001good evening welcome to the parkway school district board of education meeting if you would please rise and join us in the pledge of of the allegiance states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome we uh if you're a regular attendee of our board meetings you may notice that our president mr todd is not here this evening um he we gave him a well-deserved evening off and uh we do expect him to return to us in our next meeting on september 28th at this time we just came back from closed session so we are going to go right back into our agenda item here and the first item of business is special recognitions tonight we have two special recognitions the pnea
002which stands for the parkway national education education association teachers collaboration scholarship winners and a digital learning certificate recognition first we welcome moira mccracken who is the pnea president this evening to provide us with our scholarship winners with pnea good evening dr marty mrs hopper and the other distinguished members of the board of education i'm pleased to join you this evening and present the pnea scholarship winners the parkway national education association has a strong tradition of supporting our members in a variety of ways the pnea scholarship program awards over seven thousand dollars annually to our deserving members our aim is to encourage and assist the best and brightest of our members to continue their professional growth we're going to recognize our scholarship winners today do i have any scholarship winners here and it's okay i had
003several people tell me they actually couldn't be here because they are taking the class that they signed up for and paid with the scholarship oops so i said that was okay that was fine so uh we still want to recognize them uh and here and talk about the wonderful things that they're doing and where to point this oh there we go all right amanda claire is a district counselor and was awarded the pnea professional development scholarship amanda is working on her doctorate and is using the funds to further her research on helping students develop better sorry to better develop their executive functioning skills alicia goyle is the librarian at henry elementary school she is using the funds from her pnea professional development scholarship to refresh part of the non-fiction section of the henry library including
004topics such as digital citizenship and stem kaylee peacher is an ela teacher at central middle she was awarded the pnea professional development scholarship and will use the money to help her near her goal of earning her master's plus 15. erin valeroy is a 5th grade teacher at henry elementary she's working towards her national board certification and will use the money she won for the pnea professional development scholarship to help pay for it zack hilliard was a teacher at henry elementary and was awarded the video maniaci professional development scholarship at the end of last year unfortunately he moved and he's actually not employed at parkway anymore but he used his money to further his professional development as an educator catherine ott is an ell teacher at central high and was awarded the veto maniaci professional development
005scholarship she's using her scholarship to continue taking classes towards earning her masters plus 30. brian guilfoyle is an art teacher at central high and will be using his money from the linda favero scholarship to continue his professional development and benefit his students and melanie wellmert is a math teacher at north high she won the linda favero scholarship and is using the money to finish up her master's plus 30 as well as to become certified to teach dual credit and ap courses thank you for allowing me to recognize these distinguished winners we're very proud of the work that they and all of the educators in parkway do thank you mrs apple can i just stop i just want to first of all uh marth is our new pnea president and she's doing a wonderful job in
006a role and i just want to say what a what a wonderful way of recognizing your members and giving them that kind of professional development support we value professional development and so thanks so much we really appreciate it thank you absolutely thank you dr marti next up please welcome bill bass innovation coordinator to tell us about the digital learning certificate good evening dr marty ms hopper and board of education members my name is bill bass i am the innovation coordinator as a part of tla and i am here tonight to recognize katie pendleton as our digital learning certificate orti she is the librarian at south high and during covid one of the things that we relied on our librarians a lot for is to provide professional development and learning and to help lead their buildings
007through covet and through our transition to digital learning as a part of that we created the digital learning certificate and katie went through and completed 27 hours of digi of learning for digital learning opportunities in order to provide those to their her teachers as well as took on two minimum of two leadership opportunities in the area in the region for um for digital learning and to lead through covid and so she was a presenter at the missouri association of school librarians as well as did a webinar for future ready schools and this summer she also presented at the international society for technology and education's conference in new orleans so she has put a lot of dedication and effort into doing being a leader inside of parkway and inside of the region around digital learning and
008so i would just like to thank her and um thank you for your support during that time you're welcome don't don't leave we're gonna actually come out here look at this [Applause] thank you congratulations to all the staff that we honored this evening and thank you for joining us for these special recognitions our next agenda item 7.0 editions corrections and modifications to the agenda 7.01 addendum to agenda item 11.04 approval of personnel items our next agenda item is 8.0 public comments we do have two public comments this evening we provide an opportunity at each meeting for citizen comments in an effort to maintain an open and respectful dialogue with our community the public comment session is not the appropriate forum for addressing individually identifiable student and or personnel matters therefore due to privacy laws protecting
009identifiable information about particular students i'm sorry comments about these matters should not include personally identifiable information about particular students or employees members of the public staff and students are encouraged to utilize established policies and procedures for offering suggestions or addressing concerns and complaints prior to bringing the issue before the board please be mindful that the meetings of the board including your statement at the podium are broadcast and that you are responsible for any public comments you make in lieu of a public statement you may choose to submit your comments to the board in writing also due to time constraints and the need to complete the primary responsibilities of our meeting agenda we cannot respond during the meeting so you will respond you will receive a response from us in writing we're always available to have
