001sessions and the language matters and the finance workshops. The featured guest um at the summit was uh the former chief of staff for President George HW Bush. And my takeaway from all that she said, and she said a lot of magnificent things, was that uh when you make a decision, make a decision because it is right not to get reelected. I thought that was pretty profound because sometimes when you decide or make a decision on something, it's not always what's popular, but it should always be what's right. I also attended the new board member training in Cameron this past Friday on July 11th that hosted the new board members across the state of Missouri. Some district I found to be found to be kind of interesting that they had only 40 students in their districts.
002Uh but it was nice to be there and to collaborate and talk to and with other new board members. And that's all I have. Uh good a good evening. Uh I too attended the um Missouri State Board Association's uh summer conference and truly three-day conference and truly enjoyed it. Enjoyed being with Edna uh there too. And uh uh was um my take on it is I got to attend a refresher course for uh those of us that have already uh been board members for a while. enjoyed that and had the experience of being a delegate to go in and vote, am I saying the right word? Delegate to vote for the new upcoming um officers uh for the Missouri State Association. And that was interesting to me. I also um met this week with um
003last week with the uh Sisters in Christ and the Striving Hub. that is a a group of uh city officials and different businesses here in the Raytown area and uh surrounding communities that get together to see what they can do for the community, see how they can link services and it's very interesting. I encourage anybody that want to look up the striving hub because there's one in Jackson County, there's one here in Raytown, I believe there's one up north. So, get involved with that or at least find out what your city's doing. um with the to to join forces to help with the problems that we have in our community. That's my report. Mr. President, um I've been out of the the country for a little bit this past month, but I've really just wanted
004to say I've enjoyed the new improvements that we've made at the Raytown Wellness Center right now. Um, we've got a bunch of new flooring in and a couple new machines. And I highly recommend if you have not, you know, partaked at our wellness center, you know, it's a new school year, so it's a new time to, you know, get um fit um for everyone. Um, but the Michael and Jose are wonderful people. Um, and they do a great job over there. And so I really enjoyed the the new improvements on our wellness center and, you know, just can't wait to see what else we got. Awesome. Um, speaking of the Raytown Wellness Center, um, we recently completed with REIT a, um, learn to swim program with, uh, the Raytown Wellness Center for along with GHA,
005uh, where we had 75 Raytown school district students learn to swim, uh, through a grant that we, uh, received from, uh, GHA uh, and the Kansas City Chiefs, the Hunt Family Foundation. And so, uh, really proud of that. Working with Michael was was a breeze. And so, um, just wanted to make sure we we relay that information as we continue to, uh, just offer that to a lot of our students. We were surprised that over half of them didn't know how to swim when they were up to, uh, the sixth grade. And so, just be able to offer that, um, was, uh, was significant. And I just want to thank GHA again, and um, Michael Dean over at the uh, at the wellness center >> and thank my brother Nye Newton right here for bringing
006that one to fruition for us, my man. I don't care what they say about you. >> Thank you. >> All right. >> They say a lot. They say a lot. >> They say a lot. >> Thank you. >> You're on. >> Thank you. >> I wanted to give a huge shout out to Mr. Britt and the confer action initiative they put um together with Porsche Seals, um Stephanie Boyon, uh Dr. Martin Knox, Teresa Garza, and the whole team that's doing a really huge job with the McKenna Vento and the caring for kids. They did an amazing job the other day. Um it was amazing event that they put together. I was just proud to be a part of it and see it come to fruition with all the the key members they had in the
007community. So I wanted to say thank you guys for inviting me out to that and I thank you guys for um the traction that you've gotten family that you've helped in the Raytown community. Um and that's what I did and I really want to say thank you guys for that. >> That concludes the report of the board members. Next we have a report of superintendent. >> Thank you. Thank you uh Chairman Burton, Vice Chairman Newton, members of the Raytown Quality School District board and members of our community. While we are preparing to open school uh and many of you are looking at me like we are we are while we just wound down school, we are now getting ready to start it back up. And so one of the items under the report of the
008superintendent is item 8.8 8.1 which is the student handbook. There are some adjustments and modifications that have been made in our student code of conduct uh and in our handbook to make sure that we are operating in a safe and orderly manner while we are trying to educate our children. So you have access to that information. And item 8.2 is an update from our one and only amazing Cheryl Riker um who will come forward with Dr. Grryer. Um, for item 8.2. >> Good evening board. Dr. Martin Knox. Uh, we have the privilege of having Dr. Ryer with us uh this evening to share some of the highlights from the 24-25 school year at Hearnden Career Center. It was another great year at H. Hearnden uh under the leadership of Dr. Riker. a lot of exciting
009things happening. So, I don't want to steal any of her thunder, but we're happy to have her here tonight to give us a an overview of the school year. Dr. Riker, >> thank you. >> I didn't want you to hear me. >> Thank you um board. Dr. Martin Knox, thank you for the time. So I just wanted to share a little bit about um her new career center and making sure that it's important especially in the time uh right now of you know a few educational challenges and funding that you hear in the news and things like that. So in addition to an update really of where we've been in student enrollment and um and things like that. I also want to share a little bit about the model for career and technical education in
010the state of Missouri and how it's outlined. And so to start though, I really want to talk about the uh vision and mission for Hearnen Career Center. And really when you look at the vision and mission, it's really to foster student learning um in career ready in demand skills. Um and we're not just talking about workforce for today, but workforce for future needs. And so one of the things that really is at the forefront of what we're doing is how do we prepare kids for what's coming? Um, and so whether that be that they're going to walk out the door of Hearnden with their certification and they're going to go straight to work or are they going to Thank you. um are they going to um continue their career learning through earning a degree um
011potentially in nursing or in some other area um based off of the learning that they have learned throughout their K12 experience as well as their experience at Hearnden. Um, and so the way that we do that is trying to integrate industry as much as possible. Um, so that students really get a feel for what that industry looks like and feels like. Um, and then hopefully at the end they have experience some sort of MBA which would be a certification. It might look like some sort of entrepreneurial experience. It might be um really exploration and clear career path clarification. Um, for example, we have students that enroll in animal health and they all want to be a vet. The reality of it is there's very few vet schools in in the United States and it's very
012difficult to become a vet, but there are a plethora of careers in Kansas City is actually considered a hub for animal health um because of the research component. Um, if you've ever heard of MRI Global, that's a huge part of what they do. Bear um has uh some locations here in Kansas City and part of what they do is the research component. And so our students have the opportunity um to continue on to pursue being a vet if they want, but also could do many careers in the animal health industry. And so our goal um in addition to certifications and internships and things like that is to also make sure that students um know what the career opportunities are so that they can take the best path forward and not waste money by going to
