001up. We will go to a video. Okay. Dr. Saggel. Thank you. Board of Education. Um earlier this week, this school district was visited by two separate uh news agencies, uh one channel 9 and one channel 41. I wanted to share with you tonight channel 9's story that they did about the integrated learning house and have some comments afterwards. So, roll the video, please. High school are doing some hands-on work this school year as they construct a full home on their campus. KBC9's Matt Evans shows us why the house is serving a bigger purpose. It's a construction site like many you'd see all across Kansas City, but this one is on the campus of a high school. And there's a special reason behind it. It's not your typical classroom. But students here at Ray Peek High
002School are taking hands-on learning to the next level. from the electrical. This is already the center of the truss to the HVAC that will attach onto here and we'll face straight 90° angle down to those organizing it all. We're managing this project um learning a little bit the ins and outs of construction management. Everything is led by students just shows how everybody is on the same page with the same vision and that vision is one of helping their fellow students. I don't know how to explain it, but it's like it feels like meaningful in the way that we get to build this not just only for like regular people, but for someone who actually needs it. This two-bedroom integrated learning house will be used to teach students with special needs, how to live on their
003own after high school. I think it's going to have a huge impact. They will learn things like how to do laundry, how to grow a garden, and basic home maintenance. Sometimes transferring skills um to the real setting can be a challenge. All at this house right next to the high school. It's amazing. One, the school's right there. The construction is set to be complete here by August so the home can continue to serve students for years to come in peculiar. Matt Evans, KBC9 News. I am so impressed. Much of that project has been funded through donations and partnership. Yes, there's so much to be proud of in that video. First of all, our students and our instructors who have made that a reality. I look at Dr. bar, Scott Dobson, entire crew out here who
004have really kind of, you know, got that ball rolling. Uh, you know, less than 12 months ago, board, it was a it was just a a thought and a conversation. With your support and you allowing us to kind of dream big, uh, big things are happening. So, thank you for that. And this is something that we're going to continue to talk about uh, at our gayla uh, in a few weeks for the Ed Foundation. And we can't wait till we cut the ribbon and get kids inside and and really see what this place can do. So, thank you for that. Yeah, I think when Dr. Sliggel and team brought that idea to us last year, we didn't realize it was going to be as quick as it was. And it's and it's amazing how we
005can integrate, it's an integrated learning house, but we are integrating all facets of our students right now in there with LEAD and um the the high school classes that are involved. So, it's very exciting to see. So, I'm very, very happy with that. And kudos to our communications team for getting uh the media coverage. And looking back at Michelle, it is Channel 41 that's doing the spot on Sunday, correct? Yes, Channel 41 is doing a spot scheduled for Sunday. Uh maybe more of a features type story. So, we'll see what that uh that entails as well. And now we have um the Raymore Elementary update. Yes. As Mrs. Miller comes to the podium. I do want to say a little bit about her because she's been the principal at Raymore Elementary School for the past
006nine years. She came to the district in 2005, was a third grade teacher for eight years at Raymore Elementary. Uh and from 2013 to 2015, she was an administrative intern at Raymore Elementary School. In a role, she functioned much like an assistant principal working alongside the illustrious Dr. Michelle Hoffman. Before coming to Ray, Mrs. Miller worked in Hickman Mills C1 from 1995 to 2003. She was a third grade and special education teacher. This might be her 25th year in education or somewhere thereabouts. We kind of roll out Yeah. more than that. 30. 30. Well, we roll out this red carpet because Mrs. Miller is retiring at the end of this year and leaves big big shoes to fill. She's here tonight with Mrs. Penny to talk about uh the happenings at Rayar Elementary School. So,
007Mrs. Miller, is this on? Oh, I'm okay. Um, well, good evening and thank you for having us here tonight. Um, it's always exciting to come and talk about Raymore Elementary. Uh, as I started um, thinking about this presentation and probably because retirement is right around the corner for me. Um, I did not have enough time tonight and the short amount of time I had to talk about all the great things that are going on at Raymore Elementary. But as I started thinking and going through it, a couple of themes kept coming up. Um, and so that's the direction we went tonight, and that's what we want to highlight for you, so you get a little insight into Raymore. Um, one of those was just our family connections, our school family connections, and the positive culture
008that we have at Raymore. And the second being some things that we've really been working hard on um over the past couple years and that is getting our students um to feel ownership, get involved in projects and bring in some of that real world learning that we know um can trickle down all the way to elementary. So those are going to be the two areas we're going to look at tonight. Like I said, there's many other things that I'd love to share with you, but we're excited just to share those. At Raymore, our family connections are really important to us and um we know how important it is for our students to make connections with adults, but we also know how important it is for students to make connections with each other. And we go
009beyond the classroom, beyond the grade level. We want to think about the connection of the older students and the younger students. Um and so we have Tiger Buddy classrooms that we partner up with older students and younger students. um they meet every other month for a lesson. And those are lessons that build off of our uh SEAL curriculum, second steps. Um and they might take a spin-off of that. It might be something that they've learned in class with that. Um and then we also do a lot of lessons on just our building wide expectations. Be safe, be respectful, and be responsible. Responsible. And through that, we see connection, collaboration, creativity. But then a little something else sparked out of that. And that has started to be mentorship. And we noticed that when we started partnering
010these students up together very often later on when there was a younger student maybe struggling or needed just needed someone to read to them or was having a rough day and just needed a positive word or we had older students then already connected that could go help or vice versa. Sometimes it's a younger student helping an older student. So, that's just been kind of some exciting things that we see as um we build on those Tiger Buddy classrooms. And you can see the the power of yet positive thinking are some of those lessons that we do um together in our Tiger Buddies. Student led assemblies um have become kind of sort of a tradition at Raymore Elementary now. Um, we always are looking for ways that our students can have some ownership, make connections, and
011that has been through the buddies like I talked about. But then every other month, if we don't do a buddy lesson, then we have an assembly and it either focuses on those SEAL lessons I talked about or those con um, building wide expectations and we have fifth graders that lead those assemblies and they meet with our counselor, Mrs. Beck, they plan them out, they practice. Um, we've even incorporated a few of our younger students in there now, too. So, that's pretty exciting to see that happen. Our buddy classrooms go together to the assembly. They sit together while these students um lead the assembly. And then we have a new family member this year that's really brought a lot of joy and connection to our building as well, and that's Tasha, um, our therapy dog. And
