Board of Education Meeting | May 12, 2025

001All right, let's start with the motion. I move that board approve the May 12th, 2025 agenda. Motion made and seconded. Motion passes. Next we have report of board members. Start at the end. No report. Uh good evening everybody. Uh I just wanted to report that I was uh blessed to attend the mayor's prayer prayer breakfast and it was wonderful. I think it was a wonderful event. uh I believe the uh the community uh came in and and really supported Sisters in Christ and others who helped to sponsor it. It was a wonderful event. And secondly, I got a chance to help facilitate Faith Bible Colleges uh high school and college graduation this weekend. And I mentioned that because six of our Raytown uh transitional living uh adult adults graduated with their high school diploma. And

002I know that may not sound like much, but for you to be an adult and not be ashamed to go back and get your education, all of them are slated now to go further in college. I think and they came from the Sisters in Christ transitional living program here in Raytown. I think that is noteworthy. U Mr. President, um my big event that I went to, I went to United Song. Um I just want to give a shout out to a all the bands, orchestras, and choir groups um from all the schools. Um it was fantastic. Um I also I saw a lot of people who had never been to Kaufman before um for allowing us to have that opportunity for families you know in this in this community to actually go downtown go to

003Kaufman and you know actually see um their child um on that stage. So it was an amazing event. Um, I thank all the um board on the band directors um the orchestra directors and I really want to make a special shout out to Alex Coloulster um for helping putting that all on. Um he also got nominated for he's quarter finalist uh for the Grammy for music educator. Um so he did an amazing job and I'm very proud of him. So that's that's my board of support. Thank you. Uh thank you. I wanted to uh just kind of share I got an opportunity uh been the president of REAp to uh participate with the real world learning um coordinator Kiana Dickerson over at Raytown High School. So I want to shout out Dr. Grryer. Uh phenomenal

004opportunity getting a chance for the senior English students to u have reap as their project. uh we got a chance to meet a few times in the past couple three months uh to for them to learn about reap for them to kind of strategize and uh help us understand where we can be better. One of their biggest things of course was social media. I said hey we have Facebook. He was like hey my mom and my grandma have Facebook. And I said you know what you're right cuz that's what I'm on. Uh but they were phenomenal. And then um last week spent um a day and a half at the school hearing their presentations. The uh students got dressed up. uh they had um handouts, pamphlets, presentations um in the library just phenomenal experience. So

005that that that real world learning I think uh is great for them. I got a chance to critique them on how they present you know just from how they talk the the pauses that they need to have and then their presentation skills and so it was it was phenomenal. Secondly um had a visit over at Reed from Life University last week. some students came over and we had a lot of items um and things for them to kind of go through and you can see the the smiles on their faces as they kind of lit up being able to kind of shop on their own and uh us learning about them as well and them learning about what we do at Ree. So, uh just a great experience, right? Good evening. I would like to

006say thank you to sisters in Christ for inviting me to the marriage prayer breakfast and being able to open up with the pledge of allegiance. I would also like to say hey congratulations and very very very great job to all the teachers for teachers week last week. I want to give you guys a round of applause. Say thank you for all you do. I would be remiss not to say uh happy belated Mother's Day to all of the mothers. So, thank you guys for all. I'm going to say I will really, really miss all of our seniors we'll be sending off this weekend. So, thank you guys for all you've done for all for us and me to be a board member. So, thank you guys very much. You all right? Yeah. So, um I

007got to attend the uh retirement dinner for our teachers that retired this year. Um, fortunately and unfortunately, uh, it was it was four of them, but the the thing was we had a good night and any chance you get to go to Cinder restaurant is a good thing because the food's really good. And so, um, I can't wait till that's a happening place on Friday nights. But uh but it was really good and uh we really appreciate the years of service that uh those teachers uh provided to us and uh we um are thankful that they have uh reproduced themselves prior to leaving and look forward to uh many more years of uh our teachers uh being dedicated to uh our district. Next we have uh the report of the superintendent, Dr. Mox. Good evening,

008Chairman Burton, Vice Chairman Newton, members of the Raytown Quality School District Board, and members of the Raytown Quality School District community. It's absolutely amazing that we are at the end of the school year and this is the point in time where we're closing a school year while also preparing for another. So, if you ask us, are we in a good place? The answer is no. Um because we are saying farewell to our seniors. Uh while we will miss them dearly, we can't wait to see what it is that they have to offer uh in their future endeavors. Um, this week I wrapped up my meetings with our superintendent ambassadors, which are our students who really represent our uh, student council and their leaders within our high schools. And I will tell you, if you've never

009popped in to hear the dialogue between myself and the students, it is an absolutely uh, wonderful experience. Uh, this one was a little different as they changed my vocabulary. Uh, and they're laughing because they know what I'm talking about. Um, but I just wanted to say while we have a junior and senior representative uh in the audience this evening, I just want to say thank you. Uh, thank you for being the voice of our students. Thank you for not holding anything back when you come and meet with me. Um, but I truly open that dialogue because we only get better because of you. And so, Chase, as the senior sitting here, I just want to thank you uh for all that you've done and continue to do. And I know you will make us proud

010moving forward. Um, and that goes for all of our seniors who are here this evening. One will be recognized in a moment, so I'm not going to steal some thunder. Um, but you'll see momentarily. I also want to recognize some individuals. Last week, we were able to celebrate uh several of our students who graduated through a program from UCM. Uh, and I'm saying this to not only recognize those students, but to market the partnership that we have with UCM. And so we had individual students who graduated with warehouse certification. And the question is what does that mean? It means that we have students who are now marketable. Their market value asset has increased. They can still go to college. They can still go into the military, but they have additional credentials that sets them apart

011from others. So I just want to personally recognize those students for their hard work and their efforts. They graduated with certification in OSHA 10. They graduated with AEDCPR certification and they are also warehouse forklift uh certified as well. Uh so they will immediately be able to go into the workforce. And one of the things we talk about with CTE and the opportunities we provide our children. This is not squeezing everybody into the same pipeline. Every child's not college ready, but we will ensure that they are college ready if it is their choice. We also want to make sure they are career ready if it is their choice. and also being military ready. And how about that? If we have students who are graduating already certified to go into workforce, they could possibly get a job

012with a company that has tuition reimbursement and so they can continue to work on their college degrees while they're also working, which will help support their families and their household. So just just a a work of art uh to watch our children. I actually went to watch them uh get certified with the forklift. I stayed behind the fence, but they were uh being trained on the I did uh and they knew it. They smiled, too. And I smiled and waved and gave them a thumbs up behind the fence. And so, um it's just amazing to watch our kids. And I just want to thank Dr. Grryer uh and our curriculum folks are making sure that we're able to push opportunities like that for our children. Uh because I don't think we need to keep our

013children locked in a box. uh let them explore and find what it is that they desire, something that will allow them all to be successful. And in the words of one of the parents, it probably wouldn't have happened for her son had it not been for this program. So, I just wanted to put that piece out there. I also want to congratulate our culinary students. Um our students went to a national competition uh last weekend uh in Baltimore and so I actually joined uh just to watch them in action. Uh, and if you've not seen it, it's on our social media. It's also on the national platform. And when I tell you our children are simply amazing. They are simply amazing. So, I just want to give a shout out to our students in the

014culinary program at H Hearnden and for Chef Mike. Um, I don't think many people understand the amount of work that goes behind preparing students on a day-to-day basis, much more less for a national competition. We also had an opportunity to celebrate our retirees. Uh, I think we have a few in the audience and I don't want to put anybody on the spot because sometimes people's eyes begin to sweat and I don't want to do that. But for those who are in the audience, if you're okay with me saying something and recognizing you, please stand. Okay, I guess not. I'm going to put them on the spot anyway. Mr. Hammond, would you stand, please? Just want to thank you, Mr. Hammond for the work that you do. I was actually listening to a podcast last evening

015uh and one of the things they said is the job of a high school principal is one of the most challenging and then someone chimed in and said no in education it's challenging. Um but I will say firsthand we appreciate you. We thank you for what you've done for the children at South High School and we're going to miss you. Uh so we wish you well in your next chapter of your life. Um but just thank you and for all of our retirees uh who will be saying farewell and understand Dr. Calcar is here. he still has your contact information. So, do not hesitate uh answering the phone when he calls to ask you to step in and sub. Um, you all are laughing. I'm serious. And so, at this point, I would like to