013school in an area they really don't want to pursue. um or finding the right school that's going to have a specific major that they want or how can they get an internship that turns into a job that turns into a career where they provide training and advancement for them. So in the state of Missouri there are 444 comprehensive high schools. They have designated 57 career centers. And so um not every school district has a career center and we are lucky enough that Raytown um where I'm a proud graduate of has a a career center Hernand that has been around for more than 50 years now. Um and so there's 57 the districts are assigned by DESIE. So our six districts that are assigned to us at H. Hearnden are um center Grand View, Hickman Mills,
014Independence Lee Summit and Retown. Those are the six districts that are assigned. A district could choose to try to go to a different career center. Um but in the metro area, that doesn't really happen. It does happen in some of the more rural areas based off of road improvements where they might be able to get to a career center faster. Um you can see the breakdown of the rest of the the ways that CT is delivered to students. Um but uh Harden is lucky enough, like I said, to be one of the 57. The reason that there's 57 is because um some of the highly specialized training that we do requires very specific equipment. Um and we rely a lot on industry support. Um, and so the model is that instead of having every district
015trying to replicate the exact same thing, districts send into one centralized location, a career center that then allows students to pursue careers that maybe um, individual high schools don't have enough student interest and they don't have the ability to hire enough teachers in that specific industry to be able to teach that content area. So it allows for those districts to come together to have enough student enrollment to have the right equipment to have the right industry support in order for students to be successful in that particular area. Um and that is divided up into different content areas. So we have a business marketing and information technology um family and consumer sciences. So back in the a long time ago that was homec um it has advanced quite a bit. Um and then there is uh
016the health sciences, marketing, skilled technical sciences, and then technology and engineering. That's how it's broken up nationally as well as in the state of Missouri. Um we have in the Raytown school district all of those areas. Um the only one that's not at Hearnden is um the technology and engineering which is the PLTW path um that we have at our comprehensive high schools as well as students have the option to do the capstones at Summit Technology Academy. Um which although it does provide career training, it is not a career center because it's not one of the 57. Um H. Hearnden currently has 18 programs. Um and so I will say this is the start of my 13th year at H. turned in and when I started we had 11 programs and 12 teachers. So um
017we have had the support to continue to grow to provide new career opportunities for students which we are incredibly grateful for um because it's needed. So how are those 57 career centers funded? because I think that that's an important component um in this and that's really we have specialized funds that are set apart from the state department and legislated um and so we have uh Perkins which is a federal grant um so far everything has been moving smoothly with Perkins so we'll knock on some wood for that um then we have BAS and performance funding which is Missouri's funding model and that is based off of having correctly certified teachers um the student enrollment that we have the student completion. So students that started the program that finished the program, their placement 180 days after
018graduation, if they are in a positive placement related to that career area or um whether that be in the military or that be in a job placement or if that is in a continuing education, whether that be a university or college or training program. Um there's the use of enhancement grants which last month you guys approved the um or a couple months ago you approved our enhancement grant um where the state everything that we typically apply for um is usually a 75 reimbur 75% reimbursement from the state and then our district only pays 25% um at the onset. There's other specialized grants that we apply for. Oftentimes, I will say that there's very specific limitations of what we can use the money for and how fast we have to spend it down. Um, Mr. Husted
019and myself work closely on a lot of the grants because of the timing um in order to make things happen. Um, and so the gap between what it costs to run Hearnden and what we bring in in grants results in tuition. And so, um, you also have seen the tuition plan and the tuition statements. Um, and so, and that's based off of the actual number of students that are enrolled from each of our sending districts. And so, um, you can see like our map here of the school districts that asend attend H. Hearnden. We have a large geographic space that we are covering when you consider how large some of our districts are that sent to us um, spacewise. Um and then also just enrollment wise. And so when you look at the districts that
020are designated for H Hearnden, you can see where we're at in um our enrollment in FY24. And so um or I'm sorry, FY25 for Hearnden. I use the FY24 size of district to give some perspective in terms of um how big is each district that's sending students to H. Hearnden. And so I have that listed there in that first column. next to the district name where it says enrollment um that is their K12 enrollment because that's what I pulled off of the Desi website. Um and so when you tally all of that enrollment up, what percentage of population does that district have within our six districts that send her Hearnden? And so if we look at Raytown, you see that um our enrollment is 15.7% of the enrollment of all of the um the six
021districts that send to us. When you look at the FY25 Hearnden enrollment, you will see that actually we had Raytown had 29.9% of the enrollment at H. Hearnden last year. So we had 181 Raytown and Raytown South students enrolled at H. Hearnden last school year of the 606. I wanted to share this as well um because I think at times people might make an assumption um about how hard it is to get into Hearnen or what it takes to get into Hearnen and that kids maybe don't get into Hernand who apply. And so whenever you look at at this screen um for priority applications and I hid the other districts um just so that that way we're really I wanted to focus on Raytown but I wanted you to have some comparison of what the
022other districts look like. Um for FY24 in Raytown we had 238 students that hit the priority deadline application. And so, um, that means that that's the first wave of applications that we look at. Um, and so total by the time we finished applications into the school year, we had 298 applications. So, we had 60 late apps. Um, part of the process is the sending schools endorsed students. Um, and so we had 262 endorsed from Raytown Raytown South. We had 57 of those students that did not meet the prerequisites, which may be um for example in nursing, they need to have a C or better in biology or chemistry because the content is really hard if they don't have a good grasp of biology or chemistry because of what they're going to do in class. Um
023it also looks at are they on track for graduation? Um do they hit that 90% attendance um that we're all striving towards. Um, and so that's an example of some of the prerequisites that we have. And then out of that, Raytown had 197 students accepted. And then we had 34 drops for a variety of reasons, which could have been a student moved. It could have been a student was accepted, didn't pass something they needed to pass their junior year or their sophomore year, which meant that then they needed to stay back at their home high school in order to take that class. So, just to share a little bit about how we recruit, um, we work really hard at trying to make sure we get the message out to students about what we are and
