001all right time is 7 p.m welcome to the march edition of the columbia school district board start by calling roll please kimberly here tammy hines here andrea corey here craig meyer here lisa schumacher here scott middle camp and tyson search are absent that still makes a quorum so we're ready to proceed next time is our pledge of allegiance everybody would stan i pledge of the allegiance states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you all right welcome all the visitors we had a good crowd today thank you very much for participating do you have any public comments any call-ins or anything all right easy enough correspondence i think is going to pass around do we have any correspondence perfect we're just flying
002right through this great all right on to our consent agenda mr cody if you'd walk us through that yeah um we've got the the the resignations and the employments i'd like to point out that kelly hintus is our fifth our new fifth grade teacher she's here stand [Applause] i'm adding two names robert post who's our high school english she accepted the position today and then uh carolyn kish she'll be here next month but she accepted and she couldn't make it to the board meeting tonight but she's gonna be high school science and so those two names are the uh additions to the certified personnel um and then we've got the the vacancies um i believe there's no questions or comments on that if there's not a administration recommends that you approve the consent agenda as
003presented any questions comments concerns without entertaining any motion to accept the con consent agenda as as stated yes andrea corey yes craig meyer yes lisa yes welcome aboard both all of you thank you for attending the maintenance night it's always nice to put a face with the name when we do this so thank you all right on to our communications and presentations our enrollment report is in the packet any questions on that administrative report we'll start with the columbia middle school good evening mrs hughes welcome thank you amber haven is here with me this evening and we're going to take some turns to share information about cms tonight um over the last month this month and next month we have a lot of positive events happening at the middle school currently going on right now
004is the march reading madness this year the library is hosting a school-wide reading tournament called march reading madness it is similar to a sports tournament 16 books are competing against each other for the title of best book the students are able to fill out a paper bracket with their predictions and then they vote online using google forms for their favorite books we're hopeful that this will build even more book love and reading excitement at cms this spring we're down to the final four and those votes are being made i think tomorrow and next week so it's really fun we also have our paper rock scissors competition happening right now among the staff the annual prs competition is organized by mr ackerman it commenced this week with the first round of games in the books participating
005faculty members filled out a bracket with their predictions on who they think can overtake last year's champion mr janie let's see if it happens again we also want to thank carly atwell for all of her leadership in our st baldrick's donations she and others have raised a great deal of money for st baldrick's and we have over a thousand dollars raised by fifth and eighth grade fifth or eighth grade students participating in various dress-up days tomorrow we have another day it's crazy blue and white and in addition the snow angels team members have raised over seventeen thousand dollars outside of school the big event is a shave event that's on march 26th that ace is wild in columbia from 12 to four we also have german students visiting thanks to mr um mr nickerson and
006miss hellman for organizing those events on april 29th we're going to be welcoming some students mostly to chs but also they'll be visiting cms as well and we're excited about those visitors rpe students are going to be roller skating starting on march 30th they bring in a lot of um they look like bookshelves but they open up and there's tons of skates in there look very similar to when i went to school i'll speak for myself um it's a two and a half week long unit and the gym is turned into the skating rink with lots of time for free skate and various games and activities that's nice and fun we also have the young authors contest happening right now this year over 20 students wrote and submitted books for the young authors contest 17
007students are representing cms at the young authors conference in waterloo this year we're really proud of their accomplishments and how many turned up student council planned a kindness spirit week this year in february as an alternate alternative to a valentine's day theme and we worked on spreading kind and uplifting message through locker notes and posters we are currently brainstorming about a spring dance for seventh and eighth grade through student council and second step lessons taught by mrs lang gang and ms klein are taught to our fifth graders every monday for 20 to 25 minutes lessons include topics such as empathy respect responsibility compassion kindness and managing emotions we have dare happening in fifth grade right now our dare program sergeant zach hopkins instructs like i said the fifth graders on tuesdays and thursdays it's a
