Board of Education Meeting - April 13, 2022

001good evening everyone like to welcome you all back to the regular meeting if you'd all please join us in the pledge of allegiance we'll get started of the united states of america and to the republic of which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you would you please call roll here uh let's see first up we have some sports champions state sports champions so this evening we would are thrilled to be recognizing the state sports champions from central south and west high schools so at this time i'd like to welcome mr mike roth director of athletics and activities to introduce the state sports champions for the board of education and dr marti it's my honor and privilege as the director of athletics and activities for parkway to to

002introduce our state champions for the 2021-22 winter season tonight we are recognizing members from the parkway west wrestling team and the in the swimming and diving teams from parkway central parkway south and parkway west congratulations to our coaches and our athletes you have put in many hours of practice all the while representing parkway in such a positive manner your hard work and dedication has made you a state champion parkway is proud of you and now i invite our coaches to the podium for introduction so our coaches will be here and talk about their team so in front of us tonight uh not with us is stephanie seidel the head coach for parkway central but the dive coaches here at natalie we also have from parkway west wrestling coaches chip allison and jeff schlotty and from

003parkway south blakely mathis is on her way if not matt roach the ad will speak on her behalf and from parkway west colleen sumner so coaches all yours i am introducing carissa burshy she had an excellent dive season this year she was the conference champion the district champion and ended up being the state champion [Applause] hi my name is jeff shlody and this is chip allison we're both assistants i'm sorry we're both assistants at parkway west wrestling uh zeke allison the head coach is actually home with his new newborn child he had a second uh child uh two days ago right two days ago so anyway so we're here to introduce paige warmeister she came to us as a freshman uh never wrestled before and just it didn't take us long to realize what kind

004of a special person she really was she went on to become a four-time state qualifier four-year varsity letter winner two-year team captain three-time district champion two-time state champion undefeated her junior year with a 23-0 record undefeated her senior year the 51-0 record she didn't even give up one single offensive point her senior year which is remarkable only two-time state champion from west that goes for the boys and girls first time female state champion in wrestling for parkway school district tied for most career wins at west with she was named a 2021-22 st louis official outstanding wrestler of the year two-time conference wrestler of the year she's currently ranked number four in the country in her weight class all this while carrying a gpa of 4.08 she is the total student athlete package she's a tremendous

005leader and we're really proud of her [Applause] good evening on behalf of blakely mathis i'm here to represent parkway south's first state championship in the girls swim and dive [Music] next up was is kylie sullivan this girl similar to the girl you just heard is an incredible girl in and out of the pool uh she placed first place in the 200 yard individual medley individual medley first place in the 100 yard butterfly i believe set some state records there as well she also joined we had two of our relays go first place as well the 200 yard medley relay was kylie sullivan logan nohoff elena hinage and lucy price set school records in that as well and lastly they placed first place in the 200 yard freestyle relay again logan nohoff mia muckerman was on

006that elena hinnage kylie sullivan i believe was a state record as well and a school record so these girls were an incredible crew that uh six of the seven girls that placed in state are coming back next year so we're looking forward to possibly being here again thank you [Applause] hey i'm colleen sumner here to introduce the parkway west girls swimming and diving they were the class 1 state champions that was their second title for this group in two years they won in 2020 right before covet hit and celebrating again as seniors and as champions once again um the so we were class one champions that was our 14th team title by the way and then we were first placed in the 200 yard free relay megan van volkenberg nora rotkowski maddie lang and campbell

007murowski three of those girls are returning as well we also placed first in the 400 free relay to win this event this whole meet um that was megan van valkenberg maddie lang alice rashi and campbell mirosky again three of those girls are returning so looking forward to doing this again next year and hopefully having the girls here recognized in person thank you congratulations to our state champions and especially congratulations to their parents thank you board [Applause] thank you all for taking such great care of our student athletes certificates will be sent to these students thanks to those students their families and administrators for joining us virtually tonight for this special recognition we are honored you could join us next up we have several identity editions corrections and modifications to the agenda those include 7.01 addendum

008to agenda item 11.10 approval of personnel items and 7.02 edition of agenda item 11.26 approval of corporate partnership d1 training next up is public comments and before we get to those we actually have uh a notice of intent to resign uh in upcoming board vacancy so uh before we get to uh ms davis's comments i'd like to make some of my own and those are that it's come to our attention that some members of our community believe mrs davis ms davis's recent announcement of intent to resign from her board seat lacked authenticity and that our adoption of new policies last month is somehow related to her decision or the recent election in an effort to clear up any misunderstandings i would like to offer the following remarks first as the board understands it ms davis

009had no control over the timing of her recent interview process or when she was ultimately presented with an offer of employment even if she had it wouldn't have mattered if it was last week last month or anytime this year missouri statute and the county board of elections would not have permitted us to simply add an additional seat to the recent election no matter when a board member resigns we must follow specific guidelines for filling the vacancy second during our last several years during the last several years the board has undertaken substantial time and effort to revise policies in order to clean up language and and remove ambiguity and provide clearer definition of the practices we expect students and employees to follow policy changes include review by the missouri school boards association or msba its legal

010council parkway committees which include board members and parkway's legal counsel prior to final policy being presented to the full board for our approval parkway's policies are divided into categories and we typically review and revise one or two categories at a time this process can take a year or more from start to finish review of the section b policies which outline board function and governance began some time ago and we finally received a final draft back from msba on january 19th of this year since then they have been reviewed by parkway's legal council undergone a final review by board subcommittee and subsequently reviewed its february's board meeting and approved at our boarding board meeting last month since 2009 the process for resignation of a board member has been governed by board policy bbbd.bp that policy literally

011consisted of only two sentences which simply stipulated that any vacancy would be filled through a selection process however no process was defined the new policy is largely language direct from msba and mirrors many of the policies in place in surrounding districts our current policy provides clear guidance on how we are to proceed which will be discussed later in tonight's meeting i hope this helps explain the circumstances of the last several weeks and helps to underscore the benefit of seeking to obtain factual information from credible sources before making assumptions so at this time ms davis would you like to make any comments thank you mr todd late last december a recruiter contacted me about an opportunity to lead a well-respected organization doing incredible work to advance health equity in the state of georgia in interviews which

012stretched from january to late march it became increasingly clear that their vision and my vision were aligned like most people i don't publicly discuss the possibility of a career change prior to the details of that change being finalized in this case given that this is a high profile position details of my departure and arrival had to be carefully negotiated between both my current and my future employers as most can understand those details were and are quite sensitive for me and for my family on monday april 4th at 505 pm i received an email with an employment agreement for my signature at 10 o'clock that evening i signed that agreement and i returned it to the organization for their signature a final executed employment agreement was returned to me on tuesday april 5th at 12 31

013pm with all pieces in place on wednesday april 6 the communications staff at my current and future organizations were notified and met to discuss the announcement timeline that morning i shared with the board of education my intent to resign and i asked them to keep the information confidential until my employers made their announcements which happened on thursday april 6th this professional announcement did not constitute a resignation from the board of education tonight i am sharing with the community my intent to resign from the board of education effective june 2nd the last day of the 2021-2022 school year my ultimate decision about accepting this role was deeply personal my husband and i thought long and hard about whether it made sense for our family with particular attention paid to how a move would affect our children

014i was honored to join the parkway board of education five years ago my son was just barely a year old and my daughter was three i've worked hard to teach my children to be positive contributors to their community to use their privileges to make opportunities for others and to act with integrity and humility in all that they do it's been an incredible privilege to serve in this role for the past five years and i hope my actions have modeled the values that i work so hard to instill in my children with that said i look forward to continuing to serve for the next seven weeks and doing whatever i can to support the board and district during my transition thank you mr tug thank you next up we do have some citizen statements tonight so

015it's during this time that we provide for those statements in an effort to maintain an open and respectful dialogue with our community a public comment session is not the appropriate forum for addressing individually identifiable student and or personnel matters therefore due to privacy laws protecting student students and employees comments about these matters should not include personally identifiable information about particular students or employees members of the public staff and students are encouraged to utilize established policies and procedures for offering suggestions or addressing concerns and complaints prior to bringing the issue before the board please be mindful that the meetings of the board including your statements at the podium are broadcast and that you are responsible for any public comment you make in lieu of a public comment you may choose to submit your comments to the

016board in writing also due to time constraints and the need to complete the primary responsibility responsibilities of our meeting agenda we cannot respond during the meeting so you will receive a response from us in writing you we are always available to have an open dialogue outside of our meetings and can be reached by email or phone during using the contact information on the parkway website tonight we have 11 speakers uh and so i will call on them in order we will allow three minutes per speaker i will try and give you a little bit of heads up in and call two or three names at a time so you can be prepared uh we will begin with wayne hartman he will be followed by benjamin liveack and ruth levack this is the first uh swearing

017in that i've come to uh to see now that uh that they have uh you you swear no to the constitution of the united states so i want to congratulate you first on having your seat having said that the united states government has deemed these people as domestic terrorists and that's that order has never been rescinded i want to know from each one of you if you believe that these people are domestic terrorists and you can email me at my emails on file with that board seat that's going to be open mr schindler last month said he likes to keep politics out of his decision making so let's take that all out of your decision making also you have leeway when it comes to assigning a new board seat you just had a vote and

018if anybody spent 10 minutes listening to tony spielberg he would be an asset to this district and asset to these students an asset to these parents and he'd be an asset to this board and i want you to give that some serious thought i know you've got leeway in doing what you do but take the politics out of it the people had spoken you've got one year on him if you don't like what he's doing vote him out mr todd mr miss hopper if they don't like what you're doing vote them out or if they're doing good you get voted back in now having said that my last thing that i want to say is i want to give a shout out to the police security people that work these meetings they quietly invisibly do

019their job and i want to applaud them for that when you're invisible you must be doing something right that's all thanks thank you [Applause] thank you i'll ask that we hold our applause until the end of all the speakers and then you're welcome to applaud for everyone next up is benjamin levac ladies and gentlemen of the board good evening first i would like to thank you for your service to our school district and our community and for taking the time to hear my plea and the plea of my classmates who are here with me today my name is ben leveck and i'm a sophomore at west high school i don't love going to school but i do love my school a huge part of why i love my school is that i found a sport

020that i love to play water polo i swim exercise and watch water polo every chance that i get this is important for you to know because without west's aquatics programs and facilities none of this would have happened i didn't find water polo until my freshman year and i probably only had a total of five minutes of play time last season but i knew that i wanted to play the next year i have made lifelong friends lost over 20 pounds and learned more about who i am and who i want to be while playing water polo than doing anything else i've spent the last five days working to tell everyone about why i think each high school needs their own awesome pool i have distributed our petition before school after school at lunch and after practice

021some of my friends are a little tired of hearing about it there are some of my classmates that are worried about their swimming and water polo seasons being interrupted by construction of a new pool there are some who want a big district 50 meter pool but all of the people i have talked to agree that our current pools are horrible and in some cases dangerous they need more than restoration please ensure our pools are safe and awesome for future generations of parkway athletes you need to know that our pools should have been cared for replaced or renovated years ago i have cut my hands and knees many times on our pool because of its condition if parkway had planned better and replaced these pools one at a time we would not need to talk about

022this right now don't worry i struggle with procrastination too when we practice in our pool and then go play in a bigger pool we struggle to compete just yesterday while preparing for a water polo game against kirkwood we talked about how to change our our strategies for a bigger pool we need our practice pools to be the same as our competition pools i think a district pool would be a big mistake and i want my high school pool to be just as awesome as neighboring district pools please consider my request for my high school to have a new pool that will last for many years to come thank you for your time thank you mr livik next up is ruth live she'll be followed by tracy goldstein and manny mcneil ladies and gentlemen of the

023board good evening thank you for your service to our district and your time my name is ruth levesque and i am the mother to four parkway students that's one of them five days ago i saw a need for awareness in our district i can't help but feel like parkway's trying to sell us something to cover up a lack of planning and budgeting i believe all four of our district high schools need and deserve a new or very renovated pool i wrote a petition and put that petition on change.org and started a public facebook page i would like to share a summary of what people have said several on facebook support a 50 meter district pool they believe parkway will keep in good condition all four existing pools there was reference to the income a 50-meter

024pool would bring parkway swim club is also endorsing a meter district pool please note the current draft budget that parkway has published is for a 25 meter pool not a 50. no one wants a 25 meter pool we are concerned the draft budget does not support restoring and keeping all four pools in good condition i suspect the budget provides for minor repairs which will ultimately result in their closure when repairing no longer makes sense and a district pool is available for use in our school district is our school district in the business of making money facilities are to support our student education first and then athletics not income i appreciate the relationship parkway has with its swim club but that in no way should dictate or even influence how taxpayer money is spent a community

025pool should be built by the community not our school district a number of parents are concerned about transportation to a district pool bus driver shortage or not transporting kids more than necessary has risk are you going to transport student spectators too there were also a number of pictures and stories all of these people shared their love for parkway aquatic programs and want good safe up-to-date pools at each school it is your responsibility to listen to our community our petition on change.org received over 500 signatures in five days ultimately it is your choice and your burden to do what is best please don't make your choice based on clubs income or lack of planning and budgeting make a new plan that is right for each school and its students and their education and high school experience

