Blue Valley Board of Education Meeting - March 8, 2021

001[Music] do [Music] you guys give me the nod when it's time we're close i talk slow um good evening um you know we have a very special person who's going to kick off um our board meeting i would like to invite jacob marash fifth grade student from lakewood elementary to the front and he is going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance did you come over here to 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 jacob you did absolutely wonderful and i also want to thank jacob's family for being here so um so he could lead us in the pledge and i know dr merrigan and uh president tyson have a certificate and

002a pen to present to you we're gonna take your picture for the scrapbook how about a hand wave thank you appreciate it all right great job can't think of a better way to start off our board meeting um we also have um some very special people in the audience tonight and it's so nice to have some people back for recognitions tonight i would like to recognize a very special teacher in the district who has made a tremendous impact on the profession very early in her career emily maurer would you please come forward [Applause] so emily is one of two blue valley teachers who have been named recipients of the kansas horizon award an honor recognizing exemplary first-year teachers who perform in a way that distinguishes them as outstanding she was honored along with cassidy evans

003in a related resources teacher at blue valley northwest who was unable to join us tonight emily is a fourth grade teacher at timber creek elementary where she believes that building relationships with her students is a key ingredient in a successful classroom making strong connections helps her understand the ways her students can learn best she uses a student-centered and welcoming approach which empowers her students to take risks and challenge each other this in turn builds confidence in her students learning current valley park elementary assistant principal and former timber creek colleague laura lahoo shares that emily has an innate keen sense of the diverse needs of children in her care she goes on to say that she motivates and inspires her students on a level that paves the way for a personalized relationship with the school experience

004her aptitude for providing high quality instruction as well as her natural inclusion of character development and social emotional learning makes her a one-of-a-kind educator the kansas department of education honors 32 kansas teachers with the award each year please join me in congratulating both emily and cassidy on their outstanding efforts in their first year of teaching your abilities to personalize learning and build relationships truly epitomize the qualities of an exemplary educator congratulations [Applause] yes thanks for coming tonight to support her thank you so much congratulations now one of the things i usually say that i'm kind of rusty since we haven't had recognitions but there will be a time in the board meeting after recognitions where um if you wanted to leave so i wanted those who are here for recognitions only to know that there's

005a time here where you can sneak out if you'd like and of course you're welcome to stay for the meeting if you prefer as well so now we're going to go ahead and recognize our national board certified teacher so at this time i'd like to invite um julie vodanol susan rosenberg and stacy dickerson to the front i'll tell you national board certification is absolutely i have i can't even imagine but from what i hear and understand it is an unbelievable journey and the effort um is tremendous that it takes um to get this kind of achievement so congratulations to you all it's my pleasure to recognize these four teachers who have undergone an incredible professional learning journey and now have been officially named as national board certified teachers this is a challenging and esteemed accomplishment

006that we are proud to recognize tonight blue valley now has 57 members who are national board certified so as i call your name why don't you kind of step forward and we're going to give you oh you already gave the certificates so um no that's good i didn't share my directions with you so so at this time i think what we'd like to do is take a picture of the group of um the group of you together so first let's give them a round of applause for outstanding work and effort and then casey's gonna come forward and take a picture so julie which one are you all right step four julie and um adriana am i saying that right adrian and then susan and stacy all right congratulations yeah any family here wave because that

007takes a lot of support a lot of time they're not at home they're working so appreciate family support so that we can make this happen for them and thank you so much for what you do because we know that it's our students who benefit from this so congratulations [Applause] okay that wraps up our recognition so i'll turn it back over to president tyson to get us moving um those who came for just the recognitions this will be the time for you to slip out and if you are here for the meeting you can either find a better seat or a seat in the back whatever you prefer oh yes yes correct yep all right i'm gonna go ahead and get started um first up we have open forum welcome to those in attendance to address

008the board or listen during 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 three-minute limit per speaker after 60 minutes the board will close open forum and will proceed with its agenda items for the evening whether you plan to speak or just listen we're glad you're here because we care about your opinions and your concerns and the 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 i have a few

009reminders about open forum that will help our speakers to have a constructive and positive experience when discussing items with the board when making remarks please be civil and use respective language if you are speaking in person please keep your face covering in place while you speak please limit discussion to the relevant business of the board tonight discussion of manners related to a specific student or employee is not allowed instead comments should be submitted in writing to the superintendent please remember to limit your comments to three minutes and avoid repeating the concerns of a previous speaker 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

010education possible to our students when your name is called introduce yourself before beginning your remarks as a reminder we ask that all remarks are limited to three minutes let's get started all right we have one um one person that signed up for in-person comments tonight uh kevin miner and it appears kevin's not with us tonight so we will go ahead and complete open forum with remarks from our patrons who submitted comments in writing and we have one patron jody havens the following comments were submitted by jody havens who has students at blue valley southwest and aubry bend middle my name is jody havens and i have two children at blue valley southwest and one at aubrey bend middle i am writing to ask the board to consider giving all or a portion of the activity

011programming fees back this 135 dollar fee for my freshman sixty dollar fee for my senior and fifty five dollar fee for my seventh grader is on top of paying and a hundred and fifteen dollar learning resources fee for each of our three kiddos i have called the middle and high schools as well as district administrators in an attempt to learn where our activity feeds have gone this year since there have been limited activities for middle and high schools i have gotten different answers from all of them as a parent of three children who all opted last summer for in-person learning i paid these fees up front expecting that my kids would have been in person utilizing these activity fees far more than they have been on top of the activity fees and learning resources fees

012i pay fees for covering certain electives for my students such as sculptures and engineering classes i was told that the activity fees at the middle school level go to paying teachers who work overtime for club meetings and sports while my seventh grader had a delayed cross-country season last fall his practices were attended by two coaches and they had a total of only two meets his choir concert was 100 virtual and was literally one song emailed to parents clubs have yet to meet in person so i am willing to bet that 55 times the number of seventh graders plus the activity fees for sixth and eighth graders far exceed what was actually spent this year on activities with our kids still in hybrid and remote learning now i have received a letter that i owe more

013money for my son's elective this quarter i would ask that you strongly consider refunding at least a portion of the activity fees or waive them all together next year the 115 dollar learning resources fees should be more than enough to cover expenses this year since students will only be in person for one quarter of the year i will add lastly that the parking permit at the high school went from 15 last year to 35 this year it more than doubled yet my student parked in the lot less than half of the time it would be wonderful to receive an explanation for that thank you for your consideration in this matter thank you jody that wraps up open forum for tonight on behalf of the board of education i'd like to thank our participants we appreciate

014that each of you took time to share your thoughts with us please know that the board and district administration takes notes during open forum and will follow up as needed with participants next up i'm going to call the meeting to order first on the list tonight is to receive reports from board advisory committees and the first one that we have tonight is diversity equity and inclusion thanks amy the diversity equity and inclusion committee met on february 11th at that meeting the first thing that we did is spent some time as a committee reviewing the five different groups that we had set up in january and each group had come up with a strategy we spent some time asking clarifying questions and letting each group get some feedback the second part of the meeting was a

015review of some work that blue valley will be doing with other school districts in the area blue valley was invited to be a part of the equity and school cohort along with seven other area schools this work is being sponsored and funded by the kauffman foundation a group of district employees we'll begin with an equity audit and engage in some collaborative learning and work over the next year to develop that long-term strategic plan around dei for the district the dei board advisory committee will provide feedback and input along the way for this group the next meeting of the diversity equity and inclusion group is this thursday march 11th thank you dr merrigan next is health and well-being with student services and dr collier is going to give us that update tonight the health and well-being

