Board of Education Meeting - December 10, 2025

001We are ready to begin. So uh if you would join us in the pledge of allegiance we will begin our meeting to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands nation. >> Good evening. Uh my pleasure to welcome you here. Uh this evening the board of education is honoring an outstanding group of Parkway students and staff for recognizing state sports champions. And I would like to invite Mr. Corey Johnson. I don't see Cory. Is Corey being Oh, there's Corey right there. Corey Johnson to join us. He's director of athletics and activities and introduce the state sports champions. Good evening. On behalf of our board of education, Dr. Schneider, it's my honor uh this evening to recognize our state champions um from our fall season. And tonight, we will

002recognize uh two teams from Central High School. uh the girls cross country team and the boys uh swim and dive team. So now for our state champions, we'll start with the girls cross country team um and our head coach uh coach Bant. if coach Badger can come up. And also our state champion uh um our state champion in the class 4 uh championship u of the cross country meet, Gabrielle Morrisy, could you please come up? we get to talk good about >> um so Gabrielle this year um she won the class 4 championship um her time was 18 minutes and 26 uh.8 seconds and I I have to say this the the um two things one um Dr. Schneider was able to join us and actually see the meet and and witness this. Um, and

003so that was uh really special. And then at at the state meet, there's a big board that has the athletes names and their times and their their live times as they're running. And so as we're watching this board, um, Gabby didn't know this, but as we see her moving and see her time going and and that that just got all of us so excited. and then that final stretch as we see her coming over that hill. I mean, we were literally almost in tears watching watching Gabby come through. So, um she just she's just amazing. It was an amazing and exhilarating race. Um it it was probably the most exciting race of the day. Um because of, you know, how how close and how competitive it was. But she did a wonderful job. We we

004actually get um to have her come back in the spring and and try to do this again and then next year in the fall. So, she gets an opportunity to be uh one of the few um back-to-back champions and double champions for both cross country and track. And what's most impressive about uh Gabby is she she does this and she also carries a 3.9 GPA. So again, our our girls class 4 cross country state champion. Our second state championship team uh from Central High also is our boys class one champions. They are the state swim and dive uh champions this year and they are uh coached by coach head coach Andrew Shaoff and um his assistants are Natalie Kerner and Abigail Vermeier and actually uh they were not able to to make it tonight but

005a couple of the athletes are here and we will go ahead and recognize our state champions that are here. So if the state champions for the team could come up And tonight with us uh we have Hunter Durman and we have Adish uh Gatheran. And so they are state champions um that were here um that are here present today. Um the championship team uh this year uh won several races um in the in placing first overall. Um the team won the 200 medley relay which uh Hunter was one of the main main legs on that on that medley relay in a time of 1 minute and 34 seconds.99 seconds. Um the team won the 200 freestyle relay um in one 1 minute 26.52 seconds. Uh Hunter also led the 400 free uh relay in 3

006minutes 13.46 seconds. And then also Hunter placed uh third in the 100 meter uh butterfly. So Hunter had a a great meet um overall. Um we did have two other individual champions. Um those champions were um junior Conor Moran. He placed first in the 200 IM and also the 100 breaststroke and then uh Brody placed uh first in the 100 free and also the 100 uh backstroke. Um one thing I'd like to add again with with our students with our state swimmers also um Connor has a 1.07 sorry 4.07 GPA not a one point 4.0 07 GPA. Um, Brody has a 4.1 and Brody is the only senior um, not the only senior, I'm sorry. Brody and and Hunter are the seniors of the of the group. Um, and then the team itself has an

007overall accumulative GPA of 3.609. So again, these are great swimmers, um, great leaders in our school, and also great students. Um, so we really, um, are are proud of these young men and this team. Um the unique thing about this team um that's really unheard of is this is a four peak four consecutive state championships. So for Hunter, he has won state every year that he has been a student at Central, which is uh just rare. That's something that does not um happen um very often, if if at all. So uh congratulations to these young men, this team, and and their um accomplishments. So, just briefly in closing, um, I like to say we're very proud of our of our state champions and their accomplishments. Um, we're also proud of them and how they're leaders

008in our schools. Um, we wish them all luck the rest of the year and their endeavorments. Um, good luck to our seniors next year in college. And then lastly, we really want to thank and recognize all of our parents. Um, we really appreciate the support that you give our teams and everything you do to allow us to to be successful and all of the encouragement and support that you give our teams throughout throughout the year. Um, I I must admit the um our our student and family section at the state swim meet um it it uh it it outmatches everybody. So, um they they know where where the central swim team sits. Um, and I will I will say that that last uh um 400 relay um you guys that that was an amazing amazing

009site the [clears throat] way we we came back and and won that. I think we went from uh third or fourth to to come back and win. So, um just uh congratulate you and thank you for everything that you've done for us. [applause] Congratulations again to our students and your coaches. We're very proud of you and parents. You have some amazing students. Uh and uh we couldn't be more excited for the state championships this year. Uh at this time, we'll take a brief recess and we'll resume the meeting shortly. Okay. Uh we will resume our meeting. Um next up on the agenda is uh 7.0 uh which is additions, corrections and modifications. Uh tonight those just include one thing. 7.01 addition to agenda item 11.09 9 approval of personnel items. Um, next up is a

010period of public comment. Uh, it's during the uh time that we have provided opportunity for citizen comments in an effort to maintain an open and respectful dialogue with our community. Public comment session is not the appropriate form for addressing individually identifiable student and/or personnel matters. Therefore, due to privacy laws protecting students and employees, comments about these matters should not include personally identifiable information about particular students or employees. Members of the public, staff, and students are encouraged to utilize established policies and procedures for offering suggestions or addressing concerns and complaints prior to bringing the issue before the board. Please be mindful that the meetings of the board, including your statements at the podium, are broadcast and that you are responsible for any public comments you make. Uh in lie of a public statement, you may choose

011to submit your comments to the board in writing. Also, due to the time constraints and the need to complete the primary responsibilities of our meeting agenda, we cannot respond during the meeting. So, you'll receive a response from us in writing. We're always available to have an open dialogue outside of our meetings and can be reached by email or phone using the contact information on the Parkway website. Uh tonight, I believe we have three speakers. Uh each of you will have three minutes and I will call on uh speakers in order in which they have signed up. Uh once you get it to the podium, please reintroduce yourself and uh let us know your affiliation uh or connection to Parkway. Um and uh we will begin with uh Tina Miller. Good evening, board of education members,

012Dr. Schneider and Mrs. Stove. My name is Tina Miller. I am a proud parkway parent, recently retired teacher of 35 years from Central Middle, retiree representative on the district's recent morale committee, and a Parkway substitute teacher. Tonight, I address you as an invested resident to share an important component of how I believe Parkway can work towards being its best version yet by improving teacher morale. Many things factor into low educator morale, stagnant salaries, rising insurance costs, recent increases in class sizes, proono expectations of educators personal time. While these systemic and local issues are complex and must be addressed, one issue that can be addressed immediately is to ensure that Parkway educators, people who have direct and daily contact with students, are at the forefront in all decision-making. Educators are the first responders. They are the

013screeners and implementers for said initiatives. Yet increasingly decisions have been made that affect students and educators but do not engage staff. We need to ask not only how will this directly benefit students but also educators. Is this new initiative actually helping? If their answer is no, there must be an immediate response. There is no time for things that don't yield results. This diverts energy away from the classroom. Perhaps via simple rebranding by overlap of something already done, experienced, seen, or implemented. Often, educators feel overwhelmed by the quantity of new initiatives they are responsible for rolling out. At times, while still in the process of delivering the last initiative, educators become demoralized when they are required to devote time to new initiatives that divert time from a vital classroom task, such as prepping, planning, or feedbackbased

014grading to a task that does not produce observable results. People who are most affected by any decision must play a crucial role in the decision-making process. Parkway has an opportunity to return to being the best place to work. Not only by offering a desirable calendar, first class salaries and benefits, but while simultaneously valuing, honoring, and acting upon educators voices. This will be validated by consistent, solid student learning results concurrent with high educator morale. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Next up, next up is Raal Song. Good evening and thank you for your time. My name is Rachel Song and I am a teacher at Parkway South High. I was fortunate enough to get my start in Parkway as a student teacher at North High. I learned so much in that experience, but one

015of my biggest takeaways was how h how happy the staff was to work in Parkway. They found meaning in their work with students and they felt respected by administration. Teachers in the building encouraged me and helped confirm that I had chosen the right profession. When my student teaching was over, I knew I wanted to work in Parkway. And in 2014, that dream came true and I accepted a position at Parkway North High. It was truly one of the best moments of my life. As a new teacher, I felt challenged and supported. The more uh experienced teachers encouraged me to take on leadership roles and to become involved with committees. Through that work, I felt valued by the district. In 2016, I transferred to South High. And south and north are different buildings, but what held

016true at both places is that teachers loved where they worked and couldn't imagine being in any other district. Parkway, regardless of the building, was the place to be. In 2023, the mood and morale changed dramatically. For the first time in my career, I voted no on the contract presented from NEA. I was disheartened by the failure of the salary schedule to keep up with inflation and the decision to shorten the high school teachers plan time. What contributed further to the morale change was the lack of a clear and cohesive message from district decision makers as to why these big changes were taking place. The impact of that can be seen in the data from the semianual survey teachers took in November of 2024. The district summarized the results as follows. Staff indicated a key concern

017being that the district does not effectively listen to or address staff needs and concerns. In that same survey, when asked how likely teachers would be to recommend the district to a friend, only 21% of the staff responded positively. Now staff or morale has not been lower in my career, but I do not believe that these challenges are insurmountable. And so with that in mind, I'm asking for your support support for a contract that includes a salary schedule that keeps up with inflation, more plan time for all levels, and a clear plan from the district on how to communicate more effectively with teachers and to allow our voices to affect change. Thank you for your time. Next up is Amy Hubard. Good evening. Uh my name is Amy Huard. I am a social studies teacher at

018Parkway South. I've been in the district for many years. Um, following up on what what Rachel has just said about um, teacher salaries, last board meeting, Drew Jennings, another colleague, talked about the real numbers of inflation and what that feels like and what that means to us. That because of inflation that even though on paper we received a raise, uh, it doesn't really account for a raise because of the reality that we live in. I wanted to give a couple of other real life scenarios that are more like it's not just the numbers on paper or we're doing really well. It's more kind of I think reality. Um, one example is I know of a teacher who is a fifth year teacher with a master's degree in the district. And as that teacher goes from

