001everyone uh we'll go ahead and start our meeting and of um and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all nikki would you please call role here i am here uh we have no additions corrections or modifications to tonight's agenda so may have a motion in a second to approve the agenda for the special meeting of the board of education scheduled for may 11 2022. second all in favor aye any opposed not first uh we available say it often enough but thank you to our board secretary nikki stover uh for keeping us organized at in between meetings among the many other tasks that she juggles thanks also to jerry sam and jason rooks their teams for managing our audio and video so well nikki and
002jerry were instrumental in orchestrating the layout for tonight's meeting so that all participants are viewable to those watching remotely as a reminder ms davis informed the board last month of her intent to resign on june 2nd the last day of school our objective has been to conduct the process to fill her seat in an open and fair manner we know the appointment to this position is important to our community and a responsibility we each take seriously tonight we have 12 individuals who have met the requirements we set forth at our last meeting they have each appeared in person to submit their application letters of recommendation and have been found to have met the requirements set forth by the state of missouri to hold office as a board member since our last meeting we have studied
003the formats and questions used by surrounding districts in recent years when similar vacancies have occurred we believe tonight's process will provide a transparent and uniform method for selecting an individual to fill the remainder of ms davis's term we have each had an opportunity to review the materials submitted by our applicants we've also received dozens of messages from our community in support of various individuals shortly before tonight's meeting began applicants were provided five questions which are to be addressed in their interview these are essentially the top five questions used by other districts and or suggested by the six board members here tonight they are number one please share why you're interested in joining the parkway school board number two why are you seeking an appointment at this time but did not choose to run in the
004recent election number three why did you feel you are i'm sorry what did you feel are the most important issues facing parkway both now and in the future number four what is your understanding of the role of a school board member and what would your objectives be in the next 10 months and number five what do you believe are the greatest strengths and weaknesses of the parkway school district and how would you support or address those going forward each applicant will have 10 minutes to address the questions in any order they choose along with any opening or closing comments they wish to make inside their allotted time jerry will keep a timer on the screen for their convenience applicants are welcome to stay for the entire meeting or you're free to exit the meeting after
005your interview is complete due to time constraints and the desire to maintain a fair and equal process for each applicant's board each applicant board members will not engage in discussion with them or ask follow-up questions ms dover will draw names randomly and i will call each applicant forward when their name is drawn board members will have a sheet to take notes on for each applicant after all interviews are complete we will use a ranking sheet where we will rank our top five applicants in order of preference of being appointed to the board a number one applicant will receive five points and number two applicant will receive four points and so on ms dover will tabulate the results and i will announce the applicant with the highest score out of a possible 30 based on our
006ranking our notes and the ranking sheets will be added to board docs within the next 24 hours at the end of the meeting a motion will be made to appoint the new individual as of the effective date of ms davis's resignation we will plan to swear in the new board member at the regularly scheduled board meeting on wednesday june 15th so that is our process and we will begin with it right now so nikki would you please call our first javon willis yep you come right up here and join us at the interviewee table thank you for having me so just answer you may answer in any we have the questions up here on the screen you know i'm going to grab my paper because actually that's fine okay so just go straight through the
007questions and answer right okay um so why am i interested in joining the parkway school board um i think that my interest comes just because i am passionate about education i'm a lifelong learner and i'm also passionate about advocacy and i felt like it was time for me to turn my passion into purpose so meaning it's one thing to be passionate about something and it's another to have actual items to address those things so i really wanted to bring my expertise to parkway in my experience and create actionable items in the area of parent advocacy so that's kind of why i'm seeking the position so why am i seeking appointment now and um why i didn't decide to run the last time so i was actually completing a fellowship in public leadership and parent advocacy
008at the time of that election um the the um fellowship is called chisholm chair and it's uh through we power i don't know if you've heard of wepower but there are a advocacy group in st louis and the the fellowship has to do with how to run um in like voter or how to run in elections and how to get appointed positions and things like that so i was actually going through formal training and my intention was to run for the next one so i just kind of took some time to get like more formal training in the area so that i can be better equipped to make some of those tough choices that i know you guys make all the time so that my intent was to run in the next one what do
009you feel are the most important issues facing parkway well right now the bus issue i think we all are going to be driving buses next year you know that's really that's a really big thing right now um but no in the future i feel like parkways is becoming more diverse and i feel like that's something that needs to be addressed eventually we need to have more diversity initiatives for our students you know diversity is huge we have you know a wide range of people coming from all backgrounds and i feel like we need to make them feel more inclusive when they come here so that's something that i would like to see in the future what is your understanding of the role of a board member and what my objectives are in the next 10
010months so i feel like the board member of course they they make you know the decisions on behalf of the the school board the community students and the parents but i also think that their their objective is to create an environment where kids can learn it feels safe at the highest level so uh one thing that i would like to do in the next 10 months is really drive more diversity initiatives and parent advocacy specifically in the area of transparency and communication like i would really like to run a campaign where we can communicate what is going on here at parkway so i feel like a lot of times when when parents are upset or you know about certain issues because they they didn't have the communication or they felt like things weren't as transparent
011so i would like to really drive more communication campaigns coming from the board all the way down what do i feel is the greatest strength and weakness of parkway i think the greatest strength here is i've been in the district for eight years and when i first got here i really just drank the kool-aid because i feel like everyone here has a real passion for their kids their education and not just like what they learn in the books but the community and the love that they get from the school i feel like they just teach them how to be great human beings and that is like the one thing that i love so much about parkway and a weakness and like i mentioned before i would just would like to see um more transparency and
012more diversity initiatives for our students and for our community i feel like we have such a diverse um community and i would like for more students to feel like they have a place to call their owner they feel like they belong here at every whatever school that they go to so that's it okay thank you his waters we have miss waters with us tonight oh that's okay so so we're calling people at random um however um ms stover has a list of questions uh and your name was actually just selected so um but to be fair i'm gonna i'm gonna let you uh have a seat and look over those questions and you will be our next contestant uh up uh after the person that missed over is going to draw now ms feeler please
013join us hello good evening okay since we've got uh 10 minutes i am just going to do a brief little uh intro just to let everybody know that's watching and all you guys know who i am clearly i'm joanna um i've been in parkway community for 30 years um i went to parkway schools growing up and i married my high school sweetheart after reconnecting 10 years ago i moved into the house that i grew up in so my daughters also went to parkway i have a daughter named amber who's 24 that graduated in 2016 and ashley's 19 and she graduates week and i'll just move on to the questions that's just a little brief about me okay so i want to start with question number two why am i seeking the appointment at this time
014but didn't choose to run um in the most recent election uh there's a various number of reasons behind that um one of the most number one reasons is why i didn't was i knew i had heard that there were several candidates that were going to be filing in december and knowing that there was only two seats and clearly the parkway community wants the best two people to be selected um so i just thought that maybe taking a step back letting other people run and get the two that um the community thought were best to uh get the seats and uh mr reddy and mr spectre are clearly ones that won that um so there was thought about running and or filing this december to go for this coming one in 23. all right so moving
015on to number one then um why am i interested in joining the board it's just simply to continue to keep parkway being an excellent school district that they are i have like i said 30 years of experience and then my two daughters and i have absolutely loved every aspect of elementary school middle school and high school for my kids so that is one of the main reasons i wanted to be able to help the district achieve their goals that they have set and to advocate for the best interest of the students teachers staff and for my community all right so number three why what do i feel are the most important issues facing parkway both now and in the future well there are a couple issues that clearly have come up over the past two
