it's the 29th if that's the day we come back um that's the date that that I would uh be willing to agree to yes please I I think it's important that uh we follow the science and if the health department is not recommending Mass I think we should delay it just to clarify you said if the Health Department's not recommending masks if the Health Department's not recommending to remove masks mandates
149in schools because of the nature of the schools then I would uh recommend that we delay it I I do remember um when we did have Dr Hu in here um I you know I was pushing for a metric I was saying okay I get it why when can this what what can trigger us to move on and she couldn't you know she wouldn't give us an answer and and I understand why um and their hesitation to commit one way or another at this point but she did say I specifically said to her if the numbers were what they were back in June and July would we be having this conversation and she said probably not so you know I'm not saying that that's her giving her Blessing by any I'm not speaking for her
150but I'm just saying that was her take at that time and things have changed significantly since that time I'd like to just um so Mike um regarding you know the arbitrary date um I think I think you know Stacy and I spoke to Stacy did it well that spoke that it's really not an arbitrary date it allows a few weeks for the youngers to to become fully vaccinated so that that's not really you know just mentioning that's not really not an arbitrary date um the the other thing is you know um the scientist told us when when the health department you know comes in masking is a mitigation right so that's that's all these Health experts are telling us that's one of the reasons why our numbers are low and we can keep our numbers
151low so you know taking it off at this point in time you know we're going to expect especially without a higher vaccination rate we may expect to see you know um higher um exclusions or positives um so um what what about um you know the other deal is too you know when when kids are in school they they have to be in school right they're they're in a confined space they have to be in our buildings um you know the state makes for sure that that that we have kids that attend school right so um after school that's not a mandatory um experience right you you choose to do your clubs or your activities um but my concern is the the eight to three or the seven to to three time where they have to
152be confined in these classes and in these environments um that you know be you know they can't spread out um so that that's still a concern of mine so I just wanted to throw those thoughts out there and can I just clarify we're talking only high school and I guess 18 the older kids so I assume that includes 18 to 21 and it means that it's grade and above nth grade and above and it means it's optional it does not mean no masks or masks it means your family can choose what is best for your family Dr Maran can you talk for a second about Casa and kind of where things stand from their perspective at this point just to touch on what jod said in terms of the optional nature of after school clubs
153activities things or activities so Casa activities which would be Sports band cheer theater some of those things um Casa does not have any set required mitigation factors right now they um tell you to um you know use local local data to look at that but they do not have a mask requirement um at Casa activities okay which is what we're talking about the mask requirement Sor I got a quick question Dr Maran about the 3% what's our current exclusion rate now where' we come up with a 3% well it's it's low it's you got turned it on when I look back uh on the school year I believe the highest we were at is I I didn't look at any IND individual School but I think as a district we're about 1% um at at
154the top end so I did look at at our high schools we've been less than half percent most weeks and so so what is the basis for the 3% number uh 3% is is just a uh honestly we we probably couldn't handle test to stay if we went above 3% that's part of the rationale uh behind that and we would want to be able to offer that option um for our students because that's part of again we want to keep kids in school and I agree one of my concerns is that we're going into the flu and cold season and we're removing one of the very mitigation factors that has helped us stay at a lower rate and we come up with some numbers that um seem to justify whatever capacity we have to deal
155with whatever we're trying to deal with so I have those concerns and would would believe that the appropriate thing is to wait um if I may jump in with another thought again trying to bring everyone together and and find something that we can can all live with um I I do believe that sometime the first or second week of December would have allowed those kids that were able to get in the first week for a vaccination to have completed their whole process I would propose that we add a week or two to that November 29th date in order to give those younger kids times to complete the vaccination cycle I think that might alleviate a lot of uh concern and anxiety among our students and families um so I I I would like to throw
156that out there as an idea and I I do recall uh Elizabeth holu saying that our solution our way out of this was through vaccination and I appreciate that the numbers are low now that's why we're having this conversation but that's not the single consideration to have I I think that complete vaccination opportunities for all of our students is really really an important part of this and so I would ask if anybody was interested in in maybe getting through that first second week whatever that timeline is for those kids this first week to have reached full um vaccination just a quick other date here so um Dr M can keep me honest here but it looks like the December 21st is the last day of high school finals and um I don't think k through
157eight has school that day so I I just give that as a data point um because to Stacy's point if we were to move it back a week or two we're kind of we'd be at a point where we may only go mask optional for a week or so or two right but again I just I wanted to check that date for myself so you that's the correct okay thank you okay so kind of what I we've got a couple options here it sounds like um the majority of the board I will say is in support of um making a decision uh similar to what has been presented tonight the date is what's in question um the dates that were thrown out as potential options were uh and I'm not going to I'm just going
158to list them and without commentary but tomorrow uh November 29th uh early to mid December and we can pick a date or at the start of school after the holidays which would be the fourth for teachers and the fifth for students so we had a couple different options thrown out there and and like I said I hopefully by saying the majority of the board was open to that conversation of one of these dates if I could Amy um take tomorrow off that list that's good I just I wanted to be fully oh no and I I appreciate that and recognize but I also recognize the concerns of my peers and um I'm more than willing to take that date off that's fair I I want to be inclusive does anyone want to make a motion
159do we want to have some further conversation before a motion's made where's the board at uh just one more comment um I I don't know what the conversation with um Elizabeth hu was quite honestly I I I don't know what that is I would I would comment that the county has mandated k6 in our case K8 for a reason um and for for those of us that you know kind of follow rules most of the time um that's the current Rule and I don't think think we're we're going against that I think we've all agreed if if I can look around the table we're not going to vote we've all agreed to keep um Elementary and and Middle School masked so what we're talking about is high school and and John's County Department of Health
160and environment has not mandated for one reason or another doesn't matter what it is has not mandated um high school we did that and and I firmly believe if and and we have fundamentally followed um either K's Department of Health and environment or Johnson County Department of Health environment that if they firmly believe that high school kids needed to be masked on a going forward basis they would tell us that they have not so that that that and the quarter will get you a cup of coffee somewhere well and and I understand what you're saying I I think you know the reason um I remember the discussion being the reason is that we wanted to keep our their bodies and seats right and so we were concerned that that the way we we couldn't do
161that because of the guidelines we have to follow with the health department regarding exclusions and you know all of that so um that was that was you know the reasoning behind that because our biggest goal was to keep uh that kiddo in school or that teacher you know in school agreed and and I believe we have the appropriate safeguards I believe we have the appropriate testing and I think we have the appropriate monitoring to continue to do that all right are you I'm looking for a motion or kind of like maybe I did in January when I I think we're getting kids back in school or thinking about it um I've written down some stuff here do you remember the Johnson County Health order number counselor I number 00 1-21 2 one okay all right
162I'll give it a wh I the 3% thing I I I I was wri down a whole bun earlier but I've added that as well um I mve that the Blue Valley Board of Education modify its policy extend ending the Johnson County Board of Health order number 000-21 to grades 9 through2 and the 18 to 21 year old program to allow mask optional environment of in these programs effective November 29th 2021 unless the total percentage of students positive or identified for quarantine by the Johnson County or the jcdhe exceeds 3% okay motion by Tom do I have a second I'll second that all right second by Mike um I'm going to do I believe a roll call vote just so that we're yeah I'm sorry is there any dis any further discussion I just make