016board advisory committee met wednesday february 24th after welcoming members and visitors christy balman director of united community services discussed the increasing poverty trends in johnson county her presentation covered topics related to housing food cost wages and employment while we're aware of the impact of covid19 on the broader economy the impact on johnson county provided local context to these issues additionally additionally tara wallride shared district data regarding free and reduced lunches foster care and homelessness within each of our blue valley feeder school areas karen mulligan as you know our children's mercy school social worker supervisor shared information about providing food for the weekend within the backpack food program providing hygiene supplies through giving the basics and making referrals for families for food clothing rent and utilities while there are many organizations in overland park social workers

017and our school counselors help connect families to these resources finally charles rathburn blue valley director of food and nutrition services shared that food nutrition has continued to provide meals for students attending both in-person and virtual learning this year for students at home as a reminder this includes bundling three lunches and three breakfasts together to be picked up twice each week this has been provided through a federal grant grant at no cost to the families the committee will meet again wednesday april 7th at 4 o'clock again via zoom thank you dr collier next up is student activities with mr stubblefield thank you the student activities committee met on thursday february 18th the primary purpose for the february 2021 student activities committee meeting was to continue our discussion of a character and leadership development program a student

018leadership workshop and a character curriculum overview were shared with our team prior to the meeting for their review i opened the meeting by sharing a process to help narrow the focus of our character and leadership development discussion the committee then broke into smaller groups using this process they worked through the shared documents to determine what was important for their group each small group then shared their information with the rest of the group we will continue to work on this topic at the april meeting the high school and middle school administrators provided activity and athletic updates as well as the blue valley recreation the finance and operations board advisory committee met on thursday march 4th via zoom i provided an update on the status of the learning modes at each level in the staff vaccination rollout

019plan jake slobodnick director of facilities and operations gave a brief update on the status of current construction projects including elementary 24 and blue valley high school edition that is scheduled for completion prior to the end of the school year jenny daniel director of finance shared the recent final results from the 2020-21 kansas state department of ed annual audit blue valley's audited enrollment came in 563.2 fte lower than last year which equates to a projected loss of approximately 780 000. jenny daniel provided a report on the quarterly 2012 bond reallocation reallocations that's on your agenda for approval tonight director of business operations jason gillum and director facilities and operations jake slobodnick presented 22 bids and contracts that are on the agenda for board approval tonight also the next meeting is scheduled for april 8th thank you

020kyle and next on the agenda we're going to receive reports from board members and the superintendent for items not included on the agenda so first up tonight uh tom you want to start us off yeah just real quick um as we return to normalcy i thought having the awards and recognitions tonight was fantastic so great to see all the teachers and their friends and their principals here in the the boardroom i was also going to take some good news from some of the information we get and just share it real quick to make sure we're honoring a lot of our students um arts council of johnson county shooting stars awards there was 93 finalists in johnson county blue valley school district had 22 of those which i thought was awesome theater voice strings literature photography

021and wins and percussion blue valley west boys 6a swim and dive state champions and blue valley schools had four individual state champs and two relay state champs and then we had two blue valley students one state titles and wrestling both of those were from blue valley southwest so again just to our students here in blue valley a job well done so that's all i got all good news yeah thank you for sharing jodie dietz um yeah so um i wanted to just uh piggyback a little bit on uh the review of the health and wellbeing board advisory committee and just mention that that it was a fantastic presentation by united community services and the interesting thing i brought away from that or took away from that was the students that we have on the committee

022were surprised when they heard of all the different types of services that are available and actually kind of led a discussion about how how to get that information in the hands of the students in a better way and so it was it was a really great topic and really student student directed so really appreciated that blue valley ed foundation they're working on building a bridge out of the wilderness science center and it's going to be really nice right now apparently there is no bridge it has fallen down and so um they're working on funding that so that'll be awesome that's a really great experience for a lot of our students as well as community members out there in addition they are also working on a women's giving circle which we're going to hear maybe more

023about so that's kind of an exciting road that they're on also i was able to attend a k-a-s-b bullying program this last week uh focused on students and adults prevention and intervention um so um a number of really interesting takeaways from that and how important our social emotional learning and character development um are and that kind of piggybacks into the student activities discussions we've had with our coaches and and teams so uh let's see here oh and uh our special education uh committee had a resource fair this last week and i tapped into it a little early there were an amazing amount of vendors at that event and so that was really exciting i think that's all i have that's really good thank you for sharing all that mike sites yes okay michelle benjamin i'm

024just going to say kudos to everyone who is involved in the vaccination effort i was there at hilltop this weekend and was blown away by how efficient the process was how easy it was i know that that level of perfection in my mind does not come easily it comes with a lot of really hard work and i just wanted to say thank you to eric pinswick and mark schmidt and everyone who helped work with you i know there's a team of people um to pull that off and um it was really impressive i was it was a very proud bv moment so children's mercy did a lot too but i know that it was it was a team effort and and i was very very impressed very proud and and very happy so thank you

025so much so thank you to children's mercy as well yes of course uh patrick hurley okay stacy okay um i just have a couple quick things um michelle i was going to cover that so thank you for covering that so eloquently no that that's great i really like going at the end so um and jody you did a great job wrapping up uh health and well-being our students always amaze me they come up with great ideas they had some ideas that the adults in the room hadn't thought of for ways to put that information out there and to make what's available known to each of the families so that they can take advantage of those services there are um no acacia updates for once um unless there is another special meeting scheduled our final meeting

026will be at the end of april um but spring season is underway um also would like to thank the more than 30 that have expressed an interest in running for the board of education in the election next november i would like to encourage any of you to feel free to reach out to myself or i'm sure any other board member would be willing to answer questions and help you make that decision and then for my committee updates um blue valley uh wreck they are hanging in there they have lost close to half of their hilltop memberships they have had trouble staffing with officials um it it has been a challenging year for them but you know what they are doing everything they can they're using masks they've closed their locker rooms they're doing everything they

027can to you know keep it keep it moving and um for those of you that have been around for a while and sat on that committee uh you may remember rufus nye was a commissioner um from back in the day well he had passed away a couple years ago and his family has made a donation and they have created these um umpire bags for baseball uh behind the plate officials for young folks starting out because a lot of that equipment can be very very expensive and so they've created these bags that will be used at blue valley rec for some of the younger officials to use which i thought was just a fantastic honor for him to remember him um and then again the student activities conversation that we had i am so excited that

028we are thinking about other ways to give opportunities to our kids to help them grow and by providing a character and leadership development path for them through athletics and activities to me is phenomenal i mean you've got a great opportunity there to make an impact on a lot of kids and and i do really appreciate that so i think that is all i have this month thank you great and dr american i have several updates thank you amy so um march is music in our schools month so i want to thank all of our music educators for everything that they're doing this year they're you're going to hear it a little bit the multiple mitigating factors and i also thought it was very um appropriate that you all have at your place there of a

029little program for kmea the kansas music educators association you have to audition to perform at this conference typically it is in wichita i have gone the last several years and it is absolutely beautiful music we had two groups that went through the process and actually performed online so the blue valley northwest high school chamber symphony and the blue valley southwest wind ensemble so kudos to those students i listened to them it was amazing and they had very little practice time altogether but they truly produce some really wonderful music so congratulations to those students i was very very proud of them to talk about a proud blue valley moment this also is social worker appreciation month and so we've had a long-standing partnership with children's mercy now around having social workers in our school and it

