BOE Meeting - April 11, 2022

001of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all uh mr president i move that the board approved the april 11th 2022 agenda second motions all right move right to uh report of board members anyone um so i was really grateful to be with some fellow board members and we went to a regional missouri school board association meeting um and then just shout outs to raytown high school where she kills the monsters as well as some of our fellow board members were able to attend the teacher of the year breakfast where we really recognize the value of all of our teachers and especially michaela whitmore who was our nominee from the district and i believe it's fleet rich right that's

002cool i think that's right all right so that was a joy to be able to do that well i went to pretty much everything that natalie we've been buddies this month so um i too got to attend the play and the regional meeting and the teacher breakfast and it was that that play phenomenal the lighting the costuming it was incredible so good job katie and senior recognition night or like um or academic night how about that if you ever have an opportunity to tell to attend the plays at our high school either one of them i encourage you it's amazing what our students do and what they can do and i didn't attend everything that you did but i was at the play so it's very good i was able to attend the regional meetings

003it was very interesting and puts our board itself in a very nice position as a board of excellence so i was happy to participate in that i also had the opportunity to travel to jefferson city for the legislative forum and you know there are a lot of bills in the state regarding school districts so msba gave us an opportunity to meet with our legislators and to hear more in-depth information about the bills and it was very beneficial to me to understand the language behind some of them we got to meet it last month was women's history month so we had a panel of the women's state representatives and the 11 as they call themselves has written a book and they have donated books based on the 11 to our libraries here in the district so

004that was exciting miss peyton are those like what grade level elementary school they want to encourage young girls to get involved in politics anyone else all right thank you very much it's all great things next we have the uh legislative update my superintendent miss plank i want to tell you politics is a dirty business um i didn't get a reaction it is at times um really the only update i have for you right now is the house has passed their budget and they pass it on to the senate it's due may the sixth the foundation formula no increase it's flat it hasn't had no the increases that might occur over the last two years it has not kept up with inflation and it still keeps us as the 49th position in funding in the state

005of missouri in the united states and this something's got to change sooner or later something has got to change they only get a 38 thousand dollar minimum teacher salary which is not the case here but i think about rural missouri they want that to happen they've got to change the foundation they gotta fund it you know back in 2006 they wrote a new for 2004 they wrote a new formula because they couldn't fund the old one before but they could fund that one and now they haven't funded it and they continue not to fund it it's sooner or later someone's going to have to file a lawsuit against the state to get this done and hopefully that's sooner rather than later the other side of things it's pretty quiet as far as any bills that

006are getting headway we've looked at open enrollment and it's kind of stalled a little bit and we've looked at some virtual instruction increases and it's installed a little bit they have to get this budget done they have to get the congressional maps done and agree upon that it's time to file and they haven't so with that i will answer any questions you do get your msb update so you guys are pretty in tune with what's going on but that's where we're at with that and then any of the other questions here i'm going to give my time to our our two young ladies in the front row that are going to be bringing their first uh student representatives to the board reports and i'm sure you'd all you know to say it but rather hear

007from them than me so if that will start my jump up there to the mic and raytown high school introduce yourself mike hello everyone i'm amaya morgan i'm the current vice president of student council and future president of student council for next year um i'm filling in for a while a long way she cannot be here today she's a current president she's sick but things happening in our school rachel is putting on our annual hunger games this has been put on a pause because of covid but we're hoping to come back stronger than before because in the past when we've done hunger games we've been able to fund reap and like keep their pantry full for like the whole summer so we've been able to keep their shelves full for months so with hunger games

008we like reach out to all the schools in the district this is something that every school participates in we have goals set for i think we want 18 500 cans as a district and then we'll also be at like businesses like outside of doors trying to get cam donations and things like that but it's basically a way to get the whole district together and make sure that we all feel the need to give back to our city and our community and so that's basically the whole point of hunger games and also to help the less fortunate and bring town that go to our school go to schools in the district things like that and then it is also crunch time for seniors we have senior announcements coming out we have senior picture day coming up

009fees stuff like that and graduation is may 22nd so they're closing out their final days here at rhs and then stuka is working very hard on our prom coming up april 23rd in about a couple weeks um we're having it at the gallery event space downtown and we're just we're hoping that since this this might be like our first official prom after kova that it comes out really good and that we get good numbers and things like that and we just started our spring sports they're kind of like like loving it but we're hoping they're coming up strong and um we're just looking forward to making like we're doing our elections and stuff like that and planning processes for next year so we're really hoping that we can get onto things that we've been missing

010like assemblies and um coming out to games and things like that we really hope that we can pump that up next year but um also the play went on but this past weekend is great it always be great i'm so proud of them all time but that's basically what's going on [Applause] my name is casey rogers i am the president for raytown south student council as of right now raytown south is currently like student council wise is planning a unity wall to show the upcoming classmates how the south is as a whole and it's gonna be in that cafeteria it'll say we are and then we'll have different words that describe raytown south as a whole over the past weekend scholar bowl beat rockhurst and it was the first time we've won in 18 years

011[Music] we also have an athlete she's a track athlete her name is she is the children's mercy athlete of the week and she also won nationals at the nike nationals in new york city a couple weeks ago our teachers are working on the senior breakfast award for the seniors because our senior breakfast is may 6th um our boy scouts are working on the courtyard this saturday cleaning it up making it look nice for the springtime and then our play is elephants graveyard and it is the 20th through the 21st at the raytown south auditorium and then we're having fun at the kaufman stadium may 14th so the day after our last day and then the theme is enchanted garden are there any concerns or issues that are going on in the school that you all

012are concerned about i would say do you want me to go back to it sure i was like i don't know if i should just talk thank you i'm not surely positive about concerns directly for the board but um our biggest concern right now in our school is like uh renovations because they recently like took out the flooring and like a lot of students are confused about it so we just want to know like where we're at with renovations in our school like is there some is there new things that we're going to have next year that's that's mostly the questions this like this time around it's a great question and i think we can probably have mr houston answer that send something to the high school send something to student council yeah perfect you

013can do that i had a junior ask me the same question first south i don't think that there are any concerns i just think that kids are ready to be done it's their first year actually i just think kids just want to be done and they want it to be summer time to start the new year but like she said we also haven't had floors but i don't think anybody has that was concerned they just walked the halls they took a picture of me posted on snapchat the first day that happened but then other than that we haven't heard about it ladies know that i'm not competitive when you say we beat rockers that brings a smile to my heart may i add to that i heard from a good source that one of the

014categories was theological questions well i'm not since this is close to easter i'm not going to broach that subject ladies that was excellent thank you uh and we'll see you back here next month yeah that was that was great that was what we were hoping to see when we went forward this idea so appreciate you guys both very well spoken i think it's great that the the president was not here and they had a succession plan so if i'm here you're just gonna see i'm not here you're just gonna see an empty seat but you guys uh took care of that so appreciate that you have my time mr president all right all right uh report of elementary did you know good evening so i started did you know off with a lot of news

015that most of you probably already heard that are raytown school district challenge students earned first in the battle of the brains competition the rivien robotics team they earned a 50 000 grant [Applause] and their proposal will be brought to life at science city it's going to be a multi-million dollar exhibit and it showcases how robots help surgeons perform microscopic surgeries clean ocean pollution and understand planets and so we are in works i've talked to dr merkley a little bit we will get some kind of special board recognition for them there's a lot of students involved so i may have to look a little creative as to how we do it but we'll get that in the works um harvard bound raytown south high school i'm nick cruz class of 2018 was accepted into harvard medical