00810-week program and it comes to a close with a final celebration with t-shirts and ice cream provided by the columbia police department we have some spring sports at the middle school right now we have girls on the run our season has started girls on the run is a program for fifth and sixth grade girls it's a social and emotional curriculum and we we practice two times per week we work on physical stamina as well this ends in forest park on may 14th with a giant 5k with all the metro st louis area schools it's really really cool event this year there are two start times i don't know what the columbia start time will be but i believe the options are 7 am and 10 am just to kind of keep with some distancing recommendations
009we have over 40 plus girls between cms and parkview and together we are going to run our practice 5k in the city park here on monday may 9th and we welcome anyone to come and join and cheer us on with just your voices your claps silly string glitter anything you can imagine mark your calendars um it's going to be really fun we also want to say thanks to those who are organizing d-league basketball for fifth grade boys and girls to work on basketball skills which i think makes a gigantic difference and track season has started we have 30 girls and 30 boys participating this year so we want to thank mr whereinberg our boys coach and miss lang gang our girls coach we will be having 10 track meets this year compared to only three
010that were able to have last year with covid and the other sports being squeezed at the same time so really excited about the spring we had a sixth and seventh grade an eighth grade chorus concert on march 3rd titled music in our schools month with kicked off kicked that month off we had two concerts for art on march 24th cms will be participating in the annual roe art festival public and parochial schools in both monterey county and randolph county send students to participate and we have 15 students entered they are working with still life sculpture figure drawing illustration and cartooning so mrs packard mrs foreign and miss fulty will serve as judges for the competition that will take place at spps in waterloo and the fun fact of the day is the last time the
011festival was held was just before the pandemic and we hosted it at cms it seems like 10 years ago miss faulty we just completed our third quarter incentives through the pbis program that mr ackerman pioneered at cms the fifth graders celebrated with complete open access to the gym in our commons so we had lots of equipment out for the kids to have free play in the gym and board games and student choice in classrooms and commons areas the sixth grade students who earned the incentive had a block party style where different classrooms had different games and then there was an ice cream bar as well the seventh grade had a trivia in the cafeteria that was really fun and then the eighth graders got to go to the zoo now we are going to talk
012about some fun things happening in the classrooms a lot of teachers at the middle school have gone to projects lots of project-based learning happening and you're going to hear a lot about it here the 5th grade science classes welcomed the monroe county ag in the classroom someone came in and taught all of our fifth grade science students about corn and they dissected a corn kernel that's fun um the fifth grade science is also going to host a star gazing event with the help from the ptas fall grant fifth grade students and one of their parents will be invited to the remote control airfield on bluff road the date is to be determined it was originally scheduled for march 11th but we had some snow so we had to cancel that students will attend three stations
013that evening one will be a make and take constellation box with a battery operated tea light one will be a constellation star scavenger hunt in the night sky and the third will be a telescope station where some high school science teachers and hopefully our fingers are crossed some members of the st louis astronomical association and society are going to come and volunteer their time in their telescopes to guide us through the night sky watch last year the event had 80 attendees and that was just with one hallway and now we're opening it up to both hallways so we think it'll be a fairly big event the sixth grade special ed class is creating a 15-page comic book it goes along with the novel that they read just recently called strider and after two years of
014being put on hold the sixth grade science classes conducted the classic and much-loved peppered moth lab this model's natural selection i saw some pictures students were wearing glasses and some of the glasses had ziploc bags taped across the top to skew viewing and they had different shapes of beaks and things like that it was very interactive students take turns being birds battling to find and hunt the most peppered moths to bring back to their families in this lab sixth graders explored how variations within a species such as camouflage and beak adaptations all lead to changes within that species is light bloomy i can keep going yeah i think so you can keep going okay sixth grade social studies mr pitts has had his history students research the 20 different wonders of the world making a