016move to item 8.7, which is our demographic study. And speaking of Dr. Cra, let me go to 8.6. Okay. Sure. Are you telling me what to do? No. Okay. Okay. So, the suggestion was for me to go to 8.6, six, which I will oblige. And then 8.7. Yes, ma'am. I forgot something. Um, the jazz band Race Out. Oh, man. They were good. They were good at the retirement dinner. Yeah. I started listening to all those songs on on my I started streaming them soon as I left. I was like, man, they were good. Anyway, Herby Hancock Mr. President, Vice President, members of the board, u our guests. Um last month, if you remember, uh Mr. Johnson came from CBiz to talk to us about our insurance uh renewal. We've had three years of no uh

017increase to our premiums. Um and part of that is because of the great preventative care that our employees receive at the at the care clinic. Um although we weren't at a 0% increase, it was 1.2, two, which is well below industry standard. Again, part of the reason and one of the things that I think Raytown does better than most school districts around us is take care of our folks through the care clinic. Uh we have our annual utilization review uh that we want to briefly go over with you. Um again, because this is such a critical component of one of the benefits that we're we're able to offer our employees, uh we appreciate our CBiz partners, and one of those is here with us tonight. Miss Aaron Een will take us through um our annual

018utilization report. Good evening. Thank you so much for your time. I get the fun part compared to what my colleague got. I get to talk about the Raytown Quality Care Clinic which as Dr. Kera mentioned is um in my book of business that I work with. It's something that I use as the the gold standard of what I hope my other uh clients will achieve. So um I want to spend a little bit of time and do you have a slides in front of you? Do I click? All right. So, I want to spend just a couple of minutes um kind of looking back to where we started. This was our ninth year in 2024 of the Raytown Quality Care Clinic. Um so, we're in our 10th year and we're excited to celebrate that uh

019coming up. So, it opened in August of 2015, and I'm not going to read every single thing to you, but I want to highlight in April of 2024, we had um the opportunity to add our new physical therapists and our new behavioral health counselor to staff. We had those services before, and this was a a gap that we had um and it takes time to find the right people, but we were really excited to have um Lena and Jared uh alongside Dr. Hearn and Amber and Nisha um in the clinic and Tara. So just some key utilization metrics that we look at on um we look at these on a monthly basis, we look at them on a a quarterly basis and then this is annual data uh just to look to see how we're

020trending, making sure that we're maintaining and growing um in an ongoing way. So we had over 3,800 total primary care visits um seen in the health center. Those were folks who saw our providers um our nurses uh for anything related to their own personal health. We had in uh behavioral health started in May after that gap. We had 184 behavioral health visits and 43 individual patients treated. um these numbers if you compare them to the health plan are higher and that's not because people um it may be in some in some degree because people are more comfortable but really accessing behavioral health accessing therapy and counseling in the community is really challenging. there are just a a huge shortage of therapists, a huge shortage of therapists willing to take um your medical plan. And so

021anybody's medical plan, not just yours. Um and so a offering this service, having it available to employees at either low or no cost is just an incredible um incredibly important thing and you guys do it well. Um wellness coaching visits, these are virtual care visits offered through your partner, Premise Health. Um we had 128 total visits, 33 unique individuals utilizing it. PT again started u midyear and we had uh uh 250 visits uh 38 unique personal health. That's continued to grow. We have 10 hours of PT a week. It's full consistently. So that's something we're keeping an eye on making sure we're serving population. Um over 500 occupational health or workrelated illness injury visits. That's includes 78 bus driver exams. They um are kicking off starting next uh next month or later this month. Um

022and so that'll start uh ramping up in the summertime. Started on the wrong slide. I apologize. We had a thousand total unique patients using the health center for personal health. That's 82% of your employees access this health center. That's an incredibly high number. Um 263 were new. So we add a combination of new new folks to the district. Um their families utilizing the health center. Uh of the breakdown that I showed before, there were 40 over 4,700 total kept visits all inclusive. 25% were accessed virtually. So folks could access them from their homes if they were too ill to come in or from their um home locations within the district so that they were they didn't have to leave the job if they uh didn't choose to. You we watch capacity utilization. I mentioned the

02310 hours of PT time. We we watch that to make sure that you have access your folks have access consistently when they need it. Um and at 87% that's telling us we're highly utilized. um we have a little bit more room and that allows that same day next day availability. Um so we want to be in that space. We don't want to be much above 90%. That tells us people are um having to wait a little too long for appointments. So an average of 4.3 personal health visits per patient. That's important because it tells us that our patients are utilizing this as their medical home. They're not just walking in and getting um a lab draw. They're not just walking in when they had a sore throat and it's their last their last choice. They're

024going in for their pre preventive care and they're coming back over and over again within a year. 100% of the top diagnoses were chronic conditions. We don't want people to have chronic conditions, but the reality is as we age in this in this world, we we get them. And so, um, what this tells us is that our providers in the in the clinic are treating those chronic conditions consistently. We had over 5,000 um 4,000 medications either dispensed on site, so when they walked out, they had a medication in hand or they were dispensed through the home delivery program. That's at no additional cost. That's included in the cost of the care. If they have a visit fee or if they have no visit fee, depending on their plan, it's it's there's no additional cost. people

025are accessing the medications they need to get better, to be there to serve your students, to serve your their your their staff, their co-workers. 4,400 labs were drawn and we referred 260 folks out into the community for care that they needed. So whether that's a cardiologist, whether that's a dermatologist, whether that's a mammogram, getting people out there and making sure they're following up. 82 were internal referrals. Those are referrals back into our physical therapy, our behavioral health or our um wellness coaching. The fun stuff is the satisfaction data. 100% of folks rated the services that they received as either excellent or good. The large majority excellent. Um this is on a post-visit survey that they're offered right after their their visit. they're asked to they would like to complete a survey and they have a

026couple of minutes on a tablet to do that. 100% indicated that their privacy and confidentiality was maintained. Obviously, healthcare is an incredibly private um thing. HIPPA laws uh guide the the provision of healthcare in this clinic, but the perception of that is equally as important. And 100% of people felt that their privacy was maintained. 100% of people who completed the survey indicated that they were willing to recommend it. 99.7 indicated that they were either likely or very likely to return. We look at every single one of the people that says no. A lot of times it's it's I'm retiring or I'm I'm leaving the area. Those are the types of folks that are often not willing or able to return. And 90 almost 8% waited less than 10 minutes to be seen. 92 almost 93%

027had no weight or weighed less than five minutes. If you've ever been to the doctor in the community, that weight time is far less than what you probably have experienced. The word cloud next to um the statistics is uh pulled from the free text comments that that uh your staff members and their families enter. And the words that are larger are um repeated more frequently. So you can see um Dr. Hearn, Dr. Nisha, you see service, care, love. Um, I can see the physical therapist named Jared in there. Professional, thorough, great. Um, that's that's the kind of care that your providers are are offering to the staff and their family members. And the last thing I just want to go through, and I'm not going to read every single one. I just chose a couple.

028Um, but you feel free to read every single one. Um, these are just a few of the comments that were pulled. We ask within the survey, we ask if people are willing to share this information. So, they've given permission to have this shared. It's obviously deidentified or they don't identify in the survey, but I'm just going to read a few to you. I'm so thankful that we have this research resource available to us. Having the clinic has made has been has been one of the best decisions Raytown C2 has made. I'm grateful that Dr. Hearn is my primary physician. The staff, Nisha D, and Dr. Hearn that's our MA and our primary physician really care about you and the health issues you may have. The customer service is amazing and it is enjoyable to go

029to the doctor when you know that the you that you will be treated like family. I cannot express how much these two professionals mean to me. Thank you for adding physical therapy. Jared is caring professional and listens to come up with a program that is doable but beneficial to his patients. We've heard stories about Jared where um people have avoided having surgery just by getting physical therapy which is a wonderful thing. It's less costly to your plan to Dr. Kcare's um note around how the health plan has been performing but surgery is tough and so avoiding it for the individuals is equally as important. And with that I will just open it up to any questions you might have. Any questions? I don't have any questions, but just thank you. I think this is one

