001The pledge will be said tonight by Rothy Theogarajin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Thank you. Next, we need approval of the open session agenda. We need a motion to approve the June 18th, 2025 open session agenda as presented. Motion. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Next is recognitions. Okay. Up first, Liberty Liberty High School senior Delaney Hilenbrink and Timberland High School seniors Cameron Bowen Tisdale and Cample Hull and Arwa Janju and Haley Weinhardt each received the distinguished student leader award from the Missouri Association of Student Councils. This award recognizes students who demonstrate superior student council leadership. Congratulations
002pictures. Okay. Okay. Three WSD students were selected for this year's Missouri Scholars 100. Here tonight, Liberty senior Rosh Shaw Thea Garajin and Timberland senior Maddox Riley were named to this distinguished list. The statewide program honors 100 of Missouri's top academic students. Up next, congratulations to the three WSD students for earning a first place gold medal at the State Skills USA conference. Liberty's Isabelle Smith in criminal justice, North Point's Kaylee Burns in masonry, and Timberland's Will Cfelt in power equipment technology. Congrats Sorry. Lastly tonight, congratulations to Dr. Mie Mestes, librarian at Boon Trail Elementary, for being awarded the 2025 Missouri Association of School Librarians Special Service Award. The Special Service Award recognizes a member who has provided significant service to the organization and/or school libraries. Congrats Congratulations everybody. All right. Next we will be moving on
003to 8.1 public comment period. The first speaker this evening is Maggie Bezenthal. All right. Good evening. I come before you tonight in response to a director's comments about immigrants last month. I'm a former immigration attorney who handled cases before citizenship and immigration services, the Kansas City Immigration Court, and the Board of Immigration Appeals. In the two and a half years that I practiced primarily immigration law, I met with people from over 40 different countries. Doing so gave me a whole additional perspective on why America is great. As I learned what these immigrants sacrificed, what they left behind, and what they endured to get here for their chance at an American dream. I want to educate the board that being present in the US without authorization, being undocumented, is a regulatory violation. It is not a
004crime. Holocaust specifically Awitz survivor Ellie Vel said in 1988 of Salvadorian refugees, "No human being is illegal. A person may be undocumented. People are not illegal." Next, I want to remind the board that when you speak of students in this district, you are speaking of children. Children who do not have the capacity to choose where they live or whether the right paperwork was filed for them. children who have the fundamental right to an education under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The US was one of eight countries represented in drafting this declaration which the UN General Assembly adopted in 1948. This declaration states that education is a human right legally guaranteed for all without any discrimination. UN member countries have the obligation to protect, respect, and fulfill the right to educate all children
005in their boundaries. I encourage you to read about actress Diane Guerrero. She was Isabella in Enkanto. She writes about coming home from school at age 14 to find half-cooked dinner on her stove after her parents and older brother had been arrested by ICE. She, having been born here, lived the rest of her childhood in the United States without her family. I sincerely hope that no one who's tasked with guarding the welfare and education of all WSD students wants to invite that fate for any of the children in our district. There are plenty of roles to take on in our community if you want to protect your tax dollars or assist in fulfilling an administration's political aims. A public school district's board of education is not one of these places. As a schoolboard member, your responsibility
006is to take only those actions which protect and enrich the education received by each WSD student, regardless of any students individual identifying features. If that is not what you're here to do, then please consider where else you can serve to achieve your personal priorities. The people in your chairs need to be for improving and protecting the education of all of our students. That's too important a job to be done by people with different aims. Thank you for your time. Please feel free to contact me if you want to discuss this further. I love sharing what I learned in my work and one of you in particular knows where to find me. So, thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker is Katie Hubard. Are you sure? Silence not compliance. One's limited view pass their blinder
007to their echo chamber is sorely mistaken where multiple people have spoken at this podium sent emails and also sent emails to represent represent representatives in opposition of a voucher system and public school budget cuts. History was made this weekend with 5 million people across 50 states that march against this very um issues along with veterans rights, education and more. Many programs are being severely cut to tunes of millions of dollars such as early childhood, SNAP, Medicaid, mental health access, accessibility for programs and disabilities. As you're cheering on this administration, the cuts they're making, you're making cuts directly to uh programs that directly affect our students. Many of these students got to graduation and got to that stage because of these services. Does their diploma mean any less to you by using those services and intervention
008programs? How many students are not going to be here to walk across that stage either physically on this earth or to be able to walk across that stage without those services that are being cut? What are we going to do to make sure these students get those services and to make it to that stage? It is our duty to protect all students regardless of their race, religion, immigration status, and who they choose to love. Again, as was mentioned prior, asking about immigration status of her students and birth certificates, birth certificates, and the cost to a district, it sent chills down my spine because how quickly did our administration go from going after criminals and gang beggars to grabbing children off school buses, graduations, school graduation, high school athletes on the way to practice, or regular
009scheduled court hearings? What are we going to do to protect our students on our property if they show up to take our students? What can we legally make sure that we're able to do that our teachers and administrations know how to handle to protect our students? Our board policy means nothing because our constitution apparently means nothing uh these days. Has our staff been properly trained with the directors and people and other people in this room. Well, not today at least. They want people or teachers to carry to help protect intrusives that come on the inside. Bold group glass is not going to do anything. That's a lagging uh response to a to a situation. Are you want them to ask for immigration status first since we we don't want to protect them? It's not how
010the process of what we need to do. So then my next question is how do you tell an immigrant looks like? I'm going to ask you this and I'm going to make you pause and what you think about this in your head. If your answer was anything other than you cannot tell by physically looking at them, then you are absolutely on the wrong side of history. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Next is district comments. All right, I'll be quick. Last week, the board and administration had the chance to visit the Reach Adaptive Learning and Samuelson early childhood centers. Uh it was incredible to see the progress that's been made and and how how amazing honestly the facility is going to be as we move forward with it. Um the current Reach Center lease will
011be expiring and it's very important that the building's ready to accept students ahead of the expiration of the lease so we can make sure that we can provide the services they need. That looks like it's going to happen. Again, the anticipated date is in November and we would move students over there to start second semester. So, we're well on track to be able to do that. Summer projects this year, we've taken on a lot as usual. Uh phase two of Boone Trail for the HVAC interior lighting and intercom system upgrades is currently in there. You can see some pictures going on that looks like it's in the middle rows there. Uh Holt the sewer and sanitary lines are in being replaced. Um, quite honestly, they were every bit as bad as what we thought they
012were going to be with the piping being incredibly thin to the point it was almost going to just break again. So, this was a needed project. Uh, the most high need areas are being are being replaced now. Uh, it's it this is a band-aid to fix a longerterm problem. So, we're going to have to keep working towards that as well. Uh, Timberland, we're doing a multi-phase buildingwide HVAC replacement. So that's going to again occur over several summers where we're replacing different aspects of the HVAC until we can get that a total replacement done. Uh additional work for building legacy or legacy buildings is also in process. Uh they're being bid out right now and we'll begin work toward the end of the summer and into the school year which should not impact our learning environments.
