001the approval of the consent agenda items does anyone have any exensions I'm good motion to approve the consent agenda item all those in favor say I iOS items are approved moving on to new business I'm going to do a roll call vote to schedule a Clos session to discuss student and Personnel matters as permitted by revised Missouri statute 61021 sections 31 13 and 14 at the conclusion of the Open Session second Melissa hi hi hi uh we are up to our pirate Pride update we want to share with you um this is our pirate Pride time Hub where our employees can access on our district website anyone else can access it as well um the information that we utilize to drive the pirate Pride initiative that we started this year uh this this initiative was
002started in lie of the students not doing Ami during snow days because we built in extra time minutes everything into our calendar so the teachers um worked with the salary and Welfare committee and the administration to come up with ideas on how we could utilize our time as teachers to increase the pirate pride and do things to support our students outside of the classroom city um a a lot of really amazing ideas have grown from this um it started with attending um plays concerts uh sporting events and led to um just a plethora of of opportunities our teaching staff also um explored opportunities to grow and do some professional learning um many of them have become um Quil podcast listeners now um because they are following um some professional Educators and growing and learning about
003that so we've got a really lot of good feedback from it at the beginning of the school year I came to the board and with the previous school year we had not missed very much school because of incom and weather last year was a pretty good not very many snow days year and so I asked the board if we could at least start three days ahead with the staff because there's so much work that the teachers and staff do that go into getting ready for school before that first official day and so the board agreed that because of all that extra that goes in we would start kind of banked with three in three in the basket three to the credit so then um those three days we we had those sitting in the bank
004for pirate pride and then the weather and the season started in and we started missing some snow so we started making up um and some teachers even got a jump start up uh fall Sports um saw a a really neat influx of people in the stands and it was exciting for the students to look up and see their their fourth grade crew of teachers to come out and watch them play ball and many other things as well so so those first three were built in the next three the teachers did all those different activities building up that extra Bank time and then this last three that takes us up to nine we went back to the teachers and said because we've missed a significant amount of instruction we need to take a little bit of
005time and really prioritize look at your lessons you're probably going to be a little off track now so let's prioritize let's get rid of some fluff what's that look like that took time so we gave them credit for that time three days worth of time they could build up kind of going through resetting priorities connecting collaborating with their Partners just kind of realigning curriculum so that we could get everything in that was essential before test time which is just right around the corner so that took us to 9 so we have two more days hanging out there because we missed 11 so far so I'm coming back to the board tonight to see if you all would allow us to give Grace for those last two days we've worked hard we've established a really great
006great habits we've really supported our students in ways that we hav in the best so I ask that the board give us day 10 and day 11 with a little bit of just debate those um and and we could still miss school we still could have reasons that we would not be able to have school everybody knock so um I'm just asking for the two and if we miss more then we will start start making time again after that so if you all will consider that um I think the teachers would appreciate it we've gotten like I said a lot of good feedback I went out into the buildings and sat in the teachers lounges and and answered questions they had a lot of really neat ideas we said yes to some things that were
007out of the box we said no to some things it's like that's something you're need to be doing and they're like well it's worth trying so but I think two more days um they would appreciate it very much if we could give them that 11 days in one school year that's a lot of snow days I just ask if you all would consider doing that and say hell little prayer for us that that's all we have I'll make a motion to wave those two days from the contract terms second all those in favor say I I oppose right we're moving on to um discussion item the msba policy update 224d has everybody had a chance to look at that I know it's is there any did Stacy did Stacy have anything that she wanted to
008um we just we looked at the one about the U the teacher placement but I think with with teacher recruit but it would be okay to leave that anybody have any discussion about any of these questions okay so next month they will move up to the consent agenda um to be approved and if no one has any other okay everybody okay um moving on to informational it items we have our student council reps here tonight to give us a report on attendance and I believe they have a video as well we have a slid yeah okay 're I'm just G on my head to you when I need the science ches that's okay yes can you intro can you introduce everybody please thank you so uh hi we are the student council here at Harville
009high school I'm Katie broking and I'm the president of our organization and these are all my officers uh I guess we'll go down the important L my name is AA day I'm the student council treasurer I'm will Hoover I'm the corresponding secretary I'm Alison Burns I'm the recording secretary I'm Morgan HW and I'm the reporter I'm Rey and I'm the committee leader filling in so today we are here presenting key reasons of Why students here at our school are missing school Beyond illness we conducted a survey if go ahead and slide and we we conducted a survey and 423 of our students filled it out which is 67.9% of our whole school population at the high school uh almost 70% which is amazing uh quite a lot of results and I'm quite proud of that
