Board of Education Meeting | May 18, 2023

001foreign so I call this meeting to order so first up we have the Pledge of Allegiance we have I think someone elitist and that is Jackson vanderplug from Liberty High School 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 okay please repeat the mission statement learning today leading tomorrow so for the first time in my board career we have no one signed up for public comments so we will move to the next agenda item wait wait I missed resignation that is going to go sorry this first fine we're going to go to recognition so I'll turn it over to Dr Dorma okay all right um congratulations to the three wsd students who will

002Who will represent the Lewis and Clark career center at the invitation only skillsusa National leadership and skills Conference held in Atlanta Georgia in June these students advance to the national competition after earning first place gold medal at the state conference Ethan Traeger and Isaac Roseberry from North Point High School and Jackson vanderplug from Liberty High School who qualified for Nationals are here with us tonight congratulations [Applause] thank you congratulations foreign all right up next we have superintendent comments so I'll turn it over to you well we are in the home stretch bren's gonna pull up a PowerPoint for us here can't believe we're already in the middle of may like this year has just gone by so quickly but unfortunately um it's not working Brad if you'll advance unfortunately we're starting this meeting again with

003a moment of silence for the loss of one of our students at Timberland this past month okay thank you with with the month of May we have in April there's always lots of celebrations happening in education and so we've uh celebrated our after-school paraprofessionals our professionals through Chautauqua for their Appreciation Week and we have Administrative Professionals Day so many hard-working people throughout the district our school lunch hero day with all of our Child Nutrition staff who work tirelessly to feed our kiddos breakfast lunch and everything in between Nurses Day and we know our nurses work tirelessly as well to keep our students healthy and safe teacher appreciation week of course our teachers work so hard for our students each and every day and with that then we also had people join our teams this this

004past month so Pat brazel is with us and he is our new in-house general counsel and we also have Dr Katie Brett Schneider who is currently our principal at Discovery Ridge Elementary and she will be joining us for next school year as our assistant superintendent of academic services so we're excited to have her join our team we have Dr Arlo Monroe with us here tonight she is joining us from the Columbia Public Schools and she will be our new director of Technology operations so we welcome you here uh we're celebrating Alicia Hooten she is the current uh assistant principal at dweller Elementary and next year she will be our principal at dweller Elementary uh we are also excited to welcome Dr Kimberly Walters to our wsd family she will be taking the home at Heritage

005Intermediate as the principal there and we also have with us this evening Jordan Steppin so he is currently a teacher at Timberland high school and he will be joining the administrative their team there next year as an assistant principal so let's give them a nice welcome Round of Applause so we want to take a moment to celebrate our transportation department as well their bus fleet was inspected by the Missouri State Highway Patrol in at the end of April and they found to have an approval rating of 98.9 so we're very excited um with the pride they take in in everything that they do there uh we have had a couple of recent collaboration meetings one even this afternoon with the Saint Charles Community College you may or may not be aware that they are actually

006in the process of Designing and getting ready to build an Innovative center off of shaper Road near Interstate Drive so right here in our district and so we are excited to work with them and also with the Troy School District to bring additional Workforce Development and uh Innovative programming for our students here in Wentzville um you met a few of our Lewis and Clark students uh just a moment ago that competed at the skills USA state competition through Lewis and Clark career center that is an amazing program and they are able to do many many things that are highly desirable in the fields that they're studying we also recently had our caps board meeting and at that meeting we had four of our caps Associates from Timberland High School highlighted and they were sharing uh

007their experiences from participating in the Caps program and they represented the district well for the entire County we had our seventh annual wsd Film Festival recently we had 140 over 140 submissions and creativity and Technical skill that our students have are amazing and 10 winners were chosen from that program we've had learning walks uh this week and I can say our students and our schools are finishing strong they are they just wrapped up Statewide testing they are reading and writing I actually had the opportunity to visit at Wabash in a PE class and they were doing something fun and even though I was in a dress in heels I had to participate because it was rock paper scissors run and so I ran laps with I think it was a third third grade class and

008I'm happy to say that I did beat yeah I had to kick off my shoes though so I did so um we also had the Start program graduations throughout the district as well for our fifth grade students participating in the drug and alcohol programs and at Frontier Middle School they also held an anti-drug assembly with different resources from across the county to Bringing and highlighting the opioid epidemic that our nation is um battling right now we a couple of weeks ago at Liberty High School were able to hold our first Community engagement event almost everybody from the board that was able to be there who was in town was there and we had about a hundred participants with us and we engaged with our community around our four major goal areas this year found out

009what they thought had was working where our successes were and then also ideas for the future that we're going to then incorporate into our planning as we move forward and it was a great event and we look forward to more of those next year we also were able to celebrate our seniors through our community scholarship awards ceremony that was held at North Point High School students came together from all four high schools and over five hundred thousand dollars in scholarships were handed out that evening it was such a wonderful event to celebrate all the amazing things that our students are doing we also then the very next night turn around and had our 2023 staff awards banquet and I am just blown away by the caliber and the dedication and uh just general amazingness of

010all of our staff members we celebrated our retirees our 20 and 30-year service um staff members our teachers of the Year our support staff of the year as well as some other specialized uh new uh awards that you'll see here in just a second we recognized Isla Oller from Stone Creek Elementary as our volunteer of the year for the district we also recognize Matt Schulte our principal at Wabash Elementary as our district administrator of the year we recognize Stephanie struckman as our District substitute of the year and we also recognize Lisa berghoff from Liberty High School as our district-wide support staff of the Year these are just amazing people who are so deserving of the recognitions we also had our first Board of Education student Roundtable so you've heard me talk throughout the year of

011meeting with our individual high schools and sitting down with our student groups who just hear from them their perspective of the things that we're doing well areas where we can maybe improve and I asked them I said well if if I created an event where you could come and sit down with our Board of Education you can come talk with some District leaders would you be interested and they said yeah and so even though it was May in the middle of everything right we filled this room we filled this room with students and board and District administration and just spent a couple of hours together really talking with students and hearing from them around our major goal areas what's important to our students and so I think that it was a great opportunity for everyone

012who was able to participate students left just thanking us for listening and for the opportunity they asked to do it more frequently which I thought was amazing I know our board members and our administrators as well just felt like it was a great opportunity for us to really just hear from the students perspective Timberland indoor percussion Ensemble also our state champions and so that's a great recognition for them this year and then our robotics team we know that they always do amazing things but they uh just recently received a thousand dollar stem Grant from um the EDC and on the next slide they are heading to the World Champ or they went to the world championship so our uh ratchet uh rockers our robotics team they are just simply incredible they have so many volunteers

013and individuals that work with them and they're so dedicated to what they do we also uh just a couple of weeks ago Liberty Junior Trent uh stewerman won a brand new Ford Mustang convertible from Clement Fords and so uh Ford's dealership and so they reached out and they asked for students that really kind of checked all the boxes grades academics attendance all the things and we had uh I think they selected 20 students and we had the bulk of those 20 students for Wentzville School District so we were really excited I know Katie lizek was able to be there that day when they were all given keys and his fired up the Mustang so I'm I as you can see he's very happy in that picture um we also next week are celebrating a go

014green week fundraiser for our new care to learn um chapter so we are raising funds for that next week and our uh Wentzville Foundation is um happy to host their summer jump into reading program and so this is going to take place the week of May 24th to the 28th at the St Peter's Mid Rivers Barnes and Noble and the big event is going to be on May 27th where they're going to have balloon artists face painters cookie and cupcake decorators stem demos trivia guest readers raffle baskets and more and they're looking for volunteers and people to come read first for the kids that come and things like that so if you're interested please reach out and we can help connect you attendance again um we're in the home stretch I think we have four

015and a half days five days nobody's Counting I'm not counting obviously I don't have the right number um but our our schools are finishing strong so our attendance numbers have continued to rise over the semester and we just continue went to uh I want to highlight that for our students as well we have received so many amazing applicants for our openings that we've had this year so I think as of last week we are in the mid 40s of individuals who are coming home to us and what that means is these are individuals who have our veteran teachers veteran staff members in other area districts and they're able to bring all of their years of service with us with them to us and we are hearing great things from our principals and our interview panels

016just talking about the caliber of people that are coming to join the family and so we are super excited now we still have lots of positions that are available so please spread the word we are hiring literally for everything so um refer your friends and family and then the last day of school is May 25th and that is an early release day for K-12 and so right around the corner next Thursday last day of school and then summer will be here before we know it so with that that's my last update thank you I do I do just make one comment I think around the engagement with the community as well as the student-led initiatives are a refreshing change you know in terms of how we're working with our community to to better the district

017so I do appreciate the administration that's put a lot of effort into those those events um so moving on here we have the consent agenda I do have a requester pulling one item out for a separate vote so I need a motion to approve the amended consent agenda moving 13.4 to uh new business for a separate boat that was David okay all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed eyes have it so moving down to 14.1 we have the federal programs evaluation so let's turn it over to you is it Jerry let me do Jerry before we start I do want a motion here from the board to approve the federal programs evaluation as presented motion second then let's let's Jerry before we vote let's let Jerry present then go ahead good evening

018board cabinet and Community just wanted to take a moment this year to highlight our wsd federal programs evaluation this is a new arena for me moving from student services into academic Services students and schools as well and overseeing federal programs so I'm really excited to see what we have going on in the future and working with the teaching and learning act Services team so far these last couple of months to dig into Federal programs see what we've done historically highlight some of our pride points and then talk about what we can do in the future we're really excited to think about the ways that we can use our federal allocations to best support our students in our community so we have title one is about improving the academic achievement of the disadvantage and this is

019per deci the purpose is to essentially ensure that all students have the significant opportunity for a fair and Equitable experience at school this is often figured off of the um disparity as far as the free and reduced lunch and so what we've done there is we call these buildings once we look at our allocation and we identify our students and our schools with the brain reduced lunch highest populations we determine which buildings will get which allocations and this past year we've provided reading and math small group instruction to students K5 historically our emphasis has been on reading and we've had four reading interventionists that have helped in Title One buildings be able to pull out additional small group reading intervention groups in addition to the two reading interventions we have in each building so those

020title one identified buildings have additional help on top of the Baseline that all of our other buildings have additionally we'll probably looking at math in the future as well we look and monitor analyze and utilize that student performance data to see if what we're doing is working if it's working that's awesome what can we do what will you tweak what can we add if it's not working or if we don't think that we're getting enough movement on that needle what adjustments do we need to make do we need to go back to the drawing board into determine how can we best utilize those federal dollars in order to increase student achievement in those title one areas also providing resources collaboration professional development to our teachers in those title one buildings um I've got a little

021bit ahead in that last slide so again for Title One Reading interventionist um they did increase their Ela and map scores overall from 2021 to 2122 in those students scoring proficient in advance because we don't have the data back from the 2020 22 2023 school year that we just finished we're unable to give that information at this time so the the best comparison we can make is from the two previous school years and again not only are we having a national or state test scores Ela and math improving we can also show that our local data in regard to our our ready proficiency scores is also improving so we want to see a direct correlation between those two which we do all right and title two uh title two is all about professional development preparing

022recruiting high quality teachers principals other school leaders a lot of times I know as a building principle is important to me and these Title II funds was professional development many times we can use our one percent funds to help professionally develop our certified staff many times other staff members such as paraprofessionals IAS secretaries don't necessarily qualify for those one percent funds and so a lot of times we've used Title II to provide professional development to them a lot of times our administrators will also qualify for that title II professional development funding again making sure that all students have a significant opportunity for a fair and Equitable high quality education the goals support District assessment initiatives and interventions and that high quality PD that we mentioned a couple of highlights in the bottom left hand corner