013So that is also continuing. Uh the end of the year uh it seems like it was forever ago now but it really wasn't that long ago. Uh the school year ended on a high note. a number of fun activities for all of our students such as the senior clapouts which was one of my personal favorites where kids get to go back to their middle schools and elementary schools and see those teachers who had such a profound impact on them. It's fun for the teachers to get to see how what that kit looks like now so they know what's going on with them. Uh we also had field days and transition days for our fifth and eighth grade students. And finally, my favorite day of the year occurred on June 1st when we celebrated the WSD
014class of 2025. It was so fun to watch those kids and the excitement of them and their parents. Uh we had over 1300 students graduate and we wish them the very best of luck in their future endeavors. Congratulations class 2025 and to all our students and staff. Have a great summer. All right. Thank you, Brian. Next, we need to approve the consent agenda. We need a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. Motion. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. We have no old business. No old business. So, moving on to new business. The Yeah, let's Yeah, that was the old business. Uh, new business 11.1 code of conduct update. So what I did here is uh I did ask the other Mr. Bishop uh
015to come and and be available for answers and things like this. The P it was put in the packet. There's an update as far as like a presentation as well. So you'll find the updates information related to both the code of conduct and the discipline. Uh Mr. Bishop's here to maybe answer any questions that anybody has instead of doing like a formalized presentation. So this is not an action that requires vote. It's just an update. Did anybody have any questions for him? Yeah, you can't let him off the hook this easy. I mean, we worked so hard on this. I we would need to ask some questions for sure. [Music] Just because I ask questions doesn't mean I don't like you. While uh Director Hanky is looking, I just like to take a minute to
016thank everybody um administrators from the building, from admin center, uh board members who've served as part of this process for the feedback. We started this a couple of years ago in creating a code of conduct. we had a a general idea of what we wanted. Um started heading toward solidifying a lot of the things that some of our buildings were doing anyway, putting some tighter parameters in. Uh making sure that we're consistent and collaborative across not only our buildings but also building to building and vertically as the kids grow in age. Um and then right now we feel like we have a pretty good product and then we just tweak it as we go each semester. if there's an addition, a deletion, a small edit, um we're making that and then ensuring that we are
017communicating to our teachers, our staff, our families, and our students of what those expectations are moving forward. So, a lot of work that's gone in and just wanted to take a a transitional moment to thank everybody um and to highlight um the progress. Okay, I got it pulled up what I was um looking at. and it's just the numbers where it shows just the um offenses from 23 to 24 and 24 to 25. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with these numbers. I mean, they are what they are. But we see um for semester 1, this is for um I think this is at a whole the the district it is at a whole. So, um, for 2425, we saw an increase in inschool suspensions, um, first semester, and I'm just wondering, is
018that due to um, maybe the students getting used to the new rules and standards that have been set forth, or um, is it expected to see that's on the is that under the discipline? I'm just gonna make sure we have everything covered for the code of conduct before we move to discipline. Sorry, I really didn't mean to. Did Yeah, code of conduct is before discipline. Okay. Anyway, I just want to make sure did anybody have any code of conduct questions before we move on? Please. Real quick before just to stay in that order, I I like the addition of the community community service aspect um when it happens at the end of the semester. Is there any thought to putting the option out there perhaps as schools just mentioned to be able to do community
019service to lessen the amount of time a student could miss and understand like leave that to the discretion potentially of administration or the superintendent on on what that would be because obviously not all offenses would be eligible. But I do like that addition. Yeah, I think when and this is what I I'll say I kind of spearheaded a little bit of this one. And I think the thought process was we really didn't have any opportunity for them to reduce in semesters. When I had talked to some of the building administrators, Brian and I had a conversation, Jerry and I talked about it. I just didn't want to jump too far because I really have a heart and passion for this one. I didn't want to go too fast and say, "Hey, we can do it
020this this at this time." So, I felt like those natural breaks really would help to support and help the administrators because really it is a heavy lift on those assistant principles also because that's who I ask to track everything. I think it progressively I could see where you're going. I would like to do some of that. We could do it at natural breaks, spring breaks, and everything else, but at this point we were just kind of doing summer break and then that would that winter break because they're extended delineated breaks and then we can see what's the the buy in. I'm also working to build like I don't know if you've seen this the community service forum, but working to build more community agencies. So if anybody has anybody that wants to take in community
021service representatives, that would be great. But we're working with some agencies with that to try to expand that to provide more opportunities because that is one issue we do run into is the opportunities that are provided that we think are appropriate for that. So and Brad I think from my side that was a go slow to go fast. So we really wanted to kind of we piloted in one building to see how it would go and then we want to implement this and get some feedback on how it works. How much is it working? Is it doing what we need it to do? are the community service outlets. really what we're hoping to accomplish like we want students if you're going to get if you're going to remove your discipline through you know working in
022the community to actually have a true community service where you're giving back and so I think this is a great year for us to kind of see let's see how this goes and then really talk to our community service partners too like what would that look like if you try to do it throughout the course of a year is that something you can do you know you find a lot of times especially around winter break everybody's looking for some help during you know family serving wheels and doing all that kind of stuff. So, I think in the future we could look to expand that, but right now we really just want to get some feedback and see how it goes. Yeah. No, I think it's great. I'd just love to maybe like put something for
023January to or you know, recap how it's going because I think expanding that going forward would be great. Well, Vice President, Wel, one thing I haven't even had a chance to talk to these guys about because I just was able to compile it. We've actually had three kids finish their community service. So, it was two a two-day, a three-day. We also had a student finish 11 days already. So they were able to work he worked 40 hours that first week he was out in order to replace those days. So we are seeing success already. I mean three is great in my opinion. So I'm pretty excited to hear that. Yes sir. Yeah. Do you have any thought any consideration ever for making this the community service beyond school property? Yeah. So that's certainly something actually
024Brian and I had a long conversation about that and what it looks like and I know we have some administrators are looking forward to that. We do worry and that's something I've talked to Pat about of what's our legal ramifications. Do we have any liability issues? So, those are things that we wanted to slow down and let's see how this works and then come back to that. I would personally like to see that. I mean, I think it's something we we definitely are interested in and I know I have some buildings that are very much interested in campus beautifification. You know, those kinds of things that I think would be great in the future. We just got to make sure liability wise and then what can they do because like one concern I would have