010and uh we found that at the day that we conducted this uh survey there was 47 students that were absent so not a lot either that was pretty good A lot of response the data reveals important trends that if address could improve attendance in Student Success the leading reason students miss school is for mental health anxiety depression and overwhelming stress make it difficult for students to attend many feel unsupported or lack of coping tools needed to handle these struggles if students don't feel mentally well their academic performance and attendance somewhere the second most common reason students miss school is lack of sleep whether due to homework extracurricular activities jobs or poor sleep habits students are not getting enough rest sleep deprivation affects concentration mood and overall performance schools could help by educating students on healthy
011sleep habits encouraging balanced workloads and even reconsidering start times many students miss school as well due to family events including weddings funerals and other obligations in some cases parents simply require their children's presence for important matters but this is a category that sometimes a student is going to have to miss for obviously the fourth leading reason would be for permit or driver's test which would be about 17.9% or 76 students a notable portion of students miss school for their permit or driver's test as appointments are often scheduled during school hours while getting a license is important Milestone it does contribute to absences this is another thing that is not very avoid avoidable to some kids send to miss school for 66 students admitted that they skip skipped school simply because they were just bored this
012highlights the need for more engaging lessons and Hands-On experiences when students don't feel challenged or interested they're more likely to disengage incorporating real world applications student-driven projects and interactive teaching methods could make school more compelling and encourage better attendance additional Reasons Why students miss school were vacation some families take trips during the school year leading to absences Transportation issues lack of trans transportation makes getting to school difficult for some students bullying some students avoid school because they feel unsafe addressing bullying is a crucial to improveing attendance homework and assignments not complete some students choose to skip to face to avoid facing the consequences of Unfinished work and students also miss because of errands some students are responsible for running errands for their families and which is taking away from school time and we had other
01312 students list other reasons yeah beyond the listed reasons 112 students report missing school for other reasons those included Sports commitments medical appointments work obligations hunting or personal appointments overall this data shows that absenteeism is not a simple issue students in the school for mental health reasons exhaustion family obligations and logistical challenges but want to improve attendance we must address these underlying CES and also look families of the students this isn't just a student issue it's also student involving parent it's also an issue involving parent by increasing mental health support promoting healthy sleep habits and school more engaging and working with students and families to create practical Solutions we can help Foster an environment that students not only need to be at school but feel they want to be at school so thank you any
014questions very very well done um thank you all for for this um I think we have some work to do because we want our students to be here and now that we've found out why the reasons are I believe we can we can get started with working on some of those so um we really appreciate that um and thank you very much because we get an attendance report every month at our meeting and kind of like why are the kids missing school and you know it's glad that it's you guys surveyed everybody to give us that information so we really appreciate that thank you how many how many uh answers were I was the survey constructed so the survey was cond conducted in kind of like a list style we were handed them we handed
015them different responses they could answer to and they could just fill out the boxes to whichever applied to them so some students could respond like to three answers or maybe four if possible but alog together uh that's what the responses showed and mental health was shown to be the highest that most people want uh what do you think the board or School leadership what message do you think we could give the parents to help this out school's really important I would say I think it needs to be emphasized a lot more it's very important to be here it's important to be with your friends be in classes get educated and uh to really learn all the stuff you need to learn to go out in life and be successful I also think if parents knew
016maybe of the description of some classes they would make their kids more Ed in those classes so like maybe I don't know attaching a description or adding more Hands-On um classes they would be more engaged with them have more fun thank you all very much what your next time whatever time give us thank you thank you [Applause] we're up on to our financial report I hate to follow that yeah okay so for our February Financial reports Lo it up a little bigger to see okay first we have all funds Revenue we have an overview that gives us our year-to dat information um so that we have have up through February of 2025 now and we can compare that Revenue by Source also to the two prior years so revenues tracking to come in a little
017higher than the prior years which is great um federal revenue however looks like it's coming in a lower federal revenue doesn't always come in at the same time um and we're seeing some paaw in some of that potentially so we'll be keeping an eye on that Federal UE is the smallest portion of our total revenue our largest portion of Revenue Source comes from local revenue and then you also have the numbers to look at so it's visually represented as well as numbers you can see what our prior year-to dat amount was compared to our current year to date what we budgeted or predicted that we would collect in revenue and the percent of the total budget that we've met up to this point and these are broken down by object codes same report same visual
