Smithville School District Board Meeting - December 15, 2021

001welcome to the regularly scheduled smithville r2 board of education meeting for december 15 2021. if you would please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all call this meeting to order i will start with as soon as we get past it to the 7.0 the adoption and modification of the agenda 7.1 adoption modification of the agenda it has been brought to my attention that on the agenda item 11.8 in new business was stuck that far down on the agenda because they were attending another board meeting before they came and presented to us that meeting was cancelled because of the weather so this has

002been asked if we moved 11.8 up to 11.1 so that brad or whoever is here from the accounting firm can um lead so is that approved take a motion in a second to make that change and to modify improve the agenda second got a motion in a second to approve the modification to the agenda and to approve the agenda as modified any further discussion please vote motion passes 7.2 approved the board city joint meeting minutes from november 2nd 2021 comments questions or modifications or changes that need to be made to those minutes hearing none i'll accept a motion in a second to approve the board city joint meeting minutes from november 2nd 2021. karen it advanced to 7.4 on ice cream second got a motion in a second lynn and jeff to approve the ford

003city joint meeting for november 2nd 2021 any further discussion please vote that this is still on 7.4 so don't vote again we should be it advanced okay there is 7.2 we have a motion of second glen and scott please vote sir leonard jeff sorry okay motion passes 7.3 approved the program evaluation workshop minutes for november 2nd 2021 comments questions or changes need to be made to those minutes i'll accept the most in a second to approve the minutes from the program evaluation workshop held on november got a motion a second to approve the program evaluation workshop minutes from november 2nd any further discussion please vote motion passes 7.4 approved the regular session meeting is corrections modifications hearing that i'll set the motion in a second to approve the regular session meeting november get a motion

004a second to approve the regular session meeting minutes for november 17 2021 any further discussion please motion passes 8.0 approval of the consent agenda items we have four agenda items this month and consent agenda 8.1 approved bills for payment december 2021 8.2 supplemental pay for december 2021 8.3 approved board policy gbca for the third reading and 8.4 federal impact aid grant application 7002 comments or questions on the consent agenda i wondered if on this we could get a summation of here's the dollar spent from each what the grand total is from each fund and the bills for payment yeah the check registries yeah i must have to have one summary for all of them there's a couple of them here yeah we can we can look at providing you with more information there and we

005talked to robert and wayne see exactly what it is you're looking for jeff i guess jeff to what end if we look at the financial report and we're seeing all revenues and expenditures in an overall summary it's just nice to have the summary at the top and you know we wrote x amount just see if anything stands out to you yeah okay just makes a little bit clearer so you know general public's digging in and looking they can quickly see robert your thoughts on that on the consent agenda items carrying now and i'll set the motion of a second to approve the four agenda items as presented in our package we've got a motion in a second to approve the consent agenda items presented in our packet any further discussion please vote motion passes 9.0

006communications 9.1 correspondence you know we have a thank you card from donna catlett her father passed away in the district sent her family a plant and she's providing okay 9.2 more priorities updated yeah real quick here a few items uh first of all poac the program that you're familiar with is wrapping up at the middle school one of the things we've talked about recently as an administrative team is to bring some students to a future board meeting so we would like to have them come and visit with the board and tell you a bit about their experiences so you can be looking forward to that also the the second kindness and inclusion meeting took place on december 1st another very good meeting thank you for dr creditfield for her leadership in that area so very

007productive and we set our next meeting date for [Music] january in january january 12th january 12th so that's upcoming making progress in that area and really really good group of people remember the last time we did this we had one big robust meeting to kick things off and then it died off quickly that doesn't seem to be the case with this effort so i'm excited about that also robert's working with dlr our architectural firm looking at some cost estimates for the potential no tax rate increase issue of april of 2023 so we continue to put those details together so there's a couple of items for board priority number three and the last one addressed is board priority number one that's all i have there unless you have questions questions okay 9.3 assistant superintendent for academic

008services i have a few items on which to update the board thank you just a few items to update the board on um first at our last meeting um a student brought to our attention some books that she considers inappropriate and um is planning to initiate a book challenge so i just wanted to let the board know that the policy and procedures and forms associated with that have been shared with the student and she um and i and dr platt have been in communication with each other in addition dr platt and i have conferenced with the msba attorneys who wrote the policy to make sure that we fully understand the process um and what that should look like so we are prepared once those forms come in to begin that process um several meetings ago

009i shared with the board that we were approached by an organization called view scholarships to include our students in a scholarship research base and that has launched last week so our counselors emailed all of the junior and senior students and their parents and let them know of the registration process and the very next day the gentleman who put this together emailed me and said what have you done to let people know because you have more registrations than anybody so um clearly our parents and our students are interested and they are taking advantage of that and just to clarify what it does is um the students allowed to to register and create a profile that includes their gpa their act or sat scores and then of the universities that have partnered with view scholarships it will

010generate what automatically the student would receive based upon those two indicators it doesn't have anything to do with what if they applied for a music scholarship or an athletic scholarship those are above and beyond but these are the automatic ones just based upon academic performance so very excited about that we did find out today and that children's first the fund that is that we have to to deal with mental health issues and such for our students um denise had written a um a grand revision requesting funding for poac and they are funding two more rounds for both the middle school and high school so that is very very good news and lastly um four staff members including myself and a community member visited cedar rapids today and there's a school there called iowa big that

011is completely a project-based learning school that serves two different school districts and we were able to meet with the students and the staff and get a real good feel of how they organize that aspect of real world learning and just saw some amazing things and so our design team is getting very close to being able to draft a plan which is good because it's due to complement on march 25th so we need to get that together but we have um honed in on some of the aspects that we think are most feasible for our school considering its size and our staff but also that will have a great benefits for our students so i have to say that in my 24 years in education this is probably one of the most exciting things i've ever

012worked on and i think that this is going to be absolutely amazing for our kids so i'm very pleased with our design team and the effort that they're putting in and all the different perspectives that um they provide so um we will have some information for you after the new year as far as what that plan will look like um prior to doing our pitch to the kauffman foundation and if you don't have any questions for me that is all i have for you thank you uh [Music] um actually okay so everybody at home can hear me now so just to recap great weather last 30 days except for today got some great progress on construction uh so i have some some pictures to show you some information to share on our timeline we're tracking

013great we're on schedule we have the the roof is all weather tight then you have you see probably the brick around the bottom we have the wayne's coat going around about four foot high around the whole building and then we have the metal paneling that's going to be going on next but right now they don't have the structure to be able to put in the windows or the garage door so you can see that they have the plastic over those areas and they have that sealed so they can do all the work they need to on the inside so if you want to go into the next slide randy we can get into the details of course the two projects we still have left are the activity center that i'm referring to and then horizon

014eight facts systems i'll give more to that secondarily randy you want to go ahead the next couple slides you can go those pretty quickly so these are the mockups you guys have seen for months go ahead in the next one and i'll start getting just some pictures for some explanations here all right so here's a picture of uh standing at the old block house looking back towards the activity center and so you can kind of get a really good structure for seeing how this thing's coming together you can see the wainscot that i was talking about the bottom with the brick and everywhere you see black's gonna be more of a platinum-grade metal paneling going on there you can see the garage doors so on on great days you'll be able to take those garage