016school and i used to i love to throw a little alumni news in there so that's our alumni news of the month the award-winning raytown schools training careers culinary arts program prepared to distribute a thousand meals to families in the raytown community the meal district distribution took place at the doors of the herni career center institute of culinary arts and cinder restaurant this was a first-come first-served distribution and the partnership was made possible with help from local organizations including 15 and the homies and i put it in here did you know you didn't hear a bunch of it because it was an invitation only distribution because we want to make sure that our families that really needed the meals could get to the meal so with help from our student support services department as well

017as some of our raytown schools community feeding program partners that we made during the pandemic we dust out those contacts and they also helped us get in touch with families that really need it especially hope network who was able to take some of the leftover meals to their industrial kitchen and get those meals out to families that next day on saturday so reap uh sisters and hope hope network and then our student support services and uh social workers also reached out to families here in the district so it was kind of that invite only piece to make sure the families that you did but um a really amazing partnership and i will post some photos on social media i just wanted that to make sure those families got what they needed first so and maybe

018a future partnership piece as well from what i'm hearing so that's really exciting a piece of the pie fleet ridge elementary students achieved a pot of gold fundraising goal to benefit pta as a reward fleet ridge elementary students elandis anthony and trey warren smashed pies in the faces of administer administrator interim melissa glasgow and principal leslie mott i will have a video up tomorrow on facebook and they went way too easy on the they went way too easy on mrs glasco and this is not if you ask me and both boys also get to take a pot got to take a pie home with them for smashing the price so i thought that one aligned nicely with pi day as well as um just a fun reward before we went on spring break and they

019play it up uh last month rachel high school ceremony students were to stay in the clayed up ceramics competition several rachel high projects placed first in the competition i've uh got one picture here and i'll put extra copies of did you know on the back um the one of their first place pieces what do blue jays do on their day off the unique thing about this competition is they worked together as a team from reach on high school as individuals then they also partnered with students from other districts to create pieces and some of those pieces also won first place as well and um so we have maybe three or four first place finishes from that competition and from the teacher of the year breakfast i hear that we may be bringing one of those

020competitions to raytown high next year so that is did you know i'm going to skip ahead uh just a bit before we have our proclamation i've got some msba certificates for refresher trains so i wanted to present that to mr burton mr landers and then i have an extra special packet here from msba um and this one goes out to mrs plank so i wanted to share that with you and i kept it and i didn't want to lose it because that was a lot of pressure here so and this is for your master board certification so there's your letter and your certificate [Applause] but like i said i didn't want to lose anything i might say beth won't say it herself but master reservation requires a lot of extra work reading books writing papers

021and doing some extra stuff so so that helping us on our way to the board governance uh award too so appreciate that's great work and mrs flank if you'll hang around at the end we'll get a john o'brien photo of youtube here we go awesome and for our our last piece we have county executive frank white jr here first special proclamation for coach jim asir he's my favorite second baseman that was probably jimmy come up with me mike thank you uh thank you board for having me uh here this afternoon to do this dr mark and i was having uh breakfast one morning and talk about school stuff and some other stuff sports always seemed to come up and so we were on sports and he was telling me about jim and some of them's

022accomplishments and and we sort of decided hey maybe that we can do a proclamation recognizing his many years of service and so uh we put this together uh for jim for you tonight and i'll read it real quickly i'm really slowly for you but it says uh jim azure has served as a coach in the raytown school district for more than 50 years and as head coach of the raytown high school swim and dive program has a record of 559 wins 88 losses and two ties whereas 2 2021 2022 marks coach asia's 13th undefeated season and the 46th year in a row that raytown high school varsity boys swam team has qualified to compete at the state competition whereas it all began in 1965 when jim ran a five-mile warm-up before track practice at the

023university of central missouri marking the beginning of his amazing coaching career jim's many accomplishments include starting the first high school soccer team in kansas writing a master thesis that became a prototype of for other students and leading the teams he copes to state championships producing three all-americans co-founding the missouri high school stem coaches association organizing clinics for missouri coaches becoming the first high school coach to speak at the world swimming coaches clinic in las vegas writing the manual for the aquatic program for the kansas kansas city magnet school system as an appointee of the federal task force committee and the list goes on 2017 jim was recognized for raytown high school swim team's accomplishments and included into missouri sports hall of fame inducted into the missouri force hall of fame in his spare time jim

024and his wife beverly retreat to their homey built at the lake of the ozarks to entertain his children and grandchildren it gives me great pleasure to acknowledge coach jim asia for his commitment to accomplish what few people do in a lifetime teaching and coaching boys and girls soccer basketball track diving and swimming in addition to serving the community as an alderman for the city of raytown so now therefore in accordance with the powers vested in me by the homeland charter of jackson county missouri i'm frank white jr here by proclaiming april 11 2022 recognition and congratulations to jim asia for positively impacting the lives of student athletes for more than 50 years and extend best wishes for all your future endeavors [Applause] i don't know you knew that much about me dr mark i'm a

025little choked up which is kind of unusual actually because i usually know what i'm going to say and first of all i am deeply humbled to not just get this recognition from the county executive and the jackson county you know government but also from one of the greatest athletes candidates have ever had the frank white so wow personally as i feel uh you know a little shaken by that because it's quite an honor um you know i want to share stuff and i wasn't going to say this but i didn't have a speech anyway so you know my wife and i were sitting down um a a month ago and we when we heard about this and she said you know you've been recognized by the the uh city and by the board and by

026the state and now the county and she said there's only one more that you need to be recognized as the federal government and i told her i said you know we already have one of my first years of raytown my class received a handwritten letter from the white house white house stationery richard nixon from what we accomplished the projects at raytown high school on operation democracy so i could say we did it all um you know first of all frank and i don't know you probably know that not every school district has a swim team and the privilege that that our students have is a privilege that they're granted by really the board of education and the administration that put together a program to allow us to have that opportunity i think your goal of

027every teacher and every coach is to bring out the very best we can in our our students and our athletes but it's also an opportunity for every teacher and coach to bring out the best in themselves that's what our challenge is for me personally and like everybody here every time we see a student do well it gives us just a tremendous amount of satisfaction and pride you know in our school district and in our community and i can say that mike my i let my family here i like them to stand up and just maybe introduce them really quickly uh andy went to raytown high school because his wife cindy my daughter jackie went to raytown uh kathy went to town this and there's my lovely wife there my grandkids who all live at least

028except for my wife they will tell you they're my action my witnesses tonight that there is nobody prouder than jim asia and the love for this community and this school district i think that what we have accomplished makes raytown school district a standout in jackson county i'm really proud to have been an employee a coach here for the past 52 years um you know it makes my life complete and so i want to accept this and i'm not just on behalf of jim asia but for the school district okay because everybody does their job you know it's a big team everybody has a little job a little park the people that run the facility who provide the budget for us the principals the secretaries the superintendent i mean it's a big group and we could

029not have been successful uh without the support of this support group which is really big so this goes really is for all of us it's for everybody and uh thank you very much frank for thank you and yeah i appreciate that and for good board i'm again i'm very honored to be here floyd thank you [Applause] thank you so much now we'll i just have a question for alan maybe brooke while she's talking but on the battle of the brains again it's just great just fantastic that they've won this but on the science city union station project will the kids have any involvement in helping oh absolutely bring that to life it was interesting first of all i had kevin uh threw a curveball and he hit it out of the park this picture says