024what we offer and how it's changed. Um, we get a lot of repeaters where we have parents who have come to H. Hearnden in their past and then they're excited because their student is choosing to come to H. Hearnden. Um, but we also know that there is a wide part of the population that maybe hasn't heard about H. turned in or the opportunities that students have while they are enrolled in the Raytown School District as well as those other five districts. And so we work really hard to try to make sure that we're we're available to do presentations or assemblies. We set in cafeteria um spaces. We go to open houses. Um we have ambassadors that are student ambassadors that then their schools when they're talking about career opportunities and and enrollment opportunities, then they
025help present at their schools. Um and then our website and social media trying to make sure that others know what we do at Hearnden. Then we try to do as much parent engagement as possible. And you know at the junior senior level that's a little bit hard sometimes, but um doing a newsletter every week and and lots of other things just to try to make sure that we can engage parents as much as possible. whether that be inviting them on an advisory committee to serve in that role or um help us promote um if they have opportunities at their job for our students um or if they want to come guest speak, we try to incorporate that way. And then truly a huge part of what we do at Hearnen is that industry engagement um
026because we have to stay current with what is available in industry because otherwise we're not doing the best for our students. Um and so it really is about what's best for kids. And so trying to incorporate the changes in industry so that we can incorporate that in our programs. Um to give you an example in our advisory committee several years ago. Um one of the things that was present in the industrial area which would be welding construction and HVAC was the fact that they were not using very many printed blueprints anymore. They were doing a lot of digital blueprints and we didn't have the right tools at that time to teach that to our students. And so we worked through the enhancement grant to then get the right equipment so that we could do digital
027do blueprint reading because that gives our students a step up on other people whenever they enter the industry. Um just quickly um in terms of the application process, we open that in November of every year and then we set a priority deadline in February. Um, and then we handcore all of the applications based off of different sets of criteria. And um, that includes GPA, attendance, and meeting the prerequisites, but half of the rubric points actually come from student interest questions. There's five questions we ask them. Why are they interested? Is the GPA a true reflection of their academic ability? Is the attendance percentage a true reflection of their ability to come to school? Um, we learn lots of things about students in that process. Like if they, let's say, had a surgery their freshman year
028and it kept them out six weeks and that's why their attendance rate is low and then we just look at the sophomore year and it's great, then that allows us to try to do um, a better job of making sure it's a great fit for students. Um, and so we accept students based off of their score um, and then however many spots we have available in the program. Um, and so we try to work really hard to find the best fit for every single kid. Um, and then how do we pick? I said we're at 18 programs now. So, how do we decide what 18 programs we're going to have? It's really based off of industry need. Several years ago, we had an early childhood program. Um, and the industry data was telling us that
029although our students in that program had an opportunity to earn the CDA, that was not what industry was needing for their certification at that time. So, what we did is we collapsed that program for a year. Um, and then he rebranded that through our education exploration program because a lot of places were wanting early childhood certification teaching credentials. And so we could do that in addition to the other teaching credentials that we were addressing in um in in that program and it had a different set of competencies that students were trying to earn. Um, and so we have to make sure that we're staying relevant to what is going to be actually useful in the industry. Um we have to look at the opportunities for students. Um what opportunities are going to be available? What
030additional training are they going to need? How can we um put the certifications together? How can we get industry support? Do we have the ability to um offer client connected projects or do we have the ability to do internships? We look at all of those opportunities to decide if that's a great program for a student. And then feasibility. Um, hiring teachers is really hard. Um, whether that be a traditional math teacher or um, you know, if it's a welding teacher or autoc collision teacher or something like that. Um, you're asking somebody in most of the cases for the Hearnen programs to leave an industry job and come back into a classroom that looks nothing like it did whenever they were last a student. And so um it's a really difficult jump for a lot of
031people to come from industry to come um teach uh students and stay relevant in the industry area. Um so that's one of the major factors and then what is the cost to run the program? We do have to keep that in mind. And then um can we get approval through DESIE um which is sometimes a bumping point of not moving as fast as we need to move with industry. Um and then also just in terms of do we have the space to fit a program and things like that. And so um H Hearnden is one of the career opportunities that students have while they're enrolled in the Raytown school district. Um I'm pretty proud of what we have to offer at Hearnen. Um and love the support that we have the community. Students do other
032have other options as well which ties into where we're going with the academy model um because that we have the option for her and career center. Students can go to Summit Tech which is part of the Lee Summit School District. The new early college program is an option for students. Um certificate based programs we started the first one with the warehouse jumpst start this last year where students could get the forklift certification. Um and then phabbotomy and computer support specialists are coming as options for students. And then really going forward, part of the work that we will do within the academy work is figuring out what capston's Ray High and South High are going to have so that students have the opportunities to really pursue their career interests and be prepared when they graduate Rayton
033or Rayton South High School to the best of their ability based off of a great setup in terms of classes that they take their freshman through senior year so that they are prepared for whatever it is that they want to pursue. So with that, I'm be able to answer any questions that you have. >> Mr. President, first of all, thank you for that. I really appreciate it. I'm interested in the technology part because uh just a lot of what we're seeing with the way the job market is going um with AI and technology. So I'm just curious as to and I know you already have probably thought about this as what we are going to be able to offer for our student population when it comes to you know AI in in the workforce which
034is having going to have a big shift within the next 10 years kind of what are you guys um looking at and then second part of that question is do we have any 3D printers at the at the uh at Hearnden so >> first part of the question be happy to answer um the reality of the the techn technology pieces is tough. It's really tough to get student interest and parent endorsements which honestly it takes both of those things. So when we started South Encaps um eight years ago now we had a technology solutions program and really what that program was meant to be was exploratory because students don't necessarily know if they want to be a computer programmer or if they want to be a network specialist or if they want to do website