015doors up and have that outside area be able to transition back and forth between any activities going on uh on the first floor um with any of the classes and then the field and track so that's would be a great area to be able to transition to do lots of different things at once with lots of kids you can see the side door here is actually where the locker room is so when we have soccer games when we have football games that's where the teams can exit enter we now have a spot for the visitors obviously instead of the metal shed with the porta potties they'll be on the east side that you can't see from this picture so identical size locker rooms identical size facilities on each side for home visitor and then this

016is um kind of a close-up of that front that second story there is the wrestling room as well on the back side with the concessions and restrooms for our visitors as well so what's nice is the proximity to the softball field we'll be able to use that concession for softball it's not as ideal as having it right next to the softball field it'll be much better than we've had in the past until a later date when we do the combination softball baseball which is in 2026 in your master plan so this is the we're standing towards the east looking back west so this is the opposite side we're looking at so you see the mechanical hvac units so we do not have rtus on this building they actually sit down to the side on these

017slabs and so they're easy to access easy to maintain there will be a fence around the top of that retaining wall plus in front of these back units that have kind of a black mesh so you won't you know actively be able to see those if you're just looking at them you'd actually have to go in the fence and get into those so this is a great inside view i'm standing in the first floor in the weight room classroom area looking back towards the metal framing you see so right there i'd be looking at locker rooms coaches offices officials changing room so you can see the inside structure starting to come together and then this is the top level um on the i'm looking back west in what would be the wrestling room concessions area

018and restrooms so they have not started the inside framing yet that would be to to the my right side or if you're looking to the right of the picture that's where that's located where you see that hvac ducking up there that's where that's at and then there's windows if you're looking at the picture to the left or looking back to the field so we have made huge progress and so this is kind of a timeline just kind of showing where we're at the building isn't closed uh we're weather's height with the roofing and everywhere else the next thing that we're looking for for a milestone is to complete our drywall so with that building enclosed we're going to work inside we had spire finished their natural gas hookup last week so we'll be actually using

019our our hookup for that and not having to bring in propane to heat that space to keep it at the right temperature for that drywall construction so we're looking about february for drywall completion uh the athletic flooring for the first floor for the weight room which is going to be combined of that black matting and turf in the middle for plyometric drills other explosive drills you're going to have march of 2022 and then the actual install of the equipment is going to be in early may so while the contractors are working on the outside so they have they have to do final grade they have to build sidewalks down to the field they have to build the landing area in front we'll be able to get in the inside and put in all the equipment

020get all that installed in early may and then we're still looking at a late may completion and having an open house before school's in for everybody to see the area so we're on track we're on schedule um if anything could have hooked up the schedule um you know knock on wood it probably would have already happened with either perfume of steel or what happened with um weather and and trying to break rock for our foundation and luckily we were able to get through those time periods without that so so right now i mean there's a less of a chance for us to come off schedule than there was earlier in the project in september october and november so so that's a good thing but i mean it can't happen but it means it's less likely

021because we're through some major milestones with that so we need to move to the next one uh i want to let everybody know the progress on naming the building so to this point we just called it activity center we sent out a survey to our community members so staff students and community giving them a chance to give their input on the name of the building so we've compiled all those names and then on tomorrow i meet with our building naming committee and we're going to review all those suggested names and then they are going to bring a short list for you to review at your january meeting if you choose so to take action at that meeting um we would have a name for that building this process is following our board policy ff and

022just want to kind of give you an update on that so tomorrow we'll have a better idea of where the committee's at with some of the names that we have suggested from our community so the last thing i did want to mention on the hvac installation is we do get bids tomorrow for our hvac installation and our board meeting agenda deadline is the thursday before the meeting so we're a week after that for me to get those bids in for this board meeting since seven tomorrow um there is a price increase that's going to happen january 1st 2022 for the units that we are that they're bidding on and so if we're able to do a quick meeting before that january 1st timeline we can save around 12 dollars by having that meeting to get

023that um order in before january first so if uh that if that pleases the board i would love to have that meeting it would be a quick online zoo meeting to look at the bids to be able to approve those get our order in and be able to you know beat the january first price increases that they've announced for that so just wanted to bring that up you know you guys can talk that over and decide but uh estimated on installation so that'd be totally up to you guys whatever works for your schedule to be able to just have a virtual zoom meeting to be able to look at those bids so you need you need anytime i'm assuming that's going to manifest in a change order and that's why you need board approval well

024it's so anytime we have construction bids over a certain amount it requires workplace the amount of this is going to be somewhere in the 400 to 700 000 range for these hvac robert could send you some times um that you could choose from and um we need a quorum obviously we need four board members that are available it doesn't have to be an evening meeting uh probably take would take as long as you wanted to but it could be as short as you know 10-15 minutes to conduct that meeting right robert absolutely we'll have the vids ahead of time so you can look those over and and you know really dive into what those are and then of course in the meeting you know i can answer any questions this can be assumed right any

025questions or comments for mr hedgeworth thank you robert thank you 9.5 comments from the audience uh this is an opportunity for members of the audience to make comments to the board a total of 20 minutes will be allocated for public comments speakers will be heard in the order in which they notified the superintendent of their desire to speak if the 20 minutes expires prior to all speakers being heard any speakers not hurt may submit their comments in writing to the district office or email the board members directly individuals addressing the board state their name address limit their comments items or issues related to specific personnel should not be discussed in open session one thing we would like to add to this will be added later students staff should not be called out by name in

026public comments and as you address the board i mean you're free to address us i guess as you please but uh students and staff are asked to refrain from calling individuals out by name during this public comments section thank you first up tonight whitney carlisle carlyle like probably many of you i can recall a wide variety of emotions i experienced while learning to navigate [Music] there were times of frustration and anger i fought for what i think what that spark is while i have felt the divisiveness of differing opinions on how to approach this situation i have also felt so much strength and power of what can happen when you speak up and stand up for what you believe with the end of the year upon us i am feeling optimism and excited for what

027we have while i certainly know how many still here affecting the lives of many i believe good things are ahead and we will come out of this structure henry ford once said quote the only real mistake is the one from which we learn that i have learned that parents are a powerful influence and should be included and welcome when addressing the needs of our children and students we do not reach our full potential as a school district without parental involvement even if i did not see eye to eye with those with different themes around public policy i respect them and are also fighting for what they believe was best many parents in our district have been plea for months two and admin to make changes in our policies we thought would be best for our

028kids however it took a season assist letter from the missouri attorney general for our board to make the changes we were fighting for i hope moving forward we will improve on ways to hear the people in our community it shouldn't take a letter from the attorney general to allow parents to do what's best for our families talk to the parents in our community listen to their opinions answer emails create ways where we can have open discussions be more transparent and honest with us months ago i asked for another va style to be formed so that parents staff and ford could have an open conversation i still believe this would be valuable for our district while i am optimistic and eager for return to school plan from january i can't help but think of the at