016years so i think one of the most important issues that parkway is facing is the mental health issues that students have undergone over the past two years it's taken a toll on their mental health and i think that a way that this could be helped is making sure that parkway is fully equipped to handle the mental health crisis that is happening and i think that there's going to be future impact of it and we're just starting to see it i think that younger kids we're going to see it as they get older as to um what the pandemic has done to them i think that maintaining trained counselors and crisis intervention and up to date on all the different social media trends that are going on is very important to help with the mental health
017issues and the bullying that can happen that goes on with cyber bullying okay so number three kind of i mean number four what um is your understanding role of the school board and my objectives in the next 10 months okay so the school board represents and advocates for the parkway community students and parents staff and taxpayers and the board adopts policies procedures for the district reviews financial matters and a very crucial responsibility of approving the curriculum so my objectives um would be like i stated before to maintain parkour being an excellent school district maintain the excellent teachers and staff that they have my children have both had ieps and have had fantastic um teachers and counselors that were just phenomenal i want the focus to be on the course subjects math english history science these
018core priorities is what makes students successful i think that parents involvement in the child's education is critical to their success so getting parents to be more engaged with the teachers and the staff and the school counselors and just in the school in general i think it just helps the students succeed in parkway all right and the last question what do i believe are the greatest strengths and weaknesses of the parkway school district and how would this be supported moving forward all right i think that a weakness overall in the entire nation of the united states that we've seen is politics are getting in the way in school boards we see it all over the nation i think that parkway has maintained not letting these politics take over their decision making and that is definitely a
019strength that parkway has parkway continuing to allocate resources for needs that's another strength of parkway has collaborating relationships between staff and community and engaging in the community these are all things that i have seen with all the years that i've been in parkway okay that's all thank you thank you very much swatters if you join us up here and just so you're aware of the the procedure we're not going to ask any questions you have those five questions you can address in any order that you like and you have 10 minutes and the questions are up here as well as a timer my name is renita waters i've lived in chesterfield for 10 years i have a granddaughter who attends the school parkway and she was had some issues her parents got divorced and so
020she was all over the place from rittner and so she came to live with me and my husband i have married my high school sweetheart we've been married for 41 years and i grew up we both grew up in normandy so we're normandy high and normandy middle school which is not there anymore and then i graduated from washu and i got my masters from lindenwood and right now i work for um ywca i am a social worker that works with women that's been abused and neglected and so that's what i do i find them housing and get them back on the right path that they can live a you know a good environment a good environment without being battered and abused i had decided to kind of run on the purpose of interested in joining
021the parkway school district is simply because you guys did a fantastic job with my granddaughter she came kind of like a little bit you know destroyed she came from another school district and when she got there it was um not very good but you guys with the teachers and the counselors she has got accepted to number one college and she graduates next week but three so she's doing real well and uh i want to cry because i seen this young lady come in my house mad angry and just discouraged and you're at school the school just you guys did it you did it for the teacher stayed you know focused on her and so i felt that uh maybe with other parents maybe i can help you know to be a part of the parkway
022school district and living in the neighborhood you know for a long time so i thought that my interest would be something that i can help other parents in the community with i'm seeking appointment at this time but uh but did not choose to run in the recent election i i was thinking about it but i wanted to make sure i was going to do it next year be honest i had i had planned on and i was thinking about it but i know that they had you know everybody had their points and and so i said i was doing that show but i want to get her kind of settled and out the way and so now i will call myself an empty nest me and my husband who's looking for a participant uh but
023but we you know we felt that this would be great for me i've been on a lot of boards and stuff so i've never been on the school board but um i kind of feel that the most important facing parkway probably is you don't have a really high rate of dropout i kind of did some research but i'd like to see a zero balance of of the dropout rate you know it's very very low and and in the future probably have more parents that are interested in just talking about what's going on with the children when i work with the parents of who i work with at the ywca their children need uh some therapy and you all therapy uh therapists are great you're okay you know and i just think that i like to
024see other parents a lot of people don't want to you know don't want to talk about what's going on in the household but it could be from the poorest to the richest and you know children sometimes have issues and they bring them back to school and so i like to see more parents be involved in you know just uh self-care and self-care with the children and i think that would make it even you know even much better you know i know that parkway is number four i bred to my girlfriends all the time and so uh i know that you guys are just out just outrageous when it comes to just education and giving the children you know what they need um my understanding of a role of the role of a school board member
025for me personally transparent honesty think about the children education is the most important thing i i had a story and i tell my girls all the time even my two granddaughters who's who's gonna who are juniors and seniors in school at lincoln that education is the best thing that you can ever get and i had my grandparents were illiterate and they couldn't read or write and so one thing my grandmother told me i always get your education and that's what i preach to my kids i preach to other youth i preach you know get something get something that you can be a productive citizen in society i don't care if it's you just getting uh entrepreneurship but you making your own money and you you know don't have to do anything outside that's wrong and
026um my understanding is that you know being transparent education is the most important thing and letting the parents know that we care about them my community where i live that we care um about them when i went and told my manager and she was just saying oh rene i'm so happy i'm so happy you know so she was happy that i was running and you know if i don't i'll do it again but the thing is that um it's it's very important for me and the community and the children and the youth and you know the teachers are fantastic the principal i've talked to the principal i know i know anybody so uh i just think that uh for me i just want to be transparent honest make sure that the children know that we're
027here for them and the parents will always know that the greatest strength is um you all have compassion and you have caring it's a caring community compassion for the teachers the children the family the communities and uh probably the weakness for me is just not really having um i like to see the dropout rate really really low nothing zero because we have most of our kids do graduate and go to height to college and they do you know they do it but i like to see a zero you know and i know i don't know that sometimes it's hard because parents go through a lot for losing jobs and you know so that's one of the things um the weakness and the uh that's that and scooter how would you support and address those going
028forward uh work and talk i'm gonna talk to i have a lot of resources just kind of dealing with uh maybe having speakers coming in talking about other issues that we can bring the the school you know the the drop-out rate you know up a little bit other people who's doing other jobs entrepreneurs doing other jobs or any kind of uh college you know professors and because like for me i learned a lot from my professor and i love them today i call them you know when i'm in trouble or if something when i'm in trouble if i'm dealing with a parent or whatever and his name is dr harbor walls and fall and i want to give him my props because i was a mother that went away went to school when my daughter
029was in the 10th grade and i went back and i got an associate bachelors and a masters and may work on my phd i'm just kind of thinking about so uh i just think that uh you guys are great and i think the school is great and i'm going to miss you guys because trinity graduates next week and so um i just want to thank you guys i just want to thank you thank you very much everyone ready for the next one are you with us she is not one of our online people okay sophia ford glanton would you please join us i think there's something wrong with nikki's hands she keeps pulling all women out of her little fish bowl tonight um let's see here so just a little bit about me when my
030timer starts i have lived in this district for close to nine years now um i have three children who've gone through parkway my oldest graduated in 2019 and i currently have a child at masonry elementary and so i've experienced almost every single grade that there is to experience within the parkway school district including the pre-k program it was really cute because when my daughter was a senior at our junior i should say at parkway central my youngest was able to go to the pre-k program that they had there and she would be able to stop by and visit with her which was um adorable i and my husband are both physicians here in the local area and we have practices actually out in rural missouri we serve the underserved communities there we have a heart
031for service because there are many communities that don't have specialists available to them and they don't like coming into the city and so we go out to them so that way they don't have to come here so why i'm going to go ahead and go with number two as well first why am i seeking an appointment but didn't choose to run in the election i actually have run in elections before i ran against both debbie and jeff way back when i was one of the nea endorsed candidates when i ran and i also experienced a lot of vitriol and threats during my campaign which is why i decided not to actually run a campaign this year with this climate um i didn't want to subject my family or myself through that type of um scrutiny