015google slides show in a handmade poster and then they finally presented that to their classes and in sixth grade language arts the students are currently learning about greek mythology and mrs williamson is running a contest where the kids are creating their own god and goddess and then the students are voting on the most creative one among the class this week we had pi day which is march 14th and in mrs avorica seventh grade math class the pie contest took place if you're in a classroom you would see she has a gallery wall of winners it's a very big deal so we had the prelims and then the final contest was held on tuesday march 15th students that recited 60 or more digits on monday went to the finals last year casey bernard recited 650 digits
016which completely blows my mind and this year she has the current school record her brother bradley is in second place with 367 2018 and the winning student gets the name on mrs zaworka's wall of fame or hall of fame a 15 gift card and to a place of their choice and a pizza pie delivered to lunch uh this year we had five of the 15 students in the final contest who were able to recite 100 or more digits including kendall hempkin ushia james maddy brandenburger aaron eisenhower and this year's pie reciting champion grace nowak she had 414 digits i can't even imagine mrs oborka even counting that but it's just mind-blowing i'll never it'll never happen to me i'm so excited for them some special ed students in eighth grade are learning how to write
017a cover letter and resume as well as write interview questions for each other and ms klein is here tonight and she has a some 8th grade students who have visited parkview parkview on march 4th a very important activity in 8th grade language arts is writing for a real audience so 8th grade students interview parkview students and write a personalize and illustrate a personalized book for them it's a very fun thing there's also a career day coming up at cms on april 12th where high school students will speak to their 8th graders on that day and 8th grade students are participating in another march activity called march mammal madness which is a simulated combat competition against animals so we're excited about those academic activities as well another science big deal is we have are about halfway
018finished with our illinois science assessment this year each grade level takes three separate tests and we're also looking forward i suppose to iar it's a very big change of pace um it's a lot of testing on the week of march 28th and then we'll also have map testing in early may our end of the year 8th grade celebration is also scheduled for may 26th we have a columbia education association friends of education banquet each year the illinois education association region 4 honors those in our area who work to improve public education with the friends of education banquet the nominations are given to those who make our district a better place for everyone to work this year liz cole has been awarded the honor of attending the banquet on behalf of the many ways that she
019personally and the pta help our school and community in addition to liz cole as the friends of education winner the cea recognized two other nominees lainey randall for her work in the special education department that goes above and beyond and tim folte who donated hundreds of dollars worth of materials and countless hours towards making wooden whirly gig kits for the summer school program last year i just wanted to say worley gig again i sent our mrs fulty sent both of the runners up a letter a gift card and their nomination letter and she feels like all three were very deserving of the reward but liz fit the spirit of the award award the best cms is also involved in taking care of some pta auction items we're just so thankful for the pta's involvement it's
020such a relief to have a great relationship and working working relationship with liz cole and jessica ray all the things we do for our students and the fun some of the fun things we've mentioned is so easily planned because of their time and effort and funds so it's just a huge relief to have them as a working team i'm also excited about the morning of march 23rd in an update that i sent parents in july i think no not july what am i thinking january uh i was so excited to finally be able to possibly talk to parents in the building without a mask on simply because it's hard to develop a relationship only over the phone and via email so i'm happy to say that 33 parents rsvp'd and they're coming to cms on
021the morning of march 23rd just to mingle and meet some other parents but also match names to faces because i like i said i talk to parents on the phone many times i email with parents yet i might patch them in schnooks i don't know who they are so i'm looking forward to march 23rd we also want to say say thanks to our subs who have brought us through through the trenches teresa bradshaw stacy haltom and joyce henson heather cuevero and liz schreckenberg are just really devoted to cms and keep us keep us alive to say the least and then also i wish everyone could understand the daily puzzles that tracy hayes and saracoca stump saw for us to make sure that our days go as planned i also want to thank the republic times
022for recognizing katie jack for her southwest region teacher of the year award and finally i want to say thanks to our rockstar teachers who have earned awards this year i like to show them off on social media so hopefully you've seen their face if you follow us on instagram or facebook don williamson callie zavorica theresa farrens carly ottwell joe birch jenna stewart sarah dahl will pitts katie jek jeannie rice amber haven and most recently mickey spivey and kelly landgraf i want to thank them all for their time and dedication to cms and then finally i'm really excited to welcome cali and christine to the cms family thank you anything else i don't know maybe all right our assistant superintendent reported so i am really glad that mrs huells and mrs haven talked about all of