012thank you to the board and our district for allowing us to be a pilot in this. Um I I can't tell you just what joy she brings. The kids are always asking, "Is Tasha here today?" They come in sad or if there's a problem, she seems to be the magic per one that helps with that. So that's just added to that connection piece at Raymore Elementary that we have really enjoyed having. The other part that I uh wanted to highlight tonight is just a lot of our the cool projects that are going on at Raymore and that student ownership and real world learning. Um we took on my view our reading resource about three years ago and the really neat thing that teachers got excited about was the week six. Um at after week six
013after they had done stories and done their lessons there was always like an integrated project that came with it. So we started working on that and then teachers started asking questions like what if we partnered this with our science or what if kids had a says so in what this looked like or how could we get kids to be more involved and so those discussions just kind of started leading to more planning and more organization and then this year we've really seen some of that come to life. Um, Mrs. Penny was part of these um, projects as well. So, she's going to talk a little bit about the second grade community beautifification project. And we did plan this. Just FYI, we're 20. So, this was We usually don't dress alike, but No. So, um, yeah,
014this project was all about um, how to improve your community. And so, all throughout the five weeks, they read about communities. And so they brainstormed ideas on how can they improve. They just went to Raymore Elementary. How can we beautify Raymore? And so they decided to work on our learning garden and build bird feeders and windchimes. And we also did the tigers um cups on the fence. And then they thought, okay, well, we've done Raymore, but what can we do out in the community? So they decided to make the uh windchimes for our for businesses in the Raymore community and gave a little note saying that they are special. So, I know the Painted Posie still has theirs up to this day. Also, this year, as our building leadership was meeting this summer and planning
015things, we started talking about our announcements at school. We had video announcements every day. Um, and you know, it was the traditional what's for lunch, whose birthday is it, what event is going on that day? And we were like, it's just getting kind of how could we make that better? How could we liven that up? And how do the fifth grade students know something cool going on in third grade? Or how does the first graders know what might be uh something cool going on in fourth grade? So, Mrs. Pagoshnik, our librarian, and uh Mrs. Moore, our fifth grade teacher. They got together and they had a few students that were kind of interested in a news crew. And so we built the Tigers news crew and it's fifth grade students who in this picture you
016can see they're planning with Mrs. Bagoshnik. They plan out what what news story they're going to do. They actually ask teachers, "Is there anything you'd like us to highlight?" They come up with ideas themselves. Um, they have anchors, they have reporters, they have a student that does the videoing. They all have a part in it. Um, they built a news uh desk and they will record these and then we put them out to the whole building so they can see the cool things that are going on and what other students are doing. Um, we interview people. The latest interview was last week when our new principal for next year, Mrs. now they interviewed her and so that'll be our next um newscast. So we have a little clip of one that was back this winter
017uh where they interviewed uh Officer Hornback. [Music] This is a Tiger News presented by the fifth grade news crew. Earlier this week I interviewed Officer Hornbeck. Let's watch it. Hi, my name is Ken. Today we are with our with Officer Hornbeck, our resource officer. Our school resource officer. Good morning. Good morning. How are you today? Doing pretty good. How are you? Good. Fantastic. Thanks for asking. Yeah. Can you tell us why you decided to be a police officer? Um, I decided to be a police officer because I like helping people and I get to help people in a lot of different ways. um whether it's um if there's a car accident, if I'm taking a police report, if they just have questions they need to be answered, or if I'm in the schools helping you
018guys solve problems and do fun things like interviews and stuff like that. Yeah. Nice. So, it's just a short little clip. It's really cool. They have even went and interviewed um like third graders who were doing projects doing some of these projects and asking them about where'd you get your idea, how did you choose to do this? So that's uh oh that's that's been really cool. Um here we go. Um Mrs. Penny's going to talk about a third grade project and how the kids kind of took a spin on it and um had some ideas on their own and where that went. I was really involved in this project and this one was student student ownership by far. Um the what they wanted you to do was pick a famous person who they think is
019a hero and do a presentation on it. Um but what they realized that all throughout the unit they read people who were not famous but they were just people who took time, dedication, um problem solved were created and determined. And so they they were reading a book about the plastic problem. And I don't know if you know about the great plastic problem that we have in our oceans. Um, but they also started to see some things happening in their building as well too. And so they asked Mrs. Pennington, "Could we please talk about the plastic problem and what can we do here at school and at our homes?" And so she's like, "Absolutely." And they were so excited about this project because they wanted to do it. They took different roles in researching what is
020plastic, what can we do at school and at home to help. They also had a math group who looked at the budget, which I think you guys would love to see how can we save money on maybe plastic garbage bags and items like that. Um, this was a great um project that they did. Okay. Um, I have a picture of them presenting ways that that you can help at school and at home. Um, they also wanted me to show that what math that they were working out to see how to budget with using plastics. What they're doing at school is they're encouraging kids to only take the utensils they need at lunch and don't just take all of them. They're also turning starting to encourage students to bring water bottles, not the plastic ones, but
021one that we can refill in our filling stations. So, this one was great because they had ownership. We invited people from the um district to come and hear our presentation and we're trying to get signage out in our school so that we can at least help be a hero in our school with the plastic problem. And tonight, like I said, those are just some highlights. Our K through five students are all working on different projects. It's been really cool to see it. Um they're getting to be able to have some voice and choice in that, some collaboration. those critical thinking skills, all those things that are leading up to the Channel 9 newscast that we just saw with our kids building the house. So, it's really cool. We're excited about it and um come see
022us anytime you'd like in action. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That was amazing. And we love seeing how the kids are having their own voices and um getting up to where it's projects and being very involved. Um we're not just sitting and staring at a screen, you know. So I I think we all appreciate that. Thank you very much. I just wanted to say thank you for Ror Elementary. Those I'm a little biased because both my kids attended Ramer Elementary. um back when Dr. Hoffman was the principal. Um so I I it's it's still our little family um for my kids and the and their teachers that invested in them as well. I just want to apologize for all the water bottles that are here. Plastic bottles. That was very unfortunate. There we go.