032or receiving that type of attention unwanted attention why am i interested in joining the school board well i do believe that diverse opinions and diverse experiences not just in physicalities but in life experiences that they can bring a different perspective and allow someone to see things from a different way and allow them to experience or even think of something that they would have never thought of before because that's not their life experience so i would hope that by joining the school board i would be able to bring a new and different perspective one that hasn't been there before so what do i feel are the most important issues facing parkway both now and in the future one of the main things is the aging buildings within our school district and maintaining them i know that
033my elementary school mason ridge is over 70 years old and so just the dealing with with some of the buildings and the facility management there the bus driver shortage of course is one of the main issues that are concerned and then one of the issues that's a very near to me is dealing with the lack of diversity in the teachers and staff of course i know that parkway does its best there but that there's still some strides or some inroads to be made in that in that area so my understanding of the role of a school board member is that they set the overall district policies manage the financials and they also manage the or set the vote on the curriculum not set the curriculum vote on the curriculum and then they in addition to
034the policies they make sure that the um that the metrics are being met by whatever standards and guidelines are are there so if we say that this is what we want to see done in the next five years over the strategic plan making sure that that the school district is meeting those goals along the way so what would be my objectives over the next 10 months given that it is such a short time my main objective objective would actually be to leave a lasting impression on the board members who would remain and to help them to shape future policy and future district and of course to fully integrate myself during that time and be involved and present what do i think are the greatest strengths and weaknesses of parkway well we are a very financially
035sound district we have amazing teachers and staff who are dedicated and we have a strong community and parental involvement and so i think that those things are all within the they're on the plus column over there as far as what is really lacking i believe i said it earlier and it is the diverse teachers it is important for children of color to be able to see teachers who look like them to have somebody who's there to encourage them and support them i think one of the ways to help alleviate that problem is to partner with historically black colleges and universities and try to entice people to come right from school and to create that pipeline creating those partnerships are key just like with the spark program of course you know creating those community partnerships and
036allowing the students to get that real life experience and and see what it's going to be helps to create a pipeline and helps employers know what kind of students there are out there what what the job market and helps the students know what the job market's going to be like what they can expect so i think that having those type of partnerships and those kind of collaborations are things that can help parkway to achieve its goals i believe parkway has done a great job doing those types of things in the past especially where the students are concerned our students are some of the brightest and most confident caring competent people i've ever met considering that my children are part of that group and that is all i have to say this evening thank you for
037your time okay thank you everybody ready for the next one okay mr reagan logan join us please well looks like i'm going to be the first male good evening my name is joe reagan bogan and just to give you a brief introduction about my background it may be a bit unique and that i spent most of my career teaching in parkway i started teaching uh 1979 in new orleans that's where i'm from originally and i was a teaching in a an inner city school in the lower ninth ward but i met my wife in college and that was up in illinois and she's from here and she wasn't very happy living in new orleans thinking it wouldn't be the best place necessarily to raise children so she convinced me to move up here in 1984
038and i got on with parkway in 1985. so i spent 13 years teaching history at parkway south high school 14 at parkway north where i served five years as a department chair and then i retired in 2012 but i came back and spent another seven years teaching part-time in the mosaics academy at west middle um for the past three years i've been fully retired which uh well let me get to the questions now and then maybe i can bring in some more things about my background as well the first question about why is it that i'm interested in joining the parkway school board i feel like it's very important to dedicate your your efforts to your own community the fact is that we've always lived up in the north attendance area my children attended craig
039elementary then they went to northeast middle and they graduated from north high and they got an excellent education but i've always served a dual role not only as a teacher but as a parent and i was very supportive for example at craig elementary when they had a very strong chess program for example and i used to help out there every week with their chess program and they they actually won the state championship five years in a row as a result of that um so i feel like it's just because i'm now 65 years of age doesn't mean that you know my commitment to the community ends now and i think that's the primary reason i guess the other reason is i feel like i can bring a different perspective in that i spent so much
040time teaching in parkway i know it very very well i'm also a parent like i said and my two kids who are both attorneys today uh one of them is in denver and he works for a non-profit there and does a lot of good things working mostly with the colorado state legislature my daughter is a federal public defender and they got an excellent start in the parkway schools and that's something that i'm very very proud of but i also feel like it gave me a lot of insight into parkway in terms of every level of education elementary middle school and high school and finally because i'm retired i feel like i have plenty of time now that i could devote towards a lot of the things that i would like to do um the second
041question frankly i never thought about running for this position i'm just not a politician and it never crossed my mind but i've always been searching for a way maybe to give back and a couple of weeks ago a friend of mine who still teaches at parkway north high school suggested that maybe i should put in for this he thought there was a lot that maybe i could contribute obviously at this point i will think about it in the future but it's just not something that ever crossed my mind in the past all right the third question about the most important issues facing uh parkway now and in the future i don't think it's any secret that we're living through contentious times um and i don't know if i've ever seen this country as torn as
042it is right now you'd have to go back probably to the civil war to say that that things are are are terrible now fortunately i think i've already heard this it hasn't really infected parkway but i would like to be sure that doesn't happen i think it's important that that this district continue to resist some of the external pressures that it makes an effort to maintain a balance because i think that's necessary between on one hand for example representing the interests of the public and the parents and listening to them anytime they have concerns but at the same time guarding the academic freedom of teachers who were hired because they're qualified to be teachers in parkway and i think that given the opportunity and the support they can continue to do some of the great
043things that they've done in the past i can throw out one quick example of this and this is a personal example several years ago when i was teaching in the mosaics academy one of the and i was teaching seventh and eighth grade and then having the students take the ap exam in american history at the end of eighth grade and so obviously i piled on the readings these kids were exceptionally gifted students and and were up to the challenge so i had them reading a book of slave narratives well one year i had a parent who complained about that she had read through the book and felt it wasn't appropriate to me then the solution is simple i've met with the parent we talked about it and i made accommodations to to to be sure
044that that her her needs were met the needs of her daughter were met but at the same time you know the other students and their parents wanted the book to be read so the whole point to censorship is that you know one parent should not decide what other students are able to read or not be able to read and that's an important principle to me going on to the fourth question about the role of the school board to me there's this three important roles that any school board member needs to play one is to support the administrators and the faculty in the district to be sure that they're doing the best job they can to meet the needs of students the second and i think any time you serve as a representative whether it's here
045or in congress is that you still have to take into account the interests of the public that elected you so obviously you have to be willing to meet with people talk to people and and and deeply listen to what their concerns are um and i think the third point is and i'm gonna speak more about this in a minute is to take a look at the future no matter how good things may be and no matter how strong a district might be the world's rapidly changing and in order to keep up with those changes i think it's incumbent to try to stay a step ahead and still look for opportunities to improve you can never just sit back and rest on your laurels um objectives at least in the next 10 months the one that
046comes to mind and like there's plenty more i guess we could talk about is the fact that as as strong as standards are throughout the district there's always room for them to be raised even higher now anytime you talk to stu to teachers about doing this of course you may not get a very good reception but i think with enough support with an opportunity during staff development for teachers to come together and talk about what can they do to get even more achievement out of their students that's actually the easier part to me the harder part is then what does the teacher then do to help those students who may lag behind and not be able to meet those higher standards and i think there are there's probably opportunities as a school district to provide