026make a plan that will serve our schools for many years to come i apologize for going over i timed it 10 times at home i promise thank you next up is tracy goldstein followed by mandy michelle and ryan wharton good evening everyone my name is tracy goldstein i am a graduate of parkway central's class of and i am here tonight to share with you a couple of thoughts that i have as the weeks have gone on first i want to talk well mostly what i want to talk about is the election a couple of years ago there was an issue on the ballot for medicaid expansion and for some people in this room they may find it hard but this moderate voted for it well then the legislature of the state of missouri decided to

027take it upon themselves to discuss the legislation and actually try to repeal it and a court of law said that the will of the voters the voice of the voters should never be ignored and while i realized that there is a distinction and that there were two seats and not three at the time of the election as mr todd discussed i hope that the board will not ignore the voice of the voters i congratulate mr reedy and mr specter but i will remind you all as you are deciding who to put in the spot the margin of the second and third place candidates was only 33 votes we spoke we fell short but now there's an opportunity to listen to the people of your community i additionally want to speak about tony's character tony spielberg

028has been my friend for 40 years and he has been grossly defamed harassed and had his personal material stolen 142 signs tony told me he was running and he made me promise something because he knows that i occasionally can have a little temper and he said please tracy please don't do anything on social media that's wrong keep it clean keep it tight keep it right and tony did that tony taught me how to take the high road tony taught me a lesson he is an amazing human being and you may hear things from speakers to come i ask you to weigh them with very little until tony has the has the ability to speak for himself during this process because he has been grossly mischaracterized i ask the board to assess the individual to fill

029the vacancy i ask you to please think about tony tony was the only other candidate that ran a tight race he campaigned with all of his heart there were three people that solidly ran campaigns and with that in mind think about our community think about our voice think about what you can do and right this wrong and please give tony a chance and let's bring moderates give me a voice thank you thank you next up is mandy michelle hi my name is mandy michael um i know i've heard every pronunciation in the book sorry i have a daughter at high crawford and i have a son at west high first of all i'd like to thank the board for everything you've done for students teachers and parents throughout the years and especially during the pandemic

030thank you for volunteering to be in this role it's often a thankless job i thank you so much in particular thank you pam and sam for your many combined years of service we will miss your compassion intelligence and reasoned approaches to making decisions for our kids also thank you jeffrey spector and rob reedy for stepping up to serve you ran amazing campaigns i especially appreciate the emphasis on dei and following through on the equity task force recommendations i also love how you declared without qualification that you support transgender people at this time the missouri legislature is attacking trans kids attempting to make them keep them from playing sports on their genders team also they are trying to make a child abuse to provide gender affirming health care to transgender youth this is a topic that

031gets me emotional but this describes a lot of the kids at parkway uh that i know personally who are wonderful people and very quietly uh myself and some of those people are talking about fleeing the state so that we don't get charged with child abuse so i encourage everyone to reach out to the legislators and tell them to stop attacking trans kids so a time like this hearing board members allyship with trans people is refreshing and reassuring which i heard during the um uh candidate forum from uh rob reedy and uh and jeffrey spector um thank you christy klein davis for being an amazing board member for several years and i'm sad to hear you're resigning though happy that you will have a new opportunity to lead in georgia i know many people are here

032because they believe that the first runner-up for the two board seats should receive christie's vacated seat however i disagree that line of thinking would assume that if voters had the ability to vote for three board members the first runner-up would have won that is not accurate given a third option we would have chosen someone else if there have been three slots up for grabs on the parkway school board that would completely change campaigning strategies it would have been an entirely different race there would have been more than three candidates actively campaigning so in light of that i urge the board not to choose the first runner-up but use your best discretion thank you thank you next up is ryan wharton he'll be followed by debbie donnelly and john wilford good evening my name is ryan

033wharton and i am a senior at west high i'm a swimmer and a water polo player and i've competed for all four years of my high school career dr marty and school board members i want to bring up the current pool situations that we have all four pools that we have at our high schools are in absolutely deplorable condition problems such as a broken diving board itself at south there's chipped tiles all over the floor of all four pools and like ben said earlier cuts scratches it's so common there's limited seating at all the pools i think of at central we had a water polo game and people were packed and there was not enough space for everyone to watch and not to mention the current codes south cannot fix their diving board because the

034pool does not meet codes to fix the diving board why can't a pool that's supposed to be used for competing have a diving board i'm not here to talk about the issues of the pools because we all know there's issues with the pools otherwise we wouldn't be talking about this to begin with i'm here to talk about the fix to it the district pool a district pool is not the fix to it we have four current pools that are used for competing every sport at the schools with the exception of golf has their home field to compete on and to have home events that's not what a district pool is i think of my senior night i had a senior night for swim and i'm planning on and i obviously will have a senior night

035for water polo a district pool that's not a home pool the point of a senior night is to have your last competition in your home pool that's not what a district pool is not only that the thing about transportation this year for swim and dive we had one bus to one swim meet all the others we had to drive to so if we can't even get buses to one meet how are we supposed to get buses for every practice and how are we supposed to coordinate transportation every day for practice it doesn't make sense we deserve it the if you look at the titles the state champions that were shown up here before there was a lot of aquatics at three schools there were state champions top finishes it's not like we're not bringing in

036the hardware other sports may not bring in as much but they get all the fancy facilities and a district pool again is not a home pool you wouldn't build a shared football field for all four schools to use so why should you do the same with the pool we need four good pools one at each school thank you next up is debbie donnelly hi my name's debbie donnelly i'm a resident and a parkway north graduate so thank you i'm bored for all that you do congratulations to our new board members i'm also a member of we can i have been before the board before talking about sros and asking to please get common language for our police departments and we had an sro review the district did and there were six recommendations and what i

037want to remind the public and the board today are those recommendations and um i did hear back from administration that there have been talks with some police departments but nothing has gone further so i'm going to read the recommendations and hope that this is a gentle reminder to continue the work so that we have a system in place for all of our schools and all of our sros the first recommendation was develop and communicate more clear guidelines regarding the roles responsibilities expectations of sros the second recommendation provide annual professional development for principals and other staff as identified regarding sro roles responsibilities and expectations incorporate guidelines into a consistent annual review process and build with building principles in the survey building principles were unsure of the roles of sros and the sros along with their supervisors

038and although there are six i'll only read four establish ongoing professional development expectations for sros and security officers and ensure funds are available to support them including but not limited to sro certification crisis intervention training school-based school-based development trauma informed care equity social emotional support etc you've employed the survey you've gotten the recommendations and so i implore you to set a timeline ask when these are happening because it's important to our community and to our children thank you thank you next up is john williford hi thank you for having me here today my name is john david wilford i'm the head coach national coach for parkway swim club i am a parkway employee since 2014. i grew up swimming club and high school in arkansas and then i ended up going to jury university where

039i was an all-american in 2008 for their national championship team since then i've been coaching in florida arkansas for a few years and then i've been in st louis since then four pools versus one seems to be the big debate here and which is going to further the development of the community which is going to drive forward the future and help them out the cost of four pools is way greater than the cost of one big aquatic center and you know for four pools if you give an eight-lane pool compared to your six lanes it's a step to the side i wouldn't say it's really a step up you would give local high school meats you'd have local dual meats and that's the extent of return on investment that you could kind of benefit from

040having four pools if you give one big aquatic center a chance the cost of building it would be much less than the cost of building four new pools and the return on investment is you can bring big events you can bring big high school meats you can have big water polo and you don't have an issue on space you don't have an issue on seating and stands and it benefits the community as a whole for the future because the more people you can kind of bring into the community the more tax dollars get brought into the community and and more that's brought in for people wanting to come visit the st louis area as you can see from the aquatics program and the state championships we've had many swimmers that i coach nine months out

041of the year who perform for parkway and they do a great job representing the school district and state champions and to further get that to keep that momentum going i think the one big aquatic center is the the route that you want to take for the future of parkway to be honest um i only thought i had two minutes so that's why i finished in that time but i appreciate your time and thank you for your service thank you next up is ryan kerr it'll be followed by doug stockenberg and then ann saladin i'd like to start by congratulating mr specter and mr reedy on the uh duly elected by the taxpaying citizens of this district while i don't agree with some of the acceptance of political endorsements or some campaign practices i look forward

042to the commitment of the district of equality inclusion diversity and most importantly high quality core education going forward considering the recent election in the public resignation that has followed i come to ask you to do the will of the people and appoint the runner-up in the recent election to the board this was an election with thousands of unique voters and separated second and third positions by 33 votes uh over the past six years in this country social and mainstream media has created a revolution of woke-ism that is unfortunately rooted in emotions and not facts as i am sure the board is aware parents across this country have been split by politicians on crt sex education social policy guidance books and the general demonization of traditional religion while putting social special interest ideology on a pedestal

043these parents are not against transgender people people of color or any other minority group but instead want schools to teach core curriculum for being successful in life and not to lead social ideology up to the parents at home the same people that believe that 19 to 23 year olds are too incompetent to understand taking on student loan debt are the same ones that think a child was old enough at five years old to make lifelong biological and chemical balanced choices for themselves the flip side is the parent is giving consent which is even more damning as the parents number one priority is to protect their child from undue harm why aren't these parents counseling their adult children on student debt practices the hypocrisy is astounding it's time to take a step back from the idea

044of an all or nothing mentality that forced forward movement regardless of the destruction left behind and the kids left behind that typically takes decades to repair the 1994 crime bill is an excellent example of legislation that destroyed the black nuclear family in this country not only did it destroy these families but it's taken 28 years since and there's been zero progress in making these families whole all for virtue signaling it's all the 1994 crime bill was virtue signaling destroyed entire minority population in this country it's time to let teachers teach core curriculum and to leave the virtue signaling and opinions out of the classroom unless they want to obtain parental consent first it's time to allow parents to control the social narratives that their children build foundations on ms davis best of luck in your

045adventures to come in georgia the georgia health foundation is a fantastic organization so i hope you do very well there also with the swimming it seems like the debate is really between whether or not we're going to provide for the happiness of the kids that are using these pools or the profits of a district going forward thank you next up is doug stockenberg good evening my name is doug stockenberg and i am the parent of two students in the parkway school district i'm here tonight to briefly address the issue of filling the soon to be vacant seat of christy klein davis effective june 2nd in my view there's really only one fair approach to this issue simply put that is to select the candidate with the third highest votes in last week's election of course

046i need not remind everyone that tony spielberg was just 33 votes shy of second place which represents just simply one one thousandth of a percent of the nearly twenty nine thousand votes cast in last week's election the remaining candidates were not even close to tony's sixty four hundred vote count with the fourth fourth place finisher receiving just over two thousand votes this board ultimately represents the voters within the district and thus the board's decision in this important matter should reflect the will of the voters while a different approach may have been warranted six months ago or at some other time frame the current situation however compels respecting the will of the voters who heard from all the candidates and made their voices heard last week i believe it would be unwise and unfair to select

047anyone whose name was not on the ballot if any eligible candidates were truly interested in serving their community in this way they would have stepped up in december and filed their candidacy however no one i believe should get the benefit of an appointment just one week after or whatever that time frame is very briefly after an election without going through the electoral process as tony did it would also be unwise and unfair i believe to select anyone who filed their candidacy but subsequently dropped out of the race although several withdrawn candidates indeed received votes in this election cycle they made the personal decision to withdraw and that wish should be respected notwithstanding a sudden change of heart after this most recent announcement those who dropped out should also not get the benefit of an appointment

048without fully participating in the election and campaign process here's the bottom line tony spielberg formally filed his candidacy back in december he ran a very active campaign this spring and received the third highest vote count following again just 33 votes shy of second place thus i believe the board should respect the will of the voters and select tony spielberg to fill this this vacancy effective june 2nd with my remaining time i'd just like to briefly respond to the comment that if we'd had three candidates on the ballot it would have been a very different vote no one's suggesting that should have been three candidates on the ballot i'm certainly not however we'll never know what the what the results would have been had there been three candidates on the ballot but the bottom line is

049the election results that we do have are the best evidence of the voters will and again i simply ask that that will be respected thank you thank you next step next up we have ann saladin good evening thank you for this opportunity a little bit about my background i've spent almost four decades in the parkway school district as a child a teacher and now a parent my husband's a graduate as well i count my years teaching as an exceptional chapter of my life and still count my principle as one of the most influential mentors of my life my work co-workers continuous friends and i enjoy running into former students in fact my neighbor new neighbor across the street is a former student most importantly being a teacher has made me a better parent and being

050a parent has made me a better teacher my message tonight is super short i'm in between dance practice and soccer so i respectfully request that you give sincere consideration to appointing tony spielberg to the upcoming vacant seat send a message that you hear and welcome about the vote count from last week send a message that multiple points of view can co-exist and work together send a message that we are one community made up of many united for our kids you can do this we can do this my proudest parkway years were those when i taught surpass that with this vote thank you for your service and for listening this evening and good luck for your new job thank you okay next may i have a motion in a second to approve the agenda for the