163sure I covered everything there just so we all understand that says effective November 29th High School our 18 to 21 year old program and our 18 to 21 year old program would be mask optional effective the 29th yes and we would monitor go by the 3% we would continue to monitor the data and if it exceeded 3% we would okay in administratively we would Implement a two-e masking requirement okay I I will make just one comment about again about my peers you know this is um um this ain't a lot of fun um but I want to compliment all of my peers regardless of how this motion goes um on their preparation and and on their um ability to keep a level head when we've seen other districts other school uh School boards um totally
164go out of their mind and I compliment each of you regardless of whether we agree or disagree and I just thank you for that I I totally agree respect professionalism the way we converse amongst each other whether in this room or other so I really appreciate and I emphatically trust our Administration if some things go the sideways or different we'll be up to date informed and I just I didn't trust their leadership over the last 18 months we've just done a really nice job here so Amy could you give me the dates again for what would have been the December date that would have allowed at least the first batch of youngsters to and Excuse me while I get my phone out here because that's my best no that's good I should have written it
165down no you're good the date I had thrown out just as a reference point was that uh December 21st is the last day of high school finals last day of the semester of the semester um and so using the date or Stacy's commentary it it would have probably assumed the sixth or the 13th of December as a potential December date because those are the two Mondays at after the 29th does that answer your question yes and the reason I threw out the 21st is just so you have perspective to how long we'd be in school with that so um so yeah the 6th or the 13th I don't know if you I mean I I do like the the concept of going through finals and not having to mess with this um but um I
166I I still have some concern about Thanksgiving and it's just being a just a hair too soon okay is there any further discussion before we call for a vote okay I'm going to take silences note Tom I know where you stand so why don't you start off yes okay Jody Deets um yeah I'll I'm I'm voting yes but concern okay Michelle yes Patrick Stacy um I advocate fairly regularly on this board to come together and find a middle ground solution I personally would not have picked November 29th is the date I feel that that is too soon um however I will come around to the majority of the board and um accept that as the date with the understanding that the administration is going to be watching this like a hawk and we are going
167to be right on top of it if we see any any outbreak concern whatsoever in any of our schools and be able to revert back to masking very quickly um you got to practice what you preach thank you I believe that's a yes it is okay Mike yes all right thank you and I'm a yes as well uh so that passes a 61 vote you all right and just to reiterate what Mike said thank you for the good healthy conversation I think that was uh good to and like Stacy said needed to be done so that's good all right next up on the agenda is um an assessment overview and Adam Wade is going to lead us through that all right o for two but now we've got the clicker and the mic we're ready
168to roll all right so thank you everyone today's big question is what does our current data tell us about students in Blue Valley so we are going to start our analysis by looking at the percentage of kindergarten through second grade students at Benchmark or above in the area of literacy as measured by acadians so this is the third year that all kindergarteners and first graders have completed aadience testing and it's the second year for second graders so that's why the trend data that we have is available here um of note you can see kindergarteners have stayed relatively consistent expectations for them aren't very high because there's not a great expectation that they come in with a lot of literacy skills the first grade data um is consistently lower although we had a good swing from
1692021 to 2122 um and the second grade data is is exactly the same as last year with percentage of students showing at Benchmark or above um it is important to note here that we're still getting used to the way aadience works in the standard Peaks and valleys so for example if you were to look at this year's second graders so the magenta bar on the second grade graph is 81% that's the same group that would have been the heal bar on the first grade graph and was 56% and that same group would have been 77% as kindergarteners so that's a group that from kindergarten to second grade they've evened themselves out and even grown a little bit but at the same time that teal showed a little bit of a dip so that's something that
170as we get used to the product we're just going to continue to monitor um third through fifth grade so it's the second year of aadience administration but it's the first year where we gave all the subtests so that we could get a composite score so numbers here again it's the first year we're trying to see what this really means we'll get more context when we throw in map and state assessments and other measures as well but we can see the data here um 85% 77% and 70% at Benchmark or above in grades five in middle school and in high school but this is Middle School first uh step one is that students take a nationally normed reading comprehension test uh for us us we use map and each district has to set their own cut
171off or own proficiency standard for us we chose the 35th percentile as the proficiency cut off um statistically you know you would expect 65% of scores to be above the 35th percentile because 35th percentile means that 35% or below it um but you could see here these numbers then and that contact when you would expect 65 the 90% 89% 89% are good that this does beg the question of why did you choose the 35th percentile and how can you verify that that's a legitimate number um so a couple things on that point so the goal of screening remember is to find previously unidentified students who are reading below grade level so we're not talking about students that we've already identified if we've already identified an English language learner or a special education student we already
172know that that more reading um support is needed they wouldn't necessarily need to go through this process uh but 35th percentile so it's roughly half a standard deviation below the 50th percentile so it accounts for a little bit of error assuming that 50th percentile would be the national mean which is reasonable at the same time knowing that this is an estimate we have built in a safety net here so in the fall we had all middle school students enter the aadience testing process um which basically gave us another way so if students didn't show if they didn't meet this Benchmark or if through the aadience testing process they showed that they weren't meeting benchmarks they advance to take the next step which is an oral reading fluency okay by the way when we talk oral
173reading fluency we're talking um a like the student reads A Passage and then the teacher is sitting next to them reading it's it's a tool to have the teacher hear how the kids read they get really good one-on-one info okay so that is the Middle School info the last slide in Reading before we move on to the next set of data is the high school data and this is the read 180 reading inventory so note that there aren't as many tools available for high school we use read 180 in our reading strategies class of both Middle and High um we've had success with it there so we felt like it would be a good tool for us for Universal screening um here we have different percentiles kind of breaking down since we're looking at again
17435th percentile um or below for for needing further testing that would be the blue and the purple wedges which total to about 14% so 14% of students um at least would move to the next component that oral reading fluency assessment the one other component I would add here is that we do have a safety net at high school as well um that safety net here is time we know from our dyslexia team that students who um May score above proficient but take an excessively long time could be dyslexics with strong compensatory skills so we flagged students who took 35 minutes or longer the average Blue Valley time on this test was about 19 minutes standard deviation was about 7 minutes or so so 35 was a couple standard deviations above um for both high school
175and middle school the other thing I want to emphasize screener is a general education measure so we need to emphasize that teachers and problem solving teams always have discretion to include other students for further screening if there are questions or concerns okay so before we leave reading screening and go to the next metric are there any questions you guys have here Adam maybe this is for Jennifer yeah um but the state didn't say to us because this is a state requirement but they didn't say to us this is the assessment you should use at middle school or high school we just had to find a nationally normed reference test exactly to utilize and so that's why we've interpreted it this way exactly yes districts had their um had had leeway to select that yeah and
176we you know since we were already giving map at middle school that was a natural pick there high school is a little harder um but since there was some experience with Reed 180 there actually aren't as many high school products out there um but read 180 students actually get to pick their own passage so you kind of um get a little interest is a little bit less of an issue on this one because students are generally reading something that at least they're hopefully interested in so yeah all right so that's the reading inventory um let's move to map and with the map data we're going to look at elementary math first and this is the percent of elementary students of grades 25 meeting their fall to Spring growth Target is set by map note that