030has been a game changer you know as a former school counselor we were missing that link and that has been so well received in our schools also around mental health i want to let you know that i met with zero reasons why students who are high school students who really are trying to end the stigma of mental health and they have some ideas about how to reach middle school students and so that was a great meeting too again talk about blue valley students shining and this is blue valley students coming up with ideas to assist middle school students so watch for that to come soon i also want to do a shout out thank you on the vaccines it has been a true herculean effort but the johnson county department of health and environment and

031children's mercy are great partners of ours and they truly ran a well-oiled machine but we had lots of staff members who really helped with that dr pinswick dr schmidt you're going to hear just a little bit about the numbers that we've had along with tara asher and sherry buxton who have been at almost every single one sid cumberland the blue valley ed foundation who provided some resources for those people worked eight-hour days and so they helped to find some snacks and we had private rooms for people to do that nick and jake's kevin timmons supplied meals for them for many of the days so we couldn't have done it without all of those people so we truly want to thank them um and then oh we are 2021 healthiest employer honoree we were recognized by

032the kansas city business journal and blue cross blue shield so kudos to our hr department for for the works of submitting that and then finally in march at the march board meeting we we always announce the last day of school and a lot of times the march board meeting is after spring break well this year it happens to be before spring break but we're still going to announce the last day of school so the last day of school for students will be on friday may 28th it will be a half of a day for students and that will wind up this end of this school year staff will continue professional learning the rest of that day the other thing i would say is that we are going to meet our 1116 hours that are required

033by the kansas state department of education high school is going to add adjust their schedule just a little bit for fourth quarter and you will be getting some communication about that tomorrow that's it some good news on the last day of school so thank you very much and just to kind of combine a couple of thoughts here uh thank you to dr merrigan uh the administration and everyone principals school staff that have played a part in making sure that we are going to be in good shape to go back to school full-time in person on march 23rd so we'll finish out this week in a hybrid mode and then look forward to being full-time in person after spring break so thank you all for everything you've done to make that possible all right next up

034on the agenda do i have a motion to approve the agenda i move the board of education approve the agenda for the march 8 2021 regular board of education meeting as published motion by tom second by michelle all those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes 7-0 and uh next up consent agenda do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda i move that the board of education approved the consent agenda for the march 8 2021 regular board of education meeting as published motion by stacy second by tom all those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes 7-0 thank you much and then moving on to our new business first up tonight we have a learning update so we have multiple people who are going to um do this presentation

035uh dr pensbook are you starting this one out thank you we'll start with a review of our dashboard we presented this in the past board meetings and here are just some updates if i can get this to work there we go we're in business now all right so the uh first slide that we'll show is the number of positive cover 19 cases uh that we've been tracking since back on september first you said an overall overall trend line from december to now is going down when we break this data down into students and staff you'll notice that we have a similar numbers in the in the sense of we're going down and trending in that direction in comparison to where we were back in the the december when we had a number of cases in

036addition we were tracking the quarantine data and if you see our quarantine data it is ticked up a little bit in in this february time frame but overall if you see a trend line going down from november and december to where we are today a couple other updates is our asymptomatic student testing so uh dr schmidt brought this to you last month and talked about where we were going with the student testing we have great partners in mod labs that have been able to provide this up in lenexa and we had a overall you'll see the number of uh parent consents that were available for us in the elementary middle and high school we had this many tests returned and if you look at that a little over 1800 tests that were returned to us

037through mod to covet 19 detections in the elementary schools during that february and march time frame when we're doing the asymptomatic staff testing again we we started this in december if we look at our february and march numbers we've had one detected in february zero so far in march for asymptomatic staff testing we're going to continue this every thursday through the end of june for all of our staff members also we've talked about vaccinations here a little bit of an update these are our total numbers we have just over 2 800 nearing 2 900 vaccinations that were given to our staff members at the hilltop location and at the olathe location when that was first provided during the february fourth and fifth time frame you see the dates here for the second dose clinic and

038when those are scheduled and we know that some of those dates will go over into april 1st and the health department is working with children's mercy to finalize those dates for the folks who've had their tests in the latter part of february and now here in march we have 56 left to have their first vaccination here tomorrow night and shawnee mission at their location and that will get us to the 2800 on top of the 2800 we also had health care providers our nurses and some of our ots species under our rsp umbrella they were vaccinated in that first wave prior to the teachers having their vaccinations so when you look at the overall total for the number of people we're well over 000 and we know that we're north of 70 percent of our

039staff members that have been vaccinated at least with their first dose sitting right now i'll hand it over to dr caller any questions over the dashboard vaccinations or testing hey eric i have one clarification so if somebody got a vaccination somewhere else do we know about that necessarily no we're not collecting that data we do know anecdotally that we had around 250 individuals say that they were able to find a vaccine at a different location because they either live in a different county a different state or they were in a different risk group that got it earlier through another source yes pat eric um on the positive test results do we know how we compare to the other districts or not no i don't have that number i can get that for you some of

040them are putting on their dashboard as well but not off the top my head i don't but i can get that yeah i'm just curious how we compare to other jurisdictions yep okay so just to summarize of those staff people and this includes cafeteria custodial school bus everybody yes of those staff people who have wanted the vaccination were very close to getting everyone vaccinated who who wanted it we only have a few left 56 yes correct okay correct and the percentage of how many staff do we have total in the district so we have right around 4007 who are on payroll and then if you look at people that we contract with that work with our students crossing guards bus drivers that's another over a hundred so we're just a little bit north of 4

041100 total people who are working within our schools and we have over 3 300 that we know of and have estimates on that have received it so that's north of 73 of those people have been vaccinated at this point perfect thank you anyone else thank you much speaking of quarantine um this evening um shelly nielsen and david stubblefield have the pleasure of talking to you about our plans to return all of our students uh here in just a matter of days on um so but what i wanted to point out to you is that those quarantine numbers that you saw will still be implementing quarantine measures um as necessary as recommended by the johnson county health and environment so key to students returning is at middle school and high school the utilization of cohorts shelly

042and david will talk to you more about that this evening we know that what we've all been hearing and practicing is six foot social distancing the guidance for schools is to employ three feet social distancing when we can but we cannot guarantee three feet social distancing throughout our student school day in the entirety so we're going to continue to exercise masking and hand washing you'll hear about that but what will happen if a student happens to have been posit test positive or is it a student another student is exposed is the approach of what's referred to as airplane mode and so what that means is those students less than three feet master unmasked north south east or west of that student would be asked to quarantine and david and shelly will talk to you about

043if we have students at home quarantined because of coven 19 related reasons they'll talk to you about how they'll access their classrooms and teachers additionally with all of the students returning we also will discontinue the utilization of low risk notification letters to families if you can just imagine a student going through the school day with that many as many students a student could receive potentially several of those letters in a particular day so those are new measures they'll be going that will be employing communication will go to families as necessary patrick with the returners to kids going back to school in a few a few weeks or days i guess at this point we know that the email to sign up for testing went out prior to the board's decision to return kids to school

044on the 23rd are we going to send out another email to kids so parents can sign their kids up for covet testing whenever that time period or that it did go out after patrick it went out before and then it went out again after and really quite honestly they could sign up at any point if a parent was interested and so how do they they sign up if they're interested so we'll we'll put that back out through e-news again um but it did go out again after the board made that decision okay okay i'm gonna go ahead and turn it to shelly and david thank you we're really excited that our middle school and high school students are going to be returning to learn after spring break and i want to first just mention that

