Cape Girardeau Public Schools #63 - School Board Meeting - January 2026

001Well, good evening everybody. Welcome to our January regular session board meeting in February. So, it's a fun special night. Thanks for braving the snow and the cold and bearing with us a week later. Uh, call this meeting to order. Let the record show all board members are present except for Dr. Faggley. And let's start off with pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> All right board, we have a agenda before us. Can we have a motion to approve? >> So move. >> Second. >> All right. All those in favor? >> I. >> Okay. Agenda carries. So up first, Dr. been terrific Tigers and uh we'll call names and

002uh you can come up front and get pictures and then everybody will stay up. We'll take a big group picture at the end. >> Okay. First from the early childhood center we have Charlie Rustler, prek daughter of Janice and Samuel Rustler. Charlie was chosen as >> she's she coming. Okay. Charlie was chosen as terrific tiger because she showcases a love for learning, a kindness towards others and an infectious spirit. Charlie is an exemplary leader and an inclusive friend inviting and assisting others consistently. Charlie and her positive attitude are the perfect example of a tiny terrific tiger. I >> think the kneeling is better than the stool, but you guys might not be able to get up too much. >> Next from Alma Elementary, we have Kelsey Wheeler, kindergartener, daughter of Amy and Jack McDonald. Kelsey

003is a kind and gracious student. She is the first to help out in the classroom and is always giving compliments to help encourage her fellow students. Kelsey comes in every day with a smile on her face and is eager to learn. She lights up the room and is a joy to be around. From Blanchard Elementary, we have Ren Emmens, kindergartener, daughter of Ashley Emmens and Samantha Burner. Ren always gives her best in every task presented to her with enormous energy, enthusiasm, and a thirst for learning. She displays the utmost kindness and respect towards everyone. Ren has a contagious smile, and her words and actions encourage everyone to the to be the best they can be every day. >> Do we have two from Blanchard? Is that right? Okay. All right. So, we have a second

004from Blanchard. This is Winter Emmens. She's also the daughter of Samantha Burner and Ashley Emmens. Winter is a perfect example of a terrific tiger. She is an outstanding kindergartener student who always shows respect to her teachers and classmates. Winter always follows instructions and tries her best in every activity. Her kindness shines through as she is always willing to help others. from Clifford Elementary. Armad Davis, fourth grade, son of Tiara and Arth Davis. Armad is an excellent friend, helpful student, and hard worker. He takes pride in Clipper by his choices to be respectful, responsible, and safe. Armad never gives up and is always trying his best. He shares his thoughts and participates in every class. Armad can always be counted on to lend a helpful hand, and he recently joined our safety patrol team. from Franklin

005Elementary. Prosper Anderson, kindergartener, son of Ronald Anderson and Kayla Nighton. Prosper is a very conscientious and polite young man. He works diligently during class to learn new things. Prosper models good listening and thinking skills, and he shares and takes turns easily. He accepts responsibility and maintains a delightful personality. Prosper is a good friend who is kind to others and is quick to help when someone is in need. From Jefferson Elementary, Ariana Williams, kindergartener, daughter of Eric Williams and Alendria Apple White. Ariana is a star student who leads by example in the classroom. She's always listening and following directions with a kind heart. She is always sharing and helping others. Ariana has a passion for learning and tries her very best on everything she does. Her sweet smile brightens up our entire classroom every day. We

006are so blessed to have her in our class. From Central Middle School, Lillian Gaither, sixth grade, daughter of Muriel and Cody Gaither. Lily has the gift of leadership and is someone who clearly has a heart for others. Lily has served on our student leadership team this year and she is a CMS student of the month recipient. Additionally, Lily has drafted plans for the little library on the CMS campus. This initiative will promote literacy in our community by creating a location for a book exchange. from Terry W. Kitchen Junior High. Levi Morris, 8th grade, son of Christina and Daniel Morris. Levi has one of the best attitudes in the building. He's a friend to everyone and enters every room with a big smile on his face. He gives above and beyond effort to all of his

007assignments. His cheerful attitude and consistently positive interactions with all of his peers brighten every day. from Central High School. Bruce Miller, 12th grade, son of Elizabeth and Frank Miller. Bruce has become one of Cape Central's outstanding student leaders this year. His straightforward, nononsense confidence makes him a great decision maker that his peers and teachers appreciate and admire. He is the perfect example of a terrific Tiger. from Central Academy. Sariah Horl, 12th grade, daughter of Travonda Horl. That's it. >> We have a clear back row. Sometimes Casey, you don't we don't make you earn your money. >> Wow. >> Right. Sure. >> Make it so your face shows. I'll write it and I'll read it, too. like the district. >> Yeah. She's been >> I'm just kidding. >> I was like, "Wait, that's not making sense."

008But okay. Where's everybody going? Let's get Hey, you weren't part of All right. Well, thank you guys very much. Congratulations to all the terrific Tigers. We appreciate it. Um, up next, information, proposals, or comments from the audience. Mr. Payne, do we have any >> The individual requesting this month has >> Okay. Okay. And again, our policies basically five days before you can make comments to the board. Uh, reach out to Mr. Payne here at the board office. Anybody has any. All right. So, up next, information reports. Uh, board president's report. I was going to keep it short. We've kind of got a long agenda today. Uh, it's biggest thing. I hope everybody had fun sledding and it doesn't anybody got hurt. So, um, thankful Friday went well and we're we're back in the groove again.

009So, that's all I've got. I'll pass it off to yourself, Dr. >> Thank you, Mr. Cook. Uh we've had some really exciting uh news to to share with everyone. Um on Friday when we went back to school, I had to get on stage in front of a lot of junior high kids that had to come back to school for Friday. But um I'm glad that we were able to do that. Um we we're going to have this person come at the end of this month as well to talk to you a little bit about. But Haley Russell, >> you know that she was nominated for uh assistant uh principal of the year for our region. >> Well, she has won the state title of assistant principal of the year. It's very exciting. It's a it's

010a huge it's a it's a huge award. She's going to have to do some speaking and some traveling to Washington DC. Uh but there's no better person to earn that than Haley and and Miss Russell. She works so hard over there and I know our team would say the same thing as well. So, I wanted didn't want to leave that out uh today because we're really proud of her and so well deserved. Um community developmental screenings are going to be happening. We will be hosting free developmental screenings for children's aged 6 months to 34 months on February 20th and April 10th. Uh children will be screened in areas of health, vision, hearing, and overall development. This is a great way for families to have an understanding of how their child is developing compared to their

011peers. Families can sign up for a screening by going uh to our website. Lastly, penguin parties right around the corner, February 14th. I'm sure most of you have already gotten your tickets. Uh we're excited about that. But um but everyone out there, please uh consider supporting the Cape Gerardo Public Schools Foundation at the Penguin Party on February 14th. It is always a fun event and a great way to support our schools. Uh tickets are tickets are available by reaching out to Miss McDonald or you can also link it to our foundation website as well. >> Yes, sir. Dr. Minion, if I could add to that, um we're still looking for sponsors, auction items, and table sales. So again, um, reach out to Amy McDonald. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you very much.

012And parlay our congratulations to Miss Russell. Miss Russell. >> All right. Up next, CEP program evaluation safety and emergency response uh intervention plan. Mr. Cra. >> So board before you, you have our program evaluation. roughly how many students and families will be impacted. So this is part of elevate 2 provide comprehensive analysis and recommendations for best practices of safety security. So, uh, we've had a discussion on what Senate Bill 68, uh, that was certified in the statute, uh, brought as a baseline for all Missouri public and charter schools. About 99.9% of it we doing or ahead of it. A couple of them are just always ongoing, so that's why we'll never be there at 100%. One of those is always keeping our emergency operation plans up to date. we're advising them annually because our buildings

013change or uh various different things changing. So, always staying up on that. Um concerns that we've had, you know, we're limited on some of our funding, but we've been very successful in in getting grants that have given us a jump started to areas. One of those things on weapons detection units that we have throughout the district that we can use uh whenever they're needed uh extracurricular events or for daily use at some of our schools as well. As you see through here, I think again we have a very good plan and we have above average and you can also click the link to look at our public facing safety security protocols that we have available questions, concerns or comments. Thank you very much. And uh up next, CE elevate 2 to kind of go on

014that together. >> Yeah. So that's the link. Yes. >> Uh that goes into all the various different protocols that we do districtwide and we have it broken down into various silos between what district personnel do. If we have hard systems, you know, emergency go bags uh throughout um walkie-talkies and door barricades for classrooms, various different things of that nature. Then we look at what we do preventative wise internally, whether it be drills that we take all of our schools through, various different trainings that our staff have, uh ongoing organizations that that we have set up within our districts and then externally all the various different partnerships uh that we do. So went a little bit deeper in with concerns, you know, Senate Bill 68 now being law, just making sure that not a concern, but

015we are meeting the legal guidance that we're supposed to adhere to. That legal guidance was supposed to be uh pushed out publicly to all schools, public and charter, by December 31st of 2025. Here we are February 2nd, 2026, and Bessie is still not giving us that guidance, but we're following the spirit of the law as we read it. and hope to have that specific legal legal guidance. >> So, in parallel to safety, several of us on the board are perceived at more power than we do and are accused of deciding whether or not we have school um when it's snowy. How how was that decision made just in parallel to safety? Just >> you make that decision. >> That's what we were accused of. But that's >> Yeah, you guys make that decision. It's >>

016all Casey. >> Yeah. one person that has all. >> All right. Well, thank you very much. Anybody have any other questions, Mr. Cra? >> Very much. So, other grant funded programs, local food for schools grant. >> So, I'd like to make a quick introduction of uh Randa and Miranda, our dietetics program, and they're going to come up and share some extremely good news that we have district, but we also need uh later on in the board uh you're granting us the acceptance of running the local. Yep. Um, like Josh said. So, I'm Miranda, the dietitian for Kate Public Schools, and we found out that we were going to get $6,000 to spend on local foods in our district. Um, then we requested some more funding and we found out December, right before Christmas break, that

017we're actually going to get $50,000 in addition to that. So, um, we've started spending the money already, even though, um, a lot of things aren't in season right now, but we're trying to get in what we can. So, um, so far we have gotten in, um, some watermelon from a farm in Frandland and we got spinach from Southside Farms. Yes. >> And then we've got some honey we just got in last week, um, to use on chicken biscuits um, in our schools. So, we're super excited. We have some pictures of the kids with the items that we've gotten so far, too. We always try to provide them with a nutrition education piece so they know a little bit about the foods that we're getting in. That wasn't a kid that was over there to the