023you'll see our district assessment Coach Jill Khan Smith she has been her she is part of the title II allocation that we utilize the curriculum assessment coach so she looks at our district assessment so we do have a director of assessment who oversees map testing and the Wida tests and eocs Joe does a really deep dive into district-wide testing and local assessment looking at even those smaller formative assessments quick feedback going in talking to small groups of teachers and teams identifying pinch points for kids with assessment within the curriculum what do we need to tweak okay if this particular fifth grade team is doing really well but I know the fifth grade team across town is having issues with this particular piece in the curriculum what can we do what can we trade so that

024we can all get the best results and share great ideas and therefore hopefully celebrate the data together also like I said high quality professional learning opportunities and then instructional Improvement in the areas of student-centered coaching Cycles title 3 is about English language Learners it's language instruction for ell and immigrant students you can see that the purpose is very similar to the title and the goals are to provide those professional learning opportunities for our ell teachers and staff we have those spread across the district we have ell in every Elementary this year we have I believe every middle school and one high school also offering after school tutoring for secondary English Learners and supplying the El teachers with those classroom materials very similarly to how we do in title one making sure that we have resources

025above and beyond the resources that we have in every building a couple of highlights from ell and title III um the Elevate conference if you'll notice e-l Elevate for English language Educators our El students continue to outperform significantly outperform if you want to look at the program eval report in the board packet as well but significantly outperformed the state in ela math and science which is a huge kudos to our staff and our students and then our Wida which is their test their way to access data increase in student percent attain proficiency showing over the sixth grade levels in which they have increased their level of proficiency there again like I said we have the El programs in every Elementary this year it's in all four middle schools and then in one high school so

026we can cohort our students and make the most of our resources and provide everything that we can to meet the needs of our community Through title III and then title IV is preparing for 21st century schools again each of these title programs as I mentioned earlier is federal allocated money this is for student support and academic enrichment this is where we receive the smallest amount of federal dollars so I would say the largest emphasis is typically title one where we receive the highest amount of dollars and then title two and then three and four are a lot less than than one and two but again we want to increase student achievement by providing funds to offer well-rounded education for safe and healthy schools a lot of focus on counseling a lot of focus on mental

027health and additionally technology so the goals the three main goals support efforts to increase well-rounded education we talk about the whole child and all the facets of our our learner increase student opportunities for safe and healthy students and then also providing effective use of technology and a lot of times safety around that technology as well and ensuring that our students understand modes and operations of safely navigating technological tools that they have um if you'll look on the right hand side and the yellow sweater is one of our instructional Tech coaches she does a great job in our buildings to make sure that teachers understand the technology that they're using and also can quickly implement it in an impactful way not just a replacement a paper pencil but a truly impactful way for our students our

028program highlights are the Missouri school counselor Association conference you can see our counselors in the bottom left picture having the opportunity to collab and learn together it's not often that they get that time so when they do it is very well spent increasing technology to support professional learning and then also purchasing stem kits to enhance the elementary program any questions in regard to titles one two three and four in federal funding up to the board director Lewis under Title II uh this there's a sentence there at the beginning that talks about fair and equitable both of those words have a lot of hot touch points in in our country today can you expand on what you believe those to mean as it relates to not but maybe the government and what we're specifically using it

029for absolutely happy to do so and and like you said while sometimes that's a Hot Topic today or could be utilized in that manner it's also words that have been around for a long time in education and ensuring that our students have um access to what they need in schools equal access and have opportunities to perform to their greatest potential so just making sure that we have provided all the resources that our students could possibly need to to be successful I have a question I apologize for the voice um can you just share with everyone about Title One and how parents actually have um input on some of the decision making that's happening at their school absolutely so our Title One buildings also um through part of the federal allocation have parent engagement nights the

030title one buildings get together with the parents they they seek input they also provide activities and opportunities to help those families interact academically with their student at home and again seeking those that input to see how can our federal dollars best be spent in order to meet the needs of our students in our communities and that happens at each of those title one identified buildings each year any other questions from the board director Lewis under the title III the talk about Ela and migrants um I I think I read this in some of the writing that I received this week that we don't have any migrant students in our school district this year is that a correct statement you are correct we don't have while we have many English language Learners we don't have any

031students or families who identify as migratory families so families who would move for agricultural purposes for work and then move when the season is over so we do not have any that identify that in our school district this year Ela is still used for I don't know U.S citizens or is there I mean I where do they where does that fall in all that funding in the teachers so when we enroll families a migratory uh a migrant worker a migrant family that's a family that is transient and moves back and forth dependent on the season for work where an ell student is a student who speaks English as a second or third language so English is not the language that they learned initially so they're still learning um so it doesn't necess it's not necessarily

032indicative either way for either population of their residency status but just essentially like I said the migrant families are the ones that move and they're transient so we're trying to fill gaps if they are moving from place to place during the year based on like various farming Seasons whereas the ell families English may be their second or third language because they have an initial um another initial first language and so they're just getting up to speed in English in that area but again not indicative of a residency status at all so so they're not they're not migrants but they don't they didn't grow up learning English correct correct and if I can if I can add to Jerry maybe I can elaborate a little bit as well so when any new family enrolls in the

033district one of the questions there will be a screener and they will be asked if English is the primary language that they speak in their home if that is a if that is answered no then they will go through a screening process just to assess their English proficiency depending upon their ranking on that screening then they may qualify for additional English language instruction to help improve their English language acquisition and and we know that that can take up to 10 years for kids even to become fully proficient from when they move to this country as a first-time English speaker to to full proficiency we also go through assessments annually and to determine the acquisition of English and what types and what amounts of support they would need all right you're welcome any other questions from

034the board all right thank you Jerry so so I've got a motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed hearing none eyes have it motion occurs so moving on to a safety update what's up Rick that you got it did you know thanks Rick all right good evening Dr torma in the Board of Education this year worked to set common goals with the Board of Education and one of those does did include improving school safety that aligns with csip2 and csip3 and those specific goals are to implement security upgrades as needed to protect all students and staff in order to provide a safe learning and working environment and then provide and maintain safe clean and aesthetically pleasing facilities to accommodate student growth improve and upgrade older facilities and

035administrative Services Works in tandem with the business office and facilities for this so the progress measures that we set for the csip2 goal was visitor management system completion in Phase One of 21 and 22. the exterior door security system completion and phase two of 2223 and the interior security system completion in Phase 3 of 23 and 24. so we have completed the visitor management system with raptor we are currently nearing the end of the second phase or second measure of exterior doors security system and then we will be working on the interior security system starting next school year so some some security upgrades that we currently have are still working on and improving this year as well as next year we do have ai phones which is an intercom camera system that we use to

036check our visitors into the building once they arrive in the building they do they do go through the Raptor system um just last week Governor Parson did approve a portion of raptor through a grant for all school districts in Missouri so for us that could include drill management system in Raptor and then it also has a security alert feature in Raptor so that would allow us to implement an app for our District staff and students if we would choose so that people could report an emergency in a building it could be something as some it could be a fight it could be a request for a custodian for an emergency type cleanup the technology department continues to work through security system upgrades through the phone system upgrades this year we also received 9-1-1 notification when

037a building calls out with 9-1-1 we then receive that notification and are able to follow up with the building we continue to update and change the phone cards and room signs so that if someone is in a room or a space in one of our district buildings they and they're locked in there in the event of an emergency they can look above the door by the door for the name of the building that they're in as well as the address so that they're able to call out 9-1-1 and share that information staff ID badges in coordination with the business office this year we are working towards the key fob system to include the staff ID badges for next year school crisis plans were updated at the beginning of the school year we jumped in right

038away in June and July and met with our emergency responders as well as our administrators and we updated the school crisis plans as well as took a look at the tornado room plans and then we're going to do that again on August 9th for this fall other security measures we continue to emphasize if you see something say something students parents staff whoever that may be so that we can look into it and investigate through that we also receive tips through wsd info the wsd app with the tip line and then also courage to report and then we do utilize Blackboard as our communication system through community relations we have emergency One Touch One Touch radios in all of our schools and that's a picture of one right there and that orange button in the middle

039if you press that that will bring in every emergency responder team that call goes to the top of their list this year we have emphasized Partnerships with the fire and police departments and Danielle has invited them in throughout a variety of different meetings this year just to work on that relationship we still continue to have day and night custodial security and then we have also added two and a half school resource officers this year our intruder training is with tier one tactical where we have options based program in place and then we have trainers in all of our schools so that was implemented in 2018 and we continue to train staff for that program we through that we also provided tips for parents which is essentially a brochure newsletter that can go out through the

040building and when they're starting to get ready for that intruder training so that parents and students both have that information in August we will also have our staff safety day and our sros are involved in this with the intruder training where we do use that tier one technical options Based training we also have our nurses present First Aid on that day and then our staff also work on our staff annual trainings those staff annual trainings include all of these items here I won't read through those all but it does include items from HR student services policies and regulation a variety of different things this is a continuation of that the this is a list of departmental safe safety trainings and this is not comprehensive it's just an example of the different ones for transportation Child

041Nutrition and then maintenance and custodial every school is responsible for holding the emergency drills and they have to have six fire drills to earthquake two tornado and then two Intruder drills for students and then separate from that are two Intruder drills for staff and we do break those up between the fall and the spring semester so we have been busy with Safety and Security this school year so Dr Ben hebison was designated as our school safety coordinator this year I will be attending the conference in July and will be the designated school safety coordinator for next year we both have attended the terrorism liaison officer training which is led by the FBI um we both have attended a variety of different safety conferences and workshops including the FBI preventing violence in schools Workshop in August

042July and August we did review all of the crisis plans and then we did also spend time this year reviewing our Emergency Operations plan for the district and we are circling back to that again this summer we did implement the behavioral risk assessment training for all of our school crisis teams and they have put that into action this year already we have a system that allows us to monitor computer usage on school issued devices and then between a team of us we are able to share that information with the appropriate School building so that they can check on the student and make sure that they're okay ongoing work so some things we're still looking at for this year and for next year we'll continue that staff intruder training we'll work with the local police departments

043to test all of the emergency one-button radios in August we'll continue in on August 9th to update the emergency crisis plans and then we will evaluate that District Emergency Operations plan also phase three of the Interior Security will move forward along with the business office and maintenance teams we'll continue to work with the Safety Committee and reconvening that and then we will still be looking at Raptor and whether or not we'll be able to implement the emergency drill feature and then the security alert feature all right questions any questions from the board yes so um the grant that you're talking about that person sent out was that specific to Raptor or is it for safety there are a couple of different grants that have kind of been floating around recently the one that Dr Mueller

044just spoke about is specific to Raptor that will be a service that will be provided free to all Missouri school districts with the drill management and then kind of like a one button alert kind of feature there is another set of money that's set aside for school safety grants we did apply for those funds and they just I believe it was last week announced the first round of approval and when I looked at those lit the list they were very small very rural schools that don't have a lot of access yet so um it looks like to me they're they're trying to make sure that they're creating Level Playing Fields between schools that might be in more impoverished areas rural areas first and then build beyond that so they haven't said how many rounds of