045that in person planning there's been a lot of careful thought and consideration and we've followed recommendations and guidelines from the center for disease control the kansas department of health and environment the johnson county department of health and environment the kansas department of education their navigating change resource and then of course just thinking about unique building needs i just want to say how cool is this that it's like the old workshop days where we get a present and you guys get asked questions and i'm here with my teammate i love this mitigation measures that we've taken into consideration first of all we've been doing this for a while in hybrid consistent implementation of those layered strategies social distancing when possible masking obviously for sure hand sanitation stations temperature checks when students are coming in all of

046those things we're going to continue to do and you know our our staff our students have done a great job of implementing of ensuring that they're looking after one another and making sure that they're you know they're considerate of each other so that's been great when we talk about attendance for covet related reasons those students are going to be allowed to zoom in to the class or have asynchronous work waiting on them per the teachers as the teachers feel fit uh see fit in terms of of adding that information onto canvas but those are those students will have that opportunity to zoom in if they are in isolation because of close contact or they themselves have covet so we want to take just a few minutes to highlight areas that careful thought has gone into

047um with with the building and this all of these areas are based on guidelines from ksde which the board adopted so the first one is transportation our kids are going to continue to ride buses and vans as long as they are masked if they forget a mask our bus drivers have a supply of masks to give students and we're going to have new bus routes right before spring break and most importantly we have seating charts and seating assignments on our buses which will help with that contact tracing and minimal exposure arrival and dismissal at the high school levels is going to stay the same the times for arrival and dismissal will stay the same at high school they have some staggered dismissals at the end of the day a change at the middle school is

048that our students were taking temperatures right as they were walking into the building and now they're going to have their temperatures taken in first hour we will continue to take temperatures for our bus riders when they get to school they get to school about 7 20 and they already have assigned locations that they go to so they'll go ahead and continue to have those temperatures taken during that time cohorts as dr collier mentioned cohorts are extremely important in this process our teachers are going to continue using assigned seating they're going to continue grouping students in cohorts that is extremely important when it comes to contact tracing and we will do our very very best to keep that within three feet when we can but again our very very best with that and our special ed

049services have been in place from the beginning of the year we planned for that for hybrid and we're following those mitigation measures and we'll continue to do that as we go into full in person same with transitions we at the middle school and high school went to block scheduling which helped us limit transitions we've limited passing periods and our students have learned the flow of the building they know the building blueprint our administrators and teachers have walked through how to social distance and to get through the building and then of course they're going to be monitoring that on a daily basis our teachers and administrators while they're in the hallway i don't think it's any secret that providing lunch for students is going to be a hurdle to overcome with everybody in the building with

050that said you know we're going to increase or we're going to offer lots of spaces within our buildings they're going to be two to three separate spaces in some buildings to allow for more space between students while eating without masks tables will continue to be spaced apart some of those extra spaces that they're utilizing are common spaces our gems our pacs our atriums and of course as weather permits we'll use outdoor areas as well to allow for plenty of spacing middle school will uh have arrangements in cohorts uh small groups as possible in a small group as possible as a space between their tables planning to maximize lunch seating by using the stage hallways pods and again outside spaces we're going to do the best that we can and the number of students that may

051need to quarantine may possibly increase but again uh we're going to make sure that we're doing our very best to to allow for the maximum amount of space in those areas uh restrooms we're going to monitor those continue to monitor those closely uh and limit the congregation of students in those areas locker usage i know that our middle schools are are not using or not planning on using the lockers for the time being and there will be minimal locker usage at the high school mostly limit to some of those special education programs students are able to carry their backpacks with them at all levels another area that uh we continue to have good conversations on and collaborate on our some of our music uh programs uh performing arts uh we're gonna continue to find large

052locations for them to use keep we're going to continue to use mitigation strategies and protocols that we've put in place let's remember that this was not discussed in a vacuum this was a collaboration with the directors of music with school administration with district administration uh with our health professionals with kasha with nhs lots of different uh guidance and voices develop those mitigation proto protocols and procedures one thing i want to highlight is the ppe that we provided for our students and staff in the area of performing arts those include bell covers for wind instruments in band uh merv 13 material to insert in bell covers for wind instruments in band that's kind of like your the mask for your instrument uh absorbent pads that are used to empty brass instrument spit valves in band for

053daily use surgical mask the disposable kind i know that was that was that was kind of gross but we we provide those uh the surgical mass that our choir our flutists and band and actors that are engaged in projected speaking in theater and class for extra curricular theater activities alcohol wipes for string instruments used when teachers are tuning or repairing student instruments the uh the estimated cost for this uh was approximately ninety thousand dollars uh to date can i ask a question um real quick before you move on from that talking about the music um and the uh activities that we've uh provided for students this year and thinking ahead to fourth quarter yeah correct me if i'm wrong but we did not have a district-wide policy about how that was going to be handled

054was that a conversation that happened at each school building with each department to figure out what where the comfort level was and how we were going to handle that yeah that's a great point to bring up so we developed these mitigation protocols and strategies collaboratively we invited those directors of band we had building administrators involved in that process and they so those directors were then uh able to coordinate with their building administrators uh a procedure a risk mitigation protocol to continue with performances and concerts that information was then relayed to me and approval was was granted based on their protocol so individual buildings did have that opportunity to move forward with their individual building performances all right um in our for our libraries we're going to continue to use our libraries and we'll do that

055with social distancing we'll have minimal classes in there probably one class at a time at the middle school we're going to actually we normally our libraries are open at the beginning of the day and the end of the day but for to start out we're going to have those spaces closed because it's a place where we have a big congregation mass gathering of kids so we'll start out with with those areas closed same with visitors we're going to continue to not allow visitors in the building parents and guardians guardians will only be by appointment only and we won't have our college admission officers or recruiters at the high school level and then in the area of intervention support which is extremely important we are blessed at the high school and middle school level to have

056intervention in flex built within our school day and our teachers will use that time to full court press with academics and social emotional learning and i'll let david talk about activities and athletics okay just another area that lots of collaborative effort has gone into working with our athletic trainers our health professionals here in the district our district nurse our our doctor here in the district as well as with ku health systems and and their athletic trainers and epidemiologists so just a lot of discussion and and protocol implementation around activities and athletics uh for those covered mitigation uh opportunities and you know we're going to continue to limit the amount of travel that we set in place for to continue with the spring travel and also we're going to at least through the month of march

057limit spectators and we will kind of review that towards the end of march and the beginning of april to kind of see where we are in the district with the spread and with vaccinations and just again allow for some opportunity to have those conversations especially since these activities will mostly be taking place outside that's it any other questions that was a lot for one slide so thank you we we rehearsed you guys did a really nice job it was well done good pass offs um any questions from board members all right well thank you guys again thank you david david i know you've got a game to get to so you got to get rolling thank you yeah i would like to recognize and thank shelley nielsen david stubblefield amy farthing and mark schmidt as

058we planned this year and as we prepare for the full return what first it was elementary but middle and high school now you can imagine the questions that come from our buildings and these folks are available to our leaders 24 7 and i just want to publicly thank them for all they've done to help make all of this come to fruition so thank you and okay so moving on um this evening shelly referenced earlier that um our plans for this year were informed by ksde guidance navigating change our plans for next year are informed by their guidance and that is navigating next within navigating next there are six strands that we have built our plan around that i'm going to speak to tonight there are actually two additional notes on the screen that really actually

