001citizen part participation sheet that if you'd like to sign up to speak tonight, it is over on this little wooden cabinet. Now, let's get going. Um, I need to call the meeting to order. So, move second. So, that was you first. Roger. Hey, I'm new and second by. Okay. Motion by Roger, seconded by Caitlyn, to approve the uh to get to call the meeting to order. Chris, yes. Roger, yes. Adam, yes. Caitlyn, yes. Tammy, yes. Sherry, yes. And Jennifer, yes. Seven yeses. Next up, we need approval and adoption of the agenda. So, move second. Motion by Caitlyn, seconded by Tammy to approve and adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor? Yes. Opposed? Seven yeses. Next up, we are going to review board norms for the month of April. We're going to review norms
002five and six. Um, we will be involved to our individual level of comfort. Each of us is responsible for airing concerns and/or disagreements during the meeting rather than carrying those disagreements outside the board meeting. And we will operate in a courteous and friendly atmosphere. Express disagreements with ideas, not individuals. Next up, pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Uh, next on our list is board recognition and we do not have any for the month of April. Moving into citizen participation, this meeting is a business meeting of the board of education held in public. 30 minutes will be allotted to residents of the school district and staff to give
003the board the opportunity to listen to citizens. Remarks will be limited to three minutes and to one appearance, thus allowing for maximum number of participants in the allotted time in which citizens are to speak to issues. The board will not respond to comments at this time, but you will receive a response to any questions from the district superintendent andor a member of the board within a reasonable amount of time after this meeting. Additionally, members of our community may contact individual board members to engage in dialogue about school matters. During this public comment period, we ask that speakers refrain from using profanity and speakers who violate this rule may be asked to leave. We do have one um citizen participation and it's Gene Ael. Hi, I'm Jean Ael. I teach kindergarten obviously. Um, with the belief
004that less can be more, I just wanted to touch on the topic of class size. As a veteran teacher, I definitely feel strongly about the impact of just a few more kids in a classroom. I know what my experiences and opinions are. At times, I may find that hard to articulate, but I kind of was wondering what the actual research showed. Project STAR, the student teacher achievement ratio project, was a 4-year study that examined the effects of class size in kindergarten through third grade. After the four years, the following effects were noted. The children obtained higher scores with improved cognition, needed less remediation later, had a lower retention rate, had improved discipline, and these benefits were retained even in later years when they returned to regular class sizes. The gold standard for the class size
005was a 15 to1 studenttoteer ratio. My dream. Two other items of note I thought that was very interesting was the largest impact was discovered and achieved when the student enters schooling in a small class setting and that students of low socioeconomic status get substantially larger benefits. Again, as a veteran teacher who has had between 16 and 23 kiddos in my class, I can definitely tell you that the personal connection between a teacher and a student is much deeper when you have a smaller class size. I just like to finish by saying that I'm not wellversed with fi the financial implication of maintaining small class sizes. All I wanted to do was speak from my heart with concerns about the kiddos that I'm very lucky and blessed to have in my class every year. Thank you.