045funding will be approved but they did they were very clear that it was the first round so we're still in it um and hopefully maybe the next next round we'll we'll receive some of that funding and I have a few more so the walkie-talkies that you were talking about with the orange button on the top who in the buildings have those is it every teacher is it just office there's one per building and the administrator in the building determines where that goes as to who's who's in the office frequently and so I'm gonna just caution us just a little bit of with the safety security piece of this that we don't want to get too detailed with our questions because we also don't want to compromise any of our safety security plans either as we

046move forward so if there is anything that seems to be more specific in nature we're happy to when we go back into closing closed session answer that for you I do have more questions but they are probably like you said so I'll ask those when we go back to close okay any other questions from the board director Lewis sure just one question on the security update Slide the last bullet you put out there was vestibules for each school what does that mean so the district has worked to set up a two-door system so that you have one door from the outside then once you enter you have the vestibule area while you're waiting to then check in through Raptor and then be allowed to go into the building is that for every doorway or just

047the front that's just for the front of the building thanks so I have a question so what I'm hearing you say is that Raptor will be moved out of the office into the vestibule where so they'll check in there before they're actually buzzed into the office so when you enter a building you have the first door and then right there you have um the ability like for example at the high school level that's where you check in at the window and then use the Raptor system but not every school has the window with a registrar person sitting right there so the secured vestibule entry doesn't allow them to go directly into the school it either secures them in that vestibule or it forces them directly into the office with the staff there to assist them

048any other questions I just have maybe one comment or you know it could be I know we have a work session to talk goals on Saturday but in our last time we talk goals in a workshop one of the things that I had heard from buildings was around the buzzing in specifically on Food Service delivery and allowing them into the building to you know deliver food and I thought we were going to look at at least the process that's handled in the buildings on keeping that person from getting into that first door and just leaving the food outside I think that that was something that got brought up I remember from that session and it doesn't have to be answered today but as we think about next year in our procedures it was a comment

049from the passport so just as a clarification you're not not talking about like our food delivery providers for childhood yep so instead of having GrubHub walk into the building there's no reason they can't just drop it off in the front they don't need to be buzzed in at all any other questions okay moving on sorry I lost my spot so we have just a budget update from Rick that's 14 3. yes I'm going to go ahead and wait for the slides to come up okay oh okay I can work with it uh what this presentation is going to do on the first gray slide uh is to let you know where we are with the budget the budget is going to have to be approved uh next month and next month's board meeting and I'll

050explain that in a little bit but we're currently in the process of entering the final numbers into our systems for the computation of the 2023-24 budget uh Revenue expense projections have not significantly changed since the March budget presentation uh the administration gives a presentation in March on the budget and gives a lot of detail on all the individual items that are increasing and decreasing and we explain those items in detail in March and I can tell you that nothing has significantly changed since the presentation to the board in March we're currently planning to submit a balanced budget to the board in June it is balanced at this particular time and we don't suspect anything is going to happen that would bring us out of a out of a process of being balanced for this particular

051budget I am going to go over a very high level won the revenue items and won the expense items to give you a strategic direction of what is happening financially with the district and again this is not a lot of detail but it will tell you the direction that the district is going again this is a reassessment year in our assessed values have gone up over 20 percent and what that has resulted in is that the tax rate for the district has gone down 35 cents in relation to the increased assessed values one of the biggest reasons the assessed values go up in this District isn't just increased house prices it's because there's new homes going in all the time which get completely added to the assessed value so that 20 isn't just the home

052values going up of course it is also new homes going down again the 35 percent are the 35 Cent reduction in taxes related do that per the Hancock Amendment prop C sales tax increase we're getting a very large or expect a very large increase in sales tax next year per deci what that is is we the schools in Missouri get a dollar per student a certain number of dollars per student uh for sales tax and that dollar per student has been increased by the state and by deci for next year also the state will be fully funding Transportation next year which is unusual this will be two years in a row that they're funding transportation pilot programs are increasing what a pilot program is is a payment in lieu of taxes and General Motors is

053uh increasing or based on their Agreements are providing over a million dollars more in payments in lieu of taxes earnings on investments are increasing although uh interest rates are going up is very unsatisfactory for many people in here who own homes and who try to get loans but when you are investing in fund balances or earnings on our investments will increase significantly next year based on the items that schools are allowed to invest in which is very limited to government type items but which is specific to us and increasing our revenues there's going to be a decrease in the state formula funding most of that is due to lower attendance it's not necessarily based on enrollment it's based on attendance we do not have the same attendance as we have had in the past and

054that is it does affect the amount of money that we get from the state Esser payments are being reduced and fully spent uh we're reduced after next year that's the last year we're going to have our Esser payments we are cutting our Sr payments in half next year to what we're receiving this year and uh by next year uh 2023-24 all of our Esser funds will be spent the last item is federal revenues and expenses for Grants have been reduced equally uh we have Federal revenues and when our federal revenues get get decreased we decrease our federal expenses accordingly on the expense side our expense highlights is that wages and benefits have been increased this year you saw a lot of increases in revenues and this is the main priority and this is where our

055major expense increases came from other large expense increases are third-party payments to custodial cab service and grass cutting let me explain custodial and cab service we have not been able to hire hire enough bus drivers we have not been able to hire uh enough custodial staff and we are using third-party services that is expensive it's raising our expenses and as soon as we can get those especially the cab services that's on a on a day by day basis as we fill up our bus drivers we will be able to cut those cab services custodial we just worked on a new contract with them and we'll be able to cut those with 30 days no notice also so we are able to cut these as we get new staff in but we are budgeting a lot

056of extra dollars here because of what we're going to have to do we also changed our grass cutting uh uh people who who do cut our grass we weren't getting good service we are going to pay more there but uh we were getting what we were paying for and it was not sufficient for our district energy costs are increasing eight percent liabilities workers comp and property costs are increasing our liability workers compound property insurance premiums are increasing another eight percent uh and again our federal revenues and expenses for Grants have been reduced equally as I stated with the revenues on the next slide Desi recommends and this is uh what I want to impress upon the board is that Desi recommends that school boards adopt the budget at least at excuse me at the last

057meeting of the Board of Education prior to the beginning of the fiscal year that's next month uh Desi requires that the uh the budget be approved statutory Provisions also require that the board approved the budget by June 30th the reason for that is is schools are not allowed to spend money that is not approved by the boards so and they also recommend that that budget not be given too early because they want everything in the budget that believe me Desi sometimes makes changes right up to the very end and they they recommend that that the June school board for us would be the June School Board as It'll ask before a fiscal year so that combination hits next month so if you do have any questions on any of the Strategic direction of the budget

058I do highly recommend that you ask those questions tonight and that that we work through those then the very last slide oh that I didn't do that slide yet that uh the budget as presented to this board in March and reiterated in this presentation is well underway the budget is balanced and we're not anticipating even through deci at this point we're not anticipating any changes when we're planning on going through with the budget balanced as we have it right now now the last slide is this is a budget update only we're not requesting emotion it's our ability to tell you where we're heading with the budget what's expected next month and to answer any questions you have on the Strategic direction of the district okay appreciate that Rick recognizing we'll have over a hundred pages

059to review and approve for our next meeting are there any questions at least on the Strategic Direction here on the budget no questions Danielle coming I was just going to make a comment I don't know that he mentioned this but when you get the budget next month there are 24 000 line items in our budget okay correction 25. sorry [Laughter] director Hankey please when will we be getting that report that report will come to you in the regular budget packet it will not come to you in the addendum so that Friday before if that makes you feel better okay okay we're moving on so new business in 15 one got a presentation this is for no motion here board but a first reading of policy 412 uh I think that Danielle you've got a presentation

060for us I think yes I'm going to turn it over to Pat brazzell here in just a second but I did just want to kind of open this up um on July 1st a new law goes into effect that requires all Missouri public school districts to have a component of their regularly scheduled board meeting that allows residents to request to have agenda items added to the board agenda and so with this policy um there was a community community engagement component through the legislation there are required items there are optional items there are recommended items and so as a district during our community engagement event that we had a few weeks ago at and as well as a survey that we put out through our district e-newsletter we did get Garner quite a bit of feedback

061I think we had about a hundred people at the community engagement event that gave us feedback and then we had about 600 people that took the survey as well so um with that I'm going to turn it over to Pat he's going to walk us through some of the language and I and I also want to clarify that our current board policy zero four one two this does not change anything that we have in place with public comments public comments will continue to stay just like they are and for public comments anyone in the public can come and make a comment during the agenda item component that is designated through State Statute as residents only so with that I'm going to turn over to Pat thank you so I'm going to start with just providing

062a brief overview of the statutory requirements so the Missouri General Assembly not in the most recent legislative session but in the preceding legislative session past 162.058 of the revised Missouri statutes and it requires implementation of a community engagement policy after receiving Community input and it must be adopted by July 1st 2023 so in your board packet you'll see a Redline version of what is currently board policy zero four one two and that Redline version includes for your consideration revised language that is geared toward compliance with the statute and also exercising some of the discretionary Provisions that were provided for within the statute but that we got feedback on from the community engagement session in the survey so amongst other things we have to provide residents of the district with a method of communicating with the

063board and the administration we have to create a process for allowing any residents to have an item placed on the agenda of a board meeting if the resident follows the process described in the policy no item can be placed on the meeting agenda unless the item is directly related to governance or operation of the district and it requires the creation of a process allowing residents to have an item placed on the agenda again that pertains to District Operations I apologize for that um in addition we have some discretionary things that we talked about so one of the things that the statute says is that the policy can require a meeting with the superintendent or designee if that's set forth in the policy prior to placing the item on the agenda so the purpose of that

064is just to allow an informal resolution of what would become a formal agenda item in a board meeting uh if that superintendent or designee requirement is included in the policy then the policy also also has to include language uh whereby the superintendent must meet with the resident within 20 days of a written request to meet and then after that meeting or if the superintendent does not meet with the resident within 20 days the resident is required to submit a written request to the board secretary to have the issue brought before the board as a meeting agenda if the board secretary receives the request less than five days before the next regularly scheduled board meeting then the issue will be placed on the subsequent regularly scheduled board meeting if the hearing of a resident's agenda item

065is delayed the board must provide the resident with an alternate method of communicating to the board regarding the agenda item but it doesn't specify what that alternate method of communicating is so again that's one of the discretionary items that we the board has the opportunity to decide upon uh it may establish reasonable rules governing agenda items including time limits for presentation or discussion of the agenda item limits on the number of speakers to a single individual or to individuals who met with the superintendent or the superintendent's designee before the issue is brought to the board the board May refuse to hear delay hearing an agenda item if the board has heard an identical or similar issue within the three previous calendar months so um those issues can be excluded at the discretion of the board

066but once that rolling three-month period ends that point the resident could pres presumably then make the request an agenda item may be removed a different board meeting with consent and the board May delay hearing and agenda item if more than three resident initiated agenda items are scheduled so that is the kind of overview of what the statute requires before I jump into the next part does anyone have any questions okay so uh the district has held two Community engagement sessions which were alluded to earlier one was on April 27th um about a hundred folks from the community parents staff were there and community members were asked to weigh in and provide input regarding the sample Community engagement policy and that the policy that we're working off of and that has been established in the district

067policy zero four one two that was proposed originally by our policy provider the language that we have worked off of to comply with this statute although it has been amended it was also provided by our policy provider so we worked off of a template that they had provided and we altered that template so to speak based on the community feedback that we received uh through the electronic surveys previously mentioned over 600 community members participated the feedback was tremendous so on the survey and at the engagement session here is the first question that we asked should the resident be required to meet with the superintendent or designee before placing an item on the agenda and when we were in person meeting with folks the community members who attended overwhelmingly supported requiring a superintendent meeting or a