010an open dialogue outside of our meetings and can be reached by email or phone using our contact information on the parkway website so having only two comments tonight we will put three minutes on our time clock and we will call our we have two uh speakers tonight michael bertz to talk about prop s oh okay hi good evening dr marty vice president hopper members of the board and missed over thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight i'm megan heather and this is michael burtz we are the co-chairs of the citizens for the parkway community which is a citizen-led group leading an advocacy campaign in support of the 2022 bond issue coming this fall prop s we're here to update you a little bit on our work and to highlight the kinds of
011support that we are seeing in the community first though i'd like to express our deepest and most sincere thanks to all of those individuals that have stepped forward and supported the committee's efforts so far we are so gratified to see the broad range of people including citizens who are also parkway administrators board members such as yourselves the members of our own committee and the broader community at large come forward to support the campaign's efforts that possible that support makes possible the messaging and communication that is so important to advocate for the why behind the need for prop s to pass and how it will benefit our schools our community our own property values and most importantly our students for everyone who has contributed we sincerely appreciate each and every one of you thank you very
012much and i'd just like to also echo megan's thanks um your support is all important both in the message it sends and the resources that it provides over the summer we've been hard at work assembling our team of volunteers and developing our message we're equally gratified both by the breadth and the quality of volunteers across the district's community who have come with their time and their talents to support the efforts to spread the word and advocate for prop s these individuals come from all corners of the district from those with very young children in the schools will be here a long time to those heavily active in their ptos from those with recent graduates who recognize the quality of the education their students received in parkway to those with their kids grown and gone who
013recognize the importance of the school district and the value it provides to their communities i'd also like to mention some of the feedback that we've received as we've been out in the schools which includes the validation of the community driven work undertaken in project parkway where that input directly shaped some of the project priorities that became included in the bonds projects as someone who's participated in more than one round of these facility cycles and through project parkway it's particularly gratifying to see the community voice heard and responded to regarding priorities it's that kind of partnership that helps drive parkway's success thanks for your time thank you next up we have mandy michelle and if you would please state your relationship to or with parkway so you introduce yourself hi my name is mandy michael i
014have a son at west high and i have a daughter at highcroft elementary i'm here to talk about book banning my name um reading it i'm imposing parkway banning books and premature compliance with senate bill 775 which was just passed into law just a sunday ago this bill banned graphic novels with explicit images and the words of the bill are um there's an exception if they're educational or artistic parkway band uh genderqueer uh fun home and handmaid's tale at my son's high school uh these are all award-winning graphic novels uh genderqueer in particular is a is a book that's very significant to my non-binary child who doesn't go to parkway but this is a book that is a coming-of-age graphic novel and gives a lot of the sexual education that would otherwise be missed and
015i seriously doubt that there's any other a book in the library that's similar in that respect there's nothing violent there's nothing you know there's nothing like predatory or anything it's like a non-binary child learning about their sexuality so i want to say that every book in the parkway library is artistic and educational i know that because my son's educated and experienced librarians pick them out these people are kind intelligent and knowledgeable they have about 30 years of experience between them i like having them decide my kids education do you know who i don't want deciding my kids education extremists like them we have rick bratton he created the book banning amendment targeting teachers for jail time and fines on in sb 775. let me tell you more about him here's a picture of his whole
016family with guns even the youngest he attends a church that's so homophobic that they offered free meeting space to the lee summit school district and the district turned them down because the teachers said no he voted against the law that would take guns away from domestic abusers that's not who i want deciding my kids education uh here's andy wells hugging is ak-47 he's part of the pack that is making the laws helping making the laws in jeff city and making it so that parkway feels like they have to ban books parkway also cut off the access to the county library for the high school students so they can't do research this needs to stop stop adding books thank you very much as we mentioned earlier we will provide you with the written correspondence after tonight's
017meeting next agenda item 9.0 approval of agenda for september 7 2022 may i have a motion and a second to approve the agenda for the regular meeting of the board of education is scheduled for september 2022. all in favor aye any opposed motion carry 6-0 10.0 communications communications 10.01 our calendar of meetings the next regular board meeting will take place on wednesday september 28 2022 beginning at 7 pm at the parkway welcome center parkway's annual tax rate hearing will take place at 6 30 pm on september 28th prior to the 7 pm meeting our next agenda item is 10.02 board and superintendent reports matt would you like to start us off sure i will just share two things tonight um since the last boar meeting i attended a teaching and learning subcommittee meeting with jeffrey
018and with kevin and um you'll read about and see some of the information tonight about the program evaluations are coming up at this board meeting on the next board meeting which would be good it's gonna meet and kind of get feedback from the board and their thoughts on the process going forward and then um two we did do a little bit of discussion on sb 775. um i'll just make a brief comment the fact that this is another instance of jefferson city taking away local control from the districts in terms of way we provide education to our kids this is just one more example of that and this can be very concerning and it is difficult right now looking at those exclusions we have right now with those books and having to respond to it
