001Is Pam on? Pam's on. Okay. Welcome everybody. Um, we're going to get started. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Adequate notice has been given. I'd like everyone to stand and join us in the pledge of allegiance, please. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Okay, thank you everyone for being here. Um, I do want to let everyone know Pam is on speaker. I was gonna say she's not on but Pam is here with us too virtually. Um, Chris, will you please read the motion for the agenda? I move that the board of education approve the agenda as posted. Second. Okay. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? No. Okay. Motion
002passes. So now I will hand it over to Dr. Kushki for recognizing our own. Oh, okay. Great. Okay, great. Miss Kurley, thank you. You can come up to a microphone. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The microphone. Microphone. Was it working? [Music] Um, as I was saying, I'm Darcy Kurley and I am a teacher at the high school. I teach English. Um, in addition to my teaching duties, I am one of the sponsors for the mayor's youth advisory council, MYAK as we call it. The way that my works is that students who are going to be juniors and seniors get to apply to apply of small one of the one of the um councils within the city government to follow and shadow and learn more about as they are joining us for the whole at
003the end of the program we try to identify one student who over the course of really exhibited genuine interest and um engagement in what was our meeting and this year we would like to Ben Coer as our Mayor's Award recipient. [Applause] So Ben is a senior at Clayton. He just us What could happen now? Maybe return thought. So for all of that, thank you. Congratulations, Ben. Hey, and Ben, aside from Lucia, you are the student that we have seen at more school board meetings than anybody else, in fact, too. and I wondered if you were being punished by your teachers or a government AP class or something. But um so not only have you taken an interest in what's happening at the mayoral office, but we've seen you a lot at school board meetings here.
004So maybe one day you'll run for school board or mayor of Clayton. Yes. You only have to be 18 to run for school board. Oh, Andy's 25. 24. Sorry. 24. Andy's going to WashU, so he's not far. he could he could continue to help us. Okay, congratulations. Um, okay, moving on to public comment. We have two public comments this evening. Um, first we have Susan Brock House. Should I go ahead? Yes. Good evening. Thank you all for your service to Clayton schools. I'm Susan Brock House and I'm the parent of a white-on sixth grader and two Marramac elementary schoolers in fourth and first grade. And I'm also a member of the phone free Clayton parent group that started last spring which we collected a thousand s a little bit um under a thousand signatures asking
005the district to go phone free from bell to bell and we did research on a proposed phone locking system. So, I'm here to repeat a message that I first delivered in November 2022 with three other parents in which we asked that the district consider a district-wide policy that student use of phones and smartwatches at all Clayton schools would be limited to before and after school only. This is the policy at Widown now but not at the high school. So, I won't go into the various data because we provided it all before on the damage of smartphone use to student focus, learning, social skills, and mental health. And we also provided in the past a list of area competitive private schools that are going fully phone free. Um and most recently uh Parkway School District said
006that it would be going phone free. So we've provided some of that data, but I want to focus on what has happened since last summer when our group lobbied for a district phone free policy, specifically recommending a locking pouch system. In response, Clayton opted to do an internal study during the summer and made minor policy enforcement tweaks for the start of the school year. So rather than go with a holistic solution, um Clayton chose to go with an incremental approach. And we now have data which will be presented tonight in the PowerPoint that shows that the incremental approach specifically at the high school is not working. Just to pull out a few data points and a few anecdotes from parents. At the high school, the data shows that only 36% of faculty say the policies
007are enforced quite or extremely consistently. Also at the high school only 54% of students say an adult will intervene if the phone policy is broken. Um also from the data it looked like a number of WON uh students did were um were subject to the enforcement policy this year and the high school numbers seemed extremely low and it's quite hard to believe that that would res uh represent the number of cell phone use at the high school based on that data. two quick anecdotes from a YO down fellow parent said that one of my middle schoolers says that most kids get their phones out to look at things during class under their desks and that either the teacher doesn't say anything or doesn't see it. Teachers want to keep a good relationship with their students.
008And then an anecdote from an individual I know with a high school freshman who says that the student is watching Netflix during classroom time. The student was able to watch four seasons of a Netflix show during classes. And the reason the parents know this is because they have controls on the child's iPhone which prompt a a request and notification when they're needing extra time. So that's how they were aware of it. Um and one final note at the Clayton Longrange facility planning meeting on January 14th at CHS, uh Superintendent Patel said that the nationwide public policy issue of school choice was quote not a matter of if but when. She was saying this in reference to keeping our infrastructure up to date so we remain competitive with area schools, privates, and other competitive schools. But
009this should equally be applied to our consideration of student learning and phone policies which will either attract or deter families from this Clayton school district as we know that many in our district do have a choice as to whether to go public or private. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Susan. Um Betsy Men Hi. Hi. I'm Betsy Men Smith. Um, I have a seventh grader and a sixth grader at Wound and a third grader at Captain. And I wanted to thank you for your service. Thank you. Making my headache. So sorry. Um, especially tonight when the Blues game is looming. That's really awesome that you guys are here. Um, but I'm here to ask you to rethink the approach to the personal device policy specifically at the high school level. Um, before
010I talk about why that matters, I want to remind this body that I only have three minutes. And while I would always prefer a dialogue, the way this process is set up means that we don't have the opportunity for back and forth discussion. And it's really difficult to present one-sided comments about a somewhat controversial issue in a in a in a perfect way. To try to make a strong point quickly while also not being adversarial is challenging, and without the opportunity for clarifying dialogue, it's almost impossible. I hope you all assume goodwill from everyone who steps up for public comment, and I'm open to and very interested in follow-up discussion. Um, maintaining status quo on the personal electronics policy is really a missed opportunity to improve the academic and social experience of kids in Clayton.
011The middle school policy of no phones during school is clear, easily enforced, and effective, and I hope Dr. Jordan has some time to speak about the great work they're doing at Wound. Um, the policy is clear, the faculty and students know what the expectations are, and the enforcement is universally understood and followed through upon. I know there are obstacles. The high school has a different format with the open campus, greyhound time, and other flexible arrangements I don't even know about. I believe though that as a district with a with great problem solvers, we can come up with an effective solution at the high school, too. We work with kids to develop good academic habits with studying and doing homework, for example. If and inevitably when they disagree about the value of studying and homework, we
012have no trouble maintaining that these skills are the best thing for their future. Limiting distractions during your workday is also good habit. So is communicating with peers face tof face and developing in-person relationships. If I as an adult very easily get off task when my phone alerts, how can we expect kids to stay focused? Your own data show that kids are distracted by others use of phones. 83% of students find others using phones in class distracting. When asked about phone use for academic purposes, 75% say teachers once in a while or sometimes ask them to use phones, which reads to me as they're rarely asked or required to use them for school related reasons, making them unnecessary for academic purposes. And regarding school safety objections, a phone might help a person feel more safe, but
013I think the more appropriate question is whether or not students and teachers actually are more safe. Whatever happens next, the administration at the high school has got to enforce the existing policy consistently across the board. That me dinging. Um, I'm almost finished. At the middle school, the data show the policy is clear and the enforcement is clear. I know it's difficult to extract technology from children. I have three of them. It's the worst, but kids are watching Netflix during class. Parents are being asked by the office to text their kids if they're dropping something off for them during the school day. These are clear violations of the existing policy. There are books and articles and anecdotes and even warnings from the surgeon general about the detrimental effects of technology of all kinds on people of
014all ages, especially kids. We cannot be so arrogant as to think Clayton is immune to the effects of technology. It's hard for all of us in this world to limit technology usage, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. I urge you to continue the robust conversation you started at the October board meeting and please take this issue seriously. Thank you. Thank you. And even though the Blues game's starting, um I hope you'll stick around to hear or watch later the presentation to gather and understand some of the context around the data and plans moving forward too. Thank you. Okay, next. Sorry. Um Superintendent Communications, Dr. Patel. Thank you, Stacy. Good evening, everyone. Um, great to see you here. Appreciate you taking the time always to come to our board meetings. Um, a couple of
015things I wanted to talk about. The first thing I do want to mention is, um, I'd like to start tonight by just giving you a quick update on what's occurring at the new um, well, I'll just say the board of education at the state level. So, typically how this works, the state board has eight citizens that apply for that are board members at the state level. Um, those eight citizens are actually appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state of and those eight citizens get eight-year terms. Over the past few years, we've had pretty good stability on who our state board members are. Um and most recently the however we've had four open positions in that and um Governor Kho actually appointed four individuals to those open spots and one of them he pulled
016back on temporarily at least. So right now we do have three new state board members that have been appointed and in the next coming days or weeks the Senate will be confirming them. I just think it's important for us as a community and citizens and staff members to really just pay attention to that because obviously the Missouri State Board of Education has a lot of work that they set all the educational policies. They really overall give you the direction for and vision for the preK through 12 school system. They oversee 500 school districts involving over 860,000 students. Um, so it's important to pay attention, close attention to who our new state board members are and what they do for our education system. So I just wanted to put that on everyone's radar. Um, next I
017just quick update on our long range facilities master plan. Obviously following our last meeting, we have advanced our search for partners to support the three outline priorities um that we've found from our long range facilities plan. And you can look on the screen the timeline for our RFQ on April 23rd. We did issue it. It can be found on the website. The deadline for partners to fill that out and submit for the RFQ is going to be May 13th. And after that, we're going to have a selection process. Our goal is at the June 4th board meeting, which is the last board meeting of the school year, we would announce who our partners are in the next phase of this plan. Um, obviously the selection process is going to be important. We're going to have