030of the best things we have done as a board member not being able to participate in this service. It's kind of depressing. I feel that I have to go to my own my own docker. So, yeah. Well, there you go. That's the that's the bright side. So very good on one hand, depressing on the other. So thank you. Everybody doesn't have it. Well, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. So again, um, one of the things our district does that's better than districts around us and sets us apart and certainly is exceptional. Um, you know, that 1.2% increase, although very low, is still hundreds of thousands of dollars to the district. We did not with your help, Jackie Vernon's help, Dr. Martin Knox, we did not pass that along to

031our employees. We did absorb that uh because then so they have they have their fourth year of no cost premiums um to the district. So again, that was something that we're doing. Um you know, again, we look at uh the preventative care, which is able to help us keep our plans down. uh we were able to work with our our CBiz partners and Bluec Cross Blue Shield to uh offer uh narrow network plans. Those plans are cheaper for the district to buy. Um and so what we did is we turned around and invested that money back into our employees. Um and so now if you go on that narrow network plan and employee uh only um your HSA could is $1,555. Uh so we we doubled that. And so again, I think those those aren't

032things that people are walking around saying, I'm staying in Raytown because or I'm coming to Raytown because but what I'll tell you anecdotally, um they are good for us. They keep people here and they are recruiting points um that although you don't hear enough about um they are they are the right thing to do for our folks. So you should feel good about those things. Thank you. That's Rachel 8.7. Yes. Thank you, Dr. Marin Knox. Uh we'll move on to the demographic study. If you recall, u we put out an RF uh RFP um earlier in the school year for an updated uh demographic report. Um Mr. uh uh Craropper and his crew um have been moving forward in that work over the past several months. Um I want to thank Matt Berendon and his

033technology team because a lot of this was um uh data heavy and Matt and his team uh needed to dig into that data to give to uh Mr. Craropper. Uh but uh we've got him here tonight. Matt, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself uh to the board and uh and our public? Sure. Dr. Kakara, thank you very much. Uh, President Burton, members of the board, Dr. Martin Knox, and, uh, viewing audience, thank you for the opportunity to be here, uh, this evening. I am Matthew Craropper with Cropper GIS Consulting, and, uh, as as was as was stated, we have been working with the district over the past couple of months, and we are here to present our demographic study and utilization forecast findings. So, with that said, I'm going to go ahead

034and share my screen here. Okay. So, uh yeah, like I said, we've been doing some work with the district for the past couple months. We've done an enrollment forecast and then we also looked at that forecasted enrollment and how that relates to capacity and utilization of your schools throughout the district. This will help serve as a guide for the district and inform them over the next 10 years of how schools uh and enrollment is anticipated to change and as it relates to enrollment totals and also school utilization. I'm Matthew Craropper. I have uh a lot of experience doing this. We're we're in the 20th year. This is the 20th year of our business being open. Um and have a lot of extensive experience doing this kind of work across the country. This is our specialty.

035Um, in addition to doing work with K12 schools, we also do work with the US Department of Justice, the Office of Civil Rights, and I work with them on on federal desegregation cases that that that currently exist across in certain places in the United States. But, uh, coming come here as an outside objective third party, uh, using our experience to help, uh, give you our insight into the district. Zoran Stoyakovich is our demographer. He's not here, but he is the was uh is trained and educated and experienced in doing um enrollment forecasting work and he was the man behind the curtain doing the forecast that I am presenting to you this evening. So, like I said, we were hired by the district to do a demographic study uh and then look at that in relates

036as it relates to utilization. And these are the things that we're going to be sharing with you this evening. So the in doing a demographic study, we like to say that in order to really understand what's happening to enrollment in your district, you have to understand what's happening to the total population. Um people always fixate growth or or change in enrollment with new housing and things that are being built but the the age structure of the existing population in any school district is the primary factor and and and determinant of change over time. So before we do any kind of enrollment study or any kind of enrollment forecast, we actually do a full population study of your district and determine what the age structure is. now and how that age structure of your population is

037anticipated to change over the next 10 years or through the life cycle of our forecast. In doing that, we work with a lot of census data. We we look at fertility and we look at mortality and then we factor in migration, which is how many people are moving in, but then also how many people are moving out. And then finally, once we get a a good understanding of population, we start to look and study your enrollment data. um as we do our demographic study work, we are not fortune tellers. There's things that we can't uh control or or or can't um identify or always um call as it comes to our our work. So we we established a set of assumptions. These are assumptions that things are really more non-demographic that are economic factors, political

038um and also social factors and things like that that we assume are going to maintain the same levels that they have in in in prior years and things like that. Things such as home mortgage interest rate. We're assuming that your home mortgage interest rate and the mortgage rates in the United States or in your area too is going to stay below 8%. Uh right now it's it's up in the it's it's getting up in that close area. It's in I think it's in the sixes at the moment. But um if if that mortgage rate gets to above 8% what it does is the higher that interest rate goes, the slower u what it does is it slows down home sales activity. Fewer people are buying and selling homes. And so what happens is people aren't

039replacing older older families with younger families and people age more in place and that results in enrollment um dropping more than we had expected. If in mortgage rates go back down to 3% like we saw in 2020 2021ish era era. um if it goes down to the 3% it's going to accelerate home sales activity and you're going to see a lot more homes being bought and sold and that's going to actually accelerate or increase your enrollment above what we have anticipated. We're assuming that your mortgage rates can the mortgage rates can stay below 8% and that's that's the basis of this forecast. There's house other housing assumptions that we put in here uh with foreclosures assuming that they're going to maintain some similar levels. Nothing really surprising is going to happen in the area that's

040going to cause a seismic shift in people moving in or moving out or staying put. Um another thing is the the vouchers and uh charters and interd district transfers. I know that there are some things in the state legislature right now that that could potentially accelerate the number of students that would participate in vouchers and open enrollment. And if that happens, that could have an impact on our forecast. Um I take the state of Indiana as a perfect example. They opened up interdistuh transfers or voucher program where students are allowed to attend schools from outside of their district of their choice. and that has caused a real big change in the mobility of students attending and living uh in and out of school districts. So, that's something that we'll have to keep an eye on

041and see how that's going to how that's going to play out in in state of Missouri. Um, another one that we look at are another housing one is that we're assuming that you're going to have about 850 units bought and sold, single multif family units of uh every year over the next 10 years. And that's what we've seen over the last three to four years about what you've averaged in terms of new homes or homes being bought and sold. And that's new homes and also existing home sales. So these are the these are the assumptions that we we list. Uh uh other things that such as private, we're assuming that you're going to have the same rates of students attending private and homechools versus public and those types of things. We're assuming these are going

042to hold, but if they don't, it could have an impact on our forecast. Um, we usually try to be within plus or minus 2% uh at the district level through the life of our forecast is is our confidence interval as we as we work and evaluate our our work after we're done. We one of the things to do in our population study is we look at the age structure of of your district. And so this is what we call a population pyramid. So each of these bars you see on the screen are a total population in an age group. So the bottom group is 0 to four year olds. Um 5 to nine year olds is the next bar up and then it goes to 10 to 14, 15 to 19 all the way up

043to 85 plus. These help give us a better understanding of the age structure as of 2020 uh in your district. And so the 0 to four year olds are your preschoolers that were living in your district in 2020. The five to nine are uh elementary age kids, middle schoolers 10 to 14, high schoolers are 15 to 19. You get in the next group or uh family formation. The 20 to 34 is the the majority of of of parents are having children at some point in time throughout that in in that life in that site that span of ages. There are outliers. There are people who are having having kids at an older at an older ages and things like that. We're seeing a little more of that lately, but the majority of the population has

044children within 20 to 34 years um with the as as a majority. And then the next group between 30 and 54 are the householders with kids. These are the these are the the the houses that have uh parents with children living in them. And then you get up into the empty nesters and turnover uh households. These are kind of give us an indication of what's what's going to happen in your district with um within with your age if they were just to age in place. So this is your school district uh the Raytown C2 school district population pyramid for 2020. As you can see there are fewer the the 0 to four bar is smaller than the 5 to9 and the 5 to9 is smaller than the 10 to 14. So this tells us that

045if there were nobody moving in or nobody moving out of your district, everybody just aged in place, your enrollment would be dropping would drop. And that's because there's just not enough not enough preschoolers coming into elementary and then elementary kids coming in the middle. This there's fewer kids coming in to replace the population that's there now. Um but then we also look at people moving in from home sales and that kind of helps fill out the bars a little bit. Um, you could see that you have a fairly stable population pyramid. Sometimes you see they look a lot more strikingly different in terms of the shapes of the bars. And then we have your 2035 forecast. And this shows you could see that the 0 to4 and 5 to9 bars aren't as quite uh quite

