001good evening uh if you'll all join us in the Pledge of Allegiance we'll get our meeting started welcome everyone uh this evening the board of education is honoring an outstanding group of Parkway students uh and an elementary school we're also recognizing State sports champions our newest Blue Ribbon School and honoring retiring Chesterfield chief of police Ray Johnson first I'd like to invite Corey Johnson our director of Athletics and activities to introduce the state sports champions good evening on behalf of the Board of Education Dr Marty and uh president Mr Todd um it's an honor and privilege tonight um to introduce our fall state champions and and we have quite a few so a great season for us tonight we'll be recognizing uh the members of the Parkway North girls tennis team the Parkway South boy
002swimming dive and the Parkway Central uh boy swimming dive team and now for our state champions if we could uh for Parkway North I'm our head coach Coach Ron left court um he's assisted by Isaac pearlstone and the two uh state champions are the state uh doubles Champions Emily coup and Ivon Shannon if you could please come [Applause] up Emily and and AI uh defeat defeated the doubles team from Villa desin in the state finals two- z um Emily and Aon also swept the district and sectional matches leading up to State um they were very impressive Emily was first Team all conference singles and doubles ion was Suburban Conference Player of the Year and first team conference doubles um ion will be attending uh Missouri Baptist College in the fall um to play tennis and
003I did get an opportunity to see this Duo play um and they were very very very impressive so these um outstanding ladies and Coach left court did an outstanding [Applause] job our next day champion from South High Carter Crook and Carter was our 100 meter uh breaststroke champion in class one um he had a state leading time of 40 49.79 um he dominated the field in in the state meet and Connor is actually not here because he is gone with several of our other swimmers uh swimming um in the in the junior Nationals um but again Connor did a great job and and he he's very very impressive and had a great season now for our team state champion if we could have the Central High boy swim team come up tonight um as we
004honor uh Central um want to note that Central is the two time they are backto back state champions so they have won this two years in a row so that's an impressive uh just an impressive feat that is very very rare in our in our state um and and Central just leads leads the way um of our state champions here um we have uh Payton demic uh Hunter deutman Conor Moran Winston Reese uh zadan Reza uh Colton Smith and Daniel Richmond were present there we go um our head coach uh coach shanoff could not make it tonight um but his his trusted and outstanding um assistant um coach Abigail of verier and Natalie um Connor are present so again congratulations um and there's a long list of Champions um for this team at the state
005meet um it was just an impressive weekend the two days um we really didn't go more than than probably five minutes without either Central or one of our other uh Parkway schools having um an athlete on the podium so of our first place uh medal winners um this group uh set a class one record in the 200 medley relay of 1 minute 32 seconds um and that relay consisted of uh Connor Colton Daniel and William this group also uh set a school and class one record in the 200 yard freestyle relay um man Connor was on that relay Tyler Brody and William they followed that up and swept the relays they also won the 400 yard freestyle relay with Tyler Brody Colton and Daniel we also had an individual champion and William Jost he won
006the 50 freestyle and the 100 freestyle and a new record overall record and then we also um had a couple of other placers uh Brody placed uh second in the 500 and the 200 freestyle um and then Connor was second in the uh 300 um individual medley well this group is is very very impressive one of the things I like to note about this group this team this entire swim team along with winning back-to-back state champions um they have a team GPA of 3.38 so they're they're just outstanding uh swimmers and outstanding students Central uh outscored the competition and the team Race um by over 100 points um Central scored 328 points um second place was Parkway West so West West played second with 186 points and then South also played so three of our
007four uh high schools placed in the in the top five so it was just a very impressive uh swim weekend for us um in closing um we're very proud of our state champions and all of their accompl ments but again we're proud of them for being great leaders in our schools um being great students um best of luck to all of our seniors and before we let them go thank you to all the parents um that that came tonight we could not have had this success um without you and just thank you for all your support and everything you do next up please welcome Dr Mar Marty to the podium uh he's going to recognize our latest National Blue Ribbon School and uh he's also going to recogniz nice Chesterfield Police Chief Ray Johnston thank
008you president Todd I'd like to just pass on my congratulations uh and Corey great job uh it's wonderful to see uh these athletes but uh your leadership and your wonderful work academically is also to be noticed so thank you and also parents thank you for being here and all your support wonderful wonderful evening of Celebration so Gina Pini Dr Pacini please join me so uh we're very very proud uh that this year uh pymont Elementary School uh was named a National Blue Ribbon School uh and I had the pleasure uh to join Gina and Chris Sal one of her teachers in Washington DC a couple of weeks ago for the recognition the recognition is based on the school's overall academic performance or progress in closing the achievement Gap among all subgroups and this is pretty
009significant it's not about just the top students but all subgroups show Improvement and Parkway was one of eight schools not districts but individual schools from Missouri to be recognized Parkway now has 18 National Blue Ribbon Schools and the Blue Ribbon program goes back to the 1980s started in the Reagan Administration and again only eight schools in Missouri earned a 2023 recognition we were accompanied by a school from Leo and a elementary school from Rockwood so we had the the region well represented so while Wy schools represented diverse fabric of American schools they also share some core elements National bur School uh leaders articulate a vision of excellence and hold everyone to high standards they demonstrate effective and Innovative teaching and learning and they value uh the support that teachers and staff uh get through professional
010learning and professional development data from many sources are used to drive instruction and every student strives for uh success and Excellence families communities and Educators work together towards common goals I say all this because I think it's important to realize that in our schools uh it takes a whole community and it starts with the principal and I'm proud of Dr bini uh but she has an excellent staff and she certainly has an EXC excellent community that reinforces uh the work of uh of getting to this achievement level so it's my pleasure uh to let uh Gina talk a little bit about and brag a little bit about permont and her staff and her students and her community and I'm very very proud to have a company Gina I was very very uh proud to be
011able to walk across the stage and be recognized by the US Department of Education as a Blue Ribbon School Dr bini thank you Dr Marty Dr Marty um bored and my phone is not doing what it needs to do thank you so much for celebrating this accomplishment with us um I'd like to quickly um recognize um like Dr Marty said our staff and our community um something you need to know a little bit about our teachers and staff every day I watch our teachers and staff with the kids every single day and every single day I can attest it's the same high level work day in and day out I can only describe it as sort of an infectious Synergy that our staff has to be the very best that they can be no matter
012what barriers come their way no matter who is in their classroom they do what they need to do for our students you might know that Pon is a very rich culturally and linguistically diverse school or you might not know that but we really are and no matter what comes our way what language child speaks where their home country is or who they are they're getting the top our teachers stay razor sharp focused on the Parkway Mission they have a strong sense of collaboration and Collective responsibility they're exceptional Learners who take on some pretty brave challenges and you know what I mean there's a lot of challenges out there our parents and Community I want to thank they support us and love us each and every day and our parents well they kind of treat us
013like rock stars it's pretty fun they come in and they just treat us like rock stars and that goes a long way with our staff so they're very very supportive and we couldn't do it without them they support us no matter what but I'm telling you our our parents they have some high expectations too they want us to do well by their students and our staff rise to that occasion I also need to thank the people that make this possible because honestly the school board the administration you all give us the platform to do the work that we're doing you give us the high level resources the strong Mission and what we need and even sometimes the autonomy to do what we need to do best and I'm very proud of permont and the Parkway
014School District thank you who's walk well Gina is walking the the line here uh you see uh Chris salt uh who was a a kindergarten teacher at piop had the pleasure of spending some time with him and I think he's referred to as the mayor right and so when Gina talks about her staff I think he is one of the one of the reasons and among all the staff but I understand he greets everybody he gets around the building every morning that's why he's called the mayor right and thank you Gina thanks very much all right our uh final recognition tonight is Chief freay Johnson Ray would you come up and join me Chief Johnson I am very proud that Chief Johnson is able to join us tonight something that uh you may not be
015aware of is uh Chesterfield was incorporated in 1989 uh as a as a official City and uh shortly after that the chief Johnson was selected Ray was selected as the police chief so get this after 35 years he is the only police shape that the city uh of Chesterfield has had and I think that in itself is a wonderful tribute uh I think Ray had a history before Chesterfield but uh certainly spent 35 years here in in the city of Chesterfield I'm going to let him him introduce his uh when he has comments his replacement is here tonight I'm glad she was able to join us let me just say that uh we have been so fortunate to have Ry as the police chief from a a school district perspective uh he has been a
016wonderful supporter in my time and I know even before that for example uh Ry over the years supported we no longer have the d u program but initially in the in the 90s early 2000s Ry was one of the reasons why the D program was set up and he and certainly supported that from the police department at Chesterfield he has been a long supporter of our s SRO program our police and schools and he serves the Chesterfield SRO serve Central High Central Middle uh West High School and West Middle School when Sandy Hook uh occurred 2012 a number of years ago Ry actually came to us the district and said uh we want to support our elementary schools as well so over the last many years Ray has been able to use his staff to
017roam the elementary schools not with a a person dedicat each school but certainly resources for elementary schools and not only that they also serve the the the Rockwood School District and and public private schools as well Rey is certainly always been a wonderful supporter of uh of of Parkway and making sure that we were taken care of at extra events like athletic events and other special um special events uh the department always uh you know made security and safety a major part of their work and it's changes over the years including the cameras and those things came into existence uh ray met with us and always made sure we were comfortable with the work that his officers were doing even when the department faced some uh some fiscal uh challenges a couple years ago Ry
018made sure that our office his officers were going to do his their best job in making sure they're taking care of our school he's a real gentleman he's always a professional a friend of public schools and it's been such a pleasure to work with him over the years because he always made sure uh he took care of Parkway took care of our students our families and our staff so it's my pleasure uh to welcome Ray to make a few comments introduce his his his uh his replacement and uh again let's give Ry a wonderful round for Applause for all his work well thank you Dr Marty and members of the board thanks for inviting me here I'm I'm in good company with all these other uh students that are being recognized so I feel very
019proud to share this with you but um as Dr Marty alluded to uh we've had a great working relationship we the Chesterville Police Department with the Parkway School District I'm very proud of that we've uh uh hopefully served you well uh it's been an honor to for me to have served 35 years with the Chesterfield Police Department but it's uh working with other entities such as the school district that made my job so enjoyable over the years um you know when a a a family or a company or or Corporation for that matter is looking to relocate one of the first things they uh look at is what uh what lies ahead for the their their employees and and what are they bringing into that community and you know they they do look at security
020and safety of their employees but way before that and much higher on their list is what is the school district what are what are the schools like and what do they have to offer the uh children of their their employees so uh we're proud to share that list with Parkway but we're we're down below uh the schools when it comes to what people are looking for in a community I think Chesterfield has um a great rep reputation on all of those lines what people are looking for but again uh the school districts are important part of our community and we and the police department are proud to have and have had an opportunity to work so closely with uh the school district and all these other programs so uh thank you for the recognition here
021this evening um it sounded like I did a lot it was if you spread it out over 35 years I'm not sure it was enough but uh I've enjoyed every moment of it and uh thank you for the opportunity to work with the school district special thanks to Dr Morty and the uh members of the board for this recognition here this evening thank you uh I do want to go ahead sorry I I do want to add one thing and that is uh although I'm leaving I can assure you that the relationship between our department our police department and the school district will continue I've been intimately involved in helping select my replacement along with other members of the city government but one of the certainly one of the requirements if you will on my
022part was that we continue to work with the school districts as we have and my replacement has been selected uh she will be taking over when I leave in mid January and she's here this evening uh captain Cheryl Funkhouser uh she is she is the chief in Waiting uh she has been with the department and and I've worked closely with her for the past 28 years but she's done a great job I know she is is as committed to continuing the relationship with the school district as myself and the rest of the department has been so uh I I'm sure you'll look forward to a good working relationship when she takes over but again thank you for having me here this evening thanks for the recognition and congratulations to all you guys great job I
023think you did more than I did it sounded like it so but thank you and thank you thanks again to all of our parents and students and and your families that were here to join us tonight and uh Chief Johnson and our our Blue Ribbon school and all those who are here to support um so many in our district uh we're now going to take a quick recess and we'll resume our meeting shortly okay we all set to resume um let's see next on our agenda is 7.0 uh additions Corrections Andor modifications those include 7.01 addendum to agenda item 11.06 approval of personnel items 7.02 addition of agenda item 11.30 approval gifts from the public donation to Central High School and 7.03 addition of agenda item 11 31 approval of contract automatic entrance gates for
024grounds and Facilities uh next up is public comments uh we only have one tonight and uh I believe uh our our single speaker tonight is a repeat so uh I won't uh I won't subject you to the the long uh dissertation I I sometimes describe so uh welcome Denise Hawkers Darlene Hawkers nice to see you thank you very much uh good evening Dr Marty president Todd vice president Hopper and esteemed board members my name is Darlene Hawkers self and I'm a science teacher at West Middle School uh watch out tonight Here Comes math uh seasons greetings and happy holidays I'd like to dedicate this to my wife uh the Reverend Hawk herself the math teacher and Special School District teacher of the family I should have had her check my uh numbers in 2022 the
025Trevor Project showed that on average 28% of LGBT You Youth experience homelessness and housing instability linked to rejection violence or fear of rejection or violence or the use of conversion treatments at home due to their lgbtq status some research suggests up to 8% of the population may be lgbtq we are present across various cultures ethnicities religions and races you can assume we are everywhere including in the classrooms the 2022 enrollment in Parkway was 16,99 7 and we can roughly estimate that about 1,360 Parkway students may be lgbtq we can anticipate that uh 1,3 of the 1,360 students uh 17 to 56% that is 231 to 680 students may be experiencing home and housing instability do at least in part to their sexual orientation or gender identity whether at home we at school not every otherwise