051regular meeting of the board of education is scheduled for april 13th 2022. all in favor aye any opposed motion carries 7-0 the next regular board meeting will take place on wednesday may 18th 2022 beginning at 7 pm right here at the parkway welcome center a parkway board of education workshop will be held on april 23rd 2022 at the parkway welcome center beginning at 8 am uh next we have uh board superintendent reports uh so we'll start down there with matt i'll be very one being quick week at the chancellor business rental springs along with one of the members of the missouri school board joining us too and just seeing the personalized learning in action the fact that they've actually taken on that challenge and an extra choice for our parents and our district undercover and

052the other thing is too just kind of the sign of the times and the fact that um last week we had a first ukrainian family come into parkway i want to appreciate the welcoming apartment community i love the diversity that we have in the community and i look forward to continuing that thank you okay jeff do you have any comments uh well i'd just like to thank uh everyone for being here tonight and i appreciate the support that i received during my election during the election um and i look forward to serving parkway parents teachers staff students for hopefully many years to come along that same vein i'd like to thank everyone that supported me it was a very exciting process and i found it personally enriching and i'm very enthusiastic to help the district

053in any way i can over the next three years i'd also like to just say as an aside that my family and i were able to attend the claymont multicultural international night last week it was their first ever of this kind and there were several countries represented it was a fun and vibrant evening that we all enjoyed and i look forward to attending future ones and years to test i said what i needed to say earlier so i will pass for now well uh i attended the operation subcommittee meeting and a lot of you probably have never attended an operation so and i could talk about it all night but that's not why you're here but uh it was uh eye-opening paddy leads the meeting uh one of the things that struck me when i

054first joined this board is just the breadth of things that a school district does and provides you know you think about teachers and classrooms you don't think about you know how does the toilet paper get to the building it needs to be at and how do we get bus drivers and how do we get you know all that all that goes into running a district and so it's always educational to hear about the challenges and how we meet them i want to welcome my two new colleagues to the board it's nice to add another lawyer and another mizzou grad if only one of you had gone to parkway north too we'd just be a perfect little family here but uh and also at the organizational meeting we said goodbye to sam and pam and jeff

055and debbie spoke very well i just want to add my comments because it's been an absolute honor to serve with both of you uh i just want to tell you first of all sam the thing i took from serving along sam is whenever uh you people see this part of it there's also a lot of closed session and we do grapple with some issues and what i learned from sam is sam would always bring us back to how does this help kids and i it was always i would love when he would say that because you know you get in the weed you get all over the place and sam was always there to be that rock to focus us on what we're really here for and i learned a lot from him and hope

056we can continue that tradition and pam i met with pam the morning before for lunch uh pam had lunch with my father and i today i was uh the school board for him when i was running for office because she was helping me to you know sort of coach me for that forum and she's just so knowledgeable at some point my father interrupted her and said why aren't you writing you know way more about this stuff than my kid and he was right then and he's still right now so pam was an honor serving with you thank you for all for your service um on march 28th i attended the region seven spring regional meeting with msba this is a large we haven't been able to do this in a couple of years because of

057kovid but it brings together the the evening was at riverview gardens school district and it brings together all of the board members from all of the st louis region school district so even the st louis public schools were there they talked about some of the advances that they're making in enhancing the education of their students so there's lots of takeaways that we can learn from st louis public schools as well we also heard from the rittner high school rittner school district and their international welcome center which is becoming of even more importance as where even parkway is receiving um more students from the afghan afghanistan community and from ukraine so we need to be cognizant of some of the needs that are coming through with that so rittner would be a wonderful path to take

058a look at in and learn from their experiences as well one of the highlights of that evening quite frankly they had the rotc group present their colors which was very moving and there was also the gentleman of vision which is a 40 member step dance team of african-american young gentlemen from the riverview riverview gardens school district performing and they were absolutely phenomenal they were the i would say the highlight of the evening and much to learn from and these are individuals who are going on to colleges to tech schools and into the military they are well on their way on march 29th i tagged down the very end of a mayor and meeting that dr marty hosts with all the mayors in the communities within parkway school district and it's uh we even had representatives

059of the saint louis county council on that meeting as well as different mayors and administrators within the community so it's a very important meeting and building those relationships and um understanding what's going on with the community uh and some of the uh ballot measures that we're going to be voting on that day uh actually the next day or the following week were discussed as well and then uh this past monday april the 11th i need to thank mike roth and all of the athletic directors i actually toured all of the pools at every high school here within the parkway district and then mr roth also took me to the kirkwood pool where i was able to see the their their single pool that they have that particular pool in kirkwood accommodates their curriculum as well

060as their swim team and then that's the pool that is rented out also to swim clubs around the area we will be having a board workshop on saturday april the 23rd and this topic will be part of that on that agenda so i will be talking more about what i saw i also toured in addition to the pools i asked to see the locker rooms the shower areas for both the swim area as well as regular pe classes i also got a look at the team rooms and the athletic rooms for the first aid that takes place with our mercy group when they come in for the the people that have to help the athletes if they have any injuries so they're we'll we'll have a lot to talk about on on that day so

061i welcome anybody i would encourage our other board members especially new ones to offer up an opportunity again which i know our ads and our athletic director would welcome the opportunity to tour other people board members and perhaps sat through the pools and the locker rooms and the showers there's nothing like getting in there to get your eyes really on what's going on there so and i think we could learn a lot from the kirkwood pool as well and incorporate some of those ideas into our own pools so we'll look forward to having further expanded discussion on april the 23rd thank you i also attended the mayors and city administrators meeting and i'm just grateful for so many of the the mayors and city administrators and their representatives who join us with quarterly or or

062so and it's just a great way to to hear what's going on in our community what's coming down the pike from from these different municipalities many of them have construction projects with a lot of new residential which will affect us at some point so it's always good to be a part of that i also attended the pto leadership meeting with most most of our schools are represented that night but but we have uh just some great folks who are running our pto's uh across the district and it was a great night to to get together and kind of honor them and the work that they've undertaken the last year really the last couple of years that that they've worked to try and keep their communities engaged and many of them have been still continuing with

063fundraisers using every every uh opportunity they can to raise money for their schools and their their teachers and in different programs in their communities so i really want to thank them for their continued efforts and i know some of them um at dr marty's request have have undertaken the idea of of helping the grounds improvement around their schools i i remember when i was pto president at west middle we did we did that same thing we we all got together on a saturday morning and we planted flowers and bushes and stuff and and trim stuff and so it's it's great to see that continuing and and i hope that that board members uh get an invitation to some of those because i know uh we'd probably love to come out and help dig up a

064plant or plant something you know somewhere along the way i'd be happy to do it and also i i got the pleasure of of attending the all district honors band concert last week and that is always a treat i'm i'm uh i'm a music guy at heart and whether it's a strings performance or choir or band i love those opportunities uh and and it always amazes me i mean i i think back when i was a student and i you know we were we were barely amateurs at that point but but some of these performances that our kids give are just simply amazing in this particular group both the middle and the high school those were kids from all over the district that got together that many of them met each other that that morning

065for the first time they met their conductor for the first time they saw these pieces of music for the first time they practiced all day and i i tell you it sounded like they've been performing all over the world uh by the end of that night so just kudos to those students that that really have a passion for music and especially our teachers who have a passion for teaching it so thank you and uh if i could uh just to reinforce that uh mr candy i think would support we just got notified again we received a recognition as i think there's a one or two districts in the state that have been recognized for our music program and uh but watch for that there's gonna be announcement uh jeff lackey just uh just informed us

066to support what you said and we have had uh a uh on all uh concert which was hosted at logan college and then uh missouri baptist host at the concert i was at so yeah i agree with jeff it's just a wonderful evening also just want to reinforce mr todd's comment about our ptos and uh one of the things we're we're trying to do this spring we are in many areas uh down workforce and so we're trying to uh you know needing to get our grounds looking and i was at belle reeve i'll just shout out to belle reef they spread mulch and did all kinds of work for a couple hours it was wonderful to see staff parents students the two administrators there working together it was just a delightful day so shout out

067to our pto's we are uh really busy administratively filling uh principles uh positions we're getting near the end when all is said and done we'll have about eight new nine new principles counting fern ridge and so we've been really working hard i want to thank um dr valgus dr watson in particular and all our my saturn members and many others who step up and parents as well to help us in that process uh it's a very important uh that we get the best absolute best leaders in our schools uh i'm not sure i just i just feel it's important because mr hartman raised a question he wanted the board to respond to i just want to say again and i you've heard me say this before we are we do not believe our citizens are

068our problem we welcome public comments we'll continue to do that and you demonstrate again tonight again that we can have a very positive public forum on many many issues that you heard about tonight so we don't see you as a problem we don't see you certainly as criminals we see you as as important citizens who have a voice and we want to recognize that so i want to thank you for that and i think our board so you don't i don't think they all have to respond i think they all feel the same way we want to certainly want to continue that discussion um i want to just take a moment to uh introduce you i think next month we're going to introduce our all our administrators but uh we do have a person who's

069just putting a lot of time in and she is in transition uh we have a new uh deputy superintendent dr watson is retiring and that said dr tiffany holman best can you just wave or stand up this is our new deputy superintendent [Applause] she has a wonderful resume worked in several districts in the region we we're so delightful she's got big shoes to fill she knows that uh dr watson of course has just been an amazing administrator but uh we're so grateful to have uh tiffany dr bess join us so we're grateful of that i also want to take a moment uh we tonight you uh witnessed uh the election of uh aboard uh treasurer patty bedbury but also our board secretary and uh nikki stover and ms stover also serves as my daily lifesaver

070and yet she runs around and this has been a particularly busy time with the election and all the and i i just sometimes you know you take people for granted and i don't think anybody in this board or anybody on my team will do that but i just think the community needs to know how valuable ms stover is and i just want to thank nikki for all your service and now finally our our team is uh always uh sad to see people both administrators and board members depart we said goodbye to people tonight but we also want to welcome our two new board members we know that we work our board members hard and it is a true partnership between our district administrators and board members so uh rob jeff welcome and uh we'll be

071working hard we had a little orientation session would you believe it on sunday afternoon uh to get them ready and um there's a lot of a lot of work coming up and i think we try not to overwhelm them but they'll be certainly busy as was mentioned we got some workshops we got some work here obviously in the next several weeks so welcome thank you uh at this time we'll take a very brief recess and we'll resume the meeting in just a few minutes if everyone is uh ready we will continue our meeting jerry can you hear me back there okay uh so next up we have our consent agenda which the board has had an opportunity to review um and um so may i have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented

072in the april 13 2022 board materials so moved second is there anything to be pulled to action or closed all in favor any opposed any abstentions motion carries 7-0 next up is 12.0 it's an action item and it is the discussion of the board vacancy process so earlier tonight you heard uh ms davis announce her intent to resign effective june the second um so we and and i explained a little bit about our board policy during that time so at this time we're going to have an open discussion as prescribed in our board policy about that process about which process we will take moving forward there is a very defined process per the msba guidance and that that is to hold an application an open application process whereby any member of our community could apply

073for the soon to be vacated seat and we would follow a procedure that that we'll we could talk about here uh the other option is that we could take uh some other route we could we could uh we could decide to do something different than that that prescribed process so during the next little bit uh i don't know how long that will be but we'll uh we'll discuss the merits of all of the options on the table and we appreciate you listening we've heard from some community members both here at the podium and via email the last week or so about people they think might be well-suited to fill that position so at this time i'll i'll open it up to the rest of the board to uh to discuss to to answer the question

074i'll start with a question that was probably the most common uh the most common question at the podium tonight and that is um what do we think about just appointing uh the runner up uh in the recent election um in the merits uh the pros and cons of of just simply appointing mr spielberg uh to fill that seat new guys you want to go first i think that as a board we have policies and the policies dictate how we're supposed to behave and how we're supposed to govern and in this case the you know our policy is you know to be transparent and go through a process and i think it's important to honor that process and honor that transparency not lost on me isn't as compelling to say we just had an election you

075know there's two spots open and someone came in third and that's indicative of yeah that however many thousand people voted for that guy is indicative of you know where that how that person's received in the community i don't think that's lost on me or any of my colleagues however i stopped short of calling naming that person to fill an empty seat the will of the people we had an election there were two seats there weren't three people voted for two people not three people chose to run based on two seats being available not three there's many many hypotheticals you can play out in your head and you know things were different maybe things would be different but the only thing we know is two people were elected and someone finished third wasn't elected and so

076i don't think it is carrying out the will of the people just to insert that person in an empty seat now there was a similar problem or issue when this country started the united states constitution initially provided and dr beckner dr marty social studies guys can correct me if i'm wrong but i believe it originally provided that whoever finished second in the presidential race became the vice president that's correct and pretty early on in our country it was it came to realize that that wasn't the will of the people you know two people ran against each other presumably with philosophical and political differences and allowing the guy that came in second to be the successor to the first thwarted the will of the people in fact it wasn't and that's why our constitution was amended