018representation for those expenses that the district incurs up through February for this school Year's budget um we break that out also by objects so we have salary and benefits purchase services and supplies and materials so we are over halfway through our budget so we're watching to make sure that our expenditures are exceeding over the 50% range at this point also looking at those prior years to see where we were the year prior and the year before that on this same date those years ago when it comes in to expenditures we've made a real concerted effort to try to reduce our spending this year in this current budget to reduce our purchase services and our supplies of materials and you're starting to see that come to FR rich and in that visual representation there salaries and
019benefits we actually did not predict to see a reduction expenditures there because we gave our teachers and staff raises and we want to continue to be able to do that so that's one visual representation that represents an actual increase in expenditures the next portion of that is the actual numbers again just like the other one is set up the salaries the benefits and all other expenditures broke down into the number set so we can really watch closely some of those percents this is the time of year when we're going to come through uh really sit down and try to predict where we are with revenues did we estimate we always typically estimate revenues to come in very conservative just in case um but after we've got about to when we start getting February April if
020they're looking pretty steady and strong and it looks like we under budgeted revenues we'll come back to the board and ask the board to amend those Revenue budgets so that our reports visually represent a little better and the same with expenditures if we're a little heavy on one side we're going to play really close attention to that maybe something unexpected come up in the budget we had to um we experien of costs that we hadn't predicted so our expenditures may be high in a certain area or they may be under in a certain area they're really white under that means we're going to into the good and have a little carry over into next year's budget sometimes instead of carrying that over into next year's budget we'll go ahead and purchase out what we can
021ahead so that we start fresh again in July so this is just the uh year today financial report from everything from February back to the beginning of the budget year okay anybody have any questions moving on to our attendance report okay how are we track thank you student council I was very informative on attendance and it's ironic I've started reading attendance reports and I'm glad I did this last Thursday from what I hear seniors all right so primary Center uh starting out uh K is listed at the bottom kindergarten uh but overall at our Primary Center we had 95. 3194 and our first graders have the best attendants in this period reporting period here uh next up we had the elementary and we had as you can see I marked the grade level that had
022the best attendance there and that was third grade overall tracking at 95.4 n and then we have the Middle School School in our seventh graders um we're tracking at the highest there just a little bit 95.0 and then we're moving on to the high school and sorry freshman we have fresh freshman in in our past reports uh we're glad that our freshman have the highest attendance in this reporting period here 92.57 then we have the career center last one there and overall our Juniors were at the highest there 92.8% so that is this month's attendance reform Mr Hayden I just had a question just about the format so on the example you have there you see the attendance status percentage 6092 Yeah that's something we're still trying to figure out weed still give the 9090
023report a matter of fact I think we had group that talked with infinite campus today about how we can figure out what the 90 90% is so I as we think that's an inaccurate number yes thank you any other questions looks like our attendance continues to improve so that's good and next month we have our assistant principles I think quite a few of those are in attendance here they've been working really hard they met yesterday but they've been working really hard along with the principles as well on attendance they will be presenting to the board on how that's looking in each of their buildings next month so moving on to our class size report and I they they talked about student council talked about homework I think I might have failed my homework assignment because
024I uh I did K through five and I did not get that loaded or downloaded or link there but this is the last six years on our class sizes these were pulled from our data that we have on [Music] five thank you so I have a couple Elementary principles in the building and make sure I get the correct year we trans transitioned in 2019 to from K through five correct so we went to K first and second and then third fourth and fifth so I ran the first year that we moved to that where we had both a primary Center and then also the elementary and so what you're looking at there is each year and I try to simplify that on the total number of students the number of teachers and then the average
025class size so once again I apologize I didn't got did not get this to youe of time and the reason we always like to kind of take a peek at this um the board years ago approved a Target um because in some of our buildings we kind of yeah it's down there kind of felt like we were busting at the seams um with class sizes and we wanted to make sure that we had a Target so that every the district knew kind of where our Target was and then also the the desie recommendations and then the desie maximum maximum students in a classroom so um we just kind of like to take a peek at this every year to make sure we're not need to adjust some class sizes and we've got enough um teachers
026for that number of students so looks really good couple areas so the bottom right corner area there is the board approved I think that was probably almost 10 years ago maybe and so those new recommendations that are there in the right corner that's part of our MIP six that's the recommended also the maximum number that they have so if you look at this year's I'll just start with kindergarten uh pass right at the Target first grade would be above second grade would be right at it third grade is above fourth grade is home below and fifth grade shows there withth is at one less teacher and also first grade has one less teacher s yes sir 2425 school year um I see in each building you have 20 teachers um is that your target we