046different. They're they're getting more close closely aligned together. And then you do and I think a lot of that is what we see. And so that as your age, your population ages, we're anticipating a lot more households are going to be turning over and younger families moving into your to your district to help offset some of the aging u of of the ele of the school age population. This is another good statistic that I that I like to share. This is 2020. These are the number of children ages under one year old up to 13 years old that lit that were counted in the census within each of your elementary attendance areas. Um, and this helps us kind of identify as we start to do our enrollment study work where there may be abnormally large

047age groups at any particular at any particular time. Like for example, if you look at little blue, you could see there were 77 11 year olds and 105 10 year olds in 2020. Sometimes people look at enrollment data that may look at little little blue's enrollment data at that particular time and and when that age that 105 group moves up and and and goes to the next school level, they see growth. So automatically people start to think, oh, we're growing. We're that's we grew by over 30 or about 30 students or something like that in in this one year. So we're going to continue to grow. But as you look at it, you could see that that's just an abnormally large age group. And the next year that's coming back in is 83. So this

048helps us identify where there may be bubbles and where we don't particularly uh lean on a large group as a trend, but identify it as maybe a one-year abnormality. Another thing to note on this that I like to point to is the district total. If you look at the the the far right, the older kids, you could see your numbers are 770, 785, and all like in the 700s, the last five years of age of age groups. As you start to look to the left, you start to see a lot of more of them are in the 600s. So what this tells us is you you you should have experienced enrollment decline and you probably will continue to see some enrollment decline not because of of people moving out or not because of the dis

049of of any kind of perception of the district. It's just uh it's just because of the age structure and fewer kids in school in school age population that you have to serve in your district. So looking at our population study, uh I won't spend too much time on this, but you could see that we have uh in 2020 your median age is about 39.8 and we have that going up to 42 at the end of our forecast. So your population is aging. Um the number of births are going down slightly as you as the population ages and the deaths are going up because of the aging population. And so and so that's off that that is offsetting there are larger number of deaths than there are births and that's that's causing some fluctuations in your

050population. The the net migration is what we're seeing is the the net of people moving in versus moving out. So you've had about 20 540 people net come into your district from 2020 to 25. We see that remain relatively stable around the same amount of people moving in and moving out over the next 10 years of our forecast actually going up slightly to 580 um uh net people total population moving in and this is just these are all people 0 to4 to 85 plus year olds in this in this table. So looking at the enrollment forecast, how does this relate to your enrollment forecast? Um you could see that your K5 enrollments 3367 as of this school year. We're anticipating that to it's a steady decline in your in your enrollment uh ending at about

05131.99 right about 3200 at the end of our forecast. A drop of about 168 kids. Um, your middle school is a little more a little more stable, but there are only three grade groups, but that one you're dropping from 1669 down to about 1571 at the end of this forecast in the 10-year forecast. And your high school population is going anticipated to go from 2386. Uh again, all three of these grade levels have a similar trend sort of a steady uh decline in enrollment going down to about 2166 at the end of the forecast. So total forecasted enrollment is 76.92. Right now we're anticipating that to be around 7,200 at the end by 203435. Um, and with that said, do uh would you like me to would you answer any questions about the demographic study

052before I get into talk about utilization at all? You can keep going. Okay, I will keep going. Um, so once we have our enrollment forecast, we have forecasted enrollment. We did this for every single one of your schools, the the population and enrollment study for every building for the next 10 years. And now we're looking at things as it relates to utilization. So we took your forecasted enrollment, looked at the capacity of your buildings and determined what is the capacity and utilization of your school now and how does that change over the next 10 years. These are your elementary schools. So you could see we do a color scale here that kind of gives us a visual of how you look in terms of utilization. I would say ideally you would like to be somewhere

053in the middle of this range. The sort of that light green to the light pink is sort of the sweet spot for utilization for four schools. um your total district utilization at elementary is 75% and that's forecasted to go down to 72% at the end of the forecast. So that's not that's not a a a very low utilization. That's actually a a can be can be an ideal utilization number for the total district as it relates to elementary schools. Some of your schools though do have there is a are some imbalances as you can see. Blue Ridge, Spring Valley, and West Ridge um are right now they're in that sort of the darker green but not the darkest. And they they they they go into the lower lower scale under 65% utilization through the rest

054of the forecast. And then you have Southwood and Fleet Ridge that are in the pink, but then getting up to the darker pink getting up um in the mid to high 90s. Southwood is the only school that we see uh getting at 100% at at the 10-year point of this forecast. So when I look at this, I don't see a critical need to address much. maybe some imbalances that could be um that could be addressed to try to s look and see are there adjacencies with the the the pink zones and the green zones to maybe make some adjustments to help balance things out and get them all in the light green or light pink. Um but nothing nothing critical in terms of over or underutilization in your elementary schools. Middle schools again are very

055similar. you're running 76% now going down to 71%. Um so utilization is fairly balanced in your middle schools. Um I would say that your middle schools are um running on the lower side what we typically see in the country in terms of total numbers of students served at middle school. So that's so your middle schools are pretty small in terms of total enrollment. But I don't see any major imbalances in your middle schools that necessitate a need to to try to shuffle or do any kind of boundary changes at uh uh as it res as it relates to the utilization. And then high schools also running 81% now going down to 73% at the life at the end of the forecast. Raytown South's a little bit higher than Raytown High, but nothing that that nothing

056that necessitates an immediate need to make to to make a change uh in as it relates to utilization in my from my perspective. So, I think utilization looks pretty good. you have some flexibility to make changes if the district wants to with uh with with facilities and things like that, but this can help serve as a guide for the district to see what what you're looking at now and how it's going to change over the next 10 years. And as you start looking through facility planning and as you work through that dayto-day and whenever the time comes, this is something you can refer to uh to help give you an idea on how it's how we anticipate um utilization changing over the next 10 years. So that's all I have. I do have the studies

057with me as well. I'd be happy to answer um any questions that you guys may have. Any questions? I I did have a question. Um on the utilization um also does it have when you did the um study of growth? Did you by chance do any like particular areas or zones or do you consider the zones of uh the boundaries of the elementary schools and where those growth may be? I was curious because uh we want to know what what makes Southwood and Fleet Ridge increase um in their utilization and maybe that could be something we could tap into. Um, yeah, I think that if I look at the, um, if I pull up the demographic study, take a look at Southwood and Fleetbridge here. So I think one of the things could be that

058we see um net migration in this in this the fleet ridge zone is uh is higher than what we see in other zones. And so I think that that could be one of the contributing factors that we see more people net moving into this area than moving out. Um some of your others other areas uh we do see a net migration uh on the negative side. So more people moving out, but um um and Southwood has the same and also you have a fairly stable population in these zones where um the population isn't is not aging um as much as some of the other as some of the other zones. Um look also looking at the Southwood pyramid you could see if you look at their population pyramid uh this is another thing in that

059and 2020 that 0 to4 age group was larger than the 5 to9 and then the 10 to 14 there's a smaller 5 to9 but then a bigger 10 to 14. So, I think that some of this also is that you have a lot more more preschool age children living in the Southwood zone that um that is going to continue to metriculate into your into your district. If we look at Fleet Ridge, Fleet Ridge does not have as much that you still have you have that normal deficit of 0 to four to 5 to 9. I think a lot of Fleet Ridge is more people moving in anticipated um to to to cause that growth to occur. So, I'll I'll also circle back with my demographer and ask him if he has any other insights in

060the South Southwood and Fleet Ridge that he can that anything that I may not have identified that can maybe help give you some insight on why we're seeing that um those areas in particular grow. Yeah, because there's a there's a few schools that's kind of they're kind of close to each other and their their utilization is um quite different. So, but anyway, like to see that they [Music] have Mr. President. So I just have a question for Dr. Martin Knox and for Dr. Cal Cara. So how are you guys gonna use this and what what's next for you guys as far as using this? Um excellent question. Um I think what we first got to start with is their prediction with regard to student enrollment. um you know obviously over the next 10 years predicting

061um 7,200 kiddos which is five or six hundred fewer than we are in this place right now. Is that a drastic of accelerated decline of students? Um no but is it is it consistent over the next 10 years? It is. And so what that clearly indicates to us is okay, how do we start matching um expenditures to make sure that we can serve uh our community and and our students. And so that's really what we're looking at is um again, how do we um match our expenditures and resources to serve those our students over the next 10 years? Does that mean that we have to um contract in some places? It does. Um that's nothing to be alarmed about. That is uh that this is what uh communities do. Um we appreciate Matt's work in