026loving adult has the capacity to look upon lgbtq Youth and hide their discomfort or genuinely share their Joy so I'm advocating for bre best practices in schools as reported by glisson's uh School climate learning for justice guide and not just for lgbtq students glisson's 2121 climate snapshot of Missouri reports that between 90 and 99% of students hear insults about gender identity and sexual orientation in Missouri schools boys should be free to be tender and girls should be free to assert with Bas and the rest of us should be allowed to do what we need to do in between how people Express their gender and sexual orientation in school are protected First Amendment rights if we wouldn't object to a heterosexual or cisgender students behavior regarding names manner of dress relationship choices participation in activities day-to-day
027Expressions that are otherwise school appropriate then we should not call out or Target the expression of lgbtq students are we preserving the privacy of our students are we allowing them to develop and disclose their lives at their own pace are we paving a way for them to have the smoothest transition possible into all aspects of school life academics sports clubs relationships with peers dances and graduations why do we Spotlight lgbtq Children and Youth who want a different name used why must we report the differences of sexual orientation when a child reports that they are bullied how dare we medically monitor transgender youth so closely ignoring Health privacy it's chilling Free Speech thank you for your time and your attention happy holidays next up uh may I have a motion in a second to approve the
028agenda for the regular meeting of the board of education is scheduled for December 6 202 so second all in favor I opposed motion carry 70 next up 10.01 is our calendar of meetings the next regular board meeting will take place on Wednesday January 17th 2024 beginning at 7 pm here at the Parkway wel Center uh next is board superintendent reports I don't have much I'll just kind of share a thank you um since the last board meeting we've had some long nights here with various workshops and other um meetings I just want to say thanks to the admin staff thanks to sat team putting in an extra four hours after the work day five hours after the work day being with us having fun sometimes not having fun other times but um we do really
029appreciate it because you're putting in your long work day and there's a lot going on during the school day and having to come afterwards for four to five hours sometimes and being with us we do really appreciate it thank you yeah I want to Echo what Matt said uh it has been some some long meetings since our last board meeting but again uh appreciate everything that happens um I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving holiday um you know for me I know that Parkway is doing something right when after a long holiday my kids are excited to go back to school um whether it's to just see their friends but I think it's it's generally they're excited to go back to school so I was extremely excited for them to go back to school as
030well um and I hope like I said I hope everyone enjoyed a good Thanksgiving holiday and also happy holidays coming up so wonderful yes je um I just wanted to like some of the guys have done already call out attention to our board board Workshop we had the other night um for those you in the community particularly those of you watching online who don't know we have these twice a year and um the one the other night was five and a half hours long and and there was um there was a delicious Buffet but in addition to that it's just a lot of folks who clearly you know as I sit there and I sort of watch the room I didn't contribute very much that night but I listened a lot and there's just a
031lot of people very passionate about the craft of teaching and learning and focusing and honing our vision of how best to help the students in the Parkway School District and coming away from a night like that you know just it's hard to not feel emboldened about the positive future Parkway yeah thank you um so I would like to Echo what Matt said I we want to also thank um our our fabulous administrators and staff that um do such hard work every day um and put in additional time in the evenings uh probably more often than not um in the last couple weeks since our last board meeting a lot has happened we've had Thanksgiving um I caught a cold um we had our first board Workshop of the school year as as uh uh my
032two colleagues before had mentioned um and a lot of topics were discussed at this meeting um and we have a lot of work to do still we are a great District but we still have a lot of work to do to make sure that we're keeping the focus on all of our students success we want all of our students to leave Parkway ready to succeed in the world whatever world might exist by the time they leave we want them to be successful um and I know we have a lot of great people that are working towards doing that and I'm grateful for that um December 2nd I also along with um Mrs Hopper and Dr Marty attended the school board PLC professional Learning Community um where we get together with a lot of the school
033boards in our region and we talk about a a variety of topics ICS that are similar to each of our districts um a couple of things that stood out for me that meeting were was along um social emotional learning and the need for this to be like the the basis of of everything that our students are um learned from if a student is hurting physically mentally emotionally they are not capable of learning and we need to make sure that we understand that that Foundation is there so that our students can be successful that's all I have thank you I don't know what they were talking about those five and a half hours just flew by uh but I do want to thank Nikki that was the best uh Rob bench in the buffet the best
034food we've had at any Parkway event so far so well done thank you other than Char W is also a um so the two questions you get asked as a school board member the most are why are you doing this and what's the worst part of it and uh I'm up for reelection so I need to come up with a better answer for the first question but the the worst the second question it's a very easy answer the hardest part of this job is is the disciplinary hearings which I think someone mentioned earlier uh just because you know we're deciding you know issues that of discipline for students and you know things that can shape their lives and it's a responsibility that we all take very very seriously um but the reason I bring this
035up though is because I think it kind of showcase what I think my answer is to the first question um you know we had a hearing last week and we've had a few of over the years and they're they're very tough nights but I'm very proud to be part of a board that even in those environments those difficult when we're making difficult decisions you know we work together to try to as best we can still trying to help kids even at you know the kind of the lowest moment of their academic careers and you know it's not just about the board but I think that's just the climate of the school district is you know Sam stino always talked about you know how what how is what we're doing good for kids and it's something
036that this board it's a question we ask when we're making any decision I think that Echoes out through the the whole district and I'm very proud to be a part of a district and a board uh that puts kids first well I'll echo my um thanks as well to the administration in addition to that very lengthy board Workshop which takes a lot of preparation to begin with um and then trying to come up with the ideas the topics as to what we should really delve deeply into because on a board night we just don't have that much time but in addition to that some of us also attended on um Tuesday night the project Parkway steering committee meeting and Dr Beckner and uh Dr Beth hman um are leading the charge with that and facilitating
037that and I know a number of our administrators had attended that meeting as well including Dr Marty so um so that was a a wonderful opportunity to get to hear the results of all of the focus group meetings that we have been having um for the past several months um focus groups have taken place with students staff our community members um board members um a variety of different advisory committees that we have uh within Parkway to come up with uh where are we headed with our school district and where do we want to be and we'll hear tonight from um Dr Beckner I believe on our vision for a learner and Dr Beth Heman as well which has been generated out of the work from Project Parkway as well um so that we're um continuing
038to stay on the edge of being a very Innovative District uh so that we can do again what is best for all of our students um then with that on Wednesday night I also in my capacity in serving on the special school districts governing Council I serve um on a subcommittee to evaluate the bo the process for electing the Special School District Board of Education directors uh that process is starting as all of the candidates for school boards are starting to um their first filing date was yesterday I believe December 5th and it will run through December 26 the difference with special school district is that the governing Council is the only body that elects the C the Board of Education directors to the Special School District and that's done through an application process and
039then through a personal interview process and so it I have felt that it's been very important that we need to be be more robust in that process the last time we reviewed the process was in 2018 and uh we wanted to um make some changes to make some things very clear uh with the direction of where we want to go with um th that election of board members we currently have two seats that will be open for the March 2024 election to the SSD Board of Education so if you know of any individuals in any of these areas please encourage them to go to the SSD office to pick up an application packet uh we have subdistrict five the incumbent currently is Dr Meredith buers and subdistrict five includes the school districts of brandwood Kirkwood
040Lindberg Valley Park and Webster Groves so that board member on SSD would be representing all those school districts and then in subdistrict six our incumbent is Miss Tiffany Hudson and that includes school districts of Leo Normandy Ritner and University City so uh we look forward to that that process and and hope that we can continue to um to make it a better process than it's been in the past and then we had the board workshop and then on Friday I also attended a government relations meeting um and prior to that in that morning I did attend a government ad um legislative advocacy Zoom webinar that was conducted by our St Louis County Board PLC group um and so I think the the big message here is uh December 1 was was the first date for
041pre-filing bills that legislators could file bills and that uh we really need to keep an eye on the various different bills that are going to be filed and that will be talked about in the next legislative session we will particularly those related to education we're learning that legislators really want to hear from students and parents they just assume that they will hear from people like board members and teachers but they really want to hear from students particularly and parents so encourage your students encourage your parents to get out there stay on top of this and we is I will commit to trying to Make a Better Effort to communicating what some of the key issues are that in our board subcommittee reports as to what some of the legislation is that we really need to
042keep an eye on and then Saturday morning of course uh as as um Miss Matt Franklin uh already talked about was the St Louis County PLC event which was pretty well attended for Saturday morning on the cool December day um but some of the focus groups we had a legislative advocacy session with a case study um the focus groups that we we broke out into our social emotional learning career and college Readiness student voice and empowerment early childhood education equity and legislative advocacy um I went to the student boys and artment I had intended to walk around and and go to Al but once I got into that one I was just so overwhelmed by these kiddos and it it gave me a new hope that uh wow we've got some spectacular young people out
043there who are going to be leading the charge and they are worth listening to so uh we welcome those opportunities to um increase our um opportunities to meet more with our students within the Parkway School District as well and then the governing the Special School District governing council meeting I attended on December the 4th we received an update on year two their five-year um comprehensive School Improvement plan as well as an update on the budget and their process with that which is budgets now are those processes have begun underway in school districts so uh we'll be hearing about some of that tonight for Parkway as well and then we we did review the revisions made to the process for going through the Special School distri District Board of Education director interview and application process and
044the the governing council did approve those changes so we were pleased we can move forward with that thank you uh I will I will be brief since uh some of the things I was going to mention have already been mentioned uh but I'll add my own thanks to uh uh administrators and directors uh and all the people that worked with us uh on our board Workshop we do really appreciate your time especially in those late night um and I'll all only other thing I'll add is uh that Tiffany I got to participate in the progress 64 lunch um that that happens every fall uh this year's theme was champions in action and uh they they honor people who have achieved think great things uh not just in the region but uh uh not not necessarily
045professionals but also some students uh so this year they handed out four scholarships uh or $20,000 and half of those scholarships to to students who were from Parkway so uh great to see uh everything going on uh that and it's I think it's been almost every year we've had at least one um so this year we uh we had two students that we recognized so great to see you thank you um I would be remiss if I didn't uh pass on the administrations thank you that some nice compliments but please no we also appreciate all the time you put and uh the big p you get as a result of all that time but no we really do appreciate the relationship we have with the board and your your willingness to put in all that
046time as well uh in the last month I I had the pleasure of attending the uh Missouri Hall of Fame a couple of Sundays ago and the reason I went is Dr Tom Smith who's our who's a Parkway Alum and is president of our alumni association was inducted into the Missouri Hall of Fame you might say well how what did how did you do how did he achieve that who was a longtime uh athletic director at Missouri Baptist and very successful and really grew that Athletic program so I and a number of the Alumni Association members were had that pleasure and it was a particularly uh interesting they had 25 U Rec recognitions and the last one was uh was Mr way R from the Cardinals and so they had a lot of a number
047of people that uh had achieved wonderful things in Missouri Athletic history so it was a wonderful wonderful day congratulations to Dr Smith who by the way has doing a wonderful job in that role I also uh had a pleasure last week uh so we were pretty active in Parkway Junior Achievement a lot of our almost every one of our students get a chance to go to Biz toown and in their fifth grade and then we also do oftentimes business people coming into classrooms well last week I just happened to be at barretts and get this 70 volunteers many of them parents were at barretts for a what we call Ja in a day now I'm on the ja board we try to really think differently because it's hard to get people to come over different
048times so the J and a day is where you spend a whole day with various volunteers talking about economics and finance and various activities had 70 volunteers at Barrett what a what a what a wonderful uh salute to that community and it was a wonderful uh to get in and out of classrooms and see that those activities uh that was last week um also uh just want to uh indicate that um on this is a way a little bit down the road but um on February 4th uh we'll have our summer Expo for Community Education it's going to be a West High School so Circle that date Mike sey and his staff put together a wonderful program and we like our community to get out because there's so many there's about um over a hundred
049people who who show up and talk about the things that are offered in the area for for students in the summer um we have a new commissioner in the CATE of Missouri you probably have seen that Senator Carla essinger who is A from Southwest Missouri former superintendent uh former employee at at Desi the department and uh for the last several years since about 2015 been in the legislature both in the house and now in the Senate she will take over from RG even in uh in June so she's going to finish her term as a senator I've had the opportunity to spend some time with her both in terms of um being in Jefferson City but also some orientation I got involved in last year with new legislators and then she actually sponsored a bill