018a committee put together that's going to include district leaders, board of education members, Clayton parents, and community members. And we'll do an interview process with the interested parties who have submitted for the RFQ. And again, our goal is to have that individ the partners selected at the June 4th board meeting. So, we look forward to that. And as always, we'll keep the community engaged. We want to be very transparent with all our processes and we're going to be communicating all of it out. We've created a website. Um, obviously links and everything is all on there. So, we want to make sure that everyone is aware of that process that we're in right now. Next, um, we are going to have two presentations tonight. The first one is Dr. Well, one of them Dr. Garganigo will
019be at the table to talk about the success Ready Student Network and our membership in that. And then we're going to ask the board for approval for a resolution um supporting the work and part of that includes a waiver for the MAP assessments that we take and replacing that with interim assessments. Um so she'll be talking a little bit more about that. And then obviously our next other presentation, the first one for tonight, Dr. Gachuski and Dr. Jordan and Dr. Dr. Garganigo will be here to give us an update on that. So, if you recall last year, we began with new practices at each of our levels, elementary, middle, and high. And we began by we did a survey of our own. We surveyed our parents, our students, our staff, got their input. Then we
020did a board of education presentation where we said, "Here's our new processes, outlines for the school year and practices." And then we did a first reading of the policy of personal electronic devices and then we followed up with the second reading and adoption. Since then we've been working on implementation of all the new practices at this at the different levels. Based on the implementations we had also said earlier this school year that we'd come back at the end of the school year towards the end of the school year and just share how the implementation piece has been going. To do that, we did a survey again for our high school and middle school students and our staff. Obviously, we are sharing some of those results with you tonight. And I want to be very clear
021in saying that we too recognize and acknowledge the areas of growth for us. The two main areas, one obviously we're going to look at more closely is at White Down Middle School and the number of confiscations. And then the second, and I know Dr. Jordan is already going to talk about it during the presentation and give us specific steps on how to address that moving forward. And then the second big area is really enforcement at the high school level with the stat that I believe you shared with us, right? 36% of our high school staff feel that it's not being enforced. And that's not a number that we're proud of. That's not a number that, you know, we're like, look, this is working. We acknowledge it and we want to make sure that what are
022we going to do in terms of next steps to make it better. Um, and so we're going to talk about that a little bit more in our presentation as well. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Lucia for our student update and then we'll begin our presentations. Thank you. Um, I would like to start off with some shoutouts. Um, earlier this month, Marramac hosted its first ever week of service with each day dedicated to a different way for students to give back. From composting and recycling to working with buddies to plant flowers, pull weeds, pick up trash, and complete other tasks. It was a wonderful experience for the school community to come together to support Marramac and one another. Captain Elementary students celebrated Earth Day on April 22nd with engaging hands-on learning
023experiences organized by teacher Kim Beielman in collaboration with her fourth and fifth grade students student leaders from the recycling club. The day included studentled lessons, crafting opportunities, and an Earth Day picnic for the school. Beyond this event, these dedicated students worked year round to promote environmental sustainability at Captain through initiatives like managing schoolwide recycling and participating in litter cleanups. Glenidge fifth grade students took the stage earlier this month for their annual agents of change presentations. These enthusiastic students delivered persuasive pitches for school improvement improvements, addressing topics like fostering kindness and creating more engaging lessons. The event not only highlighted their public speaking abilities, but also built momentum for the change they'd like to see in the school. Okay. And prom festivities. Um, going off strong, I would like to start off by sharing one of
024the most recent events that happened in the high school, which was prom. For a little bit of context, this is last year's student representative, Moini. And we of course had to take a picture, so I thought I would add it to the slideshow. And then the other two photos, those are in the actual um prom venue, just for a little inside peek at how it looked. Um prom was an incredible success. From the energy all around to the beautiful roaring 20's decoration, it's safe to say that the students had an unforgettable evening. The spirit was high and I'm happy to report that the event went smoothly thanks to the hard work of our student council staff and volunteers. Um the weeks leading up to prom with prom court nominations and all of the pre-prom events.
025It's a nice and exciting time for all of the students before AP weeks and finals hit us. Overall, it's a celebration not just for juniors and seniors but for the whole school community and it was celebrated very amazingly. Um, okay. Regarding the elementary school updates, unfortunately, my meeting with Marramax students had to be pushed back to later this week. So, I will be giving the joint elementary student update at the next board meeting. I promise it there will be one. Um, um, I would like to however share about a meeting that I had with the Wellness Youth Council a little later. Um, I was genuinely drawn into the welcoming atmosphere. The Wellness Center is helping students transition more smoothly from middle school to high school by offering a consistent and supportive environment. It's not a
026place to goof off. Students come to take a breather, reenter, and return to class feeling more grounded. The youth council is working to make this space even more effective by creating weekly plans, promoting outreach, and preparing events like wellness week and senior wellness week, which is already in the works for these final months. Senior wellness week is actually I think this week and even there are like some senior spirit weeks. that's going on. And the wellness um the wellness center and the wellness youth council actually prepared gifts for all of the seniors to come by and pick up at the wellness center which was an amazing surprise. Um students are always encouraged to be a voice for the people and the youth council is truly empowering students to care for their mental and emotional well-being.
027So a biggest shout out goes to the wellness center and the youth council for all of their hard work. And that's it for my update. Thank you. Thank you, Lucia. Thanks for the picture with Moin, too. That was um Okay, Dr. Gargano. Um, you are up and Dr. Kashki and Dr. Jordan. Thank you. Everyone, good evening everyone. Thank you so much for having us this evening to talk. Um, sorry. That's okay. No, that's all right. U, I'm not used to starting things off. I know I'm in the big chair now. Okay. Um, so our purpose this evening is to share with you an update on our journey since we implemented the new practices. We will share discipline data, surve survey data, and next steps. Our overall goal is to foster a more focused and productive
028learning environment while allowing students to thrive academically and personally while also acknowledge the unique situations of each grade span. So, our current practices at Woundown, cell phones must be turned off as the students enter the building. Um, and then they will are to be uh put away for the remainder of the day. If they are wearing a wearable smartwatch, they are supposed to be also supposed to be turned off or in airplane mode for the day. And students should only be accessing the internet through the school provided district networks um on their Chromebooks or things like that. We also, just for note, don't allow Chromebooks to be used at lunch either. That's also or in the mornings while we're waiting for classes. So that is our current practice as we started this school year. Okay.
029I'm sorry. Can I just pause right there? Is Jeff in here? I just got his text to take a threem minute break because we lost Pam. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. Round two will be better. Just pause. Just time out. Um I just I think there's an issue with the Wi-Fi. Yeah, he said that's why there's an echo. Yeah. Or something. And I want to make sure Pam is here for this. Do you want us to start over? Yeah. I mean, that you totally need to start over, but let's I don't know. He sent me a message like 12 minutes ago that I just saw. So, I don't know. Well, let's see if we need to or Oh, we're using that thing. Okay, maybe hold on. I'll just text her while we're working on
030it. What? Okay. Oh, I was just texting her. Oh, okay. Well, then I could just uh Well, I think we Okay, everyone at home hold please. Technical difficulties. It looks like we're talking. Can you hear us? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. I'm going to hang. Okay. I'm going to mute myself. You guys are the best. Oh, don't repeat anything. Thank you. Ready? Yep. Okay. Um so ne next this year we at at CHS for the first time we had unified expectations around the use of personal electronic devices where cell phones and earbuds were prohibited during instructional time. Smartwatches and similar wearable devices were are expected to be placed in airplane or school mode while in class. The and and the the only exception to this would be with the express permission of
031a teacher for a an instru a specific instructional activity. Then students who violate the policy uh we have a series of uh progressive uh consequences that go into place that that in involve uh confiscation of the device and ultimately loss of privileges at this point. Sorry. So, in regards to white on this year, as we've implemented as we've implemented our new um policy, um we've hadund actually 70 as of today um cell phone confiscations for the year. Um we've had uh we've had 66 different repeat offenders. Um and I can go into detail about that if you'd like. Now, we have had 100 uh firsttime offenders of that group of 66 I'm sorry, 100 sorry, let me back up. Of the 170 cell phone confiscations, a hundred have been first-time offenders. Most of those 80
032out of the hundred were within first semester. I only bring that up as a part of the learning and the cultural change that has occurred. Um, which is a good sign for us as we've been looking and worry going through that. 39 children have had their cell phone taken twice. Um, which at that point in our policy is when we phone call the parents and say if the cell phone is taken again, you'll have to come and pick it up from the school. um 16 have had it taken three times, 10 four times, and there are two children who have had it taken five times. Um so when we get to that number of students that have had it taken five times, those those consequences look like uh because we don't want to pull them
033out of class or give them in school or out of school for as those that's defeating the purpose. So we actually have them check their cell phone in to the office um for a duration of time and then check it out at the end of the day. So that's how we work with those kinds of things. Um these have come from 20 different teachers across the building um at different times as we've gone through the different parts of the confiscation um working with this. Um the months if you would guess in August and also in January are our lightest months as we've like initially rolled it out which I also think is a learning for us that when we really hit it hard with the students and the teachers reiterating the rules reading in the