029least 47 students who are unable to attend school this week many of those students are completely healthy and devastated to not be participating in their activities this week i sent numerous emails free to follow the words of our attorney general and end the mandates immediately while keeping these healthy kids home tomorrow and friday may not seem like a big deal to some i personally know a number of these kids they are devastated to not be able to participate in what are some of the most fun filled days of the year for our students they don't get a do-over for those memories missed please consider this when approving the starting of this plan approval of two new classes at the high school on the agenda tonight i am excited for these courses i love anytime you

030get a student more interested in me as a mom i dealt with the situation this year for my daughter in elementary school was recommended book to read that was completely inappropriate for her age this book contained descriptive sexual acts thankfully our principal and central office agree it was not suitable for elementary students i think one way to be more open friendly parents in our district i would encourage the list of books in this course to be included so it is clearly known to parents this will save any potential problems later adults have different ideas on what is appropriate for children so i think up front with all coursework will be best we want parents to be well informed on whether kids are learning so this is a small way of being upfront and it will

031go overboard one comment from the monday meeting wherever is the need to trust parents to be the right thing that trust goes both ways we as parents also need to trust that you will find ways to better listen to our concerns that you will encourage parents to come forward and ask the tough questions they have asking questions and wanting to inform is a good thing we live in a great community i am proud to be a small warrior our students are top-notch just last night after the basketball game many of our state championship operators stay and play catch with the little kids who walk out to them my kids included they didn't have to do that no one asked them to they did that because they're good kids they have been raised right and have

032strong values i look forward to sharing ideas on how i'd like to see us continue to raise the bar and help strengthen our students setting them up for success people are looking for a school district to demonstrate strong leadership and values instead of asking if other schools have implemented our study standards prior to us acting i want us to be the leader school district of this world too we have the great students a strong community involved and encouraging parents and wonderful teachers thank you [Applause] thank you uh just i hope the lord doesn't mind me saying this just so the public knows with our meeting the other night this board unanimously disagrees with the attorney general's interpretation and cease and desist order so just so that's out there you know there are any changes that

033were made to the return to school plan were not made because of cease and desist which is for transparency next to speak chris palmer it's sad that the law by class basically said the court says is i find it very interesting that the only reason that firm rash works with eyebrows only hurry vaccine works to find facts it's very interesting how that works in our community and if you don't see the bs in there we have given the school board unconditional control the teacher's competition control what i mean by management is that as a parent for the first two years of my kids going to school three um if you guys congratulations on the practices thank you guys so let me hear some stuff because i know you guys don't like to ask we've been

034getting this mask because again you want to stay in control c5 the social impacts that we can't even measure that's going on right now it's really never discussed on this one all we can talk about is athletics that seems like the only thing that people care about on this board well the masks the control again this was causing some of these issues i spoke with a friend of mine who just opened up a business and smithville he can't find employees kids this job his employer or the company started generally hires kids they don't want to go to work why is because of spirit and are we really raising kids to go out the real world and i'm really disappointed in people who basically said people on twitter basically and that's what's wrong with the school

035board right now there's too many good models so i personally think everybody should design including machines but i know that's not going to be the case so i do this i can't call people out with their respective wishes but those who are running on the board step down let another leadership have an opportunity principles if becomes successful we're going to have a gaming process back in place we have crt we have vaccine spending as well but guaranteed i guarantee you're going to so we need leadership thank you very much thank you next up [Music] um i recognize the struggles that we all have been through since the start of the constant efforts made by board teachers staff and parents in this initiative analyze data and apply results to the creation of their best version of

036the safe learning environment and safe decisions and i think that dr shoots summed up accurately when he said that all school districts have been miniature health departments have been judged and jury and making all of the determinations and what needs to take place this burden is not something that should have ever been put on your shoulders but the school districts when they already have an important task of providing an education and quality education for the children in their districts i am grateful for the attorney general stepping in to lift effort not fair changes on the shoulders of the schools and their staff and i appreciate the efforts that the lord has made to try and beat in the middle when the attorney general has stepped in ahead without this heavy burden on your shoulders it

037reduce their stress and now apply their efforts to the education and anything else that might need their attention now is not on school's shoulders to continue maintaining massive amounts of data and implementing and navigating complex feeding criteria and nasty guidelines i'm hopeful that we can continue to move forward and focus on other more important issues my gratefulness is no longer 100 on your shoulders so that we can share the burden with you which is what we always want it doesn't matter who thinks they have control who is actually in control it doesn't matter what we say we are going to do many ways and that is what we actually do actually speak louder than words that's something i tell my children all the time what we should focus on is moving forward together we should

038look to the future how we can support each other to ensure our priority is always the education of the children the children and their quality education is what we have wanted for so long is to be able to support each other it's interesting that she must be brought up in the reason that we trust in each other this is something we've been asking for for so long we've been asked many times for you to trust us as parents trusting each other and trust the supporters of the district the students and the staff trust that we can make responsible decisions for ourselves and our families trust is what we've been seeking and i have been and always will be an advocate for all people and their ability to choose for themselves and their own families regardless

039if we agree or not i trust that they can choose for themselves and we can still all move forward together we must all give our trust to one another now not demanded from each other we have to be giving in our trust of each other we will all have each other's facts and we can trust each other to make our own informed educated decisions that will continue to drive us all towards the ultimate goal in the state which is a safe effective healthy and enjoyable education and i'm grateful for this new opportunity for us all to move forward together and i hope we all jump in together trusting each other and having each other's lives thank you thank you uh 10.0 old business 10.1 general financial review yeah you have the review in your packet

040and we can answer any questions you have in that regard if there are none the update on enrollment is the same as last month at 25.53 uh down a few from the start of the school year which is not at all income any questions on the financial review or the update on enrollment okay we'll move on to 10.3 student recognition 9. dr creditfield at our administrators meeting last week we discussed some options for the student recognition and what we would like to propose is to pick one evening and have the three elementaries rotate through we would need to set a specific time frame somewhere 30 to 45 minutes should be sufficient so each elementary would have a specified time for those students teachers parents grandparents whomever would like to come to come for the recognition

041and then we would bring another elementary in and the third we would finish the evening with the middle school in high school combined because those usually don't have quite as many students um it would take a little bit longer but it would allow the celebration to be a little more intimate with each individual building and would also keep us from being standing room only in the pack so if that meets with your approval i have a date that i would like to recommend which is monday january 31st you have a board workshop or a program evaluation the very next evening so that may not be your favorite but um that would be um that would give us enough time to get all of the certificates printed and get feedback from the teachers and have everything

042prepared for that evening sarah denny does that um we would probably want to start about probably six and i think we could do 30 minute rotations because when we did everyone it took us 45 minutes to an hour so i feel like that would be sufficient time to have all the recognitions complete allow one group to leave and another group to come in all right i'll continue with that and get the nominations from the teachers and we'll get that rolling thank you very much yeah this is a great tool that we've been utilizing for several years now mr kruger put this together with the help of uh great breaker and uh wayne are you going to present this or is robert looks like you are okay about some of the projections into the future so