023But I will not mention. Oh, tell them I I appreciate the environmental aspect, you know, sustainability, the responsibility that, you know, we we all have in this and starting them young. Thinking about that is awesome. So, can we put it in the minutes that next meeting we'll all bring our own cups? I won't be at the next meeting except for you. You're coming to the next meeting. You're gonna dance. Um, on to consent items. I need a motion to approve. So moved. Second. Second. Second. All in favor? Motion passes unanimously. On to the Raymore or the Rayek School Ray Public School Foundation update. Yes. is Jody Houston's coming to the podium. She gives the update annually around this time and also has a special invitation for the board for April the 5th. Jody, thank you
024for letting me come. I always love to talk about the foundation. Okay. Um first of all, last night we have we've had lots of fun things happening, lots of great things. Last night we were able to sponsor and partner with the district with the teacher of the year and the support staff employee of the year. That's always fun and was a great night. We love celebrating the staff. We also, hopefully you've seen this, won the chili competition. It's always a competition between Belton and Ray Peek. And last year was the first year we've ever won anything. Eric Collins made our chili and we won two awards last year. This year we won all of them. Every single category we won. So, I'm very, very proud of that. And you might see something at the taste
025of Ray Peek that we were telling you about that might involve this. So you might want to bid on something very exciting. Um we honored three distinguished alumni at the in February. Three wonderful candidates. Um we've been giving out impact grants. Hopefully you've seen that all over the place. Just this last week we gave $15,500 but this whole year we've given out over $42,000. So that's a big increase from what we've done in the And that's because of the donors that we have and the support we have from the district and also great applications and great requests. So, we're excited to continue to do that. Major saver update. I'm happy to say we're up again this year. I was a little concerned. It was snow days at the beginning of the campaign. Usually that does
026not end up being a good campaign, but we raised over $30,000. Last year was at 27 almost 28,000. So, and it's still there's still things trickling in. If you don't have yours, please come see me. I still have some. So, I'd love to sell you some. They're great gifts, too. So, if you have friends, clients, anything, we would love to um sell those to you. Um scholarships are now open. We have 15 this year, different kinds. Some of them are sponsored directly by the foundation. Then, some others have been done in memory or in honor. Um just some exciting things happening. So, if you have any seniors or you know seniors, please be sure to have them fill it out. They're online. They're on Navians, all of the things. Um, and then this is the
027big invitation. As you probably have heard, we have the Taste of Ray Peek. It is Saturday. It's like two weeks away. Saturday, April 5th. It is going to be super fun. Bring your disco7s, whatever. If you don't want to dress up, please still come. It will still be fun. It will be fine, but it's going to be a super fun theme. We've got over 200 people already signed up. Fantastic donations. We will have we also have a raffle going on right now for $100. You can choose between four trips, amazing trips, or $2,500 cash. So, that's just an easy way to support the foundation as well. And you can start that now. We will also be opening up the auction, the silent auction um on April Fool's Day, I believe. No fooling, but April Fool's
028Day, we are going to open the app. So, if for some reason you can't come, which I know you all want to come, it's super fun, but if you can't, you can still log on and support the foundation that way. And also our fund a need project, he kind of indicated that a little bit ago, is the integrated learning house. So we're coming up with some fun ideas on how to get people to sponsor and to give toward that project. And then again, I always appreciate your support of the foundation. We feel very supported and appreciated and I appreciate all of you as well. Thank you for letting me speak. Have a great evening. Are there any questions? I I have one. Yes. When can we bid on the trips? Now. Today. Right now, if
029you would go to your phone, it's a raffle, Carol. Yes. Yeah. Yes. For $100, you get a chance. And there's only a hundred tickets being sold. Okay. So, you have a good chance of winning the trip. So, go just go to the go to our website, okay? Uh Facebook, anything like that. It's there. But yes, it can start today. We've already sold some. Okay. So, any other questions? Again, thank you so much. Thank you. On to the technology program review. Yes. So, Ryan Gooding will present the program review for technology tonight and you are free to answer ask him all the hard questions you want. So, he's ready for Oh, yes. Yes, please. So, I'm starting this meeting with Dr. Vulkar just walking over to me and saying, "Is the stream working?" Which I am
030quite certain it is working, but that is a great way to step up here in front of you guys. Um, you did not have to. So, the the stream is the stream is working. But, wow, that's a it's a great way to start. So, thank you guys for letting me come and and speak with you tonight. I'm always excited to come up and talk with you about the state of technology in the Raymore Peculiar School District. So, over the next few minutes, I'm going to highlight some progresses that we've made in digital learning, infrastructure, security, and operational efficiency. technology continues to be a driving force behind student success and district-wide effectiveness. So, I'm going to start here by kind of introducing my team. Um, and needless to say, nothing that I talk about today could
031happen without all of these people that you're looking at on the board right now. So everything from our instructional technology people to our network administrators to our system administrators to our technicians in the building. Everything that we talk about today is just because of the great work that they do every day when when they come in and do their job. So um obviously I'd like to recognize all of them. Uh I wish they could all be here with me tonight speaking with you, but I can guarantee you they don't want to be here speaking with you. So, uh, but I do want to recognize them and and tell them how much I do appreciate what they do and, uh, really their focus and and their commitment to the to the mission of the district and
032what what we're trying to do with students. So, impacts of the program, the technology department has broad effects across the district. So our our efforts directly support digital learning efforts which include our onetoone devices, the tech integration in the classroom, operational efficiency which can be anything from automating accounts for students and staff members to make life easier for them to cloud solutions that allow us to reduce the physical footprint of our equipment on campus and allow people to get access to things that they never could before from home. uh security. We have a major emphasis on security in the district. That includes firewalls, uh endpoint prot protection, multiffactor authentication and staff training and all those things we'll talk a little bit more about later in the presentation. connectivity for students, including Wi-Fi, which we'll talk
033about again, and our network, our wide area network that connects all of our buildings together through fiber that allows everybody to communicate with each other and and allows technology to to work across the district. and communication systems which includes uh parent portals like our new focus parent portal which talk about a little bit later. Collaboration tools like Canvas or Google Meets which people are on and using every single day. Our our emergency alert system we support which allows us to be ready our teachers to be ready with lists of students in case something happens during the school day that uh that they need to to take action against. So ultimately we strive to ensure that technology remains accessible, functional, and aligned with with the district mission. Uh what you're looking at here is just a
034quick snapshot. This is not supposed to be comprehensive. This isn't by any means everything that we manage in the district. Uh but just a quick look at at some things. And uh those of you that have been on the board for a while probably don't remember this chart, but uh the computer lab equipment you'll see has dramatically decreased for our students. So as more and more of our applications have gone web- based, we've had less need to have desktop computers and classrooms for students to get get uh to work on. So, these are really kind of focused labs that you're looking at at this point for like CAD or for esports or for our programming students, for our journalism students is really what we're talking about with those. Our presentation equipment um including our interactive
035displays. We're getting closer and closer to getting rid of all of our smartboards. So, um we're excited about that. Um projectors and smartboards are definitely on their way out and we'll speak more about that a little bit later. our onetoone devices. Um, student Chromebooks, you can see we're very heavy with our Chromebooks, uh, with our and our tablets. So, um, our tablets are for our K1 students and our Chromebooks are for for everybody else, 2 through 12. And then you can just kind of look and see the the staff equipment that we have there as well. So, like I said, this isn't close to everything we manage, but just kind of a high level look at kind of the devices that are out there right now. So, um, customer support. Um, this is a kind
036of a breakdown of work orders, completed work orders, and kind of our goals and the goals that I have for my team. Um it includes our average response time, our average res resolution time and our average time in progress. So we are really looking to have an average response time to be at two days or less. We're looking to have an a average resolution time. So the situation has been resolved in under three days and um obviously we're not quite there but we're we're working towards that. So, our completed work orders, if you look at 2022 to 2023, it looks like we jumped from about 1,400 work orders to over 6,000 work orders. Let me explain to you what happened there. In 2324, we brought in incident IQ as our way for the district to
