001[Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] good evening i call the march 24 2022 meeting of the park hill board of education to order please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance 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 i would ask everyone silence their phones please and before i call for announcements i would like to remind the board of our norms be prepared display integrity remain mission driven and goal focused stay in the role of a board member no grandstanding and speak and listen respectfully any announcements this evening mr faint um yes i do it's a personal one i've sat on this board
002for 12 years it's a little surreal as i reflect on that i'm grateful for um all the leadership of all the other board members that i've had the great opportunity to work with including those sitting around the table and i'm um i'm grateful for the legacy that i believe is going to be passed down to those who replace both susan and i and susan it's been a distinct pleasure i know we've run four campaigns we've done it together and i really respect the fact that you came at this with a teacher mentality and then lastly i'm considering park hill maybe my new alma mater because i didn't even spend 12 years within my own school district so and after giving out thousands of diplomas wow what what a marvelous life experience and i i hope
003others um will um step in into this role with the same uh respect for the position that's it thank you mr monsis none thank you mrs reed thank you mr klein thank you this is woodley just quickly i just wanted to uh thank recognize all the teams that have been competing this week with mathletics today and our robotics team from park hill and park hill south just did amazing it was really cool basically to watch those robots operate and park hill was just phenomenal with their school spirit they won the award for that over all the teams that were there and went on to the semifinals and park hill south went on to quarter finals and they also won best i think structure for the robot and did a great job so park hill showed
004up mrs doomberger well in the same vein as mr mr feign i've been privileged to serve on this board for the last 12 years my entire life has been dedicated to public education both in the state of missouri and for this district and i hope that commitment will be shared by whomever the voters choose to replace me i'd like to recognize three people who have been key to my service to the board first of all my late husband michael who encouraged me to run one last time from his hospital bed he was my biggest supporter in all things but especially in public service second to my running mate todd fame i didn't know him at all when we were both in endorsed by nea during our first election now 12 minutes 12 minutes like that
00512 years later todd you're one of my closest friends and confidant for issues not only relating to the board but in life itself thank you and finally to paul stipe who has shown me that there is life and love after such a tremendous loss that i had at the beginning of this term will enjoy my second retirement from park hill together someplace a little bit warmer um dr jeannette coward and members of the cabinet to the entire staff of the park hill district you are what makes park hill a great place to work and to learn to my fellow members of the board thank you i applaud your candor your commitment and service to the parkhill school district it's been an honor thank you dr coward yeah announcements i do i hate to follow that
006that's uh mr payne and mr burger thank you so much we do we appreciate you and we'll talk about that here in just a minute too i did want to have just a quick reminder that the parking board of education placed proposition i and proposition n on the april 5th ballot together these questions mean a no tax increase and they would allow us to maintain the community's investment in our facilities and bring them all up to date this will also allow us to build our 12th elementary to help us move our students out of the classroom trailers and maintain our class sizes at the elementary level and it helps us maintain our high quality school operations including that of our school staff and our salaries and making sure that they're competitive so we can recruit
007and retain the very best teachers and support staff around so just a reminder that's coming up tuesday april the 5th um i have a couple of announcements i wanted to thank the pta district council for the forum that they sponsored last night for the board candidates and that's a unique opportunity that our community has to hear from our candidates and laila and her team did a great job so thank you very much to pta um i want to also thank mr fein and mrs newberger for their service to the district and the board will be hosting a retirement reception in their honor at 5 30 on april 14th in room 230 here in district office fain and mrs newberger were both elected to the board in 2010 and have given a combined total of 24
008years of service to the park hill school district so we hope everyone will come out and join us join us on april 14th to honor and celebrate them as they retire from the board and we'll get another chance to thank you i also have not an official recognition but we wanted to let everyone know that dr coward just returned from a conference where she was very surprised we're not but she was with the missouri administrator of the year award for missouri schools public relations association so on the behalf of the board we truly appreciate your commitment to building and maintaining relationships with our stakeholders and we'll have additional opportunity to honor that when nicole gets back thank you so much [Applause] all right i'll need a motion and second to adopt the march 24th agenda
009as presented so moved second motion from mrs in a second by mr fain to adopt the agenda as presented dr coward do we have any modifications no ma'am not this evening board do we have any modifications all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay motion carries 7-0 we'll move to recognitions and awards and we have doctor dial this evening [Laughter] all right new uh new spot for me i'm excited so come on up here got a couple folks we want to recognize here a very exciting recognition tonight the counseling teams at congress middle school and walden middle school earned the national recognized asca model program award which is also known as the ramp award from the american school counselor association congress and walden are the first middle schools in the state of
010missouri to earn this distinction the ramp honor recognizes schools that fully implement a comprehensive data informed school counseling program that positively impacts the academic social emotional and career development of all students this is a big deal i want to give them an opportunity to introduce themselves in the school that they're from my name is cara lane and i'm a counselor at walden middle school i'm sarah mcginnis also at walden and i'm bridget cecil at congress can we please give them a round of applause thank you i'm going to get your picture out here [Music] thank you dr dial um we'll move to public comments during this part of our agenda we will receive public comments from patrons who pre-registered by the noon deadline today uh ms hibbs i understand we have sevens all right when
011called upon by the board secretary patrons are to approach the presenter station speak into the microphone and state your name before making comments each speaker will have a three-minute time limit the board secretary will monitor the time please direct your comments to the entire board generally board members do not provide any response during public comment however if needed board members and or district staff may provide a response at a later time discussion about individual staff members or students is not allowed [Applause] all right we have tom hutzler first are we allowed to stand or sit or if you could sit because we're live streaming it makes a little we have two chairs there's you know what's in the middle to be great thank you thank you i'll try and straddle both of them you're fine
012thank you sir my name is tom hutzler and i grew up on a small farm just west of here nearly a stone throws away and i've lived in platte county all my life and i'd just like to say my comments tonight were going to be sincere and respectful so i'd like to say that crt started at harvard law school most of us know that it had its origins in marxism its programs are divisive it views every incident or conflict as a racial incident or racial conflict that's what crt is that's not equality equality is not judging someone by the color of their skin equality is equal rights and equal protection and equal opportunities tonight i say no to crt i say no to dei but i say yes to emh emh that acronym is english