043that's kind of how we'd like to do it and then entertain any questions that the board may have much of this information actually is also reflected or will be reflected tonight by westbrook and company when they talk about fy 21 but as dr schust alluded and randy's working on getting this document pulled up there was a pdf document because that's what was favorable for your electronic school board packages pdf document it's actually a spreadsheet and it's an express it's a spreadsheet that allows us to manipulate uh to do projections for revenue and expenditures based on known assumptions that that's the beauty of this rule but it's also a historical document that provides actual revenue and expenditures based in certain categories from the previous year and then add some comparative data for you to look at

044so i want to share with you just a couple pieces of that comparative data for you to look at this evening for example we're going to focus on fy 21 which again is the budget uh audit documents you know you're going to review tonight so for example on the revenue section and these are these are audited numbers these are these are audited numbers these are not projections so for revenue last year for for f y 21 you received a little over 11.5 million dollars in local taxes for revenue everybody see that on the document when you need to look up there you go so so that that first box at 11.5 there is is local taxes so and from a comparative standpoint you can see that the previous year you've received about 10.3 in local

045taxes why why the big jump um anybody i want to take a stab at that two two reasons no two reasons one if you recall voters approved the ten cent transfer from your fund three to fund one leaving the tax overall tax rate the same that transfer again generated more operational dollars uh not the the total amount was the same but again it went into a different pot so you could operate with those funds and then secondly you can see there at the very top of that you had overall in the district about a 10 million dollar increase in overall assessed valuation so an increase in success valuation generated more local taxes you can go through and you can see that like our prop c money was about the same but you can also see

046that our other local was almost a million dollars less than the previous year and not only was it almost a million dollars less than the previous year you can see comparative from previous years back we were pretty much running about 1.9 million in other local revenue for multiple years in a row but last year again it was just a million dollars why anybody crickets ferris bueller moved here the reason is is because uh kova and and the fact that you were not serving lunches you were not serving meals or charging meals for the meal money that comes in for meal services local revenue wasn't there secondly activities didn't charge gates because again coven local revenue that had a significant impact on your budget but as brad would probably mention if you go down and skip

047down a line you received 3.3 million dollars in federal money last year that was an anomaly two main reasons one coveted relief funds federal covered relief funds secondly i mentioned we didn't receive a lot of local revenue from food service we received a lot of federal money from food service because those meals are being subsidized because of cobra so again that's illustrated there in this document overall last year we received about eight percent more revenue than the previous year and again that's reflected in your asbr our our overall uh fund reserve balances went up almost a million dollars and again it's associated with those items that i just mentioned as far as revenue randy if you'll go down to the bottom section or the lower section of this document we've also broken it out for

048you in in the term of expenditures and we've broken it out between certified staff benefits non-certified staff the cost of insurance the cost of purchase services um which would be like food service and transportation consulting supplies and etc and you can see for example from year to year what those overall expenditures have been in those particular categories those are audited numbers and then down at the bottom of the chart again you can see um kind of where our bank balances have been at the end of the year on june 30th and again those were actual numbers robert's going to talk about the beauty of this tool one it's very um enlightening to see where you've been but it's it's more telling to see where you're potentially gonna go and that's the beauty of this tour

049i'm just gonna talk about that this week thanks wayne so green can you zoom out a little bit so they can see the labels that's good so it's wayne was saying the great thing about this tool is it's really the projection of the future so everything all the data that wayne gave you is from fy21 before is on asbr they're all those data it's those exact numbers at the end of the year the annual secretaries will report it's reported in destiny and those are the actual numbers we have we're looking forward when we project what we think our revenues are what our expenses are going forward the great thing about this tool is we can project different scenarios and it will show us what that cost will be how it will affect our balanced budget

050and what that does so it reserves over time so for example randy if you want to scroll to the right and go to fy23 if we look at that area that area will tell us any new dollars that we might be spending on staff so for example um if we added 250 000 in expenses which equates about to adding 750 to the base for certified staff and once you enter that in that automatically changes all the data for fy23 and four gears so if you can scroll down a little bit you can see what our reserves look like for fy23 if we added that um to the base there you go 18.09 percent and you can see the subsequent years how it lowers our reserves you can also see that you would be 136 000

051in the red with that now i do want to say that we've been very conservative on our revenue for our future years meaning we've only assumed a 3 assessed valuation increase we have not assumed any money from pilot payments for the data center there may be some but we want to be conservative because there may not be as well anything we get will be added revenue that we did not anticipate now the great thing about this is in april we may find out more information that we are going to get pilot payments for fy23 and we can adjust this document as we see here um so randy go ahead and pull out that 250 000 if you don't mind and you can see how the numbers will adjust back to what they were with our

052current assessments now this schedule also assumes rolling the schedule for certified and classified staff so that cost is already baked in another feature of this if you look at row 45 it talks about different budget adjustments so there might be different things that happen for budget adjustments for example um we might be able to put in we have an estep program an early separation incentive program for our staff once we find out the savings that we have from that we can put that amount in there and it'll show us how fy23 adjusts and future years adjust because that is a recurring cost whether it's new staff or staff that or a different rate coming in that's recurring cost so so way less the fun stuff for me everything this document does is you know it

053shows the past where the numbers are to prepare but being able to put in different scenarios and have it adjust for future expenses future revenues in real time show what that reserve ratio is going to be and looking at the future so right now you can see reserve ratio gets up to 90 percent stays pretty steady again we have been conservative with revenues but one thing i did want to point out about this is our current enrollment so i believe our enrollment is on this sheet it's in the middle and it shows our enrollment for the last two years so the last two years our enrollment has actually declined about 90 students over two years so just so you know from the state you get paid about forty five hundred dollars for weighted ada and

054that's for a hundred percent attendance uh for that way so if you have a hundred students about forty five hundred dollars you can see that's 450 thousand dollars of reduced revenue that we receive from the state so that's something i do want to bring up uh to the board um but i do want to know that in talking with other districts from the state that's something that everyone is seeing everyone has seen some reduced enrollment over time uh you know everybody can theorize what that might be um you know population uh birth rates are starting to flatten and decrease um you have more kids at home school you have a lot of kids um they decided they want to go to private school so there's lots of different factors in that but um you know

055with buildings starting to increase in the area you know again with more options for homeowners you know i think we'll see that reversal tick back up so i did want the the board to note that um you are paid for from the state for the current year or the highest of the previous two years and so because those previous two years were declined next year if we decline again it will be real dollars from the state that we will lose out because we won't get to use during the previous two years as our highest wada so um a great tool again um you know wayne's passed us along to me but it's a great projection tools we deal with our salary benefits committee and look at options for next year so i can answer any

056questions [Music] i assume that's why a lot of our data is probably in pdf versus excel so as we kind of look at preparing next year's budget i want to challenge us to maybe present our budget and our data a little bit more transparently and see if we can you know a budget message is a copies of an excel document that's really hard to read and i think platte county does a great job with their budget document i wonder if we can move to you know that type of format where it's presented in a little bit better format on in a little bit more absorbable by the general public and so that's one of my asks as we kind of look at this document as we look at our audit here our results here in

