001here tonight tonight is definitely not the meeting we want to start late so let's get started we got a lot of stuff to get covered tonight i don't get anybody in trouble tonight so let's jump right into it so we're calling me at 5 31 and we're going to make up that minute somewhere in we will have our blue ribbon update mr smith mr president members board dr smith renovations are going well lc we're actually putting flooring down on the third floor and we did pass inspection for above ceiling so that'll start going in mechanical work and boiler room continues on lc1b phase the one on the right is actually lc's new dance floor or dance studio as it will be ready to go later this spring ln third floor continues drywall continues on the
002third floor as you see there the panels the architectural panels for the pool we're hoping to start raising those panels march 7th ln new walls those are at the company where we are basically passed the okay to pour and proceed transportation we are winding down transportation this week and moving that facility uh through the course of this weekend and we continue on with the middle school with the design process and the hva aac continues question for mr smith for our blue ribbon facilities update roger can you give the board mr smith update on the move for transportation since you alluded to that you can go ahead and share that the transportation uh yes we are uh going to be moving the facility starting actually friday we're going to have the buses drivers take the buses
003over there and technology is working hard we're finalizing some things this week and actually the movers even started this week moving some of the shop equipment so we'll finish that up with the two days next week where we don't have students that'll give us plenty of time to make sure everything's operable for wednesday with kids thank you questions thank you sir request for proposal for lawrence north asphalt mr smith mr president members of war dr smith we did pull a couple things out of lawrence north affalt to get ahead on some things for this summer number one is a north west or northeast corner you'll see up there in the upper right hand corner and then also the lower south east corner and also in front of the new [Music] pool area and also we
004are adding a walking path from mckin or lawrence north to mackenzie and it'll actually be on the south side and the east side of the uh drive as we move closer allowing kids to drive and to walk to mackenzie and back and forth that'll give them a safe way to maneuver between the two sites we will bring this back to the board if approved tonight later uh next month and uh have that approved so we can uh do some summer work question on our lawrence north asphalt thank you sir calendar updates assistant suits good evening mr president dr smith members of the board tonight we bring to you some recommendations for the new federal holiday juneteenth a little background in june of last year u.s congress passed the june teens national independence day act establishing
005juneteenth as the newest federal holiday in order to bring your recommendation this evening we sought input and feedback both from our district counter committee as well as our association tonight we're bringing you the following recommendations we recommend that juneteenth be recognized each year as a paid holiday with 12 month employees receiving the paid day off normally that would not be an issue because school is all for the summer but obviously we have jump start during the month of june so for summer 2022 june teens falls on sunday june 19th and should be recognized on monday june 20th this falls in line with uh recently updated federal guidance this will shorten jumpstart from a total of 16 days to 15 days as a reminder jumpstart runs monday through thursday and then for summer 2023 juneteenth is
006and should be recognized on monday june 19th and then the calendar committee will con will include this in future recommendations to the board i'd be happy to answer any questions questions for any board members well i have a question and i'm gonna act like i don't know this what exactly is juneteenth good question the math teacher me would do a gr hopefully do a good job giving you a history lesson on that um president lincoln uh back in on january 1st 1863 signed the emancipation proclamation however it took nearly two and a half years for both word and the ability to enforce that proclamation to this as far as the state of texas uh so two and a half years later is when juneteenth was first celebrated and is recognized as knowing when the proclamation
007reached all of the states any other questions on our calendar updates regarding juneteenth thank you student chromebook it's michael good evening uh dr smith mr president members of the board uh this evening i bring to you the results of our most recent bid process for new student chromebooks as you know we do a refresh cycle every year uh replacing fifth grade and ninth grade devices on a four year life cycle uh and then in future years we'll also be adding second third and fourth depending on when those fall in but this year we're looking at fifth and ninth grade and in front of you you see the results of the bid process this year hpi international presented the best possible price for the device the warranty the battery coverage uh so we have a we