030it all i mean look at this this is when the announcement came i was sitting there holding my phone up trying to record and when they said it i dropped it we were just in disbelief that wow i mean this is happening and look at these three right here i mean that is innocence and joy that they won and they knew it and all that hard work but yes and i talked to the interesting story the ceo of burns and mac right afterwards and he said it came down to the final two and they were both robotics projects and they weren't sure how they were going to be able to build these projects so they flew all over the country to these exhibits to see how they work and once they looked at all these

031all over the country they came to our kids and said yeah this is the one we want this is the one that wins and so yes the kids that he did make the statement he said the team is now trying to figure out how they're going to work with 40 elementary students to make this happen so that yeah they're going to work i i had also heard i don't know if this is true or not but each of the kids on the winning team are guaranteed a job he made the comment to all the group of all the kids that were there that they had just since the beginning of the year burns and mac across the country and hired almost 800 engineers and we're still hiring trying to hire and he made the comment

032all of you need to come to work for handsome night eventually so maybe i don't think they signed a contract they did also do a parade at um they they really got it together pretty quickly but as the students got back to each of their buildings each building had a little something prepared for those students when they got that because they dropped them all off individually so yeah we'll try to collect some of those photos and share those out i would say it's a dr knox over here this needs to be on every thing in the district right here these three kids i mean it's just pure raw emotion and the looks on their that is faces for recognition thank you thank you kevin anyone else all right we'll now enter a public comment period

033uh district patrons and staff who have signed up to speak to the agenda item will now be permitted to address the board remarks i'll i'll call the names out as i said uh remarks made for a period of time not to exceed 30 minutes total so we'll divide that time so five minutes will be allotted to each person except in instances where six or more people have signed up to speak which tonight we have i'll find it in a second yeah it's more than six uh in case in that case remarks will be limited to three minutes which is what we'll have tonight and and and to one appearance this will allow a maximum number of participants to speak in a lot of time period speakers will not be permitted to participate in gossip make

034defamatory comments or use abusive or vulgar language other than names positions salaries and length of service information pertaining to individual employees and any identical identifiable information regarding students is all considered constant confidential closed information not available first we'll have uh marie tracy for three minutes good evening i'm speaking about item 18.8 ray team's recommendations and i'm sharing words from jenna adkins who's a colleague who couldn't be here tonight but is much better versed in school finance than i am i have concerns regarding information shared in the finance committee meeting agenda documents and what seems to be decision making occurring behind closed doors first and foremost i want to remind the board that we have a severe teaching shortage in the state as a member of odessi advisory board for teacher certification i know exactly how

035dire our shortage is becoming if we don't retain staff we won't replace all of them retention is more important than attracting new candidates at this point secondly i am against spending money on things before people students will not remember the gyms in the ball fields they'll remember and connect with the teachers coaches counselors and mentors that they have during their time in school a strong relationship between adult and students will trump the physical items a school facility may or may not have to say right now that we need to spend less on our operating budget where salaries come from so that we can afford capital projects is quite simply not in the best interest of students third i am disconcerted by the quick about face on the state of our finances last year a hotly

036debated decision to raise the base instead of giving a step was generally appeased with the assurance of a step happening in the years to follow throughout this year the message and impression that we got was clear that steps would be given that we are in a good place financially and seemingly within the past week that message has changed perhaps new information became available i understand we can't change the past but i believe it is the board's responsibility to contemplate this information deeply and fully given the short notice of this to not just the board but also to ray team i do not believe an educated well considered thoughtful the decision can be made tonight take the information investigate ask questions consider all options but most importantly take the time to truly determine what action is

037going to retain quality staff that course of action is the one that will be in the best interest of our students thank you so much [Applause] next we'll have a carry plate hello hello i'm carrie claytor i've been a south high teacher for the last 16 years i'm an nea executive member i wanted to quickly talk about item 18.8 which is the rate team recommendations and its impact on our staffing i'm here to tell you that first of all i am a facts teacher family consumer science used to be home and i want to tell you that there were exactly zero family consumer science graduates in missouri this year if i leave there is no one to replace me and if no one replaces me there is no one from raytown south going to herndon

038for culinary in the beautiful new culinary buildings that we have it has to come down to retaining staff with salary staff over buildings no matter how lovely the buildings are if there is not staff inside of them there is not a school our staff are the most important thing for our students our staff it is disconcerting to see in the same board agenda 20 30 million dollars worth of gym renovations and freeze salaries for three years that's all i have to say thank you for your time i appreciate everything you do [Applause] next we'll have hayden etter awesome um i'll let them get a moment to get all those passed out real quick uh but my name is hayden i use heavy pronouns and i am currently a sub in this district and a student

039at uni at the university of central missouri pursuing middle school theater and speech communication recently due to a lot of inconsistent communication throughout the district many misconceptions have arisen concerning transgender students right to privacy and respect even during my time here as a student and a sub i've had to define basic terminology such as dead naming have witnessed ignorant microaggressions being said by staff and students that's going uncorrected as well as watching as the struggles of these marginalized voices within our schools are being ignored according to the gay lesbian straight education network in 2021 having a policy that clearly affirms a student's right to use name and pronouns aligning with their gender identity is essential for the health and safety of all students it's important for faculty staff and peers to make every effort to

040correct mistakes ensure they're not repeated and address any additional intentional misuse of a student's name or pronouns while meeting with multiple district employees they have referenced our district's obligation to treat all with dignity dignity defined by the oxford language dictionary as the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect currently as we can see through the policies that i have handed out to you guys we are not treating our trans students with dignity and we are also failing to comply with title ix regulations according to the national office of civil rights website they confirmed as of today that title ix covers all students and staff from discrimination on the basis of gender gender identity sexuality gender expression and pronouns and while this district strives for equity and cultural competency these policies are unclear

041discriminatory and neglectful when it comes to meeting the needs of these students and while a much needed discussion needs to be had involving the students and staff within the lgbtq plus community the goal today is to focus on the importance of professional development jenny betts a school climate specialist at west ed says if you don't feel accepted or have to hide something fundamental about who you are you obviously won't be present and fully immersed in learning so in order to be proactive today we're first going to talk about basic terminology as well as statistics over trans youth and then we're going to explore the power of language through professional development next examining k-12 trauma-informed care and finally concluding with our obligation to treat all with dignity it's time to properly educate our staff by listening

042staying accountable and committing to doing better thank you and i did just want to say those so what i handed you guys um that's the policy that i had gotten a couple weeks ago as well as like some corrections and then there is a letter in there from a district employee as well as a parent of a trans student who went to school here so i really encourage you to read that so yeah thank you thank you next we have katie colston hello my name is katie colster and i use she her pronouns i teach at raytown high school and i have for the last nine years i believe that most people have their hearts in the right place when working with our marginalized students however we as a staff lack the training and policy

043understanding of how to engage with transgender students i've witnessed students and staff being misgendered dead named and discriminated against for their existence within a space because of their gender or sexuality these moments have ranged from hearing microaggressions to slurs we must do better we have the ability within cultural competency to educate on how to interact with folks from all walks of life so let's do it as educators we know that in order to effectively teach students must first understand the vocabulary of the subject let me take a few moments to define some of the important words we will be using and tonight and are addressed to you gender according to the who gender refers to the characteristics of women and men that are socially constructed this includes norms behaviors and roles associated with being a

044woman or man as well as relationships with each other as a social construct gender varies from society to society and can change over time sex sex refers to the physical differences between people who are male female or intersex a person typically has their sex assigned at birth based on physiological characteristics including their genitalia and chromosome composition non-binary binary means composed of the two things in regards to this topic the binary refers to male and female some people whose gender is neither male or female use the term non-binary cisgender cisgender refers to people whose sex assigned at birth matches their gender identity for example i am cisgender queer queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or not cisgender pronouns gender pronouns are simply words that are that people use to refer to