057a little bit [Music] absolutely thank you it looks like it looks like the uh projections over the next hand four years is still below our targeted um percent on reserves is that correct yes uh [Music] i get that and i understand that um [Music] bottom line is if we don't look at the data center we're we're not gaining any ground on our target to get ourselves healthy again we're all sitting back waiting for the status center which is going to be a good thing but we need to look at the waste we have now and get ourselves under control because when we get an influx of money the waste is just going to it's just going to be magnified so i'm going to challenge the administration to look and see how we can't get that

058reserve percentage to go back up before we get the dollar center money so we can be fiscally responsible so when we do get a nice windfall again we're not increasing waste we're using our money wisely and so that's one reason why i know we started early is to work with that street plan and and not only look at you know ways to use additional dollars from the data center but also take a 10 000 view of different things that we don't utilize as much anymore and carve those out so this year in in our community and 40 million projected for next year are we taking that account into that plug into these numbers right so right now we're looking at 3d percent that's what we look like looking like process valuation so that's [Music] okay

059so we're fairly conservative with our projections on some of the activity that we're seeing around town very conservative and you're very uh on the revenue production please keep in mind uh you know with the new construction that you reference and that very first sugar comes on assuming it's not under some kind of taxing or financing models or another chapter program uh it comes on as reconstruction and we benefit you know in that first year totally but in the second year third year et cetera likely we would have to prefer the being around in the projections over the last four years there's we always come in super conservative and we always are kind of exacerbating the expenditures to agree what is can we get from you know a trend on the last four years of percent

060of projections and forecasters versus actuals so we can see kind of what the margin is in between there because you know what scott's really getting at is you know what are the operational you know reforms that we need to consider and really start stressing through that that planning process but it gets hard to do that when we have variability in terms of and i get that that's a loaded question right because there's so many unknowns that you don't have but if we look and we start to pull out the outliers in terms of you know covid years and stuff like that when we're projecting a normal operating year we can start to see what the percent of variability is in between that and then we can start to kind of hone in a little more

061financially on what is that true impact from a forecasting standpoint because right now we always do really good at being super conservative and coming in underwear and better projections you know i remember one year we came in you know there's an additional three hundred thousand dollars that we weren't expecting but it didn't manifest into expenditures and it was good for us um so i appreciate that piece of it but i also know that there's wiggle room in between there and i think you know when we go through planning perspectives about operational op you know how do we optimize that we have to kind of hone in on that a little better we have that data matter of fact that's one of the documents or references in the audio of the year that is you know

062actual uh versus projections and then we have to answer what they call a variance report and we have to explain why there's such a discrepancy if it's over now so we could go back and provide you with that historical data it's already all it's actually on the website already it's loaded that would be helpful again this audit wants yeah it's just more awareness and accessibility when we go through planning stages yeah yeah uh you hit on some things there i know the last couple years um we've come to the end of the year and we've praised and jumped up and down and been happy because we got her some money or this code would pay a lot of money or this and it's always helped the budget but it kind of overshadows the fact that

063if we didn't have that extra influx of cash uh he'd be a whole lot worse than we are so we do oftentimes sit there and uh real conservative but lately even in our conservative numbers we've missed the mark if it hadn't been for government intervention and again i'm oh i think we need to figure out where we're at find the waste and get ourselves under control so that when if if and when the windfield does when fall does come we're not we're not wasting money and wisely i want to piggyback on that in a moment try to tick and tie some common themes from this evening so between the realities of covet uh new state standards that are getting put in place um our strategic plan is already out of date and we're in year

064three of that so we will be instituting a new strategic plan which will heavily involve community involvement and it'll be a great opportunity for many folks to get involved in presenting what they feel priorities are so that is something that will be coming online in the next year or so as we seek to do that likely institute a vendor to someone to help kind of pull that process together so plenty of opportunity for community input on how we proceed and where we want to put our our dollars against priorities that you all get to help come up with so absolutely it's exciting times as i previously mentioned in reference to strategic plan again 30 plus years in the district the budget has dictated the strategic plan and that's backwards i'm just telling you that the

065strategic plan needs to dictate the budget and we've not been in a position to do it that way and i'm excited because we will be and i'm confident that we will be so the strategic plan will be the driving document and the budget will have to reflect that versus the opposite any other comments or questions for mr kruger or mr hedgehorn okay thank you 10.5 safe return to in-person learning and continuity of services plan yeah so we do not have a coveted update for you tonight uh you discussed covet at length on monday night what we do have for you is the official return to in-person learning plan uh continuity of services uh plan uh whatever we're calling it now and you can see exactly what we're calling it so this is the content of

066this plan is what was presented to you on monday night we need your official uh approval of this plan and moving forward what we will do is bring to you a brief covet update at each meeting and ask for a renewal of your approval of the plan each month for good measure so that is our plan moving forward and tonight we would ask for your approval of the safe return to in-person learning and continuity of services plan come answer questions yeah i wish i would have saw this uh monday when we looked at this if we go down to look at the close contact tracing i struggle with a part of that plan and i just need to come out and publicly say that i struggle with this part of the plan and it says

067there says that um where is it hang on a second if students were in close contact they will need to be excluded from school or work if they or they will not need to be excluded from work school or work if they are without symptoms or are fully vaccinated or have had covid19 in the previous three months the way i read this as it's written here is if i am showing symptoms of covid19 and i am fully vaccinated then i am still allowed to be in schools and quite frankly with or without the vaccine if you're showing symptoms and you have co-weight you need to be excluded you're still carrying the disease you're still just as likely to infect anybody as somebody that's not vaccinated so i think we need to reload that portion what

068uh could you where scott is that in the plan did you direct me [Music] first paragraph right now we're seeing students will not be excluded if they're close contacts and that's you're you're you're understanding that part but if they're vaccinated in showing i am if if you're showing signs of government whether you're vaccinated or not vaccinated you need to be excluded from school i mean if i'm if i have a pink eye and i'm showing signs of pink guy even if i've been vaccinated if there was i would still have to be excluded because i'm showing signs and symptoms of that disease so it is a chemical disease if you're showing signs vaccinated or not we need to we need to keep the rest of the population safe questions will be excluded until you meet

069the other criteria as listed here regardless of vaccination i can describe that position so if they're without symptoms everybody's okay with that if there's no more comments or questions i'll accept a motion a second to approve the safe return to in-person learning and constantly continuity services plan second lane and in motion in a second any further discussion please vote ocean passes moving on to new business 11.1 i welcome brad steele with westbrook and company to go over our fy21 financial audit so he's getting that ready uh again my name is bradstein on the cpa with westbrook company to perform gerard i'm not going to go through every single page of the item we're just going to go through some of the highlights and some of the financial information if you've got any questions on any