177each student gets a growth Target unique to their grade level and score since the target is set at the mean for students based on national results the expectation is about 50% of students meet their goal in a particular Year all right so the expectation is that 50% of students are going to meet their meet the goal because the goal is set at the average so half we going to go above it and half we going to go under it so just keep in mind here 50% is kind of the goal not 100 in this case um on this particular graph the blue bars represent the 17 the fall 17 to Spring 18 testing periods so 3 years ago the teal bars fall 18 to Spring 19 didn't test in Spring 20 so lose a data
178point there and then we have the magenta bars from Fall 20 to this past spring so this is data that was basically finished last April we won't get more data on this until April of 22 that said um the overall trend here is is pretty good we have over 50% of students at each grade level uh meeting their growth Targets in the area of math at all three of these grade levels so so positive here obviously with the trend but keeping a close eye when we get the fall 21 per everything we've been through for the last 18 months that'll be the key discussion correct absolutely once we get spring 22 you know it's hard with a lot of these metrics because there's just so much variability baked in from different learning modes so I
179think once we add in Spring 22 and are able to add another bar here we can really start to see you know prog dramatically what really is the trend how are kids how how successful are we in accelerating student learning yeah and just a quick question for fourth grade what is the thought process or what what are your thoughts I should say on just the why is fourth grade so much lower so why were the numbers lower in previous years so you know part of of this process is is kind of figuring out how the tests adjust to different state standards and one of the challenges in fourth grade math in particular is that fourth grade math is like third grade math but deeper um and you know different states are able to each state
180sets their own standards uh so so that somewhat factors in map is kind of always trying to balance that it's sort of countered by the point of well students weren't growing as much in the previous two years but then did grow pretty well last year on the whole so what are the differences there and I think that's the kind of question that that would be a better question um probably for for the classroom teachers and principles that said you can still notice that in that data set grades two and four are lower than grades three and five and that frankly is is relatively typical with our data set and and Kansas standards yeah all right so this is the reading version of that same slide um here the data last year was not quite as
181favorable um you can see we were only above 50% in a couple of the grade levels third and fourth here lagged a little bit um the one thing that I will add with this particular piece is that the ability to use this data alongside some of the screening tools alongside the new phonics resource is going to help us here figure out how to piece this whole puzzle together um one other piece I will add that factors into this that may have impacted last Fall's reading data um is that students who were um virtual grades three through five I guess it packed it the whole year so grades three through five virtual map tested from home the whole year so there's extra variability associated with that that of course is baked into the math data too
182um but just another piece to consider when painting the entire picture um on this slide we have the overall trend for the last four Falls so fall 2018 fall 2019 fall 20 fall 21 um really the big thing here to notice is that on math which is the left graph you know second grade saw some dips over time third grade saw dips started to bounce back a little bit because the orange bar is a little longer than the magenta bar fourth grade kind of similar to third grade fifth grade kind of similar to third and fourth grade so at least on the math half of that it looks like um the magenta bar for the majority of those grades seems to be kind of the bottoming out and maybe we're coming out of it more
183data will have to bear that out on the reading side it's kind of interesting because what we're seeing there is more of an established kind of downward Trend the one interesting piece though is if you look at the overall differences from like the blue bar to the orange bar on the reading graph you're still not looking at very big differences like in the third grade reading the blue bar is at a 197 the orang is at a 196 did we bump a little bit in between yeah but overall we're pretty close to where we were three years ago similar point with the fourth and fifth grade graphs too so just another lens to kind of look at um when we review this data all right so let's look at map at grade 68 so this
184is the middle school math MAP data and again this is the fall to Spring 2021 data goals set by each student object I is that 50% of students meet their goals um here we see a pretty clear Trend that 2021 uh data was weaker than 1819 data by six to seven percentage points at each grade level so pretty consistent across we're getting a pretty clear message from that reading at grade 68 again somewhat similar to math um we do see slightly lower percentages here um about a 10o dip in an 8 in seventh and a 10-point dip in eth so again numbers dropping down from the previous test Administration again baking in a lot of variables but at the same time the data is the data and we use the data to help figure out
185our next steps this is the one last slide I wanted to show you on map which again kind of shows okay what what is the overall score Trend over the last four Falls so when we look at this we actually see almost what we saw in elementary bearing itself out a little bit in sixth grade we see that same kind of pattern of we we oops we dipped and we kind of bounced back up a little bit grades seven and eight um we've seen more consistent declines um 8th grade specifically you can see the dip from the fall 2019 to fall 2020 um reading data again mostly seeing declines but we're not necessarily seeing huge declines okay the one piece that I would add with all of this and that I'll add with any data
186is that context is always key so with regard to this particular slide and and um you know one of the questions that can kind of come up when looking at map data is well tell us about how other districts do tell us about how the rest of Kansas does tell us how other states do so because States get to choose which tools they use um there's really no basis for comparison here outside of how do we compare to the National Norms so this is up to the minute fall 21 how did the blue valley mean compared to the National Norm so this is the number of RIT points RIT is their just standard point scale how many points were we ahead of national Norms so the good news here is that you know despite the
187declines we see overall 6.4 for second grade math is the lowest 9.8 points above the mean in third grade reading so pretty consistent despite some Peaks and valleys and dips and changes and whatnot um and the other piece to remember here is that the national norming study is always done like based on previous data and then it's released later so when the national norming study was done um events of the last year wouldn't have been factored in so this is blue valley kids whoops versus National Norms as figured out under normal circumstances so um again just another point we always like to be able to show comparison so that's one way we can compare so let's go to high school um act Trend data um and there's two slides with this so I know there's
188there's a point that people really like to make um with regard to act data that's going to come in in the second slide so bear with me on the first slide here so this graph shows the Blue Valley composite in Blue uh the Kansas composite average in teal and the national composite average in Gold um so what we can see is that in Blue Valley from 2017 to 2018 and 2019 2021 um numbers have stayed we we're down about 1.2 points from 2017 to 2021 but in that same time the states down 1.8 and the nation's down 7 the other point though is this that we're going to see some comparative data in a minute that shows kind of how this data lays out versus other districts and the other point here is that the
189participation rate spiked so if you were to compare this to the last slide you see that 2019 we were at a 25.0 2020 at a 24.5 that corresponds to the participation rate going from about 86% to about 95% that corresponds to the state providing a free of charge act opportunity for all high school juniors so well High School juniors still don't have to take it right they don't have to come to school that day they can opt out there are other ways around it but you can see that the vast majority of our kids are taking it and then in fact if you go from 19 to 20 we probably tested some kids that may not have tested if Saturday only testing was still in play okay so I to me this data is is
190one of our probably biggest celebrations we know our high schools value act but you look at the overall of kids that are taking the test um and that's a positive sign because it's a test that you know while people don't always think of test is potentially opening doors they actually can if a number is good can share it somewhere hey you've got something potentially helpful with that so um just some interesting pieces the one other point that I will make here and I didn't get it on this slide because I just found it a little bit ago um so act estimates participation rates in each state so to give you an idea of what Kansas's participation rate was in 2019 uh before the change before the give it to all Juniors Kansas was at 72%
191um that hopped to 82% in 2020 with the everyone gets it for free um and dropped a little bit to 79% in 2021 so when you look at those numbers and realize that Kansas kind of has similar Trends as us realize that our differential versus the state and versus the nation maintain relatively similarly um I think that's a a positive data point the last piece here that we're showing um is blue valley data versus other Johnson County and or larger Suburban districts so I've anonymized those districts um this is all taken from the KSD report card website this is the 2018 2019 and 20120 data um in 2018 you can see that blue valley was 1.6 act points above District D7 in 2019 d8 was was second we were one point ahead of them and