050to get some funding for character education so we invited her in last year and had a wonderful relationship with her so I I think it's a good choice personally and U somebody who's certainly you know knows public education very supportive and we're looking forward to working with her you'll notice in this room some new signage you all notice that uh we have continually work going on uh pad gutting and uh from our uh uh operation staff has been working you may remember we kicked off a high cof last year but they've accelerated this work and so most of our schools now are going to have and we have soon completed signage both on the outside and inside so you know uh Jeff said it it's it's kind of uh he's notice it certainly but the
051reason for this is H for security and for both police and fire so uh you'll see this continually show up in our schools uh I think that's uh I think I've covered most of the things and I know we want to get on with the meeting but again thank you board for your nice compliments and thanks for all you do and I hope everybody has a good holiday season next up uh I'd like to share information about the Board of Education candidate filing board candidate filing opened yesterday at the St Louis County Board of Elections as of today three candidates have filed for the two open positions on the parkway board education I will now State the candidates names in order that they will appear thus far in the ballot uh and allow them to
052stand if they are in the audience or Happ to be SE visit the table uh candidates as their names will appear in the ballot are Matthew Shin Kevin Seltzer Todd Williams filing will continue through Tuesday December 26 2023 at 5: PM candidates must file in person at the St Louis County Board of Elections 725 Northwest plaz Drive St an Missouri 63074 no filing will take place at the district office candidates May file between 8:00 am 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 election office will be closed on December 7th and December 25th and may also close due to inclement weather the election will be held on April 2nd 2024 next up is our agenda we've all had an opportunity to
053review that so may have a motion to approve the consent agenda is presented the December 6 2023 board material so second anything to be pulled action or closed all in favor I any opposed any extensions motion carries 70 thank you uh next up we have Dr Beckner and Dr Tiffany hman Bess uh joining us to discuss the project Parkway 3.0 Vision sets well thank you very much president Tod vice president Hopper members of the board Dr Marty Mrs Stover it's a pleasure to be here we certainly recognize that you guys have a lengthy agenda tonight with policy reviews and work sessions and reports so we will um certainly try not to belabor and this particular item that's said if you to indulge us with about 90 seconds of a walk down memory lane because it
054was one year ago that we sat in the board workshop last year and laid out the entire process for project Parkway that we've been walking down for the last 12 months or so of course the planning began before that and I'll give all the credit uh to the Fantastic individual to my left who when we get new people from other districts who join us in positions they ask interesting questions and one of the things uh that Dr Hol and best asked early on was Hey where's your profile of a graduate which is a pretty standard thing now in districts where you have something that shows here's what we are expecting of our Learners and though we have a robust mission in Parkway we didn't have something that really clearly laid out here's our profile of
055a graduate so we began talking about that and people said how is this different from our vision well most people in Parkway didn't know what our vision was now so that was one thing but two we said okay we'll call ours a vision for a learn but it's really if you hear that that similar language from other districts that's certainly something that's very common right now um so this process around creating our vision for a learner began with Community input and feedback we started broad with a thought exchange uh launched February 13th so about uh 10 months ago we had over, 1400 participants uh in our data over 70% of those participants were parents uh with their remainder being staff those participants shared almost 1300 unique thoughts tons of ratings of those thoughts which thought
056exchange gives us we were able to get a sense of what our community was thinking we then took that information to our steering committee that read through all that information and tried to start framing out okay what is our community telling us uh looked at all kinds of stuff created some graphics of hey what could this potentially look like we then took all of those on the wall and put up every single word that people said and tried to start capturing okay what's going on here in these and ultimately it looked like oh there seemed to be four categories of words here something about students being uh critical thinkers something about them being uh resilient or adaptable and we took that information back to project Parkway our community meeting if you remember these Monopoly cards
057which I know nearly all of you uh were there for uh we started actually framing out okay if there were these four things what might those look like and get lots of community input and feedback and spend time really working through what might this look like and what do we think about our Learners and what are the words that we actually want to use to describe what we're trying to do with our kids and what that looks like like now there's Mr Rey right there working hard Mr Rey thank you for that uh then we brought to our board meeting uh uh to our board Workshop I believe um here's where we're starting to frame this out and here's what this is is starting to look like um we then took that back to our
058steering committee and have the steering committee really work through okay if we have something that our community has now told us both broadscale and in the project Parkway meetings here's what we're starting to think this looks like our steering committee really took that and framed out even more specifically okay let let's see how this works we then actually had them um vote and and place stickers on uh which ones of these do you think most accurately capture what our community is telling us and where we go from here we then took that steering committee feedback and um drew a very ugly early version of the vision for a learner thank goodness we have professional graphic design people who were able to take this nonsense and turn it into something much more much more appealing and
059we went through multiple versions to get to this and in this wheel you know you see the words on it then we had versions where there were no bullets and there were bullet I mean you know we refined this whole process and continued uh to really try to get to where we are today which is what we're bringing for your consideration this evening is our vision for a learner where we have four parts to it a a critical thinker an owered learner a connected Citizen and a resilient individual I know the board has a copy of of that in front of you as well tonight and we mentioned I believe it was Miss Hopper a minute ago who mentioned that we're an Innovative district and and really pushing and this really while this honors a
060lot of the work of our community there are also some things in here that are saying no we want to be different we want to we we don't see in many districts vision for a learner or profile of a graduate the idea about a resilient individual and when we went out and got community feedback and it was very positive that we're capturing the whole child here that it isn't just about kids um succeeding academically in their classes but really about them being whole people in fact here was our feedback um if you recall we actually put our vision sets up in every school building across the district um and we gave the opportunity for our community to continue to give feedback around that we even had our elementary school teachers put in their classroom newsletter
061because we know that those get read hey give us feedback and uh we said fourpoint scale how well do we C capture this and nobody was at a one or a two every single response was at that three or four level which showed us we're really capturing what our community was telling us after all of that work which was wonderful um we do have one word and I appreciate Miss Hopper who called yesterday and we talked through this word agency and because in all of we had about 200 total comments submitted uh from our community um this last semesters we have those Vision venues up in our schools um six of them were about this one little word agenc which is really interesting that's not a ton but it was enough to say huh and
062I appreciate the call because um this is a word that we're going to have to educate our community on because it's not one that we're super familiar with but agency um has actually been around this whole process uh I showed you these pictures earlier but I'll just zoom in uh here was April 17th we had that word agency showing up uh on one of our initial sets and we put all those words on the board down there bottom right right there we had agency kind of hanging whole word that's been been floating around this whole time um and agency is this definition which I won't Reverb them but I'll leave on the screen but I want to highlight a couple words the capacity to take action and we don't want our kids to just be
063um Learners who sit in class and just do what they're told we want them to take action we want to innovate so that they see that they have agency ownership power over what's happening with them um actually have the a good fortune to just visit some uh schools over in the Kansas City area just yesterday I walked in the building and the very first thing in their vision is we're here to promote learner agency and when we walked around their schools and we talked to kids we heard them say I feel like I have actual impact here I feel like I can do things so it you're right to just ask the question Miss H hey what's this word does it does what is it do well this is an opportunity for us to innovate
064and continue to work for our kids so that they can have power and and be EMP powered Learners and so certainly appreciate it also this is our current CIP and we have three Mission Focus goals when we think about the word agency it actually touches all three of these that if we want our students to feel like they belong part of belonging is I actually matter here that the things I do the things that um I take action on I have agency over that I have I belong here I matter here or even in our academic goal in the middle um we were intentional to use were their goals that we want it to not be our goals for them but their goals that they can have agency over what they're doing how they achieve
065those and then certainly when we think about our students developing a sense of that school is relevant and meaningful for them that they have a purpose and a path you can't develop that if you don't have agency over yourself and your life and so while I'm want to call out just this one word because it was an excellent question from Miss Hopper we've been having lots of conversations when we zoom out and we think about agency it's got all of these pieces our our Learners identity their mindset their belief and we want a lot for our kids that's not just do well in school get good test schools we want you to be a resilient individual we want you to be a connected citizen we want you to be an empowered learner we want you
066to be a critical thinker and so we certainly appreciate the board uh considering this tonight and thank you for the chance to share about our vision for a learner thank you both very much I don't have any questions any other board member have any questions thank you for your time Mr thank you can I I just want to Kevin and I I think had a little discussion strategic plans what we talking about here moving forward with project Parkway uh one of the characteristics is it should stretch it should stretch the organization it's not about status quo it's not about discontinuing the work so I think when Kevin uh Dr Beckner talks about agency and maybe some other aspects there's some things in here that that are stretching and that's important because uh I think uh
067as Tiffany said earlier we got some work to do and uh we need to think about you know what that what we have to do to make sure every student is successful so it's not about just continuing it's about stretching so whether it's agency or other things that we need to do and we'll continue the work second semester and finishing the work and where we're going with our future Beyond The Vision uh it's really about where we're going to make sure our students are successful in the future because we like to think I think we're doing well and we've done well but we got some work to do and I think uh again it should be a stretch and I think part of our discussion too was how are we going to monitor this and
068how are we going to measure it how are you g to measure if a student has agency and so that begins with the process of understanding what it is and then how do we get there because the ultimate goal for them is to when they leave here this is what we're hoping to see and I I do love all of the the four big headings that have come together over the course of time so um so I think that was just sort of how we gonna make sure that this vision is being met over time thank you very much so having may I have a motion in the second that the Board of Education approve the vision for a learner as presented December 6 2023 board meeting materials so second call please Mrs hopp yes
069M mat Franklin yes Mr Rey yes Mr Shindler yes Mr Seltzer yes Mr Spectre yes Mr Tod yes motion car 70 next up 13.0 is policy review uh policy review includes 13.01 gbaa BP staff extra Duty assignments and 13.02 gcbaa BP professional sta compens ation uh we've all had an opportunity to review those policies and uh some of us have been a part of of the evolution of changes to those um do any board members have any further questions about either of those policies I happen to have one question okay on um Dr vas can you gcba so the question is on the second page item number four um I'm sorry can you tell me which one oh I'm sorry gcba this is the professional staff compensation second page okay item number four so I
070I just was I took a pause on the second sentence employees are responsible for fully pring of their relevant background experiences when first being employed in the position once the employee is initially placed on the salary schedule the district is under no obligation to review the placement can you explain that a little bit more because it all and why I ask it is it almost sounds like a little bit in Conflict to employee responsibility where if they if they're being held responsible to verify that their salary schedule placement is correct and say they find that it's not then they need to be able to work with the district to go back and make that correct so that's why I was I was kind of questioning what that's all about so this this policy passed the
071first time and so with the revision um of that did not take into account this but when we look at practice for us when we do hire a staff member being a teacher um a salary is given to the teacher based on their experience um the Human Resources office uh sends that to them electronically so that they know an agreement then is understood between the candidate with HR to know where they fall in the salary schedule uh and then an agreement is made when an offer is is presented and so when I look at this it might be one of those that if if later they say differently that was already agreed upon salary um but again I'm reading this right now I I'm not sure I fully understand your question to be honest well
072it it said they're responsible for appr prising the District of their relevant background experience when first being employed so you would think that that would have been already established before they were employed because that's why they were given the the offer correct correct yeah and so then if if they're in once they're initially placed on that salary schedule it says the district is under no obligation to review the placement so I was confu I I wasn't clear on what that meant so once they're there they can't the district does not make sure that it's correct and that it's in order properly so again I guess it would be that if a if a individual then a year later said well I had more experience or a different degree or whatever it's not the responsibility of
073the district then to go back and do that it's their responsibility in the initial agreement uh offer and the approval of that offer upfront to to be understanding of where we're coming in on their salary we do have individuals that then get additional I'll say certifications Etc and we honor those as we talked earlier in the evening um and so those we do go back and look at those in terms of if somebody got their masters or their Bachelors plus 15 and presented that information we moved them on the salary schedule okay I think what he's saying is it's the district it's the employees responsibility not the districts once there an established employee right makes sense yeah okay I I I just wanted to be clear on what I was reading and understanding here so
074that's all I think it'd be fair to say Dr Bas that most when we were hiring somebody you are real clear about that you asked them you know be please present everything that you need to present right now right right and we go back I mean we go back and forth because within that uh conversation and then electronic Ally through email to lay out Suzanne does a wonderful job in our office to map out all of the certifications years of experience if they're coming from another school district we can honor up to 10 years for our CBA with the teachers union uh we go back and forth on that to make sure that they are in agreement with the salary that we have before uh the final I would say agreement is made with them