019step five to step six, she will get a $500 salary increase based on the current salary schedule. However, starting in January, as we all know, uh, every person is going to need to start paying $50 a paycheck. So therefore, that's $1,200 over the course of the year. So the $500 increase now becomes a $700 reduction. So she is adding a year of experience and right this second that means $700 less in real money that I think needs to be addressed and needs to be seen in a very straightforward way. I personally am on the other end of the career, I am closer to retirement. Um, similarly, just like the deductibles have gone incredibly up for individuals, my deductible as a the person who who carries my husband and our two youngest children, um, it my

020deductible has gone up $1,600. Now, that's a deductible. we won't maybe use that. For me, that is real money. That is a real hit to a salary of mine. Um there's there's no way around it. I go into next year as well with a decrease. Um I'm on the other end of the of the salary spectrum, but I'm not at the top. Um I have hit the rule of 80 last year. I could retire this year. I do not think the real math allows me to because my entire Oh, my entire retirement will be eaten up. I gota read this last one. We have a good district. Our messaging is a good district. Our kids are good. We have an excellent education. It should not be though that that reputation is on the financial backs

021of the people that most directly and daily make this district a good educational district. It should not be on us to take the hit. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much. Next up on our agenda uh is actually the approval of our agenda. Uh may I have a motion and a second to approve the the agenda for the regular meeting of the board of education is scheduled for December 10th, 2025. >> All in favor? >> I opposed. Motion carries 70. The next regular board meeting will take place on Wednesday, January 14th, beginning at 7 PM uh here at the Parkwood Welcome Center. Uh next up, 10.02 board and superintendent reports. Matt, you want to start us up? >> Sure. Um I'm just going to share two things. Um since the last meeting, we

022had a communications lab with the teachers union, which I think was a good start to the negotiation process. Then we also had a student advisory um committee meeting with high schoolers and um middle schoolers. And it was more around the buildings and the future of schools. But I just I shouldn't be surprised after all these years. Even though we want to discuss buildings, the first issue for the kids is always the food. So I think it's interesting this year we do go up for bid on our food service. So we'll take their comments into heart as we go into the negotiations. >> Uh first I want to also thank the speakers tonight. We we we are listening. Um along with Matt, I was at the P&A communications lab and student advisory. to to Matt's point,

023it always does amaze me what they think of that I would never have thought of when it comes to facilities and what they want to see. So, it really I know we took notes of of everything that we had. It it was really quite an amazing night. Um, a special thing for me is I got to have coffee with a student who's in the Spark program, uh, who's interested in potentially pursuing a career in law. And it was just a great opportunity for us to have a conversation and see, you know, a different side of law that maybe she hasn't seen. and hopefully, you know, down the road, uh, she starts that profession. And then lastly, kind of selfishly, um, as I reported last year, my wife started the Parkway Central Middle School dance team

024this year and they had their first competition over the weekend. They they were second in their hiphop routine and fifth in their palm routine and it was uh, I was coach Spectre for the day doing the music. Um, but it was a great time and very proud of the girls and my wife is the coach. >> You do. Congratulations, >> DJ Spectre. Yes. Yeah, that's right. Uh, I just to mention a couple things. Um, there was a uh a steering committee meeting on uh November 17th that uh some of us attended. Um again covering those those important topics of facilities 2050 um budget task force updates as well as uh you know sees progress. Um and then this this last Saturday uh I attended um a I guess we call it a seminar or workshop

025with the uh St. Louis school board's professional learning community, which is an organization that uh brings together schoolboard members and superintendents from uh around the area to share ideas and go over topics. It was my first one. Um and so I I thought it was great. Uh it was the focus was on um board superintendent relations and best practices and that sort of thing. And so it was really educational for me and it was great to be able to uh meet um other people in the area from other districts. So that's it. All right. Um, so I know Mr. Schindler had mentioned um the kids uh don't necessarily care for our lunches. I had um lunch at uh Northeast Middle um on November 21st and I can see a difference between the last lunch I

026had and the and the one I had at Northeast. Um, so there is some variance that I'm noticing, but I would like to put it out there. If anybody wants me to come to their school, let me know. I will gladly come and try out your lunch. And if you don't like it, then, you know, maybe I won't like it and we can we can talk. So, um, I also went to the student advisory meeting that was um, last Thursday. Um, I'm not going to go over anything else there, but we did have a very good crowd of kids. Um, so it's always good to hear hear their perspectives and I think that our um facilities 2050 um committee will definitely be um utilizing the input that they got from them. Um, and then also

027the St. Louis County PLC that was Saturday as Mr. Kilper um mentioned uh one of our own was one of the panelists, Mr. Jeff Todd. Uh so it was great to support him as well as um just be around other board members and superintendents and understand some of the things that that they um they do they might do differently that we might be able to bring to our district and and make improvements on. Um that's it. Thanks. Uh, so I've been on the board for eight years now, but apparently I've wasted the whole time. I didn't realize we could just show up at the schools for lunch, but maybe I'll start looking into that. Um, I want we don't generally address the citizen statements and I I will refrain from addressing the actual merits what

028was said, but I want to talk about how it was said and what was said and um, I just I really really appreciate the the your perspective. I will tell you as a human we I empathize. I you know I I see the world seems like it's squeezing everybody and you know we're all humans up here and you're what you're saying is not lost on us. I do appreciate your perspective but I also want to talk about the way you said it. My day job I am exposed to all different styles of advocacy and I really appreciate the style all three of you brought tonight. Um you know it's not combative. We're all a team. It's a collaborative and I really really respect the way you made yourself heard tonight. So thank you very much

029for your contributions. I think one of the most positive things in Parkway is our ability to stay civil while we have um awesome conversation. So I thank you for that as well. Um I also want in addition to some of the things that were mentioned as having attended student advisory group, the steering committee, um the the board PLC, I I'll just say a note about that. We ended up having 31 attendees with 15 different school districts represented in addition to a St. Charles County school. So, we're um and for a very busy time of the year in the beginning of December, um we were very thankful for that turnout. In addition to Jeff, Todd is one of our panelists. We had three other board members that came from we had a Melville school board director,

030um a special school district board director and a U city board director in addition to two superintendent on our panel. One for the writtener superintendent and then the um the superintendent from Clayton, Dr. Dr. Nisha Patel who's on our planning committee as well and then we had breakout sessions on board self- evaluation superintending the evaluation best practices for board superintendent working together. So this is um a topic that's very important to being on the board uh building trust and having proper communication etc. So, um I too was very heartwarmed and touched by um the [clears throat] coming together of so many different districts together to learn from each other and to grow. Um in [clears throat] addition to the P&A steering committee, we also met with our Puma group tonight. So that was just a

031communication lab, but that's important to keep our bargaining units um that we stay in touch with them, we keep communication going with them um and listen to um all the issues and concerns that our various different groups have. Um, and in addition to all of that, I also attended the um, special school district's governing council meeting uh, on December 1st, which ended up going virtual because that was a bad snow day. And we reviewed the CSIP and uh, budget adjustments for that in addition to how that will affect the future budgeting of that district moving forward. Lots of questions came around of course about that and um they [clears throat] are in the process of their write the ship plan and we're hopeful that that will stay on target. So um they're a very important

032um institution for our partner districts. There's 22 partnered districts that rely on them for special ed services. And so um we're hopeful that we can work together to bring about um best practices with them their financial situation as well. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh I won't reiterate uh most of what my fellow board members uh talked about all the different things we've been doing the last month or so. Um I will thank uh Debbie who is one of the planners of the St. Louis PLC uh group. And so, uh, it was it was a great morning, great event. Uh, and I'll also give a little shout out to Mr. Kilper, uh, because as he mentioned, this was his first time he'd ever been to one. And lo and behold, at the end,

033he was up presenting for his breakout group. So, I was kind of impressed by that. So, well done. Way to jump in. You'll be in charge of the next one, I'm sure. Uh, and also want to uh give a shout out and thanks to uh the Weeble's one den from Shannondoa Elementary School who I spent uh an evening with last uh about a week or so ago. 16 fourth grade boys and girls and uh they were a lively bunch. Uh but we we spent uh a good while talking about uh civic responsibility and what a schoolboard member does. And uh I had questions about the the lunch menu. Um the the fourth graders decided they need a vending machine. Uh and they they want a a student lounge next to the teacher lounge. Uh so

034I didn't make any promises for any of that, but uh great time uh with that group. So >> wonderful. Well, I have a few similar things uh that were mentioned as well. Mr. Schindler and Miss Matt Franklin talked about the food and I actually went to a demonstration that was at Riverbend and I I rode the bicycle smoothie machine and actually it made ranch dressing but it was a blender that was behind the seat of a bike and I I rode it and the kids I mean I never saw such engagement from the kids. They just you could hear a pin drop or the bicycle spinning and that was it. Uh that was a lot of fun. It was put on by our Chartwells food agency and they were just getting the the kids really

035excited about um just trying different things. So that that was neat. Um last night I attended the West uh actually West High and West Middle's choir concert at Missouri Baptist University. Beautiful concert. Um absolutely talented singers. Uh the kids worked so hard on their performance. It was very nice to see that. I've been making my rounds and seeing the music this time of year at the schools. And if I can't see their concert, I've gone to their rehearsal. And so I went to South High's rehearsal. Um I will see Central's art show next week and also North High, one of their um choirs rehearsal for their winter concert. It's just a beautiful time of year to hear such great music. The kids have been uh preparing so hard for it. Um I also before Thanksgiving

036was able to meet our uh many of our faith leaders in the community and share some volunteer work and packing um Thanksgiving bags for families um who access the food pantry. So that was a really nice time to be able to get to know our faith leaders and do something together with them. Um and today uh we it was a partial day for students. So after the students were out, we treated our uh school resource officers to an annual lunchon. And it was wonderful to see them and say thank you for their service to us and for the partnership that we have with our municipalities who um help provide uh the the SRO's to our schools. So that was also nice to see them today. Um, and last but not least, our budget task force

037wrapped up their work for this semester just this past week, and we look forward to presenting to you in January. >> Uh, next up on the agenda is 10.03 board of education candidate filing announcement. Uh, board of ed board candidate filing opened at 8 am yesterday at the St. Louis County Board of Elections. As of close of business today, three candidates have filed for the three open positions on the Parkway Board of Education. Um, I'm not even going to read this part. Nobody's going to stand. Uh, but the candidates currently as their names will appear on the ballot are Tiffany Matt Franklin, Jeff Todd, and Debbie Hopper. Uh, filing will continue through Tuesday, December 30th, 2025 at 5:00 pm. Candidates must file in person at the St. Louis County Board of Elections, 725 Northwest Plaza