025director Lewis is they really can't be around the cleaning cub or uh cleaning chemicals would also be concerned okay are we lifting are we lifting appropriate are we team lifting and and that supervision falls on those custodial staff so it's kind of putting that in place and you know trying to direct where we would be if we would do something like that I guess I should weigh in So, um I'm trying to remember, wasn't there a cap on the amount of community service you could do in a week? You can do 40 hours. That's the cap. Okay. So, we did 40 hours basically with the point of you cannot go above and beyond that and you can only work six days in order to accumulate those 40 hours. So, like I couldn't have somebody do
02610 hours a day. We weren't going to do that. So what I had with that particular student that did that and I was working with that administrator, we had to go through and I really wanted to look at what does his time sheet look like as we're doing through this. So the kid works six days to average is 40. Um and then the verification process of what it looks like too, but yeah, we capped it at 40 at that time. How many hours are in a school day or does it are we just going off of days? I just went off of days. So six hours equates that replaces one day. So six hours will replace one school day. So if you look at a school day and you take out passing period, you take
027out lunch, that really equates to about a six-hour academic time, which is why what I determined was adequate to make up that time for a suspension day. So, okay, moving right along. So, the discipline numbers. So we see a little bit of a spike from um the prior school year to this past school year in in school suspensions and then again in second semester um an increase from the prior year to this past year in out of school suspension. So do you have any idea of um why that occurred? Is it because of the changes that were made? Is it Yeah, what I would tell you is and and I wish it was pulled up right now. I go grab my computer if you don't mind. I can do that too. depending on what area
028you're looking at, whether it's elementary, middle, second, or high school will kind of depend on what I believe we think the theory is. Elementary, what you've seen somewhat of is we're seeing an increase in elementary because of the way that the coding changed. So, what it used to be in elementaryaries is every building kind of had their own they were putting in we had Google forms, we had all that. When we implemented focus, it became that one centralized thing. And we definitely Laura and I expected to see that when we talked to Jerry, we we expected to see a spike in that situation in all areas. Secondary, I think what you run into at secondary really in a second semester is, hey, we've got through that grace period. We've kind of worked through this and
029we look into we've implemented all these tier one strategies. We're implementing all these things, you know, to try to support. You see the writeups, administrators start saying, "Hey, we're we're doing this through loss of privilege, through detentions." And then that progressive discipline progressively increases which is why you're going to see an increase in your in school and out of school suspensions. It's certainly something that I look at. Yeah. I think you couple that with we gave a little bit more prescribed discipline and consequences and so we kind of took away some of the in order to be consistent as a district when the code of conduct was written and the committee decided we wanted to have some more prescribed like hey this is the second offense you go to in school suspension for this. And
030so then you couple that with the focus referral systems and it it really just kind of lends itself into that and I think it was probably a little bit more even consistent enforcement. Again that that code of conduct is very different than what we had before and it it really kind of tightened down and it did what the board was hoping to do at that time which was address behavioral issues. So I think for our standpoint, it's now looking at and seeing as we evaluate it over a couple year window, is it too strict? Is it not strict enough? What what does it look like? And I think that's why that committee met again this year and it'll meet again next year just to continue to seek that feedback and look at this data. And
031also build on that your point let's say a student gets in school suspension for two hours that becomes a point two. So that also includes so when we look at these it's really instances of where in school was not total days or anything like that. It's just an instance of it. So, right. And I I mean I would agree that we would see an increase um and then we're going to chart next year. I would Oh, yeah. I would think that we would see a decrease then again next year just because we're we're setting those standards for those students. They're they're understanding it this year and then next year they'll understand it. Just a quick hopeful one. Um I see you've got the breakdown like 13% received office referrals but then only two and 3%
032received ISS of the overall numbers are we seeing that there's a number of repeat offenders or is it across the board there seems to be so what I would tell you director bezenthal is this I should say secretary bezenthal would be what I've seen at the secondary level and Laura really digs in that elementary what I say is my interpretation of that is is it's 31% received an office referral but it was only 16% that got multiple office referrals. So that that's where that data is very factual but it's also a little skewed in the aspect of that that referral is also including a conference a warning for tardies a hey a teacher will you talk to Johnny because Johnny did something. So all of those are now documented focus because you know we had
033required them to do that. So that 31% is absolutely factual. 31% of students did give referral but 16% in the high school and our secondary levels are repeat offenders. So and then in all honesty your OSS and IS repeat offenders were about 8% at the secondary level. So it's not it is some of those kids that we need to talk about what interventions what per you know strategies have we do and how are we going to start doing more you know more supportive interventions to help students and the buildings. Any other questions on discipline update? No. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to 11.3. We need approval for the final bus route. Any uh we need a motion to approve the final bus route. To approve the final bus route. Second discussion. I
034believe David pulled. Yeah. Thanks. I think last year I asked the same question. I have it pulled out. Um I think last year we ended up changing the approval to the acknowledgement of receipt. I mean, saying that I'm approving all these bus routes when all it is just a list of names. Um, I I don't want to put my name on saying I approved it when I haven't even seen the routes. Uh, so to me, my motion would be that we change the the voting category from approval to acknowledgement of receipt. I I Pat, I recall. I think we did that last year but I don't I don't Is this the statuto one? Yeah, this is the statutory that per DESIE. So you have to we have to submit in October the the quote finalized
035bus routes. Uh then if you make any revisions after that you're required to submit them again to DESIE by June 30th. So it's it is definitely a formality. That's that's truly what it is. Uh but it's a DESI formality that we have to submit that way. Um, the DESIE language says approved by board. It doesn't say authorized. So, I don't I I vaguely remember that conversation. I feel like we might have done that. I can't swear to it, but I do remember that discussion. Uh, my only concern then would be that Desi and Hold on. Give me a second. I've got it on my phone. I can pull it up real quick and read verbatim what they said. So the uh the regulation says that the routes are required to be approved by the local
036board of education by the end of October and any revisions to the routes by June 30th. So it sounds like we do need to say these routes are required to be approved by the local board of educ education. Any other discussion on the matter? So then this is being presented because there was changes made to Yeah, we they they make changes, revisions pretty frequently, things as small as a bus stop change, a time change to full scale route changes. Um some of that occurred when you do your writership numbers. Uh and then some of that occurred in the the winter when you redid your writership numbers and looked at that. And then quite honestly trying to figure out how can we reduce routes with vacancies and different things like that. we had issues with with