075for a salary that we bring to the board okay okay and this is all from MSB language correct correct so that's right covered that way okay I mean I guess I'll take the opportunity most of the revisions of these two policies are things as we look at msba information that we look to see on these two particular policies there are certain edits we wanted to make that made them more appropriate to Parkway versus another District in the in the St or in the Missouri region to where they might be adopting those those are the strike through that we were bringing forth tonight okay all right thank you y any other questions okay thank you d uh these policies will be up for approval at the next regular board meeting uh next up is uh 14.0
076we have a report on social emotional support services and School counseling comprehensive program evaluation so I'd like to invite uh Erin schy Dr Erin schy coordinator of counseling and character education and Sher Maga our Parkway director of social emotional support services to join us good evening president Todd vice president Hopper members of the board Dr Marty Mrs Stover thank you so much for having us tonight and allowing us to talk to you more about the mental health supports in Parkway this presentation will discuss mental health and the state of our students postco and the green ribbon is the international symbol of mental health awareness and the color green symbolizes growth and new beginnings and so you will see that there was one placed for you um to be able to wear in on honor of
077your mental Wellness as well as honoring those um that are your colleagues and your friends and strangers recognizing that wellbe is important we also shared pins in the back for those of you that um are participating we are all pretty familiar with our mission but I think it always Bears repeating before we start a report like this we know that the Parkway School District mission is to ensure that all students are curious capable caring and confident Learners who understand and respond to the challenges of an everchanging world the long-standing commitment of the district has been to develop these four qualities in our students this commitment has also seen its share of barriers most recently and most notably uh the biggest challenge has been to overcome the isolation and fear brought on by the global pandemic
078in response to those challenges and we just heard Dr Becker enner and Dr Holman best discuss um some of the goals that we have in order to increase a sense of belonging and a sense of social emotional well-being in our students the two of us along with our school counselors our care coordinators our social workers and our social emotional Behavior Specialists all of the positions that we're about to talk to you a little bit more about um believe there's nothing of Greater importance than supporting and boosting the well-being and feel feelings of belonging in our students through this report we intend to show you the ways in which our mental health staff significantly contribute to making those goals a reality in the June board meeting um you all approved several questions for us to look
079more deeply into and investigate um and we have organized our reports around those questions so the first um of those was what are the current mental health needs of students we answered this question in three phases we organized it with the National Data Missouri data and then our own specific Parkway data even before the pandemic happened we noted that the data for this for students was trending in the wrong direction we noticed it so much here in Parkway that we even organized a mental health task force around it to make plans about how we were going to serve our students then we saw what happened happened across the world and what we know from data on prior pandemics and prior um events that have closed down schools for extended periods of time is that the
080research clearly indicates that there will be both um immediate and long-term adverse consequences for many students and many children the data that you see on the screen much of it is from a report done by the CDC um they did this report over the course of 10 years so between between 2011 and 2021 um this report was published in 2021 um I'm not going to read the slides to you but I do want to highlight a couple things and I want to note that this study was done throughout the country um it involved over 177,000 responses to surveys from students um much like ours it's considered a valid and reliable study it's also um a very diverse sample of students um but we see that in 2021 42% of high school students felt so sad
081or hopeless almost every day for two weeks in a row that they stopped doing their usual activities I point this out because hope or lack thereof can be a really big indicator of suicide or suicidal ideation the second one I want to draw your attention to is that in early 2021 they saw that emergency department visits in the United States for suspected suicide attempts went up 51% for female students and 4% for adolescent boys compared to the same period in 2019 so prior to the pandemic um that's just a really staggering statistic and large jump um and then finally we saw increases in students engaging in non-suicidal self- injury so one in five female students and one in seven males said that they um harmed themselves on purpose data on Youth and mental health across
082the state of Missouri largely mirrors that National data the Missouri Department of Mental Health reports that 34.7% of Missouri students said that they felt hopeless sometimes often or always and this statistic is important because feelings of hopelessness often lead them to depression and deeper levels of concern the Missouri Department of Mental Health also found that 20.6% of Missouri students engage in nonsuicidal self harm and thoughts of suicide also seem to be on the rise with one in 10 Missouri Youth who were surveyed reporting that they considered suicide in the last year these statistics within our Missouri Youth are worrisome and they're alarming when we talked with both parents students and staff it was quite interesting because they astonishingly figured out that the largest part of of what we're asking about our students mental health and
083their Wellness of saying what really is the biggest concern they outlined three areas consistently and in the same order they stated that our students are really struggling most with anxiety and secondly with depression and third with Stress Management and emotional overwhelm the RO program that we have it's just incredible program much to um Dr Shy's investment our student wellness data is a program where um an agency comes and they really talk to our students and they screen them and this school year has begun and we have already screened then three high schools and a small portion of our middle school and what we have come to best understand is that yet again 58% of students that have opted in so those are students students that we've already identified and we know um we have concern
084for that they 58% have positive screen results and those positive screen results then are outlaid to say that they're reporting higher suicide ideation reporting suicide attempts and I think what's most important to really understand is that these types of disclosures are often very hidden and they're quiet and so there above the national average of what we what we know currently within our the questioning our students this school year when we look at what we asked of them last year in the same program um it's it's quite similar so Parkway students reported suicide adiation higher again than the national average and of the students that we um recognized at in was in our fifth grade students who this year are in sixth grade it's also just really worth noting that Parkway students reported self-injury close to
085the national average across the district but higher on the national average for fifth graders again in this past year students also reported above the national average for their lifetime possible mental health Wellness Focus areas that we need to take note on are students that have internalizing attention rumination and self harm Behavior plus suicide ideation those are the areas with which we have learned more about as it relates to the student wellness program it really is our goal to have students opt out so that we're best able to find those students that are really struggling potentially mostly with the ruminating and the internalizing so that we ask them how they're what they're thinking and they're feeling not just what we see in behaviors in externalizing ways so on the screen now you see the counselor suicide
086screening data this indicates the number of times a student said wrote or did something that prompted a staff member to worry that that student might harm themselves in these cases counselors respond by conducting a suicide screener and determining whether or not that student is in need of a full assessment which would then be conducted by one of our care coordinators or our social workers you'll notice on the screen that it says that the total number was 108 however this data um we had to have into long before today so I looked this morning um and that number as of this morning was 128 once a student then has um indicated when on a screener that there is concern for suicide ideation our care coordinators and our social workers step in to complete a full suicide
087assessment and what that means is they're seeking to better understand um the intensity of the students thoughts their method their plan and their intention and and since this report was written um much like what Dr schy explained the the number of Assessments has increased to 76 following those assessments this is work that quite honestly I'm pretty proud of so the students um disclose and are assessed by our care coordinators and our social work staff and then after that assessment they make a determination of what they're going to do based on what that student needs and so what you see is that the majority of the time 20 some percent students then receive outside services so an urgent immediate therapeutic appointment whether it's with a therapist or with a psychiatrist um also our staff say safety
088plan so they safety plan with students and they safety plan with parents and in addition to that they safety plan with their buildings so how do we ensure that students are um secure in a safe environment and supervised within the school building and one of the smallest yet off sometimes what they will do is they'll make a referral to our hospitals for immediate um psychiatric support and safety and possible medication modification um so this is important work and I think it shows that when a student is really saying at a heightened level I need help because I am potentially going to hurt myself our staff involve other staff they involve parents they involve students and they ensure that that before that child leaves that the building and when the child returns that the child is
089safe and that we do everything in our power to ensure that we do due diligence I think it's important also as a data point to just look at 504 data Section 504 is often thought of as applying only to students with physical or health impairments however of the 926 students who qualified under Section 504 last school year the majority have a 504 plan to address symptoms of ADHD 38% of 504 eligibility students have a mental health impairment often addressing diagnosises such as anxiety or depression and it's important to also recognize that most students have more than one diagnosis and recognizing that 504 plans then address multiple disabilities and symptoms another population we wanted to draw your attention to um and that is also increasing our our English language Learners or newcomer students um you can
090imagine acclimating to a new culture learning a new language generally feeling some form of isolation or loneliness because you've likely left some folks that you love at home um can all bring on a whole lot of stress um that in addition to our students who have Refugee status have almost certainly experienced some level of trauma before coming here um also it's an extremely rigorous process to even become a refugee here in the United States we cannot ask families whether or not they have Refugee status legally but we did talk with our lead elll teacher and she told us that um if a student comes to us from Colombia Russia or the Ukraine we could be pretty sure that they're either a refugee or have had some sort of adverse experience prior to coming here um
091so we also wanted to draw your attention to those growing numbers of that that specific subset of students um when students experience adversity to that degree um we might see different behaviors at school and very often it is our mental health staff who are responding to their needs the second question that you all asked us back in June or approved for us to investigate back in June was what is the current Continuum of Care for mental health in Parkway and so to answer that we turn to our multi-tiered systems of support you'll see on the bottom there tier one intentional instructional practice that is service for all students tier two um we're targeted interventions services for some students perhaps because they did not get what they needed at tier one um and then tier three
092intensive interventions which we would describe as services for few students and when we look at our staff with regard to that Continuum of Care we see that the school counselors are really serving students at tiers one and two um so they are considered support for all our care coordinators are at tiers two and three and they are for some and few social workers again similarly tiers two and three support for some and few um and our social emotional Behavior Specialists um run the gamut tiers one through three and support for all the next question that you all approve for us to investigate or what are the roles of those mental health staff um that we just named so we're going to go through that in order of of the tiers that they serve so we'll
093start with our school counselors what you can see on the screen here is the Missouri comprehensive School counseling program components school counselors are supposed to divide their time into four different areas so that first one the school counseling curriculum um that could really be looked at as classroom lessons or structured groups um and that is service to all students K through 12 um those really focus on probably one of three topics um academic skills social emotional development um or their Career Development individual student planning um looks a little bit like that it's just uh it's usually on one of those same topics but it is oneon-one individual as that word suggests so um you know that looks like career planning that looks like you know making your schedule um selecting your courses um decision-making skills
094and your own personal goal setting so that would be one-on-one counselor with students um the third area is responsive services and um that could look like brief individual counseling that could look like small group counseling um but that's also where the crisis intervention on the part of our counselors comes in um so that could be about any of those three topics um we also lump the suicide screener in there as well so that would be them you know responding to an immediate need that a student has and finally um system support and that would include just anything that really the school as a system needs so that's them you know planning what their program is as school counselors at their school um but that's also community relations parent relations parent communication um counselor their own
095professional development um falls into there and so every month um we audit our time about where are we spending our time as school counselors here um I randomly choose days at the beginning of the year and then counselors submit a sheet where they audit their time for every 15 minutes they document which bucket it go uh their time was spent in um and so we compiled this data for the past five years um the state of Missouri also has or desie has suggestions based on level about where and how much time they should spend in each area so I'll go through it by level um you can see here um on the right side the blue is the desie recommendations and the red is where we are with our data in Parkway so you can
096see that we are under in the amount of curriculum we provided Elementary we are over in individual planning we're about right at responsive services we are over in system support and then another thing that I did not put on that chart before this was um non-u guidance which is just another um term from desie where it's things that the counselors do that really could probably be anyone at the school to do um but it sort of just falls on their plate they don't have any special training to do it um but they are the ones doing it um and so looking at that you know we dove into the the qualitative data to figure out why this might be um why we might be over in some areas and under in others um with curriculum
097particularly at the elementary level we heard a lot especially if the school only has 1.5 counselors um it's really hard to plan around a schedule when you are potentially the only mental health provider in the building at any given time um so not having a full-time care coordinator um and then not having a full-time counselor partner um really inhibits their ability to do that because they may need to respond to a crisis at some point in time during that so hate to be pulled from a classroom lesson um for something of that nature but of course you would um then for individual planning um they're over um and when I when I looked into the qualitative data for that um it really looks like um in individual planning um IEP meetings 504 meetings all of
098the things that lead up to that fall into the individual planning um time and so they are spending quite a bit of time um on those things um for system support they really did talk a lot about and it's interesting because it's these are all good things and all things we want to do um and yet they're they're over in the amount of time that they're supposed to be spending there um but that is really you know parent education or collaborating with parents collaborating with teachers um they also I think worth noting um they run the problem solving meetings quite often at their schools and so that would fall into the system support bucket as well um non-u guidance for elementary when I dug into that um they are most often asked to do lunch