047greater support to those teachers for example i think one of the biggest assets that out that's out there in the parkway school district is what you're looking at right now i've been sitting at home for the past three years i pick up my granddaughter she's nine months old every day and i bring it to the house and my wife and i are providing daycare for my daughter but at the same time why is it that i couldn't have the opportunity to come in and volunteer more why couldn't i help teachers who are trying to work individually with students to raise those standards there are hundreds of retirees like myself who are out there not to mention plenty of others i think including seniors who might be able to give back so that's the kind of
048thing that maybe i would like to be able to do in the next 10 months is to look at the opportunity to raise standards and then address some of the ways that we might be able to help the teachers to bring those students up in other words if the bar is already fairly high if you want to raise it even higher what can we do to get all students so that they can get up to that level the final question about strengths and weaknesses i think ever since i first moved in the parkway in the mid-1980s i knew that there were wonderful teachers and my kids had wonderful teachers and there were plenty plenty that i worked with um i think that the the district has always been financially sound uh and that's a strength
049of course and although i do think there's the need for more diversity especially amongst the teaching staff and administrators there's a lot of diversity in this public in terms of parents and students uh particularly in the north attendance area that was one of the best things my kids got out of their experience especially at north high a weakness like i said i think you know parkway is one of the best districts in in the state and and certainly even in the united states but it's not enough just to go ahead and pat ourselves on the back and say that we're such we're such great such a great district what can we do to get even better and i think more than anything that i don't know if that's even a weakness but i think it's
050a concern and it's what i would probably want to focus the most on if i had the opportunity to serve on this board so anyway thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight tiffany matt franklin ms franklin can you hear us yes and i can okay you are up oh um i am with me matt franklin this is just a little bit of background about myself um i'm sorry can you you're an echo we do not hear an echo but you sound fine probably just done right in and i'll go right through it so i currently have three students um that are attending parkway in elementary school middle school and high school and i really believe it's important for parents to be involved in in our children's schools i've been involved in my
051children's school since they were in elementary school starting off volunteering in the in the classroom that volunteering in the classroom led to my joining the pto as vice president and then as president and through those opportunities of working closer with our principal and vice principals um i i started joining more district level committee so i joined the project parkway steering committee and i also joined the equity task force i feel that joining the school board is kind of a the next step of my progression in serving our students i also feel that as a person of color that is important to have a representation on our parkway board we i want to make sure that our children of color um have a voice uh in this school district as well i want to make sure
052that our teachers of color have a voice in this district um as a as a my students my kids actually joined parkway through the vic program um that's a program where city students uh city residents are able to come to parkway and we were we loved we loved our our time in that program one of the reasons that we chose parkway was because of the academics but we also chose them because parkway was known and is still known for caring about the whole child not just the academics so they truly did care for or they truly do care for our students in a whole way and i appreciate that um sorry my next question went away so that was part of the reason why i wanted to join um the parkway school board was to
053continue that progression of serving and also to make sure that um parkway remains one of our top districts because we are um why did i not uh seek at a point uh um why did i not run instead of seeking this appointment um was really because of some of my other activities so i also am or recently resigned from um the judicial commission for the saint louis county uh courts so that is a a six-year term and it's time-consuming and honestly we never know how many vacancies we will have uh in our court system so um in that position i helped select judges for our st louis county courts so when this uh this past election and in previous elections it really just wasn't a good time um in my life to add an additional
054um commitment that would obviously consume time because this is very important i wanted to make sure that anything that i do i do with excellence and that was one of the reasons i recently resigned that position and at the end of but that was not that did not really give me enough time to prepare for an election when this appointment came up it just seemed like an ideal time to go ahead and apply um what do i feel are the most important issues facing parkway um honestly continuing to compete with the global world we have to make sure that our students are are well-rounded in order to um be successful and positive contributors in a as our mission says an ever-changing world um and in order to do that we have to make sure that
055we are educating our students about all facets so that they can understand um the cultural differences of people in all areas of the world that's where we're going we are a global world and we need to be able to um to to make sure that our students can be successful in that world my understanding of the role of a school board um the the most important thing that we do is hire the superintendent and we partner with with the superintendent and his team i think an effective school board it has a partnership with the superintendent and they're working together to make sure that our school district is successful and that the goals that are set by the superintendent are being achieved so um yes a school board is is responsible for the financial oversight um
056and the policy oversight but it's really important that we have a good working relationship with the superintendent and his team um what would my objectives be in the next 10 months well 10 months is not a long time most jobs that you have it takes a good six months to get comfortable in it so um in that 10 months my my my real goal would be to learn as much as possible about this school district i although i've been involved in the schools for a number of years i know there's so much more um that's involved in our school district than um than i know right now and my goal would be to make sure that i learned as much as possible but i would also want to be a present as a person of
057color on the board i want to be a presence in our schools at our events to to ensure that those those students and teachers and others in the community know that they are represented as well [Music] and what do i believe are the greatest strengths and weaknesses um as many have said before our greatest strengths are teachers and our administrators we have wonderful staff and administrators um they're caring they're committed and they they really do want what's best for our kids um as far as our weaknesses i think one thing that we can improve upon and this was also mentioned before is the representation within our staff and our leadership especially within our teachers and principals and specifically core subject teachers of having more teachers of color as i said before i joined the equity
058task force in 2020 and the recommendation that i worked on was actually the one to attract and retain more teachers of color i think that is probably one of our most important recommendations when it comes to the equity task force because it kind of sets the stage of making sure that everyone who is a part of the parkway community feels like they belong [Music] i want to make sure i've answered all of the questions i think i did um i thank you for this time and i um i would like to say that one other thing is i am so excited to see so many um people of color that have applied this for this appointment um regardless i think it's important for there to be representation to show that parkway is a diverse community
059and to make sure that the voices of all of our students and staff are are represented thank you very much are you ready david henners join us please greetings parkway my name is david henners and i'm a cpa and i have two children that attend parkway schools so that's really a lot of my motivation here to go for the seat and i just want to go ahead and jump right into the first question talk about that and it's why i want to serve on the board of education so i believe that the most important contribution that any adult can make to their community is through educating the next generation and the board really lays out that foundation and it provides all the tools for the educators and students to be able to learn to grow
060and achieve i really want to i wish to serve my community by being a part of this important role which shapes the curriculum and the education in general for future generations just kind of jumping to the next question here about why you're seeking appointment at this time but not didn't choose to do it at the recent election i did plan on actually running for the next election cycle i had personal obligations to my church as a i was actually serving as chairman of finance committee on that and we were of course like a lot of places experiencing a very difficult time we were in a difficult situation with covet and with the impact of that and i felt that my time needed to be really focused on those efforts to help at that time and
061uh but did want to serve the um the school board the school itself when that opportunity came this opportunity uh arose and i felt that it was probably a good indicator that uh i needed to throw my hat in the ring and actually try to help out here and so um jumping to that uh the next question here what do you feel it's most important issues facing parkway both now and in the future and i think that's also um some of the things too that's motivated me to be here are the issues that i've seen i know that many have been mentioned about politics things like that but in particular what that i see that really has caught my for one the immediate things that have been mentioned by others busing we definitely have an