059define what is in uh learning environment considerations and i'll explain that here momentarily so the plan that i'm going to articulate to you this evening is being funded through esser funds otherwise known as the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds and so we have guidance there are stipulations around how we can expend those funds first of all the expenditures have to be associated with our cova 19 response this is over a two-year expenditure window so we're talking about two school years here going forward there's a one this is a one-time funds allocation the the funds are prioritized to be used around student learning and the plan that we have developed is emphasizing student learning and intervention and support and then again these these funds will be targeted towards utilization with both our general education

060and special education student populations so our plan going forward really breaks down into three areas there's three goals those are defined for you on the screen but really this plan is about three things one it's assessing students monitoring students and providing support for students in both the realms of academic and social emotional needs so the first strand i'm going to talk about is the fiscal and operational management portion we anticipate unless we receive a widely revised recommendations and guidance for next school year we anticipate will begin next school year much like we're going to be ending this school year utilizing mitigation measures and so we're going to need to continue to employ the utilization of personal protective equipment we know because it helps keep our students safe to keep them in school for learning we

061will continue the sanitation measures of all of our facilities that has been happening this school year we will be continuing hand sanitation hand hygiene and you just heard about those measures a few moments of the moments ago and so those funds will go toward those toward those needs we've utilized in concert with um the health department this year contact tracers we fully anticipate those utilizing contact tracers next year however however we will take on the expensive utilization of contact tracers this year so that is why that is listed in this portion of the strand we know this year that we have families that because of the nature of hybrid because of the nature of beginning fully remote because of being perhaps fully virtual this year that there's this gap that exists between families and some

062of our schools and the state recognizes them provides guidance to school districts to really focus on school student family school connectedness so one of the things that we're going to do before the end of the school year is to survey our parents so that we have a sense from parents what they perceive are the unmet needs of their students in academics and social emotional uh the social emotional realm prior to the end of the school year we also are going to ask about really their desires for what they hope we provide for their students when they return and start a brand new school year we'll do that before the end of the year additionally we want to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of our strategies next school year so in the fall we will

063survey around climate and culture and connectedness at the beginning of the year and we'll report that information to you and then we we will do so again at the end of the year we'll be working with principals around this whole notion about how we go about increasing connectedness to each school our assessment plan we'll be sharing with you a district assessment plan but i would like to point out to you that we believe one of the greatest returns on investment in this plan is the utilization of formative assessment or just-in-time just-in-time assessment with students so that teachers can adjust instruction accordingly we also believe that it's going to be vitally important to work with our building principles on revitalizing professional learning communities in the district and enhancing teacher collaboration around defined data we will report

064to you next year as we always do where we're at in terms of summative data but we do believe that monitoring learning following up with students throughout the school year in terms of where they believe they're at with their learning goals is really going to be very important having students be aware of their learning targets if you will tied to the data that indicates what their needs are we believe we'll see increased student ownership of their own learning oops excuse me next is the social emotional realm so this year adults and students have experienced trauma and quite frankly as adults we don't yet know that impact on us and recognize it nor do we fully comprehend and understand that impact on our students nor do they yet are they are not able to articulate the

065impact on them fully so it's going to be imperative that we understand how trauma manifests itself in students so that the strategies we utilize are trauma responsive so we will be providing professional learning for staff around this particular area our academic services team has really been working already to operationalize the details that sit within this plan that i'm presenting to you tonight in that they know and recognize the importance of helping teachers understand really what behavior when it's presented in class how to address that behavior further as it's related to trauma we want to be able to provide these funds provide additional clubs and activity opportunities for our schools our principals will be working with their leadership teams to develop and decide for building for themselves within their buildings what those are the last trend

066is the state recognizes and suggests the continuation of innovation so that's around virtual school work virtual school classes that's around career ready programs and in april we'll be coming and talking to you much more in detail about our plans around career ready programs and i think tonight i've pointed out to you our efforts related to enhancing our approach to monitoring screening and supporting students with targeted intervention based on the data that we're going to be gathering finally this here highlights for you in each one of those strands how how we will be expending those esser funds to support our work going forward and i'm happy to answer any questions you might have i'm assuming that there's a level of reporting required um you submitted an original plan but then you have to report back on

067how progress is going and things like that so we actually have not officially submitted our application um if you will related to how we plan to distrib how we plan to utilize these funds but we will be reporting back to you all regularly i don't have specifics unless dr merrigan does in terms of our accountability back to the state on regular reporting back so dr watson has put together a state level committee that we have to submit our plans and have them blessed around esser because there are certain things you can spend money on and so this committee will review them and then let us know that application has not yet been been released so we haven't seen it yet the earliest we could submit would be march 12th but there is no hurry so

068i think i'll see the application perhaps later this week but we know we have 6.5 million dollars coming to us so it's not like if you submit it early you're going to get the money you're going to get more that's all we have and so we can take the time that we need as far as accountability i'm not sure what that is uh yet but we as dr collier said we will be accountable to you we'll be back on a regular basis kind of updating you on what we're spending that money on and the progress that we're seeing because of that so the process application approval if they approve it we get the 6.5 million and then they we can start drawing down as soon as it follows the guidelines that they have okay yes

069quick quick question but specific to everything that you just described has to be specific to the correct yeah yes and and we actually believe we'll start seeing uh buildings utilizing some of that money for before after school tutoring this fourth quarter as shelly said they're going to double down and these funds will help to help them do that okay so um first question is uh you submit uh for approval they come back back and say maybe they don't like a couple of things is there a time to to adjust yes yes okay so what they're looking at is that there are there are like 15 different i 15 different things that you can spend this money on they're just our kind of our check for us so that five years from now three years from

070now we're not audited and the federal government says oh you didn't spend that money appropriately here you need to pay us back so it truly is um i believe a process to help us to ensure that because it's a lot of money that's coming through the state and we want to make sure that we're spending it appropriately but you're spending it on coveted related issues you know not that hey we want to update this gym it's got to be a coveted related issue and then the second question is and i may have just missed it the plan for summer for assistance thank you jody for asking um so we have already at middle school our middle school administrators have already put forward student names and recommendations for jumpstart also this year we are able to

071offer summer learning just like we've done in the past so that enrollment actually started today if parents haven't been to the website information communication has gone home but we do have those opportunities available and we didn't last summer so so that's great we're also looking at high school more information will be going out to provide students support versus taking online recovery courses but having courses available in person that they can take this summer to assist them how would a parent know necessarily if your child needs some assistance in this area so if it is related to cova 19 learning loss if you will they will receive invitation from the building they'll receive communication i the building would reach out to you as parent and say that we are suggesting that this summer intervention be utilized

072to support and help your child be ready for the fall so so with all the kids in either hybrid or virtual how do we know if a child is ready for the fall so that's where first of all um our teachers will certainly be right now they're already they collaborate on a regular basis and they certainly would be notifying their parents if there's needs at the elementary level we are we'll screen students here at the end of the year for instance in acadians in the area of literacy and teachers would make recommendations to parents about what needs to happen over this summer but more more specifically in the fall when we are screening for literacy and math and we have assisted our teachers with professional learning around the utilization of formative assessment just in time