037or to manage work orders and for people to put things into the system. Up until that point, we had really been more of a I'm going to email you. I'm going to grab you and pull you in here. I'm going to send you a text. Maybe I'll call the help desk. But starting in 2324, we really started to focus our buildings and our administrators and our staff, which I really want to give a shout out to them, to really focus on using our system to put those work orders in. So, you see that gigantic that spike. I think that probably we were pretty close to that all along anyway, but that is just a much more accurate reflection of what's what's really happening as far as work orders getting completed. So, um, I'm pretty proud
038of that. 6,000 work orders for 12 people in an apartment. That's that's a pretty heavy lift. And so, they they do a good job with a smile on their face and provide uh what I think is is really great customer service. So, so I'm proud of them for that. This is our detected intrusion attempts. Uh, last time I was talking with you guys, you guys had some questions about how many attempts do we get a month and what's that? what exactly does that look like? Don't necessarily want to get into a ton of details of what that looks like, but I did want to give you guys some numbers about detected intrusions. So, you can see it kind of es and flows a little bit. Uh there's not not necessarily really consistent. Um I broke
039it down into critical high and low. So, you could see kind of how what what we thought the attempt the intrusion attempt was for us anyway or how much damage it could have possibly done. So rest assured, these were all attempts that we thwarted that we saw coming that we mitigated and did not cause downtime or issues or data loss or anything like like that in the district. But I did just want to provide some numbers so you guys had a little bit of that because I know you had a question about that that last time I was I was up here with you. So um next is going to be on security. So with the intrusion tips that I just put up there in mind, I wanted to share some of our things that
040we're doing for security to to thwart those efforts and to to keep our students data and our students safe. So the first thing is uh threat locker which is a zero trust security measure and basically it gives us really granular control over computers. So, we can do it at a micro level. We can also do it at a macro level where we can control district-wide, but we can also control applications at a computer level, even a user level of what you're able to run, what you're not able to run. Um, and also get alerts whenever people are trying to to maybe run applications that they're not supposed to supposed to be running. Uh we have a PaloAlto firewall that you guys approved uh probably about a year and a half ago and that allows us
041to have some advanced threat detection, allows us to do some beep packet inspection, some applica application based control that allows us to to have a lot more control and a lot more insight into what's going on on our network and what's coming in and out of our network. uh our CrowdStrike Falcon EDR, which our in endpoint detection and response. Uh that's the the group that we team with that gives us 247 protection against attempts on our network. Um, and so, you know, it's really nice for us to be able to leverage people that do that every single day and gives us some proficiency that we may not necessarily have whenever we're dealing with some more serious threats to our network and in incident I or excuse me, infosc IQ which is loved throughout the district
042because that is our fishing simulator. So, we send out emails and you guys get those emails as well that could be fishing, could be not. As that as that uh software has kind of matured, those emails have gotten better and better. So, we've gotten more and more hits on it, but it also keeps people aware uh and keeps people vigilant. And also, we send out monthly trainings, which I think you guys also get those monthly trainings, too. I don't know if you watch them or not, but search your email, you can check them out. uh and uh tells us if they you know we get to see if the teachers have fulfilled those. So I can talk with principles and stuff like that to see if they if they're watching those videos and it just
043gives them a little bit more information about password security uh about data data protection, data privacy, fishing, things like that. Just in short little two or three minute fun I think they're fun. Some people don't think they're fun, but fun little skits uh that that play out for them. Um, we've also instituted MFA multifactor authentication districtwide. So, anybody that logs onto a rape computer has to get on their phone has to get a text on their phone or a a do authentication on their phone. So, they're having to authenticate to make sure that they are um the right person that's not an unauthorized access. Uh we've instituted a light speeded filter to make sure that we're SIPA compliant and also make sure that we're USA compliant so we can keep our -ate money coming in
044from the government. Um and that just gives us a greater vision into what our students are doing on the internet. Um it's basically our content filter and allows us to protect students and make sure we're keeping them safe. And then uh something new this year is Lightseed Classroom. And light speeded classroom gives our teachers actually the ability to monitor students in their class and see what's on their Chromebook screens. It also allows them to mute the Chromebook screens. It allows them to take their Chromebooks and send them to a website if they want to. It just gives them a lot more management of the devices at the classroom level. So they don't have to ask us to do things. If they, you know, want to send all their kids to one website, they're able to
045do that at the push of a button with that with that program. So that's been that's been really nice with them for our teachers. So next I want to talk a little bit about our district operations and our efficiency. So in addition to security, we also focus on making sure that our district remains efficient. So one of the things we've instituted is that incident IQ, which I told you about a little bit earlier. Uh that has improved our response time to our our staff. It's also allowed us to do a much better job of tracking the issues that we're having and the resolutions to those issues, which gives me a lot of power as far as planning for multi-year planning and planning what we need to do next year, what resources I need to have
046available for my people. Um, another one is Lightseed Digital Insight. That is a program that we're using that actually tracks the applications that our students are using in the time that they're using them. So it really lets us kind of look at what kind of bang for the buck we're getting for applications that we're putting in front of our students. Um so some of those education applications. Uh one of the things that we're really monitoring right now is school AI. So we're using our we're using our digital insights to monitor what buildings are using it down to what we can look at it down to the teacher level of what where it's being used in classrooms. And that's going to help us uh on the academic side if we want to find kind of pockets
047of excellence. We want to find people that are actually using it that we can maybe um leverage for other teachers around the district use as training and things and things like that. Um and focus data analytics. So with our focus program, we have a data analytics program that allows us to see at a district level really high level data on students. Pretty much everything that's in focus, we can pull on that focus data analytics. But it's also allowing us to push that down to the building level. So we give that same analytic power to our principles and then they're able to pull those same reports for grades, tests, attendance, discipline, all those things are right there for the for the principal. So hopefully they're not having to spend tons and tons of time putting their
048own data together. They can go into that data analytics and and find that for themselves. And the last one is the focus schools uh parent portal. So that's just allowed us to be a little bit more um focused with our communication to parents, a little bit more efficient in communications for parents, making it easier uh for our offices, for our teachers and everybody else to have kind of that closed wall garden of communication where they can where they can talk to parents. Um the next step is our infrastructure. So um again, we replaced every edge switch in the district last summer. So that was around 65 switches. We did all that inhouse. So, we saved a lot of money on the install on that. So, that was fantastic that we had the staff to be
049able to do that. We also traded or changed out all of our um access points, our Wi-Fi access point. So, now we're Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6 that's just going to improve wireless performance or it has improved wireless performance. It reduces congestion. Um, we have a lot of density at our larger buildings like at the high school when you have, you know, is it 15,600 students turning the Chromebooks on all at one time and everybody connects to the wireless at once, that can be a problem sometimes. So, having these upgraded Wi-Fi or the upgraded Wi-Fi access has made a big difference. Uh, East Middle School, we increased East Middle School's capacity. May not know this, East Middle School is kind of on their own pipe. They're not they don't share the district network. So they're
050on their own pipes. But as their need for data and their uh technology usees increased, we've had to increase the actual capacity in that building or the data in that building. We also use that as a backup if we have issues on this main campus. We're able to roll everybody here over to East Middle School. It's not the greatest experience for our users when we do that because that's a pretty large amount of data that we're sending over there, but at least everybody gets to stay up. phone stay up, copier stay up, and uh the data is a little slow, but usually it doesn't take doesn't take a ton a ton of time to get that done. Our partnership with Vero Network, so we are beginning in the beginning phases of our fiber network, our