068meeting with a superintendent's designee before requesting or going to the board to request an agenda item being added to uh the meeting agenda survey results varied by question so this was the first question but I think it was the least responded to which is kind of curious um so 577 responses 51.8 percent in favor of that superintendent meeting requirement being included in the board policy but again at the event the support was overwhelming for this requirement next question was does a five minute time limit seem reasonable for a resident to address the board regarding their agenda item the board may choose to extend this time limit as appropriate so again community members were almost unanimous they said that a five-minute limit was reasonable and as you can see from the responses from the electronic survey

06983.9 percent of folks were in favor of that limit as well is limiting the resident requested items to three total per regular board meeting reasonable um again those in attendance supported that proposition the survey results were in favor of it as well although we sort of split this up into three possible responses and instead of just yes and no so I think that probably reduced the total number of of those who reported being in support for it but it's still a majority of the people who responded if a resident requested agenda item is delayed What alternative methods of communication should be offered to the resident here there was actually a proposal at the community event by Community member who said in addition to a writing maybe a short five-minute video and the general consensus at

070that table at that time was that was an awesome idea so we put that out there and although we have a less than majority um a vote here from the survey I think the idea is enticing and so in your proposed policy we've included language of that effect we've also included allowing the resident to write in as a method of communication so going back to the current board policy there is an emphasis on community engagement there was already a discussion on agenda request in the current policy although it wasn't statutorily required at the time there's a public comment period a few comments here about the public comments they're not required by law in Missouri the new statute does not require or address public comments public comments allow anyone from the public to speak this new

071statute is only directed to residents of the school district so if you don't reside within the school district you're not subject to the policy that allows a resident to add an agenda item it also contains rules of decorum so this is the current board policy for the agenda request there's pretty strong language here that gives the board of the superintendent discretion on whether or not the item will be added to the agenda it's not quite the case in the new proposed policy so what have we done we've deleted the current agenda item section in the current version of board policy zero four one two we've added new agenda item request section based on the community input and the statute and the revised policy is closely aligned with the district policy provider's recommendation as I previously

072mentioned so here it is um kind of recreated here I don't think that we need to necessarily go through everything um with regard to the sort of more discretionary aspects of the Ida of the uh the revised language see there you know there's a limitation on the number of people who may speak on any agenda item it's three um you know and again all these Provisions are based on the Community feedback one of the things I know that we had informally sort of discussed is the imposition of sort of institutional board Norms versus including Express language in the policy for what the board's role will be when a resident presents on an agenda item that is something that I think we're going to open up discussion now or leave for perhaps the community engagement session

073I'm sorry the work session on Saturday I'd offer it up to the board if there's thoughts on this specific slide it's really getting into Norms we don't have to discuss it today it can't be on the 20th but um you know we obviously the slide in front of us if there's comments or questions here we'll take them from the board now this process of work you'll have you know if if the board approves the policy as written you'll have a member of the community that meets with Danielle assuming that they move past that discussion they'll have five minutes um to present to the board their view of the agenda item the question here is is around does should the board be voting in that moment or making motions in that moment on that specific agenda

074item or do you want to create some standard level of procedures regardless of what item is being brought up and having that being you know the next meeting we may choose to then vote on that allowing for example the administration to bring counterpoints and or additional information back to the board that they may not have otherwise been prepared to provide the board context of and and my general view is I think consistency here is probably at best what the board should consider so that we're not picking and choosing when to make motions and or you know listen to feedback back from from the resident in this case so that's that's where there's some judgment for us to decide here my opinion would be to allow for discussion short discussion and then vote at a later

075date yeah I think the next slide actually talks about whether we should do discussion and have q a as well so that's the other part of the policy and Norms we need to consider as well Dr Lewis and any discussion and Q a that takes place is outside of the five minutes yeah I think that's that's what needs to be decided you know in terms of like in this slide here if you look at it it talks about do you allow them to present without questions you meaning don't interrupt the presentation let them get through their presentation which then with that five minute Rule and then q a is I would consider potentially you know assuming the board agrees potentially just goes until we're done with questions I agree okay okay other thoughts from other

076members of the board yeah I would agree with that it seems like that's like what county council's standard is it seems like other entities also do it that way okay is there a question director secretary it's a dress placement on the agenda no there's a separate regulation that once we get through this then we would update the regulation onto determining where we would choose to place that on the agenda Oh you mean actually a little list yeah the order that's a that's fair question um I I would think just given business and flow it may make sense to be at the end of kind of like new business not something early and consent in other places so you have still your public comment period in the front section but then have this kind of in

077the back that'd be my thoughts yeah I think that's a standard model as well at other meetings like ours okay I would also sorry I would also support some sort of norms to what we discuss on our at our workshop on Saturday so whether that is we allow discussion how long do we allow the discussion to last all those things I think we need to give consideration to for consistency sounds good okay anything other Patrick that is all I have if um does anyone else have any other questions for me thank you so this is just a first reading at the next regularly scheduled meeting we will ask for approval so then we can have it in place to be compliant with the July 1st mandate okay moving on to 15.2 student misconduct and disciplinary

078consequences 23 24. I think Dr tormwell we've got a presentation there might be a team effort here I believe official I'll kind of kick it off and then I'm going to turn it over to Dr Mueller and uh Mr brazzell so as you know this is my first year here as superintendent one of the things that I started to dig into shortly after I arrived were all of our kind of governing documents and one of the things that since any suspension suspensions that are recommended for Beyond 10 days come up to my desk I began to dig into our student misconduct and disciplinary code of conduct document and so I did notice that in our district our current code is one that spans all students all grade levels and doesn't have a ton of specifics

079it's late I've been up since 3am a lot of detail in it and so with that one of the things that I asked our team to do was to research other districts I wanted them to to work together to create a code of conduct that broke it out by grade level spans so with Whatever item you're looking at you could see what that would look like for elementary students middle school students or high school students that when it was appropriate to give a tighter range outside of you know zero to 180 days of suspension that we would do that but then we also do still have some catch-all categories that can cover the very creative ways that students sometimes can get in trouble that we aren't necessarily prepared for in a code of conduct so

080we do have um a document here for basically a first reading tonight we did have an administrative Review Committee work through this pretty much ongoing like late first semester and all second semester really working through this and what I'll say is that this is still a work in progress what we've brought forward to you tonight definitely tightens up and it it makes it more transparent and clear to to administrators staff students and parents on what possible consequences could be it also does provide some increased consequences for areas that we felt that in the district it needed to be tightened up especially around fighting or assaults assaults on staff members things like that we also have tightened up our cell phone policy we've had many Communications and conversations around dress code and those are things that

081we can also get into as well and then when I mentioned it's a work in progress we definitely have made lots of strides with what we're bringing to you today but we also know that over the coming year and years there are other areas that we'd like to go into for example we currently have two programs that we work with right now it's our state program which is our substance abuse and Intervention Program and a nicotine program so if students have infractions with drugs or alcohol or nicotine um when they go through the disciplinary process they are given the option to go through treatment or given the option to go through a training protocol and if they are able to successfully complete that that's in lieu of the suspension and so we would like to

082do research and begin really looking into are there other areas where we might be able to do that because sometimes we know out of school suspension doesn't change the behavior for the student it's those teachable opportunities those teachable moments and the potential therapy or training or treatment program that can help with that and so that's an area that we did not get to this year but over the course of next year where we would like to work with Pierce Hall in researching that further and seeing where we could what we could potentially bring next spring for for the 24-25 school year so with that I'm going to turn it over to I believe Dr Mueller and she's going to start walking us through um through the presentation and Mr Brazzle will also share some thoughts

083as well because he he very much looked at all of this from a legal standpoint thank you so the committee that she Dr tormolo referenced did include representatives from a variety of different departments which included administrative Services alternative education counseling student services teaching and learning it did include a special education representative also administrators from the elementary middle and high school levels through that work we did explore other codes of conduct across Missouri as well as locally and with that we looked at all of the individual categories or infractions and then along with that the definitions of those categories or infractions and then we looked at the different consequences ranging from conferences to loss of privileges detentions expulsion restitution so this is just an example of the formatting and the breakdown within the document so for

084each category a small table was added for and it included elementary middle school and high school and then some include they all included first offense and then some included second offense or subsequent offense or even a third offense and through that committee work we did go through each and every category and have great pretty long discussions about that and I'm going to hand it over to Pat so after the committee did their work I did my work in making sure that what the code of conduct says actually reflects what everyone decided or at least I tried and we went through it and we worked everything out so I'm going to go through some of the the bigger changes that I I think we want to highlight so for academic dishonesty for example um we have

085for elementary school removed the possibility of a detention and a parent or a student conference for Middle School we've also for a first offense and I'm sorry that was for a second or subsequent offense for middle school and a first offense we removed attention in a student conference and for a second offense in Middle School removed detention and ISS plus we've added a conference there additionally for um we've also allowed for a redo of 60 for 60 percent credit and then in high school again very similar to Middle School remove detention and ISS added a conference and then for a second or subsequent offense removed detention added ISS and added a redo of 50 percent one of the uh bigger ones that I think we spent time discussing is assault of students and other staff

086non-staff individuals so we really spent a lot of time splitting this up in between two categories the first is splitting it up for assault of a student and other non-staff individuals and then on the other hand splitting it up for assault of Staff members and so here we've actually broken it into three separate categories first offense second offense and then a third and subsequent offense and we have amended when it is a possible versus automatic referral to the superintendent for consideration of additional discipline and can I add to that so our current code basically all of it says that um it could always have a possible referral to the superintendent for additional days and so one of the things that we felt strongly with this was that we needed to tighten up the amount of

087days that principals would um suspend for assaults and fights but then if we are getting into a second offense or those types of things that at that point it probably shouldn't be a possible referral to the superintendent it should be an automatic referral to the superintendent for for us to look at the specifics around it because the students that do have repeat offenses with this there needs to be stronger consequences and conversations at the district level on how to address that and real quick Patrick it may help because there's a separate slide for fighting it may help to to define the difference between assault and fighting because there is different you know punishments or discipline for that yeah so when we talk about a fight we're talking about mutual combat between two people they've both

088engaged in the conduct and willingly so we talk about an assault it's a violent physical attack that is either provoked or unprovoked and it doesn't necessarily have that Mutual combative element to it it could in some circumstances a fight can certainly or at least one party to a fight maybe both can constitute their conduct could constitute an assault but we've classified it differently here to reflect the fact that we should probably discipline students who are mutually engaged and and a fight a little bit less than someone who walks up to another student and unprovoked hits him in the face so you'll see that reflected throughout the code of conduct this idea of progressively increasing the punishment based on the severity of the conduct but also on the number of offenses that the student has engaged

089in and so here uh for assault of student we have it broken down into first second and then third in subsequent offense and just comparing it to what it was before it was one to 180 days on a first offense that left a wide deal of discretion up to the administration but again we wanted to tighten it up and so now it's been changed to reflect a more Progressive discipline that the committee decided was appropriate for the district you want to go to the next slide thank you you forgot before we go to that next slide and I and I'm going to encourage boards if you have questions on these slides please ask them Midstream just because um I think there's a lot on each and it'd be hard to to hold questions so I'm

090going to jump with a question if that's okay sure um making my rules for myself um so one of the things we talked about this was again back I think at the time when we had our goal setting Workshop so it was a similar time frame um one of the points I think that I'd raised and I think there was some Echo from the board at least at that time around was defending yourself and it's probably related to assault in the case you gave so you know you get punched you know you know unprovoked in the hallway in the back of the head or you know shoved and started you start getting punched um there's been a practice I think was defined um in the last discussion around if then if I fight back and