018right. That was >> That's Mr. Moore. >> Uh, but the kids have really liked it. It's been really fun um and exciting to get our staff involved in it as well. But, um, we've had a really good time and we're excited to bring in a lot more products, too. >> Yeah. Some of our goals moving forward um or some some things we've talked about um is bringing in fresh local product. It saves money. Um, nutritious for our kids. Um so moving forward we plan to um really partner with Southside Farms like our local here in Cape. Um and we've requested to do like um sweet potatoes, potatoes, more spinach. The kids have really been like wanting like Caesar salads and different things. We've sent out surveys. We're trying to get some feedback on that what

019the kids like and um you guys would be shocked but the most they say is fresh stuff. >> So we're like okay we got we got step up our game. Um even though, you know, school lunch may not always be the best, we're trying to amp it up and do um do the best we can. So that's what we're going forward. We're going to try to um partner with like Inland Rice and local farmers to get some fresh products in. And here we just really talked about um the benefit of food being fuel and why we want our kids to have healthy food. So it helps fuel them to learn Any questions? >> Have these been going to all the schools or just been in a few so far? >> Yep. Um the honey has

020been in all I don't know if it's been served in all of them just yet, but it's been delivered. Um the watermelon was everybody and the spinach um has been at everybody too. Some of them are serving just spinach salad. Some are mixing it in like a lettuce. Yeah. >> Thank you guys very much. >> What days do you serve the biscuits? >> Yes. >> Friday. >> This looks pretty good. >> Yeah, the chicken biscuit looks great. >> All right. Thank you guys very much. Okay, up next, Recovery High School. Miss Keys. So what you guys are looking at >> just going tucked up. >> Okay. >> So, uh we did a presentation to you guys back when we started first looking at the opportunity to apply for this grant and this is not the

021same presentation. So, what we're going to show you guys today is the proposal that we actually for the state board um at Desi in Springfield. And so we met with them um in December, sorry. And then we ended up going back in January uh after we knew that we well we knew they were going to have the vote um to see whether or not we were going to be accepted. So I'm just going to kind of go through what we presented to them so that it's not exactly what you've heard before. Um so the first slide just talks about our district mission and vision statement and our slogan and our goal is to get ed educate every student every day and our CESP plan specifically goal learn three which is the goal that I champion

022um reads to continue to develop and implement responsive inclusive programs and services to meet the needs of all students and our goal is to ex under that is to expand student access the counseling, social work services, and mentoring opportunities across the district. And so when the recovery high school discussion came about, we felt that this really fit nicely into our learn three in one of the areas that we knew that we had a need in the district. Um, so our enrollment projections, as you know from what we talked about before, uh, the kind of sweet spot for recovery high schools is 30 to 50 students. um total the the idea is to keep it small so that you can give a lot of individualized attention. So that's why we went with 40 students. Year one

023for us was this year. So this was when we were doing all of our planning and the money that we received from a prior grant helped us uh with all of the planning and visiting of other recovery high schools. So we had zero students for next year. Our goal would be to start with 10 and then we would go 15, 20, and up to 40. Um when we hit 20 students is when we would be opening the door to other districts. If they would like to send their students, they could apply to attend. Um if we don't fill the 10 and 15 with our students from within, then we would open those doors sooner to make sure that uh we were giving everybody an opportunity that we possibly can. Um any student that attends from

024another district would pay tuition and it would be above and beyond the regular tuition rate for Cape. Uh because this presents higher need. um positions within the school to be able to serve the students. So, we'll get into that here shortly. Our staffing plan would be that the first year we're going to have a part-time director because we would only have 10 students. Um we would have a counselor that would actually be contracted through community counseling center. We already have that uh relationship with them and um the funding for that would come out of the grant. Um but they we have had discussions with them that when the grant ends they are willing to write this part of the program or this part of the staffing into their own budget. Um the registered behavior technician

025same thing. Uh recovery coach we will eventually um the the first year that we have students we will have one and then we would increase the number of recovery coaches as the students increase and their role is to support the recovery component of the students. So they would be doing groups with them, supporting instruction in their recovery and wellness class, um supporting needs in the evening and doing some of our after school programming too, but they would be there during a portion of the school day as well um to make sure that they're interacting with them on their educational needs as well. And then the instructional staff, um we would have a lead teacher and then a second teacher um that would start out with us until we start to increase. And then we'd have

026a part-time elective teacher that would cover several electives. And then we would have a special ed teacher, but that position will be shared. So part of that uh position will be at another building in the district. And then the other half of it as needed will be at the recovery high school. Um support staff that we included in the grant funding would be an administrative assistant, a custodian, nutrition service, nutrition service staff member, and then um transportation needs for that as well. So, our referral network, you can't see that enrollment rubric. You might be able to blow it up on your screens, but um students can be referred from a variety of sources. That includes our school counseling staff. It can include external behavior providers providers, goodness, such as community counseling center, Gibson Center, um

027the FCC, also county juvenile department, direct parent caregiver initiation, and self-referral. Uh this is not a school that we will force students to go to. It is um up to their parent guardian and they have to have some kind of desire to be a part of it through some rating scales that we have. Um and if you if you're able to blow up that enrollment rubric, it gets a little more detailed to what those things look like. Okay. Our academic goals stand they kind of follow what we have for the school district. So by the end of the 2728 school year students who have completed two consecutive years of recovery high school will complete all manatory Missouri assessments and perform at um or above the rest of the district um in the areas of proficient

028or advance. Attendance will the students will exhibit increased attendance and engagement in school acring necessary credits to prepare for graduation. We know that attendance is um an issue for a lot of our students, but specifically our students who are struggling with sometimes some type of substance use. And so um the smaller learning environment in the other recovery high schools uh that across you know the nation um they have seen a quicker increase in student attendance and engagement just because the school is smaller. They feel more comfortable. Um people understand their concerns when they walk in the door. So we helpful to see that as well as engaging in extracurricular activities to support their recovery. So, we talked uh when we spoke before about um group peer support, GPS that would be after school offered five

029days a week, but not every student would have to attend five days. It would depend on where they were in their program. And then we would also have three programs that community agencies um would carry out in the evenings throughout the week so that students would have an additional meeting to attend if they felt like they needed to. Those after school programs and programs would also be open to other students um adolesccents in the surrounding um area community uh county that students that don't attend the recovery high school but want to attend recovery meetings where youth are present could attend those because currently those don't exist publicly. Um graduation dropout rate um hopefully we're increasing our graduation rate. The students will have an individual learning plan as as well as their IAP that all students

030at the high school have to fill out. Um, but they will also have a recovery plan that is aligned right in with that to make sure that they're uh as they're walking in their recovery, they're meeting their guidelines for graduation as well. Um, the school will be its own school with its own title. It won't be under Cape Central High School. It will have its own name. Um and the so it will be an accredited high school but we also are required through the grant to gain accreditation through the association of recovery high school by the end of year five. Um and we know exactly what we have to do to do that. Um right now we have standing calls on Tuesdays. Uh we have one tomorrow with um the guy who is the head

031of the National Association of Recovery High School. So he's working with us. Stuart Smith who came to our meeting um when we first presented he's on those calls and um Shereice who's from the department of mental health she is also on that call. So they are walking with us every step of the way as well as the other two recovery high schools that were granted funding. They also are and that is what so that is the end of what we presented to the state. Um, I did ask Miss Turner to be here because uh they they had more information than this. This is just what we went over with them. Like they had all of our financials that Stuart presented earlier in the presentation. Um, we've presented that to you before, but if you did

032have questions about the financials, Miss Turner knows that piece a lot better than me. So, that's why I asked her to be here tonight. What questions do you have for me? Oh, I I did want to tell you that um sorry, Desi did uh award us the grant as well as um the other two programs that requested money. We requested way less money than the other two and so they had um less questions for us as we presented than they did the other two. But the other two are going to be charter schools that are kind of going through kind of like a community counseling center that's established in St. Louis and Kansas City. So, They don't they're not already an existing school district. So there's a lot of work that they have to do

033that we >> back up on slide seven with the budget. I was just curious the other two their budgets were increasing and ours was decreased. I just what that what was going on in that slide. Yeah. Slide set right there. >> So for us construction ours um was the big cost on the front end and then I'll let >> Yeah. So they are hoping they're going to have to from a lot of other places to make that work because there's not that much money in the grant for the other districts >> for the other districts the last year I'm sorry I'm kind of old that year four is the lowest but we go back up in year five through 10 and we request the full amount of 900,000 after that so this is almost all

034fiscal year 26 is almost all capital for That's the facilities. This is about $400,000 of capital. And then the rest are HR, computers for kids, computers for staff, um, furniture, curriculum, things like that. We don't have to buy that every year like that. So this year you've got, so we've got 10 this year. We've got 15 students in fiscal year 28. I spread it out. There's there's a little bit of capital still in this year. Not a lot, but like um an outdoor garden area and um a pavilion so you can have outdoor space. I'm trying to do um a classroom that is what did we call it like an experiential learning classroom. I think there's >> cooking science. >> Yeah, it would have cooking, science, all that kind of stuff in it. So, you

035know, there's $40,000 in that fiscal year 28 that's just for that classroom. So, um as as we add and then as we add staff, we have to do we have to add money for that. And that's really why that fourth year is kind of low because we paid for everything in those first three years that are big ones. Then it goes back up because start in year six I'm starting to refresh technology and things like that and we refresh every technology piece then before the end of the grant um cross our highest number of students at year six and so we do start to add staff at that year. So, if you saw the first the full 10-year projection that we presented the first time, it shows you the increase. The state just wanted to

036look at the first four years for each program. >> This is all grant proceeds. I mean, it's not >> Yes. >> It's not out of Lindsay's >> No, nothing out of Lindsay's purse. So, all of the uh it's buying two minivans, one minivan in fiscal year 27, and an additional one in fiscal year 28 to use as the transportation. It's paying staff an hourly rate to drive those minivans before and after school. It's all of the benefits. >> And then at a district is tuition. It's tuition based. I think it's 16,000. >> So once we get so up to the 9 like the 1.4 and then the up to 900 is is written into the once we get to there are say slightly over 900 starting not Um, like we're barely over like 914 in

037year five, but we have 30 students and we're assuming at least 10 of those will be from outside the district and they're going to be paying >> 155 I think was the first year that we would be if they were joining us next year. So by then it's going to be over 17 each had 10 students paid $17,000. We're going to make up the $15,000 that I'm over for the 900 >> and I want to >> like it's $914,000 of expenses in year in year five if we have 30 students >> and the grant >> is it 900. So here I want to speak to that because um you might be thinking as I was originally what parent is going to go I'm going to pay $17,000 for my kid to come. They don't have