077to provide for uh tickets where presidents and vice presidents ran together because the idea being you don't honor the will of the people by having the person who loses an election step up to fill a vacancy now does that mean that we don't consider the person that came in third in this election i don't think so i think that that person along with anybody else is interested in serving alongside of us should be considered and should go through the same process so you know it'd be easier to have a couple of these board meetings that are just business as usual but we're fortunate that we've got a couple of months to address this to deliberate and find a person that you know is willing and wants to serve and qualified to serve that goes through

078the process and uh i think i welcome the opportunity along with my colleagues that take part in selecting the next person to sit up here to help us to govern this community and the school district so what about what about in the policy i've got a copy of it somewhere yeah i have it i have it right here so our policy bb bbe which is school board vacancies um the third paragraph states and it's only one sentence uh but it states when the when it is the board's responsibility to fill a vacancy the following process will be used unless the board votes to use a different process due to the timing of the vacancy or other relevant reasons so so would you consider the timing of the vacancy so close to to ms davis's announcement

079would that be would that be would that give more credibility to considering a runner-up no i i i don't just because i feel like an election again i don't want to repeat myself and but an election where there's two people running you know we're running for two seats it just isn't a fair barometer of the will of the people or whatever when i categorize it and i you know you can certainly we get lots of emails of people thinking you know different things about the well the six of us um but i do think that you know where we were elected and i think that we can serve and fairly and impartially select someone to fill the seat for the ten months before the next election when the voters get a chance to to fill

080that seat uh and frankly you know we the the individual for this third isn't here to speak so i don't want to speak for him but it might not be appetizing to fill a seat for a 10-month vacancy and be you know subject to running again in 10 months i don't know you know i don't know what's in anybody's head but i think giving individuals the opportunity to apply to determine who is interested in filling the seat and serving a 10-month term knowing that at the end of 10 months they're either done or you know they've got an election to take part in 10 months from now you know it's a different animal and i think we owe it not just to the community but to the individual who may you know be selected to

081go through the process allow those who are interested to apply uh you know put forth fair uh you know criteria in a process that all those individuals submit to and then i think the six of us elected and sitting before you are you know have been tasked with selecting the person to fill that seat for those 10 months so no i yes the fact that this vacancy appears after an election i it's not lost on me that it's compelling just to say well take the next runner up i just i don't think that that is the just way to proceed i also added that too the fact that if we just avoid somebody without a process someone's getting mad at us it'll be a tough situation we're not actually responding to what people wanted in

082terms of having a thorough transparent process to make sure we have a clear decision we could just vote right now bring somebody back on the board right away but i think we need a thoughtful process to make sure we go through that and very transparent about that process and if they replace candidate once we fire that process great or they could wait until come back in um for the next election because it's a tough role come in for ten months and then have to refile the run again really in say seven months then it's gonna be a tough job if i do the thing as a board the best policy would be to be as transparent as possible go through the process and see who's interested and one question i do have and we're fortunate

083to have some legal advice sitting at our table this evening that even if a named person were offered up to be appointed this evening not knowing if that person would accept the appointment or be interested in it i don't even know how that would work for us that we would just make a motion to appoint someone and get a second everybody agree do we even how do we even know that that person wants to be appointed and then would accept the nomination what would our next step be would be a fun reality show though the involuntary school board member so you know i i think we do i and i'll i i do want to acknowledge um you know the the comments that we have tonight i i greatly appreciate in the idea that we

084have just come off of an election and have this situation and can appreciate why people would think that we should just automatically but we don't know if that individual even wants to do this or if they would even accept the appointment if it were offered so by having a a process that's used which identifies we have to we have to send out notification by on our website through the media through email communications there would be a broad and wide notification process of this position being available and for a 10-month period of time to finish out that term then we would have an application process they would need to fill out an application we need to agree on what that application looks like because we just have we even need to talk about our application because

085we've never used one before we really don't have an official application in place and then go through an interview process and then in public in an open board meeting go through that interview process and then have a vote so that way if we do go through this notification process and application process we know if somebody wants to serve for that 10 month period of time if we just sit around and think of names and nominate people and don't know if they want it or not i'd i'm a little uncomfortable with moving in that in that direction and this is to follow up your point uh one of the citizen comments suggested that only those who ran the election or in fact even those i think it was even only those who ran the election and

086didn't withdraw from the election should be eligible and again i sort of see the logic of you know of selecting someone who was interested in this position but i don't see any value in limiting the pool of applicants you know just because someone didn't decide they wanted to run their school board in december i don't think that that should disqualify you from seeking to fill this position it's an entirely different animal this time around and you know for all i know there's somebody who didn't live in the district in december who would be an excellent board candidate now so i while i see where that rationale comes from i don't think it's in any of our interests to discourage anyone or to do anything to limit the pool of candidates because i think the more

087quality candidates were able to review the better chance we are to fill this seat with somebody who you know wants to be here and will do a good job one matt in a few of our speakers made the comment about transparency and they they want to see this as a very transparent process so i think i think the application process does provide that transparency uh it's it's something that as i understand it would would allow us to conduct the entire process in open forum um and we we also have that very forum at the special school district governing council level it's the governing council who appoints or elects the special school district board of education and it's a process exactly like this there's notification there's application that is submitted in person and returned we have

088to put a certain date and time that that application should be returned there's letters of recommendation that are requested if that's what we want want to do and then all of those applications then are submitted to the governing council members who can review them in advance of the open session meeting and then the meeting is conducted and it's very similar to the league of women voters forum each candidate has to whatever number of minutes for an opening statement and a closing statement and then questions are asked of each of the candidates and then at the end of all the closing remarks we take a vote and it's right then and there so i would i would encourage if we were to do a process like our our policy allows this seems to just go just

089dovetail precisely to what we do on the ssd governing council and i want to be clear you know as we discuss the process and you know not just nominating and appointing someone is but going through the process i can't speak for all my colleagues but i think at this point i can this is in no way repudiation of any individual it's simply the i it's simply doing things deliberately with a purpose and with the goal and desire of filling the seat in the best possible way and especially not in response to any specific individual or ideology uh christie just so everyone's aware christie is not allowed to to speak or provide any input during this process so she's not ignoring us she's just she's not allowed but robert jeff do you have any uh you

090know it's obviously just going through the election uh it was an interesting and long process um you know i i think the comments that the the voters spoke while the voter spoke for two voters or two two open positions uh i think certain individuals uh in the election may have changed their process during the election as there were only two open spots versus three um it would obviously be much easier to just sit here and appoint someone for all the board members but i think the process as listed in the policy should be adhered to and go through that process and any individual that you know would want this appointment given the opportunity um and it may be the person we have heard about today it may not be and again i do support going

091through the interview process as putting putting the policy yeah i appreciate all the thoughtful comments from my colleagues on the board and you know i certainly see a sort of a range of different approaches to solving this problem but i really feel like ultimately i do think it is the most transparent approach to go through the application process i realize there's uh the chance for the board to appoint someone with consideration for extraordinary timing or however it reads something similar to that but that gives me pause because honestly the interpretation of timing i think could mean a lot of different things you know maybe it means if there's just one month left on the term or something of that nature so i think with that sort of uncertainty there and and the fact that the

092application process seems like a very thoughtful and thorough way to consider the next board member with the utmost transparency i tend to agree that that's the best pathway forward okay do we need a board yes we don't we don't need to vote okay okay okay so it sounds like we're in agreement to follow the prescribed policy in the process okay so let's talk about the process so um the policy says says we have to post the the open position uh what for two weeks minimum delay is two weeks a fair enough amount of time for applicants so we need it to be longer if we begin with the end in mind is the goal to have someone selected prior to june second is what's meeting or at a special meeting we may want to do

093a special meeting but but we could do it before then effective june 2 or june the june board meeting we'd swear them in at the june board meeting so we'd have to swear them in okay okay may 18th is our may board meeting and then and then the vacancy begins on june 3rd so it's only that's only like what two weeks yeah and don't forget it's the end of the school year and it's their graduation memorial day right to answer your question i think two weeks is probably sufficient so we're if we we'd have to put an announcement in soon can we can we come up with uh you know some language that we could publish to the website in in some amount of time what kind of timeframe could we post by the end

094of this week to be to be turned in your application window to be from this friday to two weeks we where would be the best places to publicize outside of because you may have some people who don't have kids in the district and wouldn't get parkour emails yeah the the notification process states the vacancy shall be announced at a board meeting and the district will notify local newspapers and advertise the vacancy on the district's website so um the superintendent is directed to advertise vacancy in other effective ways such as sending emails etc so would we would we go to west news magazine they would do something with it particularly the local folks website i obviously posted on the website and then i know we have with the district closed on friday is it would it

095still be appropriate to begin the application window friday i mean it would be i guess it would be the first day soon yeah i don't i don't see how we're gonna i mean our staff are off tomorrow and friday it wouldn't be right to have staff come in and work well we just closed it april 30th that's a little more than two weeks they could punt it till monday and you still have two weeks right if we yeah so what if we posted it monday april the 18th and then do it for two weeks so that applications have to be received no later than by i don't know may 2nd that's a monday in the morning afternoon evening closed business close at 5 pm may 2nd and then that gives and then we we could

096we could even do the interview the night of our may 18th meeting or we have to do it um yeah we would know we would know how many applicants we would have because i think if we tried to tackle it on attack it on to from the 18th board meeting if we for some reason had six or eight applicants or something then that might that might lengthen the time of that meeting considerably if we only had one or two applicants then you know but we'll know by may 2nd yeah we would know by may 2nd and then we could we could either call him a special meeting or nikki would be able to add it to the agenda for that actually or could we do a special meeting i'm sorry no i was going to

097say and i think you're we're about to say the same thing i don't think it's fair to have people apply and not know when that meeting is because let's say you apply you've already got a vacation may 11th or meeting i think we we have to have a date that we are going to do it and we can we could be may 11th it could be may 25th i don't think it should be the day of a regularly scheduled meeting in case it's voluminous but i think applicants need to know what day they need to be available that's correct and that's what we do for the ssd governing they know when the meeting date is and the application deadline and all that yeah so we should come up with that i would caution trying to

098do it during a regular board meeting yeah it could be a pretty long night that's what i'm thinking so do we want to know we've got we have a holiday memorial day may 30th may 30th well we don't need to set a date tonight do we well by the time you do oh yeah sure yeah okay so in the meantime we can we can come up with a date that we think will work best for everybody um so is everybody in agreement on the timing timeline okay so let's talk about the application um the application process uh we have language from msba which is a four-page application process or application form that looks like it's been used by a number of districts across the state for this very purpose did everybody get a chance to

099review that and i also um added just from my experience on the ssd governing council going through this process i added some information that we use in the application for the special school district board of education candidates and so that's been shared and welcome input on what we think about those ideas we don't need to approve an official document right yeah so we can still have discussion about the application what we want in it you can tweak it okay anybody have any other input on the application itself now the way i don't know if how you want the application returned the i don't know how other school districts do this if they want the application submitted in person by a certain time i think we have to report in person when we file with nikki

100as a board so it would seem to me that that's the same process we would want to do is to do it in person submit the application in person to the superintendent's office if that's that's allowed in margaret would we still need to do we probably still need to do background checks on everybody right and would a candidate have to file uh with the secretary of state at this point right okay okay and again this might be something that doesn't have to be decided right now but based on kevin's comment this could be voluminous is there any merit to having the first applicant in is the first one considered in the public session or you know what if there's lots and lots of people i would agree that it be stamped with the time and

101the date that it's received at the superintendent's office if that's possible especially if you have to do it in person i don't know if you want to make this real case that can fix how they're ordered i was going to say is there something we can do to weed out people that might just submit an application to submit an application well as i look at this the application is not particularly onerous you know the longest answer you could fill this out in 10 under 10 minutes i don't know how many people are going to apply for this but do we want to perhaps add something to this that would make it you know sort of test the commitment of the individual you know so that we're not you know we're really considering serious candidates not

102people just filled it out to fill it out well that was one of the suggestions that i had made of incorporating three letters of recommendation with the application as well that and that's what they do for the special school district board of education is that there have to be letters of recommendation so those individuals have to present to someone asking them for a letter of recommendation and that's part of the application now that that could be helpful from that standpoint to ensure that someone's you know committed to that was way better than the suggestion i was gonna say which was do they have to record a video of themselves or do something that was or like write an essay or something what are the qualifications of the recommendation is it employer is it friends is

103it what's the qualification for a letter of recommendation the ssd is open-ended generally people get letters of recommendation generally not i haven't seen any from i take that back it's a it's a breath it could be their employer it could be community service activity sometimes it's from the principle of the school where their children are sometimes it's a mayor of their community it just we see it all i think if you take the time to get three people to do it you're a serious candidate yeah but at the same time we don't ask for letters or recommendations for candidates because well but you're they're being alive they're being elected right and then there's a big campaign whereas this you know it's not i don't know i think i i think you know the the things