091defend myself I can also then be punished and it becomes potentially a fighting you know incident um that's not really how the world Works in terms of assault if I'm assaulted someone steals my wallet I can defend myself and my property and I don't get charged and so so how does this if any way reflect that reality and those points and and how to you know look I get there's not a camera in every place and we have to take Witnesses and we have to understand that but purely being able to defend myself should be my right without being punished and I think we have you know kids that have a lot to lose and kids that may not have a lot to lose and so you know there's kids that will get into a

092fetal position and you know basically say you know I'll get hit and not fight back because I don't want to lose my scholarship my my academics or my sporting you know right to play sports for being suspended so a long-winded question but I think just want to understand how we're reflecting you know that issue within our process or procedure can I add on to that question sure it's also someone if someone is in the fetal position if a Good Samaritan comes up to help defend the fetal position child yeah so that's you know that's also sort of protected conduct under the law right so it's not just protecting yourself but if you come to someone's Aid and you apply reasonable Force back to um you know combat the the threat of harm to the other

093person you're not going to be charged with assault for that by and large I mean it's all fact specific and so our determinations as a school district are equally fact specific and they're mitigating and aggravating circumstances that are always considered within the context of imposing discipline uh whether that be assault or whether that be something else entirely and so I I think when it comes down to it you know the administrator who's conducting the investigation into the misconduct is going to look at the entirety of the facts and I think built into this code of conduct is this idea that there are aggravating and mitigating circumstances and although um although you know they are faced with that situation the district administrator will consider those sort of circumstances and and weigh it accordingly and make a

094determination and in times when we act in self-defense that is a uh at least criminally speaking that is a complete bar to a criminal prosecution or it should be and if nothing else it can result in acquittal so these are things that that we think through within the context of the student code of conduct as well and that's why we've built into the the code the provision for aggravating and mitigating circumstances with this because this is this is currently have so um as we work with our administrators we have an administrative Retreat this summer once this is approved this is going to be a huge component of what we're working on with them as we have our monthly administrator meetings we're going to have scenarios our monthly assistant principal meetings we're going to have scenarios

095to really kind of start to calibrate and make sure that level by level when infractions happen we can be as consistent as possible to add on to those comments from Jason and Jen and Pat too one of the things we haven't highlighted yet is like sometimes when a fight happens or an assault happens kids circle around they pull out the cell phones they're egging them on nobody's going to get help right and so when that happens now there's consequences for those kiddos too so our expectation for all students is if we see somebody is getting you know they're the fetal position position and they're they're getting hit we need to get help quickly we're not there trying to create almost a riotous environment where we're egging it on we need to all be a part

096of the solution to get help so that we can report it and post it on social media and get a bunch of likes I mean that's part of it so Pat yeah yeah just a quick follow-up to your statement there um you say that that you've got a clause or you've got an understanding about that person that's fights back it doesn't say that here well I think the instigator would would be taken into consideration and that would be an aggravating factor in terms of determining whether or not or the level of discipline should be imposed and also you know on the other side of it if I'm not the one who instigates it I'm sure that would be taken into consideration as a mitigating Factor it may not be total Absolution for the involvement in

097the fight because at the end of the day even if I did not um and look this is just my thinking the administrator is going to make the decisions not me but you know at the end of the day um assuming the hypothetical that was presented that person nevertheless did engage in a fight sorry I don't probably pile on what you just said director Lewis is you use language in terms of like what would be how the administration can basically not punish the defender in this case what was the language you used it was like mitigating and aggravating circumstances but also there's a ton of discretion in these situations as well yeah and I know that the presentation is different than the actual word doc but I'm looking at the word doc we're aren't using

098that language and so I guess what I'm probably going to ask is that we look at adding that language to this so that it's clear in terms of an expectation I know we're going to train and do that but maybe the language being added if the board agrees you know in terms of the next turn of this if that's Saturday I think it would be appropriate I agree with that and I do you think that our administrators need that discretion because again not every situation is going to be textbook right so let's say you have somebody who comes up and checks them something whatever hits them in the back of the head but then the person that then responds takes it too far and so there are definite um areas of gray that we're going

099to have to still have some some flexibility for our Administration yeah and I 100 agree with that and I'm not trying to jump into the gray and give like specific guidelines I think what we had discussed in the past and has been somewhat of a practice there may be some judgment in the gray being done today but there's just been a you know hard to tell who instigated it you're both fighting so therefore you're both out versus you know a due process that's you know goes at least to figure out if there is reason to believe that someone was defending themselves with appropriate you know in return violence if you will um and I think just being clear that that is an Avenue that administrators can choose is all I'm looking for regardless of what's

100written in the policy right now or in this one the revisions it's not from my experience over my son's now Junior it's always everybody's guilty everybody who's participating is guilty up to the same level maybe like one gets an extra day of ISS or something but there's never been um in my experience not just with my own children but friends children's there's never been like a Good Samaritan Clause there where you don't have a consequence for sticking up for yourself or somebody else and I just do think it would be important to put it in writing at some point maybe not specifically in here but like in the regulation portion where you're just being descriptive about things I don't know and I think that if we talk about something like that then I think we

101do need to have some clear delineation that that's an option if there's clear evidence that there's there are things that are very very clear that that was the case because when things are gray and you have a he said she said or some version of my friends your friends then then you get in a space where that's going to be no win for everybody so we'll have to be very careful with that and I agree with that and look that's what I'm saying I'm not trying to dabble into the details but I I just don't want it to be a blanket approach and allow flexibility for the admin here that's it let's move on next slide Pat excuse me do you see a time where where somebody assaults a teacher for three times that they

102wouldn't be exposed exposed expelled I mean I just to me I come from Old School three strikes and you're out you pile up on a teacher three times that person isn't in school as far as I'm concerned there could be um special education reasons why that student may need additional Services a change in placement things like that but that they are still in our schools I also think that depending upon some of this the severity of things too um and going back to each case and each situation what I can also say is that I can think right now of something that happened recently where there was a fight between two students and they were going at it a teacher came in to separate and in the midst was hit right like so was it

103I mean I could see that you could say that that that's maybe more of a a fight a hit or something like that but still at the same same time a staff member was was injured right not three times doing that not on right but but those those things can happen where I mean part of the reason why we have the problem today is because we've had policy that allows them to get by with it and until we decide to take a firm stand it's going to continue sorry my comment and I'd argue that when you compare what we have here today versus to what we have currently this takes a much stronger stance so I had a question as it relates to this slide in the previous slide I I noticed that um there

104doesn't appear to be a clear progression for kids in elementary schools I do know obviously I recognize age but can you just speak to that and provide some understanding because um I guess as we look for um continuity across the district I understand the descript the discretion that our building administrator needs but like what does that look like since they're different facts different circumstances things like that well when you have a kindergartner as a five-year-old and a fifth grader who maybe 11 you know ish um that's a giant range of learning and understanding the Age of Reason those types of things come into play and so because of that the impulsivity the all of those things that's where you're going to see Elementary is going to have a wider range of options with students things

105I just wanted again so we could have that clarification and understanding as people are trying to work through this with us well you know if you look at that that slide a solid staff member first second and third in each each column are the same there isn't a progression in any of them no but that's also where like when it comes to me then I'm the person making that final decision so then I can I can suspend up to 180 days now a parent could always choose to appeal my suspension a parent can choose to appeal anything that I do Beyond 10 days so then that might come in from the board and when that does or if that does then the board would have the choice to say nope we're gonna uphold it nope

106we're going to reduce it or nope guess what you're going out yeah for an expulsion um and if it was egregious enough then that's where I would recommend expulsion but those are things that are are very few and far between what is it currently this assault of Staff members it's a potential it's um I think it's five to ten days and with a possible referral to the superintendent for additional days so this one adds notice to law enforcement and automatic referral sorry notice to law enforcement would have already been in there oh sorry so my notes indicate here that the uh current range of punishment for assault of a staff member is a number of OSS days plus an automatic referral or additional days so 1 to 180 for first offense and five to 180

107for subsequent offense is that what you have to know okay so in going back to speak to the progressive discipline um part of it too is looking at the discipline being imposed for for example starting with disruptive conduct then going to fighting then going to assault of a student then going to assault of a staff member when you look at it within the context of different types of misconduct but which kind of range from the most to the least extreme at least with the with the um within the context of you know physical assaults physical altercations those sorts of things you really start to see the progression um through that lens I don't think that the assault of a staff member or a student should have a third or subsequent offense consequence it should be

108expulsion that's not a fight where you're duking it out with somebody who said something about your mom it's an assault you you assaulted somebody look and I was gonna so I do think there are considerations which I think the admins trying to these are my words bake within this and not be so black and white because of fape and idea you would apply different rules for those exceptions potentially but my point is is that that's what's leaving this flexible if you were to I'm just making this up change this to be you're expelled for the third option those considerations should be half and so it may not lead to then expulsion well under those the idea and the other one that you mentioned they have rules that you have to give them a certain so

109these would not apply automatically necessarily so if you have third or subsequent consequence for middle and high school they know what they're doing they're assaulting someone they're not an elementary school kid that doesn't know the difference or is trying to learn what acceptable feelings are and stuff like that I mean we're teaching middle and high school students that they can do it a third time I don't think that's okay it's an assault you can't do it a third time in society but I mean with just regular consequences no I was just going to say it's that the asterisk there automatic referral for additional days to the super or expulsion I mean the possibility is there that with the first offense expulsion could occur I definitely hear what you're saying though it shouldn't even be allowed

110to get to a third opportunity let's say it that way um but I think with the asterisk there for you know the additional or expulsion the discretion there I just think it's a different category because it's an assault but um I think what secretary lizek is trying to say and correct me if I'm wrong is just that like even at the first offense someone can be expelled because it's an automatic referral so that could be one strike it was so egregious you're you're out the rest of the year the other side of the coin is that they could do it 15 times but it could also be they could be into placement services so it doesn't necessarily mean expulsion you're done with school could be it to pierce hall or other programs as well um

111that can be done and so I think that's why there's maybe two secretary Eliza's point the asterisks and the flexibility is to consider the nature of those things specific to the student let's move to if you wouldn't mind Patrick can we go to the fighting just because it's it flows better sure I think you kind of skip and then get to fighting if you want to talk to the fighting one yeah so fighting is along that sort of range of the Continuum that I just talked about and um let me pull this up in my notes Here turn around so previously we only had two categories that it was for a first offense and a subsequent offense and they were identical conference detention ISS one to 180 days of OSS or expulsion they were all

112on the table for first offenses and subsequent offenses and so now we have a much more um I think workable sort of plan here with respect to first subsequent third and subsequent offenses across the different levels of school so for example Middle School three to ten days OSS for a first offense notice the law enforcement and possible referral traditional days subsequent offense is now five to ten days third and subsequent offense is now 10 days minimum of OSS notice the law enforcement automatic referral for additional days and then if you compare that to um high school it's pretty much similar except for that first offense which carries with the possibility of an initial um OSS of five to ten days obviously for elementary schools as you've seen throughout the range of punishments is a little

113broader but also less punitive the idea obviously being that elementary schools our elementary school students need an opportunity to get it figured out before we just impose a bunch of discipline um but then if we look at disruptive conduct going back a few slides because this is kind of the last um last type of misconduct that's in that sort of progressive discipline I talked about so now we're we've gone through the different sort of physical assaults and fighting uh and this disruptive behavior policy has been revised to include conduct that is very sort of like um a big issue right now with regard to fighting an assaults which is this is this disruptive effect of students not going out and getting help standing around in a circle watching The Fighter physical altercation recording it so