070part about it even if i don't if it's not part i go over just feel free to stop me at any time and we can answer any questions you have the first part i always want to point out is is the infinite and it states in here in our opinion the financial statements referred to above present fairly and all material respects that means you have to clean out what your bonding company is looking for that's what destiny's looking for anybody that's hoping sure that's your audit that's one of the first things they're going to look at make sure you get it from mine the next the next uh page i'm going to show you is the statement of activities on the modified cash basis you can see here on the governmental activities on the left-hand

071side the expect the expenditure is there and then the program revenue is directly related to that governmental activity and if you look for example transportation we spent one 1.4 million almost 1.5 million on transportation the true cost of the district is about 1.25 million because you have not turned 40 or 340 000 that was reimbursed uh that was killed by guessing so that's what this report says you're kind of the true cost of summoning activities this is your balance sheet and you can see there uh there's a general fund special revenue fund fund debt service fund capital projects is what it says it's capital projects and all your capital projects are spent out of that debt service any type of thing that's where your principal interest payments are coming online in bonds the special revenue

072is where all your expenditures or your certified staff are okay and then the general funds everything else so your general general fund and special revenue fund are your operating funds that's your authority that's where your operations are coming from so you can see that your total total cash in each one of the funds this is your revenues and expenditures by fund and so you can see their your general funds special revenue that service the capital project and you can see there at the bottom the net changing from balance so between the two about a million dollars to the good on the operating that's good you guys had a good financial year that's that's a good sign um and you can see there you've got service and then your capital projects because of the proceeds you

073know for these are your bonds and certificates of participation the balance the additions the retirements the balance there at the end of the year and then will not do within one year on this slide i'll tell you the principal interest payments from maturity and all your bonds i've seen so you can't hear your uh certificates of participation for a few guys important now the next three slides are graphs to kind of summarize uh your financial information this is a a comparison by on revenue by source and you can see there your revenue has gone up and then over the last five years from a from the standpoint of where it's coming from as a source of local county state or federal you stay pretty consistent as a percentage that's pretty normal so nothing out of

074ordinary range they pretty pretty pretty level there you go this is the same type of graph for your operating expenditures where it's coming from whether it's hourly benefits purchase services supplies capital outlay one thing to notice here you guys are about 78 percent personnel costs on your operating budget um most of our schools you get this question a lot about where everybody leans most of our schools out of approximately 42 i would say probably 30 of them are in that 70 to 75 percent range four or five maybe three four five or above that seventy five percent and three or four below the seventy percent so you guys are the ones that are up there above the 75 percent on personnel outcomes this is the probably the most important graph that we have we track

075your reserve ratio over the last five years and you can see there that it got up it went up a few about three percentage points this year uh on the reservation got to 18.78 that's great uh we'd like to see our schools up around the 20 range so that's good and then you can see your average daily tenant dropped a little bit and as robert was saying earlier the we've seen that a lot of a lot of schools that we do the ada's dropped issue um a number of different reasons some people just say you know what yeah i'm sure coco places uh you know private schools um homeschooling so just depends on whether that's going to come back we've seen that a lot this year out of ordinary drop a lot of the schools

076that typically doesn't happen we also have to give an opinion on your compliance with missouri laws and regulations and that's what this is and we can say here that they're fairly state we did know a couple of the material immaterial instances of non-compliance that have been fixed anything that has most of these missouri laws regulations have to do with the budget and attendance and transportation is the biggest part of this regulation here and you know some immigration instances that were corrected and we submitted the destiny has been collected on that on the attendance interpretation we also look at your internal controls as a way to plan for our eyes we don't get an opinion on them but we look at them as a way to think through your audience if you notice some significant deficiencies

077or material weaknesses we'll bring those to your attention in this case we had the same one we've had over the last many years we've been doing on the significant efficiencies just because of the internal controls on the segregation views so nothing nothing immediately um this is a summary of the audit results you can see there is both an unmodified opinion on the financial statement audit and the federal awards audit there is a significant deficiency uh on internal controls you have a lot of mitigating controls in place and that's why we've taken it from a significant deficiency um our material weakness a few years ago then it's significant efficiency because of all the mitigating controls we put in place but the fact that it's still there's still the opportunity there that's why we still have to

078approve um federal awards there were no findings on material weaknesses there and if you look down here these are the two um major federal programs this year there there's the uh significant deficiencies on segment of these and this one's that and then there's no findings or questions are two recommendations yes [Music] oh the limitations and what causes that deficiency yeah they have they may you know something you know we all have to control the place where you can handle you've got dual signatures there's checks that clear banks all the time so the signatures don't move as much um so she could she could process something and maybe go into attacking the same but this is the same as the process that can go undetected in the normal course of the jobs that are being done

079this is where we get recommendations as you can see um there's a w formula you just want to make sure you get all those in place um in the federal program expenditure coding this is uh i've got two more things tonight this is the only north ellen school because of the new cares money and new uh uh totally mine was coming through bessie put a new project code in for everything so all those expenses i had to go back and say okay what we spent on now we've got to change the project on all those experiments so that's something that that we're assisting with right over here and that's that's that's been fixed as well and in some schools and i know i've said this before but since we've had any board members i want

080to go ahead and say this now smithville is from from an auditor standpoint we really enjoy coming here because of the way things are handled if we have a a recommendation or something that that we recommend it's useful for the school uh 100 of the time it's implemented before i come back you know your administration wants things right they don't they don't take offense when we when we make a recommendation they want to okay yeah we should have done that how did we fix it what we need to fix it okay now we're going to make sure we're going to put a procedure in place or something to make sure this doesn't happen here so from where we stand as an auditor that's something that if i was on the board i'd want my administration

081handled it that way so i want to make sure you guys are aware that's the way it is the tone set at the top here and and things are handled and we enjoy um we enjoy coming here because of that you know it's not pulling teeth every time we every time we come here we can come everything's ready when we come so we don't have to you know bring it to the first day and see how what's going to be ready and what's not going to bring four people the first day and hit the ground running because we know that smithville things are going to be ready for us to start working as soon so we appreciate that any other questions on the eye okay thank you thank you brad and congratulations on the state

082championship thank you thank you okay if there's no further questions uh this time i'll accept a motion in a second to approve the final fy 21 financial audit performed by westbrook got a motion a second got lynn and sarah or ian and sarah sorry any further discussion please vote promotion passes 11.2 considered district nominee for msba john t belcher scholarship yeah for our newer board members the john t belcher scholarship obviously sponsored by msba they coordinate this scholarship each district sends their nominee that chooses to participate sends their nominee forward so there's one per district and this particular year you just have the one application and so that is in your packet and um hopefully you've got a chance to look at that and i do need though it's action from this board to formally

083approve that applicant to move forward in this competition any comments or questions if not i'll accept the motion in a second to approve this nominee for the msba john t belton's development so moved in a second to approve the application as presented in our packet for the msba john t belcher scholarship any further discussion please vote motion passes 11.3 workers workers compensation employers liability insurance coverage yeah this is simply a renewal and um we recommend your approval of this renewal with mem for our workers comp and employees liability insurance comments or questions on the package that was provided last 12 months have have done for us we don't have any estimates on what would cost you next year went up about 11 000 i think last year but we're still the top top tier as