062issue with busing a shortage of bus drivers also one that i've noticed too is a teacher shortage in missouri and it's not just something that's um you know impacted missouri or just you know parkway but all of missouri um this is uh some of the issues that i believe also um something that has been partly addressed here has been the aging facilities so i know that we have the project parkway and looking at it the facilities for parkway school district they average about 54 years old and you know when i look at this i see that you know there's a proposal that deals with a lot of the the uh a short-term fix i would call it for it renovating the schools and so forth but um i really i guess what uh one of
063the things that i felt was an issue was that yes there are short-term fixes to renovation but one of the things that i would like to see and be a part of is the long-term solution for buildings and i know that one was mentioned tonight that's uh that's over 70 years old and i kind of think to myself what is our long-term plan for these buildings that will eventually be decommissioned and so um some of these issues i think are not only short-term but long-term things in the future as well and that's in particular one of the issues that i feel is very important one here at parkway looking at the next one here about what is your understanding the role of school board member so i believe that the proper role of the board
064of education is to establish and improve school infrastructure and policy to provide support to the superintendent's staff and be accountable to the public for school district performance and unify the community in the shared goal of higher higher quality education so i i do believe that um you know yes we are there to to support the community we are there to support the school as well um but uh you know like i say overall really all of this should come together in order to serve the purpose of providing high quality education so i believe that that is an essential and crucial role for a school board member to do and then just looking here about this it says what do you believe are the greatest strengths and weaknesses of parkway school district so some of the
065greatest strengths i've been actually at the in parkway schools for right now at almost five years and what i've noticed is some of the the greatest strengths of it that yes we are financially sound for the most part seems like you know that's not been an issue over the years also that it promotes i feel like that with my kids experience and with ours that the atmosphere it does promote a positive and proactive learning um i do believe that uh the community itself it really is a strength to this as well it's it's pretty amazing to me that um we have a the short-term opening and you have 13 applicants you have such you know interaction and people involved who really truly want to serve and that says a lot to me i think about
066the community that we have here it's one of our greatest strengths that we have going here but again i would say that probably one of the weaknesses about that's going on with parkway school district is the aging facilities i think from the prior school district that we come from and when we moved here and when we got to tour the facilities and see them it was probably the first thing that i noticed was that they had aged and that they needed work and needed attention and i am very pleased to see that there is a an actual plan in place in order to do this but it is something that i think is certainly something we need to invest in for you know the best to give the best tools that we can to our
067teachers and for our students as well another weakness that i see as well that i know quite often people look as positive is that we do have a 60 proficiency in math in english the last time that i looked on here i feel actually that this should be much higher and i think that we're quite capable of doing this and i would just like to uh to work with that on those particular things but yeah also just to kind of talk a little bit more about this about what i would my goal and objectives with this during 10 months the 10-month period is a short time i know that you know during this that coming on as a new board member there is a learning curve and i'm certainly dedicated to to doing what is
068necessary and helping the board to listen to and find out and identify all of the issues and barriers that people within the district face and working together to come to a consensus in order to solve those effectively believe i've answered the questions thanks thank you very much jason is there a way we can have after after any future interviewees appear can we have that screen go back to the default i'm sorry i couldn't hear what was just said was it oh my turn i'm sorry no i was i was asking uh one of our tech people to to adjust the screen oh cj campo please please join us all right thank you i was telling david the last candidate on the way in when i saw those hundreds of cars i thought that was for
069the school board meeting at first so i'm a little bit relieved it wasn't that but um yeah thank you for your consideration um just a quick background so um my name is cj campo i i come from the the business world um i currently work at nestle purina i've been there the past 15 years and i have two kids who are just starting on their parkway journey so i have a second grader and a kindergartner at barrett's so it's crazy to think about but i really haven't experienced parkway uh without the pandemic when my kindergartner was it was his kindergarten year when the pandemic hit so we're only just starting to emerge and get him be able to be go inside the school and participate in barrett's blast and all that stuff so it's been
070great over the past year just getting to emerge from our cocoon but the first question please share why you're interested in joining the parkway school board um i think and i'll share some stories from the from the corporate world as well but similar to our schools the corporate world is emerging from the pandemic and we're trying to find our way and as a people leader at purina i've been really inspired by our approach of policy plus humanity and i'm going to come back to those words a lot in the course of my answer and one example at work is we we are now we have a mandatory return to work policy we're calling it the four plus one plan and as you can imagine that's been very polarizing just like a lot of things in
071the education world are polarizing right now so you're mandatory in the office monday through thursday flexible fridays so our hr department shared this real world example um where again policy plus humanity where a couple who works at purina was undergoing fertility treatments they were worried about giving getting coveted during that process and they went to hr and they the policy would tell you no you have to be in work just like everybody else but that's where the humanity comes in let them stay home for six weeks to finish the process and now they're expecting their first child so while on my team that i manage i haven't had anything that dramatic again i take inspiration from that and there have been a lot of conversations on my team around child care needs and appointments and
072and that kind of thing where again you you have to balance out the policy and then how do you have empathy for what people are going through um so yeah i think my record in the corporate world reflecting this approach as a high performing people leader really inspires me to apply this to the education world everything from student discipline to covid protocol to gender issues and a lot of these things there's no black or white so you again have to balance policy and humanity um why are you seeking an appointment at this time but did not choose to run in the recent election so i think a number of people have had a similar answer but i'm not a politician it didn't even enter my consideration set i think there was just some cognitive dissonance
073of even thinking of seeing my name on a ballot but that being said once these unique circumstances presented themselves and i got over that hurdle and spent time going through the issues and thinking about my positions on them learning more about what a school board does i started to maybe i could do this so if if i were to be selected i would fully intend to run in the april election i would not want to be a lame duck uh short-term candidate i would want to learn as much as i could but would through the support of people who have been in elections would intend to embrace uh that side of it um let's see here what do you think are the most important issues facing parkway so i'm going to share two and number
074one and a couple of other candidates have said the same thing diversity equity and inclusion i like how one of the previous candidates talked about i don't want to steal her words but talked about helping students find their voice so i have been involved with some volunteer work as a writing coach helping high schoolers from low-income schools find their voice in their college application essays and that's been some of the most rewarding volunteer work that i've ever done but looking specifically at parkway did read through the parkway equity task force and really liked the approach how it was so comprehensive and sought feedback from parents teachers and administrators i think the nine recommendations make a lot of sense with the emphasis on teacher development and teacher diversity training around courageous conversations refreshing the curriculum that
075was all great but i think one of the most important things in there is the accountability piece we need that to be a living document if we just say all right great we we and i don't think this is the intent but i think we need to do the hard work now of making sure that document and its recommendations come to life so at purina i sit on our culture cultural leadership team alongside some of our diversity equity and inclusion leads and the way we talk about it at work is diversity is inviting people to the party so we've done that at parkway 40 percent of our students are are non-white but inclusion is valuing those differences so it's not just volume to the party but valuing it and that's where the hard work comes
076in and just one example of that is student discipline so i alluded to that earlier did some research as part of the preparation for this and black students and this is national not at parkway i don't i don't know the parkway numbers black students make up 16 of enrollment but 40 of suspensions so that's an example again policy plus humanity you can't uh just stop at the what when things like that come up and i can appreciate that expulsion decisions and things like that are probably some of the hardest things you have to face on the school board i think you have to look at the why and start getting into case-by-case basis at what are those underlying issues what's going on at home are there issues related to family or mental health etc um