027have any positions open are you are you targeting for 20 currently uh we're going to have a recommendation a little bit later this evening to the primary Center that one is a little bit uh average class size is a little bit bigger so you may have positions open for both buildings or just one uh right now we just had one any other questions or discussions thank you for that we'll move on to the board newsletter a chance to kind of take a look at that sorry I do want to bring up that this Friday um we're having a professional development day so um and it's cafeteria style so if any of the board members would like to come over on Friday kind of take in some of those sessions um a lot of those sessions
028are led by our staff here um at the school district so um and there is like an array of sessions um that are available to um get some very valuable information about I think Jane sent out a a letter on that so if anybody has time on Friday anybody have any questions about the board newsletter or any discussion we need not we'll move on to our msba board report welcome to the March edition of the Missouri school board's Association report we begin this month with a focus on school Finance with very real concerns of a government shutdown in March and uncertainty in general with Federal funding there are a few specific actions districts should be taking to clean federal dollars msda senior director of school Finance Linda quinley explains hello welcome to this month's board
029report and this time we're going to talk a little bit about Finance with you very specifically focusing on what's happening at the federal level and state level related to some part primary grants and funding so just a key piece of information for you to know is that the recent halts or slowdowns or possibilities of those on our Federal grant dollars was not about our entitlement grants like Title One and special education those were really more about discretionary grants and so while we were not concerned about losing those main dollar sources for us we were concerned about loss of discretionary the good news is that those have been lifted right now and all money is Flowing but we want to talk just for a second about how to help your leaders that you're getting all of
030those revenues and what you do need to be watching our greater concern at this point in time is a possible slowdown or shutdown of the federal government which would then slow down or delay significantly your federal PR BS help meure that you are timely and consistently claiming those federal dollars so that if there is a Slowdown or a shutdown you don't incur any kind of a cash flow delay the end goal is to have those federal dollars in your pocket as quick as you can after you spend them so that if something happens at the federal level and there is a Slowdown or a shutdown you've got your cash instead of the beds having your cash keep in mind that as you go into next budget cycle their allocations will continue to come the leadership
031in your district will be watching for those allocations and planning to fully use those allocations our recommendation is going to be to continue next year like we're asking you to end this year and just be really intentional about getting those federal dollars spent should and claimed quickly the best practice is to claim your federal program dollars at least quarterly if not monthly keeping the funds coming in soon after they are spent by the district make sure the district spends federal dollars first saving state and local dollars to use as needed contact Linda quinley for finance questions and watch the weekly and the msba website for updates and information about upcoming Financial webinars msba spring virtual meeting was held recently and it featured Dr Phil Gore a former Seattle area school board member Dr Gore is
032also a nationally recognized researcher author and speaker on school governance the title of Dr Gore's presentation was building a culture of trust Dr Gore said that building trust and the work of school boards is critical school boards do matter when it comes to public education in fact we may matter now as much or more than ever we are one of those last bastions of local control local governance and we are the entity that ensures we're creating a more democratizing student population and young adults to take our place in years to come trust is just as important or more important than it's ever been before when it comes to this work in school board development we often tell board members that they are stewards of the Public's two most precious resources their children ever and last
033but certainly not least it's March which means it's School Board recognition month all of us at msba sincerely want to thank each and every one of you for all that you do your hard work and dedication to your schools and communities are appreciated and your commitment to all students does not go unnoticed visit the mspa website for materials to help Cate so with that thanks for allowing us to have some time at your board meeting and we'll see you in April for the next msba board report like to thank Garrett our safety officer resource officer um tonight our board um greet and meet was here at the high school and a big Boston Red Sox F okay and um we uh was recognizing our school safety officer um so thank you for being here and
034going over some of our school safety with our patrons that came thank you um next month I believe we're going to be at the transportation building um so that's your opportunity to be uh meet with your board members from 6 until about 6:45 U before the board meeting um if anybody has anything to bend our ear about um I do have a topic if it's okay with the board for our students for next time um test how do we get our test scores up how do you think that's a good topic for you think you can tackle that one it all right does anyone have a I can write it down is that okay test and I don't know what test you're referring to state test state test scores okay thank you all um all
035right I just need one more motion please toj she didn't realize all those in favor say I I oppose we are adjourned Open Session