035design. And so we introduced that class, had a great working relationship with our own technology department to try to create that interest and really uh provide opportunities for students. The numbers were really low. Um and I think one of the fear points is when you talk about technology is the change is constantly occurring. And so as another component of that, you hear in the news like Cerner laid off thousands of employees. And so parents are saying, why do I want to prepare a kid for something that then but what they don't understand is oftentimes in the technology world the job shift. So if you're not willing to shift to the job, if that job no longer needs to be there, then you have to shift away from that. So in that space, Summit Tech does
036have quite a few tech programs. And so we have worked really hard because students do have an opportunity from all of the same districts to go to either place to not duplicate programs because they're just expensive to offer and they're hard to find a qualified teacher who's going to actually do a really great job with kids. And so um we haven't come back to that because um it we just didn't have the numbers to continue the enrollment to justify the program. Um my hope is because the workforce data and things like that is through the academy model that we can create capstones that students can explore and then figure out, oh my gosh, this is a really good opportunity and then they could have a capstone at the one of the two high schools, both
037the high schools as well as Summit Tech that's best based fit on um best for their needs based off their educational futures. And then in terms of 3D printers, we actually have a 3D printer um I believe at both high schools as well as Hernand. >> So yeah, we do have those. >> Mr. especially. >> Um I guess my question would be I know like in Ray Peek they have the construction heavy operators union working with them or are we able to send our kids out there to work on those kind of construction projects or do some with those heavy operators or would our kids ever be able to work in that capacity to get on those um I guess skid loaders and things like that? >> So we have our own carpentry construction program
038at Hernand. We have quite a bit of the same equipment that they're utilizing down there. One of the things as we constantly are trying to evolve is that we are looking at there's some age restrictions. So that's part of it like you have to be 18 in a lot of cases to do that. But one of we constantly have to look at what's best for students to prepare them. And so one of the things that we have um contemplated going forward is potentially doing a secondyear program for a student who's completed an industrial or transportation program to have some baseline information to then potentially in that second year do an equipment operator certifications um and then the second semester try to get them out into internship. We're still going through that process of working through
039the our industry, our advisory committees and trying to figure out what the best plan is to make sure that we're um helping kids be best prepared for whatever it is that they're going to do. So, um while we wouldn't send to Ray Peek, we are trying to create what is best based off of industry standards. >> Mr. prison. So 6006 was our enrollment last year. What was our capacity? I know the programs fluctuate. >> I don't have that number right in front of me. I can get it and send it if you would like that. >> Well, we're pretty close to being we're pretty close. So the programs um that we did were not full in last year. Um were education exploration um we were not full in um business innovation and creation um and
040advertising and graphic design but everything else we started the year full. Um this upcoming year we are slated to start full in everything except education exploration at this point in time. >> So >> um we're we're close to capacity. We have looked at um like nursing is a huge program. We need a lot of CNAs in industry. Um it is really hard working with the different state entities. Um, and so in order to be a clinical supervisor, which is what you need to get a 100 clinical hours for your CNA, you have to have worked in long-term care. So even someone who is very highly skilled as an RN or um a nurse pract um pra, you know, practical nurse or something like that. It's if they have not had a year of long-term care
041experience, they cannot be a clinical supervisor. And so there's many career centers that actually have gone to not offering the CNA, but it is such a high need. And we have several students that graduated in 24 that were making 25 plus dollars an hour of CNA last year and getting tuition reimbursement while going to nursing school. Um, and so like that goes back to it's just hard to find instructors or otherwise we would figure out how to expand that program. So related to that, so as a percentage of total enrollment, we have the most students there, which makes the most sense. Not not I'm talking about percentage of our actual student enrollment, not Herman. >> Le has a a little bit more, but >> I'm talking about of our total enrollment. We have 2%, they
042have 1%. Which makes sense because it's it's our prime rule. So what incentives do the other districts have to send their kids to Hearnden? >> The students. >> Not not that we would want them to because it would, you know, take away from our students >> if we're at capacity, but seems like some of the districts probably could send more students than they are. >> Which is why many years ago the model in Missouri was that you did slot allocations. And I remember sitting in the counselor office as a teacher and then as an assistant principal at Raytown High and having a counselor say, "We have three diesel spots we need to fill at Earnen." So they were literally going through kids schedules be like, "Well, I think this student could take diesel." But it
043really wasn't about student interests. And so now we don't use that slot allocation. We do it based off of application and students actually picking the program that they want to go into. Um and so really that drives how many students that we have um and where they come from um each individual year. the incentive for them is a lot of them that's where they're getting a lot of their um career and teched MSIP points is because the uh CTE enrollment the IRC's that are earned the industry recognized credentials which would be the CNA or the welding AWS welding um and so they're getting the credit there and then the followup uh helps their percentage um of having we get good followup like students are placed well after graduation and then the other part of that
044is their graduation rate is typically higher if you're a CTE student than if you're a non-CTE student. >> Thank you, >> Mr. President. Um my question is if we have um two we have had 238 students to apply comparatively to our student population. Is that number relatively low? And how does it compare to um other other districts? So we only take students in the junior and senior year. And so, um, when you look at junior and senior enrollments from Ray High and Raytown South, I think that it's around a thousand. Um, it might be,00 or so. So, we have approximately 25% of students that are applying to come to Hearnen. Um and so that's actually when you compare other career centers um and their home district in some cases um like if you look at
045Cass Career that's Harrisonville um but the other districts that send to them might have some graduation classes of 40 or lower and so they're going to have a higher number of students um just because of they have really small schools to send to them. We are kind of an anomaly in the state in the fact that we have very large school districts that send to that are part of our career center consortium. Um, and that's just based off of the geographics of where we're at. Um, part of the preventors of students coming consists of some students don't want to leave their home high school, which is why it's important in the academy model that we help create capstones that students want to do at their home high school. Um, and then other times it just
046doesn't work in their schedule. If they are a student that loves band and also loves choir and that's in two different parts of the day, they can't actually come to Hearnen or they have they just have to pick. And so, um, I don't think 25% is too far off what it is many other career centers. Um, I would love to see it higher, don't get me wrong, but I think that that's part of the need for making sure that students understand that freshman and sophomore year are really important and helping them form that idea of what they want to do for a career down the road so that they take the right classes which could include Hearnen. >> Thank you. >> Just want to say uh Dr. You do a great job. I have multiple