019and having a situation where the law does put our teachers and librarians on the front line not the district itself so i feel for you right now it's very concerning so try to be positive then i will end on a note from a parent of a first grader this year she was so excited to have a real first day of school because she had a kindergartner last year did not feel like it and this year she was so happy the mom was just so excited hopefully the kid was too but the mom was very pleased they welcomed them into it they felt like a real school year and just it is nice to be back in a real setting for school as was just said i was also at the tla subcommittee meeting earlier uh
020this month um as well as i completed a few trainings the 4e training which i know rob did as well uh it's the parkway intruder training that all the teachers and administrators took it was a great experience to be in that setting it's a difficult setting to be in but it is amazing what our teachers have to go through i mean these are things when you've grown adults trying to do it and just imagine having a group of kids with your teachers i mean our teachers are amazing i also completed all the online training that most of the teachers and administrators have to do as well i attended the parkway partner tailgate last week a wonderful experience we got to dedicate the new structure concession stand and restroom at parkway central it was i was
021a parkway central grad was it was very cool to be there and see that dedication and last i had a great opportunity to go visit many schools the first week of school various high schools middle schools elementary schools it was great to be in the in the classroom seeing the kids my kids weren't so thrilled to see me but all the other kids seemed happy to see me it was a great experience and just happy to be a part of it so it's been a great first few weeks yeah and echo jeffrey's sentiments i you know in our household we have young children who go to an elementary school so just the the sort of palpable excitement that these very young kids have about meeting friends for the first time being in a classroom setting
022when they haven't been all summer was very exciting to observe as a parent but then as a board member like jeffrey said we get the opportunity to go in and and visit and make rounds around the schools at all the different children's age levels of schools will be elementary middle and high usually accompanying one of the superintendent action team members and and get get a chance to see all the the learning and teaching going on and it's just invigorating because you know frankly parkway does such a wonderful job and seeing that and observing it is is encouraging as a board member and as a as a citizen of the community so um i was excited to have my three children go back to school on august 22nd as i'm sure many of you were as
023well my kids were excited but i was probably more excited and then on august 23rd i had the opportunity to accompany mr michael vargas to three schools to visit we attended northeast middle river bend and mckelvey primary and it was great to see inside of the schools and to see the kids back in the classrooms and just being able to be there to welcome them back to the new school year there is still construction at some of these buildings that's going on i know that the teams at each of those schools are making sure that you know those con the construction is not interfering with the students learning and but they're excited about the construction that's going on so we're excited about that as well um i also had the opportunity to not necessarily as
024a board member but as a parent go to open houses in person and if you have those opportunities as parents to get in and meet the teachers i definitely recommend that you take advantage of those opportunities any chance that you can get and then you know another thing that happened was i went to a football game at west high and that was probably the second time but it was so good to see all the kids out and excited about the new year and about their team they lost but that's okay we'll get it next time thank you your second ever football game ty is christy she's also probably been the two in her life um so my colleagues already talked about the tla subcommittee meeting which i could believe i could talk about the cla
025tla subcommittee meeting all night but i think you guys did a good job of going over there i do want to echo some of matt's sentiments the book banning issue which got headlines in the paper the other day as matt said you know this is an example of the missouri legislature a body that uh routinely preaches local control you know extending their jurisdiction essentially into our domain and telling school districts no we don't trust the local control and assistance we're going to tell you what to do and uh like a lot of folks i don't love being told what to do but in this case i i do think parkway is handling this as appropriately as it possibly could uh because the reality is it's not the district it's not the admin that are the
026targets of this you know if this goes wrong you know if there is culpability or liability found it falls on individual teachers librarians educators who you know didn't get into this line of work to figure out how to comply with legislation and i you know were the legends were this legislation different perhaps that would be an opportunity to push back but in this instance i i do think we have a responsibility to protect you know our employees and and i i'm proud of the way parkway has handled that in by the way parkway's handled that moving to happier parts of our um my report i also took part in some school visits i went to three buildings believe ross and parkway north i was struck at each building with just the overt enthusiasm joy excitement
027not only on the teachers the students as well you know it's a new school year it's a new norm a normal school year and people just seemed thrilled excited to be in a building and it was wonderful to be a part of that at belle reeve which is my kids school i went to that visit and it never stops astonishing me seeing elementary school children walking quietly down a hallway in a line no one's doing cartwheels or yelling or and it's just every single time i see it it absolutely blows my mind and uh at bellerive i was able to convince a certain administrator i'd say which to go to my son's room and convince him that he was being he had somehow by the second day of school got into enough trouble that he
028had warranted the attention of his assistant superintendent and scared really scared of him he's used to that sort of thing growing up in my household i really enjoyed that as well uh ross we uh toured the whole building but uh what stuck out to me was the esl department uh it's a part of our district that i think we can all be really proud of the way we're helping kids who you know from different backgrounds to uh learn how to learn essentially uh and then at parkway north which is my alma mater i got there early and helped the principal direct traffic in the parking lot which was a joy uh the one downside is we went we visited all the classrooms again everybody was happy but one kid in one of the classrooms recognized