038to. So what happens is you get that student's annual amount of money that they comes with the student as they become a K public schools employee student employee their ADA. Thank you. you get that and then anything above that the district has to the sending district has to pay but they get reimbursed from DESIE for that extended amount. So they're no money out to send a student to us. They are originally before they get the reimbursement. So there's no reason why they wouldn't send a student because there's no skin in the game for them. It's just an additional service for their student if that makes sense. >> Talk to me about the Sorry. >> No, that's okay. I was so The ADA for that is $10,000 then and we're charging 17 by year four or

039five. Uh say it's from Jackson. Jackson would pay us the 17. They get the 10 back from the state for ADA and then they submit a special form to the state saying we pay an additional seven for this kid to go to the recovery high school and the state reimbures them for that seven. >> So yeah. So there's no parent out money. It's all still public money. It just doesn't through the grant, it comes through. And there are also, in addition to these funds, federal funds that we have already looked at that are going to be able to supplement a lot of this after year 10, as well as community counseling centers um commitment to taking on some of the the cost in many of the positions that we have within their organization. So, it's

040been a while since we had when Dr. Beck gave that presentation I think before talked about some of the numbers and or maybe you shared other districts who've done this like in Charlotte, North Carolina or Portland, Oregon. And I think our ramp used to be slower than what we show here and I think most of those big cities had slower ramps than this. And I guess I'm curious what happens if we don't ramp as fast. What how does that affect anything? >> Doesn't hurt us. We asked that question. Doesn't hurt us. If we don't go up, if we don't hit 40, doesn't hurt us. We still get the same amount of money each year. It's not a per student rate. >> Do we think So, you mentioned that it would be exclusively our district, current

041district until you get to 20 unless you represented it, then you'd open it up. >> Where do we envision what do we think is going to happen based on where this has happened other places like the the Vivo uh Melissa Bhuton or however she says her name like she's done this in Colorado and now she's doing it in Kansas City and St. Louis. I noticed their ramp is, you know, slightly more aggressive, but they're seeing a catchment area of several million people. >> They are. And they also originally had a number of hundred and something students that they thought that they were going to be able to serve, which wasn't which the state didn't feel was realistic. Um, so they actually were required to bring their numbers back to be a more realistic number. Um,

042so I mean I I we're stopping ours at 40 because we think that That's what research shows us. They're making their own decisions. >> Um, they are also have a lot more students in their area that they're looking to serve >> and they are going to have to raise money for theirs outside of the money that they're getting too to do everything that they would like to do >> because they will not. >> We're saying they're not getting the amount of money shown here or they are >> they are getting the amount of money >> underneath. other this year there's that much money this year there's not that much but ours they had to write in other if that makes sense like we didn't have to because we didn't this year so that I some

043expenses to year three so that we wouldn't go over like the 40,000 for the experiential learning and a patio outside with a pavilion on it, picnic tables. Um the second van, we'll wait till July one. Like I initially had it built where we were going to buy one before July one and then another one before, you know, the next July one. >> And I just pushed those off a year to try to to make our budgets a little better. So I manipulated it a little bit and still tried to make sure that we >> did not have to look for outside friends. Like that's the goal is we wanted this to all under one umbrella. Um they have a lot of staff in theirs that are they have a full-time >> level position just for

044fundraising >> built into their um a lot of the charter schools. Yes, you got a lot of the charter >> a lot of the charter schools have built in like um a director of fundraising, a director of curriculum, a director of >> whatever. And it was high-end and that's what we saw in um Indianapolis, too. Um because when we came back, I was like, this is the school that's probably gonna we're going to function most like, but we are not going to have that many high-end people because we have those people established in our district and other positions already. You don't need all that per but we're a school district and the we're looking at were charter schools. >> So we have a curriculum director. We don't need one there. We have people that do

045HR. We have people that help with marketing built in. >> So remind me just for clarification. So in year one, right now the grant says you have a million for I'm going to round the numbers. A million4 in year one and up to a maximum of $900,000 for the subsequent nine years essentially, right? >> From this grant. Yes. which is a little over10 million dollars over that time period. >> We do know um Shereice sits on the Department of Mental Health Board and Chief meets with us every Tuesday. We've already looked at other funding sources that they have um in case we did decide to go bigger at some point. We're not looking at doing anything like that, but there is they foresee there being quite a few other options for funding to supplement if

046we ever want to do anything else and that was brought up our state level as well. >> From a budget standpoint, I guess from an operations like Mr. Cra and HR, you guys all went in that out. >> Everybody helped um in there. I compiled it. So, Dr. Beck did the HR budget, sent it to me. did the facilities budget and I'd go back and I'd say, "Okay, I think that we need to cut money here or there, you know, like we worked together on that. I worked with Mandy and um Jamie on the curriculum budget." So, and the professional development, they would send things to me and I'd say basically if it doesn't fit in the budget, um we've got to negotiate a little bit. Um that's where Mr. Crow and I worked by

047moving a little bit of the funding for the because they told us we had to be at 1.4 or less for fiscal year one basically. I had sent it to them initially with 1.8 and then but I had fiscal year 27 and 28 were actually lower than that. So then I was like okay so well if I can have up to 900,000 those years we can we can delay a little bit and push it off you know and I don't know that I need four full classrooms outfitted in year one for 10 kids. >> Also regarding the build we know that the building probably Everything has been delayed with the state getting us in. This was supposed to go back in October. We thought we'd get to start building in January if the board approved.

048Um, we are looking at not opening the new build until January of 2027. Um, and we would house the students in the metal building that's across from the junior high where we had a pre-k classroom at one time. We had two prek classrooms there. It's outfitted for three little office spaces, two classrooms. It has its own bathroom, everything in that area. So, we can do that for the first few months until we get >> from a >> from the junior high >> from just a long-term stewardship standpoint and we'll see how things shape. But year four or five and we see districts like this isn't working or we're not giving students whatever else. >> What's the the bailout? I don't know. I'm not quite sure. Yeah. what's what the right words are there. But >>

049so the funding is not tied to the number of students >> um at all for for the first 10 years because I specifically said well what if we don't grow like we think we're going to grow um that is not an issue. If it becomes an issue as we're going toward the end of that 10 years and we're going to start picking thing up picking things up and we're looking at our sustainability plan of what community counseling center is going to cover um what federal grant money that we're going to get to come in. Obviously, we're going to have conversations like we do with any other program that we put out in the district. If it's not fiscally responsible, then we're going to come up with a different path. What we have learned through this

050is, you know, if we get to that point and we decide, okay, we're not we don't have enough students here, it's not adding up, we don't know what's going to work, we have gotten so much rich information on how to help our kids through this process that we can then start to roll some of that out potentially into some some of our schools. and Central Academy is already all over. She's like, I want my kids to I want some kids to attend GPS and I want, you know, I want them to know about these options in the evenings. And um so I I don't think it will ever be, wow, we shouldn't have done this. I think it's going to be, wow, we I think it's going to be successful. If it isn't at some

051point, I think it's going to be, wow, we learned a lot, so now let's take what we know and push it out. And that the asset the facility is ours at that point if you attend what I use it for. >> Correct. >> Whatever. >> Two notes. One on that. We do have to have Desi Stuart Smith who is our Desi contact. >> He basically has to give it a stamp of approval annually kind of like we do like the program evaluations come to you all to get a stamp of approval. Um, we have to Desessie checks my federal programs, my title plan every single year. By June 30th, I have to submit a new title plan for the next year and they tell me yes or no, they need revisions, whatever. He's he still

052will be monitoring that annually. Um, after four years, we have to go back to the state board. Um, and they would have to it's not a full vote again. It's more kind of like the charter schools do, which you know, Yeah. Okay. You got accredited like you were supposed to or you're in process of getting accredited. You're you're meeting your goals that you told us you were going to or you're making progress towards them that you told us they were going to those kind of but it's not until after year four that we have to go back and do that. So that is one thing I wanted to add about your kind of like long-term plan. And then the other thing that Casey made me think about whenever you said um you were asking more

053about the budget for the facility. We have like we built in but uh annual like plans for upkeep operating expenses like we have um for utility bills, maintenance costs, custodial supplies, things like that. And then it has a 2% annual increase. We have money built in for like utility bills and everything for that into the grant. So, the district really should be out zero dollars for 10 years. Like, there's not an ounce that I have not built into here that I can think of. >> And as we discussed earlier, because I was looking at these numbers, we put in high-end salary numbers for the teachers. Um, probably that won't be where the teachers that we hire are coming in at. So we did pad >> it for lack of a better word to make sure

054that we would have enough funding to do what we felt like we needed to. >> How does this work from a standpoint? So let's go back to exactly that point you just raised. So if we end up having we didn't end up spending in FY27 the full 900,000 on this project because ultimately we paid a lower level or we saved money on utilities or whatever the case may be. Do we still get the full amount or is it like invoice reimbursement where we say here's what it cost us and they give us money back? >> We're hoping to have some of those questions answered. Typically there it's invoice reimbursement is the way bestie works. However, I have not had a grant or federal programs or an after school program or anything that I can't move

055the money. So, if we have less HR expenses and I want to spend more in training or I want to take these kids on a field trip or I want to purchase additional experiential learning equipment, I just I just submit a budget change to them and I justify why I want to move the money. Uh, our HR expenses are going to come in 50,000 under what we thought they were and I would like to move that 50,000 to >> here. I've never had an issue getting that approved. So, we don't lose it if we don't spend it in HR. I can move it. I still am going to have to expense it out by June 30th of that year. >> For the construction pieces, we have um Mr. Carl has some what do you call

056it like a a way that we can bucket that money by June 30th of this year and then still use that money to continue paying those construction bills. I don't really understand that piece, but I know that he talked about >> he says it can happen. So, >> he told me it can happen. So, we won't lose that those construction pieces um before the end of this fiscal year. That's kind of the one that's probably a little wonky, but then after that, it's no different than what I do in federal programs and I move that money to where we need to based on what the principles and other people seeing around here tell me they want where they want the categories. And we did make some budget cuts because they came back to both us

057and Vivo and said, "Hey, we want you to make, you know, make cuts on." Well, actually, they came to us and said, "Well, if we have to make cuts, you making them make cuts, too." And they were like, "Yeah, we are." All right. Just making sure we're all the same. But, um, also, if we had additional money where we did make cuts, those are things that we can pick back up. >> And coming back to like the if it if we underenrolled, because again, I I keep in my head thinking that like Charlotte, North Carolina enrolled like four kids and they had eight kids and they had 10 kids and that's a three and a half million people community. And so I guess I I come back to wondering where do we think most of

058these students are going to come from? It sounds like we think in this district based on the 20 we won't do outside the district until we have 20, >> right? I think it will be from our five well the first 20 I would love to see come from our school. I don't know whether or not we're going to get that many that buy in. Um, but from the f our five count oursel including the four counties around us that community counseling center also supports. I think that we'll get them from all of those counties. When you when you're talking about Charlotte, North Carolina too, that was a charter school. They they weren't given money to start their program. Um, no other state currently is funded as well as our program is getting ready to fund.