114disruptive behavior the language is now defined as conduct that has the effect of disturbing education the school environment or the safety of a student this includes but is not limited to engaging in behavior that encourages provokes or incites physical altercations violence or fighting among students whether by director indirect means including but not limited to surrounding students who are fighting recording fights or other altercations on cell phones or other electronic devices and posting same to the internet or social media and failing to seek help from staff members when a fight or other physical altercation ensues in their presence I have a comment on that one I have seen video where yes there was a student recording I highly doubt it was for likes on Facebook or Twitter I think it was probably because they wanted to

115get a recording of what was happening to their friend um and it was text messages text message to their parent afterwards where the teacher walked around the fight to try to take the phone from the child that to me would be a violation of this policy because you're not helping the child so I mean I think that the teacher shouldn't have to be thinking about enforcing two policies when there's a fight going down they shouldn't have to think oh get off your phone get off your phone and break up the fight I think that's that's taking it that's extra I think they're probably hypotheticals that cut against most of the board policies and student code of conduct I mean there is a bunch of discretion that's inherent in the discipline decision making process that isn't

116necessarily reflected into each one of these individual acts of disruptive behavior but the point's well taken and I don't know if I'm spoke but that was not a hypothetical that was something that did happen and I believe it's happened multiple times in videos that have been captured by the students it's interesting this is just whoever the team was that there were very micro focused on that very point because everything else is a general statement it's assault it's fighting it's whatever and this is and if they do this and if they do this and if you do this and do this it's all about surrounding the fight or it doesn't say anything in there about disruption that that occurs in the classes that is not just disrupting you know their time of learning but everybody else's

117as well it's interesting just that that is so specific on this disruption well and I don't I don't think that it's an intended to be so specific it's intended to give an idea of what disruptive behavior means so when you talk about assault you talk about fighting generally people understand what that means when you talk disruptive behavior there's such a wide category and earlier when I talked about this that we tried to be pretty specific on a lot of things and then we had some catch-all categories that we would be a little wider with or more General with the possible consequences just disrupted behavior is one of those areas and I think it's what's it's the D's it's the dangerous Behavior it's the disruptive behavior and the disrespectful Behavior those are the catch-alls that can

118catch a lot of things and because of that need a little more description in this area yeah maybe I'll add to that director Lewis I think the presentation itself is meant to highlight probably specific changes and are significant changes to the list but we still have I think to to Dr tarmallow as part like disrespectful conduct or speech bullying and cyber bullying dangerous behavior that would fit within if you wanted to to take a disruptive behavior but there's already a specific you know item and I think the presentation is really just a minute to highlight um you know changes that are significant to the policy but otherwise they're included elsewhere and I'd add like this is a problem in general I've watched videos probably similar to what director Olson is talking about where there are

119students that are doing this encouraging literally almost pushing others to fight into fights and they should absolutely face discipline for those things they are not creating a safe environment they're making it worse and I don't think we should I think that we should find ways in which there have corrective behavior and consequences for those things as well I do think to your point director uh Olson on staff I don't think there's General requirements for staff to put hands on kids in in an unsafe environment especially if we're talking high schoolers and male students that are 18 years of age and a female employee I do think and I think we talked about this before in this topic before around you know staff being loud making sure that you know they're being allowed in terms of

120this is not appropriate stop stop stop being you know getting in you know that that kind of mode but then as well alerting those that are either trained to handle those situations or getting involved um you know that are that are allowed to do that and or comfortable doing that so I do think reiteration of that you know in terms of Staff being involved earlier and sooner in other ways it may not be physical um you know is important for training of staff and making sure that they're you know thinking about this so we stop the you know the violence the issue because the safety of the kids is important here we don't want them to hurt themselves I'm not in favor telling kids they can't video record it my view my my words I

121don't know that that explicitly is here I think Patrick's made it clear that there's discretion involved recording it for the reasons you cite maybe we're an administrator uses discretion and says hey I'm doing this for the safety of them the staff was already alerted so there's no reason I can't do that for the reasons you cite I think there's discretion here I don't think it's black and white that you get punished and I think there's you know asterisks to to the to that well I think it's pretty I would like to add some something so if you look at what it says up here it's you're right director Lewis it is specific and then it says recording fights or other altercations on cell phones or other electronic devices and posting same to the internet or

122social media so it's not saying specifically you cannot record the fight it's saying if you're doing it for the purposes of spreading it on social media am I understanding that correctly doctor then instead of the word and they should say for the purposes of because it takes out that gray area of whether or not they're allowed to do it I would like to mention about the staff intervening we do have a policy under the corporal punishment that the staff may intervene they may protect a student I don't know if we need to maybe cite that in some point in this policy or have a clause in there well and there's Good Samaritan law which covers all of our staff members of Staff members were to intervene in a fight they are protected if they're acting

123in good cause to protect children so that's something where our staff will always be protected and maybe that needs to be brought up because staff members are under the impression that they are not allowed to touch students in any situation and that can go with the training this this is going to have tons of training with it so let's remove the electronics we're just gonna just we're gonna put burn barrels out and get all cell phones burned as that was in here I didn't see that right yes sorry it has been updated the definition of electronics um I think previously there were let's see here where's the square line do you want me to read it I have the old policy in front of me yeah so I was just gonna mention that it used

124to include MP3 technology CD players CD players cellular phones computers headphones I'm pretty sure beepers were in there too of beepers it says VHS so it has been modernized so to speak to include the current technology of the day in addition um I think the offenses have changed and we've also broken it out between describing the conduct in elementary schools and middle schools and in high schools you have a comment just one were you done sorry I am sorry okay I didn't mean to cut you off were you going to say something okay on this um I guess my issue is allowing the teachers discretion to whether or not they want cell phones in class because that's creating two classes of teachers the cool ones and the not cool ones um it's disruptive no matter

125what because the the earbuds go in the ear whether or not you can see the phone and they're listening to stuff and not the teacher um they're playing on their phones because they can't access the website on their Chromebook it's happening and there's no need for it we have every single one of our high schoolers middle schoolers had an electronic device issued by the school that they can access a calculator the internet their schoolwork everything they need they don't need a cell phone may I say something out during class yes so I'll just make that more clear and concise I I actually agree I think there should be no use of cell phones during any kind of instructional time period yeah I I think I was smiling because I think you're gonna get a board

126consensus not to speak for Julie she's not on on the call anymore but I agree um director Olson I think and I want to pray add a layer to that I think that in the high schools I think having um the electronic devices available in passing and at lunch and in Wellington time are appropriate for that age group I do not however think that's appropriate for middle schoolers um and so I think that's actually speaking from experience I think that's actually the practice that's in place at North Point middle which is where my kids are 8th graders at so they are not allowed to have it during passing time they're not allowed to have it at launch they're not allowed to have it in win time and the reason I think at least from hearing

127from staff at that it makes it at least in the middle school when they don't need it two it makes it a very easy policy for staff they don't need to speak you know they know if a phone is out that it needs to be put away and so even if they're not their students they're allowed to then speak to the kid in the hallway and or at lunch and correctly Behavior I've heard a bunch of positives from that school specifically I'm not sure if that's happening at every middle school but nonetheless speaking from my experience and staff at that building that it's been a game changer this year to be that strict on that policy and so I'd like to see not only the language specific that you described in the classrooms for both

128middle school and high school not allowing discretion for the teacher but also not allowing that to happen during passing lunch and other time for middle schoolers and I would agree with all those things and just to bring a different point when students bring phones to school those are personal devices not school issued so I disagree with teachers asking students to use their personal device to take a picture or turn an assignment or anything like that yeah I think I think there was you know there's obviously a time where we weren't one-to-one and so some of that apply whether using Quizlet or other tools and so you couldn't use your Chromebook for that and so you know obviously the high schoolers everybody's got a phone so it was easy to do that if you're an educator

129we're one to one we paid quite a bit of money to do that and so I think you know we should adapt our learning to what we have with Chromebooks um and I think it goes without saying I think everybody would agree the amount of cyber bullying and what's happening with pictures you know and Boots being spread on Snapchat and other places we're never going to eliminate it 100 but if we create less time for that to happen the better this is for kids that was not clear and concise just saying giving you a bad time damn it thank you my apologies so those were just amazing those are the major highlighted changes that we went through so some of the ongoing work will be researching various interventions some restorative discipline and different therapy options

130that we'll be looking at for the following school year I have some other comments and I would I'm seeking feedback from my peers so it's something that I would like to see in this regulation that I think would be beneficial to our students and staff and parents is that the Board of Education review this policy annually as kind of a living document and try to see where we are on things I know that's going to be difficult um and challenging but it is a guiding document um I would I think that would be um helpful and I would also like some consideration around communication with a parent I know that we have a separate policy 2662 and regulation that speaks to suspension but I feel strongly that if this is in a policy in a

131written policy and even if it requires a an official conference I think a parent needs to be notified so they understand what their kid is violating and the code of conduct and not wait until it rises to a second offense but but that's my feedback and I would like see where everyone else is on that maybe I I think those are fair points maybe Dr tormo if you can add just what's our general practice here today not necessarily with the annual review because I think this is new but in terms of communication with with parents I think Mr Brazil can also and Dr Mueller can add to this in a perfect world right we want our All Families to know what's happening with students but we also know that sometimes when there are minor infractions

132and lots of things happening in the school that might not be something that happens immediately when we do get to any type of suspension there are required notices that go out to all families so if there are in school and out of school suspensions that's where automatic notice should be going out to All Families um if they do have any type of long-term suspension that gets referred to me automatic letters go out to all of those individuals as well with the information on how to appeal if they so choose so Dr Mueller would you like to add to that at all covered it I would just like to agree with um director stole Lee I do know of one situation where a student was out of school suspended and this the parents were not notified

133the student was notified and did not tell his parents the school did not contact the parents so the student was sent to the school the following day and then they did receive a phone call that he would you know the child wasn't supposed to be there but I do agree that there needs to be some sort of guidance and some communication that is going out things that we had previously discussed too is as we go through this training protocol this summer with our administrators is developing our Internal Documentation to help calibrate some of this to make sure that our expectations across the board are there at the same time like I do feel like I need to be very clear that a day in the life of a school administrator is a complex thing and

134that there are hundreds of decisions that happen every single day that are not black and white decisions that don't fit into a code of conduct the way it's written and there are a thousand one different ways that a day can go really really wrong at a school and so we definitely do want our administrators to be communicating immediately and as soon as possible with our families at the same time I also understand from the seat that I sit in of overseeing nearly 30 buildings that there are times while we don't necessarily like it there are times that that communication is delayed for a variety of reasons and it's not intentional it's not to not share that information but that that is a caution that I do have of being able to um address what's coming

135at our administrators and when they're at school many of them stay till six seven o'clock at night making phone calls so that's one of those things I just feel very compelled to say that out loud as well because they're they're working tirelessly right now and so I just and I hear you and I could never nor ever relate to what a building administrator goes through on a daily basis um but kind of where I'm struggling is if you look at policies throughout the state of Missouri St Louis Public Schools Rockwood if there's an infraction it's just not specific to suspension there's a communication to the parent so I understand that there might be a fire here there might be a fire there but I just think ing from just an individual board member perspective we're