047kids go through these programs. They actually really enjoyed it like actually getting hands on while learning. Um I've had kids cosmetology and they loved it. I really do think this is like one of the best things that we can offer as a school district and I just want to make sure that we continue to support this because this is definitely one of the best especially when we're trying to prepare our students for the world having that certification having everything all skills that we need to do all those different so I do and we see five years from now especially things like see where we can keep providing. So, you're great. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. And it's a it's a team as you you know be successful in everything. It's a it's a team,
048but um ultimately at the end of the day, it's all about what's best for kids. And so, that's what we always are trying to strive for is try to provide the best opportunities for kids. >> Thank you. The next item is 8.3. >> You said we finished with 75% enrollment. Is that a from your um understanding is that a good number to finish? I know we started with 3500. Uh but just to finish with 75% I would think that's really good because summer is a tough time to do anything productive, right? Uh so can you kind of just give us you know your your opinion about that about >> Yeah, we're encouraged that we had 75% of our kids, you know, persist to finish uh the summer school program. I think we try to be
049strategic um and mix in, you know, the academics and the fun. Uh we try to balance it through the program so that maybe some of the experiences the kids are really looking forward to, they're going to see maybe towards the end of the program. Um but I would say that yes for a typical summer school program uh we ended the year higher than normal with students who persisted to uh start and finish the the month of June with us. >> And how significant is that credit recovery part for our high school students uh as you see it? Yeah, it's critical uh to have the opportunity for kids to come and earn uh up to a full credit based on, you know, where their transcript is, courses we offer to get them back on track to
050graduate or to take care of uh courses that might limit their schedule during the regular school year. So, for example, we have students that take health or personal finance. um courses that maybe are tougher for them to schedule during the regular school year, they can knock out in the summertime. Um so yeah, credit advancement and credit recovery are big for our kids. Um and we also actually even piloted a new uh virtual vendor this summer, proximity. We were very encouraged about what we saw there and um should we have the need to have that type of uh classroom experience just based on how our staffing ends up shaking out with the hiring season. Um that was a great litmus test for that new vendor. So yeah, it was I would say overall a very successful
051summer school and and that credit recovery is really important for kids to help get them back on track. >> You mentioned a credit advancement. I'm sorry I asked so many questions, but I love this part. Uh because the credit advancement part, as we as we think about it, do we have a lot of kids who take advantage of that? >> We do. >> Okay. >> Yeah. PE, personal finance, health, um these are semester classes that it's tough to connect them with another semester class in a schedule. So those standalones, um especially for our students that are involved in the arts, >> right? >> So Dr. Riker mentioned earlier, you know, choir and band. We want kids to have the opportunity to take everything that they want. And so sometimes the ability to knock out a
052semester PE class or a personal finance or a semester health and wellness opens their schedules up to take more of the things they're they're really interested in and it allows them to take care of those graduation requirements through uh credit advancement. >> Thank you. Let me turn that on. I just wanted to say uh Dr. Grryer, I'm looking at the results from the uh surveys that came back. A whopping 86.8% is that at six, let me zoom that in. It's 86.8% were very satisfied with their summer school experience. And this is information coming from the parents. when you can get that type of a response from a parent with their child's experience in a summer program, you guys have done a great job. >> So, thank you. >> Yeah, our our team, our curriculum team
053did a great job of uh planning and of course our our staff, our teachers, our principles, the summer staff did a great job of executing the program. So, we're always looking to get better. Um the survey data that we shared is not all of what we received. Um, of course there's lots of information uh that uh we'll be able to share in more of a full report um later on, but these are just some of the highlights. But yes, we're encouraged by the feedback we got, but we also know we're going to make some adjustments to make next summer even better. So, thank you, >> Mr. President. In my opening comments, I made a mistake and I said Tyler Brick. I would be remiss not to say Dr. Lynn Tarver. So, I really apologize, Dr.
054Tarver. You're doing an excellent job and I >> Dr. Tarvin is phenomenal, isn't he? >> I'm so sorry, Dr. >> Wonderful. >> I know. He does so much. I mean, hey, >> he's right here, >> you know. I know. I say I'm sorry. I owe you big. So, I'm so sorry, Dr. Tar. I really appreciate everything that you do. Thank you. Thank you. >> No grace. I expect no grace. Thank you. and the Oh, that's not my part. >> Master plan. >> Yes, ma'am. So, uh very quickly, we had the opportunity to uh share our master plan with for next generation learning on June 30th. we presented this document. So, um I'm not going to go through the document tonight. It's there for your review. I did want to just highlight page 53 of the
055report up on the screen. Um to dovetail with the conversation we just had with Dr. Riker around H. Hearnden. We know that H. Hearnden provides an awesome opportunity for some of the students in Raytown. Uh we are inspired by the great things happening in H. Hearnden and we want to create that H. Hearnden like experience for every student in Raytown. And so that really is the inspiration behind where we're headed with careermies. Um again, where are we going this year? Freshman Academy is launching this year for the class of 2029. We're excited about what we're going to be able to provide for our freshman in that experience of being in an academy. The se freshman seminar class that they're going to take, the career exploration fair they're going to participate in. They're going to be
056on college campuses around Kansas City. really thinking about what the next three years of high school will look like after their freshman year. Uh when we get into second semester, that class of 29 will select an academy either health and human services or business innovation and industry for 2627 and then they'll begin pathway work inside one of those eight pathways. They'll take one class as a sophomore that'll move them towards a threecourse sequence that'll end with a capstone experience. That could be college credit. It could be uh an internship with a company. It could be a client connected project, something that's going to get them prepared for what life after high school is going to look like that they're passionate about. So again, we are uh very proud of the work so far the last
05720 months. Um, in the the pages following this, there's a list of of all the folks that were part of building this in the community, our staff. Uh, we feel we feel uh like we've heard from local business, we've heard from higher ed, we've heard from, you know, our our students and so we're excited about where we're headed next, but just wanted to share with you all that that presentation went well. Uh, Dr. Martin Knox did an excellent job of uh representing the the district as did many others that were part of that call. Um we got a lot of great feedback and we're excited to move forward. One thing I'll mention as a next step for us in November, we are excited to host Ford NextGen Learning in our district for a designation ceremony.