013math and history and while we teach our children history let's pay close attention to the constitution the bill of rights and all the amendments that come with that let's pay special attention to the 14th amendment equal protection of the law crt is just the opposite of what martin luther king said judge no man by the color of his skin judge all men by the content of their character crt is just the opposite of that moving forward tonight i'd like to see this board spend our taxpayer dollars on education on teachers salaries and sporting facilities that we can all be proud of our children are our future thank you very much next ann anne-marie holland hoffman i'm sorry anne-marie hoffman not present okay we will move on to john nielsen not present kathy place i think
014i got this low enough for me not quite there you go tonight the board will be voting to continue contracting with sofix solution consultants to implement an equity equity-centered approach to education we've been told over and over that park hill school district does not teach crt yet the description of services to be provided by suffolk include the words diversity equity and inclusion also known as dei dei is number two on a list of code words representing crt that was recently published by texas public policy formation a key principle of safak is and i quote changing the narrative meaning we must do our part to change what has been said about others in our society i'm not sure who the others are but it sounds divisive to me it all sounds like a it also sounds
015like a requirement that could possibly be measured another part of the contract states that we are to learn and accept information that is new and or counter to what we and generations before us believe in other words we must accept things that are counter to what we believe in does that include god does it include capitalism freedom of speech our educational system's mission should be to teach math science history english etc leave families to guide their children and forming their values that is not the school's job the final thing i want to touch on this evening is about equity equity doesn't mean equality it means equal shares regardless of performance equity's goal is for all of us to be exactly the same no matter how we perform we are all going to we will all
016be the same but we're not all the same seeing the world through an educational lens that labels people according to their economic situation the color of their skin or their ancestry isn't fair or equitable thank you [Applause] david prakasari please so i've read through this a few times i keep in 3 15. so um okay so dear all my name is david prochasseri i'm here to speak to you about sofix solutions and the contract this is the first step of implementing critical race theory or culturally responsive teaching to me they're the same thing it's this it's a change of narrative when crt started to get negative feedback so let's jump and look at what diversity equity inclusion principles are within this one of the first principles is changing the narrative just like has been done
017with crt but they don't address what we're changing it to the language or the experiments another is willing to be uncomfortable our kids have been uncomfortable for two years is this the best environment for our kids to be uncomfortable in in elementary middle and high school or when they are adults having critical thinking skills research ability and decide to take a class or not in san antonio second graders were segregated into privileged and unprivileged groups where non-privileged groups were discriminated against they were told that they were not intelligent they were giving games with missing pieces so they could not participate and they were left with tears in their eyes feeling bullied by teachers and by the administrators what's this going to do to a seven-year-old what's this going to do to the classmates how are
018they going to come out of that class how are they going to go to math right after that moving on um the commitment to engage and trust the process well things like white supremacy pyramids where teachers administrators and peers would potentially profile other students i don't think that's adding to the learning environment and it should be questioned how about the anti-racist bingo where you're well in the middle is you this is not something that i'm not even sure where this is coming from um but basically the you is your duty to be anti-racist but also for you to police the people around you i'll leave you with one more comment the anti-racist baby book this is now in georgetown uh in their pre-k this is sowing seeds of racism in kids who just want to
019engage with their friends regardless of their hair skin or eye color across the us we have a shortage of teachers growing class sizes and parents continuing to pull their kids out of public schools for multiple issues instead of paying 40 plus thousand for this contract i would encourage you to hire more teachers to raise the teachers we have value them and give them a pay increase for going through the struggles that they have for the last two years and to focus on raising the 2.5 average gpa because most colleges are looking for 3.0 thank you appreciate your time and you're listening corey terrell my name is corey terrell today i come before the board as a concerned parent on the board agenda tonight is a couple of votes on contracts for paranormal student success agreement
020renewal and an approval for a contract with sophic solution partnership i wholeheartedly oppose both of these organizations and and any interactions they have or will have with our district first panorama and their surveys without parental consent collects personally identifiable information education records student records and all other non-public information including student data metadata and user content of district students this is an invasion of our students privacy highly reprehensible and a district that a district will allow an outside company to gather this data on our students you have not asked nor have you been granted permission from the guardians of our students for any of this data personally identifiable information should be protected and i will not give you permission to collect it from my daughter secondly so so fake solutions does nothing but teach racism it
021is straight out marxist ideology i don't know about you but i think world war ii should be a very strong signal that marxist ideology is a very bad idea suffix solutions uses diversity equity and inclusion as a euphemism for critical race theory one of the solutions uh one of the largest promoters of critical race theory is ibrahim x kindy he said the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination the only remedy to pass discrimination is present discrimination the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination in an article from the outlander suffix solutions dr rodney's founder of sophic solutions rodney smith and his wife stephanie are self-described change agents and community mobilizers whose radical views include dismantling america's capitals capitalistic system and pursuing marxist ideology marxist ideology by redistributing power to help each teach
022similarly problematic views the smiths use an anti-racist bingo card and a white supremacy pyramid while they encourage white individuals to give up money time and power and black to black individuals and consider the bootstrap work ethic to be covert white supremacy oddly the center square on the bingo cards reads note this bingo card is for you to use to hold yourself accountable and maybe fellow white and non-black friends who you can with whom you can keep each other accountable this is not to be used performatively i.e to prove you aren't racist because we are since you believe in this marxist mess this is what you're doing to our children there's a term for this it's called ideological subversion it is a legitimate and overt operation to change the perception of reality such an extent that
023despite the abundance of information no one is able to come to a sensible conclusion in defending themselves their families their community and their country our parents in this district do not approve of fighting racism with more racism [Applause] marilyn rivelo good evening marilyn robelo um i'm also going to talk about these two contracts that are up for a decision tonight as well i'm going to start by reading aloud for public knowledge part of a sunshine request that was sent to you today regarding this decision on extending and renewing these purchase contracts ms hibbs good afternoon i would like to request the bid information for the purchase of panoramic student success and sofix solutions partnership agreement both of these items are on the agenda for approval at tonight's board meeting but i only see the agreements