099duty almost every single day um they also complete review of existing data packets for SSD um that that that is the they have the most of any level um to do and that takes quite a bit of time um and and then they also during the sub shortage and Beyond have been asked to substitute teach for our teachers when we could not find another substitute for middle school you can see again we're under in curriculum we're about right for individual planning pretty close for responsive Services maybe a little bit over um over in system support and also over in non-u guidance um they cited a lot of the same reasons as Elementary School counselors um but they also they so they talked about working around teacher schedule working around the building schedule to get into
100the classroom um but they also really talked about their level of crisis response um and I would explain it that I think they're um really struggling to get out from under so much crisis out from under responding at a tier two or tier three level to get to prevention and tier one um we can also look at first system support um similar to the elementary school counselors um they collaborate with families they collaborate with other teachers um and they also quite often are responsible for running the problem solving meeting um so that would would count also as system support their most frequent non-u guidance activities similar to elementary school were also um as being asked to substitute teach and um doing lunch duty every day and then finally for our high schools you could see
101also that we are under in the amount of curriculum we're over an individual planning just under in responsive Services right on for system support uh and again over in nonu guidance um again um I think the academic focus at our high schools inhibits them the most from getting into classrooms to do Universal lessons and prevention um um work uh they have to plan around a teacher schedule they kind of have to get permission to to go in and do it um and sort of you know whether that's trying to interrupt academic lab or interrupt um the curriculum that the teacher had planned that day or that time um just can be busy and difficult um and I think too you know thinking about high school schedule there's just so much going on at any given
102moment um at any given time that throws off the the normal schedule there um so that was in digging into qualitative data what we saw there um individual planning I think can also be explained by the um 504s the IEPs but also the focus on academics and really looking at students course planning and course schedules there are certain times of the year where they spend a lot of their time one-on-one with students planning those things for them and with them um and so I think that explains that pretty well um we were pretty spot on for the other two but for non-u guidance um their biggest non-u guidance activity would be to coordinate schoolwide testing so ACT SAT PSAT AP exams ASVAB you name it the the high school counselors have a big role in
103planning that for the whole school um and it is it is quite time consuming um with all of the the different needs that students have the different accommodations and things like that um and so that not necessarily considered a counseling duty but they do they do it and they do it well and they do it with Fidelity um but they also are asked to do lunch duty and they're also asked to do hallway Duty so those things came up for them in non- guidance as well and I'm not gonna I kind of went through the qualitative data but um I did summarize it for you also on these slides but I'm not going to read that to you because I just went over that with you um I did want to highlight the qualitative data
104from students and parents so we asked them you know what is what is the school C celor what does that what do they do for you what how do you perceive them how do you see them our students really felt like they helped me with my academic and my personal concerns and I really liked um many students mentioned that the counselors make school a safe place for them to be um and so I thought that was really um fitting for what we try to do um parents had a similar response um they said that they provide mental health support they advise my student academically um and they assist also with the transition whether that be from um prek to kindergarten 5th to 6th 8th to 9th or their post uh secondary plans as well and
105my last thing that I just want to point out about the structure of school counselors um our ratios um when MIP 6 came out it set a new and I'm going to quote minimum standard for the amount of students we should have per school counselor so both MIP 6 and the American School counselor Association say that we should have no more than 250 students per school counselor um mip6 went a little further and said a desirable standard would be no more than 200 students per school counselor um and so currently uh none of our schools meet the desirable standard 16 of our schools meet the minimum standard and TW of 12 of our schools do not meet the minimum standard after taking a look at our school counselors let's answer the question what is the
106role of the care coordinator and the social worker Parkway School District social workers and Care coordinators are trained mental health professionals and they are hired to enhance the district with their Knowledge and Skills by assisting with mental health concerns behavioral concerns academic supports through consultation collaboration with school home and the community specifically they work with students staff and families by providing those targeted interventions as you saw on the on the um mtss graphic for tiers two and three and that includes but isn't limited to risk assessment psychological education Crisis Intervention cordination of resources Mental Health Services that can include both group and individual therapy there's nine Parkway School District social workers and they're shared amongst all buildings across the district to include preschool through high school there's 18 Parkway School District care coordinators who are
107utilized throughout the district having one care coordinator in each High School one care coordinator in each middle school and a shared care coordinator between two elementary schools in the graphic that we already looked at as Erin explained just wanted to reemphasize that the position of the care coordinator and the social worker most often is utilized within that tier three and two area so those targeted interventions most intensive interventions for our highest need students and just explaining their services in in a in a way that's understood through a leveling system um we often talk about care coordinators and social workers and their role the services that they provide um are in a priority of one two and three and so a service level of one would be the lowest level of what a student might need
108and that might Simply Be crisis intervention so I might help you in one time um due to something that is happening with you and it also might be that you just need psychological education psychoeducation is what we call it in the therapy World um so it's just something like coping strategies or things to help you understand your mental illness or how to just have resilience in a different way or cope at school sometimes within the staff we talk about a service level one as I check in with you it's not something that's always routine it's that I know about you and I check in with you just routinely the second level of service would be case management um case consultation so that might be someone who has receiving outside Services therapeutic psychiatric Psychiatric Services um
109and so managing those services for that student communicating with both staff and parents and Consulting consistently to make sure that we Monitor and keep those students well and that they're um they're we just know how they're doing so often we talk about them as I'm working with you so not only do I check in with you but I'm really working with you on a consistent basis then the highest level of service is a service level of three and what that would consist is of direct routine time that I meet with you and that would be because of intensive wound Services which would mean um more areas of your life so quite possibly it would require our multidisiplinary team and we talk often about you it's the case management of the services outside of school both
110outside and inside and then offering you those therapeutic supports so that might be individual therapy um at school so we refer to that as I individually know you an intake has been completed there's goals that you're working on and that's the highest level of service we asked our students to tell us about um the services that they they received from their care coordinator and their social worker and what was interesting is that they mirrored one another and so we found that they were they were provided with Supportive Services in a myriad of areas just like those service levels that we talked about from both the care coordinator and the social worker and it just really demonstrates the overlap of these positions what is the role of the social emotional Behavior specialist and the teacher assistance
111there's seven individuals with skills in special education academics and mental health and they make up what we call the sebb team it's a multi-disciplinary team of five Parkway School District social emotional support Specialists and two teaching assistants that are highly skilled in building comprehensive systems and providing supportive interventions four scbs are assigned to all Parkway School District buildings offering both consultation and coaching and then there is one individual who provides Contracting to assist stud students specifically so just to highlight quickly um the consultation that our scbs provide that is assisting our schools with that mtss design and and um infrastructure within the school and helping to support mtss also professional development and they are district Trainers for non-violent crisis intervention so they consult with schools at more of a higher level of a macro level
112in our schools they also provide coaching when it comes to a student who's struggling and a teacher that needs some assistance they might need modeling um they might need a plan written they need an observation someone just help coach them that's some of what they offer in a school and it really is that tier 2 student that doesn't have severe needs but is just continuing to to need more than what's offered in a tier one system and then Contracting is a student that is specific that needs more than what is being offered and so an sebb team member um will go into the school with a TA and write a consistent often trauma based plan for that student that involves teaching it involves coaching for the for the adults and just really oneon-one support and
113then they have a TA that's highly skilled that provides the the leadership of that plan and the consistency so that they can go to another school and provide support to another student so when we asked how does the sebb meet the demands of the social emotional mental health needs of students it really was reflected in what they said through the coaching the Consulting um and the Contracting in in what they talked about the SCB role is is a bridge builder between social emotional staff teachers and administration by providing consultation to enhance confidence and teach and the effectiveness in dealing with student needs in that coaching it's the sebb engages in proactive efforts such as professional development and training and then Contracting is what we talked about when it's that individual student they're responsive when a
114student is in crisis and just needs a additional support so how can Parkway mental health staff be more effective in their roles in one of those ways is to elevate Mental Health on a districtwide professional development as a priority so what we know is the success of school mental health programs rely upon educator knowledge of mental health conditions including how those conditions might manifest in school settings so it's important for us to have the knowledge through professional development as well as offer which we've highlighted consistently Clarity of mental health roles in Parkway um as I've already alluded to one of the ways that we could um improve is to offer more prevention tier one Services um both through curriculum and universals and I think additionally to that um tier two as well um and then
115finally an overall focus on Mental Health needs because we can see that we have growing needs um and so how do we really focus in on what those needs are and how we can best respond when we looked at student parent and staff responses to our survey about this question we asked them um since you all asked us you know how can they be more effective um we asked those groups of people and astoundingly again they all came to at least for school counselors um three main conclusions about how that could happen um one of them was that they wanted improved availability slash some of them specifically asked could we have more of them um some of them uh asked for uh more of a focus on mental health and less of things that are
116not actual you don't need counselor training in order to do can we get Focus on the things that counselors are trained to do um and then finally all three groups asked us if we could clarify the roles for everyone um since we have had some pretty recent additions of mental health staff members to our Continuum of support when we ask students parents and staff as it relates to Mental Health Data our students responded that they wanted an increase availability for mental health professionals and that specifically outlines in our elementary building buildings because those those individuals are shared between two and they asked for individual attention that's offered on a onetoone sessions creating a comfortable environment what this speaks to is not that we don't have a comfortable environment we do in every school it's that
117it becomes uncomfortable when the the mental health professional and the student are consistently interrupted and that's what becomes uncomfortable due to crisis and them managing crisis and parents responses were really just more of a collaborative effort a collaborative relationship and more open communication um and then the staff were consistent in saying we'd like to better know roles and what what are the role definitions and um how to mirror what the students and the parents are speaking to and so uh we have some recommendations for you tonight about how to be better um but before we do that um Miss bage and I are extremely interested in research um we are encouraged to utilize research we both um try to stay up on all of the things um with the growing needs with the changes that
118we see um one of the resources that we are often encouraged and led to um is the EAB um and so this is a recent a quote from a recent article that they published um we hear often people ask us should schools really be doing that like are you guys like mental health is that a thing that schools really should be engaging in and do you have the staff for that um and we really feel like the answer to that is yes um we should be supporting our students in all ways that we can um and we should really set ourselves up and our systems up to respond to the needs that we all have seen since 2019 and before um and so we felt like this quote really um summed up how we feel
119um and I'm going to read it it says districts are the Adolescent Mental Health Providers of necessity and choice students often have nowhere else to go for mental health care even when external care is an option data shows that students are far more likely to utilize school-based Mental Health Services districts today cannot afford for not to take the lead in helping their students be well enough to engage in their education and I think this speaks to what you were saying before miss m Franklin that if this is not in place nothing else is going to be in place we're not going to be able to do academics we're not going to be able to get past um anything but this and we are really excited um that we feel we have the right people on
120the bus that we um want to enhance the the system that we have in order to best serve again the growing needs that we have seen for students even before we had a pandemic um so with that our school counseling recommendations are the following um number one to move toward meeting the minimum standard for school counselor Staffing as outlined by MIP 6 number two to research structures Staffing and allocations that would move Parkway school council closer to meeting the time allocations set forth by the Missouri school comprehensive counseling program number three to investigate the barriers that counselors face when trying to implement tier one and tier 2 support and number four to generate Mental Health Resources for the influx of elll and newcomer students who we see and who present specific needs the mental health
121recommendation ations number one is to develop and Implement a combined care coordinator and Social Work role for the school year of 2425 to pursue Staffing to cover Elementary buildings District lead support and areas in the highest rates of mental health concerns as data indicates for specifically the secondary levels this would allow the care coordinator and the social worker to offer tier two and three support and promote services at the highest level of mtss social emotional needs and mental health conditions number three to continue to develop Implement and support multi-tiered systems of support structures districtwide prek through grade 12 and finally research and develop a universal screener as our CIP indicates specifically concentrating on the CIP goals one and three of belonging we wanted to thank you for your time and for your leadership and I