058So we're going to host that at Raytown South High School. More information to come on that, but just know that uh in November we'll formally be designated by Ford Next Generation Learning as a Career Academy district. So, um very proud of where we're at and excited for what our kids will experience starting in August. Okay. And then finally, we'll move to our strategic plan update. So, they're going to be uh putting up a presentation and I'm going to I'll begin. I'm going to invite my esteemed colleagues to join me. Um I'll introduce Dr. Calcara here in just a minute. Uh but we wanted to provide the board with a quick overview of our strategic plan. So, where have we come from this school year? What progress have we made and where are we headed into
0592526? um the strategic plan, if you've if you've read that document, it's there's a lot of words. It's a lot to digest. And so, one of the things that we really believe is important as a school district is that we continue to keep our board, our community updated on our progress. So, this first slide here is linked. So, at the top there where it says 2425 strategic plan project plan dashboard, you can click on that link. It takes you to our website. But essentially, we hosted over 40 strategic planning projects during the 24-25 school year that were championed by a variety of leaders in the district, all aligned to the goals of the district around student achievement or uh employee value or um you know fiscal responsibility. So we have a number of projects that
060we're very proud of and the the progress that we made. Um we also completed a strategic plan record. So basically we kept score of how do we do on those projects. Um as a district we met the success criteria of 84% of the projects that we uh champion this year. So over 40 strategic plan projects. Of those 40, 84% roughly of those success, every project had had goals and so we met the goal in 84% of those uh strategic planning projects. So very proud of that. Again, you can click on that plan record and you can go into a deep uh take a deeper dive in any of those projects. It lists if the goal was met or not. It also talks about if the the work has been completed and embedded, if it's moving
061forward to the next year. And then there's also some notes in there um to give uh the community a little bit more information about how we did last year. One thing that I just want to highlight very quickly is some intentional work we did last year to advance the leadership in the district. So, uh, school progress plans are the way that each individual building helps contribute to the district's strategic plan. Each school has five goals in their school progress plan. You guys get a monthly update on each of our school school progress plans. Um, so we are setting goals around the success of our students for on grade level standards. That those are the collaborative team wildly important goals. We're setting goals around attendance, around reducing uh infractions, around students ability to demonstrate social emotional
062learning and their sense of belonging. Those are the five areas of school progress plans. So, one of the projects that um I was part of leading last year was how do we develop our leaders to lead these plans? Well, um we participated in a variety of professional learning. You may remember uh EAB, educational advisory board. That's a partnership that we have. Um they they are a a vendor that works with school districts all over the country and and does a lot of research and professional development. We partnered with them last year to provide specific support for our leaders. We wanted to increase our leaders effectiveness and change management. So again, hard to read here, but it's it's linked at the top there if you want to take a deeper dive, but there was a whole
063year's worth of programming and planning and work with our building leaders. How we measured that was in the success of our school progress plan goals. And so this very busy slide um gives you an overview of every school. Um you'll notice on the lefth hand side each school is listed. Each school progress plan is linked um in this document. Myself, Dr. Moore and uh Doc Miss Basset and Dr. um Spreer, we meet every month uh in buildings to review progress with principles and their and their teams. Um we review their plans, we provide feedback, and then we keep score. And so you can see here um we had the goal was we wanted 80% of our schools hitting four out of five of their school progress plan goals. Last year we landed at 48%. So
064we've got room to grow. Um we've got support additional support on the way at our leadership retreat here in just a couple weeks. But this is the intentional work that uh my team is doing to try to build capacity for leaders and build the success of our buildings. I want to turn it over. Oh, I'll just I'll pause there. Any questions about any of this information before I uh hand it over to Dr. Calcara. Pretty awesome. >> Pretty awesome. Thank you. >> Um for any of the schools that did not meet any of their uh their goals, um what's like a reflection process and like u are they going to try to re um meet the same goals? Are they adjusting the goals? Um what's that process like for if they didn't meet one of
065their goals for the next year? Yeah. So that that process has has started with building principles. So part of our end of the year reflection with them during principal meetings was to get their input on, you know, where do they need more support? How might we how might we increase uh support? What do they need to help their buildings be more successful? We gathered that feedback and are using it to guide uh the professional learning that we're kicking off with all of our schools here in just a couple weeks at our leadership retreat. uh working specifically with Miss Basset with our secondary schools, Dr. Moore with our elementary schools, we shape plans that are very unique to each building based on their current reality. So, we have a very personalized approach with each of our
066buildings. We're in those buildings every month. We are talking with their teams. We are troubleshooting, providing support, figuring out how we can better support them. Um, so yes, those conversations are happening and and plans are underway to help support our buildings be more successful next year. >> Yep. >> All right. Good evening, Mr. President, Vice President, Dr. Martin Knox, community. Um, we talk about the board goals. The board goals provide a framework and a roadmap for the strategic work that we do. Um you hear a lot of talk especially in the last few years about our staffing shortage. Um we talk about attract recruit retain highquality staff and what does that mean? We're really talking about EVP which is employee value proposition. And this is employees saying well what is it what what's in it
067for me? Um and our job is to make our value proposition increase that the value of what we can give to employees. Uh the higher that is, the more likely we are to increase um retention, the more likely we are to attract top uh talent. Um strong EVP helps attract and boost engagement and improve retention. Uh so this has certainly been a priority of the strategic work that we've done in the HR department over the past three years. Um I think these are huge successes that we we should all be proud of and happy about. Um these are a combination of the work that we've done uh the work we've done with you. Um the things you've passed and approved over the few years we've we've been working on this. um you know, things like
068in reducing insurance premiums um by over $1,200 for each of our plans. That's significant. Those are dollars in our employees pockets. They're no longer having to spend. That hasn't happened in this district in over 15 years. Um that's a huge accomplishment. We talk about increasing um our health savings account for our high deductible plans. um when we save money because we have the clinic and we reduce um claims and we reduce premiums um we invest that money back into our employees that $750 in the um health savings account we increase to 1550 that's a significant dollars in our employees pockets to do things um to pay for medical bills um to purchase health related items um that's significant we talk about increasing EVP that's exactly We're talking about um 0% increase in employee premiums for
069the third consecutive year. There was a slight increase this year. Um we all decided that we would absorb that as a district and pass 0% of that on to our staff. That increases our EVP. What's in it for me? Um that's been significant. Um when we look at salaries, so staff is always asking what are you doing to attract and retain? These are the big rocks in the river the district can move and you're moving them. When we look at the salary increases over the past three years, we're at a 13% salary increase for our staff. Now, if you even look at the 200 plus employees that got STEP restoration that were here in 2009ish, um we're looking at even greater percentages, those 17 plus% for those folks. That is significant. Okay, I'm going to