023the really exciting things going on um mostly at cms only because this month is i was just going to bring up that we are getting into that um standardized testing mode so next week on the 23rd while mrs huels will be having fun doing a parent meet and greet mingle our high school juniors will be taking the s.a.t where they will also be enjoying taking the s.a.t um maybe not as much as mrs huels will enjoy her time but that day then our seniors will be going and doing some community service around that day and then the following week like mr tulel said is our illinois assessment of readiness testing that will go on with our third through eighth grade students um again not as fun as all of the really cool things that they
024mentioned um but important nonetheless for different things obviously i think any educator that gives that assessment would really like to see results faster and be able to do something with it but it is important as a something that the state asks us to comply with and we do utilize a lot of that information in the best ways we possibly can so um those are coming up and then um the only other part i was going to mention is that i am really hoping that you approve the financial literacy course tonight um i had the pleasure of going and speaking to the chamber of commerce this week and while i was there um started speaking to several of the different businesses in town about how they can contribute and help us with our financial literacy um
025and i was overwhelmed with the number of people that were already there that stopped me and then um if i didn't get to speak to them there that day that they had emailed me and reached out some had ideas of what their business could offer to our financial literacy class others of them had a full-on simulation that they would like to then see implemented at the high school level so it was just really exciting to be able to reach out you know a lot of times teachers are faced with students saying why do i have to know this why do i have to know this and so by bringing in the community it will be a perfect example of this is exactly why you need to know this so i'm excited to get the community
026behind behind our new course hopefully if you approve it superintendents report last not least all right it it's it's amazing to hear everything that's going on um it this is what we call scheduling nightmares because all of these things have to happen on certain times and certain dates and you don't want them to conflict with other things and it's just um it's hard work well received because all of the efforts that the people put in to make sure that these things run it's great for the kids and it's great for the community and it's just great to see graduation we talked about last month and we talked about may 14th being the saturday for it and 15th being the sunday rain day we talked about the time and um we do have a baseball game
027in the morning there's a double header that there's an issue with it's also the girls regional for soccer and so we want to make sure that the time we do will allow baseball players to play and soccer players to play and talking to mr reeves and uh mr horner we believe six o'clock on saturday would allow the soccer game to occur the baseball games to occur and nobody would be able to miss i say that with the acknowledgement that we did i was contacted by a community member who has a child who's graduating college that same day and it just it pains you that they have to you know you can't be at everything but it's just so many things are going on it's the way it is sunday if we get rain on saturday
028sunday we would still want to do the 1pm um time and so i will update you more but saturday is going to be 6 p.m sunday is going to be 1 p.m and that's graduation march 31st is soaring eagles and i encourage the board to attend that at the high school every faculty member picks a student and they talk about the student and the student gets a little pin and they wear it then when they graduate on their um on their graduation robes but it's a really it's a neat event looking further ahead pensler award is scheduled or this was going to be scheduled for april 28th which is the fourth thursday however it had to get moved because the roe scheduled the i'm not going to say it right the outer order murder erder
029the earlier banquet got scheduled on the fourth thursday and so mr reeves moved the pensler event and it happened to be on the 21st which is our board meeting and so i think what we're going to do is i'm going to look at the calendar and trying to find a time that we can move our board meeting so that we'll be able to attend these events and and see where we're going i apologize for that clerical oversight however it's just so many things going on you can't have everything free and so we'll try and move our april meeting so we can attend that um april 18th the germans come as we had already talked about april 22nd is the ace olympics that's uh athle athletics challenging each other and that'll be at the um the
030multi-purpose field and during the day you'll have athletic coaches and the students participating it's not special olympics because we can't use that term but it's very much of the same thing there's a bunch of events going on that day and it's gonna be just a blast um what was the date for the astronomy to be determined okay because i'm i'm excited about that one as well i'm kind of a star geek but just all of these events and everything it just i'm glad we're not wearing the masks i'm glad we're all back in person but these events these activities these things that we do which is icing on the cakes for all of our students is just um it's rewarding to see and so i want to thank everybody who is actively involved in making