059So when we looked at the U Minnesota schools, they were having to go out and work the I don't want to say work the streets because this isn't helpful, but that's what came to my mind. You know, they were going out and constantly fundraising and having to make cuts because um they couldn't they didn't have any funding coming from from their state to support them. One of the things that I will say that was unanimous which it felt like nothing else at the board meeting was unanimous except for this is every board member from DESIE was on board and um some of them shared some of their own personal stories uh about their experiences and how this would have impacted them and they also said that they were excited to see for the future and

060felt that this would be something that they want to keep in legislation to keep the funding as a budget line item. Now I know boards change but that was what they shared that day. >> So we also um one reason that we feel like we probably can fill those seats from within our district is prior to applying for this grant there was a very um small desi grant that was like research this and find out information about it. And one of the things we did was we hired with that grant money was we hired you to um do stakeholder findings. And so they surveyed um and held some stakeholder focus groups and then they surveyed our students. And that's what I was trying to look up right here. But we had like 20 or 30

061students say they would be interested in attending a recovery high school from our high school at that time. Does that mean that all 30 of them would actually end up doing that? Probably not. But do I think that we probably are there's probably who didn't say they would that might end up in there and there's probably some who said they would that probably won't end up happening. But I feel like that's telling us that that there's a need here that um we need to address and we have students who are at least willing to consider that because they know they have a problem and they don't know how to fix it. >> And the first thing is to get away from that fear. acknowledge it and say okay I'll see help on the way and

062on that note I have two questions one is that okay we get over the 20 and we start accepting from other districts when graduation time comes will they graduate from us >> here okay so that's and um it will be like just the regular graduation even though that is the um uh recovery high school >> so >> how's graduation handled on We would actually discuss that within um the admin team that will be at that building, their leadership team, how they want to do that because um it may be that the students want to have their own separate graduation, which is what has happened in some schools. They've they've let the students kind of vote and decide what they want to do because they don't want to even though this is a small town kind

063of feel and they're reingling with the students in the community, that may not where they may be proud of their graduation, their facilities. So >> that's that's all going to be determined once we get our staff in place and we get our students in. A lot of the decisions that they made at the recovery high schools were with student leadership input. >> I think that's important to give them a voice. I mean, they're doing some hard work. >> Yeah. >> Stepping up and saying, "I need help and I want to get it." And I think they should have some say in how >> things play out for them. >> Well, I commend you guys on your work that you've done on this Thank you. >> I have one more question. Um, so, so, and this

064may sound repetitive. So, if we underenroll out of the gate and so you get three kids and you get five kids and you get 10 kids, do you still end up getting the same amount of money? >> We get the same amount of money. It is not written in as a per student rate. There's nothing per student about it. I wrote the like You would shift the money though how we were going to use. >> I would shift some of it because we only had three students. I probably don't need seven teachers, right? >> Two and a half teachers and an RBT and a like. And the nice thing about even at Central Academy when you're looking at teacher certification, when you're with an atrisisk population, you can you can code it as at risk

065and any teacher certification works. So, we still want highly qualified um teachers, but they may be more qualified in um like more like a special ed teacher who has experience with kids and less content. And then Mr. Russell could work with online programs or we could shift students, teachers from across the district to help support specific subjects if we needed to. But we would hire less staff. I probably wouldn't need two vans, but I probably would go ahead and buy those in the years that I had them because, >> right, >> we always need last a long time, but um the amount that we would pay hourly for drivers wouldn't be as much because they wouldn't be driving as much. And I can move that money to buy either additional training for the staff at

066that building, the staff at some of our sending schools um at both central I putting out some positive PR. We can use it for experiential learning off campus. We can use it technology that maybe I hadn't thought of yet that Mr. Hall, Mr. Russell haven't even told me it exists yet. You know, like there's a lot of different ways that we can utilize those funds um to buy additional teacher, you know, manipulatives and materials and things like that. So, um we don't lose the money if we have three kids next year. >> They just go to a field trip like Paris or something. I mean I think you know college visits go expensive because I have written a lot of grants for that and just to get our kids to places other than Simo. Not

067that Simo isn't and I've written grants to take our fourth and fifth graders to Simo and it was expensive just to get them across town but um and that some of them that was the first time they'd ever really been on a university campus and that was really awesome. But um >> but we can take them to other and we can pull them and see what their interest is in, you know, and it might look different depending on what those three students I mean, I could come up with something I think is really cool, but even if it's you, you and I might not have the same interest. So, I need to like we need to really dig into what those kids want and need there. >> That's the individualization piece. So, a lot of

068the schools in the first three first two to three years when they have those small numbers, they're taking their kids to do things, two staff to one student, um if they're interested in welding, they're going to take them to the CTC to look at our welding facility, to do trade stuff, to go out and see businesses that they could be hired out of. We're going to do um a lot of student centered student focused individual experiences so that they can see that there's a way other than the way that they've been living >> and the only way to do that is to get them out of out of what they're used to. >> And so we're saying the only restriction so I keep hammering this point the only restriction is so we have three kids

069and we have 900 grand 400 is going to be capex. So we've got three kids so we've got like $133,000 per student that we can spend. So whether we go >> you keep saying it's per student but you can't say it like that because >> obviously it scales it scales and so it's not tied to the student but correct ultimately your >> your spending you can't go spend it on other students though right >> correct >> so it's kind of tied to >> it's tied to the building it's tied to the building but what I want to say >> if we stayed at three or four students for years obviously they're going to be going you don't need this much money okay so we wouldn't be a smart steward of their money. If we continue

070to request $900,000 for four students, right, year-over-year, we're not going to do that. That's not the right thing to do, right? So, originally those starting out, recovery high school research shows that most of them do start out very small. And so, they're aware of that and they're willing to work with us on those numbers. And that's why when Vivo had the quick rise up to 150, I think was their first one, right, Jamie? It >> was, >> they were like, whoa, this is not research based. This isn't how this works. I love the BO people for all the internet for the record. They're very nice. But um just that understanding of that it's going to be a slow growth process. They are aware of that. >> I don't know if that makes No, it makes

071sense. I mean it does make sense. I'm just saying there's scale to education. So if you're educating two kids, like the fixed cost of having a teacher, you got one teacher, if you have two students or you have 10 students, the teacher doesn't cost, they don't charge per student. And so >> there are some fixed costs like that. The director's going to cost the the administrative assistant's going to cost the same, >> the counselor, >> some of the usage of utilities cost is probably going to be similar because you've got the lights on and then he and that kind of stuff. Um, you know, would there be some possibly some additional things we could do to outside to make it a welcoming >> um environment? And I think that is one thing. I did not

072go on any of the site visits, but Miss Keys went on all of them. Did you go? >> I didn't go on. >> Okay. Yeah, you're right. But >> you can use it school where you can keep it up open 24 hours. >> A lot of summer programming is built in here, especially for the recovery. >> Oh, sorry. Say that part again. I'm sorry. >> There is um the HR pieces to keep recovery processes going throughout the summer and Christmas break and things like that is built in. Also, um some academic pieces for summer school are built in. Um we could, you know, it it may be something that if we're struggling to get some increasing the enrollment to the maybe we pay for additional programming for after school for kids that might need it

073that aren't sure they want to leave their high school to come but they know that they have an issue and they want help and maybe we take some of the money instead of hiring two teachers during the day and maybe we do some additional evening or after school program we have some flexibility we just would have to justify why we're moving money and spending it differently with Jessie but I do that about once a week right now with my other things. So, I don't feel like that would be a an issue if we needed to do it. The money is also the 3.6 million that they have. Well, it's not here. It's in another spot and it shows you where their DMX money is. That's opioid settlement money. So, it's in a a fund that's

074making money, right? So, for us, they divided it up annually. if it for some reason doesn't get spent that year. The state doesn't lose the money. >> There are some things with federal funding that you do sometimes lose the money if you don't spend it as far as the state is concerned. This is not that situation because it's opioid settlement money. So if we truly can't be good stewards of and we don't need 900,000 like I really think the first three years regardless of how many well this year they're doing but those first two years regardless of how many kids we're going to use pretty darn close to that amount of money because of >> some startup cost right but after that if we don't have to add um additional student devices as fast or

075we don't have to uh we're just going to have to look at it because you also don't want to go from, oh, we only had three students the first year, we had 10 students the second year, and now we got 30 students. You know, we don't want to skip those steps and then not have enough student devices. So, we will still be buying some of those technology pieces and some of those desks, whether our student enrollment is that high or not because I don't want to lose that money that year >> and then those kids come two years later and I don't I don't have the money two years later to buy what I said I was going to buy two years prior. >> Y >> So, there are some things like that that we'll

076have to just really keep an eye on. Um, I just wanted to add to that. The reason I said not per student is um, one of the board members was saying that, he kept saying that to me about the first year and he was like, "That's over $100,000 for kids." I was like, "What is he talking about? It's not that." He was taking the amount and dividing it amongst the kids. And then when we explained to him that a big part of ours was capital project, then >> which I know >> he canceled the Paris field trip. >> He just was like, "Oh, okay. That makes sense." like he wasn't understanding the large amount with such a small number of kids. >> I lied about my last question. I have one more at least. >>

077So, if if we had 10 students that came from Cape Central High School and said, "I want to go to recovery high school in year one." And so, we had state funding of like 155 or 16, whatever the number is. $160,000 associated with these 10 students. Does the recovery high school this budget funds those 10 students now and we keep the $160,000 $170 or we lose this money? >> So the ADA we still get as a district that would that's not included in this if that's what you're asking. Our K public schools ADA is not included in this. So we would still Lindsay would still get to pull up the ADA and put it into the district >> the general fund not just one >> and and conversely if we said hey nobody in the

078district wants to come but we have 10 kids from outside the district whether they came from the state of Missouri if they came from Illinois it's probably a little different I don't know >> do we expect people to cash pay like I mean in some ways I almost wonder I have no idea but part of me wonders if I'm a family who is affluent and I say I have a kid struggling from addiction and they don't have one of these in my community or anywhere close which is true most of the country I think there's not very many and so they say we're going to come to Cape Gerardo because I want you to go to this school then they would just pay the 17,000 or whatever the number is and they would be enrolled