045others without using their names using a person's correct pronouns fosters an inclusive environment and affirms a person's gender identity for example i use she her pronouns other commonly used pronouns are he him they and them dead naming is when a person calls a transgender person by their birth name when they have changed their name as part of their gender transition dead naming is invalidating and can be traumatic microaggressions are indirect subtle or unintentional acts of discrimination against members of a marginalized group in regards to addressing microaggressions in prevention and response to it is vital that we remember that impact matters more than intention finally cultural competency the american bar association defines cultural competence as a set of congruent behaviors knowledge attitudes and policies that come together in a system organization or among professionals that enables

046effective work and cross-cultural situations now that we all understand what these many words mean i'm going to pass it on to someone else to discuss some statistics regarding lgbtq students and why what we're advocating for tonight matters thank you [Applause] next we'll have tracy williams good evening according to the cdc there are approximately 1.4 million transgender students under the age of 18 in the united states that's approximately the size of phoenix arizona my name is tracy williams and i use she her pronouns and i have taught at the raytown school district for 20 years the statistics i'm going to give you and share with you this evening all come from the cdc the american civil liberties union and the gay lesbian straight education network everyone has the right to be themselves wherever they go including

047school in the raytown high school district we have we have young people whose appearance or identity doesn't correspond with the gender they were assigned at birth of those 1.4 million transgender youth i mentioned earlier report self-harming and an estimated 35 percent have attempted suicide these youth are our students they need our help and understanding and the primary reason i'm here is because my step-daughter is included in this group approximately one third of transgender students say they feel unsafe at school and are bullied at school members of the lgbt community are three times more likely to report that they don't plan on finishing high school we need to ask ourselves what our school district can do to combat this back in the fall at rhs our our cultural competency committee put together sessions so we could

048attend to better help our students it was one session about transgender students it was optional and it only lasted 20 minutes while this training was appreciated it's not enough of transgender students have experienced harassment in a k-12 setting only 20 of transgender youth say their families are very supportive this is where we need to be there for our kids while these statistics only represent one group of students that would benefit from comprehensive cultural competency training they are also one of the most at-risk groups which is why i highly i highlighted excuse me them today moving forward is essential that we develop an understanding of the diverse needs of all of our students so what do we do to improve the department of education suggests using welcoming and inclusive language which we've already discussed tonight ensuring

049school policies clearly and affirming students rights adopting policies that respect all students gender identities including safeguarding students privacies and adopting plans to guide staff on how to support students and communicate with families thank you next we have rachel morale good evening my name is rachel brown and i use she her pronouns i would like to speak tonight in support of raytown school district's goal to understand student differences through a cultural competency in order to better meet the diverse needs of all students as a high school english teacher who has been in the district for nine years i agree that this is an important goal to set as we all continue to learn and grow as educators as we pursue growth in this area i feel that it is past time that we redouble our efforts

050to train staff in a variety of topics that will lead to greater cultural competency this includes but is not limited to practices of inclusion to support our lgbtq students and staff to be clear this is a safety issue unfortunately i have been a direct witness to the harm caused by this lack of knowledge i care deeply about my students my colleagues and our entire raytown community and i know that we can serve them better when we establish common language we foster a more productive and intentional learning environment the same is true in my classroom i don't expect that my students know all of these terms before they arrive instead we review and learn them together once we know their meaning we can apply them in context this makes our analysis richer and our discussions more

051thoughtful i believe that we need the same approach to professional development and cultural competency we can't expect that every staff member knows these terms and understands how to use them thoughtfully with students we need to provide quality required pd to establish a common language and understanding this is an urgent matter and we need to treat it as such simply put words are powerful when we know use and understand lgbtq inclusive language we create a safer and stronger learning environment we owe it to our students to do everything that we can to meet their needs and i don't believe that we can do that without mandatory cultural competency training for all staff as well as diverse learning opportunities for our students i often talk to my students about word choice in their writing in my class

052they learn that word choice impacts tone the attitude of the writer of speaker and mood the feeling created in the reader or audience my students learn how to analyze word choice to identify the tone and mood in writing and how to alter their own word choice to communicate effectively with their reader and audience as a community of educators we can harness these skills to show students that we respect and love them for exactly who they are we can use the power of words to create an environment where students feel safe valued and accepted thank you for your time [Applause] thank you now we'll have john garoppolo my name is john garofalo and i use season pronouns and i've taught at red town high school for nine years as a high school english teacher i feel

053best when i can walk into my classroom feeling prepared i know we have many meaningful professional development hours every year lgbtq plus topics have consistently been absent with the lack of focus on these topics and the teacher education programs that many of us came through it can be difficult to know exactly how to foster a culture of inclusion and acceptance in our classrooms simply put teachers are currently underprepared to accomplish this fundamental classroom goal for all students luckily there are many research-based resources available to assist great time in implementing meaningful professional development in on lgbtq plus topics here are four lgbtq professional development resources that come from reputable and long-standing organizations the glsen which stands for gay and gay lesbian and straight education network this is an organization that offers professional development resources targeted towards

054teachers and administrators a guide on developing inclusive curriculum as well as practical back-to-school handouts for teachers learning for justice which is formerly teaching tolerance they have a best practices guide and they that includes a policy audit a student bill of rights and anti-bullying and harassment policies pbs has uh lgbtq plus identity toolkit for educators and this includes professional development webinars reproductibles for teachers and much more and then finally the human rights campaign welcoming schools initiative which is a bullying prevention program that has book lists for uh educators and uh has practical handouts on how to respond to anti-lgbtq plus language in the classroom this is by no means an exhaustive list but it does serve to illustrate that the resources the district could lean on to implement this type of meaningful meaningful professional development that

055we're asking for today are readily accessible and abundant it is incumbent on the raytown school district to provide and require these professional learning opportunities for all staff members as teachers we need the tools to lead the conversation about lgbtq plus topics with confidence in order to foster a culture of inclusion and acceptance thank you [Applause] thank you next we'll have emily barks hello good evening my name is emily barks and i use she her pronouns i teach music at little blue elementary staff at little blue this year have been receiving trauma smart training i'm very thankful that the district has chosen to dedicate resources and provide the strength to our staff and i've personally learned so much more about trauma and its effect on students an early part of our training is learning to use

056a trauma-informed lens which is built by first asking these questions what has the person learned about relationships and about themselves and how has the person learned to survive when i reflect on my trauma smart training sessions i frequently think about my trans and gender non-conforming students and the trauma they most likely experience for example what has the child learned about relationships when they are frequently mocked for their gender non-conforming clothing choices what has the child learned about themselves when caregivers at their school refuse to use their preferred name and pronouns in order for the raytown school district to implement the trauma smart program with fidelity and move forward as trauma-informed caregivers we must have district-wide policies and regular training about how we can support a firm and protect our trans students no matter what school

057they attend i would like to conclude by sharing an excerpt from the letter that you all received just a moment ago by hayden this is written by one of my co-workers i'm writing to share the story of my son who he thought was a beautiful baby girl starting at the age of around four he began struggling with his mental health he was in the challenge program and excelled academically however he struggled with self-regulating his emotions and always seemed unhappy he got so bad that he developed an eating disorder and dropped to 99 pounds in sixth grade he was hospitalized and received extensive treatment he missed a ton of school but recovered almost fully right at the beginning of the pandemic he began his transition as a boy when this happened i saw a new side