037our route efficiencies. David, yes, thank you. Yeah, I I understand the point and and I'll resend my request for a modification. I do think it's important though given the sensitivity of this subject and it's one of the biggest hot buttons right now that we have with the community. Um, I think there needs to be more communication on not just what we're going to do, but we've done been doing the same thing relatively speaking. I don't mean that to be negative, but relatively the same thing for a few years now, and we're getting the same results. I'd like to hear from the staff that is in charge of the transportation. What are they planning or trying to do differently to so that we don't just repeat insanity? Yeah, and we can I mean I can tell
038you from our level what we're doing. Um if we want to bring the transportation administration team in here and kind of have a discussion, we can absolutely do that. Put it on a board agenda. We can do a whole workshop centered around transportation. Um from our end, what we're doing is Dr. Lebr's going to start really overseeing, you know, looking at efficiency, looking at ways that we can maybe improve efficiency, absolutely improve communication. Some of the other things that we're doing right now, we we have the app that you can now download where parents can track it as well as buildings can track when a but when a bus is going to be late when it comes to employees. Um Dr. Neil, who was hired on, is going to be conducting stay interviews and doing
039some culture and climate stuff within the bus routes to see or within the bus garage to see why or what's causing people to leave or why or what's causing people not to come here. So, we're looking at it from kind of a two-headed monster here of what's going on. Uh, from a communication standpoint, that's another area that we're looking at. What are the procedures that are being utilized? Where are they breaking down at? What's causing those to break down? Uh, we piloted the app with our ESY kids this year. This summer, uh, we've gotten some really good feedback on things that need to be improved and things that are working well. So, that's been an effective pilot for us. Uh, for instance, we caught that the buildings weren't able to access the app at this
040point and get the alerts. So, what we had to do is kind of put a dummy account in there so they would get the same alert that the parents got until that can be corrected. So, it's little things like that from that standpoint that we're getting. Um, we also, you know, we're going to talk about it here, the agreement with 4894, that increase in base pay and top-end pay for drivers that puts us well second in basically both categories and and the surrounding area. So, and a reduction from back from 10 steps to five steps uh has was a big part of what that negotiation group included as well. So, yeah, I agree with you banging your head. The definition of insanity is continue to do the same thing. And so, it you know, we're
041not going to continue to do the same thing next year. We'll have a better plan that we can absolutely communicate and we have some ideas on how we think it's more effective to communicate than what we've done in the past. So, that's that's our goals right now. I appreciate that, Brian. When you say we're going to present, it's June, schools, buses start running in August. So, when are we going to have a plan that we can share? A more formalized plan. To me, it'll be to you guys. It'll be something like this. We can submit it many different ways. If we want to do a public presentation, we can talk about here's the plans we intend to utilize, see how they work. Um, I would say we'd be able to have you something July at
042the latest for that. Yeah. You know, from my perspective, it's just the parents want to know when things are going to change and why they're cons consistently the the route that gets nicked. Um there there's all kinds of other questions. Now, you hear a lot of complaints and that are valid. I don't know what type of audience we'd get if we'd hold a session, but I really believe that being available to talk through that going into another school year would be important. Thank you. That's all I had. Anybody else before we take a vote? Okay, we have a motion on the table to approve the final bus route. All in favor? I I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Next. 11.4. We need a motion to approve the facility needs assessment as presented. Motion. second question. Um,
043so I guess my question is, um, out of all the people that submitted their bids, Poner was seven times less expensive um than the highest bidder. four times less expensive than the next lowest bidder. I'm talking 41,955 compared to the next lowest bidder at 175,000. Um, how does that or I guess why would that happen? you want. I mean, I'm assuming that the people that are bidding on this are going off of uh standard market estimates and they think they're competitive because they were all kind of in the same neighborhood except Honer who was four times less than the next lowest bidder. Yeah. Um, speculation on that would be that uh it's the 20-year history of Honer has with the district, knowing our buildings, knowing what, you know, they have a lot of the leg
044work already done that it's going to take to do this project. Um, you know, Zumalt did something similar. Their architect also was significantly lower than any other outside architect. any outside architect is going to have to spend, you know, a lot of time just gathering plans, getting the information about what we currently have where Honer already has that and and can, you know, doesn't have to do that side of it, doesn't have to invest the time and and resources to gather the historical knowledge. Um, so they're able to to do that without with a lot less labor. So, are you saying with Honer knowing our buildings, um, were the other biders not given all of the same information as far as what exactly we're going to be needing? They were all given the same information
045as to what we need. Honer already has the knowledge of what our buildings are. They have all of our plans. They have access to everything that we already currently have. They know the current state of our facilities. These outside companies don't know anything about what our current buildings are, what the age of any of our products, you know, the the the buildings that we have, the condition of any of the uh existing facilities. Um, so you know, I I I that's what I attribute it to is just the the working knowledge that they already have and being comfortable of what um uh you know, we are we have what we're looking for um and the time that it would take uh to do that because again they don't have to do the leg work to
046figure out where we're at on all of our buildings. Josh, I don't know if you have any other thoughts on that. No, I agree. Right. Just just another concern. Um and I had expressed this in a prior meeting. You know, Honer comes in with the lowest bid, but then we see an influx of change orders. Um so I'm just wondering if we're going to see that type of behavior continue. I when we were touring the reach building I was talking with somebody I think we're at negative change orders currently with honer on the reach and early we're at 15 correct yeah there's always going to be change orders in a yeah this is not a change order project this is a this is the price that they are proposing to deliver the work that we
047are requesting in the RFP um so there's not a this is not a change order process process. This is this is the this is not construction. This is consultation. So, they are agreeing to perform the work that we're requesting in this RFP for that amount. Yeah. For us, we put out the RFP. Here's the scope of the work. This is everything you have to do. Don't care who bids. Don't care about anything like that. If we don't get a bid, we accept, then we go back out again. But the scope of the bid is this. whoever accepts it or whoever we award it to. You have to in order to get paid complete the scope of the work. So there's not a change order. It can't it won't happen like we already know what the
048scope is. So when you provide that each company will look at it and make the determination what they feel like they can do it for. How much is it going to cost them to do it? Um again purely speculative. it it would probably make sense that owner's been with the district that long so they do have a lot of that information instead of having to go we don't turn around and provide all that to them like the scope tells them what they have to do and find the information themselves. So part of the reason we went for this is you know some of the feedback from Prop Led kind of an outside look from a quote trained company to do that. Um, some of it is, you know, we have an executive director of facilities