034incidences um where the biggest months have occurred is around November, December and February. Now January also we had a fair amount of snow days in there. So let's be honest about that. So those are the the discipline data that came with that. We also had this year four incidences of other types of referrals that involve cell phones such as videotaping, uh, cheating or refusal to give up the cell phone. Um, so we've had four incidents of that. Previous years we had eight last year, the year before was 16 and the year before that, so 2122 was 12. So those are the different kinds of referrals that have come with, you know, beyond just the confiscation referrals. Those are the referrals that are occurring with cell phones. I think that's also a sign that we're moving
035in the right direction. Uh at the high school uh this year, actually as of as of today, we're actually up to 42 actually cell phone confiscations. Um and that and we have had three repeat offenders. Two students have had their phone confiscated twice and one student has had the his phone confiscated three times. Uh the confiscations have come from 18 different teachers. Um the in addition to the cell phone confiscations, we've had five different disciplinary incidents involving cell phones, four involving academ academic integrity issues and one involving filming without permission. um the uh the what I would say relative to uh prior years the number of com I don't have the exact number in front of me because we we started kind of logging things differently this year as we started logging every every cell
036phone confiscation in prior years we did not necessarily do that but I I can confidently say that the number of cell phone confiscations last year was in the single digits it was less than 10 so I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about the survey survey information that we've collected um this spring. So, Panorama is a survey that I know you all are familiar with that you we've been using for several years for our um data as well as staff and or family input in different areas like special education or school programming. Um earlier this year, Panorama shared with their clients um a new survey related to cell phone and use within schools. Um and from feedback in October when we came to the table, we heard a desire to have professional
037survey writers create surveys for us where possible. Um so that initiated us exploring these surveys a little more deeply. Dan and Jamie and I reviewed the cell phone surveys um for students and for faculty. Um, and if we were going to have an opportunity to have the district responses compared to national responses, um, which we had also heard was a desire at the table to get some information nationally, um, that we would need to give it as written, at least the first time. So, we gave it in its entirety, um, so that we could keep the validity of of the survey in place. Um, since this is the first time that districts across the nation have had the opportunity to administer the survey, we don't yet have those national comparatives because windows are still open
038um, for school districts. So, I probably won't come until later. I've been in communication with Panorama and they're trying to sort of get a sense of when we will have those data. Um, the survey looks at three areas. So, cell phone impact and these are questions that evaluate the impact of phones in general, not necessarily related to education, to policies, to practices, but just related to teens and phones. Um, cell phone practice impact and then well, we they call it policy, we call it practice. Um, and then cell phone practice implementation. And you'll see in the data that I'm about to present that this really is our biggest area of improvement. So, um, we surveyed faculty at Widown and at the high school. Um, and in October, we shared a series of thoughts, um, supported
039by literature, and some of those beliefs are supported by the responses from our teachers around impact, including connections between cell phones and learning disruption. Additionally, teachers strongly believe that there is not a helpful effect of phones on safety. And why don't FA faculty report that they rarely ask students to use a phone in the classroom setting and the majority feel that the cell phone use in general for teens can hurt learning. Um, okay. The overwhelming majority of Wound faculty feel that the current practices are positive for both the learning environment and for student social interactions. And there's a theme in their comments about this year being a better year um and an overall improvement in the environment at Woundown. And then why don't faculty also overwhelmingly believe that the practices have been clearly communicated both
040to students and to families that they're easy to enforce and that they're consistently enforced and they see a support from the leadership team um in that enforcement. So then with the high school faculty similar to Widown the high school faculty believe that phones in general are harmful to teens and their learning. So that supports the the conversations that we've had at the table before. The majority of the faculty believe that the current practices help meet that goal of minimizing distractions for students. Um and that they believe that the practices are effective. Um but the faculty practices have been clear the faculty believe that the practices have been clearly communicated and have support from the administration. But the most obvious place for improvement from the faculty's lens is the consistency of enforcement. Um, and this is
041an area that we need to spend time focusing on and making those adjustments. When Jamie and Dan and I decided how to use the student surveys, we recognized that some of the questions related to impact could be seen as not important to ask teens. Um, we decided to administer the survey in its entirety for two reasons. the first one that I talked about about being able to to nationally norm um that information and then also we believe that by asking these questions we could get a sense of what our next steps may be um as far as education lessons or curriculum design. Um so for example adults agree that in many instances phones can be harmful to safety especially when we need students to be responding to the directions of the adults in charge. When
042we see that 46% of students say phones neither help or hurt safety, that information tells us that we need to instru to adjust our lessons or our instruction to help them to see this differently. So that was a lot of the reason behind us keeping these questions in there was for us to get a sense of like how can we calibrate and and get a sense of what the students believe to know what would influence our curriculum and and our teaching from there. Why don't students have a neutral response to cell phone impact on learning to safety and friendships? And this also is helpful um to influencing where we go with our development of curriculum moving forward. Um we feel like there's obviously space to grow um in that area. Similarly, students have a neutral
043opinion on the impact of phones on learning, safety, and friendship. And these data will be used moving forward again in developing materials um and lessons for students. And while they say that the rules are clear and the staff is likely to enforce the rules, they also acknowledge that there's room to grow with student compliance. 19% of students saying that they follow the rules a little or not well at all. At the high school with the student responses similar to Woundown, CHS students are pretty neutral on their opinions of phones impacting their learning. They report that teachers ask them to use them sometimes. um and they would agree that cell phones can be a a distraction, but also 48% report phones not having an effect on their learning. So these seemingly opposing responses give us something
044really to deep digger deep in dig into deeper. CHS students don't report a strong opinion one way or the other about current practices and their impact of learning, attention, safety, and friendships. And like with WY down, this is information that's going to be helpful to us as we move forward with curriculum design, um, which will start this summer. And then the last part with the student responses, um, the majority of students report that the rules are clear, um, and but there's obviously room to grow in the area of compliance from the students lens like we see with the teachers. Um, we acknowledge that we're working on a culture shift within the school. And so one of our theories of practice that Dan and I had was to disagregate the data by the class of 2025
045and the class of 2028 to see if there was a difference um in their percentage of responses because the class of 2028 is coming from a system where they had some enforcement um last year. And so while we when we look at those data we do see some difference, it's not a it's not a significantly um better increase, but it does feel like um it was something for us to acknowledge within this culture shift that um our senior class and our freshman class are responding differently um to some of this work. So updates on the updates on the digital cit citizenship curriculum. The elementary has an assured experience at fifth grade. um at one of the elementaryaries it is for all grade levels but it is an assured experience at a fifth grade at why
046don't it happens within the health curriculum and um um you may remember Bob is one of the lessons that we use and the and they use that as a a way to teach around sexing online predators digital footprint online reputation the health teachers do a very good job of being explicit and also understanding and giving lots of different examples of um what's going on with the lessons and finally at Clayton um high school. They did add this year half the story to the CHL CHL health curriculum which was a recommendation that came out of a person that helped consult with the wellness center. Um however after they implemented the curriculum and worked with the students um the teachers felt that it was not uh up to the par of our Clayton High School students and
047their maturity and their level of really taking it in. So the health teachers recommended that they work to develop their own curriculum that will actually be at a level that the kids will receive it better. So in summary, at the high school, we recognize that enforcement is not where we want it to be actually and and that we also recognize that this is a huge cultural shift because we're going from uh basically a group a group of students, the majority of whom have never had any sort of restrictions uh or organized restrictions placed on cell phones going to um a a uniform uh policy and uniform expectations that are that are formalized with with uh consequent like a consequence structure. We have uh communicated w with with kids and and with with uh teachers and
048we're having conversations about how we can best support teachers. Overwhelmingly the teachers say that they feel supported by the administration but obviously when we look at the enforcement numbers that we feel that it's clearly not consistent across the board. So one of the things that we have done is to ensure that all teachers have a dedicated place to store phones in every class on on campus during teaching and learning time. Uh we use the shoe organizers and we have those in every classroom. We've continued to partner partner with the wellness center, the edteex and the all-in coalition for parent education events. Um we have started to note uh cell phone viol violations in teacher observations. So, when we're doing going into classrooms and if we see um if we see a cell phone out because
049a lot of times you'll be sitting in the back of the classroom or moving about the classroom. If you see a cell phone, we're we're noting those in in observations so that when we have the postcon conversation with the teacher saying, "Hey, these two kids had their phone out. Did you know that?" Like, what kind of what's the story? Um and so that the idea being it's formative in nature but and then for those teachers that um that are kind of it seems to be an ongoing issue. Um obviously we we offer support with that but then ultimately we'll be start documenting that in in evaluations. One other thing that we're doing too is we're working with teacher uh teacher leaders actually right now to talk about uh so the how we might how we
050might uh do some I'll call them sweeps or walkthroughs uh within the classroom. We do a lot of we do a lot of different walkthroughs within the classroom whether it be equity walkthroughs or MTSS walkthroughs or curricular walkthroughs. Um and one of those things or one of the things that we're discussing now and looking at a way that we can formalize it for next year is the idea of can we incorporate um a sweeps for cell phones in in a way that either empowers the group or the teachers that we we we if we see a cell phone as an observer we just confiscate it and and then move forward which also um hopefully will be uh you know affirming to the teachers or you know give give the teachers an overt form of support.