192in 2020 we were 1.1 points ahead of D1 all right State data at the bottom again we were looking for some comparative districts here so we're looking at bigger districts Suburban districts Johnson County districts things like that okay act or KSD has not updated the report card site to have 2021 data um but I'll get that info to you when we have that um I would anticipate that that our Gap will remain relatively consistent though with the others but we'll see all right um let's see so the next slide is about market value Asset attainment which you've learned about a little bit um with regard to some of our CTE work with regard to our work with the the Kaufman foundation so students can earn a market value Asset in one of four ways they
193can complete nine hours of college credit before leaving high school they can complete a client connected project all of our caps kids complete a client connected project so that's that one and two are really the big Pathways in for us um number three is the receipt of an industry recognized credential so that's our students earning um like the CNA certifications that's that's the most common one for us at least right now um more students can even complete an internship to get into this data set um one thing that I will add here we're starting with pretty high Baseline values you look at 2019 um we were looking at about two-thirds of our kids leaving us with one of these um 2021 there was a little bit of a dip one of the interesting points last
194year keep in mind if a kid went the fully virtual route last year they wouldn't have been in caps so that probably we we can't estimate the impact would we still have gone down from 2020 to 2021 possibly we don't know um but point being there there is very likely between our emphasis on Career ready programming and between um you know just that that virtual piece not being in play as much in 2021 um some real opportunities for some natural bounce back here I believe okay can you remind us just how you collect this it's not easy um basically what I what I need to do is for the college hours I go through so I look at AP scores so if a student scored three or higher on an AP test I'm trying to
195judge that as about three hours of college credit that's generally the translation though it's different school to school and we don't know where each kid's going to go um so that's one source I look at our dual credit rosters through Johnson County Community College and Baker um those are our main Partners there so again what that means is that if a particular say a student goes to UMKC and earns credit hours we haven't figured out a way to capture that yet so there are some collection limitations in a lot of these areas but those are the limitations really on number one um on number two you know what what we're really relying on is caps mostly we've heard of some other scenarios um where like Blue Valley Academy has some special programs designed to get
196students completing a client connected project but by and large those are really our sources on number two um on three industry recognized credentials that's verification um generally of the CNA piece um or um you know as we learn more about them and we'll hear more from our CTE um director and such like that um and internships we're actually looking into ways to figure out how to collect because we know we have students completing internships and we know we're underestimating that right now yeah I would just second what you said it seemed hard to measure so thank you for coming up with a way to do that yeah you're you're welcome it's it's been a good challenge though because we know this is the right work for kids so um so yeah there's our market value
197Asset attainment data um AP Trend data uh pretty stable from 2017 to 2020 we did see a dip from 20 to 21 from a 3.51 to a 3.36 that um unsurprisingly corresponded to a little dip in the pass rate from of about what five five to six percentage points there um a couple of things with the AP data AP testing the last two years has been a little wonky 2020 tests were 45 minutes long and kids took them from home um 2021 um tests were full length and some tests were at home and some tests were were in person generally what we did as a district is the test that we're going to be more paper pencil intensive like your math tests and your physical science tests um and actually foreign language had to be
198in person so uh just a little bit of extra variability there again I think a better test for us here will be to see what happens in 2022 and how does that compare to 2019 um but the good news is overall even with the challenges of last year 76% of kids are still walking away with passing scores um on AP exams which is good because that opens the gate for college credit for them potentially um the other AP slide that's generally helpful to look at is what percent of students in a graduating class have taken an AP class so at least one AP class taken what percent have taken at least one AP test so pretty consistent data over time um in 2021 70% of students took an AP course um graduates 70% of graduates
199took an AP course so it could have been in their freshman year could have been in their senior year um though it's usually later as opposed to earlier and about half of the students a little under half of the students took at least one AP test remember you can take the class without taking the test so we know other opportunities open for students when they um at the very least are even in one of those seats so that is some AP Trend data the next couple of slides we're going to go to state assessments and we're going to present multiple layers to this data so this first slide shows the percent of student students scoring a two which is basic a three which is effective or a four which is excellent in 2021 the number
200in parentheses is the percentage Point difference from 2021 to 2019 so for example if you look at the Box on the upper left Elementary Ela 92% of students were at basic effective or excellent last year that's 6 percentage points lower than it was at 2019 all right all right um similar kind of ways to read middle and read High School data um couple bonus things to keep in mind here virtual kids last spring had to come in to test we had some opt outs amongst that group but overall our participation rate was really pretty good it was around 95% in all three of these subject areas um but at the same time what this data kind of points to more than anything else since the only score not included in this data is ones is
201it means our percentage of students scoring a one went up and and by a relatively decent amount in most cases so that's part of the reason why some of the solutions that you're going to hear us talk about in a little bit are especially important because this this data kind kind of shines a light on some of those components um so that's one layer is the two three or four the other layer is the three or four so keep in mind that when ksde sets their proficiency level in each state is allowed to Define Proficiency in all sorts of different ways um ksde defines Proficiency in Kansas as students scoring effective or excellent at a three or a four so this data is the percentage of students at a three or a four um read
202it the same way as you read the last slide so Elementary Ela 70% of students scored effective or excellent in 2021 but that's a dip of three percentage points as compared to 2019 um couple of relative weaknesses stand out a little more in this chart or relative strengths math on this slide or through the cap um lens seems to be have been more impacted than either Ela or science um given kind of the skill-based nature and math and the disruptions I don't know that that's necessarily a surprise um and at the same time um really the the biggest drop off there was at math at Middle School in particular so again again we're going to hone in on some of those pieces in just a moment uh but the one other piece before we leave
203cap is again I want to show you some Trend data so the math Trend data um this is percent of students scoring a three or a four um in 2018 2019 and 2021 this is math and again you can see in math 2019 to 2021 we dipped by a good amount that's about nine percentage points there um relative to the other districts 2018 we were ahead of D2 by about 3.8 percentage points 2019 ahead of D2 by 2.7% points 2021 um D1 overtook us they were at 48.6% there um one item of note these districts are the same as on the ACT slid so they're anonymized the same way um as they were on that one um and the State numbers are listed at the bottom there okay so that is the math Trend data
204the ELA Trend data um looks a little better for us than the math Trend data did just from this standpoint that that we stayed ahead of of the peers here um 2018 about 7 percentage points ahead 2019 about five and 2021 still a couple percentage points ahead so started with a little bit of a bigger gap on the peers that time and um for the most part you know are still ahead although the Gap has has shortened a little bit okay again you can see the state data at the bottom there and in science we see something kind of similar to what we've seen in math um here we've got both D1 and D2 leaping ahead of us by just a little bit in 2021 in terms of percentage of students getting a three or
205a four um and again State numbers listed on the bottom there all right so that's a lot of cap data we know um that of all the data we see here it's probably this cap data that presents the most opportunity so with that in mind this is the point in the presentation where we're going to talk about some next steps Adam before you go could I ask a couple of questions sure um one I asked this morning yeah and I'll repeat it but I just want averages are aren't the only story we know that right um and I know you have a tremendous amount of data MH um that's um um that you can dissect sure and I know I assume you're in the process of doing that whether it be geography you know geographically
206by school and so on and so forth um I don't think any of us are are particularly happy and and you catch the brunt because you become the reporter um but none of us are happy to see our kids doing worse sure and none of us are happy to see Blue Valley not be the be have the best test scores in the state right [Music] um what would be interesting at some point would be to see the stratification um by score in other words if we're having a higher percentage of our kids score at the bottom right but are for instance higher percentage scoring ones but also a higher percentage scoring fours it it will sway that average one way or another and and I don't know the answer to that yeah but I suspect