008combine those into a single unit price for the bid process so later this meeting i'll ask for the board's approval to to proceed with the purchase of the new chromebook so that we can ensure that we receive the devices in time to deploy them at the end of the school year and for the start of jumpstart any questions on our chromebook bits thank you technology surplus bit results mr president dr smith uh members of the boards i present to you another set of bid results this time for uh some surplus equipment uh that will be retiring from the the district uh the board has already approved declaring this equipment surplus and this is an opportunity for us to recoup some of the value uh this is somewhat of a smaller uh surplus sale than we
009usually do uh but with the last two summers of the pandemic and moving lots and lots of equipment around we needed to do a surplus sale just wasn't as large as our normal one so that's why the numbers are a little bit reduced but we feel like we got a good competitive bid and and we got the best that we could out of the equipment in this in the current environment any questions on our surplus bid results thank you just one question real quick so i i assume because we approved the bidding out of this there's no further action we need to take as a board on this we'll uh we'll be bringing it to for final approval uh to sell the equipment to these particular vendors at this price so the board has declared
010the equipment surplus but uh approved the bid results that that yeah that's going to be deferred until next meeting yes that's correct okay gotcha any other questions on the surplus or comment request for rfp for extending the wide area network viral connectivity mr michael mr president dr smith members of the board uh today i present to you um initial information about publishing a request for proposals to lay a fiber connection connected to our current district network to the new transportation facility and then also to the city of lawrence water tower to support the district-wide radio system currently we've established a business class internet connection with a third party provider comcast to get the sites up and running but as a long-term strategic measure it is in the best interest of the districts to own our
011own fiber and so this would be permission to advertise a request for proposals to get bids to lay the fiber questions pertaining to our viral connectivity thank you sir thank you award goals well outstanding agenda items student achievement update partner mr president members of the board and dr smith i'm bringing to you this evening an update on your board goal that's related to our district benchmark assessments and you may recall at the last board meeting i presented how our students were growing from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year just our students in lawrence township tonight we're going to talk about how they compare to the rest of the country so this is our fast bridge reading and math assessment so on the next slide you can just see some reminder
012information about our fastbridge assessment we assess both reading and math we administered the first assessment in august for the beginning of your baseline this is a nationally normed assessment meaning there are millions of data points across the country as many school districts use this assessment we then administered in december or january depending on the school for mid-year growth data so just a real quick refresher in percentiles a percentile growth measures the growth of similar scoring students across the country so this really tells us where we are relative to the rest of the country in terms of our students growth and a reminder that 50th percentile or above indicates positive growth so this is our data for of the district grades two through eight in reading and so as we do we disaggregate by each of
013our subgroups to see how each of our subgroups is growing so as a district we're in the 54th percentile which 50 is that magic number you want to be above but then when you look at our subgroups you can see we have several subgroups that are higher than 54 and that indicates that we're getting more growth for instance from our special education subgroup which is important because those students have traditionally not performed at the same level and so this is good data for us the math data is a little bit different we still hit that above 50 however we do have some subgroups that are right at that 50 and so math needs to continue to to be our focus for growth particularly because our white subgroup is the highest so just a couple of
014analysis points you can see clearly the district focus on reading instruction over the last several years both core instruction as well as intervention that's that same focus we're giving to math now we are achieving equitable growth outcomes in reading all students are growing at an accelerated rate however our students of color special education students el students are growing at a faster rate all subgroups are achieving growth in math however we are concerned because we don't have that same equitable outcome in math so we will continue focusing our efforts around core instruction in mathematics i'd be happy to entertain any questions you might have what questions i'm a little bit confused but did we measure where we stood percentile wise in august in september so a percentile you have to have two tests in order to
015have a percentile so you only have one percentile that measures the growth between the two tests we'll have another percentile score at the end of the year when we take the third test so usually when i think of percentiles i think that if you have a hundred kids in the room um we would be in the top of performers if it's if our percentile is 54. sure is that correct so it is however this is percentile growth so in order to have growth you've got to have two tests you've got to have two data points so we wouldn't have growth data with only one test administration in august right right i i guess i'm just confused i guess i'm just confused with that that math um with i would be below 50 percentile this week