051Now, admittedly, we also want to make sure that we don't um we don't make it seem like a gotcha event for those teachers that are also trying trying uh to to enforce the rules and and and so we don't want it to seem too punitive towards the teacher, but um we're we're in the early stages of that, but our our plan is to roll that out uh next fall. Thank you. Um, I'm not necessarily going to call on people, but I do want to start with Lucia before the rest of us ask any questions we have. Do you have any questions or comments? I'd love to hear um your response to this. First of all, thank you so much for the presentation. I don't necessarily have any questions, but I would just like to make
052a couple of comments on the student perspective. I know of course we've just received a lot of data and an amazing presentation but I also wanted to mention that like when I've been like talking with the students and teachers just saying that specifically of course I'm I can speak for the high school that there and the students have felt that there has been a really big improvement on cell phone usage in classroom. So, of course, there's a bunch of data still saying that um showing that cell phones are a big distraction and students really identify that this is a distraction, but seeing as how it was junior year, like how this policy was enforced junior year to how it has been senior year, um there has been a lot of change in classrooms and just
053regarding cell phone usage. There of course are occasional times that you might see a classmate like pull up your pull their cell phone out and the teacher or maybe even it might be a student it's like like dude you're gonna get caught like put it away you know um that actually like happens a lot and then you just like quickly put it away maybe for whatever reason it was you know but genuinely um cell phones aren't used as a means of like tuning out the teacher that's that's one of the biggest points I'd like to say um I think last year especially when the cell phone you cell phone policy wasn't as strict I I can mention that there were like a few people who you could see just like maybe like scrolling um through
054whatever app it may be to because like okay maybe you're a little like bored in class you know but this year especially with the cell phone policy cell phones have not been used that way at all at least for the high school and in the classes that I've been taking and the classes that my friends have been taking um when cell phones have been used, it has been um for usually like let's say if it wasn't really education focused, it would usually be texting, probably a friend or maybe even a parent. But mostly I can always say in an educational context, it has been taking photos of boards lots. If you scroll through my friends or my like photos, you can just see a bunch of like notes on whiteboards and it's usually always just
055like photos that you're taking of the teacher's notes or of the whiteboard of or of presentations. And that's for example one of the biggest way that cell phones are used um educationally in class and also when you'll see like maybe it on students desk when we're going through like big note topics and we're just like take a photo and then take as many notes as you can and then take a photo and then continue your notes. Um, but I so speaking about that, I'd like to say that enforcement varies and is greatly dependent on teachers and in the type of classroom that you're in. For example, I've noticed a lot that in more of the language classrooms, um, whether it's like learning a new language or an English classroom, cell phone use is like at
056all seen very very rarely. Um, but maybe for a math classroom or a science or STEM classroom, you do see it a little maybe a little I'm saying more on like students desks or just out and about. Um, and it is more for that like using it for labs and then photos and everything. So enforcement of course has been seen as an issue in the high school, but I can also say that I truly believe it's because it's just so dependent on the classroom that you're in and on how it might be utilized either for education or maybe just a bit of distraction. So yeah, thank you. Thank you, Lucia. Yeah, thank you so much for everything that Thank you so much for everything you just told us. It's it's really valuable to hear what
057you're seeing and hearing um on the ground. So, we really appreciate that and I'm so glad to hear that you've seen this big shift especially from last year to this year. It's amazing. Yes. Um in your experience, um when you do does every teacher ask for the phones to go into the shoe pouch? Not every teacher. So, in the beginning of the year, especially when the announcements went off, I think it was the first three days of high school, like reminding teachers and students about the cell phone policy, um, most teachers were like, "Okay, everyone like put it into the into the shoe holders." But then usually after first quarter it changed for some teachers and usually it was like if I see it, I'm going to take it away. Um, but you didn't have
058to put it in the in the in the in the holder. But for like language classrooms, for my language classrooms, in my experience, you do just like immediately put it into the holder and then you're not allowed to take it out for for any reason. Like if you're going to the bathroom, it just stays there for the whole 90 minutes. Could you see um utility in ensuring that every single teacher has that happen in every single class? Is that a better Is that going to be help students get on their phone less in your opinion? I think that of course it could because you just wouldn't have it there. Um but even for the classrooms that sometimes do have it all the time. There's a couple of people who might not like place it there
059and you even like you won't see it during class but it's just like you don't want to put it on the wall and you want to have it in your backpack. That's how I've seen a couple of people just have that. But um I think it would help with the distraction maybe a little bit. Like again I I want to mention the distraction because of course it has it is something that's seen in the classrooms and when I've been talking to other students um it again occasionally happens but mostly like cell phones when they are used in classroom are for that educational purpose. And so when I'm thinking about placing it there every day for the more STEM related classrooms, which are usually the ones in my experience that you don't have to put them
060in the wall on the wall for. Um, that might be a little bit of a complication because just because we're just so constantly taking photos of of the like all of the whiteboarding that we're doing. Um, usually also we like assign a person in class who takes photos of the whiteboard for like people who are absent because I know a lot of like the golf players, they go for dayong tournaments and they aren't at school at all. So for those STEM classrooms when it's heavy on note-taking, um we're taking those photos and posting them on Google Classroom for those students to see. So maybe in those instances it would be like stand up, grab your phone, sit down, grab your phone, sit down. But I think there could be some some positivity and some benefit
061to having it on the wall. But I just think it's so dependent on the classroom and the teacher that What do you think about that, Dan? I I mean I think Lucia I think Lucia I mean I think she she framed it pretty well because I would say what she stated actually has been the is pretty consistent with the feedback from the teachers when when when I I I went to each each of the core department heads and said give me concrete examples of of who and and how how you're using them in the phones for instructional purposes. Science by far g gave me the most examples. I I mean physics in particular about about using video to document motion in physics labs. Uh there's apps to measure that they use to measure distance in
062some of the labs that they do. Uh they they frequently said like Lucia that they encourage kids to take pictures of notes or diagrams or things they put on the board. Um some said stopwatch and biomed. They said they use them to videotape blood draws on mock patients actually in crime scene photos and and crime scene reconstructions. There's a they also mentioned uh basically doing um videoing their suturing practice actually so that they could be graded on their sutures. Um and then like within English u that they they said that they use them for their uh public speaking units actually where they record partners and then they they evaluate uh you know eye contact and speaking skills, tone that that sort of thing. uh world languages they mentioned that they do the in French they
063use them for a review activity where they have stations and use QR codes that have embedded video audio and website extensions but um what I would say is overwhelmingly it was science actually was was the department that that's appear that that reported that they used them the most. So I could see that being in like a distraction if you were getting up and getting back down and having all the kids get their cell phones and and then sitting back down. But I I mean I I I do know from just being around the building and I and I made a reference uh the other day to Dr. Patel. We were we were giving out uh the foundation awards and and then the number of classrooms we were in that were actually using uh the the
064the shoe holders actually and one of them was a was a science classroom actually. Uh but um yeah, like I said, it's really kind of teacher dependent. Are you good with that? I I so yes I I mean I I I think that giving teachers autonomy to to to basically use it as as they see fit instructionally. I I mean I I want to empower our teachers. Uh but I but I you know I also recognize that there are teachers that need support actually and and and that you and even though we have uh folks that uh you know like overwhelmingly they say they they feel supported by the administration and the cell phone policy. I I mean like like anything particularly when you have implementation you you have implementation fatigue. I I think and
065I mean Lucia alluded to that and I was talking with a couple of our teacher leaders today about it and they admitted themselves. It's that that you know you know I was on it actually for the for the first quarter and on it for the f the second quarter and we give reminders but but you know but in in fourth quarter that they're they're kind of like they still in enforce the rule but um they're not snatching every phone that they see. uh and the the you know the the idea that if a teacher walks in I mean according to according to the the the guidelines if they see the phone they're supposed to take it and turn it into the office that I know that there's the you know this teacher you know self-reported
066that you know look if I walk in I see a phone phone on a desk I I remind everybody that the phones need to be put away and the kids the kids will put the phone away but he said I recognize by rule that that uh that I pro I I should actually turn it into the office but he goes I admit that I I don't I don't do that actually. And and so I I think that that you know it's also one of the things that we're what in month six month seven of of the implementation and and um you know I I definitely see the culture changing that there there's there's certainly more work to do and we're we're we're working with teachers to try to see how we how we support them.
067I think Lucia brings up a good point um that you just did as well, Dan, which is that it's, you know, six months of this new practice, new rule at the high school and that you've already seen a huge change from last year. So, I'm like thinking ahead when the current ninth graders are seniors coming out of WOM where there's strict even stricter rules like what will that look like in our high school? And I think the culture will have shifted because they won't have known any any different which is why I was glad you pointed out the seniors you know especially separately. Um I don't want to I have other questions but I'll open the floor up to may anyone else. So if if the default shifted though, if the you could still if
068the default shifted to having it in the cubbies, if the expectation was that it be in the cubbies and then if a teacher has a recording situation or you gave a long last, they they would be pulled out. That wouldn't that help with the enforcement fatigue issue because you just have a default that they're put away and they pull out. I mean that's a possibility here to create a clearer expectation because I do think clarity leads to enforcement and um I don't know just something to think about. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say um it is interesting to me to be honest that I understand and I'm not an educator but I understand wanting to empower your teachers but I have a hard time with you knowing that teachers aren't doing you know that you
069that the teacher said I I I just wonder what your response is to that because to me as the leader um you know I again I understand that there's a balance with empowering Dan but to me it's really important that if we have an expectation that we expect our teachers to follow that. I was just like I'll put it I'll stop. Do you think um which by the way I love your idea about um taking notes of it in your observations and then when you feel it's necessary put adding it to their formal evaluation. But first of all, the teachers know that that is that have you informed them that that's going to happen? And how do you think that'll help? We've been we've been doing it. We didn't make it we we didn't make
070a specific announcement that we're putting this in your evaluation, but but when we see when we've seen it in observations, we have noted it and obviously those teachers that that that we're working with certainly know. Okay, good. Because I think when they know that they're going to be held accountable, that'll also just proactively hopefully get them to to change their practices as well. I don't want to monopolize the time. So, anyone else? I'm happy to tell whenever Pam's on the phone if people hear me. This is weird. We can hear you. Go ahead. We can hear you. Okay. Thank you. Hi. Um, so thank you all of you. I also want to thank Alicia, um, Jeff Pulse, and Luke Haidder for making this So that And it is clear that it is not being followed
071especially at the high school. It's not being implemented at the high school. And I have a a lot of details to to say to like back this up, but I guess I just want to start with saying what is your plan to do things differently? You have said, you know, make sure everybody has the shoe holders. That's one option. Another one is to look at them through the walkthroughs. Another one is to, you know, bring these make these a part of teacher evaluations. What are other plans? What are more systemic plans or proposals for plans to make this happen? Because we decided as a district and we made it a policy in the fall that we will have phone free learning environments and that is not happening. So I want to know some other plans
072because I don't think that the three mentioned are enough. Do we lose you Pam? No, I'm here. I just I guess I was waiting for a response to that. Like what are other plans? I'm No, no. I I I I mean I I I would argue that the the idea of of doing observations and incorporating it into evaluations and doing organized walkthroughs are are systemic are systemic issues. I mean, as we put those structures in place, um I I think that uh I I would also say that we we we're looking for uh I ideally like I said, I like I said earlier, we're looking the numbers aren't where we want them to be, but I also think that that we are new at this and I I think that um that it it you
073know, you don't change a you don't change a culture overnight. And I I I don't think you change a culture of in in one year to be perfectly honest, especially in a place where you have an open campus where you have a ton of freedom and that and then we're trying to rein in actually some of those those expectations. Uh that there are certainly going to be bumps in the road. I I I feel like we we have made progress. Have we made enough progress? No. there there's certainly uh room to grow, but I I I think that as teachers see the benefits that they've noted in the survey that that we're going to continue to build that momentum and as we continue to have students that h have experienced the the these these expectations
074um over a series over a period of time that we're also going to see greater compliance with that. Um the um you know I I think that that teachers when I I me mentioned empowering I think our our goal is to have a distraction-free classrooms. Now I I and and and while I I think there's the letter of the law and and then the spirit of the law and and and that that and while in the case of this teacher if this if this teacher reminds kids to put their phones away and the kids put their phones away I I really don't have a problem with that. I I mean because ultimately it's it's getting to to where we want the classroom environment to be. If it's in the shoe holder, great. I'm like, if
075if I were in the class, I would use I would use the shoe holder, but but some some teachers prefer to just have it away. I'm like I'm fine with that, but but our ultimate goal is we want the we want the the distraction gone. actually. Now, like I said, um that that I I I do want to allow teachers to to to have that freedom to to do what they feel works best in their classroom. And now, you know, as we move forward, we're we're going we're putting systems in place where we're we're we're and I hate to say checking actually to make it sound um punitive, but but we're we're monitoring the situation and then addressing the situation um in a systemic way. So I guess the I'm not the principal. I I
076recognize that. Um but I I don't like that we are making the teacher be the enforcer of a like a nationwide problem. I think that the um implementation of this policy needs to come from above the teacher level. We want the teachers, I think, to focus on teaching and on building their relationships with their students. And if teachers are constantly carrying this fear that someone's going to walk in and I'm going to get caught or that I have to constantly monitor my students, it's going to burn them out and it's going to impact the student teacher relationship. And I I really hope that there is there are proposals in the future or something that takes this away from the teachers having to be the bodyguards of this. Um I wonder I would like to maybe
077go through a few other points. A lot of my things I have based on page numbers but this presentation changed since I last saw it. So my page numbers are going to be off. Um, so I app oh I appreciate that you did the survey that you used panorama to write the survey and um, you know, I had asked that question about why are we including some of these questions about safety and friendships when I don't think that those answers are important and so I really appreciate your explanation of why why you use those. Um, so in the high school, and if anyone wants to interrupt me, please do. In the high school, you wrote that there is still quote still room for consistency and implementation. It was on page 11 of this initial slides.