084far as live building you guys so we're we're getting the best rates throughout the country so it claims for the last 12 months do we know what those look like um right we recently met with christine and he reviewed our claims with us um our carrier carriers mem we do have some claims they've got some funds set aside for some possible high claimants but when we reviewed the information we think that one of those is going to fall off without having a significant payout um across the board we've had a few irregular incidents take place but your typical trips falls slips those sorts of things we're doing really well with those so i mean we have work to get in that top tier for pricing and we'll remain in that tier for next year hearing

085none i'll accept a motion in a second to approve the workers compensation and employers liability insurance coverage renewal as presented in our package second in a second to approve the workers compensation and employers liability insurance coverage as presented in our packet any further discussion please vote motion passes 11.4 2021 annual performance report data in your packet i provided performance report data i know that susan has a question um and so i'll let her ask that and then if any you know if anyone else has questions i'll be happy to entertain [Music] them okay sorry um my question was that i was just looking at the standard three the indicators one two three and if you look back at our previous years um like in 2019 remember 82 and 60 so i just asked michelle um

086i figured koben probably had something to do with this but i asked michelle just to explain what this means and why maybe we think that's happening a little history um for three years in 2015 2016 and 2017 the state required that all juniors take the ect and the state paid for it so we had 100 participation um now i want to be very clear that percentage that you see there does not represent participation it is a they take the score they quantify it and then they divide it by a number of graduates so i'll explain that to you in a moment um but we had 100 participation which means that we were getting some points for every single student who graduated when they stopped doing that with the graduating class of 2018 as a district

087we decided to continue offering the act at our expense for any junior who wanted to take it and at that point we had about 75 of our student body who would choose to take it all of the other students either took the compass at that time which is it was a very common entrance exam for community college or they took the as lab which is required for going into the military so again we had 100 participation in march of 2019 we had our district act scheduled we had the asvab scheduled for later that year we did not come back after spring break so um instead we we offered vouchers i ordered vouchers for every student who signed up for the act i mailed it to them some of those kids never used their voucher and

088the kids who were going to take the asvab were not in session so that explains that middle year in the drop last year we had so many kids who were online and although they had the opportunity to come in for all of those tests they chose not to there were about 50 graduates who chose not to come in so for those students when we quantified the score that is actually how that percentage is generated they actually got zero points so let me explain to you i'm going to use the act as an example um every one of the entrance exams and the three big ones for us again are the asvab the act and the work keys now is what we're using and ncc our partners over at northland career center come and actually administer

089that test for us and we pay for that as well so all of these are free of charge to our kiddos um the using the act as an example if a student scores 26 or higher they earn a score of 1.25 if they score between a 22 and a 25 they earn one point if they are 18 to 21 they earn 0.75 if they are below 18 they get 0.25 and if they don't take it they get a 0. so we rarely have a 0 on this indicator because we test everyone they're here and when they can do it um and so that is why our scores traditionally have been really high in this area but last year we had 50 kids with zero which is typically something that we don't have so um i

090believe that after this year we again were signing up for act right now they have until friday to indicate that they want to take that test on march 22nd right here in our building um every other graduate who has not taken the act we will contact them and ask them do you want to take your work keys or do you want to take ads back we will arrange for those things to happen during the school day and i anticipate that we'll see that back up again just say thank you you and dr shoots took what an hour and a half and met with me last week and kind of walked through some of the desi data that is part of the broad reporting and you know we talked through the changes in testing and you

091know jesse's recommendation and almost not look at some of the data based on covet and other things so wanted to thank you for that time and with that uh we kind of talked through and wanted to highlight kind of my request that you know with some of the data that's in here it'd be nice to see us benchmarked against our peers peer districts in the area and so i think that's something kind of going forward as we kind of look at strategic planning and other things would be helpful as we kind of move forward but i want to thank you and dr shoots for that time and going through in detail to help me understand some of the data i was looking at so thank you [Music] okay thank you 11.5 new course recommendations for

0922022-2023 so these are two english courses to be taught online that would become part of a rotation and to answer whitney's question these courses would not have any required text students would be able to choose whatever text they would like so within the young adult genre they would choose their own selection the teacher would provide instruction about things that are common in young adult literature and the students would then apply that in the book that they have chosen the same thing with the great books those would be classics that the students would choose so you could be reading warranties i could read jaylen two studies and we would apply those skills within the text that we have chosen so there would be no required text for these courses do you have an estimated cost for

093these new courses there would be no cost okay we would be able to we have an acceleration that we would be able to be able to use our library's collection or courses that we have in our own and it would be during the normal hours of teacher schedule yes any additional comments or questions hearing none i'll accept a motion in a second to approve the new course recommendations for 2022-2023 as presented in our package got a motion a second to approve the new course recommendations for the 2022-2023 school year as presented in our package any further discussion please vote motion passes 11.6 2021 c policy updates policies dcb kkkb for the first reading yeah a couple of updates here as danny mentioned dcb has to do with political campaign contributions and when i look at

094this update um it's really what it's been it's been our policy all along uh we may not use public dollars to make contributions to political campaigns so not a big change here at all um but these uh that is recommended by msba uh as a policy update the other one kkb has to do with recorded recordings uh during meetings and from this revision you can see that there's a section addressing recordings by parents and guardians or family members that the administration or school staff superintendent or designee is how it reads may not allow recordings of those particular meetings so this policy addresses those issues related to audio and visual recording this is a first reading and we recommend your approval answer questions just so the public that's uh watching this and hearing this is isn't

095overly concerned none of this precludes a parent from videotaping their kid at a athletic event playing on the field yeah i realize that i just want that i want that to be stated so everybody that hears you know we're not oh we're not trying to forego somebody taking their phone out watching a kid [Music] any additional comments or questions hearing none i'll accept a motion to approve the first reading for dcb and kkb policy updates second got a motion a second to approve the 2021 c policy updates dcb and kkb for first reading any further answer questions please vote motion passes 11.7 2021 or excuse me 2020 2021 exit survey summary and retention data would you want to do 11.7 first personnel report i have the exit survey summary retention data on this sheet again

096from we can address those doesn't matter to me i can go to 11.8 which is what my screen reads let's do that yeah this exit survey and retention data the boards had a chance to review and ask some preliminary questions i really appreciate the board's attention to this data this is really important data to the administration and as you look through uh historically uh our heydays are in the low 90 retention rate uh i want to point out that as late as 2019 um was the national average uh for teacher republican rate uh that's the national average so you know for for what that's worth for me as long as i've been in the district for 13 years i prefer to be in the low 90 range we haven't been there for a while as

097we look at this data but the last couple of years have been very very atypical right so if last school year was a storm uh this school year has been a tornado as it relates to what it's like to be a teacher uh what it's like to be a principal what it's like to be a custodian um our world is very very different now as a in regard to how we go about educating children and that is um created a lot of unrest among our staff as we do our listening tours to the schools that we visit as we do our roundings as we meet with a nation with nea missouri nea members tier locally we know that that it's a very very difficult time for our staff i am very concerned that these numbers