073assessment i as the teacher can see in the moment that you might not be quite ready for this particular unit or 37 percent of the class needs said skills before this unit i can adjust my instruction to do that so that'll be really important next school year and just one follow-up question uh dr american to what you were talking about you know two years is a long time right to spend that money do you believe that there is an opportunity to adjust plans as you go oh absolutely okay absolutely so um this is our best estimate at this point of what we would spend that money on and then we would absolutely be able to go back and say this maybe this didn't work we're going to try something different next summer um or we're

074gonna you know change midstream in the next school year so yeah there would be an opportunity to do that so you said that um the professional development will focus a lot for our teachers on formative assessment when will that begin at the end you know i know they have some quick pd at the end of the school year and then at the beginning as well so we're actually working on developing that as i mentioned academic services is working to develop a plan we'll be taking that to our building principles but we will be looking at really what's a cascade plan if you will for professional learning so that they would receive they would begin receiving professional learning before students return in the fall quick quick question too so how do we make for sure that

075all students in all of the schools have the same opportunities is there a district-wide center place where everybody would be going or how how do we make it uniform yeah so while we're still finalizing those details we anticipate for instance um we have esy at one of our high schools we would use that space for the purposes of transportation if we provide go ahead and provide transportation to assist students to access their opportunities they would attend at identified identified site and so again opportunities would be consistent across the district so for instance northwest high school would be utilized to assist with that so one one location one more follow-up so so we've heard many conversations about you've had kids that are in virtual who haven't participated you've had kids that have participated and seem to

076be doing well and you've got kids that just haven't been able to um do well in that environment and you'd mentioned earlier that you know we've got some funding dollars to do tutoring before and after school how do you help those kids so specifically in terms of the tutoring for this quarter sure so how we help them is the teachers understanding who's being invited let's say for instance at a middle school if the student receives an invitation then the teacher knows and understands what standards a child might need to work on and so those standards if you will could be targeted during those tutoring sessions is that assist well let's go step back so so we've got kids that may be doing well in the virtual environment but they may not have absorbed the right

077level of content for the school year to take them to the fall so that's where patrick when dr collier talked about doing the assessments those are crucial like we need our students we need to be able to assess our students we need to be able to screen them for example because that will give us a really clear indication of a growth that they've made or not made but that is that is going to be crucial for a virtual student for an in-person student uh is those screening assessments so is that the state assessments they're going to go and that's something different that's something different and so is that going to be done for every child or just some children no it it at again we've talked about like acadian's reading assessment is done k1 k5

078and we're expanding that to middle school next year and we're uh looking at what that's going to look like for mathematics as well and also when we train our teachers again in the use of formative assessment before units are begun that tells teachers right now what has to happen before i move too far into beginning a unit etc and dr collier am i accurate that we would be looking at all students whether they were virtual in person for potential mitigation factors this summer to bring them in to do some things correct correct dr merrigan and to to jody's question again we will offer opportunities equitably across schools and across learning mode and so that that assessment's being done in the classroom on a daily or weekly or well some of that is really through the

079professional practice of our teachers so if you happen to be students in my classroom i as a professional educator understand and i i watch the performance i watch the grades etc and so based on that then i know that i need to go ahead and refer you perhaps for additional help the other thing i will say is that our counselors as we've gone through this enrollment process for next school year have really done a very good job of responding to our parents and providing guidance about course selections etc classroom placements etc based on the under you know the demonstrated need of their students so i think that's been helpful too to help guide folks to get kiddos to the right place thank you all right i think we're set thank you thank you katie thank

080you i know you're quietly behind the scenes doing a lot of this work and and put a lot of effort you and your team into this so much appreciated for all the thought our pleasure all right next update is our budget update uh in kyle hayden okay um there we go here this evening to give you an update on our budget status over the course of the last several months we've been giving you monthly reports one of the things i want to always come back to as we're making decisions for the future is our mission and our strategic plan and our goals and hopefully what you see when we put together a budget plan is prioritization over what matters most and that is our students when we look at the timeline for the budget planning

081process in december we gave you a report on the status of our our budget and the outlook in january get another update along the course of the weeks of january we went through a community engagement effort that ended in first part of february and then here we are tonight in march and bringing the recommendations to you so that we can begin the process of going through staffing for next year a reminder of those listen and learn sessions we had 55 listen and learn sessions over the course of the month of january every school was engaged along with all of our board advisory committees and then also the community at large our parents and we received there was over 2000 participants and a lot of different thoughts came back and this visual is is meant to

082kind of show you the things that rose to the top and with the two questions we asked what do you value most and then what would you want to see protected from any budget reductions and as you can see the you know the the things that rose the top are protecting the student experience so you know their educational programs um supporting them in their social emotional learning uh extra curricular activities and then we all know that you know the one of our most valuable assets or the most valuable asset we have is our teachers and the quality of our teachers so being able to recruit and retain quality teachers is something that we want to remain focused on when we look at the the budget challenges and responses over the course of time this is

083a slide we've shown a few times to you um we've done a number of things over the course of time tools and levers if you if you will to try to balance our budget shift the capital outlay the use of cash balances we used a zero-based budgeting process over the course of the last several years we've also had some additional revenue options that we have proposed and actually implemented for this year and some budget reduction efforts that were made over the course of last year to be implemented this year and there were questions that came up as we were going through those list and learned sessions around you know what have you done to this point and so i wanted to kind of pause and and talk about that and make sure that when we

084present some of those things um because there was also some thoughts around so what are what are revenue options that have you explored or and so we want to make sure we touch on that so when you look back at what we did for this school year for budget solutions there were reductions in revenue enhancements that we hoped to gain 3 million 775 thousand dollars that's obviously an estimate but some of the revenue opportunities we looked for were an increase for high school parking fees some caps fees activity programming fees facility rental fees and online online processing fees now some of that didn't come to fruition really because you know we weren't in school as much facility rental fees were down obviously because we weren't renting our facilities as much and opening up to the

085public some of the expense reductions um there was a reduction in classified staff work calendar for non-12-month employees we had some reductions for non-special education pera's high school staffing a major reduction actually was done with administrative staff we had a net reduction of 4 fte in that in the district office and then just district office budgets we captured savings of of 1.5 million and a big bulk of that honestly was in travel so when we look towards next year i want to put this plan in front of you we had talked about early on that we had over a four million dollar budget gap that we need to fill so when you look through this plan you're going to see several things one in particular that there's a concentration on reduction in classified non-special education

086uh paris um the second thing you're going to see is that there's attrition certified staff reductions due to attrition and then the other thing you're going to see in major reductions is just some reductions reallocations at the district level and some other operating budgets i'm not going to go into specifically through each one of these and talk in great detail but you know one of the things that we want to touch upon just a little bit more is the feedback we received and some of the different things that were brought into play here this list reflects that and one of the things that i think going back to earlier slide is is trying to protect the classroom trying to protect the student experience um anytime you go through a budget reduction process there aren't any

087easy decisions and you realize that there's people attached to this that you're impacting their lives and so you know we don't take that lightly so a lot of thought was put into that but what you end up seeing here is no educational program reductions no reduction in force of our certified staff and teachers and the other thing i want to point out under the district other operating budgets there's a 68 thousand dollar figure there we received some feedback and listen and learn sessions around why don't we have graduation in our facilities so that's one adjustment that we're making for this year and the still isn't free but it does come at a cost and but it does a reduction a rally in the valley is a reduction that we're going to take along with there's