029me from north graduation and then actually remembered one of the jokes i told at the north graduation which is flattering but it means i got to come up with some new material by may because i apparently i can't just keep recycling the same thing every year and i want to end with this recently i learned that a good family friend of ours who is a retired parkway educator still watches every single board meeting online and while i certainly appreciate that commitment to parkway it isn't exactly a ring endorsement of retirement life but if you're watching which i think you are just going to say hi nancy on that note i too visited a number of schools on i think i visit about eight of them total i did a lot more last year so i
030tried to hit the ones this year that i couldn't make last year so i attended south middle school with dr marty and jeff todd toby mcqueary the principal there showed us around and we got the lay of the land again there and how things are going and we're very impressed with um how the students were conducting themselves and the the variety of different classes now that we've been able to do some shifting there people seem very happy with their schedules and the class offerings that are taking place on august 24th i went to fern ridge again with dr marty tiffany holman bess and sarah powers the coordinator of that particular school and that school was undergoing quite a bit of construction still but on the positive side one of the students the message was relayed
031to us that a student actually said wow it looks like we're in a real high school now so fern ridge has been in very overdue for some renovation over a long period of time so kudos to that school for making some accommodations and quickly trying to deal with the construction issues going on there i also on that day attended the early childhood center with mike valgus and dr elena polson the director there and her team escorted us around and very excited to see all the students that are there i mean the place is just packed and i understand why now we're asking for another early childhood center to be constructed so that we can continue on with our early learning the most of one of the very impressive things with that tour is that they
032are developing a nature scape kind of reinforcing the outdoor school concept there and there's going to be like 11 different areas of play throughout the entire back or the outdoor landscape of that building so in a couple of weeks yet we should be seeing some progress on that and look very forward to them even perhaps receiving some certification on their their nature escape that they're doing there which will support the early learning of them of those students there and then on august 25th i went to barrett's with kevin bechner and christie lady the assistant principal there showed us around and what i didn't know about baird so that there's a log cabin on the back side of the building so that uh is kind of very cool so instead of learning cottages in the future
033perhaps we can just keep building log cabins for our students is overflow when we need it so that was very impressive and then later that day i went to west high in west middle with mike fagas received an opportunity to meet the new principals of those schools john mccabe at west high as well as adam keelan at west middle so they are very impressed that they have been already getting started you know weeks maybe even a couple months ahead of time so that they understood the school and are very supportive of everything that's going on there and then happened to just run into the new athletic and activities director jeff taggart so that was wonderful to get an opportunity to catch up with him and then um on august 31st i went to mckelvie uh
034elementary school and then mckelvie primary with kevin beckner at those uh i was very impressed with mckelvey primary i had not seen it since it had been newly constructed where we have kindergarten and first graders to help with the overflow of mckelvey elementary which now is serving grades two through five and so the it's just a beautiful building the library is spectacular huge cafeteria lots of windows outdoor space for the students it just it has come a long way from the instructional center that it used to be um so it's a huge improvement there and then when we were at mckelvey we got to participate in their fire drill so they actually didn't have the the sirens going but again the students uh you know to echo what kevin said uh kids were just properly
035conducted and and everybody you know did what they were supposed to do in an orderly fashion it was it was a lot of fun to go and see that but overall and then overall just a sense of pride and gratefulness and feeling blessed that we live in a district that's got a plethora of activities and the administrative team that we have and um you know setting the example that all of you do to help us to move forward with uh anticipating our future issues and making sure that we got off to a great start this beginning of this particular school year the other things that i attended i did um on august the 12th go to the two with law seminar where we did receive uh some education about sb 775 as well as well
036as some other legal matters it's important for us to keep in tune with and then on august the 26th i attended the communications advisory committee meeting with jeff todd and dr marty as well so always and mr tandy always does a great job with leading that group looking to expand the group get some new members and so that was a wonderful experience and then on september 1st i attended the mental health staff meeting with dr marty there were two sessions that took place there i joined at the noon time session just to do a brief introduction so it was a wonderful opportunity to see all of our mental health staff throughout the entire district come together to receive some learning and continuing education and information from care and counseling and so we just are very
037thankful for all that they do each and every day to help propel our students to be able to continue their education in a in a in a well-balanced manner that's it well i can't add too much to the enthusiasm that you displayed but i just want to say board members i i'm so appreciative of the time you took and and i have to tell you i got wonderful feedback from principals and staff about your visits uh you know everybody is feeling good as you said but they really have enjoyed seeing you and talking to you and just knowing that you're so supportive so thank you for the time you gave uh to to to be in schools and i enjoyed the company i think i speak for staff members so who enjoyed being with you
038as well uh i went out this week just to see if the good spirit is happening i've been to a couple schools and i like to bottle it i like that you know because we you know it's a long school year but the enthusiasm continues i think uh you know i i everybody just feels so good about a time where there's less restrictions that we can have really just as i don't know if the word normal or at least they ate more routines and less restrictions and certainly the relationships that can be built so it's just been a wonderful start uh you've covered so much i just will say that the tailgate party that jeffrey made reference to we honored our parkway partners uh and it was just a wonderful night and i really appreciate