078Um, I would like to hear something more concrete. Question one of your survey said 49% of students say that phones are used in the classroom for non-class purposes. Sometimes, a lot of the time, and all the time. That's half of our students are using in the high school are using phones for non-class purposes. If we include once in a while in the classroom for non-class purposes, that number goes up to 79% of our students are using phones in our classroom. That's too much. Um, question number two says 41% of students find usage by other people distracting. And so with these policies, we are just letting one student who chooses to use their phone impact the learning environment of the people around them. I mean 41%. Um in terms of the safety, I guess we already
079talked about that. Um okay, also under CHS faculty responses, it was initially on page 13. I don't know where it is now. You reported that 63% of teachers say the policies support students engaging with each other. That is true, but those are the policies. That's not what the question actually asks. That if it asks if the policies support that, 63% say that policies support students interacting with each other. But they also say in that same section of the survey that the policies are not being enforced. They're not saying that the current implementation supports students engaging with one another. They're saying the policies do, but not the implementation. In fact, question four of part one of your survey, 94% of teachers say that phones do not support students positively engaging with each other in school. Um,
080page 14, the consistence of enforcement and ease of enforcement are quite low. I I wanted to hear more reasons about why you think that that is the case and what you plan to do to remediate that. And I I'm guessing that you've already shared that. I mean, we have a 36% consistency rate. Is there any anything you want to add to that? Hold on. They're Hold on. They're looking Hang on one second. I'm sorry. Which questions that correlate to changes? No, I I mean that that's the data that that I was citing before. I mean now that now I know that that category the 36% 36% refers to quite an extremely now now if you use somewhat that increases the that increases that response to over 70 something% or I believe it's 70 74% actually
081in terms of consistency if if you use the the the the somewhat consistently response but that that being said I I would argue that um the the in terms of the response, you know, this is also perceptual. This is perceptual data from from from the teachers actually. And so, um, I I think you'll find most people if you ask them, they'll say, "I'm I'm enforcing the policy, but I'm not sure if my neighbor is." Uh and and and and while that that's that that that's not a good excuse, I also think that there's an element of students trying to students trying to wear teachers down a little bit because they self-report this all the time where they'll say, "Oh, you're the only one that that actually you're the only one that actually enforces this rule.
082You're the only one that makes us use the shoeholder." And and and you know, I think after a while teachers like maybe I am the only one that's actually doing this, which I think can have an impact on the data. But if you're asking me for for theories on on the response rate, I I I do think that that I do think that has an impact. I appreciate that, Dan. And I guess that just further reinforces to me that this should not be left to the teachers. It's ju it seems like it is not fair to the teachers when these things are being sent to them. And so I I really think that whether it's us as a board or the administration, we need to come up with a better plan that takes some of
083this control that takes some of the implementation or the enforcement away from the teachers. And well, I I do I do wonder though in all seriousness, I mean, why why down has a billtoell ban on on cell phones, yet they've confiscated 170 170 phones this year and the teachers are the ones doing that that confiscation. Correct. Generally. Yeah. Generally. Yeah. There's a few principal ones in there, but Yeah. And you know, I've been talking with some of the board members recently. It's like, well, you know, a middle school student is a very different student to engage with than a high school student. And I'm sure that that is some difference to it. And still, even at the middle school, it's they have a great policy, but it's also not enforced consistently. I think it's a
08476% rating of enforcement from the from the student from the student perspective. Um, so what 38% of Wound students report that students follow the rules very or extremely well and 33% follow it somewhat well. So it's still a C rating. I I do want to also when you talk about this student survey also some of the things to bring up like when you're specifically talking about the students and I love student voice and talking to students but you also have to remember they're 11 to 14 year olds. So, some of the things they also said was like um I'm making sure I got the right thing up here, but when it talks about is our cell phones going to distract you? I think they said like none of them said nope, they don't distract me.
085287 kids said not distracting at all. So, I feel like there's some caveats in our student data that we need to think about as we're looking into it. Not that we want to discount the student voice, but it is also, you know, one of the things we think about um as we're looking at some of the pieces. Yeah. um you know in the way that the question was asked and I know that you didn't write the question it says you know do students use these quote during class but what wasn't asked and I think is also important especially at ligon where there is a bell-to-bell rule is that you know wasn't asked do students use these in the hallway do students use these during lunch do student use students use these in the bathroom and
086all of those we hear from parents are happening and I'm sure you know that too Yeah, and I I'll respond, Pam. So, yeah. So, the bathroom thing is a problem. I agree. So, we really walk a fine line. So, you know, our overall goal is sense of belonging, right? Students are supposed to have their phones in their backpacks. That's where they're supposed to keep them. We know that majority or some students are keeping them in their pockets or in different places on cross body bags or wherever they have them. So, it's a fine line to like accuse a student of like, "Hey, let me look at your body to see if I see a cell phone outline before you go to the restroom. Um, and also make them feel like they're valued and these things."
087So, there are some things that we can do in terms of like if you have a cell phone, put it on the wall, but also that's an if, you know what I mean? So, it's a it's a piece of that. So, some things that we can do to help support that is like there are apps that parents can put on their phones that turn the phones off. So, like we need to like not just tell that to parents, but like have nights during orientation that teach parents how to turn the cell phones off during the school day, you know, like you know, but go a step further. Not just say like here's a article, here's a brochure, but like here's a workshop. And I've actually worked with my edte on some like things that they
088can do to help support the parents to support the schools and like social media and things on the evenings and the weekends and things like that because you know those are some things that we can help that'll minimize it right away if they're not allowed to operate their phones during the school day. Um, the other part is monitoring the bathrooms and this is also a struggle. Like recently it's been my job to stand outside the bathroom during lunch and watch if large groups of girls go in there to do TikTok videos, you know, like not an awesome job, but like also something that like we open the door to say everybody come out. Now they also don't love me when I open the door and say all you girls come out. So it's again a
089balance between like feeling a sense of belonging and going into the B, you know what I mean? All those things and then the monitoring. So, I I do appreciate that we have work to do there, but it is it's a little more complex, you know what I mean? So, how can we tease out some of those things um to make sure that the kids really understand why they aren't using them? You know, there's a maturity factor there, but really engage our parents. You know what I mean? Like, if a if a parent calls and says there's video being shot in the bathroom, well, then we can investigate, look into it, and then we we take the phones, we offer consequences, we go from there. we have to engage better with our parents to get that
090information to us so that then we can investigate and look into the situations um or teach the parents how to you know remind them like you've bought the cell phone most of the time you've bought the cell phone you pay the bill you get to decide when it's on and off you know but that's a that's a piece that we need to buy into and we are also seeing a cultural shift like the sixth graders are a very different group than our eighth graders in terms of like when the eighth graders were sixth graders like they're coming in with a much more educated viewpoint of like no cell phones they're they don't have as many Apple watches they have different things like but it just it has to be a partnership with the parents as
091well. I think that's a really important point, Jamie. And I think like educating I mean like I personally don't know how to turn off my kids. I mean, my kids are way older and out of the house, but I don't know how to turn off their phone. Like as simple as what you just said, I think so many parents would appreciate knowing how to do that. And also reminding parents like you don't have to even let your kid take their phone to school if there's not a need for them to have it. You know, I know realize there are needs sometimes, but I think that parent, the partnership is great. But that idea of like a a night to teach the parents how to do that is fantastic. And as Stacy just said, like a
092lot of parents don't know how to do that. Um, I don't think not sending your kids to school with phones is a reasonable solution because so many people need them either before school or after school. But I do think that at the middle school, the yonder pouches could be an incredible system of support when they are already not allowed from bell to bell. I don't see a reason why I would don't just get a yonder pouch get yonder pouches for the middle school. I guess can I add to that? Yeah, I had a I have a whole lot of points here that just kind of share back the numbers to you that you all already have. Um Pam, do you mind if I I just This is hard. Um this is hard. On page 21
093of the initial one, it you wrote that a bit more than half of students you show a bit more than half the students say that students don't think that phones impact their learning or attention. Yet the data you receive counters this with saying that 82% of students say they are distracted by others people's phones. What we know is that students and adults are addicted to these devices. We all are. And what we know about addiction is that people do not have an accurate understanding of the impact of the use on their functioning, the impact of the use of whatever the substance is on their functioning. These teenagers, they don't know any life without a smartphone. And so their perspective on whether these phones help or hurt them is not accurate. And I urge you to
094pay attention to the difference between the two. I believe that your role as educators and our role as a district is to go above and beyond this. Um [Music] uh the digital citizenship um you wrote that the elementary schools are getting a lesson as of April 1st. I know that captain had had that but Glennidge and Marramac I was told had not had that as of April 1st. And so I want to make sure that that has been added since April 1. You're saying that it is an assured lesson for fifth graders. So um in working with them, they're they're working with the map schedules also. And so they're trying to to make sure that all of these things happen before the end of the year. So we knew that captain had done theirs and
095then the the other two buildings when I worked with them, we were trying to adjust around the map schedule. I'm sorry, I didn't hear the end of what you just said. Just that we're trying to adjust trying to work around um the map schedule to make sure that both things happen, the lessons and the testing. Okay. Thank you. Um Okay. So, in summary, and then I'll be quiet, I we I think that we need to do better and I think that it needs to be a more systemic approach and I would like to see the approach be taken away from teacher responsibility. I'm not saying that they have no responsibility, but I would like for it to be much greater than just teacher responsibility. Thank you. I mean, thank you, Pam. Okay. Um, Krista, do
096you want to Yeah, I want to follow up on what you said, Pam. Oh, boy. What was it? Geez, Louise. Oh, um, with with the She talked about um Are we good? She talked about pouches at White Out. She was saying that it I was, you know, again, I don't You don't want to stand at the bathroom every lunch period. I don't want you to have to do that. So, if they didn't have them with them, that would solve that problem. You wouldn't have to be scanning their body. You know what I mean? that's that's not appropriate. So, um, again, partnering is awesome. I love the idea that you came up with. I think it's huge. Um, I also think that we could do more even without that partnering. I think both have to happen,