122also just wanted to personally thank you that I get to work with Dr schy the work that we did together it was profound and um it helped us really learn it helped us learn the state of students and where they're at and what our staff needs to do in order to truly affect lives and help kids be safe and help them belong and to be well and I think one thing that Dr schy and I just honestly believe at our core is that students who are well who are seen who are heard and who are known they achieve at their highest level we believe that so thank you what questions do you have for us questions don't uh well thank you very much for for the in-depth uh evaluation that you all did I know
123it was more than just the two of you so I we really appreciate uh everyone's participation in this um having been around when the mental health task force was created and and seeing the work that came out of that I I think we can all agree that we're in a better place than than we were uh what five years ago um but we've had additional challenges since then and obviously through your work and and through just being in this district and in in seeing and encountering kids uh so many people in different roles have seen that there's there's even more things that that uh the mental health task force didn't even uh uncover um so I'm glad to hear and read some of your recommendations obviously the question is how do we how do we
124do those things those those four things in each area um I'll the first question I'll ask is do we need a revisit of the mental health task force do we need a followup to to measure the benchmarks that or the things that we set about to do five years ago and see how we achieved them and if we achieve if we succeeded in in doing what we set out to do five years ago um or Andor should we should we take that that hard analysis again um and and do do the listening tours type of thing and and really spend time with students and and counselors and social workers and and figure out you know are we doing those those things that need to be done to to Really reach students I think um that's
125not a bad idea um I think we are having been a part of that as well um you know I I was really proud that we did put all of those recommendations ations at least on paper in place and you know one thing that we've been talking about a lot with project Parkway and with mtss is you know you can't stop it then putting it in place you have to monitor it you have to give development about it you have to check in on it and I think this is a really good time and also we've had it's a different world that we had in 2019 we saw all the stats how much everything shifted and changed I'm so grateful we had that because I hate to think about what would have happened to some
126of our students did we not have that mental health task force and not have those supports in place um but I do think it is a good time to see now we've got these new structures we've got these new positions is the actual way we've structured it working is the do we have the amount we need or we thought we needed in 2019 what what are the differences in in needs now versus then um so I think it would actually be a great time to update here's what we did and here's what's been up and running um and here's how it's working and here's how we think it could even be betterk um I had another question uh one of you mentioned uh I think it was was you Sherry how the role that that
127mental health plays in academics and in really the question boils down to what are our priorities besides educating kids and if educating kids getting them a good quality education is our number one priority I think that mental health obviously is is key to them being able to succeed um so where does that you know where does that fall on the ladder of of things we need to do to to create you know an education system that is is solid for our students I think I would just argue in balance in balance of recognizing that students St have had adversities and when they have adversities of traumas that are big or they're small it changes you physiologically and so when we address what has happened to you in a way that is honoring to you as
128a person creating a place that is of belonging and knowing then we we write plans and we gather together as a multidisiplinary team to look at what has happened to a child and what do they need in order to succeed at school so I think the answer is just really it's it's the priority of balance and recognizing that students aren't Behavior behavior is a communication of a need and our students have significant needs right now and so how do we help them before the behavior how do we be preventive in knowing their story of what has happened to them and honoring it and then providing them with with the services that they need so that it's a preventive system versus a reactive one so I had a I had a couple questions the first one
129is um could you explain what you mean by a combined care coordinator in social worker role so the idea is that we have staff both care coordinators and social workers and so combining that role in into a different title um like a mental health specialist and so that they do both the roles of Social Work and often we view that as resource giving Crisis Intervention kind like maso's hierarchy of needs and um so we think of Social Work in that way social workers are also therapists and clinicians that is that's true of that discipline and so care coordinators are much of the same they are therapists they're lpcs or lcsws and so combining the role of both social work and Care coordinators into one allows for us to have one mental health licensed clinici in
130each of our buildings so the second question is probably a little harder um so um we as kovenant had mentioned we had a disciplinary review not too long ago um of the questions I have is where are we or how do do the care coordinators and counselors and scbs fit in and social workers fit into our disciplinary process or even to help prevent some of our discipline process that is a that is a complicated question a good one it is complicated um so where they fit in is in preventive of trying to recognize again again again like as a student we know when things have happened to you that you're going to have coping strategies that are maladaptive potentially behaviors and so how do we teach you skills in order to really mitigate that you
131won't need disciplinary actions so it's the preventive piece it's also then being involved with that student once a disciplinary action takes place to restore relationships to better understand socially what is happening with you what's going on on in your life that that you are fighting that you're um inappropriate or disrespectful with your language do you not feel heard do you not feel seen do you not feel safe at school what's going on and with outside of the school so it's it's not something that often is directly involved however I I do believe that it's something that from a lens of mental health of recognizing that again behavior is speaking a communication of a need and so having our mental health lens and perspective at tables through the structure of mtss looking at students what do
132you need what can we offer you is part of discipline it's either before or even after it occurs are we doing that now or are is that like something we're working towards I would say that it's something more that we're working towards um and I wouldn't say that we are involved in it consistently I'll play off that a little bit then you mentioned earlier that our screening is opt in right now so therefore we made the switch to go to opt out all kids that be screened for the most part internally can we meet those needs and even externally with services are the service providers there your pops right now with child therapist out there it's hard to get in that's a great question um so we've been you know partnered with Mental Health America
133um for gosh I think it's been three or four years now um and we have been actually working to build up that partnership um and they have also been working to build up their partnership with outside therapists um so when a student screens and they screen positive currently um they might get referred actually internally to a care coordinator or social worker or an SCB or sometimes the school counselor um they might get referred though to this outside list who where Mental Health America has these Partnerships um and our students as being part of the program have priority where they promise they will get them in um and they will only give the families referrals where the therapist can get them in um and so that's just something we've extensively thought about with going opt out
134um I would say that you know um Brian if you've ever met him is our partner there and we we talk about that probably every time we meet um I think he believes and we believe we're we're at a good place where with that partnership and internal resources building that capacity and then him building the external resources that we would be in a good place to to go opt out soon soon we hope that's our that's been our goal since we started I think it would have to be strategically and well thought um in executing it I just want to thought by way great job and and U one of uh the sessions I attended actually for at the Blue Ribbon uh time session uh in Washington DC recently was uh University of Maryland is
135doing some study um on well in know well-being and wellness and uh here here's one of the things they said and it after hearing this report tonight we're putting a lot lot of a lot of responsibility on us and one of the suggestions is they're doing studying is the communities that are beginning to reach out to healthc Care Professionals but Matt to your point they they that's a limited number that communities need to build capacity with with families and and um a larger community on this issue because we probably can't hire enough professionals to take care of if we take full responsibility of this so that's kind of outside because I think the report was excellent but how do we going to grow um a community that really and parents particularly uh that are are
136going to be engaged with us and this will be over time to the Jeff's Point can we should we reconvene the mental health task force I I think that would probably be in fact I think that was one of the recommendations eron wasn't it you know that we really need to grow a culture of mental health uh and I think we've done a bit of that but I think you know how how are we going to build a healthy Community a community that really cares we can't take it all on I mean they're they're suggesting adding you know number of Staff but you know just think about if we would go to a a universal screening I mean we would need some some help from a lot of resources I think so that's just my
137observation tonight thinking about that report I heard and then how realistic is it that we can take this all on ourselves it really is you know we really are at a at a at a at a capacity issue here some of the other to to tag on to that a little bit is where some of my questions come in is about um the integration of the services there's some other research out of UCLA that will say that we're so fragmented in providing mental health services within schools that we need to and I I was happy to see one of your things about talking about um the redundancies or the overlap between the care coordinators and the social workers and these are the the things that have been recommended by school districts to look at is
138the fragmentation of services and might there be some way to integrate all of these collectively better and more efficiently because the resources in both um in in both Capital human capital and financial Capital we just don't have it and so how can we make what we do have more efficient and effective and I think that's what you were getting at in some of your recommendations tonight um and it it would also seem that um from the curriculum piece I think that was one thing that I almost gasped at when I saw because I thought that's what we need is those counselors in that curriculum to help those students and how how can we help make that happen because that's where those students are going to get some of these things that we're talking about that
139they need how do we do social our emotion regulation and how do we help them with coping strategies and if we if they're not they're not hearing that from their counselors in the classroom with their peers in an integrated fashion that's not singling them out and pulling them into a counselor's office um then that might very well be most helpful for them right because what you're describing is a tier three system that is pretty well defined um with the care coordinators and the social workers of service levels and what they're doing and so I think you're absolutely accurate of how do we Define tier 2 systems so that it is more preventive and students won't access or need tier three services and and the other part of that is when you talked about um I
140was pleased to hear some of the feedback from students talking about a comfortable environment um I have heard from students that they don't like going to the counselor's office or they're getting called out of class or you know this is where you go to get that kind of help and that if it could be more confidential in a way or in a way that they're not being singled out so that because some students don't want to go or when we I think in your report you talked about them being able to make a schedule with their counselor how how what does that look like and how is that being done and it sounds like in some cases it's been done in a very public Manner and they don't like that that they want the confidentiality
141to be able to see their counselor when they want to but with the confidence that they don't have to explain why they want to see their counselor you know because they may not be upfront with it and then they'll get distracted and taken to a different direction because they didn't want to say why they wanted to meet with the counselor so I so I I'm wondering if you're looking at some of those paths as well as to how students when they want to can get to those resources during the day when in a in a more comfortable way within their learning I think some of what that is is twofold though because when you think of universally if we have investment of time in curriculum and in learning and teaching of lagging skills to your
142point of both you tier one and tier two and then in addition to that we create the normaly of you have a village at school that provides you with these services so it you learned that in preschool you learned that in elementary middle and high and those Services transfer with you and we monitor you better and we know you and that way each time you enter into a school you know who your people are and who you can trust so it's all of what you said within the infrastructure of mtss okay and to follow up just a comment it you know what what struck out of my mind was not necessarily all the kids that you know have opted in it's more without getting into the academic classrooms how many are we missing um and
143so getting into the classroom obviously is is the start to to get that support system started early so that's the one thing that struck out to me is how many people are not going to these Services um not necessarily the ones that are so I want to go back to comment Tiffany made about discipline um and Kevin made reference discipline or discipline hearing earlier and I'm curious if we track if this may be a question more for principles or administrators do we track uh the mental health of students that who who are disciplined um because as you as you comment it there's there students that have trauma and often times students with more significant trauma in their lives are ending up being more likely to be disciplined for a variety of reasons because they're acting
144out because of the trauma they experienced and so on so do we do we keep track of of those students are we are we identifying the root cause of of their actions uh in in any of those instances and uh and beyond that um do we do we base our this again this might be a question Greg for um you know our our discipline Review Committee but um do we take into consideration when we're deciding the amount of discipline a student receives for something do we take into consideration those those traumas the students mental health things like that I think currently this school year literally in October we just began to ask our care coordinators and our social workers to really identify their service level and so to your question of are we tracking it
145um that's something that we could begin to do but it's just a very new system of just identifying what level of service students need um so we can in the future begin to ask is this a student that utilizes tier three the highest level of mental health supports and do it would be um known in Infinite Campus um confidentially known in Infinite Campus and so it could pause our administrators to say I might need to ask more questions um or before discipline is decided to then go seek out that information from our mental health staff our counseling staff to know are there mitigating circumstances that would have contributed to potentially why this student is acting or doing what they are doing we also did implement this year a more formal um well we don't necessarily
146require it at all of our schools I think both of our staff members have used it but um where um we have a re-entry meeting um that involves one of our staff members and whether that's to talk about what preceded the discipline event or um how are you feeling now going back and to look at their emotions as they go back into school um and so we are working with Dr Wagner to try to make that more more Universal I would say um where it involves one of our staff members you I had one other question um I forget one of you me there was a slide that showed um the uh showed the different high schools four different high schools and the the amount of um I can't think of what it was but