077the other one i will share well in the interest of time i was going to touch on mental health i'll just say really quickly my son who's in second grade and again this is a relatively minor issue i've been very grateful for the mental health resources at barrett elementary he has had a lot of anxiety about getting on the bus for various reasons and we've been able to tap into the counseling at barrett's who's given him a lot of strategies on how to cope with that and i can appreciate as kids get older and get into high school and their social media and all that the need for mental health issues is only going to become much greater so i'm grateful for the resources we have but we need to make sure that every student
078like my son has access um all right uh what is your understanding of the role of a board member and objectives in the next 10 months so i think really it comes down to balancing the interests of parents educators students and administrators these are all critical stakeholders but we can't let the balance tip and i know a lot of us are probably aware of the missouri parents bill of rights i think that's an example where the scales are tipping a little bit that's the idea that parents if they're uncomfortable with curriculum for example can actually sue the school board so i'm very against things like that i don't think we should use the threat of lawsuits and education i could see that being abused on topics such as race so i'm very against something like
079that but um i do also see the role of this seat because it's unelected and i'm sensitive to that not to come in as an activist and shake things up i think the job is to listen have empathy understand the needs of the district help as much as possible and again [Music] be ready to run in in april so ultimately policy plus humanity again i'll reinforce that and then the greatest strengths of the district i would say number one would be project parkway i went to the meeting last week and left that feeling very energized about democracy and action um that fired me up more than anything for this role just the thoughtful approach and how they were getting feedback from the community and how engaged the parents who were there were i thought that
080was awesome and i'm going fast because i have 40 seconds the um greatest opportunity i think is the division over kovid i really appreciate how you guys have managed us through that process but i think now we have to figure out uh how do we make up for lost time from the pandemic we can't pretend as if there was no disruption we have to understand the extent of that disruption on everything from test scores to reading levels to mental health issues and then we can address how to bring students collectively up to speed particularly with emphasis on our most our most vulnerable students and that's five seconds left thank you all ready mr kim evening good evening my name is robert kim i am new to the district since uh most of the folks here
081have been here seemingly a long time i've only been here for three years and two of those years have been in the pandemic i'm a professor over at covenant theological seminary i have three children one's 20. it lives in boston a sophomore over at parkway central high and the 8th grader over at parkway central middle i'll start and begin by the first question please share why you're interested in joining the school board i'm interested because of the fact that i've served on a school board in philadelphia where we moved three years ago and know the role of a school board and how important is but behind that is actually the belief that education is extremely powerful i believe it unlocks opportunities to future generations i think whether the teachers uh uh would be able to
082say the same thing but just a personal story my grandmother grew up in korea some of korean descent and she has no more than maybe a high school education and yet two generations later here i am as a professor of a local institution higher education and think about it that's all because of the fact that education has unlocked those opportunities and so to believe that education is really in essence the future for all of our children the things that we can do for the next generation the best thing we can do is just simply educate them and i think with a lot of things that have already been said by other candidates i would echo the same thing that we need to continue to evolve with the current needs of today um to provide 21st
083century 21st century education for all of parkway educa or parkway school district students the other thing i will say as to why is for a similar reason as other people of color who have said in terms of candidates is i do believe representation matters so actually i told nikki that the one of the reasons i was not late but i was at least rushed to come over is because i went over to parkway central middle true fact i didn't look at the email that clearly but all that to say is this is because that's where i went to a previous school board meeting and it was actually uh the evening for national merit scholar awards and i remember sitting there in that middle school auditorium and thinking through here are again all these students from
084all the schools throughout parkway schools and the majority of them were people of color and or maybe more specific asian-american descent and i remember being on the board and we had similar things like that in philadelphia where i think it matters those the hands of the people that they're shaking to say congratulations and to see that they would have someone who represents a leadership on the other side that says hey you know what you too can be a leader i think in my last time there i worked with different parts of the constituency and one of the things that was really just a fun conversation were parents of children who said you have inspired our children to be leaders of the next generation and i think for asian americans specifically that is something that they
085have a hurdle to really overcome amongst also all other people of color as well why are you seeking employment at the time but did not choose to uh to be honest three years ago when i first moved i wanted to and for the very reason of the fact that i did have previous experience i thought uh why not leverage that experience and actually use it here in missouri as well i looked up the laws and i realized that you actually have to be a one-year resident before you do so that was a bad time and that was the best year for me to do so because the faculty at covenant said uh robert we want you to give one year of just doing teaching and don't do other things like ministry i have a pastor
086back pastoral background and so don't do ministry but just kind of give us a year and say i said okay if i give you a year i can do other things like serve on the school board and they said sure but then again i wasn't qualified the reason why i didn't run for election is because i also know how arduous that can be and the roles that i do have i know that is simply again i do not have the time to be able to do so i'll go into the other part as to what i think is what can i do in the objectives in 10 months later but i'll relate that as to another reasons why i didn't choose to run in the recent election coincidentally though i will say this about six
087years ago i was actually appointed in a very similar fashion like tonight on that school board upper dublin school district for those of you who want to research that in the philadelphia region i was elected i had served my full term i was up for re-election i won the primary and then i took the job here and so that's how we got moved into the st louis region third what do you think are the most important issues facing both now and in the future i think like other school districts around the country but specifically in missouri i think parkway will always deal with human resources as being the primary issue and one of the lessons i've taught my children is simply this people over possessions right and to believe that that motors operandi is important
088that at the end of the day even though we can have things like facilities which by all means need to be addressed at the end of the day school district is run by people it's people-centric i think similar to the other candidate to really kind of put that into a philosophy of how you run the school district what that means is things like getting the right and appropriate teachers in terms of making sure that those are qualified administrators that are always excellent uh dealing with drivers we are living in a great resignation so having whether it be school bus drivers or other things like that human resources are valuable and that's one thing i think in the midst is the pandemic that we've learned to realize the other thing though is by all means infrastructure
089and so parkway leverages its resources and your resources are your buildings and constantly there's aspects in which you have to ask yourself of all the resources that you have what attention do you it's kind of like dealing with many children and it's really hard and i think you know i'll just echo this is by saying for everyone who served on the school board i don't envy that i would say this to my friends who are still on the board and other friends who have also sought offices in other places i say i don't envy you because i feel like in many ways i've slept a lot lighter in the last five years uh not serving in particular during the midst of the pandemic which i think wasn't particularly tough um the last thing i'll just
090simply say is one of the issues is just a sense of hubris i think as a top achieving school district there's always the sense that because we are on the top and the school district i was down in philadelphia was also a high achieving school district in fact the superintendent there when i was moving here to st louis when i was looking for a place to live he actually researched parkway he says parkway is going to be just like aberdupan both in terms of its ethnic mix as well as in terms of its uh role or this aspect in terms of wanting to be a high achieving school but i always think there's a sense of the hubris which just say if you're on the top how do you maintain excellence how do you make
091sure that you're always being going to be a high achieving things i think hubris is always the beginning of downfall four what is your understanding of the role of a school board member and what are your objectives in the next 10 months um there are things that have been echoed planning supervision looking at results there are things like duties that you have to do in terms of acting entering into collective bargaining agreements and everything else i'm going to echo what one of our sisters here or tiffany said over here is i think the primary responsibility is actually to let the superintendent flourish a good board is actually invisible in my opinion right when a board is overly visible when our names are known i don't think we're serving faithfully on the board we really support
092the vision the leader who cast it and executes it your primary task in my opinion is to say how do we do that how do we come alongside to make sure that the mission and vision of parkway school district is actually executed but we shouldn't get into the nitty-gritty we are not micromanagers and i think there's oftentimes misconceptions of school boards where they think your job is to fix x y or z and one of the things we did in philadelphia was simply board 101 education for our community where we had kind of community events where we just made sure that the community knew this is our role our role is actually not to do what you're asking us our duty is to support right this vision to make sure that it's executed faithfully so