039all the people that support parkway we did have our uh our food trucks there and the food was delicious and so we we had a great night the next day i actually hosted the county superintendents in this room and we had char again uh service and the food trucks and uh it was a big hit my peers are pretty envious that we got two food trucks and uh and tar wells of course star wars serves a lot of districts in the county but uh we're very very fortunate to have the staff and support that we have uh so again i you covered most of the items i was going to say i will just say that we're uh we're still working on adding staff in some key areas uh but transportation has done a great
040good job thanks to will rosa patty pepper and many others uh we're really in a much better spot than i thought we're gonna be starting the school year and thanks to the cooperation of our families and working through the changes we made but uh we certainly could use more custodians adventure club staff um uh certainly some others so we certainly got to sign out for people that to come and work at parkway we certainly welcome that uh construction as was mentioned it continues but uh making some progress again in some cases we're just waiting for materials to arrive so uh we're making some progress so again thanks for uh all your support to school yeah really appreciate it and again thank you for being out there it was just great to uh again it's a
041great feedback from our staff so appreciative of seeing you and i think a lot of you appreciate the student stories too right absolutely pretty pretty to see our young folks and the stories that they can tell us about their experience okay thank you very much thank you thank you all the next agenda item is 11.0 action items we have a long list of them that we've all gone through they have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented in september 7 2022 board materials second is there anything to be pulled to action or closed okay all in favor okay any opposed and the abstentions motion carries six zero our next agenda item is individual action item 12.01 approval of the resolution to reset the 2022 tax rate levy and we have our chief financial
042officer ms patty bedborough to make a brief presentation good evening everyone this year is a non-reassessment year so with that we have the opportunity to reset our voluntary roll back on our residential rate you may recall two years ago we did utilize part of our residential rollback our voluntary residential rollback in order to supplement some revenues that we lost from the financial institution tax at this point in time we do not anticipate changing or lowering that voluntary rollback um we may have an instance that we would recommend to actually increase that voluntary rollback but right now it is too early to tell so with this resolution it's really just a formality giving us the flexibility to un roll back that roll back um essentially we save um voters our property owners 4.8 million dollars a
043year by not um levying the 14.55 cents per hundred dollars of assessed valuation on their taxes so it's kind of a reserve if you will that we're able to do that without the vote of the public however we in due diligence with our taxpayers we have kept this voluntary roll back on our books since the last time that we had an operating tax levy initiative which was in the mid to late 2000s i believe 2006 or 2007. any questions we did ask ms benborough some questions ahead of time so we got those answered but there is no change in increasing or lowering the taxes of our property owners at this time so at this point in time the exact calculation is not done so there may be fluctuations within the different property groups but of
044course that will all be presented at the tax rate hearing in two weeks in three weeks in three weeks okay very good thank you anything else okay thank you you're welcome now may i have a motion in a second that the board of education for the parkway school district for 2022 tax rate calculation resolved to reverse the voluntary rollback on the operating levy for the parkway school district this includes any and all voluntary rollbacks from the residential commercial personal property and or the agricultural tax levies this change will allow for flexibility in our use of funds and to otherwise meet our operating revenue goals second okay we'll call mrs stoker mrs hopper yes mrs matt franklin yes mr reedy yes mr schindler yes mr seltzer yes mr spectre yes motion carries 6-0 13.0 policy review
045we have none this evening reports is on our next agenda item 14.01 we have our professional learning communities comprehensive program review and starting off on that will be dr beckner our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning as well as joining him amy gurken coats our coordinator of talent development well thank you so much for the opportunity uh vice president hopper dr marty members of the board mrs stover our program evaluation process uh is what we utilize to make sure that we are doing the best possible job we can in all of our programs for our parkway students every six to seven years programs come up for evaluation and at that time we can either do a targeted evaluation focus on very specific topics or a comprehensive evaluation which as it sounds is more comprehensive in
046nature in both cases at the beginning of the process we present our tla subcommittee which we heard earlier is very hot ticket in town yeah everybody's really excited to be there but our tla sell community i want to thank our board members mr schindler mr specter mr seltzer who participated in that who heard our topics and questions for both of these reviews and were able to provide feedback so tonight we'll present two reports starting with our professional learning communities comprehensive review our professional learning communities process is where our teachers have time to sit and ask questions about what we expect students to be learning what we'll do if they're not learning what we'll do if they are learning how we'll continue to support their learning that process many families will recognize is what we use
047with our early releases approximately monthly in parkway so with that i'm going to hand it off to dr amy kirk and coats who's co-leading this with dr boggs and dr gurken coats will share our main topics and what what we will be studying this year thank you so much good evening dr marty vice president hopper mrs stover and everyone else this is so exciting to be back because it's my second program evaluation so seven years ago i started was my very first year in this position and it's kind of cool to see us going through the full cycle and start at it again so why are we doing this because it's been a minute and we've learned some stuff so if we think about in the 1700s when we first started there were pool jumping
048kids actually jumped over a pole in pe class and if you look at it now we actually have the fosberry flop which dr marty is a big fan of that has us jumping to new heights right not that i did it [Laughter] so as i mentioned it's been a minute we're using a model for professional learning communities that is about 20 years old and the world's changed significantly in the last 20 years and so we're really asking the questions are we getting the results that we want with the collaboration time available for teachers and is there a better way so in may we got together with about 50 teachers and administrators with dr boggess and dr tyson and led us through a process of kind of thinking very broadly about what main topics do we