006We can move into consent agenda items. There's a list of consent agenda items in your packet. If anybody would like to approve a particular item, we can. And if not, we just need a motion to approve consent agenda. Motion. Second. [Applause] Motion by Chris Bell, seconded by Roger Bridgemond to approve the consent agenda as presented. All those in favor? Opposed? Seven. Yes. Okay. We can move into financial statements for the April bills. Um, I believe there's two different checks in there. And if you have a question, please ask it now. Otherwise, we need a motion. Um, on some of the um supplies, is that going into next year's supplies for like, let me ask, hold on. First or second check? It was first run. Or is this cleaning up like what's left over of the
007budget? So there was a deadline to utilize all their funding. Okay. That's what I was wondering. Okay. Yeah. So we utilize it this year, next year, however it is. Gotcha. I would say historically it kind of looks like this every especially when you get towards the end of the Dr. that's inside when you request um for company and then the the fundraiser chocolate fundraiser does elementary get to keep all of that or how does that work in so that yeah after they the portion back that's what I was wondering it's a company we have an invoice that has to that's Did you write that total in your how much we made in there? I don't remember. I thought it was a lifetime ago that I could record, but any more questions or did we have
008a motion? Thank you. Second. Motion by Chris Bell, seconded by Tammy Coner to approve the financial statement and action on the April bills as presented. All those in favor? Yes. Seven. Any opposed? Okay. Six. Yes. I'm gonna abstain. Okay. Let's move into administrative reports. First up, we have board and committee reports. Um I don't think that there's been any board committees that have met recently. Sher, do you have any updates? uh just with MSBA their quarterly meeting is this weekend in uh nail show and uh but I am an April go already a part of commitment family thing going on so and usually April about every year or two I'll miss April because of the same thing. Okay, let's move into building principal reports. Let's start in the high school. Yay. Um, so I just
009have one correction on my um board report that for the guidance um I had all but one virtual senior is on track and that senior is now on track. So um a week has made all the world of difference um for that student. So um we're looking good with 107 graduates uh at the moment. We met with um those that are in jeopardy. U Miss Halberg and I met with them today. called parents today. Um, everybody's got a plan. Um, and I just wanted to give a shout out to Mrs. Halbert. She did EOCC testing basically on her own this year with being going down with counselor with a lot of help from Mrs. Bouse. Um, and all the virtual students are tested and they will test tomorrow. So, we are doing good. There's also
010um the 2025 senior date. I guess you put that in your pack that there's a lot of uh of events coming up. Um I don't know like scholarship night. It's a really good night to see all of our kids just really get recognized for their all of the good things that they do or all of our seniors I should say. Yes. Yes. So yeah, make sure you get those things on your calendar. There's a lot check out the they decorate their cars for the grad parade. Just hop somewhere in town and um a lot of good celebrations coming up for them. So, if you need to find me in the month of May, I will be here. Let's shift down into middle school. Uh, just one thing to add. Um, Mrs. Pollock took a group
011of students to the book battle in Sullivan um on Friday, April 11th, and they competed against um five other schools and took first place. Um, they had a good time. they had to read so many different books um from a list of books and then they did like a Jeopardy style competition with the other schools and our seven kiddos took first place. So they was excited about that. So just getting into the busy time just like everyone else with a lot of things going on and um uh preparing for our big CMS variety show uh which we always have a really good turnout and great time does display student work and um doing the night at the museum. The eighth grade kids really enjoy that. So, it's a good time. And 18 staff members get
012a pie in their face. Yeah. And some of them get multiple pies. I don't get right now. Too late. Sorry. But yeah, it's that's that's going to be fun. we make a huge mess, but yes, I do. That's good. No, that's good. And once again, there's a lot of different um events going on in the middle school, so add those to your calendar as well. Let's get into elementary. Okay, so um we are also chugging right along. Um I did go back and look and we did clear just over $17,000 in our chocolate sales. So our little workers got out there and sold lots of chocolate for us. They had a lot of fun with it. They take great pride in it. Um we were able to celebrate um those students. They got their prizes
013um that like we kind of collaborate with the world's finest chocolate people. Um that vendor sends us prizes and then we also do things within our building. So we had some students win some TVs if they had a golden ticket in their chocolate box. Um and then we threw a pizza party. We fed pizza to I think 98 students in our building. And those students were um all students that sold over three boxes of chocolate. So that would be almost $200 worth of chocolate that they sold. So um that was awesome. We um have lots of things coming up as well. The same night as the senior scholarship night, we actually have our school carnival. Um we're bummed to have those um overlapping, but as I'm sure you'll notice with the calendar that we are