062helping us predict um how soon we need to do those things. Um but certainly already starting that work of um you know what does that mean for full-time employees? What does that mean for facilities usage? Part of what he did was a utilization study. Um, so do we need all of the facilities um that we have here in in Raytown over the next 10 years? Are there places where we can um contract um and repurpose um some of our uh some of our facilities? And the answer to that that is yes. And so we will use this uh this data to help drive those decisions. Um along with starting to engage the community and getting some feedback about u what this demographic report reveals some of our plans with regard to consolidating um some spaces

063um and then formulate a plan and our hope is to bring a plan to the board um in October, November of next year. And thank you for that question, Mr. Moore. And Dr. Kar hit uh all of the points that needed to be addressed at this particular point in time. I think one of the things that we have to do with the utilization study is continue to look at the data to see what it really means about our utilization of our facilities, our utilization of our staff, but more importantly, how we're servicing our children. And so, uh, when we take all of those factors into consideration, this just sets the stage for us to be able to have ongoing dialogue, including our staff, our students, and our community. Um, because we don't want to sit

064back and make a decision about something that needs to be done or should be done, and then realize midpoint it's an uhoh. So, we need to make sure that we're engaging the appropriate staff and bringing that information back and continuing to work with uh, Mr. proper uh in this work because this is very very intense work. Uh and what we're not going to do is come back tomorrow and say the numbers say this and this is what we're going to do. It's going to be very engaged in terms of our communication um and collaboration with again our staff um our students and our community uh in terms of identifying what our next steps are. Um because this is a very heavy lift right here. Um but we want to make sure that when we do

065it, we do it right, not just for this moment, but moving forward uh for Rtown quality schools. Mr. President, I did have a question. Um with the trends um that you've kind of forecasted, how do these compare to neighboring districts and how their impact will also indirectly impact us? Because we know we get a lot of transfers from neighboring districts. Uh so with the housing climate with um probably varying factors, how is that kind of put into this formula uh the trends and how it will impact us with our neighboring districts? Well, we um we did study sort of the metro area and the the you know the volatility and the the the housing market and the different factors within the sort of the metro area and areas around you. We didn't get into a

066too much of a of analysis of their actual enrollment um because our focus was on Raytown, but I would say that um that in in a district like yours that's sort of a an a suburb of of a metro area that that you're that you're tracking very similar to what we typically see. um nothing nothing strikingly uh high growth or high decline. But I think that what what's what's um what we're seeing here is that you have a lot of uh a lot of uh population that's that is aging and a lot of a lot of dynamics and things happening within the population within your district that's going to cause some change and um where people are are moving and where students are attending. And I think that the the policies that that are being

067considered in the state are something that we're going to have to continue to evaluate and see um h how they are how they are tracking. But in in relation to how how this district compares to not necessarily the Kansas City metro area, but other areas where we have similar dynamics in the country, you are uh you you are very very similar in terms of what what we what we typically see for a district of this of this type. Thank you, Mr. President. There's a another piece that also plays a factor and we had the conversation about it um with the Senate bill and House bill that are out there that uh will impact open enrollment. It will also have an impact on our enrollment. Um but we were looking at the forecast based on the

068here and the now not knowing what that legislation might bring for Raytown as well. So my question is related to that. So the study and how are we going to be dealing or using Mr. Craropper in the future especially if some of these assumptions change how will they be updating the report like because some of the assumptions are broad and one of them does say state of Missouri does not change any of its current laws and that's probably not likely over the next 10 years. So if the assumptions change and how will the report be updated? So the report right now is the here and the now is not inclusive of any of the laws and any of the adjustments, but should that occur, we will continue to evaluate how we're utilizing our facilities based

069on our enrollment and as well as the staffing that's needed. Uh but this is an ongoing dialogue and continuing to partner with Mr. Craropper. So he's not just presenting and he's going to go away. This is you're attached to us, Mr. Craropper. um moving forward and uh this is an ongoing dialogue with this work because as I said it's a heavy lift and this is not something we're just going to give the community and the board information and just walk away. It it's going to drive the narrative for us. And if I could add um we we do like to track our enrollment. Um it's a this is a science that we do this every day across the United States. So, we're very uh passionate about our process and our and our accuracy. So, over

070the next couple of years, even if we're not doing any contract work with the district, we will be looking at your enrollment, how it's how enrollments are coming in to see how our enrollment uh forecasts are tracking. And I would say that ideally plus or minus 2% at the district level over the life of this forecast is what we try to shoot for. Um but there's a lot of things that are happening in a country and things like that and uh at the federal level and even the state level that could create more volatility in this forecast. And so it's something that we just need to keep watching to see which of these assumptions if any start to become violated. And and if they do and we start to see our the trend or the

071magnitude of the trend start to change, then that's when we would recommend another look or an update to the forecast. I just wanted to add that this is a forecast and u we have an advantage. This is very exciting and so we have a challenge but uh Raytown sits in the middle of the universe and u we're laying locked but we we're going to be busting at the seams with the decisions we make because um there's things just as that's been reported tonight that not enough people know about and a lot of times we focus on and not that we shouldn't focus on other things the negative things the bad things. But um we got culinary uh institute, we got hurt and career center, we got early childhood education, we got we got all these

072things that so many people don't know about. And we're headed in the right direction. And so I think we got to ask ourselves the right questions. Not just how do we deal with this forecast, but how do we make how we do something different? how we make it not true. How do we make sure that we maintain our enrollment or even increase it? And I think we we still got to ask all the questions that's been asked, but we got to ask that question as well because it doesn't have to it doesn't have to go this way. That's just the forecast. Any other questions? Mr. Mr. Craropper, thank you and your team for all your work and being here tonight. We appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Have a good night. Thank

073you, Mr. Cropper. You as well. And the final portion of the report of the superintendent is 8.8. We lost one of the representatives. Um, but I'm quite sure you're going to deliver all by yourself. You know, I'm here with you. Always have your back. Well, good afternoon. My name is Savannah Young. Unfortunately, Chase had to leave to go to his last and final um theater performance at Raytown High School. So, I'll be reading his parts, too. I am the incoming um StuCo president of the 2025 2026. Um I will replace Chase um as he um served as a president this past year. Um we have a calm ending to our school year this year um as we had eggtastic for Easter where we stuffed eggs with um notes um to kids that just like needed

074something throughout the day and with candy and handed them out in the morning. And then we worked on preparing upcoming um events for this school year. So our retreat um for next um school year. And then we also have been voting for class officers. Um we also had our um end of year banquet tonight. Um it was a great turnout. We handed out letters. Um we had 13 StuCo kids um letter this year. um you had to get um 130 hours of community service and we had 13 kids um reach that. Um we've also handed out fun awards that um everybody voted on. We recognized um students that have been in SUKO for four years and we had three of them. Um and then we also gave um our seniors gifts. Um, we also did

075teacher appreciation last week where we wrote personal notes to each teacher in the school and then we also helped set up um food in the teachers lounge so they could um eat throughout the day. Um, now that now so you guys can get to know me, I'm Savannah. I'm excited to serve as the next year Stukco president at Raytown High School. Next year will be my seventh year in student council. I'm excited to serve this next year and bring more ideas to the table. Um, our other class officers consist of Emily Chin, vice president. Um, Brendan Santelli, secretary Willow Sturi, public relations. And then now from Chase, thank you for everyone for supporting our council this year. It truly has been great. You all are amazing. Have a great summer and our new leaders will

076see you next year. Thank you. That concludes the report of the superintendent. Mr. Chair, next we'll have Ray of Hope. Good evening, President Burton, board of education, Dr. Martin Knox. This evening for Ray of Hope, we are recognizing two student athletes uh from both high schools, and we are recognizing them for their outstanding academic excellence and athletic achievements. Um their dedication, perseverance, and leadership serve as inspiration to their peers and the entire Raytown community. and we have a video about both of them. You know, the thing with Tai is there's not like one specific thing he does that makes me think Tai is a ray of hope. He's that every day. He's everything you want a high school kid to be. Shows up every day, works his butt off, ask questions. When he wants to