097but um, things like pouches in the rooms, but in middle school could even be simpler that they just leave it in their first period class. It never leaves that spot the entire day. So, I did reach out to several school districts around the area around that. Um, so I I spoke with Leoo, um, Brentwood, uh, Lindberg, both of the Lindberg schools, and they actually no one who I spoke to, uh, they do that because of liability and issues that would go with like where they are, how that works, all those kinds of things. So they do similar to us. All of them have policies similar to us. Some of them do allow them during halls and in lunch, but most middle schools are similar. Um, they but they and they also do what we do
098like with multiple um, students who have multiple offensives. they confiscate those at the beginning of the day um and give them back at the end of the day. But no one has a policy that they are taking them at the beginning of the day for logistical reasons of getting the kids back to get the cell phones for liability with parents for all sorts of different things. At least at this point. Okay. And I'm I'm less interested in what everybody else is doing locally than I am about what we're doing here. And I also know that nationally this is happening. I I understand we consistently seems like we you know uh look around our local area to see what's going on but clearly like Pam said this is a national problem. So we really need to
099be looking nationally because as a nation we are starting this process of understanding how to deal with this in our schools. So we really have to be looking broader than that. You can find on the internet schools that are having them leave it and and from what I'm reading it's not a logistical problem. they there's enough time at the end of the day they each go you know it's not like all the kids are going to one room they're all going to their first period class so you leave enough you know the five minute window for them to go to their first period class retrieve their phone and you add that to you know the parent education again so much less enforcement issues if they cannot get to it all day long and like Pam
100said it's not on the teachers you know it's that first period class teacher yeah but otherwise for the rest of the day they don't have to think about it. Um, so I would really think about not just comparing us to what's going on. In fact, I would say we're we look at ourselves as leaders in this area. And if we're concerned about not just academics, but SEAL, which we are so good in both of those areas, this can only improve both of those without a doubt. Um, so you know, that's what we're trying to do, right? We're trying to continue, like Pam said, being an excellent school district and making sure our students have the best environment to have, you know, their their education. So, to me, I'd really consider um and it's the logistical
101part is not a valid reason not to do it. So, I'll just say it that way. It's just not. We we figure out logistical stuff all the time. Um so I'll go back to having said that I'll go back to what I said in October which is um we always ask in in any um public health issue we always ask for all community members to be involved in it. We never just ask parents to be involved. So 1946 is when national school lunches became something that our government said we need to make sure that these kids are getting fed properly. And so we didn't say to the parents, "Hey, send your kids to school with great food." We said, "Hey schools, we actually need you to be involved in this." And I would say that
102this is an area where we also need to have primary prevention, which is having our schools be in line with our thinking, which is that phones um are addictive and and a distraction like we all agree. And therefore, the schools are going to be a part of making sure that they are not accessible during the school day. There's very few times when we have because of smartphones and these kids especially there are very very few hours when they could be fully present right we don't as a society we don't do a lot of that especially in America where we are just with ourselves we are getting bored andor thinking creatively all of those things and if we could give them the gift of having eight hours where they not only get to be present but
103they actually get to rely on their own resiliency to get through what they're trying to get through. I watched a a really great webinar around this um around a phone free school movement n which is a nationwide movement and they had a psychiatrist an adolescent psychiatrist speak about the fact that a lot of parents will say well my kid needs it for anxiety and again this wouldn't be available at white but it would be you know and so when they're in the hallway and they and they kind of get anxious about something and they they text their mom and say I'm anxious about or they or they even just scroll because scrolling gives them that little distraction. She talked about how that's called avoidance coping. And again, if we can't control whether they do that
104at home, but we certainly can help these kids have a space for eight hours where they can't participate in that kind of coping where they're using other skills. They're going to have to cope in other ways, which hopefully they go to the wellness center and find out what those ways are, right? Because again, in my view, we're we're sort of talking out of both sides of our mouth. If we're going to have a wellness center that doesn't ever say, "Yeah, you should get on your phone and do this to help you feel better." And yet, we're allowing them to do, you know, to go to their phone for coping, you know, by having it available during, you know, the school day. Although I I love that we're are talking that we are talking about instructional
105time is not the time for it. But I'll segue to I do believe that bell-to bell is not the time for it. that it's truly eight hours because let's talk about when the the kids getting it out to like you said take pictures at that same moment that a big a text could come up a snap could go out a there's other things that can happen during those two minutes or one minute or or less that they're going to see on their phone that has nothing to do with academics. It's just the nature of phones. Um, so in my eyes there is very limited. I understand physics but I really don't even understand there's we got along without phones in our classrooms for a long time and we all did just fine. I didn't have
106a We're all here. Oh, we're all here. You're all here being very intelligent, amazing leaders in our schools. Didn't have those phones. Worked out just fine. So, I have a hard time with us relying on phones in any way for instructional purposes. You may probably already know that because I said it last time, but repeat it. Um, what else? There was a me. Um, oh, okay. Couple couple things. Couple specific things. Um the one of the thing and thank you for addressing the surveys. That was really helpful to me. I'm very I don't I didn't love that survey. I liked that it was put out in a way that um was uniform and that you're going to be able to compare. So for those reasons, I understand exactly why you said it. I don't like
107the idea of asking students or teachers whether they think that, you know, makes them safer to have it or not because we already have facts on that. We are very aware. It's just like asking students if they think broccoli is healthy that you know whatever that we don't what they say about it doesn't matter. We know that broccoli is healthy. So I I don't love those questions and I that's a bigger problem. But I understand why you use that survey. So thank you for making that clear. Um are you um have you considered the fact the idea the concept of a student and you know could be at white out too if they're taking it out of their backpack would see some sort of school threat or a violence or something come through on their
108phone during school hours. I mean, can you imagine during passing period, a student gets on their phone and reads, um, I put a a bomb in the Clayton bathroom. It's going to go off in three minutes. tell me about how having the risk of not just what you would do about it because I honestly don't want you to tell me what you're going to do about it because I don't want it to happen but I like I just I I feel like it's uh if we can protect our kids from having like we had at false alarms andor actual alarms you know we have such a great security system already and for them to see these texts and get alarmed armed it actually, even if it's a real threat, is not helpful. It could actually,
109you know, decrease the response time because we now have kids screaming in hallways, right? And people not knowing what's going on and have wrong information. I think it's the here, but maybe it's there. So, I'm having a hard time and I feel like it's a ticking time bomb like not to no pun intended that this will happen in our schools that eventually at Clayton High School possibly wound if they're not in a first period class some kid will see something and it will alarm them and it will cause a very traumatic event. This has happened. We we we've we've experienced this already. Uh I mean a few years ago we we had there was a a threat made towards the the high school along with a couple other high schools actually that was aware of
110that. Yeah. That was seen during the school day and it was during the school day and and what happened was almost simultaneously uh a student went to the SRO and reported it. A student came to me and reported it. And then we were able to connect immediately with the Clayton PD and begin begin an investigation uh immediately. Luckily, it was it was un unfounded, but uh the the the sooner we know about those things actually, the the quicker we we can start investigating them. And that's what happened in that case. Have you spoke with Michael Parkinson, our new safety and security um director director um about what he thinks? Because from what I've understand, the the student getting the word out about this potential threat is not any faster than us as our system exists
111being able to respond to that threat. Yeah. So, he and I had him have have had a couple meetings um since he's been here to to talk about this. And part of what we talked about um he comes from an environment that has an open campus. Um and so he has said to me that he agrees with um sort of our approach to our theory of practice being tight during instructional times. Um but knowing that particularly at the high school because of the freedom that that children have, he actually believes that the phones could be helpful in that instance if something were to happen while kids are at lunch that that we could um engage with the phones to alert students of something and for them to account sort of have an accountability piece back
112to us. We don't have any of those systems in place right now, but he's like that could be an option for us to look at, but he agrees with the um keeping it tight during instructional times. That goes against several things that I've read and something that Jack Boer said to me directly um during a meeting earlier this or last week. So, that's something we'll have to think about. I also want to say that um K through 12 is different than where he is from which is you know higher you know college level and so the way that a student would use their phone to help like he's saying potentially might be very different when you're talking about you know 19 to 21 year olds versus sure the other thing that he and I talked
113about was like in in a classroom environment if there if there were an emergency situation so like the article that you sent he and he and I looked at that article together um and talked through it and and we would agree with that article in the sense of in a in a classroom setting in an emergency situation, we don't want kids on their phones. We we want the kids to respond to the adults in the room um and and in that setting. And so one of the things that he and I had talked about was what does like already our training for for students as well as our training for teachers, what does that look like and how to um embed that within that training. So like the four use training that we do, what
114are the ways that we can embed that learning also for children um as well. And that feels different to me than when the kids are off campus or something like that. Um so this idea of like in the article it talks about if kids have their phones then they're alerting parents, parents are clogging things up and and then first responders can't get there and stuff. And so so he would agree with everything in that article also. So I want to be clear in like what he and I talked about. It wasn't about like the response to an emergency in a in a classroom setting of like them having access to the phones. He agrees that they that they should that they should respond to the adult. We talked more about what does that open campus
115look like when kids are off campus for lunch or something like that and something were to happen. Is there a way for us to leverage um those tools to to help communicate things to kids and for kids to help communicate things back to us? He and I spoke about that too, but kids have their phones when they're off campus. So that's not a problem. No, he's saying you can leverage the technology back and I want to just add to that. Yeah. At our PTO council meeting last week, I think I think you were you weren't there. Um we talked about this with Gina. Um the parents the incident in Wound had just happened you know where there was a threat right as kids were leaving school. The parents in the PTO council meeting were actually