058to him he seemed so much happier however when he returned to school the bullying was relentless we worked again with teachers counselors and principals in order to try to end this but to no avail however many teachers weren't very supportive even after all teachers were notified of his transition in a plan for him at the school was made teachers often dead named him in front of the class one teacher even emailed me to let me know that he had conservative values and that he had known him since he was a little kid and could not see himself calling the student anything else besides his dead name he tried to advocate for himself as well when he did this other students would laugh at him and call him names one student gathered a whole group of

059their friends and targeted him each time he reported his grievances to me i would call the school counselor nothing changed it was incessant it got so bad we were forced to move we did not feel that our son was safe at his school thank you [Applause] hi my name is jenna bartz i use she her pronouns i am a band director at raytown high school in raytown middle school and i'm also a transgender woman um the most difficult part of my job is not classroom management or assessment or any of those teacher things the most difficult part of my job is overhearing students talk about my body and about my gender when they think that i can't hear them um this sort of thing is behavior that could be disciplined except that it's usually from

060down the hallway and passing period or from somewhere behind me in the cafeteria and i have no way of knowing who said the thing and sometimes it's only sort of overheard plus even even if the situation was more ideal it's always difficult to stand up to uh to discrimination and harassment when you're the target um in our trauma-informed training we learn about a fight fight or freeze response when confronted with trauma i've learned this year that i have a freeze response and i tend to just pretend i didn't hear the thing and try to go about my business like it didn't happen i'm an adult who's confident in my identity and not easily harmed by the words of children but i find these events very traumatic and difficult how much worse must it be for

061our kids as it currently stands our district policy which is designed to protect our transgender non-conforming staff and students is inadequate there are parts that are confusingly worded leading students to have questions about the extent to which they're really protected it also doesn't allow trans students to use restrooms or locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity which is a policy that the blue springs school district just lost a lawsuit over and they now owe over four million dollars in damages as a result our restroom policy is also very explicitly in violation of current federal title ix guidance which supports the rights of students to use restrooms that match their gender identity perhaps most egregiously the current policy allows for and seems to encourage forcibly adding students to their parents or guardians in 2021 a

062survey of nearly 35 000 lgbtq plus youth found that only one in three claim to have affirming homes we also know from research that there's a strong link between family rejection of lgbt youth and negative physical and mental health negative physical and mental health outcomes for them including being a risk factor for suicide out of a concern for the safety for our students we should not be adding them to their parents or to anybody without the student's permission i want raytown to be a safe inclusive and affirming place for all of our students but the policies in place right now don't support that vision our staff needs training from outside professionals on how to start creating a more inclusive culture and our kids need a board policy that is more thorough and clear in protecting

063them you have a document in front of you that lists a lot of suggested changes and some of our thinking behind those changes we hope that you'll read through it and take those things under great consideration thank you for your time [Applause] thank you all so much for your comment that ends our public comment period next we have the report on the raytown education foundation meeting okay raytown education foundation held its grant showcase on march and march meeting on march 24 2022 highlights from the meeting are as follows grant showcase the foundation held its grant showcase prior to its business meeting kim schneider created a video highlighting each teaching and learning grant recipient for 2122. grant recipients also attended to share additional information for board members and guests a hard copy was given to each

064one of us and if you look at it was this thing right here that'll tell you some more about the right the uh showcase thing teaching and learning grants 2022-23 the foundation approved the budget allocating more the amount of fifteen thousand dollars for the 22 23 teaching and learning grants applications were discriminate distributed breakdown quality staff members by the breakdown qualities email major saver discount cards and the 2022 major saver discount card fundraiser began in its rebound from the pandemic this year's campaign generated 5 539 for elementary schools and five thousand six hundred and twenty nine dollars for the foundation raytown education foundation has partnered with major saver for twenty years raising five hundred and thirty four thousand five hundred ninety six dollars for raytown quality schools and two hundred and seventy thousand one hundred

065fifty eight dollars for raytown education foundation over these 20 years class of 2022 scholarships education foundation received applications from 67 students from the class of 2022 because students may apply to more than one scholarship by the raytown education foundation common application form 450 scholarship applications were generated raytown education foundation has 70 readers who serve on the selection committee to determine the 2022 recipients breakdown high school awards night raytown school awards night will be when the scholarships are announced and scheduled as follows raytown south high school it will be tuesday april 26th at 6 p.m and raytown high will be tuesday may 3rd at 6 30 p.m raytown education foundation will host an annual scholarship reception on wednesday may the 18th at 4 30 in the large conference room at the arc and this is an

066opportunity for the donors to meet the winners of their scholarships trivia night put this on your calendar postponed from 2020 raytown education foundation will host his first trivia night fundraiser on saturday april 23rd at saddle creek at stables and vineyards a special raytown round will be part of the trivia categories more information information regarding this event and registration is available on the raytown education foundation website so get a team and join it's fun that's it sir thank you very much next we'll have the approval of consenogen mr president i mean the board approved the april 11th 2022 consent agenda as presented second motion made and seconded materials steel things like that that probably mr wise is going to use for something most likely we had a reef donation to south high as well for socks

067sanitary products for students at a 20 donation to south high athletics thanks for the donations now for our finished business the naming of raytown high school coral rehearsal room mr president i moved that the board officially named it is this for the atlantic center no it's just from the acquiring officially name the choir room thank you at raytown high the noel wilkerson brendan yates coral room and wave section four and five aboard policy just quickly and mr landers can comment as well because he's part of the committee uh requests came from alex culture to have the the inquiry room named after noah fulkerson uh and brenda yates who's retired brenda is retiring noah's been retired for some time but noel was there for 30 some years uh the choral program the choral director uh and

068it's fitting that that they he bestowed this honor uh they tested a lot of students lives during that time so we would recommend that the board move forward with this request mr energy anyway i had the privilege of starting my teaching career with noel ferguson when he was teaching at the junior high and he was a wonderful choral music director there and and did a lot of things with our young people in the middle school or junior high and then went to the high school and and i don't know the exact number but it's astounding number similar to what coach azure did with his number of kids and went to state and what have you and what have you but his choral group got one rating of state and that's equal to all state all-american

069things for oh i'm not going to guess the number but it was more than 25 some years uh at the state level in a row that his choral groups got once and uh it's very deserving uh to do this and and then brenda she played that piano she's gone through probably five of them in all her commitment so anyway when this was brought to us and i was asked to be on the committee uh i think it's a wonderful opportunity to honor these two for what they've given to our students here in the district will there be any kind of ceremony or anything or i don't think an official ceremony not but i'm sure the cultures can figure something out to where when we uh depending on like at the wellness center and the aquatic

070in this pool area we are uh putting up uh coach ager's name the jim asir aquatic center i think exact name you know that's what's going to be it'll be something similar placard on the wall or you want to speak to may 14th they're doing at retirement celebration for brenda yates they're doing a concert for her um and so i think the plan was if approved they would have everyone come back and see the new renovations in the space as well as have a little ceremony so if we don't approve it we can't have the retirement i guess she's still retiring yeah i'll say um i have not met mr fulperson but i know his music has impacted even my kids and our family and um helped with when one of my kids went to

071state and so she is an incredibly gifted um accompanist and we're very lucky to have pet hair for as long as we have as far as i know at least until recently uh mr poglarson still has involvement with some of our kids helping them prepare for contests and things like that i know he did with my daughter he still does and he probably would want me to say this but he also funded multiple students trips to new york this year oh wow that is great jerry oh there we are it's good as you see we got our folks outlasting our policy uh next we'll be starting on finnish business and um the policies here to adapt mr president i mean that the board adopted policies jhde behavioral risk assessment dlca travel expenses and gcpb resignation