024included in the agenda items so from that and for your agenda for tonight no competitive bids were included for the public to review unless we missed it somewhere i think several parents would like to see requests to the sunshine request answered and the competitive bids for these services as required especially considering the agenda of sofix solutions which is pretty well highlighted on their website as also touched on by previous speakers this is from their where we stand statement there are six statements i'm going to highlight number four number four evaluate if you are changing the system that produces the unjust conditions sofix solutions extensively covers their commitment to dismantling capitalism on their website co-founder stephanie smith states racism is a major tool to perpetuate capitalism she goes on to say that we really think about
025the examination that it takes to really dismantle a system that is steeped in capitalism does park hill really seek to use our tax dollars to pay this outside company to tell you we must dismantle our economic system if we dismantle our economic system what is the proposed alternative from the looks of the website it appears to be a marxist agenda obviously sofix solutions is bringing in big bucks themselves with this enterprise they've already bought brought two contracts with other schools for over 90 000 not to mention many companies they have contracted with they themselves are capitalists parents want academics in school not hypocritical activism parents are wondering why board members and administrators are paying outside consultants to tell schools what to teach how to teach and whom to hire with our tax dollars the go-to
026response when well-informed parents question these marxist ideologies being brought into our schools is that we are privileged how our parents opposed to marxist ideology is considered privileged when the majority of us also support legislation which would bring true economic diversity to schooling which is school choice we want our kids educated not molded into change agents for a radical agenda if we cannot find education in park hill schools without radical agendas attached then we will find that elsewhere many of us already have and we will continue to push our legislators for school choice [Applause] you for your comments we'll move to our consent agenda this evening's consent agenda items include 5.1 through 5.15 dr coward are there items that need to be highlighted i will highlight just from the personnel i do want to point out
027uh the retirement of rhonda mcculloch from our nutrition services uh she's been with us for several years and has done amazing work and honestly i'm not sure how these last two years we would have done it without her and the work that she has done so we we do want to recognize her and also the hiring of this kelly weigel will be our new director of communications and so we're excited to welcome her uh on to the the park hill school district and we'd be happy to those will be the the two highlights but if the board would like to discuss anything else we'd be happy to do that lord you have questions for dr coward adam president i'd like to pull 5.10 from the consent agenda so we bought a builder on it independently
028okay or discuss it independently do we need a motion for that no we can't we'll vote on everything independently a consent agenda has to have everyone's consent i understand that um no i just meant to move it to the independent piece that's fine yeah that's fine yeah i need to move it to six you have six okay uh so for approval of consent agenda i'll need a motion and second to approve consent agenda items 5.1 through 5.9 and 5.11 through 5.15 so move second i have a motion from his read and a second by mrs neuberger to approve the consent agenda as presented any further discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay motion carries 7-0 um [Music] so what is the board's that be six six then i just want
029to make sure i got it on my that's what i'm okay curious so you want to move it to the end of our action items sure that's right is that agreeable to everyone okay so we'll move to our first action item approval of teachers negotiated agreement for july 1st 2022 through june 30th 2025. i don't think there's any change in that we just went through the minor changes we had last time so bill is anything else that needs to be addressed i don't know of anything nothing to add from last time need a motion in a second to approve the teacher's negotiated agreement as presented i'll move motion from ms reed in a second by mrs neuberger to approve the negotiated agreement as presented all those in favor say aye aye any opposed naseenae motion
030carries 7-0 the next action item is approval of probationary teachers contracts for 2022-2023 maybe i'll give some highlights on this please you bet um each year in march we ask the board's approval of teacher contracts for the upcoming year as well as a handful of support staffers who work on contracts and the first of those groups are probationary teachers which means teachers within their first five years of experience in a missouri school and so we would ask the board's approval of that group first this evening i'm sorry that's i'm behind okay we'll give opal a second to catch up to get back in some of my apologies maybe frozen looks like it is your part frozen as well or just the screen i just need to get joined i think i'll join you back okay
031okay that looks good okay and we're back i think we got it thank you so much just in time we need you to walk up that help at all bring a technology person up and everything works thank you thank you so i would entertain a motion and second to offer contracts to the list of probationary teachers as presented for the 2022-2020 school year so second motion by ms reed and second by ms neuberger to offer contracts to the list of probationary teachers any discussion all those in favor say aye all right any opposed say nay motion carry 7-0 next item is approval of contracts for probationary teachers gaining tenure for 2022-2023 and this is of course the group who have completed five years with our school district or four years if they came with tenure
032in another district before they joined us and they will gain tenure with the beginning of their contract in august with your approval i would entertain a motion in second to offer permanent contracts to the list of probationary teachers as presented for the 2022-22 school year so moved second motion from mr feign in a second by mrs neuberger to offer permanent contracts to the list of probationary teachers all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay motion carries 7-0 and approval of contracts for district support staff for 2022-2023 correct this uh this group includes social workers and therapists who work in various locations and we would just ask your approval of their contracts as well and doctor if you don't mind would you mention also in the past we've approved contracts with nurses and
033that has changed and it's been changing over years would you just highlight that so everybody yeah yeah in meeting with our nurses they've uh they've agreed that flexibility is uh is best for them outside of an annual contract they pay a different retirement system and many of them are eligible to retire in the midst of a contract year and it makes it a bit more difficult if we're on contract for the entire year as well as the medical field having really extra flexibility in these days and and so in conversations with our nurses we've just agreed to offer them an annual employment letter rather than the contract that we've done in the past just want to make sure i know you've seen them on the past on there so i'm sure you're used to that
034good i need a motion and second to offer contracts to the list of district support staff as presented for the 2022-23 school year so move second a motion from ms reed in a second by mrs neuberger to offer contracts to the list of district support staff all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay motion carries seven zero uh so we will add item 6.6 as approval of sofix solutions partnership agreement be happy to hear your feedback or answer any questions that you might have i know dr dale can assist us with that if you want to do that be fine so dr cara you and i have talked about suffix solutions several times that's it and you've reassured me that can you go over maybe i don't want the words that would
035not be good for me sure that's that's fine and jamie will probably help me with dr dowell help me with this as we as we go through this and so as you know we've reached out last fall in order to to find an outside consultant to work with and at the time we were doing that we we looked at several and there's a lot out there there's a lot going on in this world right now and we knew we wanted to just to find someone hopefully that was local that was helpful to us uh but the other piece was the understanding that one they were not going to be with us for a long period of time this is not someone that we want to bring in and do all the training for all of