077know something, he's willing to ask and kind of advocate for himself. So, he's a really great student here and he does a really good job here for South in the hallways and athletically on the sports field. You know who he is in the building. He does everything the right way. Good grades, good citizenship, and he's just everything you want in a student athlete. I think what it means to be a ray of hope is embracing the people in the community, you know, especially as an athlete, facing adversity, getting better each day while, you know, trying to stay on top of school because, you know, you're a student first. That's really impressive is to see kids with that grit and determination to get things done and get better and not give up in the process, but

078to always kind of trust the process and believe in it. And so that's the thing that's impressed me the most about him. He asks me all the time like, "Hey, Coach Harris, can I vacuum the weight room?" Like when the weight room's dusty or dirty, he asked like, "Can I come down during advisor and vacuum the weight room?" I'm like, "No, Ty. We'll get it done. Don't worry about it." But he cares about this place. And you know, just him asking those types of questions and being that type of kid is kind of why he just stands out. It was times and moments where I thought I went to go other places. I'm like, you know, I want to embrace my people that I'm with. You know, my coaches, they a really big factor. I

079can't say this enough, but I want to give all thanks to my coaches for giving me who I am. Especially Coach Harris. He made me the man and student I am today. My toughest moments, he was always there for me, you know, and not just on the field, but outside like Coach Harris is a father figure to me. So, you know, he means a lot. Also, thanks to Coach Stevie, he pushes me every day. He keeps me going. He's super encouraging with his teammates and how he conducts himself. Everybody understands who he is, what he's about. Who he is now is why he's a ray of hope for Raytown schools and our community. If you want something, be committed and also stay faithful and be patient and don't give up. What do you think it

080means to be a ray of hope? What I've heard is that you have to have, you know, good grades, good attendance, and I feel like that's me cuz, you know, I'm always at school. I show up. I'm respectable, and I have manners, and, you know, I respect my others. I chose Jardane because one, he's a transfer, and he's just adjusted well. He's done a lot of things for Raytown with a good attitude, great effort, works hard. He's quiet. He is a quiet but fierceful athlete. Also in the classroom, he does extremely well. He's just one of those kids that make you smile every time that you see him. He always, you know, checks in on me, too, which I feel like is my job as a teacher to check in on kids. It's been very

081good here. Like, I got to meet a very good teachers and they've been on my side and been supporting me and I love it cuz the support mean a lot to me. I thank him for all the support they gave me throughout my years at Raytown. I would say he's just so genuine. you know, you really look at him and see that he wants to make the place better. Being a student and an athlete, he has an opportunity to influence a lot of students here at Raytown High School. And again, he just carries himself so well. A lot of students look up to him and again just that genuine personality. He truly cares about people as people. So yeah, last year, my junior year, I had Miss Parenti for college and career prep and she

082was just always, you know, there from day one. She always pushed me and make sure that I got everything ready for the next level after high school. I know that this was hard for him because he does not like attention. And I think that his being so humble has helped him succeed in ways that some people won't ever know or understand, but he knows and we know. Jerane is a very chill person. He doesn't really like attention, but he's doing it cuz, you know, this is really out of my comfort zone. But my mom, she came from a really art background. like she grew up, didn't have all of it, and I just want to, you know, make her proud and so I can take her out and just make her proud. I know that

083he will succeed in whatever it is that he does. He just has, I know, made a difference in my life as a teacher and I know that he'll do that for other people as well. [Music] So, you heard Jordane say he does not like the spotlight, so he found a way not to be here tonight, but it's a good reason. He is competing in the track conference um for to move on. So, we wish him the best of luck tonight, and hopefully he's doing well. We do have the pleasure of having Tyrone Towns here with us. I said do it again. Do it again. I open the whole thing. That was on purpose. We got a new dress code, y'all. It is my pleasure uh to introduce to you tonight um our grow your own

084scholarship recipients. Um too many times we hear the negative stories about public education. Um if you are a teacher and public educator right now, it probably doesn't feel good um to hear the things we hear um about education in the world. um we don't have enough young people who are pursuing um being educators as a career. I think this is certainly something as society we've got to do better with um honoring the the position um paying it what it's worth. Um and so there's so many times again where we see that it's negative. I will tell you uh that these young folks we're going to introduce tonight give me hope um that the next generation of public educators um will will make this into a profession and bring this um pathway forward um that accelerates

085young people wanting to get into education. I'm very excited to introduce Miss Kristen Drummond who's going to talk to you a little bit. I don't know if she knows she's doing this. She's going to talk a little bit um about her program and then she's going to talk to you about the recipients um of our grow your own scholarship. So, Miss Kristen Drummond. Okay then. Good evening, Mr. Burton, Dr. Martin Knox, and members of the board. Um my name is Kristen Drummond. I work for Hearn and Career Center and I am the education exploration instructor there. Um there I work with juniors and seniors in the district who are interested in pursuing future careers in education. Um and I get to spend time with them helping them kind of figure out their place in the

086world of education, what they want to do, where they want to be. Um arguably I think I have the best job in the district. I love what I do every single day. um because I get to work with amazing students like Savannah and and the other some of the other students I'm going to introduce this evening. Um another hat that I wear is I am the teacher ambassador coordinator. So I work in conjunction with teacher ambassadors at South and Ray High. Um and their job is to positively promote the teaching profession within the schools. Um they help me to um do that by hosting various events. So, for example, this year for the first time, they took students to UCM's future teacher day. So, they were able to recruit um students in their buildings and

087get them out learning about becoming teachers. Um they also helped me identify students in the building that possess the qualities and characteristics of um future educators and that helps me to connect with them. And lastly, they help um to spread the word about our grow your own scholarship initiative. Um, and that's why I'm here this evening in that capacity to introduce four students to you that are this year's um, scholarship recipients. Um, do we want them to stand as I speak? So, would you um, bring them up here? One at a time. Great. Um, let's start with Ava Briscato. So, as she's coming up here, I'll just kind of speak. Um, so Ava is in the education exploration program with me, so we've got to spend the year. She's been student teaching in first grade

088at Northfleet. Um, and she will be attending William Jewel um as an elementary education major. This is telling this is telling us she's going to come back and teach with us. She's already completed her substitute certification. All right. Thank you, Eva. Next up, I'm going to bring up Mr. Mr. Devin Cabin. And as he comes up, I'll tell you a little bit about Mr. Devon. Um, he is a secondyear student in the education exploration program. So, he came to me last year as a junior. um he decided to come back and he wants to be a kindergarten teacher. He has been interning at Spring Valley Elementary um in a kindergarten classroom with Miss Vander and he will be attending Northwest Missouri State majoring in early childhood education. He is also working on his substitute certification

089at present. Thank you, Devin. Next student we'd like to recognize, he had to dip out. He, you know, is a jack of all trades and is performing, but Chase. Um, and Chase, yes, Chase, he intends to um attend the University of Central Missouri, UCM, and major in secondary speech and theater. All right. And last but not least this evening, I would like to introduce to you Jonathan Williams. Jonathan currently participates in Hearn & Career C Center's behavior health science program. Um he wanted he told me when he first went into the program he wanted to be a therapist but later on realized that his true calling was to become a secondary science teacher specifically physics. Right. Right. and we wish him wish him all the best as he starts his um scholarly journey at Missouri

090State University in secondary science. [Music] That someone have to Photoshop Chase. Yeah. All right, let's get on up. All right. Looking good. Next we'll have our public comment period. Um public comment shall not exceed 30 minutes. Five minutes will be allotted to each person uh except in instances where six or more persons have indicated desire to speak which is not the case today. U and so thus following the maximum number of participants to speak in the allotted time. Speakers will not be permitted to participate in gossip, make defamatory comments or use abusive or vulgar language. Uh first up we have Athena Hoffman. Please turn the mic on, please. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to our board of education for letting me speak here tonight. For those who don't know what I'm here to speak

091on, the Raytown Quality School District has decided that if classes don't make a minimum of 15, they either won't exist or they will be combined via Zoom with Raytown High. This is mainly affecting our fine arts and AP classes. Currently, they plan to combine all AP courses from Raytown South and Raytown High and plan to teach it via online learning Zoom with the class that has the most being the ones to host. The reasoning given for this has been budget cuts. These budget cuts have come from the fact that we spend a lot of money on online teaching courses such as egeneuity and elevate courses I have had the pleasure of participating in myself. I'd also like to note that I took high school courses in middle school and never received the credit for them