072professional staff members second motion made and seconded so the policy committee has any kind of report or anything or they just don't know that read this policy committee yes we do support these recommendations all right uh next we have our oats of office for natalie johnson mary bobby saltbury bobby and natalie if you'll raise your hand repeat after me i do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of missouri i do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of missouri and that i will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of school director and that i will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of school director and and for the raytown c2 school district

073county of jackson state of missouri school district county of jackson state of missouri to the best of my ability according to law congratulations thank you [Applause] nancy salisbury please stand darling and my granddaughter [Applause] all right congratulations thank you all right next uh election of 2022-2023 board president this is my favorite part of the year plus it's the last time i get to do it so those of you that that are want to be board president thank you for the donation but it's not going to do you any good okay let's uh let's go ahead and have a motion for the 2022-2000 board president i made a motion for eliza burton for the 2022-2023 board president a second okay what's the main second [Laughter] okay are there any other we're going to need one of

074those pies for the face before uh uh no others do i hear a motion to close nominations second best i'll second it all right congratulations mr burton thank you congrats thank you [Music] [Applause] we gotta see it i thank you all for your support and just for what you do and i just want to make sure that you all know that i just want to make sure that your your concerns and the things that you hear and the things that you want to do that i've opened here to that and i'm always uh willing to uh for suggestions of things the way i can be better and i'll definitely be better this year than i was last mr president i believe the vice president second third cease all right motion is made and motions cease

075to cease nominations so let's take a vote okay all right all in favor all right okay there it is [Applause] this point um i just want to say thank you it's an honor and um privilege to serve not only this board but the constituents teachers and families in our district and so i'm very grateful for the trust that you put in us and and i'm here for to balance you yeah oh shoot all right appointment of delicate and alternate to attend missouri school boards association 2022 igniting great ideas summit i would like to do this if nobody else did it last year i would too and no one else i will if someone else wants to though someone else but all right yeah grant writer contract renewal mr president i made a reading agreement between

076school district and so consulting for llc for the amount not to exceed forty nine thousand five hundred dollars second mostly made in second hit yeah we're gonna need that all right elementary ela resource adoption mr president i know that the board of education adopt amplify is our k-6 ela resource for the 2022-2023 school year in the amount of one million seventy eight thousand dollars eight hundred seventy eight thousand eight hundred and eighty eight dollars and forty eight cents second made in second is there any discussion about this i'd like to make a comment though i'd say this is our typical seven year rotation for ela materials a big shout out to jen pearson as well as the elementary administrators and elementary staff we're going about this very arduous process of deciding which materials we're going

077to best support our staff and the sort of reading writing programs now and after elementary schools we feel we feel like we found a very good replacement for owners i just want to say thank you for all the hard work and jen pearson really it's she did it she did a lot of work on this and she deserves accommodations thank you how does the cost of a million dollars compared to what we were doing before uh more expensive prices have certainly gone up uh we could actually budget for about 850 um but this is a little higher than we're anticipating one of the nice things about this particular product though is it's going to replace the products we currently have in place ixl and raz plus so we'll see some savings there not equaling the

078200 000 that we're going over but this is actually it was competitive bid process this is just what the products cost now so which budget is this coming out of it doesn't it's here all right next we have purchase of touchscreen chromebooks for k1 mr president i move the board approved purchase chromebooks from cw cdwg in amount of and 60 257.60 second motion segment so all right now we have the replacement of south high school's upper gym floor mr president i knew the board approved cv construction for apparent replacement of the upper gym floor raytown south high school in the amount of 182 thousand dollars with 10 percent contingency of 18 200 for a total of two hundred thousand two hundred dollars second wishing magnus seconded i'm sorry i was just gonna ask the question

079this is uh but uh related to the bond correct you but the project itself is something it's a really a safety and usage issue it's in the main there's moving bleachers that come out and swing at an arm on that upper stage through the years there's four joists that run one way and then another sleeper that goes across it with plywood on top of that through the years as that has broken to where they can't safely roll out anymore so we need to pull the floor up repair repair the framing issues and then put the floor up with the butcher effect um all right motion passes all right next we have a replacement for a walk-in freezer and cooler at herndon culinary mr president i moved the waterproof excel construction for the replacement of herndon's

080culinary cooler and freezer in the amount of ninety two thousand four hundred and ten dollars with a ten percent contingency of nine thousand two hundred and forty one dollars for a total of 101 651 on this um as far as we never did really find out what was wrong right so we're the process of doing that we're casting a broad net with all involved to get that rectified the the it's functioning now but barely when you get taken care of now where they can have it functioning fully by august when kids come back we're working with shelley's legal team to take action against contractors all involved in that situation okay let's get your question right so they don't know exactly what so okay so while we are paying for this we should hopefully get reimbursed

081correct down the road what will we do with the the existing one it's it'll get thrown away we can't sell like johnson county culinary [Laughter] you always put it on facebook oh craigslist storm shelters crazy storm shelter all right let's sorry i am sorry i apologize i am in another world i think so i should point we should point out here just so people will know because we did discuss this in finance committee meeting and this we do expect to be at some point reimbursed for that so it's not like we're spending another 92 000 not a brand new runner so it's just something that needs to be repaired but we do expect to be reimbursed for the job not being done right the first time all right and now we have a performing arts

082center and performing arts center and gymnasium pre-construction cost and construction manager um yes mr president i'm going to approve i'm going to move forward i approve to move forward with issuing an rfq for construction manager services second motion made and seconded discussion comments on this we discussed this also tonight at the finance committee meeting and this no cost was at this time it's just moving forward with the receiving information from possible candidates and steve you're exactly right mr moore so with the board's approval we will issue the rfq the process will be that once we receive that information back from potential construction managers we will review those along with the finance committee and then bring a recommendation to the board for work and we did approve you guys reminded last meeting we did approve of

083going using the construction manager um so this is just our rfq for it motion passes next we have our uh ray team 2022 2023 salary proposal [Applause] good evening i'm amy lowe smith i teach special ed at norfleet and i'm also the vice president of raytown msta i was asked to make this a few less slides so i'll just keep it a little short enough right person um tonight i would like to introduce megan willett she is from raytown south high school dennis hetzel he's from blue ridge elementary we have brian weiss from hernan career center and i believe the only other two members of ray team that are here is marlene bilbis and steve shelton the rest of the members unfortunately cannot make it with us tonight i do want to read the mission

084statement as i know since the last time we presented we have new members to the board our mission statement at ray team is a collaborative team working together towards a consensus to improve the quality of the workplace and recommend an affordable and competitive compensation package for all employees of the raytown c2 school district because the last time i presented all was not exactly understood by all members this goes for classified certified and administrators so all means we do this for everybody our norms i'm going to just skip to the two that i think that is super important to all of us is that remember that you represent others when we're on this team we are very mindful that we represent all employees of the district we represent classified even though there might be more certified

085people in our meetings we definitely keep them in our lens and make sure that we're working for them and we take responsibility for this process all the things that we bring to the board have weighed heavily on our mind we've talked about them for countless hours went home thought about it and come back again nothing that we ever bring to you is just a quick anything it's very thought out and debated um sometimes more than other things but um until we get to the end everyone is equal and we don't let things pass if we think something isn't right for a certain group we really want to move forward in making sure that's rectified so ratings schedule and method of gathering information we met in person in september december january march and april in october