036our staff or all of our students or anything like that which needed some help as we started this work on how to set it up and what our processes would be for part of that as we go through and so that's what they have done they've helped us set up our our um community forums that we've had we've had farms with parents we've had three separate farms with them we've had farms with students we've had farmers farms with our staff in order to gather that feedback and then help this in this the just the establishment of a what we call a diversity equity inclusion belonging uh council which you're going to hear from later tonight we have representatives from that here tonight so i think the timing's perfect so it's great to have this conversation
037um as we set that up because as we looked at it we knew that we wanted to conference we only have the conversations around students we want to have around staff we want to have them around community and so in working with them i know people want us to go fast and i think we're better off to go slow because as we do this process it's going to be the most important part for us and i think you'll hear more about that later is what is the feedback from our community what is the feedback from all of our community and what does that look like and so what has been gathered so far has been synthesized by this group and they're trying to identify what are those key drivers of things that we keep hearing
038over over an example one things we're hearing over and over is things like a more diverse faculty that we hear that we hear things about we need better communication those type of things and so we need to identify what those are and then as we move through this the next part of that which you'll hear about i don't steal their thunder part of this what you'll hear about is just then taking that to our community because these are difficult conversations as we have these they're very emotional and we understand that and we want to do what's best in park hill for park hill and so what you're looking at on this agreement just takes us through next year to finish the work that we're currently doing and then they will be no longer a part
039of us and then we will take it over as park hill and we will own all the process as we go through there but this is it's different for us we do have a new director of access inclusion family engagement it's our first year to do that and we wanted to provide some support in that area also and so that's why we reached out to do them at that time and to have that so i remember discussing as you were looking at different firms yes sir and you and i talked about or maybe i talked about what i was concerned about some marxism and some leftist things that are dividing the country and and you expressed as i recall that you were being you're trying to choose someone that would would bring us together and
040not pull us apart can you address that i think we've had enough pulling apart right now i think we do need to come together that's one of the biggest pieces we do and i think that's one of the pieces that if i went to a smorgasbord i don't i'm not going to eat everything on the smorgasbord i get to choose what we want we don't we're not taking everything that sophic solutions has only the parts that we want and that will help us with our work that's all we're using from them we don't need everything that they have we don't personally want everything that they have and so we just want to start this process so we've got the feedback and we'll do that piece and so they're really not ever going to be in
041front of anybody in our classrooms and they're not going to be in front of our pieces and our our community will give us the feedback and that will come to the board frankly as a part of our strategic plan on how we're going to address that on goal number two of acts uh which is removal i'm ensuring act helped me on this one right ensuring success for all students regardless of background is what the goal is on that one and so that's about barriers and that kind of piece and so i think we need to have that conversation i think we also know be wide-eyed and very open in saying we've got some students in our school district that don't perform well academically and we need to address that and that's not okay we've seen
042that for quite some time we do have a school district this isn't a black white issue we speak over 80 languages in our school on a daily basis on a daily basis another piece that came out from our group if i can share from the deib group was just religious differences that we have we have tons of religious differences within our community here and within our students and our populations and so looking at all those different factors what's going to be best for park hill that's what we're going to be talking about and so on this agreement this is not someone we're asking to come in and teach us and train us and do all that that's not it at all and and so that's that's the approach we have taken i understand if i
043went to their website and read some of these things and we did and then we called and talked to them about it and said we're not going to do some of these things please understand that and they said that is fine you don't have to and we have chosen not to so i guess when we get our push our feedback out to our community and see what their feedback is that will help us make decisions about what we should do and so they're not going to make the decision we will make the decision this board will make that decision of what's the right steps for park hill i'm dr this is the second read for this but the discussion which means it was on the previous agenda but the discussion um for bringing in some
044outside help started last last fall and has gone across several for several different board meetings oh absolutely and i absolutely want all of our kids to have the opportunity to graduate from park hill and become strong productive citizens and i think we all want that as a community we want to come together and do that i have expressed in dr dial address me after the last meeting or the meeting before about some of the terms because some of the terms the way they're used by different folks sure far left or where far right wherever they're at i don't know where they're at exactly that they can be very decisive words and we we heard some of those words tonight brought up the dei what do we plan on doing on how to how are we
045going to go about defining what dei is for park hill before we even approach our staff or our kids that's part of this process is doing that definition process is we need to define what does that mean for us because what it means frankly for another school district i frankly don't care i care what it means for our community and our district because this is us the thing that i'm proud of for park hill is let's be willing and courageous enough to have the conversation let's be willing to have that conversation together and we're going to disagree but we're going to have to find some places too where we do agree because this is this is who we are this is where we're this is our community this is our kids and these are our
046families and we care and love for each one of them and we need to understand we need to take time to stop and listen and to first to listen understand one things we've taught in our students with our habits of success to seek first to understand and then to be understood and i hope that's the language that we will use as a community we've tried to do that throughout this we've got people frankly that are pretty fr honest they're upset because we haven't gone fast enough you should have already done something why didn't you do something from some outside groups i'm not answering to those outside groups we're answering to this board and to our community and so if they don't think we're going fast enough i don't frankly care we're going to take our
047time and do what we need to do for us and that's really what this amounts to so i and i appreciate all the time and and the work and everything that's on our website that dr dion dr diana put together showing the steps and all the actions that have gone into all this deep thought and and of picking what is best for park hill so thank you um and i will say mr mod says i don't know if you're familiar with safik but i actually um i am not that's why i'm so concerned i've attended multiple trainings with dr rodney smith and stephen e smith the founders they will listen i've noticed and they will also work with us to customize what our community needs i was very impressed in particular because i'm part of
048an organization that had a history of not being inclusive and they really helped us do some phenomenal ground work so it's i was excited when i saw that we were engaging them because i do think they're very well qualified to help park hill i i know in 2017 we were working on the culturally responsive education and i had concerns back then and the board miss mrs paulin said perhaps we should go through that training and we went through several sessions she was president at the time and we went through several sessions and we came together as a board and we changed the program we as i learned through the whole process we park hill ized it and tailored her for our community is that the same thing i can expect on what we're doing with