014running out of days and things are filling up. So um we are excited to welcome some high school students in to help us with that if they don't have um anything for the scholarship night. Um, we did wrap up our prek screening and we officially have a roster for the 25 26 school year. So, we are super excited and proud of that. We have our weight list in place. All of those families have been contacted. Um, they took it very well because again, um, the easiest way that Miss Lawrence, being our parents, teachers, educator, and I could explain it to these parents when we reached out to them was that really we did not pick a number. The kids picked the number. We had parents enroll them. We got them scheduled for a screening. We
015screened them and we started at the bottom and we worked our way up. And once we hit that 20 cap, we couldn't take any more kids, but we could put them on a wait list. Um, but our weight list, we still feel um as far as kids that have been screened and we have their dial score to look at is a very reasonable number um to have on a wait list. So, we still have a whole summer between there. Um, so there is room for change. Um, and then last but not least, uh, we have lots of field trips coming up in our building. We've got kindergarten heading to Magic House. Uh first and second are going to go into Marramac Springs and then third and fourth grade have finished their spring field trips already,
016but they will get to participate in the MAP reward which will be a water day. So, lots of fun stuff going on. Awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Let's move over into the special ed report. She's not here, so if you have questions, There you go. Let's move into Miss Abby. Hi, Abby. I put it in my report, but we did all get to watch the superhero sanitarium play today and it was really good. I'm really proud of them. Um, they are, I believe, doing it tomorrow. Tonight and tomorrow. Tomorrow. Yeah. Well, they're still doing it right now. They're doing it now. Yeah. And then tomorrow they'll also be performing at 6. So, I would really encourage everyone to go. It's really fun. Awesome. Thank you so much. Abby, is this your last meeting?
017Come back just for you guys. We appreciate that. Thank you. We're not done. All right, let's move into assistant superintendent report. Sure. Um, I don't really have anything to add, but I did want to say today was bus driver appreciation day. Um and our bus drivers were definitely feeling the love. Um they got lots of goodies and treats um from the different buildings from um some community members and from central office. Um and then there were some students um hand delivering cards to them when they were getting on the bus this afternoon. So that was really sweet. I know they they felt very loved and appreciated. So they should be hard to have school very much so. Superintendent report. Yep. Just want to highlight a couple things in here. Um I'm pretty proud of the
018fact that our overall pool of candidates has increased and we've got we're getting really good quality candidates for our openings and that's due to all the work that's been done with hourly wages, salaries, staff benefits. I think we've done a lot of good things in the last uh two or three years. Just want to thank the board for that as well approving those recommendations and and the work put in working with me to navigate all that. So I think a big positive for our district there. And then I'm just really excited about our capital projects which will be presented here later in the meeting. But I think that turned out really well and definitely within a ballpark of doability if that's the direction the board chooses to go. Excited about the future projects. That's actually
019a major win. The what you just highlighted about having um the the applicants that we're receiving. That's a that's a huge win for our district. Okay. Okay. Let's move into unfinished business. We have a 2425 budget update. Mhm. So, our current budget, uh, we're on track here to date. Expenditures are at, uh, 95.73% in comparison with our revenues received, which are 84.25%. So, we're good for this year's budget. Nothing to major that's popped up. Okay, sounds good. Let's move into the 2526 budget update. So, in your packets, a preliminary budget uh for the 2526 year. Uh there's still a legislative process going on right now and kind of tracking uh potentially what could happen. So, some good news though on the updates today. Uh there was a lot of uh funding for public aid put
020into the budget. So, that's in the Senate right now. Um and so that should we think go through with stuff in there such as fully funding career ladder transportation uh some things they want to work on governor wants to work on is the foundation formula. So the uh task force he's going to put together to do that. Um but they also talked about the student adequacy targets multiplier we get per student that might increase as well which would be beneficial um kind of offset our decrease in enrollment. uh but uh something with enrollment too looking at legislation if enrollment passes then we could uh have a decrease in students as well. So some of it's just going to be offset a little bit but we'll have to figure out but right now we have a
021preliminary budget kind of putting our projected reserves at about 63% at the end of next year. Um but that is noticeably going down with the draw uh that we planned with the increases of salaries u might look a little higher. we maybe don't spend all of our budget that we plan for. So that's assuming we spend every penny we put in there. So we may have a 3% that we don't spend from year to year. Uh but that is right on track though. So if you put the 3% in there, 66% the end of last year we had a 82% reserve. So that's uh 16% divided in two years that's 8%. We were kind of shooting for a six. But one of the things that's catching us is our decrease in enrollment. That does correlate