079>> if they were smart >> they would enroll and if they live in Cape >> they would enroll to We can collect take off >> if they move to Jackson and enroll in Jackson. >> That's what they even though it works exactly with Illinois. >> I'm not sure that that would work. >> If they say I love living at another state >> they might have to move over. They'd have to move to Missouri. >> Yeah. So I'm not really sure about the Illinois part. >> Um the Missouri part. Yes. They wherever they buy their house at, they just enrolled in that school district and then >> And the money follows them and that school district really isn't out any money, >> right? Like they're not >> it's not like they're going to be like, "Well,

080I'm not sending you over there cost us money." It's not costing them any so there's no skin off their back to send a student to this program. >> So my only fear with this, and I brought this up the first time we talked about this, and I think I appreciate this dialogue. I really do. And I think honestly obviously a lot of thought has gone into this and I think the economics seem to be um tight. I mean again the idea that this is something that is going to be grant funded ultimate third party basically the opioid settlement is going to pay for this. Legislators have decided this is how they want to spend that money and we have gotten our paws on some of it to go try this here. Um, my biggest single

081concern is I think with all of the eyes and attention on our district around people who look at our district and say such a lot of bad things happen in K public schools and there are plenty around who have that perception that the idea that this is kind of the priority thing that we would go pursue in my mind reinforces all of that negativity. Recognizing that addiction is doesn't discriminate. It's everywhere. It's in every community. >> It's true. You're just saying it's the perception. >> Well, I'm saying I think it reinforces some of the the negative stigmas that our district wrestles with each and every day. And the people who want to are going to say, "Well, yeah, of course, Cape Public Schools recovery high school." Like, they need one. Even though whether they're a

082prochial school locally who have big addiction rates based on access to financial resources to go buy drugs and controlled substances or they're a public high school who's more affluent and again has access to these things as well. My fear is it kind of just reinforces people who want to run away from our district and says this is just more evidence that this is not the place for my kids. I think it would support the idea that we are taking students potentially out of the school, lessening that exposure um to their student and trying to support the need of the student that we're removing from the regular high school. So that that's less number of students um potentially that they would be >> That's right. That's right. >> Um I would say that I you and

083I have talked about this before. I do understand your perspective. It's grown on me. Um, your perspective has grown on me, but it is not um, our district does have students with drug problems. Guess who else does? Jackson Public Schools. Guess who else does? Notre Dame. Guess who else does? I can keep going. Um, but is that the way people look at Cape Jorda public schools? Maybe. But I think what it shows is that we recog a problem and we're dealing with it just like we've talked about other problems today that we're recognizing and we're trying to deal with and find creative ways to service our students in other ways who may not be ready to be in the school setting. Um I think it shows that we're being proactive >> and I don't I

084don't disagree with that. Um and again I think both things can definitely be true at the same time. >> Um say one other thing. Um, >> I would hate for us not to do this on the perception of possibly people that aren't even doing anything in the community, >> but we do need to be ready to um answer those questions. I do mostly make sure we're marketing it correctly. >> Most most definitely. I agree with that. I actually thought that was a trick question, but you answered it very very well. >> You know, one thing that um our our career and technology center a budget specifically for marketing. And while I didn't necessarily include that in the grants, I do think there will be money, especially maybe not not currently, but moving forward, there will

085be money um for that. Although Miss Talon has been involved in the conversation so that she can make sure that we're pushing this out in the right way so that the um it's almost like a regionality high school >> and not like the career center is a regional career center >> and we need to promote it more like that. Um whereas the first couple years are really >> we decided 20 was when we would uh start allowing students from other schools. But we need some time to just figure out procedures too since we're starting. >> It's more it's really more about developing those procedures than it is about >> we need a strong foundation. >> Yes. And we need to establish that strong foundation and what are we how are we going to handle when

086certain things come up. >> What type of students we know students with drug addiction but are there going to be behaviors that we're not going to allow into this school setting? Um, and how are we going to develop that application process for students outside the district? Um, because we don't, this is not an alternative school. >> This is a recovery high school. And so that students with significant behaviors that are not substance abuse related should not be allowed to attend this school because that will >> that's not the intent and the purpose of it. Um, and so then the holding off till year four for students outside of the district is as much about establishing procedures as it is about members. >> Um, and we need some time to develop all of that. And so,

087um, but Miss Talent has been reading over the information and really spending time thinking about how to roll this out so that it doesn't, um, it's a positive and not a negative. And we also >> because we have made a concerted effort to continue to push positive stories out about our district. So, I have to ask the question that some of these people, if they're looking for an excuse to either leave Kate Public Schools or if they're looking for an excuse to downgrade and act like our school district is a bad, did they already have one leg out the door? Quite honestly, I just have to ask that because I feel like we are making great efforts to promote our school district in a positive light. And I will say it it's growing a little

088frustrating to hear that all of this feedback just here. I'm not hearing it in the community. We're not hearing it in surveys that there's this bad taste of Cape Public Schools in in our community. I'm just not seeing it. I I think part of what you're what you're hearing though is 20 years of a reputation that has been addressed only in maybe the last two years. I agree. You guys have made an incredible effort to speak positive positively of our school to really push out a positive narrative and it's not just a narrative. It's the reality of what's happening in our schools. I fully believe that. That's why I'm here. That's why my kids are in the school. though I know what we're saying is what is actually happening in our schools, but it it

089is a more recent development to have this concerted effort to speak so positively of our school when I feel like we're fighting against something that has been spoken negatively about for many many years and I don't think you see a turn that quickly. I think that's a slow process and I think that's why you still have, you know, these people saying still we're still hearing negative things. I think it's a result of that. >> It starts with us though. >> It does. I agree. >> Here, right here. >> Yes. >> It starts here. So, >> and we're doing it. >> We have to we have to do that. And that's the reason why you're seeing the change the last two to three years. >> Uh that's something that we've talked about fairly much every week

090>> on what's going on because Kristen has done names that are pretty powerful with communication. >> Well, and the reality >> over the years really >> we all have to understand now we are in a very turbulent political climate against public schools. >> If we're not on the same page here and if we're not shutting down conversations in our community that people are having in our social circles, then we're contributing to that problem. So, I know all of you send your kids here. You feel confident in our schools. Most of you guys are graduates like I am of this school district. We're passionate about this school district. That's why I moved back here from Memphis to be a part of this school district. You know, you won't hear a negative thing come out of my

091mouth about this this school district. It's not going to happen. And I am definitely going to go to bat for the district, for our teachers who work, people who talk badly about our district are bashing our teachers and they're saying that the work they're doing every day is not important. That's unacceptable. And it does start here and our conversations that we have here, our conversations when we leave here. Um, but the reality of it is we've all got to be on the same page because we're we're fighting an uphill battle and they're coming for us. They're coming for the public schools. Sorry, I just had to push back just on, you know, again because we've made such strong efforts um with a very very minimal budget because we are a public school district so we

092have to do a lot of free things. I'm thankful for all the support we get from the CTC. Um but I'm just I'm not I guess I'm missing out. Maybe people are scared to talk to me negatively about the school district and that might be more what it is because they know I'm going to shut it down, right? I'm sure that's part of it. And again, I echo what Crystal said. Again, I've sent all my kids to K public schools. I graduated here. You won't find a bigger supporter, >> but ignoring people who are saying negative things and have reasons to not like our district doesn't make it go away. >> And so, at the end of the day, the reality is we can say it's anti-ublic school. We can say there's anti-ublic school and

093there is some. >> There's some there is west of us 2x as big as us. 2x. And when I went to school here, we were the big school. And so something has fundamentally changed in the last 33 years. And and again, I think we've got to acknowledge it. And I think it's awesome. I think there's a ton of great work going on. So do not take my comments to disparage your work. That was certainly not my intention. >> They're not taken that way. No. >> But at the end of the day, there are a ton of people. And if we're surveying families in Cape Dorado public schools, they're not in our survey because they left. >> Yeah. >> And they opted out. >> Well, that how do you say that? That's saying that any survey

094then that goes out is tainted. >> No, I'm just saying I'm saying there's a bias on who you're surveying. So if you said I'm only going to survey people who are still here, you're only going to get answers people are still here. >> But you're talking about people in our district currently that are talking bad things about our district. No >> that maybe want to leave to go to another. >> Well, there are some I think there are some that are on the fence for sure. >> We have surveyed um community members. We have surveyed parents. And I'm not saying there aren't a handful or 10. I don't know. I don't know what numbers you guys I would love for you all to give us those numbers or ask those people to come talk to

095us because we haven't had one conversation. >> Yes. >> We haven't had one conversation with any people that you're talking about that have shared a concern with you. >> Um to my knowledge. I mean I haven't. Dr. Ben, have you? >> No. >> Okay. >> And and your numbers are wrong with two times the size of our district because they're about 5,000. We're about 4,500. So >> I just mean the high school. I think the high school class is about twice as big, right? 250 versus 500. >> We have about three. >> Yeah. When I graduated in 98, we were 3 maybe 320 per class. 320 330. >> Last check they were around 1,600 total students. >> 400 per class. We're still sitting. a little what year did you >> around three 280 to >>

096I feel like we're getting into the numbers they've grown whether it's double whether it's by 25% whether it's by 75% they're bigger and they weren't so they've grown and I I I don't even think it's about like naming a specific person and making them come talk to you the reality is that I deal with the public moving into our district every single day and I can tell you consistently what we are told and Jared I think you would probably back me on this. Consistently what we're told is we don't want to be in this district. We want to be in the neighboring district. And that is not just that is not just community conversation. That is big company conversation. That is major companies that are employing our town are having conversations with their incoming people

097telling them this is the district you need to be in. So we can say that's not happening. We can say that a survey is telling us that that's not the case, but I'm hearing it every day. >> Yeah, we're not saying it's not happening. We're just saying it's not getting it's not coming >> to us. But I did want to add that um >> I we we've gotten to this point before before in our conversation. And out of that came some really good things um progress that we've made as a district in marketing and in doing things where we're really hitting academics and a lot of things. So I don't want to get us off track like you said from the recovery high school. Um, I think that optics, um, is something we need to,

098uh, clearly make sure that we market appropriately and correctly. And, um, I think we can do that and still be the great school district that we are. I think we can do both. >> I think that's fair. >> But I think we'll continue to have these discussions >> and I think we got to push each other. It's okay to be It's okay to disagree. Like, you know what I mean? It makes us better. And so we shouldn't >> we shouldn't sit and say this isn't happening or nobody tells me this because again like it is real and the reason we bring it up is because we've got to be able to address what's real. >> Sure. And we're not saying it's not real, but think about your company and people that support your company. If