049this absolutely and that's why we have scheduled actually a training session with the board or a work session with the borderland training session with the board uh in june because we know we're gonna have two new board members and so that needs to be a part of that discussion if you're going to tailor to the community that means to be a part of this discussion and so doing it now would be frankly pretty disingenuous but doing it after you have the two new board members on makes more sense to us and so that's when we could schedule it and and i think we can move it any direction we want to move it at that time i know the one thing that helped when we did it back in 2017 um because i didn't have
050a relationship with mrs newberg i only had a relationship well bart and i had a relationship mr klein and i had a relationship from campaigning together so that was fun but it took several meetings over time with space independent study it was not this one and done which has burned in my opinion this board several times over the past and i understand we had to move fast on something so i'm not pointing any finger i want i want to do it the right way like we did in 2017. yeah and you could you have that on there yeah they gave us the option to do multiple works actually okay because i think that's what we're talking about i want to make it clear no i think it's great i'm glad it's there i want the
051folks to know yeah that what we did in 2017 we took something that could have gone the wrong way in my opinion and we made it go the right way and made it work for park hill i agree and i appreciate that i think that's part of this on this agreement we have to we don't pay them until we actually use them to do something they don't just get a carte blanche of or thirty nine five or whatever it is on there so that's that's how that process works and so i agree with you because that's what makes it better that's what makes it park hill and i think that's what makes us stand apart from the others is we're willing to take the time to have the conversation and to do the work we've
052shown we've done it before when we were talking about dr dallin talked today about we were talking about before lead innovation was built we didn't know what we wanted to do but we know we didn't we talked to a community they said please don't build onto our high schools it took us a year that's fine that is fine it really is fine and so i minus take as much time as we need to take so that we try to get it as close to right as we can and then the other thing i like about park hill is it's called continuous improvement when we don't have it right admit it and fix it and that's what we should do we owe that to our community we have a great community but over these last two
053years i i appreciate your statement more than anything else we've been so far apart we need to come back together heck i'm just glad it's fourth quarter and our schools are wide open i'm thrilled i am absolutely thrilled my parents are back in school they could have lunch with their kids we get to have assemblies and i mean it's like school it's like we're having school again we haven't had that for two years we haven't had it for two years and we've missed that and we've missed each other i'll be very frank and so i think having these conversations is great also a part of this is what we've done because it is about our community we've engaged our faith leaders and they're going to work with us on this and they're going to help
054us with this because this is about us and us as a community and i i i think we our goal would be my goal would be in again i won't be here but i i'll be here but i won't be here but it's we should be able to set a model that other school districts can follow and that's what that's to me that's the parking way that is setting it up the right way and so let's listen we have diverging opinions and you and i've had this conversation too we get a lot of feedback from this side i get a lot of feedback from this side the hard work is right here in the middle and that's the part where we have to work and come up with and you know that as board members
055you've done it for years and i think that's what makes you good board members so i know that helps or hurts but i appreciate the conversation i'd like to say a few things i've actually participated with so fake solutions going actually actually we have two of our board members are part of this yes and they have been facilitators of and gathering park hills thoughts they have not really laid down a scenario or any kind of indoctrination or anything at all they have been very open all the input that has been coming in has been coming from the park hill community and identifying the needs and concerns of the community and that includes our students who are living a lot of this our faculty and families and so besides what we may have heard about their
056website i have not seen that i have seen a very cooperative organization working hand-in-hand with dr coward and the team with all the folks on there and i have no concerns at this point that we have to worry about any of that it's going to be a park hill solution it has been up to this point and i'll echo that they've they've been very they're facilitators and the work has come from uh our community and when you hear people in this group talk about it especially the students because the group of students that are involved in this are remarkable and thoughtful and when you hear their experiences you can't help but know that we have work to do because they are hurting and i know we've all received comments that um and i appreciate the
057sentiment that people say you know i'm raising my kids to treat everyone equally so we don't need this work and with all due respect i i appreciate that effort but it's not enough and i'm in a somewhat unique circumstance to be able to talk about this because i have a mixed family and i have three kids with different skin color and inside our house they're given all the same opportunities and expectations and resources but when they walk out of the house they have very different experiences based on the color of their skin and so it is we're not where we need to be we're we're getting there but we're not where we need to be and this work is still important and it needs to be done and i appreciate the way that we're approaching
058it and that we are tailoring it to our community and i would encourage people that have reservations to get involved and have your thoughts brought up and addressed and that can be part of the work as well yeah i know there's work to do and i am absolutely willing to do the work i've said that many times publicly privately other times i appreciate you bringing this up and i appreciate the opportunity for the conversation i want all of our kids i know to have happy successful lives but i just want to make sure that we're not turning out a little marxist that's a concern i think that's far from it that's good i'm gonna support this wholeheartedly with my vote and with my presence and everything else and i will talk to anyone that wants
059to talk to me about it but i i i'm approaching this like i approach most trust but verify and keep asking questions and let's let's take it slow because this is really important but let's do it as fast as we can because that's really important too i understand all that i know it's it's hard it's hard being on the sport sometimes i'm glad graduation's coming thank you thank you madam president thank you so we'll need a motion and second to approve soviet solutions partnership agreement as presented so moved second pick whatever i have a motion from mr fame question in a second by ms reed any other discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed we'll move on to our information presentation which is timely it's access and inclusion update i'll turn it
060over to and we're going to work this a little differently because we've got some guest presenters with us tonight and so that it can be live streamed correctly they can only live stream two at a time and they understand that so i want to thank our team they've got it set up with that we can actually handle this a couple of different ways so dr dion i'll turn it over to you good evening we are going to have to play a little bit of musical chairs here so bear with us i want to thank you for teeing us up so nicely for this presentation tonight um and and it's almost as if um you've been reading my notes because many of the things that you've mentioned are things that we're going to talk about at
061one point i looked at at ryan and and she was things she was going to talk about i'm like it's okay we can say it again and um so um we want to thank you for having us here tonight we want you to know that um it's not been that long ago that it was my first time in this seat and i was terrified and so i want not that you're not all very friendly basis but it's a very very intimidating seat to be in and so i just want you to be cognizant of that tonight as i sit here only third time here i'm still a little nervous along with a student in our district you'll get to hear more about that and a parent from our district as well so please bear with