207you're in the process of looking at it I certainly can be um yeah the the second question um or the third question we talked about segmentation the third question that I have I asked you this afternoon and I'm going to do it just for so everyone hears it go for it um because not everybody was was with us this morning but um the ACT results I would love to see at some point a normalization of those results right uh the addition yeah of students taking the the exam um oh yeah and it would really be interesting to see maybe by score the percentage of students who scored in that either by score by band or or you know range it would be really interesting to see that and it would also be interesting to see
208over time what that distribution of of um uh scores does you know you've got kind of a hump in the middle right right if if if you look at um number of kids by score right it I want I would love to see that entire um distribution moved towards 36 sure I don't know that it does but I'm going to leave that to you because you're the data Guide sounds good and you're a lot smarter and configure how to do that I I don't know about that but you've given me some good food for thought so thank you all right absolutely the intention of these next slides is to help you understand that uh through our data analysis we have attempted to be both responsive to our data but I would also point out that
209um the district has been monitoring uh student progress over time and there have been some proactive measures that um have been put in place and uh unfortunately the events uh recently kind of stalled some of that work so we're happy to have been able to pick that up this year so first I'll talk to you about you've heard um about this before uh so I won't spend too much time here but internally we adopted a strategy we we refer to as core 4 those are four research-based be best practices which we know uh when educators are involved in those those Drive students student results those are um a return to professional learning communities where collaboration examination and student work and data um drives classroom decision making so to does data or formative assessment the regular
210utilization of data again to plan for and design instruction um next also a focus on tier one um instruction that core um instruction with an interventionist mindset meaning just in time paying attention to the data uh providing just in time intervention so for instance this year we talk too about going you have to go slow to go fast sometimes so teachers understanding this year where students are at uh performance wise ability wise tied to particular standards before uh jumping into maybe as some particular units and then uh identifying what are the what are the supports we need interventions we need for students that may need support above and beyond um a core initial instruction in the classroom in the area mathematics quite an investment um has been made in this area and again this is
211something that the district has been planning for um again uh it's the data driving the revisions in this area that includes uh revision of curriculum it'll um include the purchase of and Adoption of new instructional U materials at elementary and middle it includes the investment of time and resources in the area of professional learning which we have started um this year and we have a cohort of teachers over a 100 teachers that will be uh assisting Us in that leadership and transition of um instructional learning around instructional practices in the area of mathematics and we will also be working to um communicate more with our parents just around the topic of mathematics starting this spring uh with family nights in our buildings to again raise that topic of uh math conversation in the area of
212math we're working with uh departments in our high schools and our uh cni administrators designing plans uh around mathematics at the high school level in the area of literacy you've quite about quite a bit about literacy uh again um in the area of expectations tied to dyslexia our state guidelines we continue to meet and exceed um those expectations and the screening of our students at elementary middle and high is very significant to identify early those students that we still have to catch to provide uh support to we continue to provide professional learning for teachers on how to use again data to drive instructional decisions around literacy we continue to make sure that our instructional strategies are aligned with structured literacy the expectation of the state bottom line at the elementary level we have the additional
213phonic resources this year and we will'll continue again in just that realm of professional learning at all three levels in the area of literacy so again just trying to reiterate we have a plan to again approach uh the that you've seen tonight to continue to positively uh Drive student results um on in multiple assessment areas as Adam has reported thus far tonight I'm going to turn it back over to Adam he's going to talk about a couple more accountability measures sure uh materials that we're using are not or have caused the draw no I wouldn't I wouldn't draw uh draw a causal relationship but what I can tell you some of the materials that we're using in the area of mathematics are some I don't I'm looking at Jennifer in terms of the last year
214that those have been updated it's been some time since we have updated those mathematics materials and also done Deep dive over um broad reaching professional learning in the area of approach to mathematics instruction particularly at the elementary and middle level so it's time to really update Patrick so it's more of a coincidence as opposed to a simp atic problem that needs to be changed We believe We Believe curriculum and resources those two are a variable that impact student learning and we know that it's time that we update those right but we're not updating them simply because the test scores are down we're trying to be responsive but it's certainly it it's been some time since we've done so and so when we look at our test scores we have to we know there's two two
215factors that impact that and that certainly uh is our curriculum and res source and want to make sure that we're updating both of those so then the the other question is about the reading so is there going to be more homework reading homework not necessarily so that's not part of the conversation in terms of solution okay because one of the sides said increase reading in the curriculum so in in that particular point one of the things that we're talking about is increasing um our emphasis on what students are doing in terms of building their stamina as readers it's talking about ensuring that our teachers have proper professional learning uh related to the science of reading instruction in their classrooms making sure any other questions thank you all right so as we wrap this up we're
216going to look at a few more CHS de accountability measures so we've talked State assessment scores um graduation rate um the Blue Valley graduation rate is uh represented by the blue bars here you can see that for the class of 2020 97.2% um that's a high for us relatively speaking over those last four years state of Kansas is in teal if you've attended Dr Watson stuff you'll you'll hear him talk about graduation a lot this is really a big Focus for the state um so we're happy to see the state's Focus kind of reflected here positively for us um we know that that getting kids across that finish line is is super important hey quick question if I could just um just so we make it clear so but blue Valley's standards for graduation are
217also higher than the state standards is that a correct statement our graduation credits are more than so yeah so but but so in order I mean this is this is amazing right a number because we in order to graduate you have to comply with a bit more exactly so this is a higher bar than what the state of Kansas asks for and we still have a great number right am I getting that right yeah yeah okay we microphone what do we attribute the increase to um I mean I don't know I I think you I think it's it's our our staff working diligently with students um we we don't want anybody to fall through the cracks so we are continually uh finding those uh methods that we can whether it is Blue Valley Academy whether
218it's the Johnson County Community College program whether it's the special education stuff that Mark and his team have done but I think it is um adding those uh additional components for students U that will um keep them engaged in in school we we did also add interventionists at some point in there too right at the high school level and and by and large that that position um you know designed to intervene with some of our highest risk kids so that that certainly has to factor in as well yeah um okay so another metric that kte likes districts to look at um is a 2-year lag measure and basically so this is this is a lot of information on one slide but these are the post-secondary success and Effectiveness rates like I said it's a two-year
219lag measure as a student is counted as either meeting the success criteria or not two years after high school so when we look at this the 2019 data represents the High School class of 2019 but we don't know whether they're successful or not until two years after they leave High School which would have been the spring of 2021 so it doesn't look like this data is updated but it actually is so the question becomes okay well what does it mean then for a student to be a success so a student is counted by ksde as a success if they're one enrolled in postsecondary in both the first and second year following high school so if they do that they're they're counted as a success if the student earns a post secondary certificate so they leave