093that's what i would say and maybe secondarily to that i think the role of a board member also is to make sure that we are accountable for all students of parkway and i'm going to emphasize the all there roughly speaking we had 4 300 students in upper dublin school district and i used to say i have three living children but i felt like i had 4 300 children whose lives were on my heart and on my mind as i continue to lead and i don't know about you i sell board members but i will simply say this for myself i think that's a daunting task when you come to realize that when you execute and make the decisions that you do you do it on behalf of every single student here in the parkway school
094district and oftentimes when we do make decisions unfortunately that all piece is not represented we can focus on let's say the gifted we can focus on x y or z but are we are we really considering how do we interact with all the schools all the students within parkway school district uh uh what are your objectives in the next month i'm just going to answer very briefly and honestly i actually don't think there's going to be many objectives a 10-month period is not much to be able to accomplish anything however at the same time here is what i would love and actually i would echo the same thing i am so glad that there are people of color who are here as candidates i would love to see a person of color come on the
095school board to again represent the diverse aspects of what parkway school district is with that said at the same time it cannot be simply a person of color for the sake of color it has to be a person who knows how to lead who knows how to execute board governance and so with that said is this i would love it if my role if it were to be the case and i'm not necessarily it needs to be advocated in that way would be simply to be an interim so that there could be someone who can execute that really well there are a lot of things that i can give my attention to but i would love to give my attention to this for the next 10 months what are the strengths and weaknesses i'll simply
096say this again some of the strengths is the community that believes i think again the fact that you have the number of applicants that there are i'm going to use the st louis question as a new resident here the one question that everyone seems to ask you is what high school did you graduate from i found that a really strange question but what that actually indicates though in st louis is that they really do value education right one of the reasons why people move into let's say the parkway constituency is because of the schools what did my real estate agent say why i buy my house it's because of the schools and so that is great strength you have a community that believes in education it's weakness i think i'm gonna just echo the same
097sentiments we live in a fractured community how do we go about unifying a vision how do we go about making the right decision on behalf of again all of our students and then i will echo the same thing with respect to mental health my daughter presently is suffering through a lot of anxiety and she's missed a lot of school this particular week we've called in for the attendance line i think that's just a result of the pandemic we've gone through global trauma so how do we care well for our students in the midst of a mental health crisis thank you dr certino [Music] can't sit very long without my knee just not working well um good evening it's kind of different being on this side of the the board table i really enjoyed uh hearing
098all the the voices of the candidates that are here this evening and i admire you and i appreciate your interest in the district and um we'll see what happens from this point on but just to give you an overview the audience overview of my background um basically i out of college i started teaching science at parkway central junior at the time and after a couple years became an assistant principal there and then we opened parkway east which is now northeast and i went there as an assistant principal and then later as principal um at then following that i was encouraged to go to central office and work in curriculum and instruction and supervise schools and human resources and um my love is in the school so that's what i wanted to do so i asked
099to go back to a middle school and i had the opportunity and went to west middle at until i retired and when i retired i had the opportunity to work in a private school setting um which was another great experience and really broadened my educational background and the ability to lead and and work through a school environment but my heart was still in parkway so after a year i joined project parkway and at that point i was encouraged to become a member of the board to run for the board and i said well that's absolutely wonderful because i do want to be involved in some capacity at parkway no matter what and i still do to this to this day so i ran for the board and i was elected four different times and recently
100did not decide to continue on the board primarily not because i was not interested but mainly because it was 12 years i have family obligations that didn't allow me to basically commit another three years so that was my main reason for not running at the time my interest in in joining the school board my interest in the beginning was the fact that i am just passionate about this district it's outstanding uh it's been my life my career and i've had wonderful opportunities to work with incredible young people incredible teachers and administrators and parents and and being in different school environments i learned a lot i learned a lot about leadership and management and organization and most important just how to care for people and to help them no matter who they are to work through
101any issues they have and any concern concerns they have we all know that middle school kids that's the age that kids seem to have a lot of issues and concerns so that was my interest and my interest continues and it always will be in some capacity or another i'll be involved as a volunteer in parkway and i did have the experience my first couple years in parkway to drive a bus we had a need at that time that bus drivers were not available for after school activities so myself and several our teachers we decided to drive a bus so that might be the next thing that i do at parkway at this point in time so why am i seeking appointment at this time mainly because of my passionate for this district and my love
102for this district and wanting to give back and wanting to do as much as i possibly can i basically served as the educator on the board which i think is an important asset we have various people with different backgrounds but being an educator i think is an important factor on the board so one of the most important issues kova was devastating our teachers our administrators our parents our students really hung together and made everything work as best that they possibly could and it's remarkable that we all made it through all that at that time but um and i admired the board at the time i admired the superintendent for really being the lead that took us through the pandemic in a real positive way as much as possible the issues facing us at this time
103i think it's the needs of students students have so many different needs and they always have we had students that had all kinds of issues with mental health as well as social emotional issues but kobut really did take a really drastic hit on young people as well as adults and we've all been through trying to help and support one another so i think that's one of the main issues is to support our students in every way we possibly can and to provide the resources for them as well i think another important issue is diversity and many of you talked about diversity we need to be sure that we have students who feel that they have someone who teaches them and works with them that look like them and that that's really critical and from my
104past experiences in parkway we worked very very hard trying to attract uh people of diverse backgrounds so that we had a background for our students that they felt valued they felt secure that they felt someone was interested in them another big issue that's starting to crop up more and more is staffing we have the bus shortage of course but there are fewer fewer teachers going into education there's not as many administrators who are interested in leadership roles in education these days and that's just going to get worse it's not going to get any better and you know i hear that not only in parkway but other places as well another issue is of course we have a bond issue coming up and if you went to project parkway you heard about the proposal to pass
105the bond issue and what it will do for our aging facilities and that's a big part of it let's see understanding of the role of school board member basically that this school board is the stewards of the district um basically responsible for the functioning of the district in every way that it possibly can be most importantly the the board approves policy and administers the policy through the superintendent and the superintendent's team of administrators and teachers basically so that's that's the primary function the regarding the superintendent of course i'm losing my train of thought here the superintendent is basically hired by the board the board has one employee and that's the superintendent and the the board basically is involved in the recruitment the selection the evaluation of the superintendent and also the firing of the superintendent
106if that becomes necessary we haven't had that at all in parkway being even questioned any respect because we have an outstanding superintendent um in terms of objectives for the next two ten months you know my objective has always been to be visible to be supportive of our teachers and to listen to continue the the strong working relationships in the district and i think that's really critical and we're very fortunate to have that kind of climate and very culture and parkway where you know parents teachers administrators and our students you know it's a collaborative effort and i i think when you go into a school and you visit and you see what's happening with our school community whether it be any one of them you feel the culture of collaboration of working together and everyone has
107a valued part of the school and everyone is valued in the school as well i think character education has been a very positive thing in parkway to to help kids to realize that there are strong values that they need to learn and they need to live up to and they need to live as part of their lives and character education has been very prominent in parkway and it will continue to be parkway's received many many national and state recognitions because of our character ed program um another objective deals basically with um following through on on the equity task force i was involved in the early childhood task force the equity task force as well as the mental health task force i think that's an important role of a board member to be involved in various