098are going to drop significantly in terms of our ability to retain our teachers i know that our colleagues in area school districts have the same concern and are experiencing the same issues but i am concerned about i can only control our turf i can only focus on our turf on smithville and taking care of our staff and our teachers so tonight multiple times i've heard the expression uh that's probably due to covet that's probably due to covet that's probably due to the pope i've also heard multiple times strategic planning strategic planning strategic planning so as as you are aware we are looking to kick off our strategic planning process a year early and part of that's due to the funding we expect from the data center a lot of that's due to the funding we

099expect from the data center but what's more important or what's as important i'll say is that our world is so very different than it was three years ago when we formed our current strategic plan and the board heard me say earlier tonight that you might as well take our current building improvement plans and rip them up and throw them away because it addresses a world that doesn't exist anymore so we need to get back to our priorities get back to our core values as a school district and as our community um and and address what is what is most important was which is educating our kids so it's been very very difficult to do that over the past couple of years and i think it is critical um that we're able to get back to

100doing the jobs that people signed up to do you sign up when you think about being a teacher you sign up to be a teacher you have a vision in your mind you know it's not what we're doing today and very very concerning to me as the superintendent so to summarize when you look at the the 2021 data with the ecip adjustment in terms of retention it says 89.81 uh i'm concerned that's going to drop significantly this year um for the reasons that i mentioned but as mr krueger mentioned earlier this is also a very exciting time in our school district because it is time to refocus as ian mentioned earlier this evening and um we have a great opportunity to opportunity to do that um when we uh when we approach a new strategic

101planning process and actually have have funds to widen the parameters of what we can accomplish so all of that kind of ties together to me we can do a lot of things and get a lot of things done but if we don't have good people in place um to to help us get those things done they're not going to get done there's nothing no resource more important than the people that we have in our school district in the classrooms with our kids not to mention all of the other important jobs there's no unimportant job in this school district so this doesn't look so bad but i'm concerned that the data is going to become more and more challenging so we have to be assertive and refocused and i look forward to those efforts in collaboration

102with the rest of the stakeholders that's all i have uh you have questions for me [Music] i just want to take this moment as someone who's working in healthcare and you know last year we we hailed our frontline healthcare workers and our teachers as our heroes but even heroes get tired and with what they've been through this past year we're seeing it in health care and we're seeing it in our our teachers and we we saw with some of the reports from both jesse wanting to up our average salary as well as uh the reports on the number of teachers who are uh contemplating a change in in their their careers first of all thank you and secondly as we get to look at strategic planning and engage with our community on where to go

103invest some dollars you know this board previous boards have made some difficult budget decisions that allow us to make some investments in our future going forward and it's important for all of us to be engaged and what that looks like and how we go invest in in our our certified teachers as well as our classified and other other staff who make up this district and i want to thank this board for that in the previous boards for those investments because we now have that opportunity to go do so so it is an exciting time it's difficult but if our teachers can just hang in there i think we've got some bright days ahead of us if i could add one more thing um education week i put out a published article here recently they did

104some research uh and asked teachers i think that's 700 responses and they asked teachers about their likelihood to leave the profession in the next two years of teachers said they are somewhat or very likely to leave the profession in the next two years that same question in 2019 was just 34 so again it's uh 20 difference in just two years time so um we have to pivot we have to refocus um so that we can take you know be true to our mission statement and take care of our kids and get back to why we're all here any other comments or questions on the exit survey summary okay moving on 11.8 personnel report we reviewed the personnel report in executive session any comments or questions regarding the personnel report to be discussed in open session

105hearing none i'll accept the most in a second to approve the personnel report as presented in our package second set of most in a second to approve the personnel report as presented in our packet any further discussion please vote motion passes miscellaneous 12.1 yeah a couple things here first of all the holiday turkeys we're gonna pass those out on the 17th on friday so i would like to know who will be available to participate and as we've done in years past kind of divide ourselves up the administration has already done that so um i need to know first of all who would be available for the dismissal of secondary schools which is uh if you could be at the secondary school at 2 30 that would be great who can join us at 2 30

106on friday i have mr matthias would you like uh the middle school of the high high school high school mr matthias thank you susan which school would you like okay how about uh the middle school jeff will be great middle school what time 2 30 if you could be there at 2 30. anybody else for the secondary friday okay i know so i'm probably going to miss it this year so the elementary if you'd be there at 3 at the elementary school who can join maple all right you can do [Music] thank you everybody appreciate that uh the next item is more of an announcement more candidate filing period closes on december 28th so just again by way of announcement the office is open from eight to four to five for the board on twelve

107sixteen eight to five on twelve seventeen age five on twelve point eight so karen will be back over the break on december 28th um to open the office for anyone that wishes to file for the board or follow up uh keep an eye on your email for the board itself congratulations uh very good so uh typically and that's a separate meeting it's kind of how you've done things in the past yeah please please take time to complete that exercise by january 7th um and then kim you've got an esep uh update in here you want to cover that um i i just want there we go just wanted to provide you with a quick update on the esib um they have until december 20th to return the signed agreement um if you recall we had

10827 staff members that were eligible for this year or for um participation in that eight of those 27 actually completed a letter of intent so they gave us notice that they were interested in that we sent out agreements for them to sign and return so that's what we're waiting on now again we have the deadline as december 20th to get those back and then one that has submitted the agreement we'll present those to you in the january board meeting to date we have received three signed agreements um we reached out to see if they were ready to present that to the board for this december meeting and they requested to wait until the january meeting to have that presented to the board so that's where we're at right now i anticipate possibly one maybe two

109more agreements to come in and that's where we stand with lisa so you know we just talked about retaining staff and then here you have an early separation agreement uh update so just something to consider as we move forward and what our priorities are our staff um love the opportunity for esa understandably um but i think that uh in in in working with the salary and benefits committee maybe we need to explore other ways uh to uh you know reward staff pat them on the back if you will um from retiring from the district but uh not necessarily so uh the board as you know will have a chance to evaluate that on an annual basis but um those are some thoughts i have right now just just so we clarify that was never done

110as a reward incentive that was done as a budget recovery tool to save expenses and has over the last three or four years uh saved is significant well thank you very much yes as you can see the participation is dwindling before we adjourn i do have one question product you mentioned january 3rd meeting i do not have anything on my calendar what are we doing on january 3rd and i may have just missed it i'm sorry [Music] if we need to reschedule it that doesn't break my heart because i'm working on it over a break so i'm okay with that if we need to look at a different day can we just move it back maybe a week to the 10th monday night does that give you a little time once you come back to

111we have a real world learning design team maybe from six to eight but i can see if that could be moved if the tent works for the board 17th right now monday and tuesday work best for me that is martin luther king jr day there will be no school that day so yeah i mean i don't have a problem uh [Music] okay thank you i just checked that when you said that earlier and i was like don't remember january 3rd okay does anybody else have anything else before we adjourn hearing not i'll accept emotion in a second to a journal meeting got a motion in a second to adjourn this evening's meeting please vote a second we are adjourned thank you