088trinkets that we give for american education week for our teachers to to recognize them and um that was one of the things that we heard that you know may not be necessary so that'll be a reduction some shifts to federal funds so we have those esser funds that we have at play and so we're going to use that as an opportunity to pay for some different positions that align with what dr collier was talking about in our learning plan and then the additional cash fallout from shift to capital outlay so that was a lever that you had seen as pull and we've done it a number of times kudos to our director of finance jenny daniel for getting with the kansas state department of education talking to them about what are some other things we

089can do and one of the things we found is that we have some supervisor positions and facilities and operations that could be shifted to capital outlay so we're going to grab that lever and pull it again as we look towards the future unfortunately we're not done and the budget situation you know for outgoing years is one that that i wish weren't as challenging and daunting as as it is um unfortunately you know we received a report back in december about our enrollment and we did have an enrollment decline and i actually mentioned that in my report in my finance and operations report and um so we're looking very closely at the bounce back effect we need those kids who were gone disappeared for a year to come back into school otherwise we will have a

090impact to our fiscal year 2223 budget the other thing that we still have at play is the new facilities ancillary funding we have two more years of a dip in that and that's going to cause us a little bit of pain but so the other things that we heard that came out were things that were going to take some time and we really needed to evaluate them we need to engage more people we need to get the teacher voice into the process um and so you'll see a couple different several different committees that we're going to begin to roll out this spring one is going to be a high school study committee looking at their course offerings bell schedules resource allocation you know potentially looking at low enrollment classes and maybe how we can share

091our resources across our five different high schools in a different way elementary schools something that has already begun look at our special schedule and how we allocate resources there we typically have you know pretty much been one size fits all across all of our elementary schools and i think there's some opportunities there for us to to look at that a little differently and see if we can capture some efficiencies and and and just really look at you know are we offering the right things to our kids are you know is there is there something different um or a different approach that we need to try to try to evaluate and the last one is operational efficiencies quite honestly this falls a lot in my realm when we look at transportation busing you know we currently

092have um essentially two-tiered busing system where we have our middle school and high school starting first around the same time 7 40 7 45 in the morning and then that same group of buses goes and gets our elementary kids that start school 835. if you were to have a third tier at another a start time to that way you could gain some efficiencies and some cost savings there there's other things that can come into play with operational efficiencies obviously once again we'll come back around to we know we're not done we know we want to continue to honor what we heard and make sure that as we move forward we keep our mission in mind we keep our students in mind and continue the work to close the budget gap questions i have a quick

093question um so kyle i thought you said i want to say it was our december board meeting um we talked about enrollment we were about five percent down is that what i was about three three percent which was similar to many of the other districts we weren't you know we weren't the worst um i think shawnee mission showed a little bit nearly five yeah around five um as well as private schools were about the same yeah right absolutely so um but you but i i feel like you had said too wasn't unexpected because our senior class was so much larger than our incoming kindergarten and first grade kind of levels yeah so we we weren't anticipating of having a large increase in enrollment for this year anyway under normal circumstances um um but what you

094mentioned is is absolutely true you know when we look across the state we received information back when eric pollam gave his report in december we received information back from the state department saying that you know this was not unique to blue valley this was impacted you know every school in johnson county and quite honestly across the state across the region across the country um if you were to tune into you know a lot of news media outlets especially in in recent weeks there's a a discussion around you know where are these kids where these kids go in particular the younger kiddos that you know um quite honestly in most cases i think families just chose to keep them home in particular kindergarten age where they didn't have to send them to school um and so

095and that's where we saw you know where we almost had a 600 student decline this year over half of that was at k1 so that just you know speaks volumes i think so we hope to have a faster bounce back especially as you know we we talk a lot we've talked a lot recently about how much change has happened since this time last year i mean we've come a long long way in getting our kids back to school here full time in another couple weeks so hopefully people have more comfort in that and as we you know fast forward to august that we'll have all of our kids back that we had plus some so as it relates to um reduction in para positions non special education prepositions so who what net group loses the

096most by not having the pairs in the classroom um i don't know if i understand your question what in that group so so you have high school paris and you have middle school parents and you have some elementary school paris what is the purpose of the pair is as it relates to the education function yeah so in some of those cases why you have some of the targeted pair positions are not in classrooms okay and then in other levels why they are so i would say you know there could potentially be a bigger impact maybe an elementary level because those we have some a group of pairs that would be directly working with kids in the classroom so so i guess of those pairs that are non-special education and aids i guess there's aids also

097out there how many of that group on average per per classroom is being removed from the classroom i don't think we're understanding your question mike i mean my question is is we we've had these positions for a reason and and now we're proposing to eliminate them so what's the impact by the elimination on the learning process so each building will have to um reassess within their building and identify so what was what was that person doing in some case they may not have been in a classroom in some case they may have been helping i don't know do other things within that building so they have to assess where where can that work get done how can we do it differently they've already started i think administrators in their minds as we talked to them

098earlier today already started processing you know just quickly really what could they do differently so these these positions although again as kyle said it's always hard it's always somebody's job who they're they're doing a good job and they're working hard within the district but these are the most removed from um a student experience and that was the goal that was what we had to to do and i would say the other thing about that is that all of these people we will work with them dr punswick and his team will work with them individually to find positions that may match them within our district so for example were they grading papers and now somebody else has to grade the papers is that for an example of prepara i'm not sure we have paris grading papers

099if we do then i would say that might not be somebody that we need we have them again it varies by building they just have identified within each building what it is that that person needs to do madam president yes go ahead michelle um well on the pera topic um i know every year that's the one of the areas of employment that we have a deficit right now these are non-special ed um paras but do you feel confident that given how hard it is to fill these positions to begin with that they probably would be able to be rerouted to a different need in within the district looking at dr punzwick to confirm um but that is the goal is that we work with them individually to assess different options that there are available within

100the district yes okay great thank you so on the um the budget reduction plan 4.2 million looks like about 60 percent coming from the district administration or district if you will district level between the reallocations operating budgets so 60 of that that or two and a half million if you will you know i know we're scraping and clawing to get to this what are things like rally in the valley cost or some of the minor things that i know we're looking at eliminating just out of curiosity well that that net figure i guess reduction was 68 thousand dollars i believe graduation correct margin was around 30 um thousands and that's with no rental obviously from municipal that's doing it at our stadiums yeah yeah there there's still a cost so the right the net savings

101was 30 thousand was 30 from there okay yeah and then um i i i i can't remember the breakdown but the little trinkets over maybe 10 000 rally in the valley was under 20. but we're scraping and clawing to get there and doing some of the little stuff yeah once again it was you know we were listening to what people said to us and um making sure that you know try to get to our number uh those are some things that we need to sacrifice and the staff shifts to federal funds which is great half a million dollars was something that we uncovered that jenny did to be able to do that okay that's a big win absolutely using your capital outlay to the fullest extent possible i don't i don't know what rock we

102haven't unturned in that one yet yeah you've grinded this thing up for sure any other questions i think we're good thank you very much so next up we have a legislative update which is ever-changing so i'm going to just give you a brief legislative update tonight um as this is just a brief legislative calendar so on friday february 26th was the last day that their committee work could do those non-exempt committees and then last week they had floor debate and so that's why you heard lots of stuff last week you heard lots of things coming out of topeka um they're actually on a little bit of a break right now they go back later next week but last friday was the turn around or the midpoint and so um they're halfway done with their session