136setting expectations throughout the code of conduct and I think this is an important piece of that um and you and I had talked about just using academic dishonesty as an example right that's not egregious by any means you know as far as someone being hurt but I I think again um if my child violated that and there was a conversation but not ISS or anything like that I would still want that communication I know you're saying you're not going to not encourage that but I think there needs to be an expectation that that communication needs to happen with the parent okay and I'm not saying that there's not an expectation uh what I'm trying to say is that there may be limiting factors of them getting that communication that day like so that's right and

137I know I know you're saying that there's not an expectation but I just want to be firm and that I think it needs to actually be written in the code of conduct because and I know we're not other school districts but it it is an expectation that is written within the student code of conduct and other school districts that again I can appreciate that a lot of things go on in a building probably I couldn't even imagine every and any day but at the end of the day I feel like this is I feel very strongly that if if it's an infraction it it needs to be communicated and so when I say expectation I mean it needs to be within the student conduct I understand and I hear that you feel very strongly and

138differently and you worry about what that might put on building principles but I just don't know how that there are parents who want to work with the school to improve behaviors for their children and and I I don't know I just I feel very strongly about it but well and I would say when you say that I feel very strongly and differently from you I would disagree with that statement I do believe our administrators should be communicating with families absolutely and I think that we can have those those expectations in place but I where where we're going to differ on some of this is how specific you get into that because if you think everybody should for any infraction needs to be notified that day if it's academic dishonesty or if it's something that just

139was a conference those are things that yes absolutely those families should be brought into that Circle and they need to know those things but in the grand scheme of everything that happens in a school in one day that might not be something that they get notice of immediately that school day that's where I'm also trying to give some flexibility in how and when and balance that with what my perception of is of what you want written into this code so just to clarify Shannon are you saying that you want that phone call that Timmy cheated on his Algebra test on the day that he cheated are you saying that within that reasonable amount of time that day the next day what I'm saying is if there's if they're implementing a discipline as it relates to

140the student code of conduct if he cheated if they're going to have a form of discipline as it states here yes I do believe the parent needs a phone call and again I I get it's not a suspension I I get that but I I just I guess I lack understanding of their if if a child is doing something that is not the expectation at the school the parent needs to know and the history has been that in the district um while of course we have best practices and we try our best to do that and we go through training we fall short of that and that's not a criticism that's just I think this is a place to improve so everyone is aware of what the expectation is at the end of the day

141I think parents want to know if there's an infraction within the student code of conduct that involves their their child I don't director Olson has though a direct question around the timing of that communication so does it need to be that day that my kid had a cell phone out and got you know detention during lunch I think is that your expectation that they call the same day that happened May I please thank you sorry I've just been waiting for a little while um I completely hear what you're saying Danielle and I 100 get that and I'm trying to go back to remember reading what I was going to say because it's been a minute um I think but I also get where Shannon is coming from completely because in my experience at the school

142my kids are at we have gotten even just for just minor things I have gotten that phone call before school has gotten out and I have appreciated that so much because it shows that the administrators at my school they are leaning on me in the partnership to correct the behaviors with my children um because right now they're you know they're littler um those behaviors are ones that can be corrected at home and so when we get into the the partnership between the school and the family or the school and the parents or the Guardians in correcting those behaviors together especially at home um we're just building a again I go back to partnership but we're just really building that strong relationship that we want we don't want it to be and I know you don't

143want this either Danielle a tug of war right or a push or pull um and it's really important that we as parents are notified in a timely manner or what you know um Shannon's opinion is on what a timely manner is if it's the the same day sorry um if it's the same day then I mean that's more discussion but I don't know I just wanted to say that so I mean I would want to add that there have been parents that will say again they appreciate the communication from a school it's unexpected and they'll say hey this happened at school it could be a behavioral problem within the classroom that has nothing to do with the student code of conduct but they're getting a phone call and it happened during that day so the

144parent can work with the teacher and the teacher can work with the parent to help improve that so I liken that to this is that that's a teacher reaching out to try to have a relationship with the parent to correct the behavior before it rises to the level of the student code of conduct so if there is an infraction within the student code of conduct why wouldn't we want to do the same thing to me it's being proactive um can I I mean I I just don't know how to I don't want to circle around this but and repeat myself several times but I just have um one thing I wanted to add if that's okay um I think we are it sounds like we're all aligned that we agree that communication should happen and

145want that to happen and as a parent I would expect that would happen with my kids as well um but I do want to provide like a picture of what a day could look like for a principal and so let's say there's a safety concern at a school and we have to send out a message to the entire School of hundreds you know thousands of kids and the principal sends out a message updating parents and then the rest of that day and the following day are taken up by phone calls with parents which is extremely important and those conversations need to happen but those are super time sensitive because parents are concerned about their child safety and so literally their whole day is spent responding to parents and communicating with parents and so it's easy

146for me to say you know sitting in my office that that needs to happen that day but I also understand that they there are a variety of things that come up and that just that's just one example you know it could be something that happens in a classroom and then you've got 30 parents from that classroom calling you and you're you're having 10 15-minute conversations with each parent that calls and so um prescribing an exact number on when that communication needs to happen is difficult for me to um want to implement on our administrators just because I know what they deal with every day and so that's just an example so maybe there's some compromise I mean can we not have language that says a reasonable amount of time and and and try to figure

147out when that might be because I I think there needs to be some sort of communication that does is via a phone call not Tyler sis or an email or a letter because ultimately the parent wants to know so let's say again using the um academic dishonesty if my kiddo does that and I haven't heard about it in a I don't know let's say a few days um and then maybe their behavior escalates and then they violated another student code of conduct I I know I'm talking about a scenario but that's kind of my concern is like there has to be some sort of communication and a reasonable amount of time so if that's some sort of communication in a reasonable amount of time is fine but I just also heard you say it needs

148to be a phone call and not a Tyler says communication or an email and so I think we have to be very careful of trying to put very specific parameters on this for the very reasons that Brynn has said for some of the of the real situations that I'm seeing Non-Stop many of our principals are in classroom subbing many of our principals are helping to help children in crisis that could take up hours of their day they're responding to different things like for us to put some very specific criteria about how and when and exact that is what I am concerned about I'm not concerned about reasonable Communication in a reasonable amount of time I'm concerned about the very specific requests of making sure that we're doing all of these things and when we have

149administrators in buildings with hundreds and thousands of kids and you look at our administrator to student ratio and we are well above what the ratios are across the state of Missouri like we're already stretching our administrators very very thin so that that's my concern and that's the last I'll say of it yeah I think there's a coalition here if I'm just listening to the talk points I think it's I think my views it should be reasonable and the medium for which shouldn't matter because the infraction like if I got an email or Tyler assist notification I can still make a I can pick up the phone call and ask for time from the principal or the teacher to understand the infraction better if I have clarification that's desired I think we should provide reasonable expectations

150you know and I'm comfortable with that making its way into to this code of conduct but I do think to to Dr cormo's point there has to be some level of flexibility given circumstances because I'd hate to have you know staff be punished or otherwise you know look down upon by not getting to certain things when there are circumstances for which there's reason to have that so I think that's a good point and Dr tormala I appreciate you taking the time and talking through this so if if not specifying the medium or platform for communication I guess this goes back to what can the parent expect so if it says in the student code of conduct expect a reasonable communication or expect a communication in a reasonable amount of time where should a parent expect

151to look their email the mail at home or a phone call or Tyler says and I mean or a I mean there's multiple places and I'm not trying to drive down like say which one of these things but I do think we need to tell parents where they're supposed to look or all of the above you know look at your school communication systems or something because I think it's difficult to ask parents to follow follow the chain of command if they don't know where to expect a communication I also think that's kind of what I'm getting at do you know what I mean like you don't want the first step to for the parent to reach out so if a parent knows okay you're going to get this via Tyler sis then they can check

152and say okay I'm gonna call my school and follow up I I just I just I think to say a communication there has to be an expectation a level account of accountability of the school just like there's a level of accountability of the student and the parent that they've read the student code of conduct I I just think that's the right thing to do but I think we should probably move on or else we can talk more about it on the workshop I don't want to belabor this that was what I was going to remind the board here we do have another opportunity at this one but did you have a question there's a giant Teen Titan thing to add on to what Shannon was saying um I think also putting in the policy that

153they can do it via Tyler says or whatever I don't really like the idea because I have a feeling that with like you said with a little of of phone calls it's going to become easier and then it's going to become the norm and I think that there still needs to be primary contact as as phone and maybe you know that's an acceptable battery to me cheating on it algebra assignment I don't know this has been quite a discussion I've said quietly I think it's time to move on I agree with you directly we should trust that our Administration will do the right thing this is we trusted that they're doing the right thing on the other points we talked about at a certain level it's moving on to 15.3 this one was pulled from

154consent so I need a motion to approve the breakfast and lunch prices 20 23 and 2024 as presented motion second discussion yes um I was wondering when was the last time we raised lunch and breakfast prices 2019-20 2020. and then what is the purpose to raise prices we've seen an increase in the price of the cost of food and then we have also increased our salaries for our staff okay and then my last kind of question so in our community our taxes have been raised which the school will benefit from that would that would those tax dollars then go towards lunches does it go towards that fund no it doesn't have a question did those increases create a deficit in that fund group in the lunch money group am I saying the right words uh

155they did not create a deficit but with our wage increases this year we expect that it would It's a combination of the wage increases in the food prices but no there was no deficit last year okay so but like projections if we don't raise it the 10 cents for the kids on breakfast and lunch then we are projecting that there will be a deficit there would most likely be a deficit that is correct okay any other questions comments all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed no eyes have it so moving on yes sir uh yeah I think it was director Olson and director Henke what do we need to do a roll call on these we can go on on the next one so let's go to 15.4 I need a motion

156to approve the elementary decodables May 2023 as presented motion second okay discussion yes I asked for these to be pulled just to highlight it because books are a Hot Topic in our community and I was able to find these books and actually find pages on a website it showed me what the pages looked like the illustrations and I thought they were actually really awesome so since they're decodable those are for our children that struggle with reading so the illustrations in there are age level where they're reading then is lower maybe to their reading level um and then another thing that I noticed was there's spacing in between each line of text which helps our dyslexic students excuse me our dyslexic students and it makes the pages just less overwhelming for our students so um and

157then the last point that I made oh sorry too that in the line of text it shows how to pronounce those bigger words right while they're reading so I thought that was pretty awesome and then I like the choice of graphic novels those are always really fun and they're not overwhelming it's a fun read so I just wanted to highlight those books I thought that was awesome thank you any other questions comments from the board I won't do a real call on this one if that's okay um all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed okay all right moving on to it I need a motion to approve change order number 18 for North Point middle school as presented motion discussion a couple of questions so um I went last evening and

158I looked at the area and so I just had a few questions um so we had sod put down and I guess that washed away it looks like grass and other Greenery is growing already and we're wanting to then put pea gravel down so it looks like there was one section where that pea gravel had already been poured so are we wanting to do the entire area or is it just a few sections we have our executive director of that area of facilities can answer that question Josh could you uh take the podium please oh sorry so yes the the answer to your question is we do intend to fill that with rock um going back just a little bit the storm water retention guidelines are set forth by the city of Wentzville and our

159design was uh specified to meet those uh parameters obviously it didn't didn't pass and it continued to fill not once but twice and then so we went in and uh were able to tell the city that you're wrong this isn't the way it should be working we need to come back here and backfill with with gravel so that we have adequate runoff and drainage and so just to clarify one little Point uh the 21 000 change order is well within our contingency for what we had on that project so did this the Sarah side specifically or grass they I can't answer that one for you right here in front of you I believe they the I believe that they requested Assad and their guideline for the for the storm water retention I would also like