108committees and task forces and i think the next 10 months i hope that we really work on the achievement of the the recommendations of all those task forces and that's all underway by the way so it's a matter of making it all work for our kids because it's important to their education it's important to the school district and everyone who's involved the greatest strengths are the people it always has been and it always will be the people are absolutely incredible uh we have absolutely incredible students and i've seen many of them over the years and as each year goes by you kind of pass them on to the next level and you kind of feel like you know i've had such an important part of their life and now they're moving on but i'm sorry
109your time is exposed kidding i thought i'd have plenty of time okay am i done you are thank you how many times you've had to say that to others who have been presented to the board well thank you very much thank you everybody mr kohler can you hear us you are next yes i can hi everyone um i want to thank uh nikki and and the rest of the uh the board for uh making it possible for me to participate uh while while traveling and being remote um just to introduce myself my name is joe kohler um i work uh i've been with the same company here in st louis for uh 25 years we're uh equipment manufacturer and uh we sell um industrial equipment uh across the globe and i've been in in in
110sales and uh uh been a leader in the company um lifelong st louisian um lived in uh different areas of the metro region uh grew up in saint charles county uh lived a city um i've lived in the near near nearby suburbs of the city and i have moved out into the parkway school district um as of you know about nine years ago i have two uh two two children um one's eight years old uh second grade in the um at barrett's in in the parkway uh school district uh the others three she's she's in daycare um um so that's a little bit about myself um going through the questions um why i'm interested in joining the school board um i would really i would want to give back to the community and i want
111to offer my my uh my leadership and my my judgment and my uh communication skills um for the purpose of uh i believe that public education truly is the backbone of the community and uh and the region as a whole um why um why am i seeking appointment at this time but didn't choose to run in the last election uh to be honest it's not something that really crossed my mind at the time um but then uh i would say a culmination of factors and events kind of came together at the at the same time and you know seeing the opportunity um i decided it was it was something i absolutely had to go uh to go for for one um kids are still young but but they're definitely getting to the point now where
112i have more time and could could dedicate my my energies to uh to being an effective member of the school board um seeing my my my my daughter in the second grade seeing her her tremendous development over the last last year she was you know behind in some things and uh and just really made great strides this year and and just seeing the dedication um at her school from her teachers and and the staff there i you know i i think that they absolutely care about the students and um and i and i just see the value uh in you know to the community um of having a strong uh school district um another thing that um that made me think about it was uh this past year i was appointed uh to uh the
113missouri district export council which is a uh which is a an organization here locally sponsored by the us government which seeks to help local businesses participate in global markets and you know it really the effort of the idea is to build uh economic strength in the region and i think that st louis has has you know historically been a manufacturing hub but we've lost some of that um some of that edge that we that we've had in the past um so that you know that's one part of building a strong region a strong community but i got to thinking that you know that's just one part of the puzzle and you can't be a strong region or be showcase you know yourself to the to the world and and be a strong community if you
114don't have uh strong public public education so um i really have a a passion for public education even though myself i was uh um educated grade school in high school in a private school and uh i i got a good education but after that experience it became more and more obvious to me that um that i i missed some opportunities some opportunity opportunities to experience diversity in terms of people that are different than me diver and diversity of opportunities is just the resources that a public schools a strong public school system has over you know uh at least some private schools um i just felt like i wonder what could have been if i if i went to a uh a good public school such as uh such as parkway so all of those factors
115kind of came came together and i thought that you know i i really can can give something back to the community and help uh keep have parkway maintain its uh you know its excellence um what do i feel are the most uh important issues facing parkway now and in the future um what what has already been mentioned is the aging facilities i think there needs to be a a comprehensive plan in terms of how to address that going forward um and one thing uh is the communication between the administration and the uh and the community especially parents i think it was uh it was fantastic through the um through the pandemic you know decisions that were going to be made and uh you know alerting everyone and being transparent i think that was great and
116i think that that is something that absolutely needs to be maintained going forward um you know it's already been mentioned that uh you know the communities are becoming more and more polarized and i think that uh that's something that has to be maintained is strong communication and uh transparency um and then lastly the um keeping retaining teachers and recruiting new teachers um you know going through the great resignation i don't know how it's impacted uh parkway but i know that as has been mentioned already there's there's teacher shortages and it's certainly a challenge that that needs to be faced uh head-on um my understanding of the role of a school board member um would be to um to build consensus and to be transparent with decisions um you know that are made in a democratic
117way um and and primarily decisions that what are the what's the best um and most efficient way to to manage the resources of the school district balancing the needs of current and future students [Music] so i think i think that's really what the core role of a school board school board member is um my objective objectives for the next 10 months yeah it's um it's not it's not a long time i think that it would be you know putting full energies into um getting to know um as many stakes other members of the board uh administrators teachers uh parents um all stakeholders um to try to try to understand um best the needs of the school district um i would say that uh one thing that's very important to me though is uh is uh
118strength in in stem related programs and really pushing to make that attractive to to uh demographics that haven't necessarily been uh drawn to that in the past whether whether it be uh young girls or um you know minorities that may not um have been drawn to uh stem stem programs um what do i believe are the greatest strengths and weaknesses of the parkway school district um strength is in the uh the financial situation um i think that the the district has a very good tax base um and obviously the great the teachers the administrators from what i've seen in being in the school district it's run very well the teachers care a lot um so i think those are really the the main strength uh weaknesses as i mentioned the the aging facilities it needs
119it needs to be addressed um and uh i would say you know the threat is uh division in the community that we're seeing um play out in other school districts i think uh so far the the school board and um the community as a whole has has handled the you know situations well and i think that's that's a threat um but uh i think with with with careful communication and being transparent we can we can avoid that type of situation and i would say that going back to uh the importance of public um education and the region as a whole mr carl parkway has a huge responsibility to be a leader mr kohler yes your time's up thank you that's all we have okay as i explained previously we have we have all the application
120materials that you all submitted we've had an opportunity to review those we've had an opportunity to review all sorts of all sorts of that information we will now spend a few minutes and go through and rank uh each of you based on where we we feel you fall and we will submit those on a on a ranking sheet um with our top five uh individuals that we uh we feel we want to select so board members you are welcome to do that now and we'll take as long as we need if anybody needs to individually excuse themselves for any reason you can and then come right back and we'll wrap it up you okay jerry are we back live here okay uh can both candidates uh virtually uh care of me yes yes i can
121okay uh so uh as i mentioned the process before uh ms stover tabulated our results um and the top the top point earner for our selection process was tiffany map franklin so ms matt franklin welcome to the board wow thank you so much so again i'd like to thank everyone for their participation tonight we heard from some really excellent candidates with a lot of great ideas several of which i hope dr marty was taking notes because there were a couple things that jumped out at me and i thought yeah that's that's a pretty good idea so thank you all for your participation tonight and those of you who mentioned that you might run in the future i hope you still consider that i hope you those of you that mentioned project parkway in the value
122you saw in that process i hope you continue with that there are lots of ways to to volunteer your time in this district um and uh every one of them is meaningful so thank you again for being here tonight um at this time may have a motion in a second that i'm on the wrong page uh we have a motion in a second that the board of education appoint tiffany matt franklin effective as of the resignation date of christy klein davis second roll call please nikki mrs hopper yes mr reedy yes mr schindler yes mr seltzer yes mr specter yes mr todd yes motion carries 6-0 next may have a motion in a second to adjourn the special meeting all in favor aye any opposed motion carries 6-0 thank you all for attending tonight thank
123you for watching and welcome to the board is matt franklin thank you