016because that math confuses me but um well i think probably where the confusion is this is growth yeah so you can have percentile score on one test administration but this is growth we're wanting to achieve so the growth data that i showed you last time about and we had lots of green with lots of growth across the district in various subgroups i wanted to show you how that compared to the rest of the country so if our kiddos for instance i don't remember what it was but for instance if they grew eight percent um they achieved eight percent higher in the springtime then um that would put them in the for let's say 52nd percentile right or whatever exactly okay and then the flip side is if they grew 8 percent but they were only
017in the 40th percentile that's not something we should really be celebrating even though it looks good in our data we need to look at it compared to the national norm thank you for clarifying that absolutely any other questions on our student achievement part two i just had a quick question i know last year it was mentioned that math was the area that suffered a lot due to the pandemic are these numbers um what you might see like reading was higher would was that a number you would see even before the pandemic where the scores were typically higher in reading than math not percentile growth oh okay i wouldn't okay the percentile growth in reading really is attributed to the focus that we've had in the district typically you'd see it the other way where you're
018getting faster growth in math than you are in reading um historically and so we're pleased with where we are with reading we've got to apply that same process to math to get our students caught up there okay thank you for the context i have a question it would be concerning um just the ebbs and flows of our subgroups um i know that we just did the uh the equity audit would that be highlighted in the audit as to why there's certain certain groups of students that do better or not than other students or is there a why that we can go to as to why like white white students are growing at a higher percentile rate so that isn't necessarily in the equity audit per se what the equity audit would call for is a
019systematic approach to interventions for students to make sure that you're meeting kids where they are and growing them to the next level which we've put in place in great detail for reading we now need to do the same for math so if that isn't specifically mentioned in the equity audit but we know it's work that we need to do it's a tool that would assist in absolutely okay but there so as of right now we don't know the why why different groups are not right now because we don't have a systematic support of interventions quite as detailed in math as what we do in reading okay thank you for working with my processing got it no problem christopher do you understand that no no i do i got it yeah we put a lot of
020energy into reading i got it thank you absolutely just quick troy chuck and i so the data set that we imagine because you know unlike nate we just take a certain but this is all our students second through eighth grade is every student correct every student compared to every student and all the other yes every student who had both a beginning of the year test and a middle of the year test so a student who moved in in october wouldn't be included in this data set but all students who tested both times are compared to every student across the country and these norms were set pre-pandemic which i think is also important information um because we're seeing accelerated growth particularly particularly in reading based on pre-pandemic measures which is what we want to get back
021to thank you questions on our student achievement update part two thank you mr notre budget tax rate update mr mr president dr smith members of the board as you know last summer we or every summer we prepare the budget and you approve it this is bringing back to you the results that we get once the state gets done with their analysis and adjustments on the overall budget it came in [Music] about 16 million more than we anticipated but that's primarily due to the growth we had in the fall with the students on the education side and the operations fund was increased a little bit there as well you can see 10 million on that and that has to do with the assessed valuation and the maximum growth that we can have now that may sound
022like cause for celebration however we have tax caps that will impact that number and reduce that so we will probably end up close to the 39 million when all the tax caps are taken into effect the next slide is the one that i really want to point out and we can celebrate on if you look at the overall tax rate last year we were at a dollar 19 this year wrote a dollar 14. the and the other one to point out is the capital referendum we did remember we advertised that at just under 25 cents the current rate is 22.28 cents you may say how did that happen because we're raising the same amount of money well our assessed valuations gone up from that time so the lower rate may not translate into a lower