070show you a chart here in a minute where even though our beginning salary for new teachers isn't in the top where we want it to be yet, we are outpacing many area districts with the percent of salary increases that we're giving for our folks. That's significant. We're going to catch them. We're going to surpass them. We talk about EVP, attract, recruit, retain. That's exact work that we need to be doing. Um increase leave buyout. So again, the value to be an employer here, employee here has increased. you voted um to increase that based on years of experience. So if you are a teacher and have 20 years of experience, you probably have a master's. If you're a master's plus 20 years of experience, you make about $72,000. So um last year that was a 25%
071buyout, we've increased that now to 50% of your daily rate of pay. That's significant. I'm hearing anecdotally after we pass this that folks are calculating if I stay in the district another five years, another seven years, what does it do to my leave buyout? And that's exactly why we did that. We want to make it worth it for them to stay here to increase the what's in it for me. These are things we should feel good about. When we look at yearly staff salary increases by district, I think this is significant because we get compared a lot to other districts. Um, but when we look again over the past three years at the percent of increase of staff salaries, we're outpacing many other districts. That is good for us. We will we're not where we
072want to be yet, but at this at this rate, um, we will keep making gains in that. We did move when we compare 12 other districts. We went from 10th last year to ninth this year. Um that's significant because every district adds money to their base, adds steps. Uh but this is significant and um evidence uh that we're moving forward in the direction that we need to be. If you look at um teachers to tenure and that is when we hire you, are you here for five years in your first day of your sixth year? basically are you here for six years? Um that number is what we need to be working on. But I'll tell you what what I like to see is the column at the left. You look at our resignations um
073of certificated staff on the left hand side. We've we've been seeing and that's been nationwide than statewide. Uh if you look at last year where we were with um 160 resignations compared to this year 85. So we talk about increasing our EVP and what it does to retention. Um, I hope that is where we start to see more of our numbers heading and and everything is indicating that it is. That was a that was a lot. Um, we're moving pretty fast. Questions about that. Um, voice is important. We'll continue. We've continued to build surveys to capture employee voice and lived experiences at all levels of employee life cycle from hire to retire. So, we want to know what our folks are saying all along the way at all of our stratifications. Um, we've added employer
074brand surveys. So, when our new teachers come in, what is their what do they feel about Raytown? What are their perceptions about Raytown? That's important because we want to capture that. And that's very positive, which means Marissa and her team, our other social media star over here, all the work that they're doing to um create stories, those are having positive impacts about employer brand. Uh, that's important. standardizing climate surveys for operations departments. And so we've done that this year. So our uh nutrition services, our transportation, our facilities operations. It's a huge half of our our total employees. Uh collecting a systematic voice for them is important. Uh by annual focus group surveys, updated exit surveys. New for this year will be a stay survey. So we've added all those surveys. This year we'll add the
075what is about Raytown that's keeping you here? That's important data that we haven't captured that we'll start to capture this year. So all of that work um gives us an insight into the lived experiences of our employees and the next piece of that is what are we going to do with this um to make it even better for our employees. Uh we talk about uh the other board goal of fiscal integrity and accountability. Um again the board goals provide us a framework and a roadmap for which we operate every single day and the strategic work that happens around accurate, timely, complete, transparent financial reporting. Um we get audited every year. Miss Vernon and her team um they are detail oriented. We are on five consecutive years of no findings for audits. So we talk about
076accurate, timely and transparent financial reporting. That's the indicator that we're doing that. Five years and no findings is significant. It's a job well done. We talk about maintenance of long range capital improvement plan. I got an email from our bond manager that said, "Hey, it is uncommon for uh to escape arbitrage, which is the interest we would have paid on our bonds if we didn't hit our spendowns over those years." Strategic planning. Um they said it's uncommon for that to happen. Jackie Vernon, Josh Huststead, you know, made that happen. We talk about maintenance of long range capital improvement plans. That is an indicator that that's happening. That was to the tune of about a million dollars we would have been on the hook for. Um, and so that work um is beneficial to the district
077and it saves us money. We talk about financial operations focused on policy compliance and efficiency. Um, I've been in the district for 19 plus years. have been in Raytown Ray team for most of those. Um what we've done with staff salaries in the past three years is way more significant and robust than anything we've ever done. Usually we're talking about a step. Um so for us to be in a place where we are significantly pushing more money to salaries and still being able to report a fund balance of over 30% which the board goal is 20 um is significant. You know what that means? It means that daily and yearly uh financial operations are focused on policy compliance and efficiency. And so not just being efficient, but also meeting the needs of our students, our
078community, and our staff. And so when you put those things together um with increased salary packages to to staff, the fact that we're reporting over 30% fund balance um means we are healthy and we're doing right by our folks, which means we're we're meeting this board goal. Um, so those are all things we should be proud of. Questions about that. I'm gonna >> proud of you guys. >> Very confident. >> The next is Marissa. [Music] >> Good evening, President Barton, Vice President Newton, Dr. Martin Knox. So, plan 25, I spoke with you a little bit about this um last year about active parent organizations at our school. The ultimate goal, of course, is to have active parent organizations at every school. This past year, we spent a lot of time finding out where we were
079and taking the temperature and figuring out where we want to be um in this upcoming year. So, we started out with the principal survey. We have about three active parent uh organizations in our school. Um and so we definitely want to get above 50% there. Um next we went to first I I will go back and say that um one of the biggest challenges principles told us they had was that getting was getting parents involved. You know they would send out emails but they just couldn't get the parents um to attend the meetings and get them involved. And so then we went to parents and we surveyed them and um how many of you would like to participate um in a PTA or a PTO and more than half of the parents it was over
08060% said that they wanted to participate in a PTA or a like organization. um some of the ops and and they said they would even be willing to pay a small fee of $15 or less. And that was about uh 43% that said they would be willing to do that. And um another large percent said maybe. And their bias obstacles or things that we can imagine it was time um the time of the meetings, transportation, and then understanding the goal of a PTA. Why are are you all trying to get me there? what are we meeting about? And so, um, we're diving into some of those obstacles and opportunities. And so, we'll be meeting with local and state PTA to get some of their ideas. And coming up over the next year, we'll be talking
081to again to uh principles and parents to get some additional input on ideas. And I think um when we finally get to an implementation plan, it it may be untraditional, non-traditional. So virtual meetings is something that parents identified that they would be willing to do. We'll also look at um unconventional times because not all of our parents work during the day um and are able to come at night. Some of them are available in the mornings or the early afternoon. So we'll be looking at all that. And next is our plan 24 which is around two-way communication. This plan is officially complete, but as you know, nothing is complete. We're always looking for ways to perfect and improve. So, two years ago, we uh implemented Remind two-way communication, and that is a tool that allows
082teachers to communicate with parents directly through text messages or through email. Um, it is a window into the classroom, which is that was what a concern we were answering from parents. They wanted to be able to see into the classroom. What are my kids doing on a daily basis? So, teachers are able to send information. They can send photos. They can send videos. This is a really popular um tool used by our elementary PK, our English language uh department and also our special ed department. They use it a lot. Um, so looking at ways to improve that focus will be familiar to you all because we moved to them last year to for our student information system. And so we are going to begin using them for our two-way communication tool beginning this school year.