104the items that are listed on the application form from msba are fairly comprehensive they talk about service to the district or to an individual school those are the kinds of things i think would be important you know we look for those things you know i look for those things when i'm selecting candidates that you know whether it's whether it's a school or you know somebody running for a municipal election i you know i like to see somebody that's that's at least been to a council meeting or you know uh has some vested interest so i think i think i think the form covers just about everything and then what we could do is any additional questions if you don't want to have the additional questions inserted from the way that the governing council does it

105those would just be questions that we asked during our open meeting during our interview process we could do it that way too these were just inserted because these are typical questions that everybody asks so this gives the board members an opportunity to review the responses ahead of time think about additional questions so that we have something to expedite the process in the interview time that they have to to go through all that i'd like i liked adding something to the application that would i want to say weed out but i think that would confirm that if people are submitting an application they're a serious candidate and i mean i don't know that i have a better idea than a letter recommendation maybe three is a lot in a two-week window maybe two one and a

106half a minimum of one up to three i mean we could or maybe it's maybe just even supplying references well maybe maybe we leave it open-ended and say submit any letters of recommendation that you wish to provide is there a place for references on the application maybe that's what it is because i think if you're going to get somebody else involved you're a serious candidate but references means we contact them and talk and i don't i don't know that i care for that idea unless unless they list who their references are but then you have to verify and you have to call them whereas if you have a letter that's on letterhead signed by an individual who's known within the community then it has a lot of and the board would probably have to be

107on that call together with the reference yeah i don't know not all my ideas are correct yeah instead of just one it would have to be all of us to hear the reference yeah jeff's point i mean you said that you know you don't need letters of recommendation if you're going to run for the board but there's so much diligence involved it's almost as though the letter recommendation would replace some of all that effort that goes into putting a campaign together and being available to the public over several months so i think at least one letter recommendation is a good idea just something a little extra do we want to make it a requirement at least one or do we want to just leave it open i think it should be a requirement at least

108one okay i mean i i recognize it's so sure okay with at least one yes we'll just state it like that at least one letter of recommendation margaret is that will the application that any letter reference be public i'm sorry is your microphone is this microphone it is okay any any i mean all of this all of the materials will be will be posted somewhere whether it's in the i would i would guess that it will be in board docs for whatever meeting the application the interviews will be all yeah okay all right but i do think there should be instruction and there were no instructions on the msba format but i think there should be instructions in like the very first paragraph explaining the instructions to the candidate to return it in person to

109the office of superintendent by a certain day and time um be and and what the meeting date will be and informing candidates that this will be distributed to the parkway school board members before that that particular date so that they they understand what is happening with the information that they're receiving or that they're submitting and include obviously the requirements to be a board member in general i mean the msba is just a general but the you know parkway resident paying your taxes all of those should be on there we need to make sure okay and it once we get this ironed out it's not currently um this application is not currently part of our policy but i'm wondering if we shouldn't at some point amend policy bbe to include this application actually it's um yeah

110well it's mspa has a b designation for it so we probably just yeah right so it wouldn't it wouldn't necessarily become part of bbe but it would just be an additional policy okay that's a good idea um so are we everybody okay comfortable with the with the application form where did we leave the only the i'm sorry no the only other thing about the application is that msba as great as that application was it it left off to me some important details about the individual um i i think it's important that and because of the type of process that this is we don't this isn't going out to the voters it's only going to the board that we should know what their education is what their career is where they're employed any other experience on

111boards or governing bodies and then if we want to know about any awards or honors that they have received i think that's important information to know um and i think it should be required on the application that that be inserted okay you're saying just sort of attach a resume is that similar yeah somewhat yeah just inserting i mean i don't know if you saw what i did wrap it around but um it's in it's in there with that because that's what we do with the ssd governing council the board of education application for that because other we don't have these candidates posted on a website with their biography of information this would help to fill in that gap right and maybe that's part of this we're going to have a second you know interview sort

112of experience but i don't think there's anything wrong with including some of that sort of you know res resume sort of information uh just to go back to i'm not sure where we left it on the letters recommendation all that i think if we if we send a number we should cap it at that number too though just so you know one person submits one and one person submits 50. you know there's not sort of sort of like keep a level playing field well i don't think i wouldn't think anybody to submit a dozen or something i i think if we just say at least one you know you might get somebody that sends two or three but fair enough well here's what i think what i'm trying to head off we get a lot

113of emails i i don't know that it's appropriate if someone submits an application and then tells everyone they know to start emailing the board and i just i kind of think that's going to muddy the water well that's not a letter of recommendation that would accompany an application though my guess is anybody that that was interested would probably tell their friends that they had applied and you know or people would hear about it once the meeting was published and we would probably hear from some people which is fine but but that's not the same as a letter of recommendation in my opinion fair enough and to debbie's point we could even say attach a resume rather than expanding on the further education for their employment rather than expanding on the actual form and making a

114new form attach a resume that way we're not having to recreate the wheel from a forum perspective which would expedite being able to get it out to the public quicker is attaching a resume along with at least one letter of recommendation that way we're again we're not slowing down the process by trying to make a whole new form well i'd i greatly appreciate that and we do receive cvs from our resumes from individuals on the government council but i think there is um i think it's also important that we have a standard form that everybody has to submit and answer the same questions if we just have just a resume or just a cv i i go along with the along with yeah i think but not everybody's going to have that so well you

115know i think if they want to that's fine if they want to but i don't think it should i think everybody should still fill out what their education level is what their career is where they're employed if they are and their experience on boards or government and then they can still attach cv i just like seeing the standardization of of everybody has to well i think i think using the form is going to provide the uniformity between all the applicants and then if you know if we ask them also to provide a resume then they can list whatever they want to on the resume that they haven't already put on the form respectfully a resume is gonna i know i was the first person to use the word resume but for the reflection resume is

116gonna be kind of prejudicial against those that might not be exactly if if they're not employed or right i think asking for education you know obviously you know what your job is as opposed to demanding because those that aren't in the workforce aren't necessarily or have been in the same position for a number of years might not have this pristine and persuasive resume i don't think it's too much to add on this form you know level of education you know things like that just to visit the number of letters of recommendation one more time to be clear since this process that we're going to embark upon is to be transparent and during public session what are we to do with the letters of recommendation in other words are we to read them all in front

117of everybody so if somebody sent many then that could be cumbersome for the board meeting i'm just curious what what the expectation is to deal with it we wouldn't need to read them we just have to have them attached to the meeting and board docs but the public would have access to them and could read them if they so chose yeah because it because so you would post all the applications on board docs right so their complete application will be there for anyone who wants to read it and that's how ssd does it as well okay and then we'd review the applications and the letters of recommendation in our own time outside of board meeting correct okay all right just want to be clear on that yeah the new guys have to read them all

118and tell us what they say the rookies the only thing uh i would add if we get an incomplete application i know in certain aspects that's not considered an application are we going to have a process if we get something sent in that doesn't have every answer completed do we consider that an application do we tell them we need it fully completed what's is do we need to have a process maybe i'm just you know in me but i i don't think we need we would toss an application if they omitted one uh one section to debbie's point if for some reason or maybe it was kevin if for some reason they didn't have a job or they didn't have experience in a school building volunteering um that you know they shouldn't feel like they

119have less of an application just because they can't fill something out or even if they chose not to fill something out they may have some philosophical reason personal reason for not sharing a piece of information and i think we would still we should still consider their application right but if they fill out just put their name and nothing else i think that's we need to know their name definitely need another name and address of all the candidate applications that i've seen through ssd governance that's never happened in fact we get volumes of editorial so um yeah i don't think incomplete app i mean if it is then you know then that person has to speak to that during the interview process and then we take that into consideration as part of their selection eligibility are

120we good on the application process okay so next let's talk about the interview process okay do we want to do we want to do it like the league of women voters candidate forum do we want to do we want to have a time for opening and closing statements with two three four same questions to each applicant to an extent that's going to depend on how many applicants we have if we have one it's going to be different than if we have 50. of course but i kind of think well i don't know i've never actually hired anybody i can just can keep going back to what we do in the governing council the special school district and that's how we follow it and it's each person has an opportunity to they everybody makes an opening

121remark we ask the questions and they have their closing statements and um now we what we have changed over time with the ssd governing council is because we have 22 or 23 interviewers interviewing maybe two or three people we don't want to go around the table with 22 people asking three people the same question or a number of questions it gets rather time time consuming to do that um and then sometimes people are just thinking of questions off the top of their head then it was like so what we have done is submitted questions ahead of time to the the chairperson of the governing council who will then ask that question of each candidate so very similar to league of women voters where they're you're submitting your questions the mc is asking the question and

122then the responses are made it works very efficiently very well everybody has an opportunity to everybody's in the same room at the same time so they hear the answers of the other individuals um so that is how it's done are the interview questions known ahead of time no no candidates do not know the questions the only questions that they not had the time are are what we ask them in the in the application so that they can think about their responses because it does help with trying to understand their role and what they consider to be their role as a board member in the application i was going to go the other way with this and that is i think we come up with a set number of questions so we give it to them

123ahead of time i don't know that ability to extemporaneously speak eloquently is necessarily indicative of being a great board member i mean it's certainly a factor and it can help but we're trying to find somebody who you know we believe will serve well on this board and i i think allowing them the time to process and you know provide a thoughtful answer as opposed to on thinking on your feet to me i think that's a more valuable way to evaluate than the latter but and i was also going to add i during you know obviously just coming off the election you know we all the candidates that wanted to participate had time to talk to board members research i don't know if having a panel of the potential applicants is the best way to go

124from an appointment perspective versus the election cycle because i think it gives an advantage to people who may not be as up to speed about parkway um listening to people who are up to speed about parkway if the first person is somebody who let's say was did a campaign and the other people are listening to that person's answers they're at an advantage from hearing that person's answers i was my thought would be to interview separately with the same questions that way nobody is at an advantage or disadvantage i think the advantage to speaking extemporaneously is there for us or for the deciders is that there might be at least from my vantage point i think there could be more authenticity in answers that are having to be created in the moment instead of wikipedia research

125or whatever else maybe it's a mix then i mean it's a year i mean that's the way the candidate forum goes you know they have a list of questions that they come up you know that that come from both the the league and also from the audience that uh that are basically given to every every person you know you guys know you got the questions and you didn't know what the question was going to be in advance and you had to you had to come up with the answer that you came up with and i will say there were there have been a at least one occasion where a sitting board member was unseated by a candidate that had not had experience on the board of education before so um you know so an incumbent

126lost i was not voted in so yeah but i can appreciate depending on how many candidates we have the idea of a closed interview process um and interviewing each candidate one by one similar to what doesn't the policy say we have to do it during the year oh that's right right the policy does say you have to do an opening so we can't we can't interview them separately i think the way to do it perhaps is we don't know how people are going to apply you know if it's just one all this is new but depending on how many apply it's gonna dictate how many questions we can do and i i think i think what we do is we set out a block of time whether it's an hour 90 minutes whatever it is

127and there's a number of questions some of them provided ahead of time half of them half of them off the cuff so you get a mix of you know allowing people to prepare but also you know getting a little some authenticity and i think for where for our purposes tonight we don't need to say how many questions it is but i think it would be helpful we said it's going to be an hour or less or 90 minutes or less and again with the caveat if it's one or two people we can shorten it we're not gonna make two people go for 90 minutes back and forth but i think i don't know tonight we need to have a set agenda for it but i think something along those within those parameters makes sense well

128and our policy also says i just saw this in here under number two review interview process the board may select final candidates to interview an open session or the board may decide not to interview candidates and make a final selection from the applications which again if we have one person so i don't know if that means we have to decide on that now or i don't think have we given you enough that we can post something get the applications and and determine the rest of the procedure once you have a form he just needs the application okay and instructions yeah so essentially we want this form with a couple extra blanks for education and work experience a deadline of may 2nd and we want to tell applicants that they need to be available on did

129we pick a day or do we want to do that right now do we want to pick a date hmm it'd be a lot easier all right everybody get your calendars you say the 11th what about yeah what about may 11. it's a wednesday i don't know what other events are taking place in the district is the only thing nikki will tell us that handy-dandy parkway calendar up yeah i think the closer to applicable ap exams are that day what senior final exams are that day there's varsity high school volleyball nikki said may 11th is fifth grade strings concert okay kind of that gives us more than a week to see how many applicants we have in the view applications everybody good with may 11th evening of mail at 7pm oh let's see how much

130they wanted let's do it at 5am no i don't i mean we had to be here at whatever time we were here tonight so uh i'd like to give people the option to go home and have dinner with their families and even if it's early so seven o'clock pretty good okay margaret anything else legally we need to all right quick question though um worst case scenario if we have one person can we put them down if we have no applications do we leave the seat empty it says the policy says shawl so we have to appoint somebody so it could be one of you and then there's no application no applicants we have to try it again okay it's true gotcha okay okay we all good all right it sounds like we have a uh

131we have a plan so and we don't need to we don't need to vote on anything for that right all right so next up i have we have two work sessions uh the first of which 15.01 is an update on grow your own and maryvale partnership so i'd like to invite dr courtney yeager director of spark teaching and learning and grow your own programs and dr michael bogus chief human resources officer to join us and apparently jennifer stanfill surprise surprise guest tonight right uh good evening um president todd vice president hopper the remaining board members and welcome new board members um we are here tonight um and thankful to provide updates on the spark teaching and learning and grow your own program and so um dr yeager and dr bagus have been working on that