049and we got three million square feet of of land and and buildings that we have to continue do. And so for us, it was trying to weigh that that cost value to this versus his time and the the the district's time. Um, he did a lot of work, you guys have seen that have been on the board for a while. He did a lot of work on our facilities master plan. This is basically an extenduation of that that's going to provide us some key information moving forward for both short-term and long-term planning. So, that's really the idea behind it. You know, the fact that Honer Bidden was able to come in cheap, that's great. Um, had they not, then we've got to evaluate the next one or whoever the next client, you know, the next
050best bid is and determine if that's still the same area we want to go. Is it the right bid? So, that's where we were at standpointwise. But the scope of the bid is what it is. It's the scope of the work is what it is. They're not. It doesn't matter who's doing it. You got to do the work. So, any other discuss? Oh, go ahead, David. Yeah, Brian, just for clarity, you don't give out the school plans until after award, right? For safety reasons. Yeah, we don't and Tim can tell you, but nothing was put in there like as far as district documentation. Right. Right. No, that that's that's what the advantage is. If you've developed your own, you have those drawings. Correct. You don't give it out to anybody that asks. No. Yeah. So,
051they've got 20 years of experience. They're going to protect their position so they can give it away here because it's not a lot of work for them. Yeah. It's the same thing that I guess for Zumalt saw too. Um and again, you know, from our standpoint, we don't know who's going to bid. It's it's a sealed bid and you just put your bids in there and then once that we hit the date, we open the bids up and see what we've got. Right. So, thanks. Okay. So, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Nay. Motion carries. 11.5. We need a motion to approve the changes to the 4894 support staff agreement as presented. Motion. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? I just wanted to
052share a few words on behalf of the 4894 um president and the committee that convened together for the negotiations and I served in the as the district representative in those negotiations. She was unable to be here tonight, but she said that she wanted to um let everyone know that she appreciates everything and uh felt amazing about what we were able to accomplish this year, that it was a positive vibe. Um people were very collegal. I think friendships were made at the negotiations table this year. Um and people were really collaborative and working together to get things done. Um, Director Hanky served on those negotiations, so thank you for being there. Um, and she um, just wants to let you know that they are supportive of this agreement. Yeah, and I would I would agree this
053year went so much better than last year, but um, a lot of good things were able to be negotiated, um, agreed upon, and I think I think they're all pretty happy with it. And yeah, any other discussion? All right, we have a motion and second. All those in favor? I I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 11.6. We need a motion to approve the salary schedule for support staff and 5% average increase for salaried support as presented. Motion. Second. Any discussion? All right. All those in favor? I I. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. 11.7 fiscal year 26 budget. We need a motion to approve the 2526 budget as presented. Motion. Second. All right. We'll have a discussion and presentation, I believe. Okay. Um, so talking about the uh 2526 budget, some of this is uh will
054be a little bit of a repeat of what we went over I believe in March as we talked about preliminary. uh some of that you know really hasn't changed but uh we will go over that again. So uh just statutoily we are required to adopt a budget uh prior to the fiscal year beginning uh July 1st of 2025. So this is just something we have to do every year. We have to have the authority to spend money before the fiscal year starts. So that's that's really what we're doing today is approving that giving the district the authority to uh start with the expenses starting in July of next year. So uh just starting with uh overall um looking at all of our funds looking fund one fund two first thing we do in any budgeting
055process is try to uh project where we are going to end this current year's fiscal uh year June 30th. So uh you see that projected balance as of 630 is just just under 70 million. Uh we are projecting uh a surplus of 272,000 uh in fund one and fund two. And so our ending balance would creep up just a little bit in fund one and fund two. Again that's general uh fun general expenses and teacher expenses fund one and fund two. Uh for fund four, our capital projects, we are projecting to end this year with somewhere in the neighborhood of a $58 million balance at the end of this fiscal year. Um but we have budgeted expenses coming out of that already. And so we're projecting to spend that down by about 29 million. That
056goes to the work that uh Mr. Bishop talked about in his presentation. the the work at REACH early and the uh Samus and Early Childhood Center, the work at Timberland, the work at Boone Trail, all the other projects that we are doing this this year uh this summer and then ongoing. So, we are working on spending that down uh projected balance at the end of next FIS end of this current 26 fiscal year of just over 28 million. Uh fund three, our debt service um account. Uh right now we are projecting a huge surplus in this account. Uh this does not include any potential defeasance. We will be bringing that again this fall uh at once we get the tax rate set um and then figuring out what that's going to look like. And again
057that defeasance is just a prepayment on our debt. So it saves us a future interest by paying that debt off early. We take our balances, pay our debt off early, save the future interest cost on that, uh, keep the tax levy the same, keep those collections the same. So, um, that will change once we get everything in, get our tax rate set, know exactly what we're getting, um, you know, and and have more more information on that. So, um, so overall funds one one through four, we are projecting about a $10 million uh, deficit. And again, that's primarily that is all due to the uh capital fund spending those dollars down um and getting that get with our planned projects that we had. Uh that capital fund had grown over the years and and so
058we knew we had some large projects that we could do and so that's this is intentional. So um fund seven, this is a new one. You haven't really heard about this one. This is our self- insurance fund. We are projecting to end this fiscal year at just over 10 million in that. And just a reminder, uh, you know, there was 8 million transferred into this fund at the beginning at the end of last fiscal year as a surplus to get that fund started. Um, you know, our projections show that to uh just be a little bit of a surplus, just over $600,000 surplus. Um, so we are in in decent shape there. Um operating revenue sources. Again, two major uh largest areas of our operating revenue are our property taxes, local property taxes and the
059state uh foundation formula. 74% of our total operating revenue comes from those two sources. Um property taxes, this is a reassessment year. So, um property is being reassessed. The preliminary information we received in uh back in March projects a 10% increase. Um now that had no growth in personal property. Typically we see some growth in personal property. As people move into the district, they're bringing personal property with it, you know, moving in with uh more. So that will probably go up some. We just won't have those final numbers until uh till we set the tax rate in August. So, but based on where we're at with that 10%, we projected a tax rate of uh $4.50, which would be the lowest since uh 2009 for this district. Uh if we see a increase in assessed