051district-wide fiber network on the north side. So, we did a southside with Bluebird and now we're doing a north side with another uh vendor, Vero. And that's going to give us some some resiliency that we don't have right now with our network. Meaning we're we're we've designed more of a ring structure with them as opposed to kind of a spoke structure which we which we have right now. So if a piece of fiber gets cut right now anywhere in our system, it pretty much brings everybody down. or if we're trying to build some resiliency and build that ring in where if it gets cut here, we can still go around and keep keep everybody up uh while that gets fixed because sometimes fixing fiber is a is a lengthy process can take can take some
052time. And then finally, um we've been partnering with the buildings and grounds team on security act cameras and access control. So, just want to give a shout out to to Scott Dobson and his team and they've been great to work with. as we've added security cameras into buildings and and uh changed our access control a little bit around a little bit. That's that's been a great partnership for us there as well. Thank you. All right, so department goals. Um so we did we did pretty good on our department goals this year. So I'm I'm kind of excited to bring these out for you guys. But uh the first one there is our minimum district standard of technology. Now we did not meet that one. We're at 77% Uh hopefully I'll be speaking with you in
053in the coming months about bringing more interactive televisions into the uh into the district. We really have our two middle schools and our academy or our two buildings our three buildings left that that need to get those interactive displays. And once we've done that, we'll have um we'll have knocked that one out, I think. So our uptime, which this is our network uptime, which I was talking about before a little bit, it's above that 99.8% mark. So we hit that one. Um the third one there is really a testament to that group that was on that second slide. So getting 90% of people to agree on anything is really tough. Getting 90% of people to agree on anything technology is really really tough. Getting 90% of people to agree that their service in technology is
054good. I've never done that before. So I'm really proud of my team for doing that and getting it to 92% is is an out outstanding for them and and uh something we've strived for a really for a really long time. So, um, we're happy to happy to present that for sure tonight. Um, user satisfaction with our wireless access, believe it or not, that has come up like 40 percentage points since we started tracking that. So, it keeps moving up and up. The 85% has never changed. We've always been reaching for the 85% and we are we're very very close at this point. So, that's another one that we're we're excited about. Uh, our cyber security standards, our music standards, we have reached all of those. And then uh that last one there is something that
055I have spent a fair amount of my last year and a half, the last year of my and half of my life doing which is moving away from Tyler Technologies to focus school solutions. And so while I say on there it's 100% complete, I feel like every day we're working on that and doing doing different things with that. But it has been fully implemented at this point. All the teachers are using it. We're enrolling with it. Um, pretty much all the modules that we're expecting to have in place are all up and running uh and active for the district. So, that one has been that one's been a chore, too. But, that's that's nice to have that behind us. So, moving forward, what we would what we're wanting to move towards or what we're our
056goals for for May of 2026. So the Vero project that I was telling you about having that 100% complete is one of the projects that we want to have completed by 2026. We want to continue with the 99.8% uptime for the district. I think that's always an important goal for any technology department to have because if that's not happening, a lot of things are stopping um just overall in the district. A lot a lot of things aren't working if your network's not up. So, our help desk ticket 90% and I'd like to ask permission to change that while I'm here because really we wanted to move that to 95% to see if we could move it even higher than that 90% because we already reached that. That's kind of old news. So, we'd really like
057to change that to 95%. So, I hope you won't hold me to that. Oh, it is 95%. I skipped one down. I'm sorry. That's 90% of help desk tickets will resolve within the established service level agreement times. So, sorry. So our service level agreements we were at about 87% and we want to we want to reach 90%. So that's the two days that you're going to contact in three days is going to be resolved. So we want to get that up to 90%. We need to move that up a little bit. My next one is 95%. So good. I had that right. Over overall user satisfaction. So we want to make sure that we want to keep improving on that. Move that 92 to 95. Uh the 90% of district classrooms. Like I said, we
058still have some work to do in three buildings. So, I want to finish that goal up and get that complete. And then I want to continue to hammer away on the wireless access 85% goal. So, I want to at some point be able to stand up here in front of you guys and say that we got to 86% and feel really good about that. Sorry, you won't be here for that bill. Sorry. Maybe next time though. You can I'll invite you. Why couldn't you meet the goal while I was I know it's terrible. That's questions for later. So, opportunities for improvement. Um obviously everybody's got places where they can where they can prove uh places that I'd really like to focus u the data loss prevention tools for monitoring. There's just so much data that's
059important. It's important that it's protected. It's important that we're doing everything we can do to make sure that it's safe. So um making sure that we're staying up to date on those loss prevention tools and doing everything we can to protect our students and our staff's data. We want to make sure that we're continuing to do that. Um, our UPS's, which is our battery backups and buildings, we want to make sure those are staying current. Those allow us to make sure that our really expensive equipment doesn't get damaged in case of thunderstorms or or power outages, power surges, things like that. And then, uh, just we want to make sure that we're staying on top of and and staying vigilant about our instant response preparedness. uh because you know with with if if when something
060happens, we want to make sure that we are ready to respond as a district and that we're we're doing all the right things and that we're able to get the district back up and running as quickly as we as we possibly can. So, with that, I'd be happy to take any questions or uh so we've done uh you guys have done a phenomenal job and it's a very large district. So kudos to your team and I'm sure they would all love to be here. Oh yeah. Um it's their it's our favorite thing too. Um with all of our new softwares and things that we have put in place, you ever considered a pen test? Yes, actually we have penetration test for those of you that are Yes. So pin pin testing we have actually done
061that with um several companies we looked into. So there's kind of two different ways you can do that is you know contract with someone that can come in and do pin testing. We also looked at a company that where we you could pin test yourself. So they provided you all the tools and then you could you could run the pin test yourself. So we have done a lot of self-pin testing. We also are partner we partner with um CISA and so every week they're scanning our network looking for vulnerabilities and they send us a weekly report that tells us how we're doing and places that maybe if they see a vulnerability they they tell us about us as well. So that's that's a fantastic question though. Yes. Okay, perfect. Because you know there's we should
062have a class a hacking class you know that'd be another real world learning learning to to try to any other question Mr. Gooding. Yes sir. Ryan uh just I completely appreciate the work you put in with you and your team uh just from where the district has was when uh my kids were first going to school here and to the point now. uh has been pretty stark, pretty amazing. Uh it's a lot of a lot of thankless hours, especially during COVID when we're having to rapidly uh increase uh bandwidth, increase our capacity. So, um you know, much appreciated for your your efforts there and uh you know, trying to think of something to give you a hard time on, but I can't right now. I'll think of something. I know you will. I know you
063will. Yeah. But uh seriously, I appreciate appreciate what you what you've done for for the district. Thank you. I appreciate your service to you. Ryan, I have two questions. Um I noticed in November when it was um critical, we had a critical uh problem with what was that again? Oh my. You had the attempts. The attempts the Oh, you're talking about the Okay. You're talking about the presentation. And I thought you were just talking about something. Okay. Yes. So the the maybe a spike in November or it was red the red bar in November. Yeah. Was that is that this may be a silly question. Was that just Rayex specifically or do you ever notice that that or hear that that's other districts too that there's a bigger problem out there causing it to be
064a critical impact? Yeah. So so usually some like that is was a specific intrusion attempt on the district. So that's all those are specifically on our network, our district network, but typically we're not the first place that something like that gets rolled out. So it's already been done somewhere else. So that specific one could have been um a teacher brought in a thumb thumb drive from outside the district that had malware on it, plugged it in and tried to run, you know, or they didn't try to run it. had just tried to launch a program or could have been a teacher got fished and tried to download something that was really malicious that could have caused a lot of damage and that we just found it and caught it before they actually launched it. Okay.