086we sent out our survey to which 597 employees responded to the survey we do thank those employees who took the time to complete the survey we noticed that our numbers are down this year in the past we've been able to go to buildings and talk to people and explain to them the survey and what we do and how things are done due to cobid we haven't really we weren't able to do that we look forward to doing that again next year and really explaining especially to new people what we do and what that process looks like and how taking this survey we listen to everything we look at every single comment there's people that read over it so we didn't get that opportunity that's why our numbers are down for this information that we wanted

087to talk about from the an update from our previous survey and it was noted that not having block scheduling at the middle school has improved lost plan time and has decreased student behavior issues we would definitely like to thank the board of education for the 500 stipend it was greatly appreciated by all the teacher of the year committee we would like to possibly revamp and we're talking to people about that how that perceived those procedures happen um technology tutorials were requested to like post videos on how to do things like um clock in for those people who clock in and access and change your voicemail because frequently we get logged off and you might forget how to get back into your voicemail system also we talked about and we passed on some information that for

088wednesday ge care if the ratio of students to adult can be met with ge staff then building staff should be let go so that would be ias would go to ge and assist in ge if we don't have more than a certain number of kids please release those ias to do other duties in the building that they may have so we're working on that also and recommendations okay our current recommendations we recommend that uh the board continue virtual conferences option with all conferences pre-k through 12 being on wednesday night and all day thursday it's much easier um can you continue to have two building setups per building ies need to have the ability to print from their device ray team recommends continuing to use ray team model as the official negotiation team for the raytown

089c2 school district when you go to the salary schedule recommendations rate team study dollar salary scheduled provided by evergreen right our rate team recommends that we keep our current certified classified administrative salary schedules we believe that the current schedules are more beneficial to the vast majority of district employees ray team does not recommendable implementation of a salary compensation study the recommendation we are making has a similar cost yet provides more equitable compensate compensation across the district as a whole and then recommendations for board of education action and then salary and cost to implement to add 500 to the base of the salary equals 900 000 giving one step as equivalent to 1.8 million restructuring a classified seller schedule to reflect a two percent increase between each step uh is 250 000 restore the frozen steps

090from 2010 2011 2011 2012 would equate to about 850 000 give or take um so our recommendations currently are to add 500 to the base salary give one step and restructure a classified seller schedule will reflect a two percent increase between each step to be implemented for the 2223 school year this is truly previously approved by the board in 2019 and was to be implemented in 2122 also i'm not going to but there's a lot of things that were discussed and a lot of things a lot of options that you all have um everything that we put out there is information for you all and i know that you all have a lot of discussions as well as we do in conclusion rank team acknowledges and appreciates the efforts of the board has taken to

091renew staff morale and community pride in our school district um ray team acknowledges and appreciates the difficult decision the board is called upon to make as well as the time it takes to deliberate those decisions great team shares the same goal with the board of education to attract and retain a quality staff for raytown quality schools and now if you have any questions we'll be happy to answer them so according to like your recommendation it's going to kind of help mitigate just this disparity like when we have like teachers who've been in the district for a longer period of time and then like if we had like a new teacher coming into the district so it sort of mitigates that disparity is that correct that was the that was an evergreen study i believe that

092was what matt presented to us um and i think that are we going to set that up where they have that presentation as well so i appreciate you guys working right team always works hard and does great work so i agree we continue the collaborative process on negotiating i appreciate it i do want us all to remember the over five percent increase we made to pay last year which the board one of our goals was to increase our rank from where we were and we moved quite a bit higher in the rankings with other districts so that was something we definitely wanted to do but sometimes we vote on these in the same night that we have the presentation i don't i think the board needs some more time to look at some of these

093things and look at some of these scenarios and my reason for not wanting to learn tonight may be different some from some of your guys reasons but i think one of the things that we're willing to have some more discussion about is we spent fifty thousand dollars on a salary study and we need to know more about why you think why you think and why we think that we might think that should not be implemented we thank you for your time we also have decided to try and have a meeting in the next week or two and invite as many board members as you can come to that so that we can answer all those questions and show you both salary schedules sell for sale and how we determined that it would not benefit people

094who've been here seven years seven years or longer um so we have all that broken out for you and we'll schedule a meeting that if anybody can attend we'd like you to come and hear our explanations would you send that to rachel the date when you have that so that we can have it we'll get that probably tomorrow okay thank you you guys are valued and i know um as you get choked up i know it's been really some tough years and we value you and i want to keep all of our teachers you taught our children [Applause] thank you steve well he's coming up did you guys have any other discussions nothing else about uh benefits or anything like that this time around no no no uh good evening um you you have the

095uh analysis that i've provided and many of you have referenced in in the comments tonight first let me say we have a wonderful staff and ray team's been great to work with on the many years that i've served on ray team one of my roles on ray team besides providing this point of interest in my perspective is to provide financial impact financial forecasting and so the numbers that i've provided that many of you have seen actually go back to the budget i provided last june if you look at the fy 22 budget document i provided them at the june budget hearing it forecast significant deficits in the years to come and the conversation here recently was just a continuation of that conversation and that analysis the board's aware finance committee is aware that in the

096coming years we have to figure out how to balance our budget balance revenues and balance expenditures we have a professional and legal obligation to do that i know this this this district and this board has faced this challenge in the past this is not a new issue that this district has faced and we've always figured out a way to to make the numbers work and and and honor our staff for the great work that we do so i think it's wise to table the discussion uh let great team go back to the table uh bring some board members into the room to hear the dialogue and discussion and can continue this process so what questions you have for me yes sir what are the deadlines that we have to approve this for teacher contracts and

097what have you what what schedule are we looking at you know uh mr mr landers you've been the district uh many years and you've seen us approve salaries in june uh which is problematic from the administrative side to turn that around in a very short time frame uh here in the last few years we we've started to take it to the may board meeting last year we brought to the april board meeting for the time purposes that we had at that moment but doing it in may gives us gives us time i will tell you if we do move to the evergreen salary schedules it will will require acquire a significant amount of time and effort for our our human resources department as well as our technology team to move everyone because we're going to

098have to hand place every employee on the new salary schedule and that takes a lot of time but along with the fact that we're in hiring season you know dr milbus is hiring folks all the time we have to process those new hires as well so um you know if we if we implement the new salary schedule uh may would be the drop dead time to get that done and give us any type of any kind of hope to make that transition thank you i have another question about the salary study schedule uh i'm gonna i'm gonna we're gonna listen and see what what your guys's reasons are but let's say if we move forward without implementing the new the study how would it age if we decided to within the next year implement it

099at some point would it have to be updated or we could still up implement it later the only i believe the only updating that we would need to do is just to make sure that the market value for each of those starting pays is updated so you know obviously that point in time in which we determine what hypothetically uh as an example the starting pay for a bus driver that was here most recently so in a year that number may be different and so we just need to go through and update all those all those market value for those positions i am thankful that ray team understands and recognizes how important each and every one of you are to the entire board and how much you are appreciated um dr shelton you mentioned some financial

100concerns as well and we know that we have to keep our fund balance at a certain level could you share with us a little more about our financial concerns as we go into these considerations yeah definitely first of all we have a board goal that says that we will as a district be financially responsible and then we also have a board goal board policy that states that our balances will be at 15 or more uh typically we keep those between 15 and 20 they've fluctuated sometimes as high as 29 but we stay in that 15 to 20 range currently we anticipate ending this year around 23 imbalances uh that is being bolstered up by the esser uh two one two and three funds that we've received and will receive over the next year or two