099you were hearing that everybody's saying bad things about your company, but nobody ever says anything to you or the people that in the leadership from you. Nobody ever comes to you. Nobody ever has the conversation to say, "Hey, here's what I'm hearing. How can we turn this? Then how do you help? How do you help as the leader? How do we help as the leaders of this district? We're so passionate about we're trying to make changes based on what you guys are telling us, not what our community is telling us. What you guys are telling us. We are trying to do that. We are working our butts off. Our teachers are working their pennies off to do that. So, we do need to continue to have these conversations, but there is fairness in saying >>

100if people can't come to us and help us understand their perspective, we can't change something that we don't know specifics about. >> I think that's fair. And again, I think it's fair, >> but I hear both of you and I think you have very valid points. I'm sorry, Jerry, I'm >> keep pointing across the >> I think it's good discussion. I appreciate it. Thank you. Guys, thank you very much. Good discussion on recovery high school and other very important optic discussions there that we continually keep going on. So, up next, uh, technology department evaluation. You should have tried to go before that. If only >> Good evening. Uh, on a positive note, our district device insurance is one of the cheapest in any district. Even though we're seeing close to a 20% increase in uh

101the cost of the devices, uh we're anticipating keeping the repair the insurance cost the same. So, we're not we're trying not to pass that on. >> What percentage Sorry, I'm asking a question before you're even done. What percentage of devices end up needing a repair? >> Uh that's hard to say. um because we have a lot of repeat offenders. Uh >> if you go if you go just by numbers um it's 15 to 20% in a year but uh some they they they're in there for the fifth sixth time. >> Okay. >> By February and others uh we don't see them for four years. >> Yeah. Okay. Uh so it's it's kind of hard to say the the exact percentage but uh obviously the repair costs are much lower in the elementarymentaries uh up to

102middle school because of cartbased than the home. Uh we did we sprung for cases at the middle school level and that reduced our 25% breakage down to about eight. So the the cost of the cases was well worth it in that building. So I mean if you drop from the 25ish actually it's close to 27. If you drop that down to eight and then hopefully again you know stays at that or even lower for four years the life of the device makes a huge difference. But we did re we did pull out and reuse 1,400 screens in the last uh last two years from devices. So we we've been our own parts recycler. Uh so we have not bought a screen in over two years by, you know, trying to be the best students of

103our mother. >> Obviously, uh we can reuse keyboards, vessels, things like that. So we take all the pieces that we can use off of them. Even if the device is too old and too slow to use, uh we can still use those pieces on the next model. >> Unfortunately, this year they're changing models. >> First time in six years. Uh but >> we're, you know, we're still going to try and keep that device cost low. Uh Muduck and I, we increased our parts budget uh several years ago to cover that offset and I think we're I think we're going to still be in that. So, I think we'll be okay. >> The manufacturers are on to your game. They said no. >> I know other districts uh have outsourced their insurance. So you have to

104pay another company and then you also have to pay a deductible every time you use it. So if you break a screen maybe it's $20 or you know it's $5 depending on the insurance policy you get things like that. So the insurance is more and you have to pay per incident fee and uh we're really really trying to avoid any of that and and you also get a discount if you have more than more than two students. So, we're we're looking out for the families, trying to trying to keep it best we can. And it it hasn't cost us that much money. And by that much, I I think 10,000 for the is is and that's the entire district. >> Because we're essentially self-insuring this, you're saying? >> Yes, sir. >> That's awesome. have been

105since the since the first day since 2014. January January 6th of 2014 when we rolled out and uh our largest increase >> our largest increase was the uh was the repair budget of 10,000 and since then so I'm very very proud of my staff and how they've been able to manage that and recycling our own parts and and things like that and uh the labor to do that is much lower than it is to buy screens are anywhere between 30 $120 now depending on if it's a touchcreen or non-interactive. So >> that's awesome. >> Uh the rest of the numbers I won't bore you with. Uh you guys you guys saw it. You uh you have all the information there. The biggest concern I think we have very strong program. Our biggest concern is the

106the cost going forward. Uh I'm sure you've seen it in the news about uh processor manufacturers pulling out of the Chromebook space, memory manufacturers pulling out of the uh consumer space. Uh only going with AI. Uh so that was I think 40% of the memory that was sold in the in the commercial or consumer market is now going to AI only. So obviously that's about a 12.5% increase uh that we're seeing currently and will probably go up. But I mean that that's kind of our biggest biggest concern as well as uh getting more off-site backups. I can say that um you know just from my experience in in working with schools across the state, you know, they they look at Brian's department and they're jealous like of all the other things that they get to

107do uh and the way that they do it. um they're leaders in what they do across the state whether it's you know uh hosting some of the guys around here um you know or going out and presenting uh and talking about how they uh what they do or being involved um across uh different conferences and stuff like that that they actually help run uh you know even even in Infinite Campus user groups across the state you They're coming to look at to see what schools do is I know we don't get to talk about that a lot, but you know, we look at the numbers. We look at our program, but what we do with what we have uh is more than what most schools get to get to brag about. So, just wanted to

108say that as well. >> Fantastic. >> Thank you. And uh just uh we years ago we used to get two applications for for an opening and now I have to narrow it down to 20. >> That's awesome. >> Wow. That's >> I think the last one I cut it down to 17 and I cut it down to 10 and you know I'm having to go through and and cut who we who we want to interview now instead of who we can get to interview. >> Right. >> That's awesome. It's it's been a huge swing in 30 years. >> The only bad thing is that our guys are so good that they get, you know, by >> We've been poached repeatedly. >> Stay positive here. >> Our hype guy. That was >> okay. >> It's a

109good problem. >> We've been poached repeatedly and we have brought in incredibly talented staff. >> So, >> well, great job. >> Any questions? Thank you very much, sir. >> Thank you. >> Okay. All right. Academic services report AMI discussion. >> Everybody's favorite topic. >> You're going to make them go back and do AMI for the day. >> I That is not up to me. Um I I do get to refresh you guys uh about uh AMI and and some of the changes over this year. We we really haven't changed anything. Uh matter of fact, later on uh this year I'm going to bring back the AMI plan because we have to vote on it once a year. Um, but I just wanted to give you guys an update that this year they had changed the

110rules, which is why we were able to use some of these snow days um over the last couple weeks. Um, and that will continue. We still have a we still have a snow day left before we start AMI days. And um, just glad that years ago we figured that out how to do that properly. You know, some of these schools, they're almost out of AMI days or are out of as of today. And so um this year we stole an idea from Fox and >> did you make this >> started using it >> TV station or the school in Arnold? >> Uh the the school in Arnold. >> Okay. >> Um when I saw >> but I want to give them their new it was a great idea. Um and that's to have a snow

111day tracker. And so uh we've got it on the website now uh and so you guys can see it live >> and where we're at in the process. And so we just wanted to share that for everybody uh so that you do we'll still post that when we can but uh it is now on the website so at any point during the year you can see where we're at. >> We burned through a few of them last week. >> We did burn through >> just a few just a couple. >> So but if you guys have any more questions about AMI and how that works, we can definitely have that discussion. >> My kids were happy. >> I'd like to learn about >> it went back on Friday. >> Yeah. No, they were not happy

112about that. >> Was the parents happy that they went back home? >> One was >> The other one had to work. >> The other one works here, so that didn't help. Um, all right. So, we'll segue into our favorite psychology perspectus for AP psychology. >> Yes, really excited about this. I was supposed to bring this to you in December and it just we just lost it. And so, um, but here it is. Uh, really excited to expand our AP offerings again in social studies. They've got a ton of them. Um, but Candace Hider at the high school has been working on this one for a couple years now. Um, and they're ready to roll it out. And so, um, later on you'll get to vote on this, but it's it's a it's another AP class

113for our students to take. In psychology, we've got, you know, we've got just the regular psychology class still, and this would be kind of the next level to that. So, we're excited to be able to offer that to our students and and give them some some more AP level. >> You might have any AP psychological questions to ask. None of us want to get analyzed. We thank you. Community Teachers Association report. Thank you very much. >> You've been so patient. >> Yes, we appreciate it. >> It has been interesting. So, >> good, good, good, good. >> A board meeting was interesting. That's fantastic. It was because I feel like as a classroom teacher like I have not heard anything about the recovery high school. I think maybe one thing on Facebook so it was interesting

114and I feel also as a CTA executive board member like if someone would come or I hear the conversations like I can now respond. So >> awesome. >> Yeah, that's good. Uh my name is Kelly Bruns. I am the CTA membership uh person for Cape Gerardo. Um, I wanted to say also with listening to the ladies from the dietitionians. I teach third grade at Clifford Elementary and the day the watermelon came out, you could hear like the kids were coming through the lunch line watermelon. There's water and the kids are in the back going there's watermelon. And the ones in the back did not get watermelon because it was so popular. But, >> uh, another favorite, about a fourth in my class is now in love with the, um, sunflower butter with their celery. And

115so, they take that, even though there's still about two of them that argue with me that it's peanut butter and I'm like, it's not. But still, it's just from from the front lines, I guess. So, that's fun to see that stuff coming out. So, um, from CTA members and principles, some staff out staff shout outs for our buildings. I'm so sorry. I'm a little nervous. Like, I'm used to like talking to little kids. Okay. >> We're just big kids. Just bigger >> kids. Used to be little kids. >> Okay. Um, so Alma says, "Shout out to those teachers and staff who are sometimes pulling double duty in the building by holding a chair or committee position. They list off um the content leadership teams uh Miss Pickkins and Miss Ayers for leading the social committee,

116Miss Wisman and Miss O'UIN for being the PD team, Miss Frasier for being the CTA rep for so many years, and Miss Mahay for the support on the calendar committee. They also have a shout out to the staff who run the afterchool clubs, Miss Owen's coding club, Miss Gentry's choir, and Coach Camp's running club. Honorable mention to the teachers who help weekly with the running club. Mr. Brown, Mr. Bordon, Mrs. Edmonson, and Miss McGinty. Blanchard. Shout out to Christy Jones for creating invaluable lessons for the third graders and preparing them for MAP testing. To Gina Herszog, who loves her first graders and gives her all to reach each one. Eileen Meisner for being so loving and informative throughout the sped process. Coach Smith for coaching one of our youth basketball teams. Mr. Lindberg for being

117such an outstanding teacher. He is dearly loved by all students and is calm, funny, and always on top of his kids learning. Shout out to Santana Arn for creating book clubs that have sparked a love for reading in our fourth graders and now our third graders too. Um, from the district office, shout out to Tw Tyson Moyers for starting the youth athletic programs. You can go to any gym in Cape on a Saturday and find Cape schools being represented on the court. Um Amy Dunn for having the vision of Cub Club and creating a safe and fun place for our youth to stay after school. Central Academy um it extraordinaire Nathan and I'm not sure how to say his last name. I was told it's French. >> Rasharde. There you go. For helping positive pathways