083So it's great because it's all in it's a one-stop shop for everything. You can enroll on focus. You can communicate with your parents on focus. Again, you um teachers can communicate directly with parents, principles can communicate directly with parents. I, as the district communication person, if we have a snow day or whatever district communication needs to go out, I can send that out and I can do that through focus. Um we are hopeful that the translations in focus will be a little bit better and Dr. Turvin Tarvin was able to sit in on several um uh meetings with us with focus. So, we are hopeful for that as well. Any questions for me? >> I have one question. Doc, will Dr. Morton Knox Tik Tok work on it? >> Um, >> can we send her
084Tik Toks out? >> You can link all your social media on the app. So, I I don't know. >> Okay. Post school business. I know that's big. Yeah, that's big for the children. I know they're looking forward to that. It's actually improved that I think. >> Yes. >> Now, I may not want to do that because when a school or class sees that she's on a Tik Tok there, then the next place we go, they want to do a Tik Tok. And so, I'm going to spend my whole year doing Tik Tok. >> That's been Yes, that's been hugely important around the district. Thank you. >> Okay, I'm going to turn it back over to Dr. Gryer. Carl left his pen. >> So, uh, Carl and Marissa did a great job of highlighting some of
085the high priority work from from their departments. Uh, one of the things though as we look ahead to 2526 that we believed was missing with the ability to really tell our story uh, in a way that's more current and at your fingertips was to add a data dashboard of the of the school district. So something that we've been working on as a team for the last several months was to bring uh to the community a data dashboard that really captured uh what we believe are some of the highest priorities some of the measurable outcomes of the school district and not just from student achievement perspective although that's very important really looking at the entire organization. So, uh, what we wanted to share with you guys tonight is the launching of our district dashboard. Our technology
086department, Matt Verin and his his team have done a great job of working with us. Um, this is actually live on the district website and has several tabs at the bottom. Uh but first just an introduction of you know what are the board's goals when we talk about as we've colorcoded um what progress looks like from target to on track approaching in floor that language is the same kind of language that uh the state uses for their accreditation process. So we've aligned our categories to to because not all of the things we're measuring are part of accreditation but we're using that language. Um this first tab looks at you know just some general information of the district. So demographics both student and staff. Um as you move on the tabs at the bottom we'll start
087with student achievement very quickly. You'll see these are a variety of of data points that we are tracking. This first page here is specifically about our performance on high stakes tests. So ELA, math, science. As you as we scroll down, you'll see social studies, you'll also notice that we're tracking performance on NWA, which is our universal screening tool that we uh test three times a year, our students in reading and math. How are we doing there as it compares to um state and national averages? So, the percentage of our students that are on grade level. Uh we're also looking at the performance of our students that are English language learners. How that their performance compares to um state and national averages. You know, where do we rank in terms of of how how are we
088performing? Um and then this last tab is something new for this year. In order to provide our teachers more support, we have developed a more fine-tuned walkth through uh protocol where we're giving teachers feedback that's not part of their evaluation. But this feedback tool is really critical to helping our teachers get better and improve their craft. And so we're going to be tracking how many walkthroughs that our administrators are going to be participating in. Again, that's training that we're going to be providing for our principles here in just a couple weeks. Um the next tab, again, these are aligned to board goals. So the next 1.2 is our our college and career readiness goal as a district. So we're tracking things like graduation rate, student attendance, uh the percentage of our students who are earning
089uh credentials to make them college and career ready. How many of them are earning our graduates are earning advanced credit each year? How many of our students have uh plans for after high school through their ICAP, our graduate follow-up, and the percentage of of our graduates that are earning a market value asset. Um again, as you scroll down these pages, there are some descriptions of what each of these things mean. So, someone that jumps onto our website has no idea what a market value asset is, they can go to the key there at the bottom and it'll provide some explanation. the this was designed uh with our community in mind so they can get on and hopefully navigate this and utilize the the notes and guidelines to just help them interpret what this what this
090data means. Um, I'm not going to go through all the rest of this, but but what I will say is that each of these tabs are aligned to a district goal and have measurable outcomes that we are designing our strategic plan projects for 2526 to point directly towards. So the the success criteria of our our projects for are all about moving the needle with one of the at least one of these metrics. So as we come to you and provide updates, as we update this dashboard, community, board, staff, students, everybody will know what are our priorities as a district and how are we doing? Are we getting better? And obviously we want to see all of our categories in the green, but we know we're not there yet. And so this gives again a current
091reality, a very open and transparent measure of where we're at as a district. But it's a place where we think it's really important for the larger community to understand where we need to go, what does excellence look like, and how are we going to get there? And the how is through that strategic plan and those strategic plan projects. So um what's going to be next to bring to the board will be actually those projects that we have identified for 2526 and we are in the process right now of fine-tuning those projects and we'll be bringing that uh back to the board um for information in August. So I think that's our last slide. We'd be happy to entertain any questions. >> Sure. Just one question on dashboard. >> Um, have you had any community service
092since live right now? >> Yep. >> Have you anybody providing any feedback about the life dashboard information or anything like that? >> So, we worked with all of the departments in the in the organization. So for example, there's a section specifically on community outreach and Marissa and her team contributed with their institutional knowledge of what are the things that we're tracking specifically to community input. Have we gone to the community and said how are we doing with this dashboard? Does this make sense to you? Not yet. But I think certainly that can be something we do as we launch this is ask the community does this make sense to you? What doesn't make sense to you? How can we improve it? That certainly can be a process that we uh put in place as we
093get this off the ground. First time ever doing this. Um but we'll be interested to hear from our community to see if these this is answering some of the questions they might have about the progress we're making as a school district. >> Thank you, >> Mr. President. Everybody go ahead. >> Really excited about this. A lot of information we get is lagging. I know some of this But just to have it at your know where you are and so I like the fact that as well as priorities that you have as a district >> on this page can really show the bigger picture and because there's a lot more than trying to uh you know fulfill the goals for accreditation. There's a lot more involved in that and where we're head know the right direction.
094>> Yep. >> Yeah. And this is just a place to start. Of course, this will evolve. will be adding things as obviously in conversation with the board um with our community there there will be other metrics that we choose to add uh but this is a great place to start and this has really been a collective effort over the last several months by all aspects of the organization so I appreciate Dr. from Martin Knox as well as all of the rest of our departments in the district who've come together to make this happen.