065But but yet yes, it's happened. I mean, we are definitely not special in that case. It is happening to schools all over the place. So something could cause it to be critical just from a teacher innocently bringing in a thumb drive and Yeah. I mean, as far from a from a security posture, our biggest weakness are is our users, the people on our campus, that is the our biggest vulnerability are the people that are here. That's why the education piece of it so important and keeping that kind of front and center for them and and just making them know it's important. Sometimes you talk about something, you know, people think it's important. So, but that that's our biggest vulnerability is okay. 700 users and you know 6,000 people that aren't necessarily on the same side
066as we are and whenever we're trying to do security stuff. So, okay. And then why is um East Middle School not on our why are they Yeah. Because of where they're placed in the district? It's because whenever that building was built, there was nothing there was nothing out there. Yeah. So, they it was cheaper for us as a district to to work with probably TNT to run fiber just to that one building as opposed to bring it into loop it into the whole campus. So, we couldn't switch it over when we built the ninth grade center. Well, we could have. I don't want to because I like having that Oh, as a backup. Yep. I like having that as a little bit of a backup. Absolutely. Yeah, that was my question. Connected. Perfect. Okay. Thank
067you, Ryan. Appreciate you. make yourself. Do I have to say anything about the board? Um so in theformational items there are um board policies for uh first review. Dr. Seyle, do you want to say anything about that? Correct. Yes. The policy committee reviewed eight policies last month. Seven of those policies that you see there are the language that you see that's suggested are mandatory changes based on legislative um um passing as a legislation in the state legislature. One policy that isn't is solely voluntary is 1422 advertising and signage on district property. We have had this discussion as a leadership team as to bringing you a policy that allows uh the district to prohibit political campaigning on property. And so this policy would achieve that end goal. All these policies areformational only tonight. We'll let them
068sit for 30 days. You have any questions on them or or suggestions, get back to us. If not, they will be on the formal consent agenda for next month. You have like five seconds. So, okay. Um on to action items. Uh the first action item is the 202526 employee benefits. Dr. Siggel. Yes. Dr. Hatfield is here tonight to lead you through the first two items. The first on employee benefits and the second on salary schedules. Dr. Hatfield. Good evening. As we touched on last week at our work session, um we are coming to you this even the request for our benefits renewal package. Um not a lot to highlight, just a few things this year. Um our medical coverage, we did negotiate a renewal rate of 3% this year. Um which in talking to my
069colleagues is very very um good. Um we we came out in pretty good shape. Um the increased cost to the district for that 3% increase is about $25,000 almost 200,0006. There's only plan changes um are in regard to the deductible. There is a statutory change through the IRS that will require our deductible to go from $3,200 to $3,300. Um that would have changed no matter what. So that that was required. The more significant change um but not impactful to a large number of our membership is that weight loss medications coverage for those is being removed. Um that is quite a cost to the plan. Um and team Rayek um discussed that and it was voted upon that we would recommend removing that to maintain a lower renewal rate. I do want to emphasize however that
070medications that are often associated with diabetes and weight loss if they are provided for diabetes they will not be impacted by this change at all. There are no other um changes. Um we are remaining with um Sunlife Delta dental um reliance standard for life insurance and coms for our employee assistance program with no premium and ch changes. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have. I know we had a lot of conversations over the last um month or so on the decisions that were made and I truly appreciate the team and team Ray Peek um for having those uh hard conversations and uh ultimately coming up with uh you a rate increase of 3% with those changes. So do appreciate that. I need a motion to approve the employee benefits for the 202526
071school year as presented. So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Motion passes unanimously. On to the 2526 salary schedules. Dr. Hfield. Thank you. Um also, as we discussed last week at our work session, um we are bringing to you our salary schedules for the upcoming school year this evening. um they are provided for you in your packet. Um just as a reminder, the average salary increase across all employee groups for the 2526 school year is approximately 2.7%. Um that does vary here and there, but the average increase does come out to 2.7 and no one will receive an increase less than that. That does bring our starting teacher salary to $43,622. um does I took a look this afternoon about where that places us with other school districts in the area. If
072nobody else changes anything, it would actually move us up a couple notches um to be ninth out of 20. This year we're 11th out of 20. But we would be four other school districts we would be less than $1,000 away from. So although it's not huge growth, um we are making some progress. I anticipate though that other districts will make some increases as well. Um, so we will probably stay about status quo in our comparison to other school districts. Any questions I can answer for you? Again, we appreciate the work. We know we've um these board meetings, we we approve it, but we've had lots of conversations and the work sessions and um I know you had to you and your team had to come up with a whole lot of new uh schedules. So,
073we appreciate that work um to get into line with all of the pieces that you need to with minimum wage and all of the changes. So, thank you. Um I need a motion to approve the 2526 salary schedules as presented. So moved. There second. Second. All in favor? Motion passes unanimously. Now, thank you, Dr. Hatfield. Now, we'll move on to the Mr. Scott Dobson show. um for the rest of the uh evening with the Ray Peek Academy secured entry. Awesome. Thank you very much. We'll uh try to go nice and slow then extend this. All right. Uh good evening. I have a couple items this evening to talk about. Uh the first one is going to be the addition of a secured entry and secured vestibial here at the academy building uh on the uh
0748 or the 912 entryway if you will of the academy uh to help make that one look more and feel like a lot of the other entryways in the district. Uh help secure the entryway a lot at a private office uh for Mr. Meyers and also for the secretary out front there. uh utilizing Source World Co-op and the Wilson Group, we'd like to move forward with this project uh in the amount of 118,820.65 with a 5% contingency on this one. I'm happy to answer any questions about this. Is that the doors at face shaw? It would be. Yes, ma'am. Okay. I need a motion to approve the bid for security upgrades at Rayek Academy utilizing the Sourcewell Co-op in the amount of $118,8205 with a 5% contingency for any unforeseen circumstances. So moved. Is there
075a second? Second. All in favor? Motion passes unanimously. On to the South Middle School RTU cranes. Yes. Uh so preparing for the rest of our couple final steps for the South Middle School early revamp of the heating cooling system. Uh with that uh one of the items that has to be subcontract that we're not able to do ourselves would be the ability to own a crane and uh perform that work. So we do have to outsource that. We listed that out for an RFP. We got two successful uh responses to that. Um and that is simply just because of the size of crane that is needed. There is only two companies in Kansas City that have that ability. Um so that was vetted out. Uh with that being being said, uh we'd like to move
076forward uh with Wilson or Wilkerson crane rental uh for the project. I'm happy to answer any questions on that. Is this something our heavy equipment program will cover in the future? Well, I don't know. I don't know if the pocketbook would like that one. Well, not to buy a crane maybe, but to operate it. Um, I need a motion to approve the bid for a crane for replacement of rooftop units at South Middle School from Wilkerson Crane Rental in the amount of $41,46.40 plus a 15% contingency for any overtime or delays. So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you for waiting until I was done this time. So, um, back back to the Scott Dobson show with the Eagle Glenn calming space. All right. As we continue to