116asking because their kids have phones if the kids could have gotten a direct text saying it was a false alarm. They wanted their kids to get a notice like false alarm because it took so long for the kids to hear from their because it was after school and that they weren't with the teacher to tell them it was a false alarm. They had to wait till their parents called them and said it's false and that took too long. I don't know if Jamie you heard this too, but I'm just saying at PTO council, the parents were asking for what Dan's talking about. Leverage the phone use to push out to students. That makes perfect sense after school. You wouldn't do that during the school day because they're in school. They're going to know that I
117think what I think the parents were talking about I don't want to I wasn't at the meeting. So what what we what we've discussed in our afteraction meeting around that incident is one of the things we learned is like and this is something if you are in a lockdown situation the time that it takes to clear Yeah. versus like we may have known that it was accidental within like I'm going to make this up for public record. This is all made up. Okay. Um we may have known that it was accidental within five minutes but we have to wait to clear and look for things whatever. So you have children who are in a lack situation and it takes a minute. So I think what they were sharing was like and there were kids that
118were also at our rally points that were waiting to hear things. So they were away from the building and you know but the kids that were in those classrooms if they could have heard sooner we think this is an accidental thing that's I think what they may have been talking about. I wasn't in that meeting but that's that's what they were sharing and um and the kids in those situations and the teachers in that situation did a beautiful job all of them. Um, and the teachers reported that there were some children that were texting their parents, you know what I mean? Like, you know, because they were fearful and you know what I mean, but quietly in the dark, you know, and doing all those things, but that was now it was after school, so
119the kids did have, you know, it's 3:15. The kids had their cell phones. So, you know, I don't know what it would look like if it would have happened at 3:00. Um, but, you know, that's that is something that we're and we're learning and learning as we go had to go through all that. I would really agree with what those teacher or those parents are saying after school. Yeah. I just don't think it helps at all during during the school. In fact, it would it's not necessary during we want them to be and I was kind of just concurring what Dan was saying about open campus in that time that there's a way to leverage it open campus to push out a text. So I agree with Mike there for sure. Okay. No, we're good
120now. We got it. We got it. I I guess I can kind of like show share a little of our story because my little brother was at the false alarm. He was going he was at track practice and he was waiting in the little like grass like indoor patio area that they have at Widown um when they heard the alarm sound and they like they climbed the gate, opened the gate for the other students that were there and then immediately left the rally points and he was telling me like he called me, my mom called me asking if I knew something about it and then there were definitely lots of calls made but my mom was the first to tell my little brother and their friends that like it was a false alarm because of
121course they had no way to to know that it was a false alarm yet until a teacher like started going up to them and was like, "Yeah, like a couple minutes later was able to meet with them at that rally point and say like it was a false alarm." So, sorry. Yeah, but that um I agree maybe like a text after school or at least what I've been thinking maybe for the high school just kind of this whole topic of conversation like made me think about also the open campus for example like if an emergency or lockdown were to happen at Clayton High School and students were let's put a scenario at like Chick-fil-A eating there with their friends like how would you know like not to come back to school when there is an
122emergency? Yeah, exactly. and that would be yes, I completely agree. I wanted to just respond to your comment about not looking at other schools. Um, we're not just limiting it to looking at local schools. Okay. Okay. I just wanted to respond to that because which I agree with like we should look everywhere but um we have so like even tonight parents mentioned other local schools you know so I think it is important for us to respond to that you know and look into that and we've even had board members and even like Parkway for example they have their new rule it's really no different than we're doing like their high schools allowing phones during passing periods and lunchtime so the the headline says a ban but it really It's what we're doing. But are you
123guys of the opinion that because everyone else is doing it XYZ way, we should I mean that's right. That's not that's not who we are. That's not what we teach our kids to do. In fact, we teach them to do the opposite. We teach them to, you know, think for themselves no matter what everybody because everybody else is doing it a certain way doesn't mean that way. So I I have a hard time with this idea like, well, everybody else is doing it. I'm not saying that's what you're saying or you're saying. I just need to make sure that we all hear that's not what we're going to do is well our district is especially our high school is also very unique. It's hard to compare our open campus situation. Um so I think it's
124there's not another high school in the area we can compare ourselves to probably for because of that for that reason. Um, okay. I want to get back on like focusing on the presentation and the instructional time and and I want to open it up to anyone who hasn't spoken yet. Ben or Jason, thank you all for your presentation and uh for the discussion. Uh, I had actually quite a few questions, several of which have already been kind of addressed. Um, I actually I did have a question for Lucia. Um, do phones go off in class? Like are there like you know dings and distractions just from phones? Is that is that a common occurrence? Very rarely actually. A lot of people I see they just like completely power their phone off at class time. Especially
125like where the ones that put them in their backpack. They just either put on do not disturb, just do not disturb or just like completely power it off and then put it in their backpack. The only times we actually hear a ding are when they're on the wall in the like socket and then the teacher's like, "Can everyone can everyone go check if um like your phone is going off and then everyone goes and like puts it in silence." But yeah, a little bit. But yeah, that's right. If you have a whole bank of phones, you don't know which one just went off, right? Yeah. So, um powering off is the next step. But but when No, but almost never. Okay. No, that's helpful. Um you know, I have a question. the, you know, we
126we talk about some of the, um, you know, kind of valid uses of phones in in classes. Uh, you know, and some of the things like around recording video or maybe taking pictures. Uh, it seems like, you know, all the kids have Chromebook devices. Is that to sort of represent some of a deficiency of those devices and what how they function or absolutely. Okay. I'll let I should let the principal say that, but so sorry. Yeah. Okay. So, why don't you ask them to see if she uses the Chromebook? Look what she's using right now. Has anybody used their Chromebook at school? I I very I very very recently got this computer since I'm going off to college. I finally got my own like personal device. Um I guess if there's like if you ask
127me how it's compared to use my own device to the Chromebook. Um don't be shy. We've already talked about this. Yeah, it's it's it's much it's much better. I just it works a lot better. I've heard a lot of people with just the Chromebooks, there's a lot of um like problems just with in with connection with speed too. It takes a long long time to load um Chromebook devices up to like go to Google Classroom and complete any assignment. Well, I guess I would suggest that that might be something we continue to talk about, you know. Um and it might be the form factor too a little bit, right? Right. I mean, if laptops are kind of, you know, you don't have a huge amount of desk space and it's like you break them out
128if they if they don't load quickly, you know, they're very heavy. They're heavy. I mean, all this is sort of like and we but there is a collaborative platform here, right, with Google Classroom and and other things to share. you have email, you have Google Drive or you know so in a way like I mean I'm just kind of think correlary to like the you know corporate environment whereby you know there's a strong emphasis on keeping all information like tightly within the environment. So with phones things kind of go all over the place. Um so that's just maybe something if we could find maybe a better pathway there we might be able to limit the need for phones. Um um the other thing, oh there was a mention in the policy about uh students should
129only access internet through district provided networks. Um I I I'm assuming that means primarily the Chromebooks themselves because you're not supposed to be accessing your phone. But although I I know I hear performance issues like with with Wi-Fi uh is is common. Go ahead. in the in in the quad. I know like the in the quad and specifically in the cafeteria some like like it just really doesn't work sometimes even cellular service but also Wi-Fi. So um for this sometimes I do know that like people use their phones to connect to a hotspot to be able to work on their homework during like in the quad. Um that's like an example I just wanted to share. Okay. So I guess maybe I have two questions um maybe for Dan on that. So um so uh
130one does that apply to cell phones also? Is that is that internet uh provided through district provided networks? Is that for phones also? So it can be. So the we have um what's called a courtesy Wi-Fi. Um so the the K so like we can connect to the courtesy Wi-Fi. The kids can connect. You you put your credentials in. When you put your credentials in it it recognizes the student as a student. Okay. Um and so then has the same the their phone would sort of have the same capabilities as their Chromebook would have um in in that way. Um so they can access that they can also they can also not and use their data plan. Yeah. Um then I would assume kind of um that there are there's content policies related to those
131networks. Right. Okay. Sorry they we haven't signed the technology use agreement. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And there's also like I think there's like SIPA is another adherence, right? Um Okay. Um Oh, uh yeah. So I one of I just and this has already kind of been talked about a little bit. I I was sort of struck by on the um disciplinary uh data screen how much fewer uh confiscations there were at the high school. Is that just um I'm curious why that might be. Obviously have a lot more kids. Um, any any commentary on that? No, I I think we we touched on on that a couple times. I I I think that that part of it is I I do think that that some teachers are are are enforcing it and set the expectation pretty
132clearly upfront and and they they're not having a problem. other teachers uh as as I mentioned before uh are more inclined to give a warning or or or a reminder to put your phone away um actually rather than immediately confiscating the phone. Um I mean I I do think that that that that's part of it as well. So just to follow on to that, we would expect probably with a little more focus on enforcement that those numbers would go up. That's correct. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Um I I was thinking about one one I Do we have any signage at the high school around the policy? We do. We do. Okay. Okay. Um that's helpful to know. Um says no phone. Yeah. That we Yeah. And we put them in uh we had them in
133all the classrooms. I haven't checked them lately, but we we we we started putting them in all the classrooms, but it was the like the cell phone with the the red line and the circle through it. They're in Spanish. Oh, is that right? I mean, anecdotally, I've heard that the the language class is where the the strictest uh policies occur. Not sure why that is, but that's that's good to hear. Um, well, that's that's really all I had. Thank you. I I'm not in a hurry, but I'll go. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's past 8:30. That's true. I'm the number that needs attention is the enforcement consistency number. Everyone said it. I'm gonna say it again. Could you I think you said it before, but could you say again what you attribute that number to? In
134other words, this is faculty responses about enforcement consistency. Are they saying they themselves are losing consistency and enforcing it? Are they saying their neighbors not enforcing it? Are they saying the administration isn't backing them up? which or is it a mix of all of those things? What What do you think's going on with that? I I think it's a mix. I mean, not to, you know, that I'm I'm biased, but but that the survey results actually have been pretty consistent that that people feel supported actually when they like from the administration in terms of enforcing the the policy. Um what I what I think is exactly what I mentioned in terms of teacher walks in, gets ready to start class, sees a phone out on a desk. now. Um, and and the I mean the