060valuation, that rate will continue to go down. That that's due to the Hancock amendment. So, those those have a uh inverse relationship. Um projects our revenue of about 9.6 6 million uh from increase and about four and a half of that being in operating. Uh this does include the impacts of the Senate Bill 190, the senior citizens property tax freeze. Um that is a that is a guess. I mean right now we don't have we have some data that kind of gives us an idea of where that's going to be, but uh until we actually see that implemented, we're not going to really know and understand what the true impact is. But right now we're estimating somewhere around a million dollar um loss in revenue growth. Just a historical chart of our assessed value and
061property tax. And again, as your uh assessed value goes up, your property tax rate will go down. And that's what this shows. So every other year is a reassessment year. during a reassessment year, unless there's a levy increase voted on by the voters, your uh rate will go down. So, that's just what this chart shows you. Uh foundation formula received some good news uh through the legislative process. The full amount of the uh SAT increase was approved by the legislature. Uh it has yet to be signed by the governor, so we're not sure what that actually is going to be until the governor takes action on it. And we're sure there's no withholdings. There is a chance that the governor could sign the budget bill but then withhold funds that's happened in the past and
062not fund that until later in the year. We'll just kind of have to see. Uh so we did not budget the full uh SAT we budgeted around 6,900. So we we did have an increase but not the full increase in our budget in the numbers I s you showed at the beginning. Uh that does not have the full SAT in there. uh just trying to be conservative and and uh realistic of where we may end up. Um other revenue sources we're projecting to remain relatively flat, Prop C, transportation, uh everything else, you know, we're projecting to remain relatively flat. So that the two main sources that we see for revenue increase is local property tax and foundation formula. Uh any questions on revenue before I get into expenses? Yes. Just one quick one. Um do
063we know when we'll know the impact of the Senate Bill 190 like when those numbers will come out? Uh when the tax collection comes in? So the way this works is it it has to show on all of our collect all of our calculations like we're actually receiving it. We won't we just won't receive the money. So the tax credit is actually directly uh given to the taxpayer at the time they pay the bill. So we calculate like we're receiving the whole amount and then once we get all the tax collections in then we'll know the true impact. So it really won't be until like this time next year that we will have the true impact of what that uh what that means for the district. And then um you guys are budgeting 6,900 versus
064that 7145. What is that difference like if you're being conservative? If we get that 7145, how much more revenue would that be? Uh, I think it's around 3 million. Tim, can you explain how apologize? Can you explain how Prop C remains flat when other revenue tax revenue is growing? It's a sales tax. So we're not seeing uh So it's a statewide sales tax 1% statea statewide sales tax that is levied for the purpose of education and then it's distributed locally by uh on a p per pupil basis. So statewide we're not seeing a large growth in sales tax collections really. I mean the cost of cars went up 40%, groceries went up 50%. All that and still it's not growing. It is not. Wow. And that's also true statewide for other sales tax. It's it's
065remained relatively flat um over this year. Good questions. Anything else? Okay. Talk a little bit about some our operating expenses. Um again when we look at where our expenses go uh you know people that's where the most majority of our expenses go. So 44% of our uh total operating expenses for certified salary 16% non-certified. Uh so we're at 60% for just salaries and then another 22% for benefits. So around 82% is salary and benefits of our total operating cost. So, um, when we talk about where we're spending money, it's on people. We just talked uh just previous motion was a 5% salary increase for certified and non-certified staff. We have also budgeted $2 million for uh new positions and that's been allocated with uh within the departments of of as needed. So, uh, health insurance,
066our October to May May combined medical claims, again, we went self-funded starting 101. Uh, we've seen uh just over $2 million differential between premiums and and the claims fees. Uh, we are uh in the consent agenda, we had a motion to uh increase fee the rates for next year by 5% an average of 5%. uh our contribution per employee will increase from 855 per month to 8.95 per month. So um that is a large portion. You know again we're spending somewhere in the high $20 million per year in in health insurance for our our uh staff members. Uh purchase services 10% of our budget. These are things like out of district uh tuition, contracted transportation, property service. I won't read the whole list for you, but that's what we are. We're paying another company to
067do a service for us. And then uh about 8% of our budget is supplies, utilities, technology, just the the things that we need to do, the the uh supplies that we need to operate the building and operate the plant. Um capital fund budget, again, we're drawing that down by just under 30 million projection. Uh, and some of that is, you know, some of that it it's kind of a guess timing wise of what's going to happen. Uh, you know, we have a Timberland project that's probably a three-year project. So, we're kind of estimating how much of that's going to be paid next fiscal year where, you know, some of it could be go flow into the following fiscal year. Um, we saw that with reach ECC, the budget that we had for this year kind
068of had that those expenses split out evenly over three years. We've seen a huge portion of that already take place this fiscal year. So, we're drawing down more than what we anticipated because we spent that amount this this fiscal year. You know, in the in the scheme of the picture, we're fine because we we have good balances and so we have enough to to cover that. We're not dependent on the new revenue coming in. So, but we are uh major projects the re completion of that reach uh Samson early childhood center the HVAC project at Timberland the legacy schools HVAC plumbing and envelope work uh we are we have about 2.8 million in new bus purchases for next year we did about four four million this year in bus purchases and all buses have uh
069air conditioning the new buses that we're purchasing. So, uh, trying to help those drivers out, you know, for the the two months out of the year when it's when it's super hot. So, uh, I always had the, uh, uh, 2455 air conditioner where you put 24 windows down, went 55 miles an hour down the road, but, uh, we have the new air conditioning now. So, uh, and then the completion of the Boon Trail HVAC and lighting uh, upgrades. So, uh, within the budget is some long-term planning. That's one of the requirements in our budget. We look forward uh for the next three fiscal year. We look back at this fiscal year projecting what this fiscal year is going to end. We provide a good budget for what next fiscal year and then we look longterm
070u more of a educated guess at those three years. So it's becomes a five-year plan. Um you know during that time those numbers I guarantee you in there will change. Um there's yeah it's it's it's estimates and we base we make their our best guess on prior history what we've done what it's kind of looked like. So uh our long-term planning shows operating income is forecast to remain favorable through through those uh FY27 through FY29. Um and then our capital projects we include, we plan to finish the projects and then we have some deferred maintenance items, you know, that we know uh we have some of those already identified for next summer and we're planning for those in our capital budget to complete those next summer. So that's part of the the long-term planning that
071we're doing. Uh and then our debt service is projected to be at a a positive balance which will either allow us to reduce debt, issue new bonds, or a combination of both. Um and then just a budget summary high level we are projected at operating surplus for next fiscal year and beyond. Uh our tax rate will be the lowest since 2009. Um tax collections projected to increase by 9.6 million due to reassessment and new construction. New construction is remaining strong in in the Wentzville. So uh we are still seeing a lot of new construction and continuing to see a growth in commercial new construction. So that is a uh that's also a benefit for us. Um state formula projected increase around uh just over 4 million. Uh we did do a 5% increase for salaries