022to about $432,000 less money received just due to lower numbers. But that might be offset by SAT. So that's why it's all preliminary. It's still kind of all up in the works. There's just a lot of parts still moving around, but we're we're in a good healthy place there financially with our operating and money for salaries. Our unrestricted fund balances are in a good place. Any questions about that budget update? Let's move into new business. Um, first up we have to adopt the 2526 career lab plan. Um, there is a a document in your packet that goes through all of it. Dr. Davidson, would you like to highlight anything on this? uh just to be eligible uh Desi does ask that we have the board approve the plan and then uh when that's submitted we
023put the board approval date in that application piece. So um if you would be so kind to approve that that would be again a great benefit to our teachers as fully fun. I make the motion that we uh adopt this plan. I should give the disclaimer that's with the budget being approved and the money being appropriated. for the state, but it it is all looking highly likely it will happen, which is good. So, motion by Tammy Palmer, seconded by Caitlyn Mace, that we approve the 2526 district career ladder plan as presented. All those in favor? Yes. Any opposed? Seven yes. Okay. Next up, we do have a policy update um for this month. It is only for review purposes. It's in your packet. So, you can read through that. If you have questions um throughout
024the next month, be sure to with somebody ask that. You I mean, you can ask it tonight, but I can't get into it. I can't. It's I don't have a product key. Well, and and I'll go ahead and share what what they added is a reference youth suicide awareness and prevention model policy. And you can Google that and it pulls up. It's about main page in addition to that [Music] regulation smiley face or something. I know that we have an IT person that can definitely help us with that in the meantime. It's just for review right now. We to it. Would there be any way that that could be emailed to us? I could open it. I'm sure he maneuver it and like you know so you'll be able to access my computer and see
025it. Roger. Okay. We can move into the presentation of proposed capital projects and cost by Mr. Corey. Hi. Good stuff. So, everybody should have a copy of this book at their place. If you don't, please let me know. I've got a couple extras here. Um, we're going to just walk through what was the process we took to get to this point today. uh starting with uh the process the district took uh and you guys' uh committee kind of going through and understanding uh you guys put together a a walk of the buildings and a list of projects from that walk to understand some of the wants and needs of the district. Um that's when sorry [Applause] um that is what is the main summary here on the small book that you have. There's three books
026that are uh being left to the district. one is a summary book and then book two and three are the actual backup and all the data. Uh and there will be electronic link with Dr. Davidson but these hard copies are staying with him to keep here in the district as well. Um but on this summary uh you will see the the full list of projects that were generated and a uh a total uh of costs or budget for these list of projects. Uh to get to this point uh we met with Dr. Davidson walked the the buildings, understood the scope, uh create definitions of the scope, uh and then put together estimates. Uh some of these scopes we may have came back and brought uh additional experts to walk out uh with the masonry tuck
027pointing uh the field lighting. Some of those we brought in some additional experts. I'm going to pick uh one or two of these and walk through it in detail to kind of explain to the group um what was in these books, how we got to the point in these books and then why we are comfortable with these numbers for you guys uh for today's dollars. Uh so if we look at the the first one here, it's the high school entrance. Uh and you will see there's a budget of $136,000. Uh 136 and 117. Um, we go into the the backup book. That same number is here under tab one for $136,117. Below that is a a breakdown of the scope based on each line item in the scope. So, this is not a a square
028foot cost. This is truly identifying scope associated with that high school uh renovation. From that wall on the next page, you'll see there's a paragraph that is a uh these aren't in your books, they're just in these books. a paragraph that explains the whole scope and kind of uh gives you a quick read of the scope so you can understand this high school renovation uh was to go through and uh remove some of the existing uh storefront, push it in a little farther into that common space uh to allow that main entrance to allow public into that main entrance and direct them straight into the front office without having access to the rest of the building. It's also adding a um secure transaction window so there's a spot there for uh administration to interact with
029the public. uh receive papers, exchange papers, have that communication uh behind a secure barrier if needed. Uh if they're deemed safe, they have the ability to let them into the the admin suite. From that scope, we do have a uh some of your existing plans that we uh have marked up and then there should be photos of that space uh with document or uh markup showing exactly what are the the adjustments of the space. That is the the same process uh that we have taken from each one of these items. But if we refer back to these uh numbers here numbers $136,000 that is the the large number up top. If you look at all these scopes on the bottom that they only add up to $86,000. How do we get from 86 to $136,000?