038Drive, St. Anne, Missouri 63074. We were all there yesterday. Uh, no filing will take place at the district office. Candidates may file between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Filing ends at 5:00 pm on the last day of candidate filing only. The board of education, board of election office will be closed on December 25th and may also close due to inclement weather. The election will be held on Tuesday, April 7th, 2026. Next up, uh 11.0 is our consent agenda. We've had an opportunity to review that the last uh several days. Uh and so may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented in the December 10th, 2025 board meeting. >> Some move second. >> Is there anything to be pulled to action or closed? Okay. All in favor? >> Any

039opposed? Any abstensions? Motion carries 70. Next up is 12.0, an action item. Um, and I'm just going to preface this by saying um if and I'm not going to go into great detail, but if you remember a couple of years ago, uh, November 2022, um, three years ago, our voters gave us a very clear directive when they overwhelm overwhelmingly approved Proposition S, uh, which expanded access to early childhood education by creating more space for our youngest learners. And tonight, uh, we're taking a significant step toward fulfilling that promise. So, I would like to, uh, welcome up Carrie Nun, uh, Mr. Kevin Beckner, and Jason Brooks. Dr. Kevin. >> Good evening. Thank you so much. Um we are here tonight to talk about a potential early childhood center acquisition. So tonight what we're going to cover

040with you is um the early childhood proposed expansion and the bond issue where we've been where we are currently. We're going to look at the proposed centers, its qualities and its conditions. And then we'll we'll look at what the opportunities we think this center will bring for our parents and students in Parkway. So just as a reminder, this is where we've been in our journey with the early childhood expansion. In 2018, early child, there was an early childhood steering committee that recommended um expansion. And then in 2021, we had Avent Marking conduct um an early child marketing study that confirmed this um confirmed this recommendation. And in 2022, as Mr. Todd mentioned we had our community approve Prop S and it's part of that language and that commitment and included constructing an early childhood center.

041Um and in 2023 we actually began um the prelim for building a you know for putting in a center between Ren Hollow and Southwest Middle. But due to traffic and other concerns in 2024, it led the board to defer that planning to facilities 20150. And then in 2025 this year, we were actually approached by a realtor for the Rainree School um to consider possibly purchasing um 2100 South Mason Road, currently known as the Rainree School. So just as a reminder where we've been. So this is language an example of language where we made a commitment um to expand um and add an early childhood center to address the increasing demands that we had on our early childhood services in the district. And this is um again as Mr. Chad mentioned um in 2022 when the

042community generously and kindly approved um Prop S, they granted us $250 million. And of that $250 million, we allocated $25 million to an early childhood center. And as we began um preparing for a site between Ren Hollow and Southwest Middle, um we we had to spend money for architects to develop those plans. So, we did expend $1.2 million, which leaves us with the remaining allocation of $23.8 million. And as just as a reminder for for Prop S funds, these are restricted funds, meaning that we can only use these funds when we are fulfilling the promises that our voters approved in the bond uh in the ballot language of 2022. So these cannot be redirected to salaries, benefits, supplies, services. We can only use this money towards fulfilling our promises that we made to our community.

043Um and so the Prop S allocation um of the 265 the $250 million. Um and so we have 23.8 right now set aside for early childhood expansion. So now I am going to actually turn this over to Dr. back here. >> Well, thank you so much. When we were approached uh with the opportunity to consider the purchase of the center, the first questions we had to ask are where is where is this building? Would it meet our needs in terms of location and serving our community? And then the building itself, will it meet the needs of our youngest learners? So, this property, as mentioned, is located at 2100 South Mason Road. to orient you on the map. On the left hand side, running north to south, we see Highway 141. On the far right hand

044side, we see Highway 270. And that road cutting right through the middle is Manchester Road. And as you see, um that is where the property is is right off of Manchester Road on the north side, just off Mason. Overlaying our school boundaries. Um you'll see in one moment that our closest school is one of our south area schools at Carmen Trails Elementary followed by Piermont Elementary and then Barretts which is also in the south area. Here is that map overlaying our attendance areas. So we see that this property which is that star at the top is right near the confluence of the Mason Ridge attendance area, the Barretts elementary attendance area and the Carmen Trails Elementary attendance area. Having seen that geographically it would meet many of our needs, including what the market study told

045us was an area of need of in the south area, we then had to start looking at the building itself. And will the building itself meet the needs of our youngest learners? So here you see some of the qualities. In a moment, we'll show some pictures that illustrate these qualities. And that includes eight total classrooms, seven of which have dedicated restrooms. They all have exterior entrances uh where students can leave directly from the classroom. There's a multi-purpose room. There's a kitchen, a cafeteria. There are large windows and natural landscapes. The school was actually built as an outdoor learning school. And the property, which we'll see in a moment, really lends itself to students being outdoors and plenty of area for play. Lots of contemporary designs, a focus on sustainability. Uh we'll see solar panels in

046some of our images, uh ample space for students to be outdoors, and one of the big features is it's specifically designed for our youngest learners, which we know is a struggle in many of our current preschool sites where we have sites that are inside of elementary schools um and restrooms and other features are not necessarily designed for our youngest students, whereas this space is. Here is the overall facility. It sits on just under 11 acres, about 10.75 acres of land right along Manchester or Mason Road. Here's an example of one of the classrooms. There are six classrooms on the main floor. They're all fairly standard looking like this. So, as we said, large windows, lots of natural light in these spaces. Again, designed for young children to learn in. There are two classrooms on the

047lower level which was part of a 2017 expansion of the building and we'll point that out again here in one moment. But again, ample space for children designed uh to foster their early learning. Beautiful cafeteria space with very large windows, very bright open space for our students. This large multi-purpose room which like in any school would be used for a variety of purposes and student activities. Here's that overhead shot. The on the right hand side of that picture you see a white rectangle with no solar panels. That was part of the 2017 edition. The rest of the building was built in 2013. So having looked at all the qualities of this building, it looks like the location would serve the Parkway community well. The physical building would serve the Parkway community well, but we certainly

048have to do our due diligence and see is there anything else going on behind the scenes that we might need to know about. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jason Brooks to talk about the due diligence process. >> The good news is this will be short and sweet. As excited as we are about this opportunity, we wanted to make sure we properly assess the condition of the land, the building, and the land. And so we engaged all of our most I shouldn't say all most of our operations leaders including our facilities leaders, our technology leaders as well as our nutrition leaders as well as engaged a third party architectural engineering company that had actually helped us with some of the designs for the original ECC plans. And we did an we did an

049evaluation and assessment of the mechanical or HVAC systems, the electrical plumbing as well as the structural evaluation and a survey of the land. Um I'm happy to say that overall a summary was the building structural systems appear to be in generally good condition and suitable for continued use. So it was all very positive marks um from that third party evaluation. But like any new thing uh we did identify some some things that we knew we were going to have to do to really get it to where we want it to be. So we put together some estimated costs of some of some of the items that we would want to try to address over the next year to two years. Uh, a big one of those being HVAC automation, integrating it in with making it

050like other parkway school buildings. Um, LED conversion, looking at a playground, you know, it's something you don't think about, but we need to make sure that it it aligns with our playground safety uh standards. Uh, we don't it doesn't currently have a ADA access to the lower floor, and so we know we're going to have to add an elevator to allow that ADA access, finish out the sprinkler system, as well as potentially looking at a parking lot expansion. So we're estimate of what those costs would be would be under $2 million. Um some of the other things we haven't accounted for would be uh we're still putting together cost estimates around technology integration. So, how do we bring, you know, what would the cost be around bringing in all the technology, the smartboards, the the

051laptops, all the phones, and all those types of things, as well as a potential kitchen renovation, which we're still looking into, as well as other kind of ancillary support services that we would need adding on a building. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Carrie. >> So, as I mentioned previously, we do have remaining allocation of Prop S funds for an early childhood center of $23.8 million. 2100 South Mason Roads purchase price is $4,300,000. Um, and then taking into consideration the estimate totals of the renovations that um Jason just uh shared with you, that would be an additional 1.8 8 million. Um, which brings at the total purchase price plus estimated renovations to be $6.1 million. So that means that even with this purchase, we would still have a remaining $17.6 million

052remaining to be able to address any future early childhood expansion capital supports that we would want to do. So that 6.1% roughly represents about 26% of the remaining allocation of that 23.8 and then that 17.6 million represents 74% left of that out of the current allocation that we have for propass remaining for early childhood. So with this with this opportunity to purchase this property, we believe that um this keeps is one step towards keeping our promise with Prop S. Um we believe that it expands it expands early access expands access to early childhood programming. Um this is a faster more more costefficient solution than building a a building from um the ground up. Um it does offer better spaces for our students. Um, and we also believe it is a great opportunity because we still

053have remaining funds from Prop S to to help future um early childhood expansion needs. Any questions? >> Well, first off, thank you for that uh presentation. I appreciate that. >> We appreciate that. Uh could you uh just talk about the number of because one of the things we talked about previously was the weight list of students or children waiting to get into our schools for early childhood education. How would that impact the wait list? Um, in what timeline? >> Certainly, one of the exciting parts about this facility is we believe that we could open in August, which would mean that we would have students who would have increased access to early childhood. Uh, it will depend specifically on what types of classrooms we open, meaning full day versus half day. Um those numbers obviously vary

054uh quite quite substantially. We generally consider if you have an early childh if you have an early childhood half-day classroom um we count that as about 54 students between things like are you doing two days are you doing three days 4 days afternoon versus if you open them as full day classrooms which obviously then that number goes down that's about 18 students per full day classroom. Either way, we would be opening multiple new classrooms beginning in the fall. That would obviously impact our weight list very positively. Um, we do have hundreds of families currently on the wait list, hoping to get into Parkway preschool classrooms. So, any addition of those classrooms is going to provide an increased opportunity and reduce those weight lists. Uh, if they were all half-day classrooms, it would obviously have a

055more substantial impact just because you're adding a larger number of students with half-day classrooms. Full day classrooms slightly smaller. Either way, we could be talking about anything upwards of a 75% reduction of the current weight list that's in the south area. Um, so it could be potentially substantial. It will not reduce our entire weight list because we know our weight lists are quite long for all of our early childhood programming, but this would um make a substantial impact on our ability to reduce those weight lists. Um, you just touch on too the fact that after the site at Ren Hollow went away, we still continue to look. And I think I think it's important to point out for the taxpayers too, the fact that we're getting 11 acres and a building already built. Just the