132um but we are going to just provide a bit of context about the spark program before we get started there we go so spark teaching and learning is really an opportunity for students to engage in profession-based experiences and experience the classroom before they leave high school and so here's a picture of kendra one of our current spark teaching and learning students who's teaching a reading lesson at oak brook elementary in the kindergarten classroom as part of spark teaching and learning so again for those of you that may not know me my name is jennifer samfeld director of choice programs which is uh includes our spark program and um as we welcome new board members to the district we did want to just take a moment to provide some context about the spark program as a

133whole so in this picture you'll see alina who is one of our current teachers student teachers who are teaching a math lesson at central high so spark is all about providing students with profession-based immersive learning experiences while they're in high school a program launched in 2014 with our business incubator and really focuses on meaningful mutually beneficial partnerships with industry business and community spark is a proud inaugural member of the caps network which is the center for advanced professional studies which started in the blue valley school district in overland park kansas so what feels like many years ago a large team of parkway administrators and board members visited spark and determined or i'm sorry caps and determined that this type of authentic learning was really going to be a high leverage approach to really achieving mission

134for our students so we have grown now to seven spark strands over the past eight years you can see those strands here and in 2020 we entered into a partnership with the rockwood school district and have been inviting rockwood students to participate in spark as well which has been very exciting and we've seen growth there students submit an application for spark each winter and this year we saw a 27 increase in applications from last year to this year that was following a 26 increase last year so we are seeing a lot of interest and next year we're going to have approximately 250 students spread across those seven strands which is extremely exciting so regardless of the strand that students participate in these are really the foundational pillars or core values for the spark program and

135so students really work to grow in these areas through their various experiences in their respective strands and so i'm going to introduce dr courtney yeager spark teaching and learning began in 2016. it was one of our kind of second waves of strands and at the conclusion of last year ms martha ehrlich who had been the spark teaching and learning program director for a number of years retired um and we have just been extremely blessed to have courtney in this role she has so many experiences as a teacher adjunct faculty member administrator the list goes on and on but i could just not wish for anyone better to be driving this work so here she is the circle button thank you good evening thank you for having me here tonight to talk about my two favorite

136things parkway students and teaching so this is jeremiah he's currently working in a math classroom at northeast middle in case you don't know we are housed at highcroft elementary which is right kind of in the middle of rockwood and parkway school district and tonight we really want to focus on talking about partnerships and a lot of our partnerships are here in our own district so first of all a huge thank you to the high schools for all getting on the same schedule because it has been amazing for spark so our students come to us in the afternoon in teaching and learning either fifth seventh or sixth eighth block and it makes a world of difference to build community and have the kids all working together so thank you huge thank you to the high school

137principals and everybody involved in those decisions um the other big um thank you tonight really goes out to parkway transportation lisa bangert our secretary who helps us with spark and trish tricia seaman in transportation this is the first year that we've been able to use parkway buses for afternoon strands and that really helps with access and equity we have a lot of kids who use parkway buses they're reliable we know that they're going to get there on time and it's a huge organizational feat to get the kids where they're supposed to be at all times and they do an amazing job so um i think i went too far sorry history so in the history of our program we have had 58 total students go through spark teaching and learning and i was able to

138contact 35 of those 58 and they filled out a survey for me 80 of those students are currently studying education or currently placed in education this year we have 21 students their anticipated college graduation then will be 20 26 27 and next year we're slated to have about 30. so we're really excited to have a lot of students going through the program the next couple of years in our current spark class we have four students that want to be high school math teachers three that are interested in middle school math facts and ela 13 elementary various roles within and one person interested in becoming a preschool teacher so like i mentioned our partnerships are so important in this program it really is a community effort to get these students prepared to be future teachers we

139have visiting experts from various fields come and work with us including our very own dr marty who loves to come and spend time with us and we just love having him he does a great lesson about the history of education 75 teacher hosts for field experiences during second quarter every teacher in highcroft is involved in this program which is wonderful and then we have about 30 cooperating teachers that are working with our students in quarters 3 and 4. i'm just shameless i keep putting pictures of my kids up i'm sorry um so i just want to scroll through really quickly so you can see these are the current teachers from all over the district working with our students from green trails to belle reeve to oak brook we have students in all schools from mckelvey

140some private schools some schools in rockwood so it really does take a village so just a quick thank you to all those teachers who are using their plan time and their evenings to work with our cooperating to work with our teachers who are doing student teaching so another partnership that we're super excited about we have dr shappy here who will be coming up in a minute from maryville the dean of the education department at maryville is our partnership with maryville so we worked this fall to come up with a four module partnership with maryville and this includes opportunities to work with middle school and early high school students so that they can learn from the university about financial literacy learn about the school of education and their mission spend some time on their campus as

141they get further along in high school they can see their degree program learn about university class structures and then when they're in spark they can spend a half a day on campus participating in their school and society class and at least have one additional school of education experience maryville is also very generous with the college credit that they overlay for our program students can earn up to eight college credit hours for the work they do in spark which is amazing and in reaching out to the graduates that credit has transferred if not for specific education classes for electives in all instances that i've heard of so it's just a wonderful opportunity that we have right in our backyard so then the exciting part is if our graduates attend maryville university and working with human resources

142and dr boggess they if they show shoes can be placed in parkway for their student teaching and maryville has been really thoughtful in thinking about what local districts need so they do not have classes in their higher levels on mondays and fridays that gives their students that are wanting to be teachers opportunities to sub in buildings and that gives us the sub pool that we need so they if they choose to student teach in parkway they can be placed in the building in which they will be doing their student teaching so that when they're subbing they're building connections and community within that building assuming they are hired by kelly services they will be guaranteed an interview and parkway and then also when parkway teachers serve as cooperating teachers to these university candidates they can receive

143a stipend or credit so without further ado i'd like to invite dr shapi up the dean of school of education to say a few words good evening my name is michelle shappy and i am the very proud dean of the school of education and i um i'm always so impressed with how much you all know about maryville whenever we come to do anything together and when you talked about the generous eight credit hours that we do let the students have or that they earn while they're in spark i just remember that that actually happened when i was the assistant dean i wanted to keep my foot in the door with teaching so i kept the freshman class and you had a student yasmine galami and if you ever encountered her you will remember her she

144is a memorable student but anyway she asked to see me after class one day and she asked if she could show me what she had done in spark and i said sure let's you know let's talk about it now she said no no i have two three ring binders that i need to bring you and i am talking about two three ring binders like this long story short it was so robust that after talking to her and then finding out a little bit more about what her experience was in spark i went to the dean and we we increased it from three credit hours to eight credit hours that the students would be able to earn when they when they came to us and so we have been incredibly impressed with the spark program ever

145since we became aware of it but i will tell you this is my 15th year at maryville and ever since i started i started as part-time it was very evident that there was a deep and respectful relationship with parkway in the school of education and i'm really happy that that has just continued to grow over the years and so i would just like to say thank thank you for the partnership we we really do appreciate it we feel like it's a win-win we're getting quality students out of your high schools and then we might have the opportunity to train them to be teachers with your help and then we send them back out and then eventually a lot of them come back to us and we train them to be principals and then they come

146back out and so we had a lot of back and forth and actually since i've been the dean i've hired two of your folks who have retired to be full-time faculty members in our in our program and so i really do feel like it's a it's a win-win program courtney had asked me to talk about our mission and so i pulled out the mission from our statement and it's it's a up there and after i looked at it i thought well that's not very interesting we are preparing educators and what you might not know is we we are preparing teachers we're also preparing in our doc programs and master's programs principals and superintendents but we also have another doctorate program where we we prepare leaders for universities and colleges i thought well that doesn't really

147get to what we're talking about so then i pulled out some things a little deeper in the mission work that was specifically to teachers and this truly is what we believe in and what we're doing i won't read it to you let you take a look but then i thought actually probably what i would want to know is what are you the most proud of or what do you feel like you're known for at maryville which is what i put together next and i said and i want to say dispositions social justice and practice is really what we're known for um in far as far as dispositions we created a tool a long time ago because we think it's really important well i want to back up and just say dispositions in social justice were

148not on the state criteria at all in the mise evaluation form so we put on we copied the state form and we did everything they asked us to do and then on top of that we we added dispositions in social justice and i'll talk about practice in just a second and i want you to know this is not all we're about obviously we're nationally accredited and we are state accredited and we do everything that we're supposed to do but these are the things that i feel like we do particularly well so we just feel like it's really important and we keep an eye and we want to make sure that the teacher candidates that we send out are kind and that they care both about their students and their students learning and that they show

149up on time so it's like all of those sort of like soft skills right but but we really feel like um you have to be nice to be a teacher right and so so that is something that we are really looking at and measuring from the very first freshman class we show this picture and we have long conversations about equality versus equity and our students are really well versed in that by the time they leave us and practice we have a great deal of practicum hours and student teaching hours and we actually require twice as many hours as the state requires for certification and that is something that we get a lot of compliments on and and folks who get our students feel like they can see that difference courtney also asked me to talk

150about our commitment to public schools and so i just pulled a few things that we've done just over the last few years so all of our practicum students and student teachers are placed in public schools we feel like that's where we can have the greatest impact we've done a great deal of professional development in the roosevelt high school and the wilkinson [Music] preschool in the st louis public school district where our faculty members go in and actually provide professional development for their teachers i was involved in three very large grants over 12 years and one of them was here in parkway with a partnership with st louis public schools on math education where we would come into the schools and provide some extra professional development and over the last five years ago we created the

151center for access and achievement and we have a director dr stephen coxen some of you probably have worked with him he's phenomenal he's raised well into the over a million dollars at this point in grants so that we can provide opportunities for students i feel like we hit both ends of the spectrum we are able to provide opportunities for students or equipment in schools that they may not have access to all the way from from that end to the other end where we provide classes two weeks every summer in science and robotics for students that are gifted on our campus and so we are in a lot of north county schools we have have students come to us we've trained students alongside their teachers we gave them both training at the same time and coding

152so anyway that that's another way that i feel like we are giving back to the public schools in our in our area okay i lost the there we go and then i just want to just say a couple of things about our partnership our department has always valued our partnership with parkway and it is the deepest strongest partnership that we have and we are very excited about the new components that we've added recently so courtney showed you a lot of things that we're doing some of those things are new we're really excited about middle school campus visits our faculty is excited about that because for the university we do a lot of why maryville why maryville why maryville but being able to talk to middle school students it wouldn't be appropriate to talk to them

153about why maryville so we're excited to just talk about why education right why teaching and so our faculty is super excited about that component and then the informal gatherings that we'll be able to do on zoom which is kind of new to all of us that now have this extra tool in our toolbox will get us into some more formal and informal interactions with future students and their parents both at the high school level and the middle school level which i think is is really great i would say that also the possibility of increasing some of our incoming freshmen from the parkway school district is also very exciting to us because as i mentioned before briefly but i will just say as a whole the parkway students coming in are better the most prepared group

154that we have coming right out of high school and so they are a pleasure to work with so we are excited about being able to increase those numbers and the last thing is that the parkway partnership that we've had we feel like is really strong and a really good model so we are hoping to use what we're doing to to spread that to a couple of other districts in the area as we seek more diverse candidates to train for teacher candidates for all of us thank you for your time thank you so much dr sheppy for being here and for your partnership and your work i think we can all agree that maryville touches every district in the st louis area everybody knows some somebody that went to maryville for their graduate work or their

155undergraduate work and has benefited greatly we have been working with other university partnerships as well umsl does overlay three hours of college credit and been working with a person who's specifically focusing on grow your own and his efforts are mostly in north county around umsl but he's been a great part a thinking partner with me his name is david stoffer of umsl and this year they're offering a summer leadership program which he spoke to my students about it's really exciting it's two weeks students get a college credit for participating and they even get a 500 stipend for their time so universities are really starting to think differently about how to help with the teacher shortage and it's been really great to learn alongside we also have partnership with londonwood recently dr stanfield and i went

156to meet with several stakeholders at lindenwood and we're looking at developing that partnership more so what we have learned in thinking through all these wonderful things that the universities are offering and all of the work the state has put out specific to grow your own initiatives is we really need to start making touch points with students earlier in their career sometimes when they get to be a junior and senior they have missed out on some courses that would have helped them or some college credits they could have earned or ways that could make their education more affordable so they feel confident going into teaching without a lot of college debt so we have started our grow your own experience starting with the class of 2026 current 8th graders who will be 9th graders next year

157beginning this summer i have a cohort of about 22 students that were came recommended from their eighth grade teachers and we are going to be working on starting a district-wide educating educators rising club that will meet um virtually and in the evenings a couple times this summer and then in certain act lab modules next year educators rising is the organization we're using it is approved by the cte community and it also is part of our nea organization so it's a great partnership there and this is how the core principles of spark align with ed rising we are also going to have different summer experiences this year where students can choose one of these weeks to come and learn alongside me at summer school so they'll be working with children and summer school teachers and then