030Up top, we start adding in the contractor's markup for insurance. Uh their markup for performance of payment bonds, their overhead, profit, and fee. Uh this also includes uh soft cost because this will require a uh design team to actually come in and uh develop blueprints. Um all of those markups are included in here to get to that $136,000. So this is a total project number. It's not just a construction cost. It's a cost for this entire project from from day one to the end. Um that is the same process we use to walk through um all of these items. Uh and then you will notice in some of these uh for instance uh the parking lots the parking lots are broke down by region uh the parking lot around the the district around the site.
031Uh so you may not want to do all $2 million worth of parking lots on day one, but you want to do specific regions you deem are uh worse uh than others or or ones that are falling behind. uh you have that cost broke down by understand those costs uh and to make those uh educated decisions moving forward. This this total dollar amount is uh $7.9 million currently. That does include a uh a 3% escalation we put on there uh to kind of we know the there was a potential intent here to get to the 2026 uh to do a a bond issue. So we carried an escalation to try to cover that year. uh this escalation did not take in account uh tariffs. We do not have tariffs. We we still today haven't quantified
032what the tariffs are going to do. So to uh make a guess that that wouldn't be beneficial for anyone is I think it's clear to show we have a clean baseline of where we're at. Um and then in 6 to 8 months if you guys are having further discussions and we are able to quantify what tariffs are at that point we can come back and do some adjustments to numbers. Uh but right now today we don't we haven't put anything in there to try to project those because we don't have a way to project them yet today. Thoughts or questions on the process for any of the scopes? I I kind of have and you might have gone through this with the um committee. So these numbers and I'm pull them on page five. Um
033old demo admin building um which that would be over at the park. Um so let's look at the second one down. Demo structure foundation basement. The price is 35,000. Is that just like a rough estimate? And because I thought at one time when you came and talked to us that you had said that we could possibly um use people within our community or what was that called? Yeah, contractors. So your prices in here um is just kind of like a rough estimate. Correct. These are estimated prices. If you say if you decide to go forward with that administration building, um we would help you if if we're engaged, we would help you draft a scope of work and put it out there to bid publicly and get true accurate numbers. These aren't numbers where you
034would say, "Hey, we want to do this and write a check for that amount. We're going to do it." That's what I was thinking, but I just wanted to double check that that came back around. Yes, that's what I thought. I just wanted to double check that. Thank you. Yeah. So, in this book here, it'll explain a little more what's in that that whole demolition. And I don't know if anybody's had the opportunity to go in that building recently. We did. We did a tour inside and uh there was a cat jumped out of a barrel. Sure enough, the cat jumped out. There is there's material stored in the basement. Yes. I think we have in there uh uh do we have yes removal of hazardous material allowance because there there are some barrels on
035there that are labeled as potential it's just old asbesus tile that somebody packaged up and put in there but it needs to be handled correctly. So we we went through there and try to adjust those numbers accurately. Gotcha. I have a question. The escalation per year, you were saying that that's an estimate based off of if the bond issue would pass in 2026. Thinking that we would start improvement projects the following summer. Was that what you were saying earlier? Is that average how that works? The scope. Some might be able to do that summer. Some would a majority of bigger projects would be the 2027 summer 27 just because it would take time to and if we also like talking earlier if we didn't do everything if we did great but say for grins and