056sheer cost to buy that type of land in the Parkway District and to build a new building. It is a a very nice deal we're getting by taking this building on. >> Yes, 100%. Yeah. And we never we never did stop our looking. um we were just coming up um empty-handed until this opportunity until we were approached um by this by Rain Tree Realer. It was it was it was very much um unexpected uh and a very pleasant pleasant surprise. Um so but yeah, we we do have relationship with our with our realators and they were actively looking for us and we just we just weren't coming up with anything until Rain Tree reached out to us. So this is a great opportunity. How does that add to the fact that we discussed how the

057age of our buildings in Parkway, this will be our youngest building coming in. >> Yeah, it will decrease that average. >> And so to to Matt's point, what what where do we go from here? I mean, I know uh Kevin, you said that we'll be a possibly able to open next August. Where does that leave the rest of our people on the wait list? Do we How aggressively are we going to continue looking for additional opportunities in the south area. >> Well, as Gary shared, with 17 million remaining, that does provide us quite a bit of opportunity should something come up. Um, our realtor partners are still looking for us and we'll continue to monitor if something comes up that seems to meet our needs. In the meantime, um, all that work has been deferred

058to facilities 2050. So, as they're creating long-term plans around our facility usage, our facility needs, they will continue to look for those opportunities. So, it leaves us in a place where while this will make a dent, we certainly are going to continue looking for additional opportunities uh to meet the needs that our community is asking for, which is, you know, to fulfill those weight lists and get students who want to attend a Parkway preschool into a Parkway preschool. Um, we don't see anything immediate, but I know facilities 2050 and our realators partners will continue to do that work moving forward. One of the positives I see in this purchase is the outdoor school concept, and I I know Lane is here, but um how would the is this location envisioned to be served as a

059different purpose than the other um locations that are we going to do more outdoor learning? Do you see new types of programs being able to come about? >> Well, Elena had her way. It would be nothing but outdoor learning. Um we are and I'm just speaking for Atlanta, they're already doing quite a bit with students outdoors, particularly at the current um Early Childhood West location where they can get those students outside and have them, you know, experiencing nature and and expanding their horizons. Um we don't want to say n outdoor learning only happens at one site. We certainly don't want to say that. But what we do know is when you have that land, you're going to take an opportunity to use it, right? And so there are trails. Uh there's a a stream at

060the bottom end of the property. Um we know that there's quite a bit of outdoor space even once we add a parkway playground to it. Um so there certainly they'll continue to build on those opportunities. Um I don't want to say that it's different programming because all of our schools have great programming that already doing that, but it certainly presents more opportunities for students at that location to be outdoors more frequently just because the physical space allows for it. And I may have missed um something in the presentation, but what's the purpose for potentially having to expand the parking lot? Is it is it are we going to be having more students there, more staff? >> So, currently that parking lot if I don't want to site the number exactly, but it's somewhere around 35

06136 parking spaces, which depending on the type of programming there um can be fairly tight. Um so, we will be looking at possibly expanding that just when you add staff plus parents when they're arriving for drop off. A lot of times, unlike our elementary schools, um the parents are often walking those students in, which means they're parking in the lot rather than driving through and dropping off and that just creates some additional space constraints in the parking lot there. Um if we are not able to do that for some reason, we don't believe that's a dealbreaker, but it would require us to shift some start times around to ensure that our families can get in and out safely and get their students um into that space. But with that just number of parking spots, that's

062significantly fewer than at many of our schools and certainly fewer than at our existing early childhood center. So that's why we would be looking at that parking lot expansion. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I'd just like to say thank you uh to Jason and Carrie and Kevin and your teams that it's been spending so much time I know evaluating this, doing the due diligence. Uh, you know, we really appreciate the quick turn. Uh, you know, this this fell on your lap in in the spring and here we are before the end of the year already already uh trying to wrap this up. So, we appreciate that and and obviously the staff um you know, I hope I hope you all are excited about it uh as as we hope you will be, but uh I

063think it's a great opportunity for early childhood. I think it's a great opportunity for our community and uh we we just appreciate everybody's efforts on this. So, thank you. >> Okay. Uh with all that said, may I have a motion in a second to approve the attached resolution of the board of education Parkway School District regarding the purchase of the real estate property located in St. County, Missouri, commonly known as 2100 South Mason Road, Town of Country, Missouri 63131, as presented in the December 10th, 2025 board meeting materials. All >> confidence. >> Mrs. Hopper, >> yes. >> Mr. Kilper, >> yes. >> Ms. MF Franklin, >> yes. >> Mr. Schindler, >> yes. >> Mr. Seltzer, >> yes. >> Mr. Spectre, >> yes. >> Mr. Todd, >> yes. Motion carry 70. Next, uh like to invite

064Perry to come on back up uh with Don Troy and Co. >> And uh they will introduce our auditor. >> Um before I come on up here, before I introduce our auditor, um this is always a time and space for me to honor a group of our staff that um rarely get recognition. [laughter] So, um you're in a moment going to hear from um KB, our auditor of and um go through the audit report and it and it is a good report. Um and that is only because we have an excellent executive director of finance and we have an excellent finance department. You only get a good audit report when you have a group that is willing to sit there from day to day um and hold people accountable and oftentimes tell them no. [laughter]

065It's it's a grueling task that um that they do and they do it diligently. Um and it's those everyday interactions that will lead to an audit report that is clean um and is produces good financial reporting. So we owe them a big thanks for the work that they do and this is this is the the moment when they get to shine because this is a report that reflects their hard work. So on that note, thank you John. And I'd also like to take a moment now to introduce our auditor tonight. We have with us Brian Wartz and he is our KB um he is an KB engagement partner and he's here tonight to share the audit report with you. Thank you. Uh you did fail to mention that you have excellent auditors as well. >>

066Oh, absolutely. >> So, um you know, we have a a brief presentation here tonight and there's some required communications that we have to um communicate to the board and those charged with governance as a part of our engagement. And we can do that in a letter, but since we're in a word presentation, we just do it sort of orally as opposed to a letter. But and this sort of satisfies those requirements. U one thing I think uh we need to mention that's in this report is there's a certificate of excellence in financial reporting. Uh so the the caffer is given to Missouri ASBO for their review to determine that the that it meets the reporting requirements. and then they issue a sometimes they'll issue a couple of goofy comments to make them know that they're

067doing their job. But uh we get that uh the district gets that certificate every year. That's been going on since I've been uh involved with the district as as an auditor. So uh you should be extremely proud of that as well. Um when I when I talk about it all before I get into this I like to just give a little bit of background as to what each other's uh role is when it comes to an audit and it's management's responsibility with your oversight to uh prepare the financial statements in accordance with the basis of accounting that they select which is the acrruel basis of accounting for governmentwide financial statements and the modified acral basis of accounting for the fund financial statements and then there's a reconciliation in between those do. Um the other thing

068that they're required to do is design, implement, and maintain an internal control structure to safeguard the assets of the district and to determine that there's not a material misstatement in the financial statements that would go undetected. Um and then the final thing uh which we're both responsible to do is determine that the district is a going concern that it will uh be around 12 months after the date of our financial services, the date of our opinion. So we're both required to do that. Um our then uh responsibility is is the our objective of the audit is to provide reasonable assurance that there's not a material misstatement in the financial statements and reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance but it's not 100% because we do not test 100% of the transactions. So we we

069can't give absolute assurance but we give reasonable assurance. Um, so we do a risk based approach. I'll talk about that a little bit later in the presentation, but if there's a if there's a um m material misstatement in the financial statement and it's due to fraud, it's harder for us to detect. So that's if if there's some if there's a material misstatement related to fraud, it's it's harder for us to detect. Um, the other thing when we're when we're doing a riskbased approach audit, we review the internal controls of the district and we get an understanding of the internal controls. We will walk a couple transactions through the system and determine that they're operating as they were described to us, but we do not give an opinion on the internal controls. Uh, that's outside the

070scope of an audit. As it relates to federal programs, we will even test internal controls and compliance, but again, we're not giving an opinion on the internal controls of the district. Um, we are also required to exercise professional judgment while um doing our audit and have professional skepticism. Um, that's that's a part part of our audit as well. And once again, evaluate the appropriateness of the accounting policies used to prepare the financial statements and us to determine that is the entities of going concern as well. Um, the last thing I want to talk about a little bit is fraud. Um, we're not required to uh develop audit procedures to detect fraud, but if something comes to our attention while performing our audit that we think could be fraud, then we're required to expand our procedures

071to determine that it's not. uh but but we do not audit for fraud. So going to the presentation, we talked about what management's responsibility is as it relates to the financial statements. We talked about what our responsibility is. Now we we perform our audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards, government auditing standards because obviously this is a governmental entity and uniform guidance and that those are the the standards related to federal uh programs and reporting on federal programs. uh we did issue an unmodified opinion which is basically based on our audit procedures. We feel that the financial statements are free of a material misstatement and therefore our opinion is unmodified is what we call it today. Internal controls we talked a little bit about that if there was a there's three types of internal

072control weaknesses. A a control deficiency which is a minor uh weakness in the internal controls which we would probably just present orally. A significant deficiency is a weakness in the internal controls that would have to be written up in our report with a management response. And then a significant deficiency that's considered a material weakness would also be written up in our in our um report with management response. The difference between a significant deficiency and a material weakness is a material weakness is the the weakness is so bad that it's probable that a material misstatement in the financial statements could exist and go undetected. Um so we're happy to report that we we had no material weaknesses noted and we had no instances of non-compliance as a result of our audit procedures. In testing the federal

073programs, we're required to get a percentage coverage of all federal program expenditures. This year, we tested the child nutrition cluster. Got us about a little over 40% of the federal expenditures for the district. Um there again we issued an unmodified opinion as it related to that and we had no material weaknesses noted as it related to the audit of the major program and we had no findings that needed to be disclosed to you in accordance with uniform guidance. The third part of our audit is we review certain uh budgetary and transportation and attendance records uh as it's required by DESIE. We performed that part of the engagement uh in accordance with attestation standards uh issued by the AICPA and related to those items we also gave an unmodified opinion. So there's basically four opinions in

074the package. There's a opinion on the financial statements, two opinions related to federal programs or federal compliance and then an opinion related to the uh desi stuff. Uh as we talked about the required communications that we're required to do the significant accounting policies used uh by the district is described in note a uh as we discussed the fund or the governmentwide financial statements are prepared on acrruel basis and the fund financial statements are on the modified acrruel. Uh this year the district there was a new Gazsby that came out um related to compensated absences and recording some additional liability or possible additional liability for that. Um when we computed that it's basically based on historical data or information of payouts is is is how it's computed. The the implementation was immaterial. So we didn't have