118always stay on track. Um, at Clipper at our building, our Encore teachers are preparing a whole building third quarter behavior reward for the students so they can work on that during the winter months because we've started having inside recess. >> Uh, to okay uh to Brad Sheridan, he is our EL teacher. He does a great job um of building relationships with the students that sometimes even in the hallways like we have to be like Mr. Sher but it's a good thing. Um classroom teachers are working hard to fill out that data and care team plans and work on instructional checkpoints after all the middle of the year testing has been completed. And we have um a first year teacher, Miss Elder, and she has been doing a wonderful job in first grade CTC. Miss Elliot

119has done an outstanding job working with all students to complete their resumes and ensure they are fully prepared for mock interview day. Her dedication to guiding students through professional expectations and preparing them for realworld readiness is greatly appreciated. Miss Cara Lrand works diligently with her early childhood education students to prepare them for teaching and for successfully completing the CDA exam. She also goes goes above and beyond to support our MO options students as they prepare for the high set, helping them earn their high school diploma. Her commitment and passion for her students truly make a difference. From the high school, Miss Ritter for being an outstanding CHS teacher who keeps families informed and encourages students and guides them for the future. Early Childhood Center to everyone who helps load and unload cars in this freezing

120weather. Thanks to Austin and all the custodians for clearing the walks. Uh Franklin cafeteria staff used sign language to communicate with a student to ask what she would like for lunch. It's kind of fun. Jefferson, Miss Min, our newest special ed teacher, is doing amazing. She's taken on the challenge by starting in January, but that hasn't stopped her. Junior high. Shout out to all the TAs at the junior high. They have gone above and beyond to meet the needs of all of our students. Shout out to Kim Dockery. She's here every day working with students one-on-one, one-on- two, and does an amazing job. Shout out to Amanda Shackles. She is hardworking, caring, and supportive for all students. She asks questions, speaks up when she is unsure of something, and truly desires to work with her

121onetoone students so that he can become independent. Shout out to all of our co-eing pairs. Differentiating instruction can be a difficult task, but you guys work so hard to make their curriculum accessible for each and every student at the middle school. They would fall apart without Brooke Delo and Cali Centers. CMS is thankful to have two competent and passionate counselors to aid the students and assist with all CMS activities. Uh, Miss Hike for doing an amazing job keeping interview interventions in place as her partner was out sick for several days. Vanessa Harrington for knowing each of our kiddos by name and treating them as her own. She goes above and beyond in her job and for our staff. We are blessed to have her as our front office faced here at CMS. Um, someone else

122added, I wanted to say vertical teaming with the junior high was an awesome experience and hope they get to do it more often. I loved hearing what other people were doing and how our things affect theirs. Hopefully, we can meet with the elementarymentaries too for more teaming. And then last but not least, Becky Wright, for her leadership support that she shows our staff and students every day and they feel blessed to have her. >> So, >> thank you very much. >> Five pages. >> Great. You did a great job. >> So, and thank you guys for all that you do because I think also like hearing some of that like this is a big job. >> So, thank you. >> Thank you. You have a good night. >> You can stay for the rest of

123it. Who knows what'll happen? We still have a lot of points on here. Up next, treasur finance report. Miss Dudek. expenses. >> I have one question that's on this report. It's on It's on the revenues and expense the expense revenue report. I guess I love one of these three attachments that that she just or Jamie just pulled up. So I love that you say kind of percent realized and like last year through this month kind of saying, "Hey, how do you compare where we are versus where we thought we'd be in the budget and where we kind of expect to be as of last year?" There's a few of these that kind of strike me as, you know, kind of odd like and the bigger categories like earnings from investments and interest like I think

124our budget is we're going to have a million5 in revenue as you get like about eight lines down there and so we're 290K year to date. Is that a function of I would have actually thought interest rates on our investment probably depending on what we're invested in um would have gone up a little bit over where they've been or maybe they've gone down a little bit over time. >> Are there big categories where you feel like there's a big swing that's noteworthy? And I guess I say that I see on here like bonds we paid zero because we've got big pinchable payments coming up that haven't happened yet. So there's some things that like make sense based on timing. But when I look and say percentage of total revenues, we're at 48.1%. Which to me,

125I feel like we're more than 50% through the year, I would think. I don't know exactly what our number is, but I'm thinking more than 50. Uh, and then if you look at expenses, we're only at 41.8% realized, but that three and a half million, $3.7 million chunk of that bond principle would raise that number substantially when it happens. Are there any big things that you see that are different than you thought that would have like a material impact? Just >> So, right now, looking at. >> Sure. Sure. >> But when I looked at I looked at this revenues pretty good. >> Yeah. >> You know, we're halfway through the year. We're almost at 50%. But also our expenses are lagging. So then I thought I need to go back. I know there's things that

126are overed and those need to be adjusted. >> Cool. You always work the magic. So, I I wasn't trying to dig in the in the weeds, but it just it's interesting when you show the dynamic of one that we're a little below on revenues for 50%, but we're way below on expenses, and you start saying, "Hey, what's driving this? Are we going to end up with more money than we thought or less money than we thought?" And >> right, >> do you want to talk about that software program that's going to be able to give you some >> different information? Are you ready to talk about that? >> She says, "Not really, but sure." >> She doesn't want to talk about it. Dr. like what you're talking about. So there is a new program that

127schools have been using. It is it's a software program that complments the software that we have right now but it has capabilities to do identify areas where maybe we're overregistered. right now. >> So, we're in a very early stage expenses and revenues to hoping that it will help our dashboard. I do like this report. I think this is a really good report. I think gives a good picture of, you know, what the budget looks like. >> Yeah. No, totally agree. And I I wasn't trying to get too deep in the weeds, but there's obviously a lot of expense categories and a lot of revenue categories. And so, as you start looking at big chunk chunks and saying, "Hey, are we are we moving towards what we would have thought recognizing I don't have any visibility

128to like how big some chunks might be that have been paid for, not paid for, but >> there's a lot of I will say there's a lot of revenue. There's really like a few categories of our >> primarily funded with local taxes and state >> right >> cool thank you thank you very much >> all right support services report more about the watermelon this >> good evening I'm going to say you all and say that everything we need covered is covered Any big nasty stuff happen in the snow or anything? Everything good? >> It's going to be cold tomorrow morning. >> Thank you, sir. >> Meteorology report. >> A little bit of freezing rain, but it'll definitely be above freezing. >> Awesome report. >> Thank you. >> Is our goto for travel. One of us

129has to travel. We're like, do we go or do we not go? Um, >> I'm going to go to Muny, Indiana tomorrow if you want to come along. So, >> do not recommend. >> No, me either. All right. Board reports. Uh, MSBA delegate report. >> She has no reports, sir. >> She has no report today, it looks like. Um, pay attention to your emails. Obviously, MSBA sends out emails. Hopefully, you guys get them. Um, lots of stuff coming up. March 10thish is the capital day. And um then just they have their monthly um lunch and learn kind of things. Uh legislative report. Nothing to talk about, is there? >> Nothing. >> I have a whole page. I'm sorry you guys have been yap for a while. Okay. So for starters, the governor did his state

130of the state address. Um one of the things that he discussed was the budget. And just as a reminder, um, whatever he says his goals for the budget are doesn't necessarily determine our budget. It is just his goals, but it is nice to keep in mind because it does kind of tend to funnel how everything else goes. And so, um, really the big takeaway is that he wants to reduce our budget by for the state, um, from he wants to reduce 600 million from the core budget. And so what that some specific things that that would mean for education is there would be cuts to the incentive for keeping a five-day school week, a cut to transportation funding, and no increase to the foundation formula. Um, in addition to that, there is a pretty significant

131fight, for lack of the better word, going on currently about taxes and what taxes are going to look like in the state of Missouri. Um because of SB3 which was passed in the last special session of the last legislative session um there will be a vote in April on property taxes that will for our county it's will we cap it at 5% for some counties it's no change for some it's a 0% it really depends county to county there's been some um lawsuits about it but bottom line is it will be on our April election. The the question is what does that actually look like for our district and or for any school district? The reality is we don't know. It remains to be seen. There are multiple bills surrounding this topic and so there's

132not a lot of clarity right now. Essentially, what we're voting on is um do we want to give legislators the ability to adjust? It's not really does the adjustment happen. It's do we want to give them the ability to adjust. It's just kind of an open-ended can they just go off and make some decisions on what our taxes will look like. Um there is a large conversation happening about property taxes, income taxes, do they need to be eliminated? What is what is that going to look like? We are more than likely going to see that play out in a lot of depth over this next legislative session. And not just this session, this is probably a conversation we're going to see continue coming up for the next several years. Um, in addition to property taxes

133and income taxes kind of being up in the air, federal funding is also uncertain right now. Uh, we are currently, federally speaking, operating under a continuing resolution, which means that we don't actually have a budget. Um, so you know what what is currently funded is good until I don't even know what the the recent res they just passed the most recent resolution. I don't know what the deadline is, but basically that just has to keep continuing or we have an actual budget at some point, but at this point it is up in the air. And so um that just again creates a lot of uncertainty. Plus we have seen federal funding even when we were under an actual budget. we have seen it just kind of be pulled at certain times. Um so all all

134of that to say with all of that uncertainty is that uh we are just really in I keep saying the word uncertainty but we are in a moment of a lot of uncertainty. We just don't really know how things are going to look going forward. Another thing that was brought up in the state of the state was that Kiho announced an executive action for an A tof rating for schools. um that kind of came along with a piece of legislation where he's also encouraging legislators to pass into law this uh a tof system. Um it is let's see they have until June at this point with the executive action uh desi has until June to establish the rating system for all districts. So, you know, budget, federal funding, foundation formula, taxes, a new rating system,

135open enrollment, etc., etc., etc. Just a lot of things up in the air. So, the the biggest thing I wanted to talk about is really action steps of what can we do as a board, as a district to um just remain, you know, on top of all of the things that are going on. First of all, if you aren't already doing the MSBA for the board members, if you aren't already doing the MSBA lunch and learns, I highly recommend them. They're very educational. Just they're an hour on a Friday once a month. It's a Zoom and they go into great detail about what is happening at the legislative level that affects our district. And they talk about not just like an overarching point of view, but like the actual impacts that we will see as