077improve, uh, these spaces throughout the district, we have a few elementaryaries left uh, to continue to improve our calming spaces uh, for our staff and our students uh, making those spaces a much more user friendly, safe environment for all parties involved. Uh with that being said, we have also worked with um our interior design group actually helped us uh a student based group worked with us to to help uh minister some of the finishes for this one. With that, we'd like to move forward uh with the Gordian group again utilizing um the co-op for that project as well and happy to answer questions on this one or concerns. Is that renovating the existing calming space that we have or is it moving classrooms around? Are we taking something different away? Yep. In this particular situation,
078we are taking a classroom and then breaking that into uh two common spaces along with a a added common space for the for the teacher. Um that is what we've been doing throughout the district and they will also then we will give them back their existing common spaces that they're utilizing that were some staff offices originally and those will actually be returned to staff offices. And did you say this is the last elementary that needs uh we do have one left. Okay. Okay. Any questions? I need a motion to approve the proposal to remodel the calming space at Eagle Glenn Elementary utilizing the Sourcewell Cooperative in the amount of $124,794.65. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any questions? I've forgotten to ask that part. So all in favor? Motion passes unanimously. on to the
079South Middle School HVAC commissioning. Awesome. Uh, one of our final steps for the South Middle School to make that project complete would be our commissioning um of that building once we're complete uh once the in-house labor is complete on that uh and all of our contractors are complete with the automation controls install. With that being said, we'd like to continue our partnership with Henderson Building Solutions. Uh we have seen great success uh with them through the completion of the last bond issue and I think that the district saved a considerable amount of money with a lot of our commissioning. Uh they found some heirs and were able to get those all corrected. So I really really see a great benefit in this and it really helped our district uh on these last couple projects and
080I'd like to continue that partnership forward with them for the South Middle School. Happy to answer any questions on that. I need a motion to approve the bid for South Middle School HVAC Commissioning from Henderson Building Solutions in the amount of $89,800. So moved. I need a second. Second. Any questions? All in favor. Carol. Motion passes unanimously. On to the integrated learning house concrete. Again, as we continue to uh put the final touches on the integrated learning house, one of our probably most prized projects for this coming summer uh to finish up and one of the most current projects we have working, we would like to approve a bid from Herring Contracting LLC uh to go ahead and finish up the exterior concrete. This was something that was bid months ago when we did the
081footings and the interior slab. At that time, we did not feel comfortable moving forward with the exterior concrete just because it wasn't needed yet. We continue to seek partnerships from other vendors. Um, to date, we haven't been quite successful on that. So, we'd like to move forward uh with this bid. Happy to answer questions there. I need a motion to approve the proposal for concrete slab/flatwork for the integrated learning house from Heron Contracting LLC in the amount of $77,53560 plus a 5% contingency for any unforeseen circumstances. So move a second. Second. Any questions? All in favor? Motion passes unanimously. And last but not least, last but not least, um the South Middle School plumbing parts. All right. Uh to go ahead and finish this project up and hopefully be done with all the RFPs on
082this one. We'd like to uh go ahead and sign up Ferguson Enterprises LLC for our plumbing supplier. uh if it will be for all the parts for the condensate drains, all the gas piping, things like that that we'll be doing ourselves. Um we just obviously have to buy all those parts and pieces. So, uh we were able to find a good co-op um to partner with on this. Um ENI cooperative is the co-op for that. Uh ran through Ferguson and we'd like to go ahead and continue that partnership with the discounts agreed upon discounts for this. Happy to answer questions. Okay. There you go. Uh Scott, before you we leave this tonight, South Middle School, your team is doing a lot of work on that to keep the cost down. That's correct. And so I
083think a lot of the things that you're seeing about Scott South uh middle school is that uh because we have to peiemeal it because we don't have one big umbrella we're doing. You guys are doing most of the work. Is that correct? That is very correct. Yep. Yeah. And instead of most likely you would seen in the past uh one single bid come from just one contractor had all these fees and and things built into it. Uh just like Dr. said this one is all inhouse. So every piece is happen to be purchased that we will not be doing ourselves. So if we were to put an estimate to it or we're saving labor uh to the tune currently uh our best estimates are between 650 to 750,000 of savings in just this project. That's
084correct for just these 35ish units. Okay. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. That's real money. It is. We have some super talented people on staff that are able to do that. So, I I just wanted to make sure the board is aware of the expert your team has. Uh I think we're going to be able to have three interns as well this summer. So, we we currently have three HVAC interns or two HVAC interns, one electrical. I think we're going to keep two of those on maybe hopefully throughout the summer. Um and they'll be in instrumental on this project. Are those pulled from lead? They are. They are HBAC students. Awesome. I mean, that would be my question. Do you have enough help? We do. Okay. Yep. Yep. We have all summer. We got a great plan.
085And again, with some added assistance, I think with these lead students, it's really helpful. We've seen great success in those that partnership so far. They're on about their second month uh of continuing that partnership right now. And it's it's tremendous. Seeing the students work every day is is excellent. They've learned a whole lot. Good. I need a motion to approve the bid for plumbing parts from Ferguson Enterprises LLC utilizing the ENI cooperative with a total cost not to exceed $100,000. So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in any questions? All in favor? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you 100%. on to committee reports. Is this where I give it to you? Nope. Okay. Any committee reports? No. Perfect. Um on to the superintendent's update. Dr. Slay, thank you. I came to the podium tonight because
086there'll be a couple of uh special recognitions we want to make during my time. But first, I want to talk to you a little bit about last night's event at the Teacher of the Year and Support Staff Employee of the Year banquet. We were able to award Ed Ruska who is the crossing guard at Eagle Glenn Elementary School with the support staff employee of the year and Dr. Joanna Clark, science teacher at South Middle School with the teacher of the year and she will then be our entry into the statewide teacher of the year program here in the state of Missouri. So, congratulations, 19 awesome finalists. And I told the team last night that I think we found our staff spotlight schedule for the upcoming school year because each one of those individuals, team members
087are 100% um outstanding, would be worthy of a staff spotlight. So, congratulations to all of our 19 finalists and our two award winners. As you know, next week is spring break. So, the district will take a collective sigh of relief from the winter weather that we've had over the past several months. Um, the offices will be open at ASC, but closed district-wide for the entire week of next week. So, we wish everyone a safe and fun uh spring break. At this time, I would like for our board of education to come to the uh area over here where we have our awards. all you at once. I want to single one person out in particular and the group out as a whole. So get Bill follow directions. Thank you, Bill. Appreciate this. Is the roast.