036giggles since the parking lot is like 2 million if we did that in sections then that the escalation amount would change obviously if we had something that was 5 years out right. Oh yes perfect just making sure I understand. Yeah, this is just to give you we were trying to project close to a year out. This just to give you a baseline from that point when you start stretching out of time. I know all the numbers will have to be adjusted. Uh but at least if you got a a strong baseline you can be comfortable with and make those adjustments from I do encourage all of you guys to look through um these books you know after the meeting or whatever they're the amount of time that went into compiling that information. I know that
037it took a while because those books are pretty impressive. It is there's nice pictures. It's for somebody if you don't know anything about like building or remodeling or anything like that. I think you could I think you could understand it looking in the You guys did a great job. Very user friendly. Yes. There. So on that mindset, there's a couple items in here. Uh restroom renovations. So there's the want for a potential new restroom. So this lays out a an assumed floor plan, an assumed fixture count. Um, so there are a few items like that that will walk you through some scopes that are um really left to be defined because that that bathroom could be adjusted later. That's just again starting with a baseline and and start somewhere to get a number. Um, but
038it gives you all that data and that backup. So if you do make those changes, you can adjust the numbers to to match the changes. And did you say that Union used a um outside source to help video and promote? Is that how they did? Um so talking about a bond issue. Yes. U Union School District Union R11 is is one of our clients and they did a uh a promotional video when they decided to go forward with that bond issue and they brought in the the board president, the superintendent. They did interviews. They walked through uh what does uh the no tax increase mean to their community? how what is that truly defined as? And then they walk through some specific scope items. Uh and then they use that that video uh on their
039social media to kind of highlight some of those items and show those items. Uh so if these are uh items that you would want to handle in a bond issue, you can go through and walk through and document and show some of those videos. There's some good uh images and markups in here that that show some potential changes and potential items that you may want to address. Uh but yeah, there there is I think it cost about $2,000, but for that company that came in and did that, but it was very uh in my opinion very cost-effective. It was very educational to the public. And your videos were everywhere. Yeah. And it wasn't too long, but it kept your attention through the whole thing. Interesting. Any other questions for Cy? Thank you. Did a great
040job. Thank you so much for all your work. I'll let it get The heavy lifting done. Thank you so much. Thank you. So, for now, that's just a uhformational piece. I know we will circle back around to this probably in the pretty near future. Discuss it a little bit more in depth, especially if we want to look at moving forward, putting this on the ballot for. Okay, let's move on to board of education proposed agenda items, there are none. Resident agenda items, there are none. And next up, we need to look at our May calendars to approve our next board meeting. Um the 15th is our senior parade. It is also there's a band concert high school at seven. Would our seniors participate? Praise at 600 takes about 15 minutes. when they get back to
041the school. I know, but still, especially when Shannon wants a little bit earlier, that it was Shannon's idea. Not my um so I would say you probably shouldn't look at the 15th. Is it too early to Yeah, early. Yeah. Um, so if anybody would like to throw out some dates, there is a calendar up here to make sure that there's no upcoming school yet. 22. Oh, that is mine too. Not mine really teachers. Yeah, I'm good. Second. Good. Good. Good. Yeah, I'll move you guys. Oh, the 22nd. Okay, I'll second. Motion by Caitlyn May, seconded by Roger Bridgemond to schedule the regular May board meeting on the 22nd of May, 2025 at 6 p.m. with close session to follow. All those in favor? Opposed, seven yes. Next up, we do need a motion to go
042into close session after a 10 minute recess, please. that no one yet. Well, I understand what you're asking, but I don't know what I'm seconding here. Motioned by Caitlyn May, seconded by Adam Carnell to go into close session in accordance with the provisions of section 610.021. 021 subsection 3 and 13 of the revised statutes of Missouri in order to discuss personnel after a 10-minute recess. Roll call. Roger Bridgemond, yes. Adam Carnell, yes. Caitlyn Mace, yes. Tammy Palmer, yes. Sherry Shudy, yes. Chris Bell, yes. Jennifer Morland, yes. Seven yeses. I don't. Thank you.