147but I what struck me was was different high schools their student populations have seem to have different needs or are affected their mental health is is is shows up a little bit different um and my question I guess is how are we making sure we have enough support for those buildings that have a greater need not just assigning one counselor you know per 250 students or or what have you if there's a if there's a noticeable greater need noticeably greater need um in different schools how are we addressing that how will we address that well that noticeably different need is within the North and the South of our district and that data is pulled from multiple data points um students in transition free and reduced lunch disciplined data um it it demonstrates that more of
148our students in the North and the South have more complex adversity that they have experienced and so um um those are the areas with which would need more Mental Health social emotional support and quite specifically it would be our secondary our secondary schools one of the other slides that I thought was rather interesting is um in your appendices the discipline referrals by area um page 94 to be exact and and what struck me is that in the South area and I I guess it's a matter of what constitutes a discipline referral and what makes it so egregious that they then get suspension because in the South area they have the highest number of discipline referrals but when you look at the suspensions at 214 over 741 it's only only a 28.9% rate of suspension for
149the number of referrals that are taking place and and contrast that with Central Area they had only 207 discipline referrals but of those 101 resulted in suspensions of any type which is a 48.8% rate of suspension and so and then Fern there 57% suspension so um so anyway I I just found that interesting as to how how first of all what constitutes a discipline referral that doesn't turn into a suspension and and this is probably all elementary with middle and high school so it probably complicates matters at theirs you know so I just was curious about what's going on in with this with this particular data within student services we just had this conversation as a full team and to really look at our practices and to help um help our Administration and those that
150are making those decision have more bumpers and guidelines to be more consistent with as they decide on suspension um or they decide on what that discipline will look like and so those are conversations that we are currently having okay thank you so I had um another question um from the report under what is the role of a school counselor it it says counselors proactively address student needs and respond to student needs according to x y and z so when we're talking about proactively how are we doing that consistently where or I guess the first question is what do we mean by proactively so that would be those that those structured groups or the curriculum which you saw in our data um is not great I'll just be honest I'll just name it um and that
151is why I one of the recommendations that I wrote is we have to figure out what's going on there um and and how we got here at all three levels um because I think we can see that it's not happening as as much as the state of Missouri recommends it should be we go [Laughter] all uh well I will I will end by saying thank you again H for all the time and effort that went into this and and really the care and thought that that went into the questions and and how you reached out students uh do you have a timeline on when we might hear a followup as to how some of these recommendations May progress I think we're hopeful we look at the guy that's in charge I think we're hopeful maybe
152we could put a little pressure mid February March earlier January 1 think tomorrow the budget process is underway so let me let me just say uh that's a big question Mr Tyler since we're just doing the presentation right now and it's been a long process to get here just remember we had the targeted review last year with social workers that wo into this this conversation on the comprehensive piece so I think what we need to do is gather this feedback to questions that you've had and then find an appropriate time to to look and give an update um could possibly be something we talk at the workshop in Spring and let you know kind of where we're at and what we're doing and what the plans are for for next year to move forward honestly
153I to be fair I mean the they did a great job and it's a wonderful U some good recommendations but the but is we also have recommendations coming from TLA and some other areas technology so this you know just to be fair this isn't the only recommendations are on table and sat spent about two hours on Monday you know evaluating where all the needs are so important needs here for needs also in t technology security other areas so we have to wait it that'll be some of our discussion in the next couple months months couple weeks couple months can we just say thank you for all that you do and all of your um mental health professionals that are in our schools um I'm I'm sure that you and and everybody all of our SAT
154and our special school district people as well and all of our counselors because you guys save lives every day and there things that we don't hear about and um I used to work at was department of child psychiatry and I hear some of the the worst of the worst stories and to be able to even work in that capacity is a gift that not everybody can do and so thank you because you are very gifted to be able to do that work day in and day out so thank you sure I you might we don't have to introduce them personally but you you do have Representatives here from we do we have people that are really important so we have part of our SCB team and we have three of our social workers and counselor
155here today and so that was our those are our Champions yeah we appreciate them special needs special education you say special education Amy blumfeld she's good friend and she she already went through this process so she knew that she could offer some encouragement so it's very appreciated well thank you for for being here thank you all again okay next up uh we actually have a work session uh on the 2425 budget assumptions so I'd like to welcome D bedor our CFO and Don Troi Executive Director of Finance join us we only have around 65 more slides we'll get you out of here before so thank you very much for having us here tonight going as you know we start all of our work with our mission in mind and of course when we're developing the
156budget um our goal three which is about resources whether it's facilities finances um time Personnel all of that figures in um as components when we're creating our business budget so just to briefly go over our timeline as you can see we are here presenting your budget assumptions um in the month of November once we finalized the revised budget we started really unpacking the possibilities for the 2425 school year um we started looking at revenues first so that's kind of where uh we land um start looking at our major sources of Revenue um as we move forward into January February March we're then going to have a program budget development we're going to have our staffing development whether it's our existing staff and then looking at our salary increases but then looking at is there needs
157for additional FTE Etc and then what are our changes in Staffing with um enrollment projections as well once we compile all that we know that we need at least a surplus budget balance budget surplus budget um we'll talk more about um fund balances in a little bit um but then in May is our next budget presentation to you and with that that will be our formalized um budget where we'll go through our revenues our expenditures and then of course we'll compile that into our about what 150 page book um that is now our two time time award-winning budget book um for the 2425 we'll also in there have some future year um estimates as well so this is a very familiar graph to you this gives our fund balance story so of course our ski
158slope that uh in the downward turn that we do not want to repeat we know that at that point in time after the Great Recession um we didn't necessarily uh put a cap on our spending even though there was clearly not a large increase in our revenues during that time so very quickly we we had built some recurring expenditures um utilizing our fund balance which as you can see was not a very good practice um so then we had to essentially spend over a decade to climb out of that um in order to actually have year round cash and money to invest and actually earn interest our overnight money earns a little bit more than 5% on a daily basis so that's a wonderful wonderful thing and as you know when we receive the S
159fundings and we had some expenditures that we were um putting towards utilizing um those funds that were not recurring expenditure recurring revenues we promised that we would book those or budget those based on our operating budget so that we wouldn't have a funding Cliff when that end but then we would take that revenue and essentially save that to our fund balances so certainly um that combined with you know other uh revenue and um expenditure controls have certainly paid off and has helped to increase our fund balance percentage so just kind of to review just where do all of our revenues come from um you're very familiar that over 88% of our revenues comes from local sources so so um we also have uh just over 5% now from State sources so um used to be
160under 5% but of course with the transportation being fully funded that has helped to increase that Revenue Source uh Federal money used to be a little bit higher than this but with um this year being our last year of the S3 uh funding certainly that has dropped down so in our future years when we look at it we simp we have our our regular title funds and then our U free and reduced lunch um participation funding that comes through there as well to take a bigger snapshot of what um are the components of our local Revenue certainly property taxes are our biggest source of Revenue so we'll go into a little bit more detail on what our our projections are for there our second uh highest source of revenue for the district is our prop
161C so that's the 1% sales tax um that is then redistributed back to school districts based on our weighted average daily attendance keep in mind that our enrollment has dropped over the past few years we were on a pandemic provision for the funding of propy but this is our first year kind of to go back to our regular way of doing funding for propy which is the prior year weighted average daily attendance so while we have an increased amount per per weighted Ada that'll be paid out with propy we actually have a pretty um substantial drop in enrollment or the weighted Ada um for that okay so getting into just our components of our uh property tax revenue so of course assess Valu valuation this was a reassessment year so we did have um some
162really good growth in our assess valuation new construction so that's new Revenue that we're able to add to the district uh collection rate so that is the percentage of what is collected versus what has been levied as tax revenue so things that impact your collection rate are the settlement of protested taxes of course any taxes that are uncollected and also then just the fees that we pay to St Louis County which is right around 1.5% uh CPI is the Consumer Price Index so that is an amount that is a factor within our formula so it caps the growth so for example if you're a homeowner and you saw your local assess valuation wor 10% we only had a cap up 5% so we can only take in 5% additional Revenue not the whole 10% so
163then your tax rate is rolled back um so you don't have a complete 10% increase in taxes and then the other component that we utilize is recuitment and recuitment is our our one time time well one time each year um availability to then recover the um lost revenues from the settlement of protested taxes so looking at uh some of our projections we do look at um an assess valuation growth we believe that you know certainly our housing market is still strong so even though interest rates of 8% or so on mortgages we still are seeing um a very strong housing market our biggest threat is our commercial property and you've heard me say this many of times but especially with our last reassessment that just happened um we do not know how many taxpayers are
164filing under protest because the assessor's office was unable to find out the vacancy rate or occupancy rate of all the commercial retail and office spaces um that are present so we believe we'll have a higher than um Norm noral or higher than we have in the past um paid under protest this year so um something to watch so with that in mind we have kind of lowered our collection rate to an estimate of 96% um that combined with the Senate Bill 190 which was the tax credit for um our seniors um we do not have a way to quantify how much that credit will be so um we're just using right now a kind of a place saer for 96% % by may we should know what our protest tax um are or the payments
165under protest so we'll be able to help you with that we know that um CPI uh Consumer Price Index is is lowering um this next year is not a reassessment year so normally in non- reassessment years we have very minimal growth in our existing property values um and such so we're predicting just a 05% um increase in that and in our new construction over the last several years we've had some continued growth in our value in our personal property which um pretty much has been led by just the value of used cars on the market um but in our future estimates we do have a lower new construction rate um as our our estimates any questions all right putting all that together you can see just a a snapshot of our our comparison you'll see
166the large decrease from federal revenues um from this current year 11 million going down to next year the 4.8 million so um you know most of that is the loss of our Sr funding um you may also see the VST Revenue so our Revenue that we receive from our students that live in the city um we will have no new enroles in the upcoming years I worked with Dr Ty um we believe a revenue estimate or sorry an enrollment estimate for the future years is about 100 students decreased each year so at first I was looking at just the graduating seniors but then um he was looking at other formulas too just you know some students move out of the area or just choose to um discontinue um making that long trip here um and
167so as we get closer to may we will refine some of our our estimates here as well as you know with Federal programs when we're budgeting whatever we have as the expenditures is usually the amount that we use for our revenues um and that you know sometimes means that we have to right size either from our Title One funding um or our title two which we utilize heavily for professional development as well too for probable changes tonight you approved a tuition increase for the Early Childhood Center so um that is one of the items that we will add into our Revenue estimates the other thing that we'll be looking at is our food service program and the possibility of um mildly increasing the meal prices for the upcoming year we know that we have a
168um what was it a nickel I think leftover from the formula last year um there's a desie formula that um we have to work through and they give us a standard price that we should um be charging for um our paid meals and such so um we do have a pretty strong um evidence that we'll need to um raise the prices by at least a million but with that I'm going to turn this over to Don Troi our new Executive Director of Finance and she's gonna walk you through just the different components of our budget all right so um we talked about the revenue and how we gathered that and how we created that now we're going to talk about the expense side and how how we figure that out um so building the expense
169uh budget requires all these pieces of the puzzle each building will continue to get their allocation that they get every year um the elementary schools get $142 per student middle schools get 153 and high schools get 205 so you take that time the enrollment and and that's what their building budget is um So based on this allocation the principles will set the goals for their building and budget accordingly with that with that budget amount in in in tow and then the program directors will begin at that time by creating their goals for the upcoming year and then then they will build their budget uh using zero zero based budgeting uh for that we also use zero based budgeting for the salaries and the benefits um and Dr Cohen and Dr bogus will be reviewing enrollment
170and uh building needs and then we'll be collaborating with us to figure out Staffing and uh for each building and and what they need to meet their goals this is another um very familiar screen for you um this is our the breakdown of our 2324 revised operating expenditure budget um salary and benefits of course always make up the most of our operating budget right now it's at 8.78% of our operating budget purchase Services supplies materials and Student Activities they make up with the remaining portion th this is a very common breakdown from year to year doesn't change much so um the first part in in me in figuring out the expenditures of our budget is um we need to ensure that we're trying to meet the district goals um so the district has done done
171an amazing job over the past rather prior year in building the fund balance like Patty had discussed and now the goal is to stabilize that fund balance in the years to come so that we have the reserve that we need um the next few slides we're going to walk through we're going to show how we set the uh expenditure maximum and for the upcoming year so that we can maintain that Goal Zero based budgeting is used uh throughout the district when we Budget on our expenses we utilize the maximum level to ensure that the district does not budget more in expenditures than the revenues that we have coming in uh the first step in zerob based budgeting like I said before is setting those goals um for the upcoming year and then based on those