220high school they earn a welding certificate within two years they'll count as a success a student earns a post-secondary degree so chances are in that case we're talking about an Associates within the 2-year time frame student leaves us um goes to Johnson County Community College earns an associate within two years they count as a success likewise we could also say if a student you know like we said earlier stays continuously enrolled so even if they're at Johnson County for two years and they stay enrolled they would still count as a success there the other option um if a student earns an industry recognized certificate ation while in high school they count as a success so like our CNA students um as an example there so that's the success metric so when you look at the
221success over the last five years within two years of graduation 82% of our students have met the success criteria the effectiveness number basically is similar to the success number but it's taking a different bucket of kids okay so success is what percentage of your grad uat Effectiveness is what percentage of your total kids that come to you as high school freshmen so for example if you have a student that you know leaves you as a sophomore and is counted as a non-graduate towards your records in some way and we'll talk about that more in a minute that student would count against your Effectiveness but they wouldn't count against your success okay so really in a way what they're trying to do is tie the idea with this Effectiveness average tying the idea of graduation from
222high school together with outcomes After High School that's their goal um so one of the things that KSD has constructed is they they did some research they constructed this 95% confidence interval um and basically what the 95% confidence interval is based on um is a District's cumulative poverty student mobility and chronic absenteeism so like we for example have a more rigorous confidence interval than most other districts in the state is is we probably should um but the good news is for us the 5-year Effectiveness average of 78% when our expected number is right between 65 and 70 that's a good metric for us okay in fact KSD gives a standard deviation on this measure of about 6 and a half so we're we're more than one standard deviation ahead there um and it's actually one
223that earned us um a commissioner's Award with honors for performance here on postsecondary Effectiveness so this is a nice kind of feather in our cap because it talks about what is it do you get the kid to the finish line and then at the same time within two years are you helping get the kids the skills they need two years out of high school as well all right so postsecondary Effectiveness somewhat complicated metric but it produces helpful feedback for our system all right the next piece is the most upto-date dropout rate data that kte publishes and I know um the common thing here is to look at this and go okay so you just told me we had a 97.2% graduation rate in 2020 and you're also telling me that we had a dropout rate
224of 0.2% in 2020 um that's not 100% and you would be right um basically the way ksde figures this out is that there are students who count against your graduation rate that aren't dropouts so that other 2.6% those missing kids um a lot of different things could have theoretically happened there so suppose that you know sometime during their High School career family tells us we are moving to a different state so the the records that that our schools put in said student moving out of state um and then we never get a records request from that other school in another state for whatever reason okay I think in most cases we do but in some cases we may not if you don't get that records request that student is neither going to it's not going
225to count as a Dropout because we don't have definitive evidence that the student's a Dropout but they're also not going to count towards your graduation rate okay so they're going to count as a non-graduate towards your your information there um another example here is that if a student leaves you for a leaves us for a home school an unaccredited private you know home school they're they're not going to count as a Dropout because we don't have definitive proof that they dropped out out but they're also not going to count as a graduate for you okay there are other factors as well um relating to to some of the special education programs and whatnot um and at the same time you can see that reflected in the state data as well because remember when we looked
226at the state data they were in the high 80s and they've got a dropout rate of a little over 1% so there there are kids that kind of go missing in this particular system the good news for us is that at least of this most recent data in 2020 the percent of kids that are definitive dropouts very low um two out of every thousand one out of every 500 okay um the attendance piece so KS toes districts to share their attendance um our district attendance data is in the blue the state's District or percentage of attendance is in yellow um we exceed the state averages in both instances there and then the last slide is chronic absenteeism uh KSD defines chronic absenteeism as the percentage of students who Miss 10 or more days in a
227given school year um so you can see here from the past couple of school years we've had a lower percentage of chronically absent students than the rest of the state so um overall you know um a couple things to kind of take away from today one multiple data points are always key when sharing a story we saw some data points here that were really good we saw some data points here that weren't good um all of those are pieces of the picture all right so we have opportunities um you know where we've seen strengths and opportunities for improvement um we also wanted to highlight some next steps during this presentation so that you can see well some of the trends here need fixing we're on it and the end goal is producing academic growth for
228each student I would also add that earlier um this school year actually it was in the summer when we adopted our goals for the year if you recall one of the goals we adopted was that we would improve the number of students um who scored a three or a four on the state assessment and the state assessment results you saw we're from last year so we are fully committed um to working towards that goal uh when they take the state assessment this spring and we'll be excited to bring you uh results um next year uh to show how we've met that goal that's right absolutely I would uh just actually like to say thank you I know that this is a ton of work I love that you p all these numbers together um and
229to be honest it's kind of a mixed bag I mean it's sometimes hard to figure out I mean depending upon the grade and if it's math if it's reading or whatever I mean some are up and some are down and so I don't envy the job of trying to sort through all of that and then figure out a plan of attack to make sure that we are meeting the needs of all of the kids and getting them where they need to be um however after watching this I'm confident that we have the right steps um waiting to be taken to do that for each of the kids so I I do really appreciate all of your guys' efforts in doing so absolutely thank you go ahead oh go ahead Amy no are you sure oh
230all your last okay yes so just real real quick I I'll address this to Dr Maran a little bit so after you know 35 slides today and 35 this morning and and re know and all the information we've be getting which is is all positive we got to have this and um you know the stuff that's in our packets just the the big State of the Union here in your opinion obviously we've got some concerns Dr Aman but just a big picture you know here's our challenges here's our quote unquote issues here's how we're going to fix it what are your so I would say that as as this slide says it was a mixed bag there were some um data points that are not good and we need to own that and we need
231to uh that's why we have a plan um we've developed literacy plan we've developed a math plan um we set a goal around uh improving our state assessments all of those things um we are committed to doing and I would say that we have uh the right people with Adam with Dr CER with Dr linski with Kelly a leading that with our principles and our teachers our teachers are fully engaged and fully Meeting those individual needs of kids and so I think it anybody's still watching this from a parent level if you are concerned about your child these numbers mean nothing you you need to get down to the the down and dirty on your kid and so I what I would say is you want to go in and talk to teachers and you
232want to plan for your student St if you're concerned about their reading scores you're concerned about how they're doing in any class is let's engage with that teacher and let's set up a plan with that individual student um but I'm I'm confident we will continue to improve these scores and like I said I'm excited to bring them back to you next year to show you how we have improved awesome thank you um I just want to say I'm just incredibly proud of the district um this District that we're in because we are always looking forward we're always looking for ways to improve um um some areas are are a bit more stagnant we don't do that here um I have you know in the 30 years that I've lived in the community you know we're
233always looking forward and we're looking at better ways to do things and that just proves we're we're a community of Learners right so I think you know yeah can we do things better we can always in in all of our you know lives and work especially Tom over here you know we can always do things better right um but you know so but but I just I just want to call that out oh he loves it he loves it I don't know how to take that he can handle it he can handle it um but you know I mean we all we all make mistakes or or take a step back in our lives and we then take step forward I think this is a great example to our community into our kids that you
234know you just keep at it and and you try different ways and you think of different Avenues so I I just want to commend the district our Administration and and all of our teachers and and and students and parents because this is this is exciting I don't see you know the the hits on some of these that are a little bit lower than than because we're just still overall moving forward so any other comments for Adam thank you Adam and um I would like to thank you Dr CER as well yes of course um we're going to take a quick break and it's 9:119 we'll start back up at 9:25 thank you for bearing with me for 70 slides today live captioners 71 it's all good thank you for thanks to your full team appreciate