160to comment that Josh it's my understanding that it was already replaced uh put in twice by the general contractor at their cost it was put in once it washed away it was replaced again with sod it washed away a second time uh I'm afraid if we went with that again uh first of all it would be VR cost I'm the general contractor is not going to pick it up anymore is that correct Josh that is correct right construction did a deduct on the uh on the project for six thousand dollars we never saw that cost so the twenty one thousand dollar ad is just free and clear for just the gravel any other questions comments from the board Matthew can you do a roll call on this one please could I make one other comment

161Yes Rick thank you this is a requirement it has to be done or we cannot close this building out this is the the last change order uh before we can close this building if uh if we don't get this closed out in agreement with the city on what can happen here uh we can't close out this building okay Matthew hi I'm director Lewis aye motion carries okay moving on to 15.6 secretary Eliza I want to put you on the spot this is just a quick discussion I think you wanted to potentially move the board date yeah we've got to do that in open um for our regular scheduled June meeting from Thursday to Wednesday is that fair correct that is what I it's golf night well we have golf so uh just looking for board

162um feedback if that works in your calendar but we've already approved the previous calendar so we would need a motion to change that motion second can I actually get some clarity on the motion please I make a motion to move our regularies regularly scheduled June meeting from Thursday June 15th to Wednesday June 14th second any other discussion from the board thoughts on that David already gave his thoughts on golf it'll help my handicap it could help your handicap love it okay all those in favor say aye hi all those opposed given up golf motion carries Danielle I had already talked to you so I knew that day was okay with you guys so okay not not to think people we excluded you all right so moving on to 15.7 I need a motion to approve

163the bills for payment May 2023 as presented motion second discussion so the first one is the Franklin Covey 900 775 dollars I thought that we were going to have a board presentation on this prior to us whether or not we were just deciding whether or not we were gonna I don't know so we do have we are planning on bringing the um uh Leader in Me trainer back in for a board overview for leader in me however this is just paying the bill of the contract that the previous board has approved right but there's a CL there's a clause a cancellation clause in there and we're creeping up on that time frame in a I kind of wanted to have a discussion about it prior to deciding if we're going to cancel or is the

164board deciding that's what the discussion would be about so that's a big purchase if we were going to have that discussion there's been a lot of concerns from people in the community about this topic that I think the Board needs to discuss before we spend almost a million dollars on supplies I would agree with that any other questions comments on this issue I have more on this item sure not this Franklin copy one but a different item on this okay so would I be able to pull that off for a separate vote right now we have a motion to approve the full thing as presented right but my question is is that a possibility to pull one charge off to one can make motions to amend motion yes and the other question I had on

165this was page 42 Follet for 331 dollars we purchased banned books and I just think um it's kind of like salt no wound could have bought each title specifically but instead we bought the compilation of all of them and called in a book called banned books I don't think that that is meeting one of our csip goals to improve the climate culture in our school community it's kind of divisive I just wanted to point that out for everybody and then there's the third thing oh sorry what page was that page 42 that's a Follett purchase it's done the fiscal year 23 AP Bill list also on page 55 and I just found this at the last minute we purchased some tequila sunrise from Schnucks I'm just kind of wondering what that was about uh without

166pulling these invoices I would not be able to tell you what that was uh what we like to do is when there's an item on on the bill list we like to be able to pull it and be able to see what those invoices are and be able to report on those uh what I do like is when you say in advance what books are these give me the titles I can get back to you on those on something like this yeah we could pull these invoices that was the book name it's on Amazon it's called banned books it's a compilation of all of the banned books I see but the Tequila Sunrise one I just found at the last minute I didn't have time to ask anybody who who was the vendor on that

167Schnucks and I don't know if it was like a tequila sunrise flavored thing or if we bought something because I know we had um creme brulee and I think that requires alcohol doesn't it I don't know I don't know just joking uh what what this is is this was uh just to let you know once it's on the bill list this was uh purchased uh at schnooks and the question is to pay the bill what what I can do is look this up and and report to you tomorrow on the staying on board on exactly what this was if that would satisfy what you're looking for so it's it's my understanding that yes we can make an amendment to an amendment but it's more of a friendly Amendment this seems like it's making multiple amendments

168within what we already have on the table so I'm not making three amendments I was just that was one item that I was discussing that 14.3 is one item I wasn't making any amendments yet but you're proposing making an amendment right is that what you're doing one Amendment so what I'm saying is there's a motion already on the table so we'd have to first vote on that motion and see if that fails or succeed and then we would if it fails then you can make your amendment I think I get to present my Amendment before we vote on the failure Passage so there's already been a motion and a second to approve this item number which is item 15.7 right and that's how we got to discussion and which point I would make an amendment

169and we would vote on whether or not to pass or fail the first one and adopt my Amendment Amendment comes as the the item on the agenda comes that's when you would make an event this is okay I pulled one item though and I it had three points to it which is why I didn't stop talking now I did Franklin Covey and then the other one the other one just to bring them up so the only amendment I want to make is to take the Franklin Covey part off I I understand that but what I'm saying is to have discussion we've had a Motion in a second so we need to vote on this first and then you can make your Amendment we can't make an amendment when there's already an issue on the table

170we did we did at the first meeting it was a friendly Amendment if I remember what was the topic so it was a friendly Amendment we changed the language of the Lindenwood contract we made a motion to approve the contract we had a discussion that was one item and we made this is one item yeah I believe on the Lindenwood one and board correct me if I'm wrong we we voted first on the Lindenwood actually declined it and then voted on the amendment which is actually what Shannon is talking about specifically here but I presented the amendment I understand that so then the board was swayed in that instance to decline the original motion of the Lindenwood contract we voted no yeah I think it was a six to one vote if I recall and

171therefore then we voted on the amendment so the original motion on the floor so that's what I'd like to see here which is consistent with what Shannon's saying and consistent with what we did last time okay I have a question about the Leader in Me yep um so have we already received the materials the nearly million dollar worth of materials um I don't I don't even know what words I'm looking to say right now permissions to use their websites things like that well and so I'm going to turn over to Dr LeBron but that purchase is a multi-year contract for the district so it's it's ongoing professional development things like that too so I I don't know the answer if we've received the books yet know to my knowledge we've not received the books I

172did receive this week some of the sample copies as requested and so I have those available for the board to look through but we've not received the bulk of the materials okay so the what we're being asked to approve that is actually covered though by a grant so is that a reimbursable so the grant would then reimburse us or have we received the grant money already those two things go together so this I believe is our portion of that multi-year and then the grant covers the other portion so we have two different funding sources so one of those funding sources is a grant it was over nine hundred thousand dollars that was applied to our total bill of approximately 1.8 million and then we were billed for approximately I think you said 974 000 and

173that was paid from funds that were provided to the district through Esser funding so no I guess District generated funds it was from Esser funding so half Esser funding and half grant funding if that makes sense gotcha so hypothetically in five years we'll be back on the hook for 1.8 million dollars so to continue not necessarily that is a really good question so um with this particular situation we were able to um create a contract that went over five years and use grant funding and leverage Esser funding as well to give us a longer period of implementation without costs directly to the district after those five years I would hope that we would be able to sustain a lot of those practices and expectations and I think just the way that that buildings will function

174in regard to student leadership and that will be interwoven into our building activities and culture anyway while some buildings may have preferences and may need some additional coaching or additional resources I think we could have some of those fund requests and that could be a district or a building budget request but I really would not expect that we would have anything of that Monumental significance like we do now and that's why we structured it in a five-year term using those two different funding sources so that it would not be a detriment to the district uh comment please uh I have not read the contract in enough detail on the termination Clause to see how much we would be uh responsible for at this point the board has approved and signed this contract already so I

175am I cannot vouch for if if this is voted on to not continue on what we would still be responsible for as the board has signed this the termination and her cancellation Clause was for the start date of the contract which is July 1 I believe or July 15th but at July 1 so it has to be I believe 15 days before that which is why we're creeping up on that date I guess my other question is if hypothetically it weren't approved um what is the liability for the grant money that paid for the half of it essentially is that us on the hook to refund that grant money I'm assuming Franklin covey's already received that grant money I I just before I were to make it this is a massive amount of money um

176I really just want to know what the implications are in costing us more essentially breaking even um we don't know those answers we were not informed that this was going to be a part of a conversation today otherwise and if we had known these were the questions we certainly could become more prepared to help answer some of those components I would assume and it's a complete assumption that if we walked away from this contract that grant money because it's from the foundation that is connected with leader and me that would stay with the foundation so that piece would be there we have schools in our district already that are currently Leader in Me schools they have have seen lots of turnaround things from attendance to achievement to climate and culture in their buildings that information

177has been shared with the board there's been comprehensive information that has gone out and staying staying on board within the last couple of weeks with research articles lots of different information not one question has come our way from the board recently we have set up times for the board members to go see leader and meet in action at our schools that invite went out to all seven board members two members have have accepted to take on our take on that option and we're going to bring back the trainer for the overview training this is this is a process that's in play that we're already down the tracks with this our um our principals have summer training set up like and there's plenty of research too that goes along with this with area school districts within

178the the region within the state Across the Nation that shows that this does make a significant Improvement in attendance achievement and with our climate and culture all of which our board goals I agree oh go ahead actually yeah at this time I'd like to call for a vote and I would just say that this conversation is actually out of the scope this is about a bill we're not to hear this agenda item is not about the Leader in Me contract so at this time I call for a vote please yeah and I want to make a comment here one this is paying an invoice that in contractual terms once invoiced we have 30 days to pay we've approved this contract we have scheduled to to Dr tormlo's point we have scheduled with the board to

179visit the schools uh tomorrow I think it is uh specific to leader and me which will be recorded for those members that cannot attend in addition to the materials provided it is planned that on our June 7th Workshop sixth seventh that date we will go through the training that was postponed uh for leader and me and can you know address further questions and comments from both public and board members at that time this is a contract that we have approved and to Dr tormo's point we have a pilot in place and a number of our schools I have another question or comment as well before we vote the reason I wanted to pull this is because I don't want to vote no on the entire May Bill list I wanted to pull that off of

180it for a separate vote that I also appreciate all of the information you've given us but this board as a whole has not had an opportunity to sit down to discuss it at length because we can't do that outside of an official meeting which is why I wanted to have a discussion with the board we can go to the schools tomorrow we can look at all the information we can Talk Amongst ourself by ourself but we cannot talk as a board outside of this meeting or a meeting about this for such a large purchase that has a lot of community um and discussion right now yeah and as I understand the contract to your point it starts July 1st we have our June 7th meeting for which then we can still provide the timeline for

181which you described underneath the contract to the extent that that decision needs to be changed and I'm assuming this purchase could also be pushed back until then as well okay I've got a motion in a second so I'm gonna do a roll call Matthew on the vote please president Goodson aye director Henke aye vice president Stoli aye director Olsen no secretary lysak it's director Lewis hi motion carries I think that I lost my spot on diligent but I think that concludes the agenda we are done yeah so I need a motion to go into closed session for purposes of personnel and student matter motion Matthew can I get a roll call on that just because it's closed um I have discussion if we can I want to make sure that the building is left available

182for the public while we're in closed session it's fair okay Matthew president Goodson aye director Henke aye vice president Stoli aye director Olson aye secretary lysak director Lewis hi motion carries