049want to explore and then bringing that down a little bit to our guiding questions so we ended up with four main topics the first one is our vision and purpose thank you so what is the professional learning what do we want professional learning to look like in parkway and how are we deciding what it is that we're going to be focused on dr beckner is famous for saying there's only so much that can fit through the classroom door and we have to say no to good things to make sure that we're focused on the most important things that we can leverage that limited time teachers have with one another and collaboration to ensure they have the best instructional practices for the students we serve so our first topic will be the vision and the purpose
050of our learning our second is that we're designing processes that are designed with equity we need to be sure that we're measuring the impact that we're having particularly on our early release days if we're asking parents to have their students out of school we need to make sure that we're getting the results for that time that teachers have together and then as i mentioned before what is the what is the focus what are we going to be working on we started this school year with all educators and administrators spending about a half a day of development around some practices around classroom management and looking at how are we supporting students and identifying what might be cultural behaviors versus what might be misbehaviors and how do we honor and respond to both of those appropriately so
051we'll be looking at that and then finally frameworks as i mentioned the process that we're using is about 20 years old it's out of illinois by a couple that were named the defores and a lot's changed in fact virtual meetings have been probably the biggest change in teacher collaboration because when we look at singletons and buildings you think about the art teacher in each of our elementary buildings we used to have to physically get in a car and drive and meet in an area of the district well now we can meet virtually and that actually can increase by the amount of time teachers can meet together by almost an hour each time they come together we need to make sure that we're taking advantage of what that has to offer us so looking forward to
052working with dr vagus i'm also partnering with filament and matt holman which i believe one of our board members has worked previously with he calls himself a recovering lawyer and really works with people on how to best plan meetings and so looking forward to meeting with someone and collaborating with someone outside of education to kind of get some new ideas about how we might work better together to serve our students so thank you very much i look forward to coming back here in about a year and telling you what we found out thank you so next up we have our k-12 comprehensive evaluation for our science program and so this will be we have some fabulous coordinators here who will share and they'll introduce themselves when they come up but we are differentiating this program
053evaluation by level because there are different questions and different topics that we need to study at each level so i'm not sure which of you is kicking it off but i will hand it off to jen of delazine the three of us are very happy to be here in person with you all i feel like i don't even know some of you which is unusual but who's to the past three years so look forward to working with you and getting to know you um we're gonna just start with the element she's like okay kevin or dr becker already explained that we are addressing this on three different levels to address specific questions that have arisen for each of the various grade levels in elementary um about six years ago science went through a complete program
054evaluation and out of that programming evaluation the goal to ensure that all students experience experience stem as part of their elementary day was established and it has taken us up until last year to to meet that goal so we finally have one resource that each of the students that each of the teachers use to teach stem to our student or elementary students ensuring that they are learning the science standards the missouri learning science standards through one resource and so because it's taken us this long to get to a place where we have one resource that's meeting the standards i thought it would be a great time to have a targeted evaluation in elementary to ask the question is this elementary resource ensuring that our students in elementary school are meeting mission and vision and the
055process in which i'm going to do that is by first of all serving the teachers the students and the community second of all having focus meetings virtually with teachers just to talk about the experiences that we're offering our students and if those experiencing experiences are allowing our students to be curious confident capable and caring that's the focus for elementary i'm the shortest of the three of us so um i have to move the microphone down i'm stephanie volley and i'm middle school so um ours is in middle school is probably a little bit more comprehensive than it would be at elementary and high school mostly because in amy's words it's been a minute since middle school has actually gone through a full curriculum revision so um our key areas and our key question is how
056might middle school the middle school science curriculum best align with missouri learning standards three-dimensional learning within the next-gen science standards and parkways mission and vision so really bringing all of these things together to ensure key science experiences for our middle school students so through this we're going to really focus on two key areas for the teachers and for our students so we're going to be looking at teacher professional development we know that development is key for teachers to know and understand what is expected of students in the classroom now and even outside of the classroom and so we want to be sure that we're focusing on some professional development to build their understanding and then after that we will be going through a full curriculum revision process where we will make sure that we have
057our priority standards we'll make sure that we have our units identified and our assessments and then finally that stage three of so what would this look like in the classroom what we're really looking at is um hoping that by fall of we would be able to have this in effect a couple of key notes when we're talking about the professional development for our teachers we really will be focusing again it's been a large number of years in science and how we teach science has significantly changed um really a focus more on making sure that kids are exploring first before we actually um share what they should be doing with that so we will take some time to make sure that they know and understand the three dimensions as i listed in that in the actual