235it all right we are back in business um next up is our 2022 2023 High School course proposals so it it is that normal time of year when we bring to you uh the proposed High School course description guide changes uh kellot was not able to be here this evening and so she has created a video um that we're going to show that outlines this process and then uh Dr CER is here uh for questions or I will try and help answer questions as well and so I would say go ahead and roll the video good evening this is Kelly executive director of curriculum instruction I'm here this evening to share the 20 22 23 High School course proposals this is an annual process it begins with teachers or administrators proposing a change to high
236school programming earlier this year the proposals are vetted by the high school curriculum and instruction assistant principles Additionally the proposals are presented to the board of education's curriculum and instruction advisory committee for consideration and feedback two times this Wednesday will be the second time these proposals are present presented to the cni committee this evening is a presentation of those proposals we do not ask for action on the proposals in November only present them to you for your consideration in December we will return and you will have an opportunity to approve or decline the proposals at that time at this time I'd like to go through each of them and at the end you we can field any questions you may have first is World Language um Chinese AP Chinese 6 this is the natural progression
237of our Chinese programming and for next year we'll need to add that six level uh AT AP level class to finish out our programming in the area of Chinese also as part of our long-term plan this is more of a a note item rather than part of the high school course description guide we will be sunsetting beginning Chinese 1 and Chinese 2 these two class classes were in place at the seventh and eighth grade levels to seed the high school program they have done their job and it is part of our long longrange plans that once they achieve their goal that we will sunset them so we are proposing to Sunset these and this change will bring Chinese in line with Spanish and French which will have two entry points one at sixth grade and
238one at ninth grade the next World Language changes are also related to the long-term plan uh Spanish and French honors 5 these are also natural progressions of the long course long-term curriculum revamp that has occurred over the last few years the revamp is related to adding a semester at the middle school World Language sequence a few years ago which required adjusting all classes um on the progression additionally um teachers would like to add an honors designation to Spanish and French 4 due to the rigor and the advanced curriculum in the fourth class in the progression The Proposal is to have this level have that honors designation this also allows French students in feeder systems that do not have French in the Middle School to achieve honors level coursework with four years of study the next
239slide I will provide a reminder of the scope of the world language program once it is fully realized here is the World Language programming as um fully realized with the two entry points um notice sixth grade if you enter in sixth grade you can complete levels one and two during your middle school years and begin your high school um career at level three and proceed on to AP level six if you choose um students always have option to enter in ninth grade and and Achieve uh four levels of study um and it's worthy to note that students can take level one at any point in their High School career care mathematics this is a very exciting addition to our mathematics lineup introduction to data science uh this exciting new course that has been piloted has
240been piloted with great success at blue valley Northwest and Blue Valley Southwest this year we are partnering with UCLA Center X to implement it um IDs as it is known is a data science course and it's designed for broad swaa students uh it will be open to all 10th and 11th grade 10th through 12th grade students um who have successfully completed algebra one this class we feel has a huge amount of value for students going into any uh career path and we're excited to offer it the curriculum and professional learning has been developed in conjunction with UCLA and this class integrates data science statistical analysis and coding using our studio these two changes are Minor Adjustments to existing courses our teachers would like to change the name of the course ACT SAT prep to ACT
241prep this is simply a name change to reflect the course's current content and curriculum we have taught only ACT prep for years and the desire is that the name reflect the content for clarity Additionally the pre-calculus and trigonometry class this is a prerequisite change to again reflect current practice the course is designed for seniors who want to take math but for whom Advanced algebra or AP Calculus is not appropriate this change would alter the alter the targeted grade level to seniors or require a teacher recommendation this proposed changes also in the spirit of increased clarity a few changes at caps um both both in the um again in the spirit of clarity exploring Health Professions uh this change would be to the curriculum and to the description of the course because of the limited opportunities
242to visit Health Care Facilities the Caps instructors would like to Pivot this class to be a more holistic overview of Health Professions also the future of foods the future Foods course description would also be amended um to ensure Clarity there continues to be some confusion regarding the content of the course the course is about food industry not a course that develops culinary skills the new description would reflect that change or that that fact finally we have two um programs that are in development these two programs will appear in the course description guide for 20 223 as part of our ongoing partnership with Johnson County Community College in the coming year we'll have options for students who would like to pursue cours workk in cyber security and to begin programming to become a nail technician exact
243course names are still being worked out with jccc and will be included in the offerings for students the coming year we're very excited to continue to add to the partnership with Johns County community college and continue to increase the opportunities to for students in career ready programming that is the end of our presentation this evening if you have any questions please make sure to ask them and we will get you responses as soon as possible thank you and have a great evening so just as a a reminder um this has gone through cni as Kelly said I think it goes the second time this week um and they have given their blessing so far and we'll have an opportunity to give feedback and and will make sure that she gets that all to the board
244it will come back to you in December for formal approval um if I may I I just I am really thankful that we are focusing so much on the extra career paths opportunities for our kids the classes that we are coming up with at Johnson County Community College is continuing to expand the you know growing range of opportunities for our kids and I love that we are continuing to just add options for them and hopefully there will be more I'm sure you guys are already working on more for the following year as well or at some point so uh thank you for that continued effort to provide more opportunities for our kids to figure out what they'd like to do I have a quick question so Spanish for is at the moment not an honors
245class is that correct okay but the only option would be honors correct okay so then next year it will so how will it be different from what the Spanish 4 kids are taking now go ahead so uh there would be added components to curriculum for that as well and related to the rig rigor of that course there'll be some pieces that aren't included in the non okay perfect thank you any idea how many districts teach Chinese six in the area maybe I don't know about six though okay I know that shy Mission has Chinese but I don't think they have it in middle school so I'm gonna ask just I get it back to Stacy point I love the diversification for whatever your talents or passions may be from the Johnson County Community College stuff
246to to what I just said so I love that I love that and the opportunity to do data science and uh cyber security when you're in high school holy moly yeah yeah I agree that's awesome so have we thought about adding cosmetology or that that particular industry yeah thank you for asking that we do know that that's an increasingly highin area for our students uh we've been studying programming and partnership opportunities we started to look into that last year we uh would like to be able to bring you something in the future with a solution for cosmetology uh this snail technician piece is a step in that direction um but um really that's tied to our active work and seeking partnership for that thank you yes thank you all right next up is an Esser
247update Kyle kind of a hard one to have late in the evening I'm used to this kind of a like a career of having late presentations that are that are kind of boring so somehow they always get stuff to the back of the agenda so so I get good at going pretty fast so hopefully you don't mind that you're like oh I'm Ming snapping don't forget we have a captioner so don't talk too fast okay all right try that um so over the course of dating back to last year uh we've come to you several times to talk to you about the federal funding that we have received um so tonight I want to talk a little bit more about sr3 specifically um but kind of review some of the other things that U we've
248talked about previously so um in previous conversations we talked about car's funding um in in particular the Sparks funding that came through Johnson County and then also Sr One funds um and then also the sr2 funds from last year that um we had to submit an application for that and so we walked through some of those things with you that were part of that application and then tonight we really want to hone in on SR 3 because we're finalizing our application for that and wanted to make sure that uh we put those items in front of you so the sr3 funds you can see just the allocations not only from the federal level but also to the state and then to Blue Valley um we've also in the past shown you what some of our