075to restate the beginning fund balance. We just added it to this year because it was it was really pretty minor to the financial statements. Um, no transactions lacked authoritative guidance or consensus. Uh, the financial statement disclosures are neutral, consistent, and clear. Uh, we encountered no difficulties in performing our audit and we had no disagreements with management, which are always good to report. Uh the most significant estimates in the financial statements, the biggest by far is the um the net pension liability, which is the district's proportionate share of the underfundment funding of the retirement obligation, state retirement obligation, and the OPED liability. Those are are are done through actuarial computations. Um and we we we when we test those, we have to test what information was submitted to get the information back from the actuary. So,

076uh, those are significant estimates, especially the OPEB, uh, and the net pension liability. Um, when we're when we're doing an audit, I I talked about risk and when we look at risk, we have to determine where we think there are risks that could be, uh, related to the audit that could cause a material misstatement. Uh, two two items that are always part of the risk is management override of controls and uh, improper revenue recognition. You have to address those two risks for every audit that you do. And then from there, we look at the the the client or the entity where we think they would have their risk based on our knowledge of prior year experience and discussing with management. Um the management override of controls obviously is because they they have the ability to

077manipulate the accounting records. So that it makes it like I talked about earlier, it's harder to detect if there's fraud or manipulation. So that's always a risk. uh the net pension liability um is a is a sub substantial estimate and has subjective judgment. So we feel that that is a risk and the compensated absences mostly because it was a new standard this year. So we thought that there could be some risk recomputing that in a different way for the first time and then the improper revenue recognition. We get confirm we can confirm so much of the revenue of the district through property taxes and federal programs and the monies that come through desi that's really not a risk that we feel like in in this audit but we do we we do have to address

078that. Um we have compiled with all ethical requirements regarding our independence. Every audit that we do we have to be independent but the independent standards for governmental entities are even a little bit higher and more strict and we did um adhere to those. uh there were no financial statement misstatements as in that we came across in our audit which would basically mean there was a misstatement in the financial statement that needed to be corrected for the financial statements not to be materially misstated. So we're always happy when we don't have an audit adjustment. We did obtain the representation letter from management and that was the same day as our audit opinion which was December the 25th. And that date's important. It's a little late this year because we're all waiting for the patiently for the

079compliance supplement to come out. Um, and it came out last Monday or something like that. And so we a lot of of financial statements that that had to get done. But so basically what that that date means is if there was a subsequent event or if there was a um a commitment or contingent liability in between the June 30th and that date, we have to review those uh items to determine if there's an adjustment that needs to be made to the financial statements or disclosure. So that's the significance of that date. The representation letter itself is from management telling us that they answered all of our questions. Uh gave us all the information that we asked for, made us aware if there was any commitments, contingencies or subsequent events. So um the financial statements are

080considered complete and accurate. Um all information has been disclosed to us as the auditors. Uh the last thing is is if if management were to have a consultation with some other CPA and that's usually about a standard that we don't agree how it needs to be implemented or something like that but if there if it's sort of getting a second opinion if that was done we would have to make you aware of that and to our knowledge uh that was not done. Lastly um we too would like to thank the district and the staff for their cooperation. Um this this financial statement is uh you know it's over 100 pages. A lot of information especially when you get into the statistical information there's a lot of stuff in there 10 years worth of information. So

081to get that all prepared reviewed and approved by Missouri Asbo is is um they do a really good job for us and we're we're happy to work with them. If anyone has any questions always that's the people on the right are the people that did all the work. [laughter] >> All right. Thank you. U we appreciate you being here tonight and u I I think I can speak for all of us on the board but none of us are accountants and so we uh we appreciate the level of professionalism that you all take in undertaking this audit. Um, every year this this summer, Julia called me and we talked about, you know, every year I get a phone call and, you know, does the board have any concerns or any areas you want us to

082look at? And the the number of clean audits in a row we have had is escapes my memory. I can't remember when we when we have had an audit that wasn't darn near perfect. Um, and so that gives a lot of reassurance on the board, but it also gives our community a lot of reassurance. And but But that comes at at uh the price of having you spend so much time uh digging into everything. And I know it's it can be a little painstaking for Don and Carrie and their teams, but u but we're grateful for the work that you all do and appreciate. >> Absolutely. Appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. >> Okay. Uh so following all that uh may I have a motion and a second that the board of education approve

083the 2024 2025 audited financial statements as presented in the December 10th 2025 board meeting materials >> second roll call please >> Mr. Topper >> yes >> Mr. Cop >> Miss Franklin >> yes >> Mr. Schindler >> yes >> Mr. Seltzer yes >> Mr. Spectre >> yes >> Mr. Todd. >> Yes. Motion carries 70. Uh next up we have section D policies. Um those pertain to fiscal management. We've had an opportunity to uh review those. Well, some of us have reviewed them. Some of us have yet to review them. Um >> I'm warming up. >> Kevin will get there. [laughter] But uh we still have some time. It will be up for approval uh in January. Does anyone have any questions thus far for Carrie or anyone else? Okay, >> I don't have a question, but

084I would just say I I was a part of the subcommittee that reviewed and and any question I did have was promptly answered shows that I should not policies. [laughter] >> All right. Uh so those policies will be up for a vote at the January regular board meeting. Uh next up we have our annual achievement report. We get the great pleasure of hearing Carter Snow, who I only unfortunately get to hear from about once a year. So, welcome Carter. >> Happy to see you. >> Oh, I got backup. Looks like [laughter] >> President's Vice President. Um, it's been a while. Hopper Debbie, it's so good to see you. Members of the board, Dr. Schneider, Mrs. Stove, I am happy to see you and I am happy to present our annual achievement report again. Um, and

085so we're going to focus today on three key areas related to our progress from last school year. And so our CIP um it really supports our strategic plan and it guides us towards meeting our mission. MP 6 is the state's version of um of evaluating and accrediting school districts. And so we're going to look at our performance in relationship to MP6. And then finally, we're going to make a note of our participation with the success ready student network, SRSN, and how that um builds towards a better system to measure meaningful learning, student growth, and future readiness throughout the school year. And so um you're going to hear from Dr. Hullman Best and Dr. Dr. Beckner, more about our CIP and and our work going forward. But as a part of this presentation, I will make

086note of things and highlight um CSIP relevant measures as we monitor our progress and our achievement throughout the year. Um with that in mind, we're going to be looking closely at achievement equity and personalized and relevant to real learn real world learning. Um but keep in mind that all of these things are interrelated. We can't talk about achievement without well-being and we can't look about achievement um without having a great facility and staff uh available to support our students. And so um while I will highlight the metrics and measures related to three key areas, just know that it really each aspect, each of these focus areas, each of these goal areas really does relate back to how we do as a school district. And so I do love graphs that go up and to the

087right. Um, and this one does too. Um, and so this these are uh our annual performance reports from the state of Missouri in relationship to MP6. And over the last three years, you can see a steady increase in our annual achievement uh report um related to both performance and continuous improvement as measured by the state of Missouri. And so although we are under a waiver from APR with our participation with the Success Ready Student Network, it's also just nice to know that our score keeps going up um and that we're doing the right things for our students. And so um it would be remiss of me if not to acknowledge the hard work of our students, of our teachers, of our staff, of our community members that do play a vital role in seeing this

088um ongoing performance trend. And so with that, um, in relation to the last kind of focus area that we will discuss here this evening, um, is just a quick definition of what the success Ready Student Network is. As a reminder, um, our participation um, which certainly is voluntary and approved by you um, as we pilot a compet competencybased system that focuses that shifts that focus from annual achievement to throughear achievement and growth. I know it's nice to be here in December presenting this annual achievement report. Um if you'd have me back, I'd do it every three months. Um but that is the idea is that we want not only be measuring um with lagging indicators, but throughout the year, how are we doing with actionable timely feedback that's supporting individual student growth, achievement, mastery, and

089attainment of what we'll discuss here in just a second, which are market value assets. So I will use the MSIPS six indicators as a way to kind of guide our conversation tonight and our understanding of achievement. And so those indicators are status and growth, student group um both status and growth, success ready students and market value assets, attendance and graduation rate. [snorts] And I know that um you know we like our acronyms and so let me define a few key terms but I I have to say that I'll do my best to avoid three-letter acronyms but it is partly my nature um because I work in a department called teaching and learning accountability which literally stands for TLA which is also a threeletter acronym. So um with that in mind we're going to discuss a

090few key terms. One is MPI which is map performance index. That is the way the state um really looks at performance on MAP tests. And so that NPI measure is a continuous measure based on how students do in that test. It comes up with a three-digit number and that gives us ability to compare year-to-year performance and performance between grade levels and groups. Another term that we use commonly with both MSIP 6 and even within the SRSN and in our CSIP um is a term called student group. And so student group refers to the group of students um that are black or Hispanic students with an IEP students receiving free and free free and reduced lunch um and students learning English. And so um this is one way to define a a group of students that

091we know that we have continued work and growth to in order for us to meet our mission. And then finally uh market value assets which is a uh newish term for us certainly not the first time we've discussed it. Um, but MVAs uh support future success for students in the workplace, in college and career. Um, they really truly are marketable skills um that are high in demand and can be used by employers placed in a resume or portfolio. That's something that's valuable for students as they um go on to what's next beyond Parkway. And so to start with status and growth, I'll go through a few key metrics as we explore both MAP and NWA scores. So as you can see in the report in both ELA and in math, um our achievement in measured

092by the MAP test in grades three through eight and then select end of course exams in high school. um we continue to exceed the state average as well as um the state target for achievement in both ELA and math. You can see that in math our post-pandemic progress mirrors that of the state um rising from just below the state target of 400 as an NPI to well above that state target of 400 as an NPI. Similarly, in science and social studies, um we are well above the state average in Parkway. And um for the first year since the pandemic, we're actually exceeding the state average uh I'm sorry, the state target in science um with a score uh above 400 as an MPI. And then in social studies, you can see this dramatic improvement in

093the last two years where we've exceeded um both the state average and the state target for performance um on that government exam. But we know we can't just measure one time a year progress over o over time. We want to see how we're doing throughout the school year. And so our participation in the SRSN allows us to really look at our performance throughout the year. And so to highlight some key features in reading which is really measured um in second grade through English two for our students um we we saw that in the spring um we had 76% of our students achieving uh average or above. Our CSIP goal was actually 80%. Um with the folks that I get to work with I I like to say we set goals that make us a little

094bit nervous. They should um we want them to be high but attainable. And so we came just short of of reaching our goal in the spring despite some progress from fall to winter. We don't look just look at students achievement though. We also look at how each of our student is growing. Um the second metric is really a metric around growth. We had a CEP goal of 52% of students meeting a growth goal. According to NWA, growth goals are actually pretty tough to meet. And so their expectation is that 50% if we're average 50% of our students will meet our growth goal. We met that average. We just didn't exceed it in the spring. Again, from fall to winter, we were on track to meet that 52% goal, but fell just short in the spring.