092which made me and many of my peers very frustrated as that was the only reason we took them. So now me and my peers and more advanced youth to come have lost credits. But now the district wishes to frankly take away our quality of education. There's a national teacher shortage. Yes. But now in our district, it seems there's a shortage for quality education among AP classes. Let me explain from my online school and co to my current high school education. When I was in fourth grade, CO hit and it hit hard. I did not come back from spring break. As I'm sure you all remember, I finished off my fourth grade year fine. It was a struggle. Vocab was interesting. But fifth grade, constantly sitting in front of a computer drained me so much. I

093wasn't doing any work. I had over 80 missing assignments because I would just sit there with my camera off staring by by the end of the year because I couldn't just stay at my computer all day and I wasn't being challenged in online school even though I was in the after school book club in which we read Harry Potter. They couldn't accurately assess if we were far behind or farther ahead which led to a lot of issues when we entered middle school. Now that AI is even more advanced, they still wouldn't be able to do that if we combine them to Zoom classes with kids frequently using TBT and other ways to cheat their way through the system. Sometimes my eighth grade year, my science teacher about two weeks into our first semester. So for

094half semester, my class did nothing but sit on desk and play mumball. Then for the rest of first semester, we did an online program program called egeneuity which the board has soon to approve. Now if you ask my class which was the honors physical science class what we remember it would probably be the only thing we learned that whole year which was in the second semester when they actually approved for the teacher to teach us which it was Newton's law Newton's three laws which he deemed the most important thing. That's all I remember because the program used was crashed on our computers leaving us unable to learn and do work and the videos which could span up to 15 minutes which were also all insible usually had no connection to the questions asked and agenuity

095is known for using an AI detection system to grade its work. I'll admit I cheated my way through that first semester because I had to. I was learning nothing and had threats of failing the course. Don't look me like that, Dr. Mox. I had to. I was learning nothing and had threats a fair in the course and not advancing. So I just copy and paste the question then copy the answer which would end up once submitting being the sample answer given to help kids understand why their question could have been wrong despite my frankly obvious cheating. I would get all those questions right. Not to mention we also won't allow tasks as the district textbook that the high school is using as it was deemed too mature. bra science course. In another class, my eighth

096grade honors English one, my class and others, including the regular English courses, we piloted a program called Common Lit. This is a website with an online English curriculum that has you read what are usually short stories and answer reading comprehension questions. As soon as we started on Common Lit, English students reading true books went away. We didn't even get to read Romeo and Juliet as that was not the common curriculum. I and many other students hated Common Lit. And even our teacher who left the district and told us that Common Lit was part of the reason, she didn't like it either as it took away what English courses really were about. Now I'm a freshman who's currently taking enriched biology. My first semester, I had an online teacher from a program called Elevate, where we

097were severely behind every other class and we learned pretty much nothing. a peer of mine who was doing an online anatomy and physiology class, ironically enough, with the same teacher, me and some other friends were curious on what she was doing. And come to find out, they were doing the exact same thing as us despite the classes being completely different. By second semester, the teacher in the room, who is referred to as a classroom coach and just the supervisor of students, had to fight for us to be switched to an inerson for a second semester, to which my now teacher, Mr. Link, sacrificed to spit our plan period to pretty much adopt my class so that we would be able to have an adequate education in first semester of enriched English to my freshman course.

098We did nothing but common lit. So every day we were staring at our computer for 45 minutes doing an online curriculum that wasn't even challenging to most of the kids in my class. The assignments we did reminded me of the stuff I did in seventh grade. Not only that, excuse me. Yeah, time time's up. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next, we'll have Erica Sakardi. Did I say that right? Yes, you did. All right. You have five minutes. Thank you, sir. Dr. Burton, Dr. M Martin Knox, esteemed members of the Raytown School Board, thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Erica Sakardi, and I have had at least one student attending Raytown School District since 2005, starting with the preschool program. My youngest son is finishing up his junior year at Raytown

099High School. Apparently, I am speaking about the same issue as that amazing young lady who just stepped down. My son participated in one of the RT town meetings. He said that while it was interesting, he said that his issues were not seen or heard. His concern and mine is the issue of upper level electives for our high school students and how this impacts their sense of belonging in the culture of Raytown High School and Raytown South High School. classes such as rep theater, music theory, early child development. Several visual art classes, as well as some AP classes have had problems getting enough students enrolled to meet the 15 student minimum requirement in recent years. In fact, I've been told that AP biology is not being offered at RHS next year because there weren't enough students.

100These are students who have passion, whose future careers may fall in these fields. When these classes are not offered, students have to settle for something that may not hold their interest. And I'm certain that all of us understand the dissatisfaction and disappointment at at having to settle. Finding a way to offer these classes consistently will create a better sense of belonging, of being seen by their school community. Two years ago, Dr. Martin Knox was hired as our new superintendent. She brought passion for teaching and for all students under her care. She is seen interacting with students and attending every game, concert, and theatrical performance that she can. The board and school administrators should take inspiration from her passion and give our juniors and seniors more opportunities to follow their interests, their passion, their future by

101opening up these classes with smaller sizes. Raytown is not a large school district, but we have the opportunity to offer amazing classes with exceptional teachers. Please give our students the chance to show you what they are capable of by consistently offers offering classes that interest them. I promise you, you will see more involvement, more sense of community and belonging. You will be proud of them if you give them a chance. I may be on the downhill slide of having a student in this school district, but I feel duty bound to speak on behalf of those who cannot do so. We are all responsible for making these students feel like they are wanted, that they belong, that they are seen, that they are part of their high school culture. Thank you for your time. Want to

102thank both of you for your public comment. Next, we'll have a board committee reports. Is there a motion? I move that the board approve the act board and February 1025. Motion made and seconded. Are there any other reports from other committees? All right. All right. Take a vote. Motion passes. Next we'll have the the board committee uh assignments. I have uh let's see we have for the finance committee we have Michael Watson as chair Rick Moore as um member uh board policy we have Rick Moore and as chair and Jordan Jameson uh for capital improvements committee we have myself chair and Michael Watson Um, community engagement. We have Edna. Help me again. Adela. Adela as as chair and Dr. Douglas as member. Um, curriculum uh committee curriculum instruction. We have Dr. Douglas as chair and

103Jordan Jamerson as member. Safety committee. We have uh Mr. Newton and Miss Edna as Mr. Newton as chair. Citizens advisory committee. Our representative is uh Mr. Newton um as our representative where Dr. Mark Knox will be the chair. Um city of Raytown leaison will be myself. Chamber of Commerce rep will be Mr. Newton. Raytown Education Foundation will be Dr. Douglas and the MSBA Summer Summit annual conference delegate will be Dr. Douglas with uh Mr. Newton as the alternate. As you will see um on there the purpose of each committee uh and the service time the resources needed uh will be uh loaded there for your reading and we're asking Dr. Martin Knox to appoint the executive staff to be members of these committees. Yeah, it's info item. So you can go to the there any

104comment question on that Mr. President. Um we have one of our students who actually returned uh and I don't know if I need Sorry, excuse me. Sorry. Sorry. I don't know if we have to adjust the agenda to put this in, but I asked him to remain and to stay so we can recognize him for his hard work. So, is that okay? Yes. With the loud applause. I thought it was just rand out. I love it. Okay, so to reiterate, Chase is going to be attending UCM uh secondary speech and theater and by his attire, you can tell he is just Yes, he does have subcertification. Chase, congrats. My god. Thank you. Take back this song. Thank you very uh switched up the order a little bit. I want to make one more comment about

105uh the committees. Uh we can have up to three members on each committee. So if there's a committee that you're not on and you want to add to what you are doing, uh we can talk about that u you know outside of the meeting and then we can get that addressed. All right, moving on. Next we have uh new business. We have focus communications module. Is there a motion? Mr. President, I move the board of education approve a communication add-on module with the district's focus student information system in the amount of $22,000. Motion made and seconded. Take a vote. Motion passes. Egeneuity renewal. Is there a motion? Does nobody want to read this one? [Music] I'll move that the board of education approve the renewal of egeneuity from imagined learning in the amount of $85,510