058question itself really helping them see how all of our sciences are intertwined and connected together the teachers have shared that students feel as though all of our earth life physical are all separate and so we really are going to be building our understanding of how all three of those are intertwined and helping our students know and understand what that means as well so um really we'll uh be looking at the entire middle school science so it's exciting good evening my name is jenny profit and i'm the high school stem coordinator and as you guys know over the last several years programming in the high schools has become much more common for example we came to a common bell schedule a couple of years ago well one of the things that is still not common in
059the high school curriculum is our core science classes and so the purpose of the high school portion of this program evaluation will be to come to the best scope and sequence for all parkway high school students and so how we're going to do that is we are going to have a design team of teachers that will come together four times we'll use a stanford design process in order to come up with a lot of ideas and a lot of prototypes and then we're going to take that through a series of feedback cycles including counselors and principals and schedulers in the buildings so that hopefully by the end of the school year we will have a new science scope and sequence that will roll out in the 2024-2025 school year so this time we'd be happy
060to take any questions that you might have about either the k-12 science program evaluation or about the plc and talent development evaluation any questions we got all ours out of the tla subject would you like to share check it out would you like to share some of what you talked about in that i'll just say um with the whole stem piece definitely a personal interest too is the outdoor education piece with stem i think it's very important we're doing a pretty good job in certain schools and parkway and that needs opportunity for more outdoor education going forward i know it was also discussed you know making sure that we're looking at the equity lens with regards to how we're providing education so i know that was talked about is definitely part of the scope and
061glad to hear that one of the questions that i i have a couple of questions about the consistency among all schools and will you be looking at that to ensure that what's being taught at you know all the different schools is is the same are there going to be any variations or differences there i'll just answer they're all nodding because the answer is yeah we want to make sure that our students regardless of which school you're at get a high quality science experiment experience and that means that we do have a guaranteed and viable curriculum by that we just mean it's actually guaranteed that the outcomes in one school are the same as the outcomes at another school that's why you heard jenny in particular talk about the high school level and getting to that
062place where we can say freshman students in parkway take this course and sophomore students generally take this course knowing they'll be variation for honors and ap courses and and different things but we certainly do want to make sure that all of our schools have that same high quality experience whether that's in the outcomes that are guaranteed or the resources that they have we do try to make sure that all of our students get a really great experience regardless of which school okay the other question that i have is is looking into the future of what is going to be taught in stem courses i hear a lot about artificial intelligence for example and that starting these in college in the united states is just too late that we need to start pushing artificial intelligence as
063just one topic and to lower into our into our elementary schools middle schools or high schools and so has there been is this going to be part of your evaluation on the you know the future of what you are of what students should be learning absolutely in elementary school the resource that we have chosen to use incorporates computer science starting as early as second grade so our students get to experience computer science in as early as second grade and then in third fourth and fifth grade classrooms we have vex kits available to our all of our students where they're actually building and creating and then in fifth grade those vex kits are computerized so they're actually participating in robotics and automation um we all believe that that access to experiences in computer science is one
064way to ensure that our students are future ready because like everybody says we don't know what jobs are our kindergartners are going to have we don't know what those jobs are going to look like so preparing them to be designers and engineers and problem solvers is the best thing that we can do and so yes the answer is yes as long as you're at the microphone could you talk a little bit about the elementary approach with project lead the way yes absolutely so um we use our current resources called project lead the way in for the most part started off as a um a club club-based activity where districts provided us something extra to their students when we decided as parkway that because of equity we wanted to ensure all of our students had access
065to stem-based experiences the best way to do that was to modify our science curriculum and make it a stem focused experience so project lead the way is a stem-based program that is that has it's grounded in real world problems so each of our grades in grades k through two they have three science units in grades three through five they have four science units each of those units are based in one of the sciences either life physical or earth science and they all are grounded in a real world problem so our students the unit is introduced they hear a problem they hear a story and the story contains a problem and then they work through the unit to solve the problem so it's they're they're acquiring content knowledge but more importantly they're they're participating in the
066process as engineers and designers and so um it allows them to see themselves as engineers and see themselves as designers and the projects that the students participate at the end of the unit are pretty amazing i would encourage you to reach out to the elementary schools and ask them if you could visit like towards the end of a science unit to see the designs come to life because they actually get the materials to build the designs for example in kindergarten they have to build a shelter to protect uh to keep a popsicle from melting and so they get the materials to actually do it and they learn about the phases the sun and how to shade it from the sun and how it impacts temperature and how to create an insulation they learn all of
067those things and and those are that's in kindergarten i mean in fifth grade they're designing a robot to help clean up polluted landfills so it's pretty incredible and that sometimes comes to life in stem fast right oh yes absolutely we're actually thinking about um next year as part of stem fest having a uh pri i i'll say project lead the way expo where some of the designs where we we share kind of the designs that the students are building we're thinking about having that thank you so much thank you my only last question would be sorrento springs is our personalized learning center do you see any differences taking place there with either your plc program review or your your uh science your stem education here well we see a lot happening if you i think