095And then we can look at these metrics um kind of in combination, but we can look at what we call the quadrant report um that really compares students in terms of low growth, low achievement um all the way up to high growth and high achievement. And so we see 40% of our students in that high growth and high achievement quadrant which is quite hard to do actually as we continue to push and excel students at the highest achievement level. Our areas of growth obviously um are areas where we have students that might be lower achieving but also not yet growing at the level that will get them to that high achievement status. So we see 21% of our students in that quadrant. In mathematics, we see a similar trend with 72.4% of our students um

096at average or above achievement in the spring. Again, some growth from fall to winter and then falling just short of our uh CSIP goal, which was 78% uh in the spring with 48.5% of our students meeting their growth goal from NWA. And again looking at the quadrants of both growth and achievement. I will make a note here in your PDF copy and version uh there was a slight error where that green box was below and it moved up and so it may look different than the version you have but this is of course the amended and correct version. So 38% of our students with high achievement and high growth. 11% of our students with low achievement but high growth. So moving towards uh high achievement 25% of students with low growth and low achievement and

09726% of students with high achievement but not yet meeting their growth goal. [snorts] So our mission calls on us to strive to ensuring all students are capable, curious, competent and caring learners as we continue to work towards equitable outcomes for all students. there remains a performance gap between students and students in the student group. Simply put, our work is not yet done. And so the next figures will highlight um where we have those gaps and how large they are. So again, according to the state end ofear measure, the MAP test, uh we can see how all students in red do compared to students in the student group. Despite us achieving above state averages for students in the student group, our goal is not simply to do that. It's to close those gaps over time. And

098the metrics to the right give us an idea or indication of which students in the student group have the biggest discrepancies. And so we can see that our black students, our students receiving free and reduced lunch and our students in IEPs um have largest discrepancies in performance when compared to all students. While students who are Hispanic in learning or learning English um have the a smaller discrepancy compared to other students in the student group throughout the year. We measure similar things similar discrepancies on NWA and so this metric is slightly different as it measures students in the student group and students not in the student group. So we can see that achievement the percent of students scoring average or above. For students not in the student group nearly 90% of students are average or above

099who aren't in the student group. But students in the student group we have slightly over half um above 55% of our students at average or above achievement. In math, again, similar trends where we can see we are all growing together in math, but that gap is not necessarily closing at the rate we're comfortable with. And the largest discrepancies exist for black students, for reduced lunch students, and students with individual individualized educ uh education plans with smaller gaps existing for Hispanic students, for students learning English. And again throughout the year, how what progress have we made towards closing those gaps? Um as we can see from NWA and math, which again is kindergarten in this case, all the way through algebra, we can see that those gaps started to close slightly from fall to winter, but

100unfortunately widened again towards the spring. So the next big area we're going to look at is success ready students. And this is just the best picture of of a student who clearly has a market value asset. Um, and so we're going to look quickly at ACT scores. And so over the past four years, we can see the comparison between Parkway ACT scores, the state average composite score, and national average composite scores. Um, partially this is a conversation is what is ACT scores post-pandemic realities. And so, um, we're happy to report that in 2025, we actually see our graduate ACT composite score going back up. As a quick reminder, we do give the ACT to all of our juniors. Um, and so it's an opportunity for all the students to have the get the opportunity to

101take the test with us. And so this is representative of nearly every junior in Parkway. Of course, they have additional opportunities on their own to take that um their their senior year as well. And so these these graduate ACT scores are representative of the class of 2025. Another key metric that we often look at when we think about success student network and as we'll see in market value assets are advanced placement tests. Of course advanced placement allows students opportunities to gain college credit um on on courses. And so we know that the both the number of exams and the number of students on Parkway taking AP tests is very high. We had over 1500 students taking AP tests the last two years in a row. Although last year we saw um the number of AP

102tests declined slightly. So same number of kids taking tests. They just took slightly fewer than before. Um but I am very excited to say that um even with very high participation rates with AP test, we have a lot of our students scoring three or above which generally confers college credit depending on the university that you might be applying to. And then as we really look and work with SRSN, Success Ready Student Network on market value assets, um we are getting to expand really our conception of what are valuable assets for students um as they go into the college and career workplace. And so we know that um this is a lagging indicator from the state as well as SRSN. So what I'm reporting here is really the class of 2024 um as the state has

103moved to these sort of metrics being always lagging a year behind to ensure accuracy. And so 79.2% of our students earned a market value asset. As you can see the m the majority of those market value assets were earned through college and career coursework. So things that we just looked like like AP tests, um dual credit, um those sort of opportunities, as well as qualifying assessments, things like ACTs. Um, we're really excited to work with our real world learning task force as we start to expand what entrepreneurial experiences can look like, how we monitor those work experiences, career and technical education because we know those are areas not only that um we can offer additional opportunities for students but also quite literally as a bean counter how we can count existing experiences for students and

104incorporate them into market value assets. you know, um, as we know that students do a lot of amazing things outside of the school day that we have difficult opportunities counting towards market value assets. So, um, Lindseay Perkins as her work and leadership with a real world learning task force is certainly tackling this and we're working together with how we can report these these measures accurately and give additional opportunities for our students to earn these valuable skills. And then finally, uh, our last two areas that we'll kind of key in on is attendance. And so attendance is something that post pandemic has also just we've seen a real impact on. And so, um, the state really looks at what percent of your students attend 90% of the time or more. And so for last year, we

105had 88.5% of our students attend 90% or more. Uh, which is actually up from the past few years. And so if we think four years ago we were 87, then we went to 86, and now we've kind of been hovering around 88.5 for a couple years. Um, pre- pandemic, just for point of reference, we were usually right at or above 90. And so this continues to be an area that we look at as we want to make sure that students are healthy and come to school on a regular basis. And then finally, taking a look at our graduation rate, another really great area to celebrate um is that uh 95.8 of our student percent of our students graduated in four years. And so the state standard here, what they're looking for in terms of points

106is that um do we have 92% of our students graduate within four, five, six, or seven years. So we're happy to report that um we are exceeding that standard within four years. And we can actually see growth within that standard over the last four years. I've also put here how different groups of students have performed in terms of graduation rates for the class of 2025. And it would just highlight that our English language learners actually had a higher graduation rate than the rest of the Parkway graduates of the class of 2025 on average. So again speaking to the hard work that all of our staff and students and families are doing to ensure that students have credits and attainment towards graduation graduation. So while it's true to say that you measure what matters um we

107recognize these metrics are just an incomplete story Parkway's incredible successes and areas of growth. I look forward to diving further into a conversation about the stories that shape our path forward about the state of our district. Um, with that, I'm happy to take any questions that you might have. >> Well, first of all, thank you for counting all the beans. >> We appreciate it. I know it's not an easy task to gather all of those pieces of information. I had a question about attendance. >> Um, I know that's been a struggle for several years. Um, do we know do you know um of the of the 12% 11 and a half% that that aren't regularly attending. Can you can you define that group? Are is is there do we have a large number of people

108that just don't attend or do we have a small group that are regular non-attenders, non-attendees? Um how how is that how's that 11 and a half% made up? >> Yeah, it's it's a really good question. So the in terms of the metric itself, if you looked at our average attendance rate, it's actually well above that because we have so many students who come to school on a regular basis um and their their attendance rate exceeds 95%. We do have a portion of students which you know typically we we classify chronic absentee as is missing more than 10% of school or about more than 18 days of school at the end of the school year. Um and so those reasons do vary quite wildly. Um as I know our our staff have conversations about during year

109extended vacations with families um all the way to chronic absence that is related to illness um to simply I don't want to come to school today. Um and so the the reasons are really multiffactorial. Um and you know if we I think it's really important that we do take that approach to solving the issue as we look at um do our students feel safe at school? Do they feel like they belong? Um do they feel like if they work hard um they can make a difference in the in in what they're doing during the day? And so um it's simply it goes beyond just uh are they achieving? Do they feel like they uh want to come? it really gets deep into a multi- kind of prronged approach to addressing the issue because we know

110that the reasons that students don't come are also there's many reasons that they they don't show up. So um that is one I think highlight actually as we work towards more closely with our building leaders with student services with teaching learning accountability learning from each other about efficacy self-efficacy about sense of belonging what our students are saying as as I know our building leaders lead focus groups with how students develop a better sense of belonging. It's easy to say all of that's going to help improve attendance numbers. Um, I truly believe it will, but I do appreciate just the the approach that it's it's simply building a stronger culture of school that encourages students to come of course stay home when you're sick, but come to school when you're healthy. >> Thank you. >> So,

111our our work with the success ready network, I know when it was first kicked off, there was talks about one day maybe not having to do map testing. I think I've said it here before that I can't stand the map test. Not a fan of it. Where are we where is are we anywhere on that um with the student you know success rating network or is that kind of >> we're never going to be getting away from the MAP test just given where we are politically. >> There is recently a timeline um from success rating student network about um starting with a very small group of students um not in Parkway but across the state this spring on piloting what could be a new assessment. um that pilot would expand next year and continue expand

112the following year. Um and so that is something we're looking very closely at our participation and when we want to jump in with that. Um to be aware though that that has to be state board approved as well. And so we've been working really closely with our partners at the state. It's actually been quite nice that at all of the SRSN meetings um we have members from from DESIE the Department of Education there with us and collaboratively planning and guiding us along the way. And so I know that there's a state board of education meeting I believe in January where this will be further discussed um as we'll we have the the federal waiver and now we're looking for the state participation and waiver with that as well. >> Thanks. >> So before it was

113like sometime in the future but we actually do have some concrete timelines. >> Good. >> So I have a question. It may be better suited for Dr. Beckner, but um what are what are we doing to close the gap between um all in the student groups? >> Yeah, I will let him respond, but I'm I'm I got the mic for now. So, um I think there there are many things and I I will say um some selfishly because it relates to some some of the work we're doing with our multi-tered system of supports is really taking a very holistic approach um how we address student needs. And so really as uh Dr. Lucas uh myself um Dr. Schulty, Dr. my guys all get to work together and collaboratively plan our leadership development around how we

114support students with this multi-tered system of supports that builds in equity and a belief in all um that ensures we have a curriculum that reflects the students that students can access and we have really clear learning intentions success criteria and not just that but we have systems that respond to students when they don't learn um and so we are quite literally at the foundation of that work but I do think it's worth us spending the time to build a strong foundation um to continue to grow this work because we know that this work is essential to closing those gaps. >> He answered that beautifully. Um the only thing I would add is I'm really happy with how tonight's timeline worked out. We're immediately following this presentation. Dr. Holman Best and I are going to give