101those balances depending on what the decision is of the board for next year could go from 19 down to 16 uh the following year they would drop below 10 percent of them the following year after that without significant changes in our expenses and revenues will drop below a level that we can't go to so uh at four percent the district is considered financially distressed uh and as well as there's some other factors that can go into that as well to trigger that designation but uh we are approaching that and we have we have a significant uh financial cliff coming in the next two or three years 24 25 and 26 are very important years for us financially and so as i said here at standard night and speak on this topic i'm looking specifically and

102solely through the lens of balancing the books and i know there are many lenses to look through um culture and climate staff retention all those all those things are very important but my my role my responsibility tonight is to speak from a point of fiduciary responsibility responsibility to ensure that the district remains solvent and strong financial condition and we've got to figure out a way and once again i'll go back to this we have done this in the past um we figured out a way to balance balance the books uh we're going to have to do that again but it's going to be significant we're looking at somewhere between 10 to 15 depending on once again what we do a 10 to 15 million gap that we need to fill and sometimes that's reducing expenditures

103sometimes that's raising revenues most typically it's a combination of both find ways to find a way to increase revenues find a way to reduce expenditures and there are some things we can do and jackie and i jackie vernon and i have been working on the list to to do both those things and it will it'll take a combination of both of those and it'll take the work of a lot of people to get that done but it has to be done there's no option we have to balance the books so have we ever faced a similar situation to this and like what have we done so that we can fit like people first sure so dr markley you know when he first came 14 years ago we faced this situation and we had to cut

104expenditures i want to say at that time three to five million dollars um and we've faced that uh scenario a couple of times at least one other time since that time eight percent of our operating budgets in in people it's in salary and benefits and that's common you know that's a pretty common percentage so there's no way to really get around making those type of reductions at 10 to 15 million without affecting without affecting people we're going to have to reduce on all sides of the ledger but it's going to it's going to impact the people in this district the staff and master greatly and the programs and then directly to the students yes you referring to basically if we agree with ray team's recommendation that this effect would be upon the budget that you're

105speaking out as in regards to the reduction in our balance i'm saying if the board does nothing we still have a financial cliff coming that we have to address if we if we do nothing it's my estimate it's about 10 10 and a half million dollar 10 and a half million dollar hole that we need to fill if we do nothing you're counting the money that we already have in a that we receive from the federal government in that yes sir either way there is a short no without question but in the past we've been able to find a way to industry educate this been a combination of reducing expenditures and increasing revenues it's been a combination and it's been dropping it's been reducing programs um that we offer and we have done nothing we

106have what is our the issue that we've been addressing since i've been on the board of trying to bring our teacher our staff salary up to something competitive with our surrounding districts that is that that issue and a lot of what ray teams mentioned is is the inequity in the in the pace here in regards to what's happened in the past and so part of that has been uh not giving increases in those years and then later on coming back giving increases and so we really gotta really got to be creative in this uh maybe more uh so i think that consideration i don't think there's no way we can do nothing because i mean we're just going back we're going backwards um so i would say we definitely gotta uh take the time to

107go to the meeting uh and i think as our as our swim coach told us it wasn't just his award it was all of us and this is and we've been talking about inclusion tonight and uh this is this is our problem and what we have to do so um until i said earlier i'm not i'm not scared and i'm not and i'm not i don't think we should go back so uh but we should we know what we got to do you know we have i mean we've heard we've heard a lot of we heard a lot of bad news in the last few months but um we still it's just opportunity for us to uh to to keep stay focused we got to set our priorities basically and our priorities are is our

108kids our goals are i i believe they're written in priority um and the students are first but the greatest asset to our students is our staff [Applause] [Music] and i'm not saying you don't need stuff but i'm just saying that we got ways to teach our kids and we gotta we gotta do it and and so and one group can't just take the goal of the low it is um evident from the work that ray team has put into this the collaboration that is going into what we've had presented today it is extremely evident that you know how to work hard to come up with solutions and to be innovative dr shelton has mentioned that our concerns in addition to wanting to serve you who serve our students is that we become fiscally or we

109remain fiscally responsible i am looking forward to hearing some innovative ideas from the rape team we know that certain things need to be considered such as attrition we need to look at things that are going on um someone mentioned earlier about some work that's going on in the facilities but it's going to take innovation and collaboration in order for us to have win-win situations um something else that i've noticed about the ray team and how you present and how you work together it is that there is no sticking your heels in the sand so i appreciate that i appreciate how you have worked so diligently and i appreciate us working together and having an opportunity to come up with solutions that work for our students for our teachers and for retail quality schools thank you

110i'm just gonna just to answer natalie's question so yes in years past we have had to freeze salary so yes it's been done and we had to cut programs and and since we made such great strides last year on raising where we were i think we went from 12 to six as far as pay uh in surrounding districts we do not want to do nothing because we do not want to go backwards so but that doesn't mean we can we don't want to do nothing it doesn't mean we can do everything so that's why we need some more time to look at this we want you to have a high morale and so and that's the goal people are teachers people first without you what do we have so but i also just wanted to

111reiterate the fact that that this study of finances is ongoing all the time and this what we're talking about is not a result of of overpaying or mismanagement or things we're in a good position because we've always paid attention to our finances but we're in a better position right now because of of the pandemic funds we just have to be honest with that we've got a lot of money and we're using that to our benefit to help our kids but that's not going to last forever and that's what we're talking about here when those funds run out we just can't keep doing everything that we've done with those extra millions of dollars that we received and because the state funding has stayed stagnant and looks like it's going to be stagnant again next year so

112those are all things that in two or three years are working against us so we've got to think about 2023 is the last year that we'll receive funds from the federal uh we more than more than likely we have about 18.3 million dollars coming in so three funds uh we're going to get as much of that this year as we can we budgeted eight million of that but whatever we can go get we will which tells me probably next year that fy 23 would be the last we can get in person in the budget projections that you have in front of you i've projected 8 million for this year 8 million for next from fy 23 and then 2 million for fy24 but more than likely we'll have it all in our possession if not

113this year this year next year i also want to make a statement to the teachers and to the staff i think that you can say about this board that in every year except in the year that we have to uh put back our foot on hold that this board has been in the mode of working and try to do what was best for our staff i think that is a testament to to the quality of people that are on the board so i just want to encourage you to know that our hearts are with your heart and that we're going to do the best that we can do and we all we have the overall district to be considered up to so i just want to reiterate what bobby says and um thank each of

114you for reaching out for the emails we've received this week for for letting your voices be heard i want you to know that we do read these we do hear them and we do hear you even if we don't always get around to responding we are very grateful for your feedback as staff within our district and thank you for for all the ways that you serve unseen we really appreciate it and i think whatever shortfall we have alan's going to write a check on his last day to make him pay us back as long as it doesn't have to be good all right i think uh this meeting that we're talking about you know there's there's the level of concerns and what and recommendations that you brought to us but it might be a good

115idea to bring some of that next level things uh that you talked about you said you know this would be good but we need to go let's take this first let us hear some of those other things give us something else to chew on what have you i've been in your committee before as a as a teacher and i know it's hard and you're trying to represent everybody and you do an excellent job but it's it's a tough job you guys have to do shelley correct me for mom maximum three board members gonna be ten or eighteen we have a fourth board remember that becomes a meeting so um we'll have to yeah so so no more no more than three okay good players to attend well additional board members on that tonight read those

116are all um house bill statute that's been passed and bringing these policies up to date so there's no reward action there then you have to take uh policy e okay that was allowing for our public comments mr president i move that the board adjourned the regular board of education meeting at 8 26 p.m second pass on those your past notes get out of here you guys did a good job