062us tonight um we thank you for your grace um but we're just glad we have an opportunity to be here this evening so first of all i just want to thank you the board of education i want to thank you for the opportunity i want to thank you for the space the time the resources and the trust in us to deploy this very important work in our district your leadership is appreciated it's commendable you are engaged you are supportive and i couldn't ask for a better board to work with so i wanted to take a moment to say i appreciate you we have board members on our advisory group and that is just a wonderful thing you've you you've been there so you could speak to it you are not far removed so i appreciate
063you and i want to take an opportunity to thank you as we navigate through our journey on doing this legacy work the last time i was before you with an access and inclusion update it was in november since then we have been busy i hope i've covered up the the lines under the eyes and the gray hair tonight we have been busy there has been so much work um going on that dr dyle my boss lovingly forced me to pare it down and only focus on one thing tonight our deib diversity equity inclusion and belonging council work not to mention our faith-based leaders who are working on some communities uh dialogues um they're going to to get involved with that and we'll see those coming up coming up probably summer and fall they're going to
064learn first they've got a a committee that's working on that so i can't talk about all that doctor and i won't let me here i go see um but we're here to talk about our council tonight and you might be wondering if i'm coming to you tonight with an 18-page plan detailing all the action steps and everything that we're going to do and in actuality i'm not and you have all set me up very well for that so thank you we're managing expectations i want to be up front with you tonight we're giving you an update on the work that we have been doing i realize there's great expectation for swift work believe me i want it too but if that's the manner at which we are approaching this legacy intentional and systematic work we
065will go wrong and we'll miss the mark i promise you building a system that cultivates an environment that feels safe inclusive welcoming is of high trust low stress allows students and staff to bring their authentic and best self to the table and creates a sense of belonging for all that's our long game that is our long game we know we've got lots of work to do and tonight we are excited to share with you an update on the process that we've been working through to achieve that and i've got guests with me tonight i'm so excited so our access and inclusion work as i have said over and over again is in three lanes students staff and parents and community and as i have told you tonight we have our co-chairs so our advisory council
066has co-chairs and it follows those same three lanes and so dr danny topfeld is our staff representative and he is a principal at prairie point he's unable to be here and he's already texted me several times um wondering and then wanting to be here and letting everyone know i wish i was there and and supporting his his his co-chairs and so dr danny topfeld is our staff representative but i'm going to let the other two co-chairs introduce themselves not only introduce themselves but tell you their why in this work so we're going to play musical chairs i'm gonna get out of the way and let them introduce themselves all right yep so my name is ryan banks i am a sophomore at lead innovation studio and my why is because i want to be the
067voice for the students i want to be the voice for the students who feel like they don't have the platform to voice their concerns and voice their problems and i want to be the voice to speak up and show the parents and the staff what we have and what we want and what we want to know my name is june leblanc and i represent the parents in the community i have three beautiful girls in the district two that attend grade in elementary and one at lakeview and my why for being here is that i want to ensure that my legacy your legacy my kids your children your grandchildren are able to have a seat at the table that they're able to have a platform a place where they feel that they belong no matter what
068their differences are when you look at the ocean there's so many different types of fish other types of animals in the in the ocean they all play an important place important part and they all have a place i want all of the students at park hill school district to know that they belong and i want to be able to be able to provide resources for parents for students for teachers for administrators to know how to interact with all of our students because we have bright students in our district we have our future leaders in our state in this district and so my reason for being here is to help be a part of creating global citizens for tomorrow okay you want to hit the next this one yeah okay so um we do have an
069advisory council and these are our members um as you can see they fall under the state court the stakeholder categories uh which are student staff and parent community as you can see under the community ones you can see our two board members there and then we also work with three district leaders um so at our advisory council meetings um we work on everything that has been brought up at our stakeholder forum forums um every month we have co-chair meetings which we use to discuss um what we're going to work on with our advisory council and at the three stakeholder forums um we have gathered input from the community and from our staff and from our students on what they want to work on we've had three stakeholder community forums so far one on january 11th
070which was in the evening one on january 13th which was during the day and then our staff and student forum was on february 15th which was in the evening as well so i'm going to pass it on to june who is going to give you some more information thank you so much so let's go ahead and talk a little bit about of those stakeholder forums so as we identified there's a lot of work that needs to be done as far as being able to gather feedback from the community from staff from students and so we engaged cervix solutions and they help provide a framework a strategic framework in which we can capture this information it's something it's not helpful to just have feedback and do nothing with it and so we engage them to help
071us come up with community agreements as well as common language so that we can present our work we divided into small groups and we held the three community forums and the format that we use is a start stop continue and consider format and so these were open-ended questions that we asked everyone who was in attendance what would you consider that we start doing what would you consider that we stop doing etc um and that led to our group shareouts in which we were able to capture that information and then kind of noodle over it a little bit to find out where there's some were some commonalities and where there were some outliers as well so in total we had about 750 individual comments unique comments from the forums 750 that's a lot of feedback one
072of the things i really liked about this group is that it's a hybrid we didn't just say we're going to have a bunch of parents come together and come up with what should we do we engage students we engage staff community members everyone was at the table everyone had an equitable seat at the table because we wanted to hear their feedback like i mentioned before with the 750 unique comments uh we were able to identify some emerging themes right and so that was very helpful and so with that information it's going to help us identify drivers for our work and next i'm going to hand it over to dr dion and she's going to go over next steps and again 750. individual comments that is a massive spreadsheet i promise you um so as june
073was saying um this has given us tons of feedback to process and that is what we're in the phase of doing now and it has been multi it's taken us multi steps to do that we're still we're still in the process of doing that and we started with just um capturing those things that we heard over and over again what things kept coming up and um our team then gave those like a a topic a title um an emerging theme and then last night we spent time going back to those and going back into the 750 pieces of data to read the narratives because it is important that we capture what our community we owe it to our community to really capture what it is they're asking what is it about staff and that we