136a district. And so it's very informative. They've already had one had one this year, but if it is something that you're interested in doing, you can just reach out to Beth and she can sign you up so you can do um the additional Zooms. Also, Casey mentioned, but advocacy day is March 10th in Jefferson City. It's a great opportunity to go and you um you know you can meet with our legislators of course but also you get the opportunity to network with other board members and you know other people that are kind of thinking the same way that we are and also trying to support their public schools. Staying in touch with our legislators. You know, even just sending them a simple text reminding them that we are a resource if they have questions when

137things are coming up for them to vote on that have to do with public schools. We are people for them to reach out to to share directly how those things affect us. You know, I I I've said this before, but it doesn't always have to be reaching out to your legislator to complainer about something or to tell them, "Please vote x way." It can just be a brag about something great that's going on with our district. You know, we just had like the um welding facility had their first graduates. Just little mentions like that of great things that we're doing within our district. Um Senator Burgerer especially has been very great about open communication. He even invited Governor Kho to tour the CTC which will be happening later this year which is very exciting. So

138again, just maintaining that relationship is a great way for them to remind them of the things that the reasons public education is so important, but also for them to see it and hear about it directly. Um, but I think the most important, especially as we're coming up on the bond issue and just as we see public education more and more becoming a a conversation, I think the biggest thing is just remaining in active and open communication with our community members. Um, I made a note of some things to be thinking about when you're talking to other community members, legislators, uh, you know, assessors, anybody whenever these conversations come up. First of all, when we're talking Actually, let me take a drink really quick. >> I hope I hope I'm the only one who didn't talk

139to assessors. I like that. I like that. Um, so first of all, in terms of the property tax, income tax debate that is going on, we currently get the majority of our funds from property tax. Property tax is the most stable source of income. If you put them in order, property tax is the most stable and then income tax and then sales tax, sales and use tax. And you know, if we are depending solely on sales tax, not only is it the most volatile source of income, which makes it really hard for us to plan ahead, but also we we then pay on the back end. You know, if sales taxes are higher, we are buying things as a district. So even if we're getting, let's just pretend it's a onetoone, they get rid of

140property tax and we do sales tax instead. Um, even if that is a onetoone exchange, when we turn around and are buying things for our district, we're paying that higher price. And the reality is it probably wouldn't be a onetoone anyway. But, you know, it's just for the stability and what we pay in the end. Property tax is what is the most stable for us and what is the most um reasonable as far as what we pay out later. You know, it's it's important to remember that public schools are not the only entity that relies on these taxes. There are lots of special districts, libraries, ambulance districts, water districts, special road districts, fire protection districts. They are crucial to maintaining community infrastructure as a whole. It's not just us. It affects every facet of your

141community. Um, sorry. Taxes have become very vilified over the last several years. I don't think that's a surprise to anyone, but those taxes have like a real everyday impact on our district. And that's what we need to focus on when we're talking to people. 53% of our budget comes from local support. Missouri as a state relies heavily on local support when it comes to public school education. And so that's 53% of our budget. That's a very significant amount of money that we are depending on our community. Um the reality is we have seen our community support things like this time and time again. We It's not just with our schools. We have seen the bond issue passed in previous years, but we've seen water pass. We've seen um the transportation. We've seen libraries. Our community

142members know that those things are important to them and they do have a value to that. They do see the value in that. And I think it is important to remind them that they're directly affected by those things. Um, one other thing uh that they talked about in the MSBA lunch and learn that I did is, you know, talking specific numbers, like I said, 53 53% of our budget comes from local support. But when we talk about like the foundation formula, right now it's $7,145 per student. That kind of adjusts year-to-year. We are hoping to see it go up, but again, we know the governor is hoping that it does not. But the reality of that number is that what we receive is not that number. We receive I had to reach out to Lindsay

143for this. I tried to do the math on my own and I could not. Um $3,11.13 per student. So, you know, even when we're talking about, oh, every student gets $7,000. Not really. We're getting $3,000. And so just knowing those numbers and knowing what that actually means for our district is just a great way to be talking to community members when these votes come up about the real impact that it has on on our district. Um, okay. So that is legislative like updates as far as what is going on actually at legislative the legislative level. But in addition to that, um I think Oh, actually it's not >> refresh it. It should be >> okay. Do we maybe have Oh, here it is. Look at that. Uh Dr. Ben and Miss Palant worked very hard

144on getting a legislative priorities flyer together. >> Miss, >> oh, it was all Miss Talent. He said, I believe that. >> You know, I'm not. So, this is something that when we go to the advocacy day, we will hand out. But it's also just something great to look at and know again if when you're having conversations with people about the things we're prioritizing within our district. Early childhood education, we know that is something very important and something we're trying to grow in our district. Career and tech um technical education and then policies that protect public schools. I'm not going to read line by line. You guys can take a minute to read that. But then on the second page, it talks about an initiative that we are working with Southeast, the university, and the city

145um with expanding like air traffic control. Dr. Bennon, I don't know if you want to talk just very briefly about what exactly we're >> Yes. Okay. >> So, so with our um with our partnership with the city and SEMA, we've had there was a few of you that were able to attend that. We had legislators there as well at the airport. But it's a partnership to help build out the airport so that we can get better businesses in here, bigger industries in here so that our airport can actually support that. And so that's kind of the the uh philosophy behind the workforce development project that we're doing. So, we started having those conversations last year with the city and then we brought in uh Southeast Missouri State University because they are also looking at partnering

146with us with their air traffic control program. We already have a uh a aligned curriculum now that is our u our flight school. And so some of those kids go into the military, some of those kids go to sea aviation program, but then some of them may want to go into a uh air traffic control program as well. So we want to be able to offer several different options. They are wanting to start this also along with expanding their uh their uh flight program. They have a waiting list to get into their flight program already. Um so we started talking to the the airport. We know that the airport has to have the infrastructure to be able to bring in bigger planes. That's part of the reason why we didn't get uh some of those

147bids that they went out for with some of these bigger airlines. So, their their thing is is they need to be able to increase their fuel farm so that they can uh actually bring in bigger planes. >> But that one of the big things, and they took us on a tour of it, is our air traffic control tower. They need a new air traffic control tower. So, they're going to have the lion share of the ask that we're asking for. It's it's over $16 million. And then, of course, we're still pushing for our fire science our training facility. We were able to scale that back down because we we could use some of the space that's in the old airport for classrooms. So, we we kind of scaled that project down a little bit so

148that it would fit into all of our needs. and the ask was around $16 million. Um, as you can see, there's all kinds of uh regional impact. It expands the safety capacity to meet the FAA uh state standards, which will allow us to bring in larger airplanes. And then it creates an aviation educational pathway for our high school kids, whether it's going into the pilot program and or the uh air air traffic controller program. Um, and then it it builds a regional workforce hub for aviation, emergency management, and public safety. So, we would be bringing people in to our community to go through these trainings, whether it's the airport, uh, air traffic control training or our ARF training on a regular basis. Um, >> one, sorry, just really quick. Yeah. One cool thing about the

149way that Dr. has the district has gone about this is partnering with the university and the city both one it's a united ask to our legislators again we know we're going into a season where there's not a lot to work with in the budget and so to have a united ask rather than just being our district asking for money it definitely um it just looks nicer you know and and to see a full regional impact of how many people this affects and and it it affects the city and the city being strong means we're strong. Us being strong means the university is strong. You know, we all are intertwined. And so to really come together beforehand and figure out all those ins and outs and then present it, it's it's just a great way to

150be, you know, showing ourselves to our legislators and hopefully >> unified >> getting what we want. >> Well, that's part of the reason why I think uh he our governor is coming as part of that because I talked to Dr. and he said that he's also going to be visiting SEO as well during that same time. That's why we only have a >> 45 minute window >> to show what what we're doing in our in our buildings. >> It's exciting. >> Yeah, it is. It is. >> So, we will be presenting that to legislation when we go up on our visit. >> Yeah. >> And then we'll give our separate one for our our program which breaks it down dollar to dollar that we have as well. Okay. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Thank

151you. >> A lot of stuff going on. >> Yes. >> Thank you. Thank you. All right. Cape Public School Foundation. We already talked about the Penguin Party. I don't know if there's any news. That's the 14th, so coming up. Um, be there. I heard Dr. Vigny has a dance prepared. >> Oh, yeah. >> I don't know. We just put it out there. All right. All right. So, up next, non-action items. So this is the first reading of board policies um EHBD artificial intelligence use policy IGBA-1 special education policy JECA-2 eligibility to enroll policy JFCJ weapons in school policy JGF discipline reporting and records uh policy JHDF suicide awareness and prevention policy GCPA reduction in professional staff workforce policy JEC-1 school admissions policy JFCA, student dress code. Policy JG, student discipline. Policy JHDE, behavioral threat assessment.

152Policy JHG, reporting and investigating child abuse and neglect. Um, so again, this is first reading. Make sure you guys peruse through those. We've got the policy board that votes on all those and goes through them, too. And we'll have a second reading and then we'll vote them in. Any questions on those? Okay. Up next, we have approval consent agenda items. Uh we've got the minutes from December 15th, 2025. Approval of course prospectus and payment of bills. We get a motion. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Okay. All those in favor indicate by saying I. >> Okay. The consent agenda items carry. Up next is our business. Uh so first up computer it's getting tired. There it is. So this is recovery high school acceptance of funding. So again this is our discussion we had earlier.

153Uh the recommendation is to authorize the superintendent or his designate to accept the grant funding from the department of mental health and department of elementary and secondary education funds be used to staff and run a recovery high school to provide assistance and support to students throughout the area. Is there a motion? >> So move >> second. >> Okay. All those in favor indic. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Okay. The motion uh to proceed with recovery high school carries. Thank you guys very much on that. Up next, approval of local food source grant. Recommendation is to authorize the superintendent or his designate to accept the local food for schools through Desi and food and nutrition services. A grant of $50,000 to be used for purchase of nutritious local foods to serve students through our NSLP.

154We would apply funding to local products such as meat, rice, and produce. Do we have a motion for that? Some >> move second. Any >> discussion? All those in favor indic. I >> opposed. >> Should cut the watermelon slices thinner. >> Yes. And have them at the board meeting. So that motion carries also. I up next information and proposals from board members. Got any. >> I have one super quick one because some people would interpret my comments earlier as being negative and I hope they don't. >> But I'm going to say something super positive. Last night, my family had the pleasure of hosting nine Lady Central Tigers basketball players at our home for a pregame meal before the game tonight against Notre Dame where the jungle showed up in mass. >> And we gave Notre

155Dame a little of this and a little of that >> for the big win. And I've never seen a group of nine high school girls age freshman to senior across the spectrum have more fun and laugh louder and harder than they did at my house last night. And it was so cool >> and it made me proud that my kids go to this school. >> Thank you. Yeah. >> With that, we get a motion to hang. >> All in favor? Christ.