106as presented. Thank you. Motion made and seconded. Mr. President, well, can someone explain exactly what we're voting what this contract is giving us? Good evening, board. Dr. Martin Knox. So, uh, our partnership with Egeneuity allows us to do a couple of things. first of all provide a state certified option for families that choose to pursue part or full-time virtual instruction. So, we do have families that will want to pursue full-time virtual instruction. That's something that's part of state statute and districts need to have options for families to pursue that if that is their choice to do so. We have several families in the district that will petition the district for full-time virtual instruction. We have lots of scenarios that pop up during the year where students maybe have transferred to us uh or their credit

107situation warrants us offering a course through egeneuity because it's not a course that we currently offer. Either we didn't have enough students enroll in the course or for a variety of reasons we need to extend students the opportunity to earn virtual credit. And again having a preferred vendor uh board, you might remember last year we actually went out for bid and Egeneuity was the the uh the company that we awarded the contract to. Also we have credit recovery scenarios both during summer school traditional summer school as also during the regular school year where we need to provide students the opportunity to recover credits virtually. And so, Egeneuity gives us the option of a curriculum, of having virtual instructors when those um scenarios aren't available to make it happen in an in-person environment. So, there's a

108myriad of ways in which we use egenuity to help students earn credits and stay on track for graduation. Is this price the same no matter how many students take advantage of it? Yeah, it is a it's a negotiated rate, an annual rate that was part of uh the initial contract we signed up for last year. Mr. President, Mr. Do we have an evaluate program to see how Yeah, we we certainly monitor um the success rate of our students that are in egeneuity. You might remember um a program called Launch that the the school district participated in out of Springfield. Um when we we bid services, we wanted to find a program that had a track record of student success and we felt like Egeneuity provided a better track record of student success um than than

109another vendor other vendors that are out in the marketplace. So yes, we certainly pay attention to that. Anecdotally, we're also um listening to our students and families about their experiences with our virtual learning provider. And then we're in contact with with Egeneuity quite a bit with regards to their curriculum, making sure that it's aligned uh to state standards and also has the same level of rigor that our in-person instruction provides. So, how many how many students current I couldn't tell you that right now, Mr. Jameson. I can certainly find that number out and get get it to you. Yep. Mr. Do you currently or have to meet with all you know success? Yes. So our counselors are in regular contact. We have a uh teachers and counselors at each of our schools where students are

110participating that are in a con a consistent feedback loop with them on how things are going, what additional supports they might need, um are they able to log on successfully? Do they have the resources they need to complete the courses successfully? And then when kids are struggling to meet expectations, that's when the counselor is stepping in with the family to find out if that's not the right uh option for them, what other options might be available. Um but yes, we're in constant contact with our families that are enrolled in egeneuity classes. Dr. Grinder, um the board, we will uh request that information from Dr. Martin Knox and we want you to provide that information to uh to her so she can then provide it to us. Of course. Um and same for I think there

111were some requests I made as well to uh Dr. Kyra. Uh we would we would like for you to do those things and we'll uh we'll make those requests to Dr. Martin Knox. Understood. All right, motion passes. Next we have the any NWA benchmark assessment renewal. Is there a motion? [Music] like that's all our money. All right. Motion made and second. Any questions? Now let's vote. motion passes. Next, we have the McGra Hill Elementary Science Resource quote and bid sheet. Present that board of education approve first year term cost of $61,000 57 um and 31 cents present. Second motion made and seconded. Mr. President, quickly, I I I'm glad that six-year term uh is in there for the 601,000 um dollars. I know a little bit about this, but can you kind of explain what

112exactly it is? Of course. So, uh the school district every six, seven, eight years, uh we go out to bid for uh curriculum resources. Uh we've been long overdue for K5 science. So, obviously, the science curriculum serves all of our students, all of our elementary grades at all 10 of our elementary sites. Uh, there is some savings to the six-year agreement, so there's a a bit of sticker shock with the cost, but that covers the district for uh resources that go to the classroom. And then there's also consumables annually that the district receives, uh, licenses to online resources, professional development for our teachers. Um, we had a district committee of staff that vetted several vendors and piloted several different resources through an RFP process and our staff overwhelmingly uh approved the Inspire Science program for

113elementary students uh to begin next year. Thank you. motion pass. Mr. President move the board of education approve the purchase of McGraw Hill Inspired Science for high school physical science for a six-year term at the cost of 123,368.18 as presented. Second. Motion made and seconded. approve the purchase of learning for middle school $60,100. Motion made and seconded. Mr. President, Dr. Grinder, is this in conjunction with your real world, not your but with the the real world learning aspects that we've implemented? Yeah. So, this is a a new partnership with a very unique resource that's going to help uh not only with our high school students with the career academy transformation, but we're actually will utilize this resource K12. When we think about the profile of a learner in Raytown quality schools, what it means to

114be academically sound, to be reflective, to be a contributor to your community, we want to build those skills every year in all of our students. And so defined learning has a platform that actually allows us to develop project-based learning across all grade levels where our kids will be solving real world problems collaboratively with their classmates. Um and you know those prompts and those projects are difficult to develop. There's a lot that goes into those. And so, uh, defined learning is a resource out there that is able to help us develop the projects that our kids will complete and the skills that they'll develop not just while they're in high school, but starting in kindergarten. Um, these skills, these profile of a learner skills are going to show up on our report cards uh, beginning next

115year at elementary and then eventually move into middle and high. So we we we need to know and have confidence that our students are developing these profile level learner skills across all of our grade levels. And so this resource defined learning not only gives us resources but also some great professional development for our staff. Thank you very Motion passes. Next we have the content filter purchase technology. Mr. President, I move that the board of education accept a quote for the purchase of three years of line wise service for from broaderland security at an annual rate of 65, $13.33. What is this? This is important. This is important. Come on, Matt. Matt, I just want you to come up here. I want to see you, Matt. How you doing? Mr. Burton, Dr. Martin Knox board, Mr.

116Newton in particular. Um, this is our web filtering uh product. Basically, it does a little bit more than that, but um by law we do have to uh filter our uh any internet searches our students make. And currently, we have a vendor, but we've had some trouble um continuing to kind of stay ahead on of kids getting into games and things like that. And so, uh we'd like to make the move to this. On top of just your standard internet filtering, it will also have uh after hours filtering on our devices and our student accounts. If there's any troubling searches, they will contact emergency contacts in the district and if they can't get a hold of somebody, they will call police. So important service in my opinion and a bargain at that price. That's awesome.

117Appreciation troublemakers get into stuff. appreciate your prompt emails as well. Like when something goes wrong, we get them. We appreciate that. Thank you. Why can't you send an email? Motion passes. Mr. President of the board of education approved the three-year phase 4 contract with Ford next generation learning for a total of $250,000 with the amount due for the 2526 school year of $125,000. Mr. President Dr. I said Mr. President, you're doing a great job. I really like for next generation. Yeah, I mean, so do I. I think you're doing a spectacular job with this hall of fame. I just want to see you again. Thank you so much. Well, thank you, Mr. Newton. It certainly is a collaborative effort starting at the top with Dr. Martin Knox, our staff, everybody that's been involved with the

118the career academy transformation doing a great job. So, it's definitely a a collaborative effort, but thank you. Appreciate. Happy Mother's Day. I agree with you. Thank you. also mentioned we'll be bringing an update to the board uh this summer regarding next steps with the academy transformation. So more to come. Perfect. Thank you Dr. Gr. Motion passes. Next we have uh the first read policies just for information. Policies were reviewed April 14th um by the policy review committee. And then we'll have the approval of the consent agenda. Is there a motion? I move that the board approve the May 12th, 2025 consent agenda as presented. All right. Uh before we take the vote, I'd like to read the donations. We have a donation of flowers or memorial garden worth $160 from Nate Cook at IDL. A

119donation of staff appreciation gift worth $200 from Ivanho United Church of Christ to Robinson Elementary School. Donation of student raffle prizes worth $125 from Ivanho United Church of Christ to Robinson Elementary School. A donation of an e gift card totaling $1,994.36 from Office Depot to Southwood Elementary School. A donation of stack snacks say stacks. Donation of snacks for for staff appreciation worth $140 from City of Truth Church to Three Trails Preschool and a donation of of a $50 gift card for flowers for self-care staff project from Costco to Three Trails Preschool. Once again, we greatly appreciate all our community helpers and and contributors to the wellness and the and the education of our students and the uh help to our staff. Thank you once again. Take a vote. Motion passes. And now what have we

120all been waiting for? Mr. President, I move that the board adjourn the record board meeting at 8:44 p.m. Motion made in second.