074need to start doing and and diversifying our and and recruiting and retaining more staff of color what are they what are they saying so we really wanted to get to the heart go back and look at the heart of the matter and the narrative we owe that to our community and so last night um in our deib um advisory council they then begin to come up with the narratives or the statements that will begin to then move into our drivers for our chart of work that will lead into our csip which dr coward mentioned uh goal two she mentioned it so again we were teed up very well tonight um so this will all feed into our comprehensive school improvement plan that is to goal two ensuring the success for all students regardless of background
075and so it is coming it is coming along i promise you and it was um encouraging last night to see that it is coming together and that was something that our advisory council members noted it was just a great thing to see that that we have we've listened to our community and we're going to continue to listen and as you look at what we're going to plan to do even next year there will be more community forums there will be community dialogues there we will continue to listen to the community and so that is our work and we would like to open it up for any questions that you might have i just want to share one of my very favorite quotes it's an arthur chan quote and it says diversity is a fact equity
076is a choice inclusion is an action but belonging is the outcome so i want us to focus on that belonging is the outcome so ryan has taken her spot there because uh ryan would like to also be part of this if you have questions um for any of us and so um please what questions do you want to have a comment first that uh i'm going to say again the students on this advisory council are unbelievable um it's just you can't even imagine how great these kids are and and they've facilitated groups in our forums and just done phenomenal jobs so um but also the people participating in and all of the people on the advisory council are so engaged and committed to this work and the people that showed up were as well i
077mean they didn't just come and say you know we need more diverse staff they came with the studies that show that kids of color that have one staff person one teacher one administrator of color have higher graduation graduation rates and get better grades i mean they came educated with that kind of knowledge and um so it was um it's been really a rewarding experience to see how engaged our people are i have um a comment and then a request so i'm very excited to see all of this i think this is fabulous that's my comment um and i can't wait to see what else you come back and present hopefully soon um i do have a request though on the themes as we go into the work that we do with the board work sessions
078it would be helpful i think for at least for me and i think other board members to see what the themes are that have arisen from i figured that but i wanted to make sure that was on the list um and i would want to get those in advance as part of our advanced study work that we need to do before we have a work session um along with whatever else needs to come our way because i think that would be helpful um and i you know some board members we want to see all 750 comments i don't necessarily need that two of them have i mean and that's okay too if you would make those available but um it would i think it would just be helpful to get a clear understanding as we
079go in um what the community feedback and the student parent input has um has kind of grouped into different buckets i'm guessing yes and i think um i think it's very important uh i think it's very important to do that and um it's you know dr card mentioned it uh earlier that we we discussed earlier today some of the similar this feels very similar to me um as uh back and i can't even think of the year at this point when i was handed the dotted triangle and told go figure out what the dotted triangle is and how that process really took time um to shape and then the number of times that we engaged community in the board and getting feedback through that process and and this is no different um and so as
080we wanna we're we're treading that careful um line of making sure that we can move it you actually said it really well we want to no go too slow but not go too fast um and so we're treading that line very carefully um and are are very hopeful that um we'll be able to provide a draft of some drivers for community feedback and for board feedback as well you're part of the community of course so that we can make sure that we heard what and interpreted those um those feelings and those statements in the in the way that we should as we should um because uh the one of the best things that i love about this district is we really shape according to how our community goes you might remember i brought you it
081was like 18 key requirements or something why 18 because that's what happened not because i set out for that and and i think that's important and so um so we're right on you with that and you will definitely see those and be able to shape as we continue to work through before we ever do anything with that and then as an additional comment to that then that goes through the c-sip process which involves another group of folks and another process that allows us to make sure that we are also being mindful of our action steps and things that we do within there too so that we it's a long road um but i think we'll be really fruitful okay and maybe you don't mind me adding too i think i actually i actually found it
082funny as they were going through their comments because we were did that one that was an online meeting i believe we were doing the reviewing the first time of the the set of comments that were coming back in and and actually selfish solutions said well this is going to take hours and i said oh i don't think so because our people understand how to do affinity diagrams very quickly and so they were putting things together and getting common themes and just doing it and she was amazed she goes how do you do that and they go because we know how to do that here okay we do this a lot and so that really has driven that but i think what was talking about is critical about because we'll get your feedback their feedback and
083just like now as i'm having conversations about the bond issue i even talk about this is what we said we were going to do and this is what we did and this is what we're doing and i think those are key pieces of this as we have those conversations so i don't want to take away from these guys just maybe a quick comment but i also have a few questions um i am so impressed with the clarity of communication and i know we're early on but i sense the emotionality of the subject and um as two board members and and the rest of you were working through the committee i suspect that there were some emotionally charged times when you're sifting through these emotional connections that this topic can bring about and so um i
084don't i don't want to make light of that we've seen our community come forward with some comments i think there is some misinformation about even acronyms and how they relate and i'm grateful also that we're this is a community idea so it's not just the school district this is truly engaging our members our faith communities within our community to come forward and work together but uh it's is it ryan i'm curious i just wanted to hear your take as as you work through this because this is your platform as a student and i i suspect that this is not an easy process to go through and i just want to hear a little bit more about that so it's on okay so i was asked to be on this council and at first i didn't
085know anything of what we were going to do um and the first meeting that we had it was initially my yes this is what i want to do or no um we didn't initially get into everything obviously but we went over what diversity equity inclusion and belonging means and what it's going to mean for this district and i think that i mean i've seen a lot of issues throughout the classrooms and throughout everything um and so i think that this is definitely going to be good and the students are going to be excited for this i know some of my friends have been excited to go to like our community forums and everything so i think that this is going to be really good for the district right thank you for your perspective and and
086your work and i know it's just beginning i was just gonna say that that i think that this three-laned approach is a a really good model perhaps for uh committees going it through to the the future because i i know that um it seems to obviously the students are the are the primary uh people who are affected as are our staff but to also have the community in there and i can think of many um opportunities going forward are you listening dr kimbrell then right here i mean [Laughter] not only for csip but for um when we do build uh number 12 for the part of that process of redistricting and things like that i i think you've set up a very good model for not only getting information from the needed people that it