115an update on our CIP work and Dr. Holman Best is going to walk through many of the things we're currently doing. So, you'll hear in a moment more in depth about what we're doing around that multi-tered system of supports to try to support all of our students and whether they are high achieving and need to be pushed or whether they're struggling and need additional support. So, we'll be able to go in a little bit more detail in our work session here in just a moment, but I would have hit very heavily, yes, on our multi-tered system of supports and how we're trying to build a holistic system that supports all of our students regardless of where they are in their learning. A couple of questions here. Um are how are the Fern Ridge students included

116in this data if at all? >> Yeah, so Fernidge students are included in the data in a few ways. Uh of course attendance and graduation rate and um you know those are huge areas of successes for for Fern um but as well as end of course exams. And so students who attend Fern may take end of course exams whether that be in algebra or biology, English 2 or government. um most typically government based on when students enter into Fernidge. Um and then students at Fern can also participate in NW assessments whether that be English one two or if they're taking algebra and so certainly give the um represented in that um as well as when we think about market value assets and what opportunities exist for students at burn um I know that uh there

117are we really expand what we consider a market value asset. We really want to look intentionally at um what credentiing might students earn um who might be at an alternative school or program. Um I know that students who attend um Southtech for example can earn a industry recognized credential um and so we have some students who can be dual enrolled in both of those. Yeah. So the the score itself does go back to the home school. However, their score is included in Parkway schools. So, >> okay. So, they're included in MAP as well. >> Well, MAP is inclusive of grades three through eight, but also includes end of divorce exams. So, students who are in take exams. Wonderful. >> Thank you. >> And then um what's the status of NWA being accepted by DESI? So,

118as we as we continue that work, we're we're in this interim period where NWA allowed us to um apply for and successfully get the waiver from APR. Um as this as the state and SRSN move forward with planning around assessment, it looks like they're designing a different assessment other than NWA um or other any other purchase assessment that other districts use like I Ready. um and that will be their proposal to move forward with a new assessment system. I would say that it mirrors some of the features we like about NWA. Um we want to move toward an adaptive system. We want to move toward a system that's through a year, not just end of year. Um but it's not it's not NWA itself. >> So if that happens, are we going to have to

119make a purchase for a new system then or um we we so I think something to consider around our assessments is that we're not overassessing students. And so if we were to move forward with the uh this piloted program with SRSN, um that may be the system that meets our needs for our students and we wouldn't have to provide NWA. Um it really also depends if the state picks this system up and runs with it. And so like the the state has the opportunity to potentially replace our map test with this new version. We do purchase the map test. It's a very minimal fee. Um but when it comes to when it comes to NWA kind of the how this pilot progresses, we'll be closely paying attention to that and whether or not we need

120to continue to purchase NWA and continue with that system. In regards to reading, however, um which is really screening for dyslexia and foundational reading needs. That will continue to happen in grades K through three as it is a state mandate. The state um should approve uh a new list of assessment vendors this December, which we anticipate any day. Um and that will help us guide our pard with what assessment will move forward with K through three. >> Okay. Okay. Um, [clears throat] my last question has to do with the ACT. My understanding is that there's a there was a whole new ACT developed and in use now this this year. How has Parkway been accommodating [snorts] this new with are you giving the new are you using that new ACT test on with our students

121and helping them to learn how to take the test with timing and pacing and things like that >> we will so this will be the first year that the district ACT is within kind of the new ACT guidance and so in short um it's a little bit shorter Um, so there's fewer questions on the new version of the ACT and uh, for the first time ever, we had the opportunity to decide if we wanted to give science or not. >> Previously, it was just the four content areas and you always gave science. Um, we are continuing with giving the science administration as a district this spring in March. Um, and so in terms of the content itself, it doesn't it doesn't really differ dramatically. Um, it's really about the timing of the test. There's fewer

122questions, a little bit more time to complete those questions. Um, and we will continue to give science um when students have the opportunity to take the ACT with um with ACT on a national test date, they they can they can take individual portions. So students could go in and just take the math portion. Um so that's a different opportunity that the national test states are offering for students. as well as super scoring. And simply that means that um colleges and universities might just take the the highest score from each of the content areas as a composite rather than just one test experience as the composite. And so, um, we will continue with not only offering that new version of the ACT for our juniors, but we're also going to continue offering a shortened practice ACT

123for our ninth graders and a preACT for our 10th graders as we continue to prepare them for that testing experience junior year. Um, certainly been working with our college and career counselors as well as our our high schools and principles to know that here's the new timing regulations. Here, how it might look different, quite literally. do we need to adjust bus schedules? Um, but all of that has certainly been shared and uh we're looking forward to what the experience could look like in March. >> And do you anticipate there to be any changes with [clears throat] when the ACT is given next year? I think there was the national date was different for Parkway. [clears throat] there was the calendar confusion or some calendar conflict that Parkway didn't go along with I think we did

124a lot earlier like in March. >> Yeah. >> Instead of like April. >> We have a number of options from ACT in terms of when we administer and so we are once again choosing the early spring administration really uh we want to be intentional that we're avoiding any religious conflicts or holidays. uh we want to make sure that we have as many students as there as possible and then some of the April dates it we when we get into testing um not only are we considering ACT but we're considering ACT AP testing into course exams and so really when we think about the staff who are responsible for staffing but also just testing fatigue uh we moved ACT into March to provide a little bit more space for many of our staff who are supporting

125staffing uh supporting testing rather um to make sure that you know we can prepare the best experience for students. >> Okay. Thank you. >> So um sorry you mentioned I think I got this right for the NWA reading it's from second grade through English 2. >> Yeah. So so we have um two different NWA assessments. One of them is NWA reading fluency and that's kindergarten through third grade and then NWA reading growth um which is second through second grade through English 2. >> What about for math? >> Uh for math um so we have NWA math growth which is kindergarten through algebra. So we give a depending on you know some eighth graders take algebra in WA some eighth graders take the the growth version of that but um they do offer a course specific

126assessment in high school which is what we offer the algebra version. >> Real quick so we talked about that we got a waiver from APR yet every year we get APR. So what's the point of the waiver? >> Well when we applied for the waiver we were told we wouldn't get an APR score. Um [clears throat] but we continue to do so. Um and so you know I think it we're very clearly focused on measuring our CSIP um because that gives us the guidance not only at the end of the year but throughout the year in terms of how we're doing and so as Dr. Hullman Best and Dr. Beckner present they're going to be very much driven by our CESIP measures and how we're relating against those. We do kind of glance at APR

127just as a as a way of triangulating against our internal measures of how we're doing. How are we doing against the state measures as well? It's nice when we're doing well against them. Um, but it's kind of shown us that we can have not only kind of a reflection of performance at the end of the year, but it's really nice to come back in January with our leaders and say, "How are we doing right now? What's working? What do we need to improve?" And really have that real time feedback. And so that that happens of course at the administration level, but it also happens within the classroom. And so those conversations around goal setting with students around how what are you doing to achieve those goals, the celebrations of successes, the honest conversations about areas

128of growth um that gives us really that real-time feedback. And so CEIT measures, we're certainly focused on our our SRSN measures including NWA. Um but of course, yeah, we do get that score at the end of the year and and we look pretty good with that score too in comparison with many other districts in the area. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Next up, we have Dr. Beckner. Arter snow is a hard act to follow. Good evening, President Todd, Vice President Hopper, members of the board of education, Dr. Schneider, Mrs. Mrs. Stove. Um, as you know, we have been focusing on three areas of our comprehensive school improvement plan, student success in school, success in life, and resources for student success. Tonight, we'll give a brief update on how we're doing on metrics

129associated with each of these three areas. Um I want to highlight on this slide for you something that you heard Carter talk about in our annual achievement report um as MTSS. And so this is strategy two um when we talk about develop and implement an expanded and consistently applied multi-tered system of support to ensure each student's academic success and well-being. Um this is the thread um it is the through line for us. It is the plate um that holds us accountable to ensuring that our students and our staff have exactly what they need to succeed. Um so as we go through this you will see a theme of our of what we are doing to further support the work in the system. So starting with strategy four it is indeed um part of our MTSS

130work. We have under the leadership of Dr. Amy Girkin Coat launched a systemwide professional development plan. Um during the four professional development days, our certified staff is involved in development um in four areas. Curriculum, MTSS, equity and belonging, um social emotional learning and well-being. Um they are deeply connected to the strategies of MTSS and are cornerstone of our work. When we think about um student well-being um it we know that is intimately connected to their academics. And so under the leadership of Dr. Dr. Aron Schulty Hamilton um and Dr. Sher McGra we begun developing curriculum and our schools have participated in administration of the fall survey this year. All of our schools have participated um we've paired this data with some additional student achievement data and Dr. Beckner will share that in just a few

131slides. Last year uh Dr. Cartilia Lucas started her work with the equity and action leadership team um to guide the work of EIA, equity and action team um to focus the priorities on strategies two and three um which talk about our equity work. As part of this ongoing work, all 29 of our schools this fall had learning walks. Um during those learning walks, um they were we collected data and got feedback um around our um researchbased culture responsive engagement strategies. Um our schools are setting goals for those and we'll have a second round of walks um in the spring. This year we're also bringing to completion our instructional model task force work. And so as we endeavor in all of this work around curriculum and service to MTSS, we recognize that teachers need a battery

132of strategies um and researchbased strategies that will ensure um that our tier one instruction for them in the classroom every day is possible but also supports their work with students. And in the area of student success, individual student problem solving has kicked off. Um this guides our work with our students who have the most intense needs. It's intentional and systemic a process and we are retreating our schools um around how to run this process and that will start in February of this year. So I know you may be wondering how in the world are we keeping it all together. Um Dr. Dr. Snow as we like to give him his doctorate uh Carter talked about um the work that we do inside of our leadership meetings. Our leadership meetings are really have really become an

133opportunity for us to become a learning organization. So we do bring together um teaching, learning, accountability and student services along with parts of our operations teams um when we do our principal meetings and during that time our leaders are learning about development around our six essential standards for um MTSS and we recognize that our teachers need to be developed as well. And so again uh with Dr. Beckner support and many others. Um Amy Geren Coat has created a systemic professional development plan for our educators um in which they always on our full day PD days receive training and curriculum around clarity for learning to ensure our tier one instruction is aligned to standards essential standards for the district. And then they do have an opportunity to participate in two choice sessions um for the other