031those things happen i appreciate it that's all we've got for my report thank you what was the name of that banquet again murder on for our items for action is the first one is the approval of our 2022 to 2023 student fees yeah and at this point in time i don't recommend changing any of the students fees i i can't stress enough that the last few years with the federal kovid dollars and everything has really kind of made the financial planning and moving forward a little um hard to understand what our normal revenues are and what our normal expenditures are so at this point in time i would not recommend that we change any of the students fees you will see that we've taken off the middle school pe stuff because they are no longer
032changing out we also are taking off the chromebook cases we sort of regret not just including the cases with the chromebooks from the get-go and so we're going to slowly segue into new cases that come with the chromebooks every year but with that the administration recommends the board approves the fees as presented the numbers did not go up and they did not go down we are still waiting for the federal government to tell us if we're allowed to keep our lunch prices where they're at there's a calculation for it and i can't explain it but they will let us know and so that might be the only thing that would change any questions is there a lunch fee right now i know for the first time yeah and so when you get your school approved
033lunch there is a fee in that cost no no no no the first meal is free that's what i thought online because we're still under uh still under covered the first meal is free if you want to buy a second meal you have to pay for it or if you want anything a lot cart you have to pay for it so then next year will they be free again is that what you're saying if there's not a no i believe that there's going to be um the normal price so like if you wanted a second meal that's the price of the of the of the meal i think it's two dollars and will there be a sea then for the first meal yes okay i believe so if the government tells us no then no
034we get reimbursed by the government either way and so when they say there's no free lunches the government can can make that happen but are there questions just so i understand you're saying approve it with the exception of taking out the costs for pe shirts shorts sweatpants and so forth at the middle school okay but the high school high school still has it still changing out okay okay i understand so chris for one of the notes is the ap dual credit course fees those are going to those will depend on the fiat the course itself or because there's no dollars yeah it'll depend on the course itself and and how many credits it is and what the uh the university is giving you the dual credit charges so those will just be disclosed when the
035student's approaching that time to potentially register because that's not going to us that's going to right that's not going to us right i just didn't have a number so any other questions we'd like to make a motion to approve the 2022-2023 student fees thank you lisa one second i'll second it thank you andrea please unanimously item b is our approval of the non-re-employment of non-tenured teachers this is a consideration we have to do every year and so the administration recommends the board approve the resolution to dismiss frank cage a first-year probationary teacher at the end of the 21-22 school year and not re-employ him for the 22-23 school year okay so we like to make that motion can i say a comment i had a parent contact me over the weekend in regards to um
036they're concerned with um the grades in his class so like they said a and b students are you need to contact mr reeves mr reeves yeah have them contact mr reeves and talk to him about that okay any other discussion we have the motion in writing the maybe you'd like to make that i will hand you the form somebody handed it to me looking for a volunteer i'll move that the board approve a resolution to dismiss frank k cage teacher at the end of the 21-22 school year and not re-employ him for the 22-23 school year okay motions over a second a second thank you vocal please andrea corey yes greg meyer yes yes tenured teaching staff for 22 23. and this is a a yearly um process and basically all of those teachers that
037are non-tenured move across and the new tenured teachers are there so the recommendation is the board approved the non-tenure teaching staff for the 22-23 school year any questions or discussions would you like to make a motion to approve the non-tenured teaching staff for 22-23 i'll make a motion after andrea want a second second raise a second roll call please greg meyer yes that's a hugely controversial item is d the approval of a new course for columbia middle school for the financial literacy yeah i i think administration strongly recommends the board approve the cms course financial literacy now on the record i think it's an awesome idea this is long overdue and it's something that i think is sorely missing with the youth of our day motion any discussion motions i'll make the motion to make