087affects but also from making sure that you have input from everyone and i think that that's really important and whether you were asked to join it or volunteer to join it i think you you've kind of got a way both sides to that but i i really think it's a good model and thank you for for working with that the other point i wanted to make was um just in respect to some of the earlier comments is that this is not a road that we have chosen to go on just because of of um somebody had an idea either on the board or with district office this is a need that was brought to our attention that there were events that occurred that have told us on the board and in the district office this
088is something that we need to pay attention to so i i applaud the the um everyone here for realizing there is a need and going forward uh to find a solution and it won't be a perfect solution so as much as i value the work i do a question or a challenge so um how are we i know you kind of laid out a plan to get community feedback but um especially so far we're getting feedback from people that are invested in this that want to be involved very good and so how are we going to pull in other people and impress on a wider audience of the work we're doing and the importance of it and and specifically i mean i've had the thought as we went through this again because the experiences of
089the students have been so powerful that you know you i i'd like to find a way to leverage that but at the same time i don't want to add to the weight of their experience to make it their responsibility to drive this change because it's not theirs it's our responsibility so i guess i'm curious and probably don't have an answer tonight but as the work goes on um i'd be interested in hearing kind of how we're pulling people outside our the audience that it's appealing to right now yeah we don't have the full answer we have part of it and so jamie you want to talk doctor dial you'll talk about it just a little bit because i think this is a key piece because part of our discussion what else do you do when
090you're driving back on i-70 but you know have hour-long conversations about these things but it is about how do you make sure it's our community that we're hearing from also and how do we make sure that we're reaching out to everyone too and so dr dalla had this conversation this afternoon we absolutely did um and if you guys know me my brain never stops so um i uh i continue to um to think about how we can make sure that we have folks that from all viewpoints who feel like their voice belongs in this discussion and so you know as we work through that feedback process i think what you'll see is several strategies that we will use to make sure that we've left no stone unturned for an invitation to be a part of
091the the conversation and yet do that in a way that's respectful for everyone um and allows for folks to feel comfortable in giving us the feedback that they truly want to give and not um not feel worried about um anything beyond that so we're we're getting really close to that yep but but noted absolutely i wanted to ask mr blanc just how did you feel coming in to the the process and where you are now just the kind of comparison and how the parents have um in the community interacted and what's your feedback about the interaction i was very um hopeful coming into the process i always try to look at things like this as uh the glass half full versus at half being half empty um i'm sorry um and so i was very
092hopeful i was very um inspired by the community's feedback especially the parents sharing their personal stories of how the school district in their opinion how it is today but also at the end of the conversations hearing how it could be better right and so one of the things that inspires me is that we received over 750 comments that's a lot of comments right that will help us tell our narrative a lot of companies a lot of organizations have to have a baseline and this will help form our baseline because it's not coming from the school board it's not coming from just the staff it's coming from the community it's coming from the students and so this will help tell us where we are today but i'm very hopeful um and excited about the way five
093years from now these same students who they probably would have moved on um but others will be able to say i now have the opportunity to do xyz i feel like my teacher truly cares about me i'm able to belong to different types of organizations i feel like this is where i belong and so i'm very hopeful that the work that we're doing today it it tells us where we are today but there is a lot of room for growth and opportunity and i think everyone around this table or that table is going to be a part of that we're not going to do it without you you are going to be included in this this is an hour type of project it's not the work of just one little department or one person we're
094all going to be engaged and so we just ask that everyone have an open mind trust the process it's not going to take place overnight it didn't happen overnight it did not happen every night so it's not going to take place tomorrow but we will do our due diligence and make sure that everyone is involved everyone has a seat at the table and that will do what's best for all of our students every single student in the park hill school district thank you i'm very excited as well to see this progressing and that we are taking our time and doing all the steps and every stakeholder within the community is being a part of this so thank you for your help yeah i think there's there's great opportunity here and i'm excited about it and
095even hearing the comments uh you know from our public and i know several of those folks personally that you know america is an ideal that we haven't lived up to yet and this i see this as one more way to move to the next step so that we keep moving to the ideal of what we want our country and our community to be so i think there's ways to engage everyone and this absolutely in my opinion we should engage everyone to bring us bring us together because the alternative is not a good place and so i want i want and and i'll say it again i want i want opportunity for all of our kids to be strong productive missouri citizens because because the our legal documents and that those bind us from one generation
096to the next and that is what sets up our our our justice our laws and the way we make laws and the way we uh ensure it and it wasn't always the best way and you can see it change over our history that everyone that the constitution is for everyone and so i just want that woven in there somehow and that will help pull in more folks thank you for starting this thank you ryan thank you jim thank you very much [Music] we have four information items tonight items 8.1 through 8.3 are bids contracts and agreements item 8.4 is relative to curriculum the board will be asked to take action on these items at the april 14th regular meeting we have any questions for dr coward i actually did get one question earlier and dr
097kelly you can probably help me on this one it was on our base beds on the masonry work on we are deferring southeast elementary right now and you may not have the soft top your head i'm sorry i didn't give you enough time to look into this but you may actually know that the reason for that of what's going on if you have that could you not have that but i can can you get that information for us thank you so much appreciate it i also i guess just want to make a note that we're following our normal curriculum process and that our curriculum is always available out on our website free and open to all citizens and parents to review and know what we're teaching so i would encourage our public to do that
098and we will be asked to take action on these items at the april 14th regular meeting and we'll move to board member reports and request uh mr klein none thank you mrs woodley none thank you uh miss reed sorry i was taking a drink no thank you mr monstas i just want to express how much of a pleasure it's been to serve with you mrs newberger yep and we haven't always seen eyed eyes i love every minute of it so um you've taught me a lot and i i really appreciate it and mr fain it goes without saying i would not be here if it were not for you it's a curse you missed her faith thank you you're like a brother thanks mr payne i don't have any thank you mrs newberger it's been
099an honor thank you thank you very much we appreciate your service and we'll look forward to celebrating you on april 14th so i'll need a motion and second to adjourn the closed session for the purpose of discussing matter matters relevant to legal and personnel pursuant to missouri statutes six ten point zero two one one and six ten zero two one three and thirteen mr fame do you want to do the honors uh second i have one final motion from mr fein and a second by mrs neuberger to adjourn to close session to discuss legal and personnel matters this is him so you call the roll i will baine yes new burger yes bowling yes klein yeah woodley yes monstas yes and reed yes uh let's uh please remember to turn your mics off we'll take
100a break and come back at maybe 8 10. thank you you