068some of you have had the opportunity last school year to visit sorrento springs particular they are focusing very broadly on the design process and and so what they it's really when we think about the design process that's a lot of what jen just described that they're doing in project lead the way through their science units but rather than just being within those particular units doing that really is just part of this is what we do here you know we're designers and really focusing on those real world problems as far as the plc process still happens just like at any other school our student our teachers still gather to look at our students learning what they need to be learning what we do need to do to help support all of our students so there's no
069difference in the plc process from that lens and and really the curricular outcomes are still the same but what we see is a real focus on student voice and choice in the design process so that our students are engaging uh in fact the first week of school they actually do a design week where the whole week that first week of school is students focusing on a problem they want to solve and how they might be able to design something to solve it to try to really build that student voice and ownership and their learning but as far as sort of the overall structures that you're asking about they're really the same as any other parkway school okay thank you anybody else yeah i have a question um so how will this be incorporated in the
070virtual campus yeah excellent question jenna's had to work quite a bit with virtual campus with elementary you can imagine with their materials and largely um the curricular outcomes for students who are learning virtually are the same as those who are learning in person we don't change the standards or the expectations do you want to talk a little bit about the materials delivery process that we have to follow because we do want to make sure we're supporting those students um we're both actually math and science we wanted to ensure that our students had access to the same materials that our students in person learning had and so we did just that we built kits and the schools had um when there were more virtual sections the schools had pick up night for the parents and we're
071following the same process now even though there's fewer students virtual campus has materials pick up which include manipulatives for math and science materials as well as project lead the way designed a completely digital platform that ensure the students are having the access to the same experiences but they're completely digital so they have both actually in virtual campus thank you well thank you very much i know we did ask some questions even ahead of tonight so i appreciate everybody's uh answering those and for uh the presentations that you both that all of you made this evening and it would be very helpful we'll look forward to the final outcomes next year thank you mrs abraham can i just do an observation um i've been in the district now long enough to see really a great progress
072first of all some of you know we have wonderful facilities thanks to our voters supporting uh work at both the high school and middle school so i think when i first saw the district we were talking about terrible no not updated and so i think from a facility standpoint and then the whole approach to stem and and leadership that we have is is really taken off uh i i i kevin would know dr becker would know but i think from a district perspective the fact that we are you know have the stem coordinators at every level and you can tell they really work well together they're they're quite a group uh is is really a compliment to their professionalism and their development and they're in there and they also are continually trying to improve and
073and this i'm so excited to think that we could be pretty content i think with what we've been doing in science but for us to say no we want to you know go to the next level i think as a compliment to use those facilities fully to to think about our curriculum to have a common finally maybe a high school approach scope and sequence i think i i'm really proud of the fact we're taking that on and not just saying you know we've done a lot of improvements already what else do we need to do uh these folks really represent wonderful leadership in the in the stem area and are highly respected and i think you know do a lot with the community the stem fests and other things that they try to get engaged
074with and some work they've done over the last couple years to try to bring we had a partnership for a while with normandy and you know we continue trying to reach out so and it was just an observation i think you know how far we've come and how far we still want to go so thank you we think about above and beyond you mentioned stem fest you mentioned our partnership with normandy we also have our food pantry and they voluntarily have been providing stem kits to all of our families who might be picking up food from the food pantry so we can ensure those students have access to stem experiences they go to the saint louis fair and air show and they're always they're always pushing me and saying we got another idea sometimes i
075have to say hold up we got enough ideas but they really are amazing ambassadors for the district and the stem area you know i just have to say uh from with the air show you may recall was like a week after school is out and uh i was at a chamber meeting and they were saying this parkway going to be there so i come back i think i send a note to and absolutely you know they were going to be there i mean school is out summer started and our folks and i think they enjoy it and they have a lot of opportunity to relate to the community and our presence there is really appreciated so again above and beyond i appreciate that may i also say uh amy thanks for your uh enthusiasm about
076plc work again i mean i think you know we're trying to grow our professional development there's a lot of things that we've done well but i think it's time as amy said to kind of take a look at how we do professional development and there's new technology there's new approaches she's right to do fours who were a team that really looked uh out of lincolnshire illinois some of us have been there that's all you know their approach but you know again things change and time changes and it's good to always be thinking differently about how we're looking at the future so i think i think these are wonderful two important areas as we think about our future in parkway thank you our reviews are very important to continue the high expectations that we have in
077parkway so thank you for your time on that our next agenda item is work session we have none 16.0 call for special meeting we have none and 17.0 is adjournment may i have a motion and second to adjourn the regular meeting so moved second all in favor aye any opposed motion carries success thank you for attending debbie thank you