158we will also start our meetings with some local universities and get the kids on campus get them learning about a plus four-year university comparisons the benefits of entering this wonderful field that we are all a part of and then as they participate in some of the grow your own experiences we also have opportunities to pay students for their talents by working as high school helpers in our summer school program moving forward which brings us to future plans this is dr boggess good evening i guess before i begin with data and our grant i i want you to i want to put in concept the time frame 18 months ago dr marty and i met with people around the state regarding grow your own um and then we went to courtney and to jennifer and to

159kevin beckner and said this is something we need to do and what you've heard up till now has been born over the last 18 months and when you look at something that's going to do wonderful things for our district for our students when you have the foundation of knowing it's the right thing it's amazing what can be accomplished in a very short amount of time and so i want to talk to you a little bit about data in our grants and so as you see on the screen goal two for our strategic plan is really bringing to the district a diverse community of teachers to mirror our students and so as i look at this data and i share it with you the column on the right is our january data for our students 19

160750 students and how the is broken down by male female white black hispanic and other and on the left side you'll see our staff i'm excited to bring back this chart to the board next year as we are hiring both teachers and administrators with the goal of two in mind of bringing to the district a diverse population of educators to mirror what our community is showing us in this data and so as you look at that with grow your own all right i got it now two grants were available to us and the first one recruit and retain each district was allotted money from the state depending on our size and other factors parkway received 605 thousand dollars of that we have patty and i shared with the board in a memo in in previous

161meetings we talked about earmarking 500 000 of that to go towards social emotional needs of our staff that was one of the criteria for this grant and so partnering with finance and patty for the 2.5 million to add to that this 500 allowed us to be able to do stipends for all of our staff and so to date we have 2 392 of our staff members have completed the training to do the modules for social emotional health we have 35 employees that have not completed that yet it is amazing though i don't have those names finance keeps track of that and they are sending emails to those 35 people just to remind them that the stipend is still there and available for them to complete modules regarding the social emotional health of our staff to

162receive their stipend of that remaining is 105 000 and so as we sit and talk about how do we help our students who are going to become educators and how do we honor their work in the grow your own program we partnered with parkway alumni association to create a 501c3 to put this money into an account with our alumni association for us to look at how best to give back money to those candidates that might need student loan help um or available positions that we have in the district that are hard to fill and so we are in the process of working with legal to see what are the parameters of what we can do but we viewed that that was the best use of that money to be able to put it away with

163permission from the state to be able to think more collaboratively with others and to be transparent in what we would use it for and not lose the money by the end of the deadline the other grant that every school district in the state of missouri received whether you're public or private receive ten thousand dollars for a grow your own and so in that some people use that money for various things i meet with my job alikes each month and so it was interesting to see what they were using it for but we also felt that that 10 000 could go into that 501c3 so we can actually look at how to best meet the needs of the the district and those individuals that have gone through the spark program the grow your own program and

164how do we entice them to come back and work in parkway and so with all of that it's very exciting to see what's next and i know courtney's coming back up here but i do want to take a moment just to say uh the partnerships that we have and what courtney and jennifer have been able to accomplish in the short amount of time makes other districts very jealous of where we are in our timeline and i just want to give kudos again to all the work that courtney and jennifer do day in day out to make this beneficial for our students that are going through the spark and the grow your own that want to come back and be teachers and we are at a teacher shortage we are still a destination district we have

165individuals that are applying but we don't know what that'll look like in five years from now when the numbers that we hear from universities is that there are less and less individuals going into education we're going to need a workforce and this is a wonderful way for us to grow our own invite our own students back to parkway as another piece to the overall hiring pool that we will have over the next several years so thank you for letting me join you and i'll turn it back over to courtney i wish i could bring the current cooperating teachers or some of my students here for for you to meet um they are making a difference their kid the the younger students just get so excited when they come in for their internship days and i

166really do think we are going to grow a really strong pipeline so some work to come again we're still working through university partnerships we are i've been in touch with a person at the st louis community college to really think about what they offer in terms of helping our students again graduate with less debt our students can participate in the a plus program with some of their tutoring hours that they do during spark and then really just building an information hub of all the local universities we're so lucky to have so many right around our area but what they offer what scholarships are available depending on the student's qualifications and again universities are thinking differently about how to entice people to go into the field of education and their thinking big with scholarships and things

167like that we also are going i will also be adding a 2027 cohort which is current seventh graders and um over half of my current spark teaching and learning students have agreed to help mentor the students as they move forward even as they matriculate into universities that may or may not be in town and then also with dr stanfield's blessing proposing a summer course that will go to proposals this spring to try to encapsulate and formalize some of the summer experiences that i mentioned for younger high school students earlier in the presentation and then also fundraising i'm going to have to talk to xantha and incubator about that because this is not my cup of tea but we will need to work through fundraising for sustainability to continue to build on that 501c3 to help

168with our student loan forgiveness plans so that is our update and we are happy to take any questions or comments well i i will start just by thanking you all uh for that great presentation it's it's nice to see some of the some of the things that we heard about a couple of years ago really taking shape uh the pre-spark uh that just that sounds so exciting to be able to reach uh folks before they're even in high school and and uh just plant that seed um i did have uh let's see i did have a question for mike actually that you mentioned that that uh the 2392 staff had taken those modules have we gotten any feedback about the actual taking of the modules and was did we see some benefit that our staff

169see some benefit from those uh how i would answer that we within the modules staff only had to take two of the modules full-time and part-time staff there were multiple modules i i think there were nine modules that were offered within that and at a at a rate of about 85 percent of our staff took all nine of them and so even though they only had to take two they continued to look at the other modules to see the social emotional stress release breathing techniques or just a couple one was on depression and so how i would answer that is the number of people that took all of them well above the requirement to fulfill the stipend was very impressive on our end i think it's stressful right now in any profession teaching is no

170exception to that we have a great partnership with pnea to where we have conversations often to try to get a pulse of where staff are in that and also talking with our principals who also work with staff members in their faculty meetings and other professional development to be mindful of having the conversations of social emotional health and being in tune with the needs of our staff so much with dr marty shutting and having the district close tomorrow and friday is another way to provide a little break for staff members in terms of the stress load that's there i know that would be something that would be wonderful in all professions it works well in ours to be able to do that to provide another level of support for our staff awesome thank you and the

171only thing other thing i'd add is i graduated from maryville so go saints my doctor at maryville yeah jeff i i can't help myself here um mike mike talk a little bit about you know how fast we move uh he and one of the things that mike and courtney know we spent a lot of time with the columbia public schools and one of my really big awakenings was peter stapleton who's the former superintendent and we were talking about their grow your own program and i was talking about you know we're going out and trying to do mike and amy joyce ahead of him you know go to recruitment fairs and he said and this this was such an uh i said keith you're sitting on 18 000 potential future teachers that's what you ought to

172be working on he says you can travel the country and you might get one you might get two they might come for a while but i don't know if you've heard this you know most educators are are working 50 miles from where they grew up so it's hard so he says that's what you want to work on it was like an awakening to me and that's as mike said we went to work i also want to just say um you the these folks and it's just wonderful to see them all together have worked so hard to make this all come and each one of them have done such great work but when we chose courtney yeager to do this work and one thing you know about courtney is she's pretty aggressive and she also doesn't

173necessarily ask you know she doesn't ask hey i want to do she just does stuff and that's okay because you got to move forward you can't sit around and talk about this problem of teacher shortage or more diversity you got to get going and look what courtney has done and not alone obviously working with maryvale working with jennifer working with mike but courtney i just got to say and you confirmed tonight man what you have done in a short period of time just being out there and just and i i know going to the classroom the the students her rapport and her work with the students is just such a delight but she also knows how to deal with people she knows how to go to universities right doctor and she has those connections and

174she's also going other places we are not going to solve people keep i go to conferences we talk and talk and talk but you've got to do something about it you know you can't just say we got the shortage you have to go to work and you i think we're doing that and we're going to start getting people and thanks to you maryville for another partnership we have so many with maryville and we really appreciate uh you're stepping up and really helping us through this so i'm delighted i just was thrilled and mike said it best you can't i just can't imagine 18 months ago to think where he'd be today and thank all of you but courtney particularly you your your leadership and has been wonderful thank you so much i'm blushing um i

175did want to say that thankful i'm so thankful for my former colleagues in middle school the 8th grade teachers when they nominated students for the grow your own they wrote why and knew that i was going to share that with parents and students and the response i mean the the emotion that parents felt about a teacher saying i think that your child would be a great teacher because they exhibit x y and z quality and we hadn't thought about it before but we want to learn more was so powerful and again it goes back to our teachers being awesome advocates for the field as well and promoting and encouraging students who maybe didn't think of the profession to do so so i thank you too with your um payday notes and your leadership and continue

176to encourage our teachers to do that i think that makes a huge difference so thank you and i'll i'll just segue to from what dr marty just said too i had attended a missouri school board association workshop a number of years ago and went to a workshop specifically on this topic and we were told right then that because of the teacher shortage and and it was it was frightening to see the number of people getting out of education um and that we were told if your school district is not doing a grow your own program you're making a huge mistake so we you know as a board i think we need to continue to support this and i'm so happy to see that it's trickling down to the middle school level because you're absolutely right

177i and i think all of our spark programs need to trickle down to the middle school level and i'm happy to hear that we're actually getting nominations from teachers so that kids aren't just sitting around you know not knowing how to get into that program uh one question that i do have i think i only have so that was one question was how do you identify the students to go through the program and then the other question too is are there opportunities for students to pursue or to um look into the idea of special education in addition to general education yeah so this particular year like i said i i sent out i sent our data about the mismatch between our student population and our teacher population in terms of making sure our teacher population

178matches our student population i asked teachers to think critically about the people in their class and who might be a great candidate for coming back and teaching in parkway 10 years from now or 8 years from now so i did uh but anybody is welcome i have had a couple other people reach out and say oh how do i get involved in that i heard you know my friend said that she's gonna do this program so everybody is welcome but we had to start somewhere so i ended up getting like i said i think 42 nominations and over half of those want to participate in the program and i will keep communicating with those that don't as they go into high school and think about it some more um to the second part about special

179education everybody in spark does do a rotation with this we have wonderful special educators all over the district but um at highcroft they do field experiences where they get to experience every grade level every special and work with our special educators at highcroft so i have had some students that want to continue to do that and they are specializing in that when they go to the university so yes we we love working with our special school district as well of course there are things uh confidential and personal that they can't know about um but the high school students when they're when they're working with students but they follow the teacher's lead and it's worked out great great thank you just real fast being the parent of a spark teaching and learning graduate um she did

180she reply to the survey did she reply to the survey yeah good okay cause she's still in it yes and also helped me find other people very good um but just the fact that yeah like w said the numbers at the state level are very very troubling and i think you guys are doing a great job getting ahead of it and um for my daughter she still has parked on the list when she graduates so something's going good and i'm not thank you all very much really appreciate it next up uh special services program evaluation preliminary work session so we have dr amy blumenfeld director of special education and alyssa gratz coordinator of special services thank you ladies for hanging out so late tonight good evening or is it night time at this point president

181todd vice president hopper members of the board dr marty and mrs stover we appreciate your time tonight to provide feedback regarding the plan for our comprehensive evaluation of the special services department and special education program in parkway the parkway special services department which is a component of the student services department led by dr matheson is scheduled for a comprehensive program evaluation during the 22-23 school year the most recent program evaluation of the department was completed in 2011. tonight we're coming to the board seeking feedback on the main topic areas and guiding questions that will drive the special services program evaluation my name is alyssa gratz i am the coordinator of special services and have served in this role for eight years prior to my current role i served for five years as the district-wide school

182psychologist supporting all parkway schools with disability evaluations and process under section 504 of the rehabilitation act with me tonight is dr amy blumenfeld the special school district special education director assigned to parkway this is dr blumenfeld's first year in the role with parkway she was most recently a special education coordinator at marquette high school in the rockwood school district for 10 years the third member of the special services department serving parkway is our district-wide school psychologist kimberly hamilton she served in this role for over seven years and was previously a school psychologist with the special school district within parkway i'm going to turn it over to dr blumenfeld good evening the special education team which is hopefully if i get the right direction nope perfect so the chart before you um tells you a little

183bit about our population and our staffing the special education team for our school age students is managed by 11 special education coordinators and they are spread across parkway's 28 schools the fern ridge choice program and parkway virtual campus additionally there is a special education coordinator dedicated to our county-wide deaf hard of hearing program which happens to have a site within our parkway boundaries but she is she's supervised outside of our area included in this as well we also have two special education coordinators that focus exclusively on the early childhood programming within special school district and they are not reflected in our coordinator numbers students qualifying for special education services are supported by special education teachers a variety of related service providers which include occupational therapists physical therapists speech language pathologists a wide variety of related