038some motion do i have a second a second at least a second this is no money so all in favor aye aye aye any opposed any extensions unanimous all right takes care of our business for this evening our discussion items is first one is our facility study this is that ongoing report i just want to um state that right now i'm going to coordinate a meeting with the city and with our architects to discuss the route 3. i think the the idea of building on to that high school has a lot of merit but we need that third lane and the things i did talk with some people in the city and they would love to see that third lane on route three actually go all the way back to bottoms road so there'd be
039a right turn into the height into the middle school and whatnot and so um i dot is not currently through my kid to the high school it makes sense to me i'm not a transportation expert but we're going to have meetings to try and push that along because that's really going to be a i think a key factor into expanding on at that high school and so i just want you to be aware that that's going on right now we're still processing through whether or not idot would allow that for everybody that is not up to it's kind of like a soap opera it's a continuing saga that we've been dealing with we've identified that the town is growing we're going to have a need for additional classroom space and the board's been looking at
040possible solutions for quite a while the latest that we're kind of concentrating on is expanding the high school so now as mr grody alluded the the traffic seems to be our biggest hurdle with that so we're trying to get that to take care of so i miss anything nope that was that was a cliff notes apart tune in every every month oppressed any questions on two individual board member comments anybody i do i have i knew it and you can call me thank you no i just wanted to thank mr grody and kim for giving us the events that are happening in the district um did attend two this past week at the high school and i also want to give a shout out to our new band director the pops concert was phenomenal i
041mean it was like i felt you know the beat when you're sitting your seats kind of moving around and i kind of looked around the rest of the crowd and saw it too mr avis rouse does a great job he does do very good and he played with the band as well with the jazz band so that was cool um and then the second thing has the awards ceremony already happened for katie um to receive her award or is there something coming up she's going to bloomington on saturday with her husband for the purpose of getting the state award we had a faculty meeting at cms to give her an award other than that those are the two events we've had planned the state is hoping to hold a banquet in the fall when they
042can fully be out from underneath coveted restrictions i mean they said that they would notify us and at that point then it would be open to the board to more more staff and faculty members that would want to attend because the last one received was mrs bain correct i think so and that was a big i know a big to-do okay it is it's a very big deal i wish you all could have seen what katie jack did for the seventh grade trivia session that was our pbis event she deserves to be on the red carpet because she makes these videos that are absolutely incredible she did did so during the pandemic when we were completely home and then she used her video skills to make a long video for the trivia night she just
043goes way past past normal i think she spent about 15 hours creating her trivia night video she does such a great job and she is so sacrificial in her time and we really appreciate her anybody else we're trying to program you guys have definitely heard enough from me tonight so i'll spare you any further we do have some items for an executive session this evening so with that i'd entertain a motion to enter executive session for the purposes of the employment appointment excuse me employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of a specific employee of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity five icls 120-2c1 and also
044discuss student disciplinary cases pursuant to 5i cls 120 2c9 any like to make that motion yes all right we're gonna go into executive session now um there are some items for action that should be a result of our executive session you're all welcome to wait around and come we'll call you back in when we conclude our executive session all right we on all right welcome back everyone we've concluded our executive session and we have resumed our open meeting there's a couple items for action as a result of our executive session the first is the approval of the administrative contracts and wages as proposed anybody like to make a motion to approve those i'll make the motion adam thank you do i have a second second andrew ii and roll call please tammy adam hempkin yes
045tammy hines yes andrea corey yes greg meyer yes lisa schumacher yes all right motion pass unanimously item b is the approval of our non-union non-administrative staff wages anybody would like to make a motion to approve those i'll make the motion thank you lisa for your second i'll make the second thank you tammy and roll call please tammy hines yes anna corey yes greg meyer yes lisa schumacher yes adam humpkin yes yep that moshe carries all right that concludes our business meeting for this evening if we'd like to make a motion to adjourn thank you enjoy your second yeah everybody wants to keep going don't we thank you adam for a second all right all in favor aye aye any opposed perfect thank you thank you very much [Music] you