072for employees and uh long-term projections are favorable for all funds. Questions? I had one quick one um summary. Do you so that tax levy collections increasing by 9.6 uh do you know what is that percentage- wise you know off the top of your head? Uh that is a great question. I do not know uh yeah I don't want to if you don't know I I mean that collection is just a little bit for fun one is I think it's about 160 million. I I'll get the answer and the same thing I would do same thing for the state like it's going up to 4.2 2 million like what percentage is that in terms of uh that total amount is is around 80 million so it's uh yeah it's 5% yeah are you done okay Tim
073one of the things that I've always thought about were challenged because of all the growth in the city we got all the communities that are being built and you know that's all great news in one sense but the taxpayers that are here have been paying are getting hit with the growth requirements. Has there been any consideration, any discussion of putting a special tax on new construction? So, they're bringing students in that are creating costs building schools. What about having them pay to get that at least partially covered? I would argue that's unconstitutional, but um well the constitution says that um you know you cannot have a different tax rate for the same class of property within a a taxing jurisdiction. So, I think that would be the challenge and I think that's, you know, if
074you've heard anything about Senate Bill 3 uh being passed, that's going to be one of the challenges with Senate Bill 3 is you, in effect, that's what Senate Bill 3 is doing. It is lowering it's keeping everyone that's here at the tax rate from 2024. Whatever you were paying in 2024 is what you pay going forward. anyone that moves in pays the current rate and then they stay at that amount until as long as they're here. So it would, you know, that's in effect what it is doing. But again, I I would argue that may not be constitutional. We tax every new building, so that's everybody's getting it. That's a different rate though. You're treating it differently in the same class. Okay. I have a question. Yes. The 2 million that we have budgeted for
075new positions, do we have an idea of what those positions are or is it just we're I would turn that over to somebody. Jerry's pulling up her document to answer your question. Yes, we do have um what we're doing with that money. We're not going to spend 2 million. uh it's going to be approximately 1.5 to start and mostly that's because we always have to add positions for needs like we need a new IIA because somebody moves in or we have an unexpected increase in classroom sizes and we need to add potentially a teacher at the last minute in August but I think Jerry's got that form that she can tell you exactly where it's going now. I'm going to try to give you a highle overview. Um we are adding some class-sized teachers at
076four different elementary schools to lower those class sizes. they already looks pretty good, but we thought we could um really make a big impact early on if we added at least those four classroom teachers. Um also adding an additional staff member um to teach ELA at the high school split a couple a couple amongst a couple of buildings. We're looking at those English 2 classes that were looking a little higher than we wanted. We wanted to ensure those class sizes were a little bit smaller because that's an EOCC tested area. Um, and this all falls in alignment with some of those staffing priorities we'd like to do over the long term as well. Um, holding a few contingency positions to the side to be really honest. Sometimes our special education numbers pop or sometimes our
077class size numbers may pop at a team at middle school or in a particular section at a high school or a grade at elementary and we want to have those in our back pocket within the budget if that happens between now and the start of school, too. Um, so we hold several back for that. Uh a couple of other options that we've looked at. Um we're adding to our technology coach team to ensure that we have uh our technology needs met. Um we were sharing one I think one person was seeing all 12 elementary schools. So that will be a um a divide and conquer there. Um we'll be adding additional counselor support. Um a special education IAS ELLIA support. Um North Point was short some secretarial help. So, they're adding a secretary, um, a
078couple of administrative interns at our largest elementary schools that are sitting right about 700 students. Um, as well as some tech operations help, uh, general maintenance help and some supervision, uh, some supervisory help at transportation as well. Looking at approximately the ability to add 18.5 positions. I think right now we're still holding out on uh three to five of those just to ensure that we're safe and have a little buffer if we see some class numbers pop and we want to add one here or there moving forward to keep those primary and then intermediate classes pretty low as we move into the school year. Thanks Jerry. I did get the exact numbers on the uh current T current delinquent taxes is projected to be at about 115 million for this year. So 4.5 million of
079that. So it's you know less than a 4% increase. And then um for basic formula that is about uh 85 million is what our collection or anticipated revenue this year. So uh it it ended last year at 27%. We 25% is our goal. So yeah, we are we will project to be above above that. Uh one of the tricky things about fund balance is you know it's a percentage of your total expenses. So as expenses go up you know to keep that percentage the same you have to have more in in the the fund balance. So um we are we will we are projecting to stay above that 25%. Um, and we will be transferring some money into to fund four out of operating to do future projects like I talked about. So, that will
080happen at the end of this fiscal year. That was in also in the uh uh resolutions that were approved tonight and consent agenda. We had several several resolutions uh in there that we we do every year. Um we there's certain ways you can transfer money into fund for um at the end of you can do it any time but there's also limitations on what you can do. All right. Anybody else? Any other discussion or questions for Tim? Thank you. Very good. All right. We have a motion on the table to approve the 2025 2026 budget as presented. All of those in favor? I I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 11.8. We have a first read of some policy updates and for chapter 0000. The odds. Yes, the odds. So, I have a question. If because I
081will not be at July's board meeting. um if we can table a few of these with the second read for so the August meeting and which ones were those that you uh for sure but we can just table all of them. I think that's reasonable if everybody else is in agreement with that. Yeah. Thanks. And then okay so that would be 11.80 980 and 11.9 just for transparency just for the community too. So what we've asked Pat to do is review our policies by chapter and then start bringing the revised policies. Some of them could be a word change or something like that. So when you see that that's really the purpose behind this is continuing to update these policies and just doing it by chapter. So that's that's why you see these that's what
082it's for. We need a vote on that. Um, actually we don't vote on first read. So should we go ahead and just approve or not approve but just consider the first read for the 1300 because isn't that just changing the compliance officers so table everything until August except 1300 1301 and 5360. 60 6260 Would each of those have to go for those would each be a first read today? Second read. Correct. July. Yeah, that was going to be my question is is there any that we need to have approved in July going into August? Okay, Joanie, did you get that? Okay. All right. So, just to recap, 1300, 1301, and 6260 will go for second read in July. That's kind of creepy. All right, we're at board action items. And this was something that we
083had a little bit of a discussion at our recent workshop about do we want to continue board action items kind of in this way that it currently sits. Um, we looking at the document right now. It's kind of I'm looking at the wrong thing. No, there's nothing on it except for two things. Yeah, board priorities. Oh, there it is. Got it. So my question is yes it is outdated but do we want to have this document continue to live where it should where it does which I think personally is appropriate. Um and then I mean do we want to have a brief discussion about it at every at the end of every board meeting and talk about the next month's agenda priorities? Any thoughts? So my thoughts are um keep it here where it's at.