184service professionals adaptive pe teachers the role of the ssd school psychologist they primarily conduct evaluations however they're infused with in our school buildings to help with looking at problem solving at the individual level for students within the schools dr blumenfeld mrs hamilton and i all work closely with building leaders and a wide variety of department leaders throughout parkway and ssd to ensure students with disabilities are receiving what they need to be successful in school we work to ensure parents and guardians are fully informed of their rights and options we support school teams with the problem-solving process for struggling learners and we work to ensure parkway and ssd are compliant with the federal regulations state laws and district policies related to students with special needs two federal disability laws directly apply to public school students the

185individuals with disabilities education act ensure students who are eligible for and require special education services have access to those services programs and specialized staff through an individualized education plan an iep section 504 of the real rehabilitation act of 1973 was the first federal civil rights law enacted to protect people with disabilities from discrimination public schools must ensure students with disabilities are accommodated and have all necessary supports to access public school and an opportunity to participate in extracurriculars summer programs and school-sponsored events and trips offered by parkway outside of the regular school day section 504 is not funded by the federal government nor do we receive any additional funding from the state of missouri students living with a range of medical mental health mobility vision hearing and developmental challenges are serviced by the many specialists in

186parkway and ssd approximately 20 percent of parkway students k-12 currently qualify for special education services or section 504 plan additionally special education services are provided by the ssd to approximately 200 young children with developmental delays through parkway's preschool program the program evaluation plan was developed collaboratively with dr greg mathison assistant superintendent of student services and dr nathan tyson parkway's director of data management and research input was also obtained from the members of the special education action team which includes a variety of district level and school-level general education and special education administrators regarding what issues and questions were most important to this program evaluation additionally input was sought from the president of the parkway parent advocacy council for children with disabilities pacd our department plans to utilize the comprehensive program evaluation as an opportunity to highlight

187areas of strength and identify opportunities for improvement the goal of ensuring all students are capable confident caring and curious is a lofty one but we believe it's possible and are committed to continuous improvement on behalf of students with disabilities to reach that goal the guiding questions which i will review on the next slides were grouped into areas of focus which are types of services and supports provided student fac student and faculty profile compliance with federal and state disability laws student outcomes equity use of finances support for staff in addition to the areas of focus the final evaluation presentation will include updates on the outcomes of the 2011 special services program evaluation recommendations and identification of areas for growth and improvement moving forward parent feedback student performance data staff input regional state and national disability data

188and information from experts in the field of educational services and supports for students with disabilities will be gathered and included in the final report the program evaluation is an opportunity to highlight the specialized programs service delivery models and educational options that are available through parkway and the special school district to students with very unique needs our guiding questions in this area are what types of services and supports are currently provided directly or indirectly for parkway students with disabilities how does this compare to other districts in our region state and or county and how many students attend schools other than their neighborhood school per their iep or 5014 placement would increases in staff training and capacity allow more students to stay within their neighborhood school with all their specialized needs being met as well as our

189programs meeting quality indicators for students when we return to the board for the final program evaluation presentation next spring we feel it's important to provide details on the number of students served over the past five years and the nature of their student needs including an analysis of disability numbers for each eligibility category comparison to districts in our area state data and national statistics will provide a framework for understanding the scope of specialized programs and services being provided in parkway and elsewhere while not the most interesting part of our jobs compliance with federal and state disability laws is a critical component of our work the state of missouri's education department conducts periodic file reviews of special education student documents to identify compliance errors hearing officers issue judgments when formal disagreements arise between schools and parents of

190students with disabilities the u.s department of education's office for civil rights division conducts investigations when allegations of disability discrimination are made under section 504 we feel a comprehensive review of the information and data gained from these compliance departments will assist us with identifying what we are doing correctly and areas we may need to improve so we believe this may be the most important component of the program evaluation and it's the guiding light in our daily work student success not only will we review educational performance data but we will also gather feedback from parents and students to gauge how well we are supporting and serving students with disabilities on their path to achieve their individualized goals across the nation it has become evident that students of color are disproportionately identified as having a disability in need

191of special education services in some categories such as emotional disturbance and intellectual disability while underrepresented in other categories such as autism parkway is no exception and the special education action team has been working to identify causes and solutions to this issue for multiple years regarding section 504 there may be an issue of under identification due to a limited due to limited resources to evaluate all students who may qualify we will include data specific to parkway comparison to local state and national data and a comprehensive review of the work done to address this issue over the last decade goal three of parkway's strategic plan is to responsibly and efficiently allocate resources including finances facilities personnel and time with this goal in mind we plan to provide the board with an accounting of both special education and

192general education funds used to support students with disabilities the specialized staff members who support students with a wide variety of health learning developmental and mental health needs are the key to student success additionally supporting general education teachers and staff is a critical element in ensuring students with unique needs are making progress educationally socially and emotionally we want to know what more can be done to support teachers and staff to ensure they feel confident capable and supported as they work to meet the individualized needs of all students the ongoing collaboration between special school district and parkway's talent development department will be reviewed as a part of the program evaluation additionally the program evaluation provides us an opportunity to review the efficacy and the recent of the recent decentralization of section 504 evaluation and case management responsibilities

193to assistant principals based upon your feedback tonight the special services program evaluation will be conducted over over the course of the next eight months once the data surveys and other relevant information is collected a preliminary findings report will be presented and reviewed with superintendent's action team in preparation for the presentation to the board next spring thank you for your time and attention we are eager to receive any feedback you may have at this time bless you bless you well thank you very much uh that was i i i'm just jotting notes and i really can't think of any feedback to give you other than you you've already got a pretty uh well thought out plan of the areas you want to evaluate and i can't wait to see what that yields so great great job

194i know thank you and i know it's late so i'm going to try to whip through this really fast i will try we'll start let's start with professional development so do you have i didn't see professional development um in in part of what you're going to be looking at because i you know some of the now that we're they've always been trying to have special ed students in the general ed setting as much as possible but yet it seems like some of the professional development done here in parkway for our general ed teachers is is there mandatory requirements or they're just optional and should there be more professional development what what does that look like to help our general ed teachers as part of supporting this for our staff so and i can feel that

195one um part of what we are looking at in some of our questions is addressing what professional development do they feel they've received or are they still looking for we have a robust option through special schools trick which general education teachers are welcome to attend with us we also within our department we partner with amy gurken coats and we look at what type of opportunities are there available through parkway where potentially we could have special education staff members join up and then working with the administrative team to see do we need to identify key stakeholders within the buildings that we want to put them through specialized training so we definitely will be addressing and surveying teachers and administrators as well to see where do they feel the gaps are where do they feel that they're

196getting that important training and we want to continue that and possibly even increase it because it's working and look at what else is needed okay and then my other question had to do with a number a few years ago when dr keenan first became superintendent of special school um i guess of around 2019 she embarked upon doing an audit of all of the districts and the services that they provide and is there any information that you're going to be able to and then covet hit so i don't know how far they got with their audit and will that be a part of what you're going to be looking at here to incorporate their findings as well yes absolutely um so they did do an audit um things were paused because of covet and so this

197year we actually picked up the audit again so we now have recent results so that is a commitment that dr keenan has made that we will continue to do those audits and that's how we'll get some of the information as we compare to other districts our size that are nearby as well as just other partner districts you know within the 22 within st louis county that we can compare what do their programs look like are we holding strong within parkway and looking similar are we different in some ways and why is that so we will absolutely access all of those reports and then on the matter regarding use of finances is that are you talking about the disproportionate funds or are you talking about something else in use of funds throughout parkway or is it

198both so in my opinion it is both that's what we had talked about we certainly want to get feedback from the board and from the superintendent's action team to make sure that they agree that we should be looking at both um but we we kind of left it open that we interpreted as we would look at both i'd like to see both yeah as part of the report and then perhaps an education with individual you know maybe the board at some point of what that is and how we get that money and how it's identified in the the dollar amount that's deemed because it's different throughout school districts absolutely we can include that um and then as far as also for support for staff if we could if you talked at all about the facilities

199needs for teaching special ed i know when we've done some visits in some of our schools lately that has been one of the the gaps that we have is availability and adequate not just adequate but appropriate space for some of the special education needs that we have within our schools and if that will be part of your or if that could be if that could be incorporated as part of this it certainly could be um as part of the audit that special school stroke does that's one of the pieces they look at when they come out and they audit the districts but we can actually make more of a focus of that here in parkway if we'd like to get more than what special school district offers us in their audit that would be great

200thank you um and then is mosaics our gifted program is that part of ssd or is that separate that is separate okay that's fine yeah um and then the deaf and hard of hearing program is that part of this we are going to include that in this because there are two districts that are identified as district-wide sites parkway being one of them hazel would be in the other so we do pull from countywide we've got students here in parkway from afton from valley park all over that access our programming and so while i don't supervise that programming they are a part of all of my meetings everything that we do within parkway they are included in so their results will also be within this okay thank you um and then as far as staffing goes

201is staffing for parkway going to be included as part of this yes that's why we had the charge earlier on in the slides and i will mess up the powerpoint if i try to get back there but we will also be looking at what are our staffing ratios compared to other districts and some of that i guess you're at the we're at the whatever special school district can provide also um in their recruiting efforts and retention of of staff to be able to provide that to our district as well yes okay and i think my the only other um one of the i think one of the other i don't know when when you talk about um compliance with federal and state disability laws will you be looking at um how students with disabilities are

202run through the discipline process and how that's maybe different for students without disabilities that's certainly something that we can consider if we want to extend it to the discipline process originally the way that this reads how we started to survey um was looking at just qualifications right and so meeting the qualifications for a disability or an eligibility area but if the board and superintendent's action team would like for us to look at discipline we can certainly consider that as well and and i think also the idea of of how how is the the manifestation determined you know is that determined indeed by just the disability or by the iep or both and how that's interpreted and so for manifestations we look at a process that is guided by state and federal guidelines and so we're

203considering there's two legally mandated questions that we will ask when we go through that process we look at was the disability and was the discipline that took place a direct and substantial result of their disability did it connect and was it a failure of the iep team to follow the current document very similar with 504 they're asking the questions as well when they're looking at those documents and so we determine does it im was the students disability impacted you know and that caused the discipline so we can certainly delve a little deeper into again those discipline practices and look at how we are conducting those meetings alyssa has a very similar process how she conducts those meetings for students that do not have ieps just as my team does across the district when there's discipline

204okay thank you and then my last question is that the last time this was evaluated was 2011 i mean that's like 10 12 years ago so i'm just wondering if if we shouldn't consider having this program evaluation and i think we're gonna be talking about that at our board workshop um sooner than that just seems too long in my opinion to go for evaluating student services no i know but the last one was 2011. so um i i don't know it seems to me that we'll be talking about that in a couple weeks so and i'll echo debbie's sentiment about uh including discipline in there we we recently had a situation that that was a related conversation so i think it would be beneficial for the board to have that yeah absolutely thank you amy

205i'm sorry sure does somebody else come no i'm i'm happy i think we're all happy to see that you're including early childhood in in this work because we've talked a lot about the you know that that needs to be connected to our overall program so i just i think that that's a wonderful so i was glad to hear that see that i think saab members would agree perfect yeah we will definitely we'll make sure we include them and get those numbers in there they weren't reflect they were reflected in the iep numbers not in our staffing chart but we'll make sure we get a full review of their programming as well as they are housed within our district one other item that i did underline that i just noticed and perhaps this will be part

206of your evaluation but where it talks about our assistant principals are now designated as the building 504 coordinators um are you going to look at that to see does that does that still make sense and is it working absolutely yes that will be a component of the evaluation okay thank you just to that point and i did want to point out uh and i'm so happy uh melissa is here tonight uh a couple years ago he made that decision because poreless i don't know you or just like you know had you were just overwhelmed worry so that decision to have our assistant principals participate in that was we got so far behind that we were not meeting uh we were as far as what a year behind alyssa weren't we i mean so we really

207had to do something and that's why we moved uh to get our assistant principals more actively involved otherwise we were dependent so dependent on alyssa who by the way is an amazing expert and has the expertise and it has a tremendous work ethic but it wasn't it wasn't a right for her or families that and had students that had needs but that needs to be evaluated updated i know there there's still some concern on the part of the you know some of this buildings and that's another workload but we can't expect alyssa to be the only person in the district that's uh you know the manager of that that program but i just want to compliment alyssa for all her work over the years and you know she takes on so much i also want

208to compliment um amy blumenfeld dr bloombell this is her first year in the district and i just want to just say as i said earlier about courtney yeager she's taken on a lot of tough topics uh it's been a tough year so i just want to congratulate her and thank her for all the work i know dr mathison would agree and dr mathis and worked with her for a number of years at marquette so he's had a wonderful relationship with her and we're glad to have her in the district so thank you so thank both of you okay thank you all very much okay so uh i know when we set our calendar of board meetings about a year ago or so we didn't plan on this being the night before uh everybody was going

209to be off so thank you all for sticking with us so late tonight and i hope you really enjoy your extended weekend based on tonight's conversation that we had on the school board the pending school board vacancy may have a motion and a second to call for a special meeting to be held at 7 p.m on wednesday may 11 2022 at the parkway welcome center second all in favor aye any opposed motion carries 7-0 next may have a motion in a second to adjourn the regular meeting all in favor aye aye aye can you pose motion carry 7-0 thank you all for attending thank you for watching you