172goals determine what is needed to obtain those goals whether it's staff whether it's supplies whether it's services or equipment or a combination of all um and then the build um so the building budgets next um the building budgets um um I think I already did enrollment go we talk about the salary increases the negotiations the support staff and hiring retention challenges those are all pieces of the um Staffing challenges that we we will be discussing the building budget allocation like Patty was saying is built on the enrollment and as she was saying we have had a slight decline in our enrollment over the last few years so this is going to um decrease the building budgets somewhat we're going to see that happening and we're also going to you know that'll affect Staffing as well
173the decrease in the enrollment so um since salaries and benefits make up such a big you know a little over 80% of our operating budget of course salaries is going to be a big part of the budget that we are creating um right now we are second we will be in the second year of the pnaa agreement for 2425 so we know that the increase for those salaries will be 3.97% uh the nurses support staff and administrators those are those are unknown right now so the other piece of that big two is our benefits um that includes our health dental vision and life um these expenses they didn't increase in 2023 and thankfully they didn't have to increase in 2024 as well so that is uh phenomenal that's a great savings for the district and
174it's du due to many factors um one is that the plan performs better than other markets Market plans and another reason is that we have KCT clinics that are always giving us new things we just had a new uh location open up on Dory Ferry and they are also providing a mental health therapist for us so they are continuing to help us grow in that area as well um and the district uses CVS um for our Pharmacy benefit management and that they have helped us um reduce the trend the trend was increasing and they are helping us control that and get that under control as well another thing that we have great here at um at Parkway is our wellness program it's phenomenal and we have education and we have all kinds of initiatives and
175uh we are always trying to uh improve those and have other ways of of helping the well Wellness of our staff um retirement psrs and peers um and taxes they will increase because salaries will be increasing but the actual percentages they do not increase so that all goes into the calculation for the benefits this is just a little brag for us is that um the historical trend for our medical pmpm per member per month cost at a 5year average the trend is only 3.5% and that is phenomenal and that helps us uh you have have other funds to meet the other goals of the district because we have such a phenomenal medical plan so that's a little brag for us there so with all of that being said um those are the pieces that we
176make the expense we set the uh expense ceiling at um well the 2425 budget you see they're at $270 million that is um a 2.1 in $2.1 million increase from last year from from I'm sorry from 2324 revised budget so that's how we've set that that's where we are and then do you have any questions about the expense sign would you mind repeating that one more time the the increase you just talk about this increase the the the 269 I'm sorry the 269 920 million is an increase of 2.1 million from our current 24 revised budget okay thank you yeah anything else I'll turn it back over to pay can I can I just want to comment um more of a comment my when I get together with my peers people talk constantly about that
177you know the benefit costs increases and and I just want to just reinforce we are so fortunate to to have the results we've had the last five years and and I and that it's it's something that many districts many organizations really are stressed out about Patty that's fair isn't it you talk to your peers oh absolutely so I mean certainly the addition of the KC clinics has been um amazing one of our is it top five um expenditures when we review our health trend is Wellness so that's that's amazing too with a a group our size to have you know right along with neoplasms and back surgeries and everything else is people going and getting their preventive care so that is so important so our awardwinning uh wellness program we bid out our um health
178and Pharmacy dental vision every three years so that um certainly makes makes at least assurance that we are getting the market check that we're getting um the best value for um our pricing uh Dr Marty was in the room at msba when I presented um just simply on you know presenting to the board but one of the um slides that we presented was the dollar sign and we explained a little bit about our benefits with that slide and there were there were audible guests because we we pay not only 100% for the employee but 50% for family coverage so um yeah so that's what part of our our 20% is is because we do pay for our family me you know we do help supplement the cost of our family members on the plan as
179well so that is a great benefit for our employees and it helps our plan too because then we have a lot more well people on our plan too um and as John um described on this we utilize where we are with our Revenue to set kind of draw the line so Debbie if you're wondering how did we come up with that amount it essentially was how do we then have our fund balance um either via Surplus um or um a balance so we were looking at prior uh year amounts and next year amounts to kind of make sure that we'll be in balance for um both years when we set that balance so of course that won't be our probably our exact balance when we come to you in May and then putting all of
180our amounts together we um come up with our operating fund balance so not only some of our history here um but also where we project to end um next year so that is a slight Surplus for next year um so not going to the 0.25% right now um we're going to be bringing to you um NE well next month or in the next months because there's a little complications with our fund balance polic but we're looking at the fund balance policy and knowing that um right now we can probably remain and have a stabilization fund balance policy that we put in place um versus our growth policy that has been in place since 2015 um so part of the story there of course is um here's where we predict just on our looking at just
181our 10year 11year history of our fund balance how far we come um and that has been tremendous tremendous effort especially you know all of our administrators and employees play a part in this I mean in our early years in 2014 15 16 um you know we didn't have a you know really high raises for our employees either so um now that um we're able to afford more um certainly we have provided more too I just have some warnings on you know what to be cautious on um I know interest rates right now are rather high but I just had a um push through notification today of 10year Treasury rates are starting to drop a bit too so it's an indication that the economy is starting to to um slow fizer a great big announcement in
182the Business Journal today $3.5 billion dollar in cuts which includes a lot of jobs here locally actually in Parkway because they have not only the science um exploratory centers but then also um the office building right there on um on all of there um Dr Marty was just sharing about um Missouri revenues not meeting their targets but um the other thing that is triggered with um the state of Missouri is a lot of the tax credits um were triggered because of the increase in revenues in the previous year so um this will be an interesting year with um the Missouri budget and such too just simply because of all of those tax credits that um will play a part in the total revenue Collections and of course I mentioned it already about our protested taxes
183um I do believe that we will have a higher volume of of taxes paid under protest this year um we know with the new or state statute that it is a two-year period for those to be settled so it won't be long and drug out like it was in the Great Recession so um perhaps we'll see a little bit quicker um turnaround and such from that too so just a lot of question marks but this is the reason that we have healthy balances too because it helps us to weather some of those storms um just briefly Capital planning of course we still have a little bit to complete on our 28 um 2018 uh Bond projects and of course we are really doing 2022 and a little bit more full force uh you had a
184breakdown of some of the um projects they're working on last month and we're also working really with our capital projects fund as well um in this evening's budget you approved a roof um repair and it's almost a replacement at Oak Brook so we're able to take projects that are really needed that didn't make the bond list and take care of them in a timely manner so that we do not have um continued um longstanding you know issues in the building as well and then we're going to keep exploring ing um the tax credits and Energy Efficiency as everything comes available with the grow growth in the cess valuation of course that helps um with our continued Health I'll say in our debt service fund um our AAA Bond rating of course has afforded us uh
185lower interest rates um this next year we will be calculating what's called Arbitrage so um we will we are earning more money on our interest in our our capital projects fund then we are paying out in our debt service so um we will be doing that calculation it's not to be feared it's just one more calculation and we'll have to pay a little bit of that interest back essentially so taxes on um that interest but um it's been decades since we've had to even do that calculation because of the um low low low interest rates um on our overnight funds any questions well I'll just say thank you for for making it easy to understand you always always do a great job of making really complicated stuff make sense um the only question I have
186is in the past few bond issue Cycles we have realized a little extra money toward the end is I know we're early in in this process for for the current Bond uh but does it look like we're headed that same direction so first and foremost our our first issuance of bonds we had a pretty substantial premium wasn't it nine yeah8 million so that alone um will help to offset some of the cost increases even that we've seen perhaps with the Early Childhood Center so we mentioned that we are still spending down the 2018 Bond um we are still finalizing some um payments and such with McCarthy um finishing out the CM project so with that we've sat on cash a little bit longer than intended to so that's why we still have a little bit
187more funds there to pay out as well um we are um identifying doors and different things that can be easily identified but certainly we're all part of the scope of the 2018 bond issue to finish that out as well so um do we anticipate more yes just simply I mean the Alone um we will be helpful with that pedy um I I'm interested in that stabilization fund balance policy because that would be new right and but would we make so could you just I know it's late but maybe explain that a little bit what what's the purpose of of that policy sure um I'll give you a little snippet So currently in our fund balance policy we actually have a language in there that is essentially a mandated growth in our fund balance over each
188year and 0.25 each year or 75% over a threeyear period so now that we're at our fund balances that we are we believe um it's my recommendation that we remain at that fund balance so um instead of our our budgets need needing to be 0.25% greater um in a surplus they could be balanced and just remain at that same essential fund balance balance dollar value and or percentage and I appreciate that because that's been always kind of the million dollar question if you will um how far do we go how far do you go because now we're up over 40% in a fund balance and you don't want to the organization by having too much money there when we might need it to flow through so so I appreciate that can I just a little
189bit of History you saw that um as we started to do the correction in like in 2012 13 um that board basically said well we have to we got to get moving faster and um late Chris Jacob was the one who kind of push on that board yeah you were on that board you and and pushed us to say you know what can we do so that's where that's where we added that 025 to enhance it like Patty says we think we're at a point now where we don't need to do that so like Patty said in the next month we'll probably bring you an adjustment to that that that particular policy but my understanding also with doing that having a policy like that it was helpful for our accreditation also when Auditors see that
190so that was another benefit to doing that that is absolutely correct they noted that every time standard and pors reviewed um us for our credit rating they um listed that as well um so what makes it complicated is that we are transitioning to msba policies and when we reviewed that policy um was 2020 I believe was the date on that we submitted it in 2021 to msba but with it it combined eight or nine policies into it so we just want to do our due diligence and check all of those before we move to the new um policy and um delete all the other ones so so it's not as easy as we thought it was I thought it was going to be a slam dunk at since we're talking a little bit of history
191I mean Mark Stockwell paty's predecessor I think came to me one when I one of my first years and said Sanders suppor was really get concerned about our fund balance and where we going to maintain the the the um triaa ra AAA rating I think Mark came down pretty pale saying oh my God we can't lose that so you know that was the reason again to really think more seriously about raising that fund balance quickly more quickly that's the policy does Parkway negotiate prescription prices directly with CVS or does that go through we utilize Business Health Coalition so we're one of several Employers in there so um because of the huge buying power so you Aspire in there and am and um oh gosh several large employers are are part of that um that buying
192power um then they essentially do the bidding for the pharmacy benefit managers um and there's two options Express Scripts and CVS um for years we were with Express Scripts this last um three years ago um CVS came in extremely aggressive uh we made the move and we had very little employee disruption with it as well so um that's been very beneficial to us so like we say it it broke the trend we were having a nine and 10% increases just in Pharmacy costs alone and I think we had 2.1% this last year um compared to last year and that's with all of the specialty drugs and the new weight loss drugs and all that that are you know in the news and headlines so I mean so far it's been it's been successful only ask
193because I just I read that CVS is going to be changing there have the particular formula that they use to negotiate those prices so I didn't know if we were GNA have to do that or if somebody else's problem is with that so well we have that bid coming up this upcoming year so perhaps that the CVS is changing how they're doing their formula for coming up with prescriptions prices so I don't know if it's in a good way or a bad way didn't go that deep to it but this it's changing and um because they are one of the most competitive uh lowcost and there's there's a lot of uh pending legislation where of course Pharmacy companies have a presence with our um Federal legislators as well and they'd like to you know get
194rid of all of the rebate programs and such too and have a little bit more price control so um more to come on that you don't know where that's all going to end up but um you know we as Americans pay a lot more for the same drug um versus in other countries and part of that is we pay for all that R&D expense here um and such so um that is kind of just part of our setup but the good thing is is we will be bidding this out again in the spring so um with their new pricing they they'd have to submit that for you know that bidding process okay thank you just just to kind and put a cap on this uh um budget assumptions is what you're you I think we'd
195say this year there was probably a bit more unsureness than perhaps the last couple years would that be fair Patty there is um again I heard about you know the Missouri revenue and and then just the economy issues well you have the slowing of the economy um the last couple years we've had you know the the inflation that is you know skyrocketing and hadn't been that high inflation in in De decades either so now you have the slowing of the economy from that so you have some layoffs with you know major employers and such um of course we'll gladly take those laid off employees we have plenty of job openings um and such so we're not to the part where you know we need to be panicked by any um way or mean it just
196needs to be cautious as we move into the future as well and from our previous discussion um I think we say this every year I know Patty's dead set on this I mean we are not going to deficit spend because you saw when we did that you know prior in the Great Recession what that what that did to us and so we will bring you a balanced budget that's our commitment and we've said that every year when we've had this meeting in December I think that that's our goal even though we have a lot of needs you know it's tempting to say we have to take care of all the things that we just talked about in the previous presentation plus all those other things but we cannot def it's about setting priorities well thank
197you all for your time that felt really good that's my my last budget assumption presentation you're gonna miss all right your attendance and watching remotely