249peer schools have received um was with sr3 similar to sr2 there was a base allocation and then there was additional allocation based on need um so depending on CS numbers um and Title One um those things would vary here's some of the allowable categories for the use of these funds um and I'm going to hand it off to Dr CER to talk a little bit more about uh this along with um what um our sr2 uh have we've used for our S2 dolls and also our sr3 looks like hey Kyle quickly before you go so was the 609 that blue valley was allocated was that the base $69 per student yeah um I think it was less than that and but then there was a slight Title One allocation u based upon our percentage okay
250thanks y so the allowable area areas of expenditure and S 3 are similar to that of s Sr 2 um as you review that list uh certainly I don't think that there should be any surprises in those areas um we did gather feedback in um and trying to determine uh the the best way to go about allocating these dollars we started with those groups um last spring talking to teachers and administrators um most recently I believe the majority of our our board advisory committees our PTO PTA president's Council also provided input and we have had um on our district website on the finance page and open thought exchange which invites uh Patron participation input um into uh the expenditure of these dollars as well you can see there some Trends in the feedback we heard
251uh quite a bit about um support in the area of math instruction we heard about um making sure we are supporting our special education program students and teachers mental health of students and staff came up so again you can uh see some of that category that some of those categories there that were that were trending topics if you will in terms of feedback that we received so at this point I'll go through uh the various categories and highlight um some of the uh planned expenditures that will be part of the application will be submitting so in terms of the area of literacy we are seeking to hire reading specialist at the middle level currently we do not have reading specialists at the middle school level um that is a it's a position we've had posted
252uh we continue to um struggle quite honestly ly to attract individuals to to that position but we are uh trying to look at what we can do what do we know about our staff that we currently have that may be close to ler in in that area that may well have an interest in that the more training that we've done with staff in the area of the science science of of reading um we've had staff interested in asking us questions how do how do I get a position such as that um in the area of esol so we know our ESO um students uh certainly had an impact last year to covid to Virtual learning um access to additional supports so that is an area that we've uh suggested adding additional staff to In terms
253a certified teacher and Par professionals you um are aware that our Middle School uh libraries um their pa professionals a position that we didn't reinstate this year however this year after um analyzing and talking to the Librarians about the impact on students uh services to students uh we are bringing back that position in a part-time fashion and then uh simultaneously looking at how we can support devices at the middle school level uh obviously there's break fix issues there and we're going to be initiating a program where our students much like other districts that have a one toone one uh device per student um engage students in uh the repair of those devices learning about the devices learning about workflow Etc and then beginning really to open up pathway and options uh for them uh in
254the future um we have um tonight Colleen zinc was here we've expanded uh the role of the dyslexia consultant and the uh emphasis at the secondary level additionally we have in a a special Services area uh hired um a literacy consultant in that area as well School connectedness those are funds that we would allocate to each uh building to engage in activities to uh connect families to school we've talked a lot about some disconnect that may have occurred last year reaching out to populations of families that may feel uh perhaps more disconnected if they're if they're new to us Etc um so our building principles for instance can use those funds to bring in guest speakers for our parents um I know there's a building that's working on some connection activities for families of uh
255students that are in foster care uh looking at ideas to increase orientation for our ESO fam so again just a variety of connectedness activities there in the area of mental health um we've talked to you earlier this year about the addition of uh social workers we've talked to you also about um extending student learning in the way of tutors after uh paying teachers after school stiens uh to support students after school learning summer school you know it's hard here as we sit here at the beginning of November but um we're really getting ready to launch planning for summer school this coming year and then also the area of A needs assessment so when you um see and about surveys that we're giving to families that we've recently released um regarding a student's performance in one
256spot right now teachers might have to go to different solutions in the district so we're looking at Solutions where teachers can go to just one spot and see all information about student one spot and keep track of that so they can um really archive and help students and understand kind of their history of performance in one spot so those are some of those expenditures in those three areas in the area of professional learning we've talked a little bit tonight about mathematics um you just heard about the uh new data course that's on the course proposal so part of the professional learning there is tied to um our work with UCLA to understand how best to design that course and provide professional learning for teachers that would teach that course that would be associated with professional
257learning here you're aware of literacy training throughout the district that would be Associated uh to this area as well and then finally the response efforts you're very aware well aware of those and those um dollars here um can be assigned to sr3 as well if you have any questions about the plan um that we uh plan to provide to the state for these uh dollars I'm happy to answer any of those questions Kor are available to do that and as a reminder we submit our application to a committee um who reviews them and once they're comfortable with it they work back and forth with if we don't have enough information it goes to the State Board of Education uh for formal approval that is correct and we do also have the opportunity to amend or
258revise the application throughout the time period of expenditure if we uh chose to do that and so the thought exchange that's on our district Finance page will remain open for continued feedback during that time when do we send that to them what was the question when do we when do we send that to them uh we can send it I think anytime they have not um to this point they've been they have not taken sr3 applications yet they've been finishing working on Esser 2 which we did long time ago but there were they have to do every uh private and public school in the state so like Middle School PA library parttime which is awesome glad to see that back we'll have to wait to kick that in until we're approved yeah we're prepared to
259post those positions as early as next week I don't know if as early as this week um and so uh We've communicated to building administrators and our uh Librarians about that at the middle level so awesome they're prepared for us to to move on that so what's your best guess then of when the funds would you'd get the green light like across this this group of funds not holding you to it I'm just like tell me like a so it would the earliest it could go would be next month and it has to be approved by the state board and as soon as it's approved then we can start drawing down but what I would say is they let let you go back and I I would say too in the webinars I've participated in
260around these funds um really very clear definition of that timeline um isn't readily available it sounds like probably early next year right okay yeah they again they haven't brought any sr3 funds to my knowledge that's um the calls I've had with Dr Watson and superintendent across the state um they were they they had to finish sr2 by federal statute they had to get those through and so they were really focused on that got okay thank you both all right uh we're gonna another Goodland reference we're back to it um but only in a good way Dr Schmidt um so the last thing on the agenda for tonight is to appoint a KB region 11 vice president um this is a four-year term um and uh Mike sites has been our representative up until this point
261so thank you for your time commitment on that we appreciate can I ask a question before we go on yeah sure I'm a little conf is Sarah here Sarah is that I'm a little confused it's has it always been a four-year ter will all be switched okay thank you um I I do believe our uh board member Jody Deets is willing to take on this role unless anyone else wants to arm wrestle her oh can I do the motion wrest yeah you okay with that yeah do it oh I move that the Board of Education appoints jod Deets to serve as the kasb region 11 vice president for four for a four-year term expiring December 2025 second thank you motion by Mike second by Stacy all those in favor please raise your right hand Jody
262Jody Jody yes motion passes 70 congratulations uh do I have yeah thank you in advance do I have a motion to adjourn our meeting I move that the November 8th regular Board of Education meeting be adjourned thank you thank you Stacy for the motion Michelle for the second all those in favor raise your right hand motion passes 70 thank you happy birthday Jody what a birthday present the 21st 21st do you want this or you want me just to put it with okay this is you know seriously please don't