103the very first adjournment is april 9th so they've got a work to do now on those committees they go back to work later this week and then the veto session would be on may 3rd i just want to remind everybody that the board has three priority positions and the first one was to fund special education at the statutory amounts and expand the definition of at risk to enhance student mental health and to eliminate tax credits and vouchers for private schools so those three priority positions are what we have really concentrated on in our work in topeka this year and so as a result we have provided testimony on five different um bills the first two we were proponents of and they both they're similar but they both were out of the house and they both

104were about increasing the minimum age around um tobacco products including vaping products to 21 which very much was a part of our student mental health and so we we have testified as a proponent for that the first one house bill 2061 just kind of has died and it's gone to 23.40 so that one again we are continuing to monitor that the house federal and state affairs have recommended it favorably but that's kind of where it sits for now we have testified as an opponent to three different bills senate bill 61 house bill 2068 and house bill 2119 all of these are around tax credits and so the first two are around amending the tax credit for low-income students to expand the student eligibility both the senate and the house version were around going from just

105free students to free and reduced students and again we testified against that and it the first one passed the senate and the house k-12 education budget did pass it favorably but house bill 2119 has a little bit more work that's happened to it that wasn't creating the student empowerment act to provide that education savings accounts for students who are academically at risk and the house k-12 education committee did pass that favorably as amended included in that originally they the definition of at-risk had several things in it it had any student who had been in hybrid or remote for the year it went retroactively so it would have gone back to this year et cetera well there has been you may have heard this in the news a substitute for house bill 2119 so they've kind

106of gutted it and they've had this massive bill that they've included all of these different things so it retains the savings accounts of the original bill but it did remove the remote and hybrid qualifier which we were very happy about but it inserted the contents of house bill 2068 which had tax credit scholarships for low-income students it did change the implementation dates for those savings accounts to july 1 2022 which again is at least it's in the future and not doesn't make us go backwards continuing on it did add all the governor's recommendations with the exception of removing the high density at risk waiting sunset high density at risk doesn't affect blue valley as much as it does some of our neighbors it doesn't affect us at all quite honestly because you just have to

107have a really high density of at-risk population the governor's budget did include bay state aid according to the gannon school finance plan an increase in special education aid increase in the lob capital improvement capital outlay and capers contribution those were all part of the governor's budget we're still doing the same bill substitute for house bill 2119 um added that in 2022 from federal relief and esser funds that we would provide for school safety and security grants we would provide for school mental health projects and a project for the school for the deaf and it recommends that school districts give 500 bonuses to every classroom teacher that taught this school year using federal relief and esser funds those would be our esser funds just so we're we're clear on that it would be the 6.5 million

108that dr collier just talked about and then permit ksde to uh to send money from check off fund to all school districts um evidently sometimes when you do your tax returns you know you check off what district you're in and some people forget to check off a district so they would use that money and then we're still not done inserted the contents of house bill 2067 requiring the allocation of sufficient school district funding to improve the academic performance of underachieving students reauthorized the state mill levy added a requirement of 1116 hours of in-person instruction uh starting in july and then finally added that if the student had been in remote learning for more than 240 hours under a state of emergency or for 40 hours when there's no state of disaster the student would be

109counted for funding purposes in the current year as virtual so virtual students do not funding wise don't count the same and it's actually less revenue so that would be a a hit on your budget if that happened so that's a massive bill that's something that the house has has not taken up yet to work but i anticipate that they will do that and we'll continue to watch that um we have notified our delegation that we are opposed to the substitute for house bill 2119. it clearly um goes against what this board passed which was the the tax vouchers and there's some other things in there too but the tax vouchers the other thing i wanted just to make sure everybody knew is that on our district page district website there is a legislative page that

110has information that will take you to the legislature we also on that page put our written testimony anytime we have written testimony for anything you will see it on this page in case anybody wanted to go and see that and i am happy to answer any questions i might jump in if that's okay doctor um so we did talk a little bit about the 6.5 million that we get in esther funds and i just saw you recap that there may be a 500 teacher or staff um bonus which i absolutely love the idea of these folks have worked incredibly hard this year and and we owe them way more than we could probably ever give them let's just be clear there but my concern is that we've already allocated that money that 6.5 to expenses

111that we've already incurred so there would be no increase in you know esther money available in order to meet this requirement so we would have to go back and revisit the amounts that we have already spent and figure out maybe how to cover those another way is this mean that 4.2 million that we just talked about could possibly increase as far as budget cuts or what are we thinking long term about how to cover that cost if this actually comes to pass i think we would have to go back to our esser funds and we would have to maybe not do something that we wanted to do i mean we would have to just go back and look at that because um yeah there is a finite amount of money at this point um there

112is talk of sr3 but i have no idea what that looks like or what that will entail so i don't count my money until somebody tells me that we have it so sorry we've spent sr1 sr2 is the one we're planning for now haven't spent it yet yeah we've more than spent sr1 right exactly but to stacy's point you may have to go back to the 6.5 million pool if this is required or is something we want to do it's not required notice it says recommended recommended if we want to do it then it's a give and take at that point yes okay and most of that 6.5 was for remediation of students that were struggling right the the majority of that money um that as we've been planning is around the academic progress and

113social emotional learning of students and so can hb 2119 is has that been through the senate and now it's being considered by that so no it's it's still in the house uh the house uh where am i going to go back here the house k-12 budget committee passed it favorably as amended so the the house has to work this first right but if they haven't pushed it through the house on turnaround day then it can't be considered for the year right no it can it's exempt it's exact yeah okay and just to be clear um on like hb 2068 uh the low-income student scholarship program really it's it's a little bit of a misnomer with that title is that my understanding is that correct because really what it's proposing is opening it up not not

114for low income students but to anyone no that one is for um free and reduced okay but 2119 is the one that they opened 2119 may have that yes title on it but that is the one that opens it up yes okay are there any other questions all right thank you dr marvin thank you more to come okay all right we have a couple of um appointments and other items to kind of move through on the agenda the first couple are related to board liaisons for kasb region 11 nominating and legislative committees our first one that we'll go through tonight is for the nominating committee and do i have a motion to appoint someone for that i move that the board of education appoints patrick hurley to a one year appointment as a board liaison

115for the kansas association of school boards region 11 nominating committee i'll second thank you stacy motioned by stacey second by jody all those in favor please raise your right hand passes seven zero and our next one is uh for the legislative committee um and uh we'll go ahead and ask i'll ask for a motion on that one i move that the board of education appoints michelle benjamin to a one-year appointment as board liaison for the kansas association of school boards region 11 legislative committee second motion by tom second by stacy all those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes 7-0 and moving on the next item approve an endorsement of a candidate for the appeal board of casia board of directors congressional district 3. and we have someone would someone like to make

116an emotion on this one which i believe this is something you're going to continue doing tom mitchell i move that the board of education endorsed tom mitchell as the congressional district 3 representative on the acacia appeal board and authorized the board president to notify acacia of the blue valley board of education's endorsement a motion by michelle second by jody all those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes 7-0 and then we have a consideration to endorse a candidate for the acacia board of directors and this one the recommended action is that the board will consider voting for brian geary usd 233 of aletha for the acacia board of directors and do i have a motion i move that the board of education casts their vote for brian geary as the congressional district's representative

117on the acacia board of directors and authorized the board president to notify the acacia notification of the blue valley board of education's endorsement thank you tom second by stacy all those in favor please raise your right hand motion passes seven zero and that is it for this evening um if i have a motion to adjourn please i move that the march 8th regular board of education meeting be adjourned all right motion by stacy second by michelle all those in favor please raise your right hand all right 7-0 thanks everybody northwest lost holy wow hey eric you