088This is Bill's final regular board meeting after more of than six years of service uh to this community. On April 8th, when voters go to the polls, they will not see Bill's name on the ballot because he chose not to run for reelection. Bill, we want to take this time to thank you for your service. Bill took the oath of office November 8th, 2018 when he was selected to fill an unexpired term when Kim Bailey resigned from the board and was appointed to the state board of education. He was reelected in April of 2019 and again in April of 2022. He is only one of three board members who were on the board when I was hired a superintendent. Now there's only two left. Board hiring a superintendent is one of the school board's primary
089responsibilities. Another primary responsibility is to make policy. This area of work was vital during our pandemic as when Bill helped navigate the board and unchartered territory. Through our board's leadership and partnership, our district was able to work through federal state mandates, guidelines, and continue to have school. And our classrooms, buses, and board meetings have all taken a different look during that since that time. During your years of service, Bill, you've been a strong supporter of the district through several ballot initiatives, the construction, new facilities, and the addition of several new programs. You've been a voice of reason and leadership on this board. And I will miss you, and all the board members will miss you as well because we could look to you for that voice of leadership and reason. We thank you for your
090service and for your work to make this district a better place for students. Pam has the presentation of the bell with Clapper. There we go. That's awesome. Take a picture and then Bill, if you'd like to say anything to the community who's watching tonight or anything, you can have the podium if you'd like. Only if you'd like to do that. All right. Sure. here for another hour. Um, I just uh just wanted to say, you know, I had thought about, boy, do I want to write something down or do I want to, you know, speak it from the hip? And I'm generally good with speaking from the hip. So, um, I just truly appreciate, you know, being on the board. Uh, I truly appreciate all the work that you all do. I think this, you
091know, as I transition out, it's it's uh bittersweet. It's sweet in that we're leaving, I think, the board in a good spot that I think we're all likeminded. Uh we bring different talents, different ideas, different thinking, but it's with one vision, and that's success for our students and success for our teachers. Um, you know, since I've been in this district, I've seen we moved in 2010 and my kids have grown through this district and I don't think that they would be the people they are without the teachers that they had uh had time with and they they really the teachers really just, you know, took an interest in them and you can see that that's what our teachers do. they they uh take an interest to our our students and they want success for our
092students and I know one of the you know the couple big things on the board have been you know the co issue and that interesting chaos um but it was always as a board we was we were always unified that we needed students in the seats we needed students in the schools and we navigated those the best our best capabilities and I was uh proud of that fact and we'll always be proud of that fact and I will stand to uh you know argue that with anybody. That's that's what our goal was. Uh the other one was uh hiring Dr. Slaggel. You know there was a lot of discussion in the room. Uh there wasn't a lot of discussion. It was it was uh you know a true blessing that you know he came to
093this district uh when when it was needed. his leadership was needed. Um he he has shown that he even though he is not from Raymore like like I am. I'm not from Raymore, but he dove in and wanted to know what the culture was like, wanted to know what the community was like. And he is uh he's been a mainstay at every every uh greeting for our students saying hi. I know there's times he's thinking, why did I start that? um because it's cold and rainy. But uh you know it's it's uh he's he's provided a tremendous amount of leadership for for this district and he's guided the cabinet, but the cabinet's been fantastic. you know, the administrative staff, everybody in that that building has been fantastic for this district and and transitioning to uh
094a different way of learning. And you know, we're I think we have the visionaries for that. We have critical thinkers for that. and we are uh our students are that are there now and soon to be uh part of uh our school district uh are going to be forever changed because of that. So um you know I I challenge anybody that that uh you know wants to make a difference uh in their community is being on the school board. Um there's a lot of uh naysayers, a lot of uh attacks, whether that be, now that I can say it, politically, uh legislatively, uh whether it's uh at the state level or the federal level. Um they are are leading by fear and by uh their own agenda. Our agenda has always been kids. Our agenda
095has always been providing them the best education possible to go on and be successful uh citizens and that's what public education does and I will forever fight for that. My my sister was a teacher, my mom was a teacher. Uh, and I would probably challenge that every legislator that's in the state of Missouri, the majority of them were public school educated and they've lost sight of what that means. So, um, now that I can say those things, it's relieving. It's really relieving. But, uh, you know, I I'm I'm proud of this proud of this district. I would I would push anybody towards this district, this community. um whether it's Raymore or Peculiar that uh you know that's why we chose one of the reasons we chose you the school district and we didn't know how
096impactful it was going to be on our kids but um we know now how impactful it was and it's going to be impactful to a lot of students moving forward but uh you know I I appreciate Dr. SLE and his leadership and everybody here and your your leadership and and the roles you played in in making this district district successful. Uh I would just challenge the board to continue doing the good work, fighting the good fight. Um you know, don't lead out of fear, lead out of common sense and reason and be steadfast in your your decisions. Um that's that's all you can ask. Leave all the all the noise aside. Let all the noise go. All the naysayers. Uh if I would say anything to get off social media because, you know, you're going
097to you're going to see a lot of the naysaying in that that realm. So, um you know, like I said, this is bittersweet, but I knew I'm even though I I've loved my time on the board, it just I just didn't have the capacity to continue. And I think somebody that needs the people that need to be on the board need to have be full and haven't been able to make a lot of committee meetings. And so that that told me right there that yeah, it's it's time to move on and let somebody else take the take the torch. So, uh, board, I wish you well. And it's been it's been a fun ride. And although it sounds like a eulogy, I'm not dying. Um, you know, I'll still be around. I'll still be uh
098I'll be still be there if you need me to advocate for anything. and uh be a be a a voice a reason for anything. So, but I appreciate everybody's input, everybody's um skill set that they bring because each one of you has a unique skill set that you bring and uh you know it'll be same with Mr. Garrison. He'll he'll bring in something too. So, um just thank you and and charge on and move forward. [Applause] We got more stuff. We got more. All right, board. Stick around right there. Board members. The state of Missouri used to designate a particular week for school board recognition. That has changed. The governor now has proclaimed the entire month of March as schoolboard recognition month here in Missouri. So, I want to publicly thank you for your dedicated
099energy and countless hours devoted to our community, devoted to our our team here. I mean, this is this is a group of seven that works so well with our group of eight to make a group of 15 make this district go. Our students, staff, and families benefit from every day from your service. And I might remind the public that these board members who are elected local residents do not receive any pay for their efforts. We are joining countless communities across the state in honoring the dedicated service of local boards of education. Thank you for your important contributions as you play a vital role in the education of our rape students. And to recognize your service, we have received certificates of appreciation from Missouri School Boards Association that Pam Steele will hand out now, as well
100as as letters of appreciation for Representative Bill Irwin's office in Jefferson City. After we are done here tonight, we'll also present you with tokens of appreciation that you won't want to miss. So, make sure you stick around for that. It's not a It's not a car. Members, thank you very much for your for your service. Thank you for that update, Dr. Slegel. Now on to the board of education comments. Bill took all the time. There's no more time left for that. Turn that off. I have a few more things I want to say. Yep, you're done. Ryan, turn off his mic. Um, I will echo what Dr. and all the cabinet would say I believe and say thank you again. Um we have a lot of fun up here sometimes and um you'll be missed
101but we'll replace you so it's fine. On calendar of events, April 14th is the reorganization meeting at 6 PM and April 24th is the regular meeting at 7 p.m. And if there's nothing else, meeting adjourned