023tax payment for every taxpayer they'll probably if their ss valuation went up proportionally they'll have the same but some may pay more and some may pay less based on that rate but the nice thing is it's lower than the 25 that we started with and then the last slide you can see our overall tax levy actually went down slightly but that has to do there again with the um the let's see yeah the ss value went up a little bit and with the rate and then the re you see the retirement severance bond debt service fund dropped a little bit because those are slowly coming off of our books here in a couple years that one won't be on there anymore but overall we did well we came in on pretty much where we expected
024on all of them the rate came in lower than we anticipated which is always a good thing for our taxpayers for questions pertaining to our tax rates i just had one question mr shreves um i know on the lt website we have a calculator for the taxpayer to see what their tax bill would be it's right now it's about the 0.25 percent will we adjust that or do we just leave it kind of as is we can adjust that okay just need to work with the ones who developed it to change that right that was there primarily when we were doing the referendum so people knew but we can see what we can do to get that adjusted it just sounded like good news to me so thank you any other questions from mr freeze
025on the budget tax rate oh i thought somebody said something thank you mr freeze neola policy updates dr harshbacher mr president members of the board dr smith you know as staff story language has changed or laws are updated both at the state and federal level that requires us to do the same and revise our policy tonight i bring to you 27 revised policies and one new policy for your review and first reading questions on the first reading of the neola policies thank you doc hartford anything for you dick anything nope nope i've taken a look at them and worked with dr harshberger on them but obviously welcome any all of your reviews you have a chance over the next couple weeks if you didn't have a chance to review them over the weekend and if
026you see anything uh you know let me or dr harshberger know about it thank you we'll talk a little bit about the public participation of board meetings just for the public so people don't get confused what's taking place in the policies okay ward on to our action items approval requests for proposal or our launch north asphalt mr president members of board dr smith who recommend the board approve the request to bid ln asphalt as presented so moved second move amy norman whitney mustang questions or comments all those in favor signify by saying aye aye and impose the same motion carries thank you approval of calendar updates good evening president mcgregor board members dr smith earlier this evening mr kuznick presented to you calendar updates regarding the federal holiday juneteenth we recommend that you approve those
027as submitted some moved second mood crystal puckett second uh dick freeze questions all those in favor signify by saying hi and they oppose the same motion carries thank you approval of our student chromebook beard results mr president dr smith members of the board um i recommend that the board approve the chromebook bid results as presented so that we can proceed with the purchase so moved second moon crystal move when the mustang second by crystal puckett questions all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye and impose the same motion carries thank you approval of the personnel report mr president dr smith and members of the board i'd like to recommend that we approve the personnel report as submitted so moved second move amy norman dick frijee questions all those in favor signify by saying
028aye aye aye aye aye opposed the same motion carries thank you for our action completing our action items tonight comments miss norman happy valentine's day to everybody in addition to the hearts it's heart month with the american heart association so just make sure you get out and find an activity you love and hopefully accessibility increases for everybody to have good health care and then i just wanted to say a thank you to our staff i know that we've had a lot of illnesses over the winter and everything and our district has been fortunate to stay stay in session as a parent as a board member i just appreciate all the hard work that everyone's put in to make sure that our kids can stay in school so thank you well sid thank you miss norman
029dick nothing here windy nothing here crystal you know i will say in celebration of black history month there is a performance at the theater um on the fort for arts of lawrence it will be from the ipeka kids and so i urge you to go check it out it will be february 24th at 6 30 p.m that's it come here what was that i pica forest glen thank you orange glen thank you mr president uh i want to thank publicly our elementary team and dr brown for an outstanding academic championship this past weekend uh the stars will be coming soon to be recognized in front of you but our champion this year or the amy beverly star so i just wanted to put that on the record thank you mr mcgregor for helping me give
030out the certificates and uh medals and as well as the trophy to the runner-up a runner-up we need to put that on the record was crestview elementary but the champs are at amy beverly and we'll see them here in a couple months as we'll recognize them in front of the board thank you that's all i have tonight thank you board our next meeting will be on monday february 28th we'll be again at seven o'clock p.m we do have a full agenda a very full agenda for that meeting so let's be prepared for that if there's no other items to cover i'll take a motion to adjourn so moved second moving probably second by consent we are concerned all have a happy