084um people who have added things to it. If you want to take things off of it, just kind of weed it every month if you want to. I mean, right now the list is tiny, but before it was huge and we took off a bunch of stuff and we have these new boxes at the top showing what we've discontinued, what we've completed, in progress, staff planning. I like that. Um, I just think it helps keep us um, focused on our plans and each individual person's uh, kind of input into the big plan. Thank you. I do like the kind of recap at the top. I think that's important and I think it's good for the community to see. Does anybody else have any other thoughts, concerns, suggestions? Okay. So, I guess yeah, I I mean
085I I support leaving it and then just kind of each kind of cleaning it up and um removing some of these things that are outdated and then we can kind of use it to keep us on task and our priorities. Okay. Board member comments. Does anybody have any board member comments? I do have one, so I'll save it for last unless anybody else has any. Okay. Well, then I'll go. I do have one. Oh, okay. Well, go ahead. Go ahead. Um, just wanted to congratulate the graduates from all four of our high schools and tell the community I hope you're having an amazing summer so far and doing lots of things outside because the weather's been beautiful. And happy almost Independence Day in a couple weeks. All right. So, the one thing that I wanted
086to talk about with you guys is our consent agenda. Kind of looking at it through the lens of the governance and board meeting hygiene workshop that we just had. So, kind of looking through our past practices, other school districts practices, our boards, um, and through our consent agendas. And I think this kind of was brought up with the Mosingo contract where, you know, it was coming to an approval for the board, but it got delayed and it already happened and whatever. So, um, what do you guys think about removing some of the things from the consent agenda that probably don't really need to come to the board for a a vote? Things such as like um, let's see, in in other districts, there are dollar amounts associated with that. two school districts were both um
087anything under $7,500 could just have an a superintendent approval and did not need to come to the board or some things that did not like that don't have a dollar amount um certain contracts and things like that um to kind of again be in that governance role allow the superintendent to manage those things that don't need to come to us um like things that are like a year or less of a contract like superintendent could sign without board approval. So I guess my question is what what the law says as far as because I I know that there has to be a majority of the board, not just the board that's present for paying bills for approving the bill list. Correct. So, wouldn't that be anything we spend? Um, we're approving purchases. Yeah. So, go
088ahead. You would still approve the bill list. This is just an approval before uh authorizing the purchase. Then you still once the purchase happens, we still approve the check afterwards like we do now. um you know you when we adopt a budget you give us the authority to spend up to that budgeted limit in each account. Um so some of that is already there. It's just a matter of you know what what does the board feel comfortable with? Do you you know does the board want to give administration authority to approve things that are not that big of deals? You know, you look at our consent agenda and there's a lot of items in there and it it kind of can clutter it up and some of those are spent with activity student activity accounts
089that we really don't control. You know, it's the uh track kids going to a hotel. So, it's it's a way that um you can kind of get those things that really aren't meaningful off the board's plate. So, we would basically be the after we we wouldn't have anything to do with the approval of the actual expense except for we're going to pay the bill. You approve the expense when you set the budget. And then like the student funds like for like you said the you know wrestling um hotels like that's coming out of their fund. So they have that budget that we approved. If we remove that from us and just let you know, whoever signed the contract needs to do that. Like to me, that seems reasonable. So the contract that comes before us
090though, that's just the contract with the hotel, right? Right. She's just saying I think like we don't need to approve that. That doesn't need to clog up the Do we Isn't it like a legal agreement? The agreement's different. I think what you're do. So, so doesn't the statute say that the board has to vote for contracts? Yes, but like I said, you can like so many other things in the law, you can assign. So, for example, looking at our consent agenda from this evening, which uh I'm looking at the music theater internationals Broadway Junior for Wville South Middle for,200 [Music] or excuse me, I can't I'm on too many pages. Okay. uh $1,215 um for the to be able to use Alice and Wonderland for the thing like to me. So who would that could
091like if we could delegate that or approve Brian to just do that and not ever those things don't come to us. So if there was a violation or breach of contract, say they distributed that p, you know, charged whatever, they violated the contract for the theatrical production, who would the theatrical production company sue? The board or the superintendent? The board, right? Which is the board. So that I think it's important that if if we are the responsible party, we approve the contracts. There is well I might add one other point to that. Two years ago when we were talking about hotels a minute unimportant thing we saw that the hotels were charging higher than predium rates approved by the government and we made that notice of hey what's going on and ultimately that got changed
092where if it wasn't presented we'd still be paying over predium rates according to government approvals. So I think they need to stay there. You look at it, you don't look at it. It's one swoop. It's not time spent on every one of them. And there's been a prior board that did do this and things did kind of go arai. And so then that authority was then given back to the board or the board requested that authority back. I don't recall that personally. It's been long. It's gosh, five or six years. It's it's been before all of us. Um, also I think some districts are that have delegated the approval authority to superintendent or or maybe not superintendent but the amount they're scaling it back to where they would have had like um 100,000 or something
093it was like 50,000 or 25,000. So, and we've never done that that I know of. Um, I just don't I think if we are responsible for the contracts, if we're responsible for paying the bills, we should know um we should be the ones to approve the contract. You know, I'm I'm real comfortable with Brian and his team today. There's been previous administrators that I would have been very concerned about if we didn't see what they were doing, just plain and simple. I haven't really processed, so I'm kind of just taking this in. Um I I don't even necessarily know about the finance one. That's something we can explore. I know other districts do it. I'm not really that it's whatever. Uh and I hate saying it like that, but it really is kind of whatever
094for me. The one that I think catches us more than anything are the non-financial ones like approving student teacherous and things like that. And I know there have been some things you've caught in there before, Jen. Um, but the the time that's cost us a couple times like losing a valuable student teacher we could have had because we didn't get it done in time and they just place somewhere else. So that may be the one that I would more talk about like where what what would be the appetite looking at like if it's a non-finance type thing. If it's an MOU for a student teacher, if it's like you saw the teach residency program at UMSIL that every school district's already doing, would that be something that you would be that would be the question
095I think where you could get some benefit? And again, if that's not something the board wants to do, that's that's your choice, but that would be the one that I would look at. I guess again, I'm just not. I don't know if that was a one-off with the student teacher situation. I know things do come down to crunch time. Um, I'm I'm definitely not in favor of delegating this part of our role. I mean to Brian's point, if it's not f if there's not financial and like if it's a potential to cost an opportunity for the district because we don't have a meeting or an approval or something, you know, then, you know, I would leave that to to Brian and his team to decide. So, I'm I'm comfortable with anything that like that if
096it's non-financial. I think that's part of their job. They make tons of decisions that they don't run by us. So, I'm okay with that. Pat, does the statute specifically call out financial contracts or just contracts with the district? So, we would be delegating our statutory authority to approve contracts with the district to somebody other than the board. Yeah. I mean, I think something. All right. Thank you. Anybody else before any other I would just kind of piggy off what you were saying, Brian. Is there a way to remove some of it? Maybe just from the standpoint of not talking finance, not talking taking away our responsibility, but with the if there's a something comes up and if we don't have a meeting, is this something that could be approved so we don't miss out on
097that opportunity, trust administration to make that decision? Not saying it's an all the time kind of thing, but if it's a once every so often, like is there a way to do that policy? Jud, you Yeah, I don't know that we can do it a once every time. I think again, the only thing I was looking at, guys, is like Missouri State dual credit. That's just a dual credit agreement. Um, the homecoming parade route and the agreement that's been in place with the city of Winfield to do that. Don't really I I'm not saying it's a big deal for me. It's It's not. I think it does provide a little bit more efficiency if you want to do that. You don't have to look at every one of those. Like that contract hasn't changed in
098I couldn't tell you how long. So that that would be like I said the one that and and again for me it's not really something that I feel overly strong about but I you know I think it could improve efficiency. It could allow some of that stuff to go through quicker. Um like I said the examples I gave related to student teaching where we've had to wait and they wind up being placed somewhere else because we didn't have anou. That's that's those are tough things because we do need those student teachers here. So that would be the best example I can give you guys. But yeah, I just think in an example like that, and we've done this before, just, hey, we have this contract, we want to, you know, go ahead and get it
099through so we can start it. And we just we have um, you know, a special meeting and go ahead and approve it. I mean, I I think we should just we we should leave it as as it is. All right. Any other board member comments? All right, we need a motion to adjourn open session. Motion. Second. Roll call, please. Director Lewis, I. President Scott, I. Vice President Walsh, I. Dr. Hanky I Secretary Bezenthal I Dr. Olson director way motion car