134three that you see there, NTSS, equity and belonging and social emotional and well-being. Um and with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Beckner to talk about some metrics. >> Well, thank you so much. Sure. Thank you. >> I appreciate the question about Miss Matt Franklin about what are we doing to help all of our students succeed? And I want to hit on one word in particular um that we keep saying when we say MTSS and that's the word system because the there is no one silver bullet to ensure that every single student is successful. It really takes a holistic system of us working through all those pieces that Dr. Holvest just mentioned to really create the conditions for all of our students to be successful to provide the strategies that help reach

135those students to be able to identify through our curriculum which standards are essential and which standards students aren't meeting and then to apply the appropriate interventions to all of those students. And so when we're talking about this, it's a lot of things because it is a system that we are building. And along with that system, we have five objectives that relate to the pieces Dr. Holman Best just described. We'll go through each of those five and talk about our progress so far. You'll notice that they'll tie very nicely into what Carter Snow just shared with us about our achievement from last year, but also provide an update on where we are currently uh in this school year. Um, so this was one that was referenced in Carter's presentation about the percent of students who are

136scoring at or above average. Um, we have set a goal this year, uh, an objective of 81% of our students reaching that objective in ELA and 78.5 in math. You'll notice that's higher than what we had last year. Um and that's because NWA actually it's a nationally normed assessment and every once in a while they have to look around and say is this still how kids are doing and they have to change those norms and it actually caused us to raise our goal and raise our target higher uh where previously was below 80 now in English we're looking at 81% as our target. Um in the fall of this year we have 79.4% of our students who are achieving at or above average. In math at target is 78.5. In fall we were at 76.6.

137Our students are actually in the process of taking the winter assessment currently. So we actually do have about half of our students who have already completed the winter assessment, but we're waiting for the other half of those results that will happen between now and winter break. In terms of growth, we don't just want our students to achieve, but we want them to grow. We want them to keep moving forward even if their achievement isn't high. So again, we're setting that mark at 52% this year. These are the same numbers that Carter shared before. And once we have that winter assessment, we'll be able to compare that to the fall assessment. We just don't have that data just yet. Uh but we will in the near future. This is one that we've been watching for a

138long time, and that's how do we continue to close those gaps between all of our students and students who might be one of those student groups that we heard about. We set that target somewhat blind to be fair because we didn't have multiple years of the NWA measure, but that we said we want to close the gap between all students and the student group by 3%. In English, we were about flat. We actually had went the wrong direction by 2%. In math, that gap closed by 2.2%. So, not quite at that target, but we are going to keep monitoring that because we need all of our students to achieve and we want to close any of those gaps. The last two objectives we don't yet have data on. The fourth one is about our SEAL

139survey and this is the first year that we have 100% of our schools having students take that assessment. So we'll be able to get our baseline data. But when we look back last year at the 28 or so schools that did participate, we had 54.2% 2% of our students show growth in at least or show strength in at least four of those areas, four of the domains within the SEAL survey. The fifth one has a lot of numbers, but this is really the heart of the work that Dr. Homeman shared around building out our multi-tered system of supports. It can't just be a hope that we achieve our multi-tered system of supports. We have to have a plan that we can execute. So part of that is of all the pieces which are listed here

140and there are many within each of these areas. There are several that are in orange. There are six that we've identified as essential standards for our schools for this year that we want to make sure that our schools are getting to. We have a rubric that's a four-point scale. We want in these six key areas to get all schools to at least a two. They took that survey before the school year. They took that survey at the beginning of the summer actually right as we received development from our partners at solution tree. We had that big June kickoff event where we had all schools bring their MTSS leadership teams and they completed their assessment and you see that we had none of the areas that were at a two at that point. Our schools are

141in the process of now taking that self assessment again so they can see okay we've been working now for about half a school year. What progress have we made? We'll be getting those results um here. I believe they're due to Dr. Home and Best on the 17th of December. Um so we'll be able to get that check-in point of where exactly are all of our schools and we hope to see a lot of movement around that. Those those key areas uh are really focused on three three basic things. One, creating the conditions where all students can learn, a really positive environment where we believe in all of our kids. The second big area is really just about setting up the infrastructure that schools have leadership teams, that they're having these conversations, that they're meeting regularly,

142that they have the right people at the table, and that they have the skills they need to really do the work that we're talking about. And then the last one is a lot of the work that many of you heard a lot about last year where we rewrote almost a third of all the classes in Parkway to get really clear about what's essential in every single course. what do kids really need to know and make our curriculum much more focused on those things that really matter and that's how we implement that. So, we've been doing that work this year with our teachers and helping them show students what those outcomes are, talk to them about it during class, refer to those things as they're teaching and then informally check for understanding. That's a lot of

143what that curriculum clarity piece that Dr. Holman Best mentioned in our PD is really about is building out this system of supports. So, we'll be getting more data on this again very shortly. I don't want to put that one up yet. I want it to be a surprise. So, we've also been um it's helping our students be successful is not just about academics. Carter mentioned it's also about their well-being. It's about their social emotional learning. So, we've been able now that we have our SEAL assessments to start to actually combine them with our academic assessments. So, this is really interesting. The first one I'm going to show you is when students have a strong sense of belonging. So all of these questions in the survey relate to sense of belonging. Each one of these boxes

144is a question. And what you can see is uh like Carter's language, we like it when they go bottom left to top right. What this is showing is that when students say that they have a strong sense of belonging at school, they are achieving higher on NWA. So, we're seeing a direct correlation and a strong correlation between students social emotional well-being, their belonging at school, and how they're achieving academically, which just tells us that we can't just be focused on help them learn math, but how do we also help them feel connected to school, feel like they really belong, that they have adults that care about them, that they have, you know, fellow students who care about them, that they really belong at school. There's also another set of questions though that really shows a

145much stronger correlation, which is incredibly interesting. Uh I'll put this chart up just so you can see the top uh bottom left to top right. A really incredibly strong correlation here. All of these questions have to do with students self-efficacy. And that means their belief in themselves, their abilities to positively and confidently engage in tasks. So some of these questions, no you can't read them up there, but things like how sure you can learn how sure are you that you can learn all the subjects that are taught in this class? or how sure are you that you'll remember next year what you're learning right now. And we find that when students are saying I'm not sure that I can do this, they're also not performing well academically. The students recognize themselves how their achievement level

146is affecting their confidence. And so we've already begun working with our principles and identifying strategies to how can our teachers build self-efficacy in students? How can they help them feel most confident, see success in their work, see other students succeeding and begin to believe in themselves? So, this is all part of what we're monitoring so that we can help grow all of our students, not just academically, but also in their well-being. Jumping over to student success and life, which is one of our other key areas along with student success in school and resources for student success. Uh, many of our objectives in this area are things that we're just bringing on board this year. There's an asterisk here that talks about our real world relevance task force that's launching this year. Uh Carter also mentioned

147Lindsey Perkins work around some of that where we want to get our students connected to those market value asset opportunities. Um that work is going incredibly well and we're um in February going to be bringing in many of our business and industry partners into that conversation so that we can help them or allow them to inform us so that we can best build out some of those opportunities. So really looking forward to that and growing out these objectives. And to go over that last area, I'm going to turn it back over to Dr. Holvest to talk about our resources that we use to help support students. And so here uh we had the opportunity uh to take a look at the uh partners that were selected to do the demographic study um in partnership with

148Parkway Steering Committee. Um we looked at that the partners we learned about the partners for the demographic study and facilities assessment at our last steering meeting. Um, additionally, we continue working um, HR continues working with Dr. Lucas' office as we look at diversifying um, our workforce as well as hosting coughing and careers regionally um, to get out in the spaces where uh, potential candidates have interest. We also we hosted one of those this evening and had 14 potential candidates show up for um, multiple job classes in just a short two-hour um, coffee and careers. Um, additionally, um, we have, um, the budget task force concluding its work as, uh, Carrie shared earlier. Um, and you will be hearing from them shortly with regard to how we are supporting, um, resource or how we're providing resources

149for student success. And with that, do you have any questions? >> So, I have a question on the academic and social emotional connection. So, if I'm understanding correctly, our NWE is only going to about 8th, 9th, maybe 10th grade, depending on if it's math or in or reading. >> So, what are we doing with those 10th, 11th, and 12th graders that are not taking businesses? >> Uh, great question. They do uh take our they do take the survey. Uh they also take our climate survey, annual climate survey. And so we do we will have the ability to kind of sit some data. We do have some questions in the climate survey that mirror the survey that we can then go back um and take a look at other metrics associated outside of NWA. A lot

150of that is great in attendance data that we can also take a look at to see if there are relationships there as well. That is an excellent question for our students who are not sitting for those exams. >> I have a question. One of the things that we approved tonight on our action items was uh strategic initi in initiatives on professional development. Is that being in sync with this CIP so that our professional learning between this CIP and what we just approved tonight are are >> Dr. Bus is going to go there. It's actually intentionally built directly off the CEIP and um she's going to scroll back and find that visual. They're actually directly connected to there it is the strategies within the CIP and the strategic plan. That's what they're labeled up there. S3

151for example being about equity and student belonging. S2 being around MTSS curriculum clarity again being around how we're getting really clear about student outcomes. And S5 was social emotional well-being. Um, we had, I think the number was 114 of our educators who helped lead development on the November 4th PD day. That include mental health specialists, social emotional behavior specialists, uh, some counselors, instructional coaches, assistant principles, teachers. Um, so just a ton of people who are coming together and get they're getting trained around how they train others in these areas. All the topics are directly CESIP related because we want to make sure that if our teachers aren't getting the message about these things, it doesn't really matter. They're the ones who are working with our students every day impacting them and they're learning. So yes,

152the PD plan is intentionally connected directly to the CSIP and the sessions are designed um by the leaders of those areas to make sure that our teachers are getting learning tied directly to what they might be able to do to help students. >> Okay. And then how is our special ed staff, teachers, parents, etc. incorporated with all of this as well? >> Excellent question. They also attend our sessions on the professional development days and then we also uh pull in our special education administrators into our administrative development uh meetings. We do have a development plan for principles and assistant principles and um mo on most cases our um area coordinators are attending our sensor principles meetings because we are rolling out the same learning that we are doing with principles for our APs and so

153they're able to get the development as well. >> Okay. I do also want to celebrate and I would be remiss if I did not mention that all of the feedback that we received on our November PD day. Um our participants scored um a three or a four almost in every single session that was delivered by the educators and leaders that were delivering that development. It was a it was very positively received systemwide by the staff. >> Thank you all very much. Uh and that concludes our agenda. Thank you all for attending. We'll now receive the post.