135and the teacher says, "Okay, reminder, phones need to go in the holder or be away. I I don't if I see it again, it's I'm I'm taking it and kids put it away." But by the letter of the law that that they they should have taken it. Um the um so I I I think that that's part of it. I mean there there's also an element of I I mean I imagine now this is purely speculation, but just knowing human nature. If I'm on the third floor and and and I see a phone and I can tell a kid to put it away and I know that they're going to put it away, um it it's it it's less disruptive and and less disruptive to my day than than pocketing the phone and taking it
136to the main office actually and giving it to an administrator. Um I mean I I do I I mean if I'm being honest, I think that that they're just being human. I think that there's probably part of that as well, I guess. um you know that that's the number that needs to be focused on. You said it repeatedly and we don't need to say it again. I I do think that clarity of expectations um and uniformity can both improve that number and make the enforcement easier because it becomes easier to enforce a rule when everyone knows it's going to be enforced. And you know I would I would I know why you're having different you're giving a lot of autonomy to these teachers. I think it may be necessary to create a little more uniformity
137so the expectation is a little more level so that um that kids aren't walking into the next class and saying Mr. so and so lets me and and that my the little I know about schools that have had at least they perceive more success on this. It really is just the culture that everyone knows that their phone's not going to be out during the day and that that works and that I'd ask you to think about that. All right. Um, uh, I just jotted down a handful of points. I'm gonna try to make them not repetitive. Um, so, uh, bear with me, but I I want to start off on the positives. So, I I actually, uh, Dr. Guski, I really appreciate all the stuff that you say that you're planning on rolling out, whether
138it's this spring or this year, all the stuff. I do think that those things are systemic. I do think putting the the shoe box or whatever you call it in the classroom is systemic. I do think observing it in class, that's all part of building culture. Uh, and I appreciate that you're doing that. I said last June that I viewed the core part of this problem as a culture problem, right? Um, and one a culture of enforcement, accountability, and all the things that we talked about. My my struggle is um that this type of culture change does require consistency. And so it plays off a little bit of what Leo was talking about. Um, and just if only 50, what is it? 50% of the faculty at CHS almost never ask students to use phones
139in class, that means that 50 roughly 50% are asking them at some point during their curriculum to use their phones in class. And I think that just again to play off of what Leo said, that just, you know, it hurts your the the hard work that I believe that you're doing and putting into this. my my own perspective is that it hurts our ability to make this part of the culture. Um, so and I think I said something similar last fall, but I I guess I'll say it again. So along those lines, you know, Ben brought up the technology issue. That's another thing we talked about last fall. I think there is general agreement among the seven of us that, you know, we need to probably make some investment in technology just to eliminate the
140need for students to use their cell phones in class. And so along those lines, I know we're entering into a two-year technology review. If there's a if if Luke, not Jeff, Luke, uh if you know, if we if there's an opportunity to accelerate some of those recommendations for consideration of the board next year, I think this is a board that would be receptive and and not having to wait two years for for those investments. Um I think technology is going to be in the classroom. um we you know and we we should be okay with that and let's just have as much control over that technology in the classroom as we can. So I'll just in terms of what the board can actually do that's one place that the board can help support this culture
141change that that you're trying to drive. Um I like the splitting out of the surveys. Someone else said it between the seniors and the freshmen. You know if we can continue it'd be interesting to see year-over-year trends around that because I suspect that by year three and year four we will see culture changes. um you know I'll just say that if um the just sort of put this out there uh you're clearly we're all clearly putting a lot of work into this Dr. you're putting a lot of work into this. I do think at some point if it's just not working, just as you've told us, hey, look, we have some issues to deal with here. I expect you to come back and tell us it's not working. And that's when I think, as far
142as I'm concerned, that that's when we need to look at doing something else. But, you know, we'll see what the next year brings. And then lastly, like I I would like to know how much school does the golf team actually miss? A lot. Like that was that was the one thing that I actually learned in this presentation that's new. And maybe, you know, I don't know if Steve's around. Actually, actually, as sports go, they actually miss the most that they do that they they they miss the most because because in the spring their meets are so long that they go during the day. So, my recollection was they, you know, they we used to have like afternoon tournaments, but you know, I guess, you know. All right, that was my last question. So, thank you
143for your time. Yeah. So, I'll be brief as well. I mean, I agree. A lot of good things were said and I think you guys have gotten a lot of feedback. I appreciate that you guys are seeing positive change year and there's more work to be done. Um I think Dan your comment on form versus substance is important and also the teacher autonomy piece is important but we also responsible for making sure that the teachers have the tools in place so that they're not feeling like they're have to always be the policeman in the classroom. And the one example that I was thinking of as I was took a step back um from this is you know we put in place a what we could debate is a popular or unpopular attendance policy for the
144high school this year only for the high school separate than the other schools. Um and it was very clear what it is and there are no exceptions to the policy unless you know they were uh individually appealed right I mean you could do something we could have taken if necessary and this doesn't improve and it's not working and you need to come back and say hey it's not working I need to do something else you could take a similar track to this we have this policy you know there's going to be no exceptions to the policy now um everybody's going to put their phones into the pouches at the front of the class. Yeah, it's going to be a pain in the butt if you have to go use it to take pictures because we
145haven't yet updated that, you know, found a better solution than Chromebooks. Um, but we, you know, we'll do that if that makes it easier and it it makes it it makes it a better learning environment, right? I mean, there are, yes, this is a cultural change, but so is the attendance policy for high school students in terms of a cultural change that we basically enacted overnight for this school year. So there there are ways I think to accelerate cultural changes that may be unpopular but that everybody will grumble about, nobody will be happy about and then and then it's and then it's done. So um so I just encourage you to think if that's you know something that makes sense. And then um I do appreciate the you know I'm now board treasurer again and
146I do appreciate that although we can overcome logistics issues Karen uh Chris I don't know where Karin came from. Um Yeah, there is a real like liability issue from a personal property standpoint. When you talk about cell phones, their personal property that students bring to school, the value of $500 to $1,000 a cell phone, 20 cell phones that are kept in a classroom is 10 to 20,000 of personal property that's in every classroom if it's kept from, you know, from the start of the day till the end. Um, so there are ways to get around that, right? we uh or there are ways to limit the liabilities for the school district. Parents can sign a waiver at the beginning just like we have them sign all kinds of waivers about you know this is our
147cell phone policy and if you decide you're going to keep it at the beginning of the day if something happens to the cell phone it's not the school's responsibility right but but it is a real like there is true like liability there for this school district as as far as collecting personal property of that value. um across that number of students and holding it in one place. I was I was thinking the same thing. I I thought to myself like you know before school starts the parents and the student would have to sign. Um so yeah I mean this these are expensive more expensive and sometimes than these right depending on depending on what depending on what students are are bringing to school what what they're so that's it. Um, okay. Um, thank you all
148of you. I I just had one question that hadn't been asked yet. Um, Jamie, I think there was a data point that said uh 20% or something of the students don't follow the rule or 19%. I don't remember where I came from that. But my question for you is I don't like I don't have a basis of comparison of of this compared to other rules at school. if is 20% of kids not following this a little or a lot compared to other rules you have and I don't know maybe you don't need to quote a number off the top of your head but I'm just I don't know if that's if we should be proud of that or upset by that so about 10% of the students have had some sort of interaction with cell
149phones that's probably what I would compare that to is tardies um okay you know what I mean like we have about probably a little more than that with tardies maybe 20 20% you know what I mean like depending on what kind but So it's it it is more than we would see any other infraction for sure. Okay. I mean that's for sure. Like if you think about when I mentioned there's four referrals out of the 600 kids for the duration of the year around that have cell phones written in them. You know we we don't really necessarily have that many but yeah so it is higher uh that that level is is higher. 10% of our kids involved in something is higher than a normal infraction for sure. Um and that is something that we'll
150try to work on for next year. you know, like I said, the bulk of them were in first semester hopefully. Um, and you know, it's funny like is it improvement or is it lack of enforcement? You know what I mean? Like it's going to be tricky to tease out as we go forward and making sure that we're keeping the maintain and what we what we have to rely on then is what the teachers are telling us. At the middle school, it's like what the teachers are telling us. If they feel like it's better, things are being happening and they can teach their classes. I think that's what we have to rely on as well as the numbers to balance. And did you see a difference? Like we looked at numbers at the high school between
151the freshman and the seniors. Do you see a difference between sixth and eighth grade? Yeah. I mean eighth grade are the repeat offenders. Yeah. Well, and I think again that goes back to that goes back to Yeah. Um Dan's getting them next and it has to do with their age and development and Well, I think it also goes back to what we've talked about as a culture shift, right? It's it's new. And so our my hope like I said before is that the sixth graders and the nth graders by the time they get to eighth grade and 12th grade will have been more used to this and so the entire school will be better off. But I will tell you what I also think we're we're not remembering also is um adolescence like so the
15211 year olds are different uh maybe more fearful maybe more under with working with their parents than the than the 14y olds. Like when Dan and I were talking about this and he was telling me the names of the students who are the repeat offenders. They're ninth graders, tenth graders. They're not using the phones in the same way. I mean, what Lucia described is like what you would see in a corporate setting, what you would see at at Washington, you know what I mean? Like it was actually I know this I it was it's like that is maturity in action. You know what I mean? That's not what we're seeing with eighth graders, nth graders, right? 10th graders. The infraction, right? The cell phone use in the classroom at whiteown is not the same as
153the cell phone use in the classroom at the high school. I see what you Yeah. Right. And that's why our rules are stricter. That's why we our teachers look at it differently. You know, all of those things at the high school she said. Yeah. She said because she was comparing it to what? Yeah. Right. Right. Well, um, well, the high school, you know, well, there's different reasons. You know, greyhound time and lunchtime give students a huge break in the middle of the days to socialize and do things where they don't have that at Wound. So, meeting your friends in the bathroom is your time to socialize. No, you're right. You know, the high school, they don't need to go seek out those other times to socialize as much. So, that's probably it. But I just
154wanted to close by saying um I I truly appreciate like all three of you, but Dan and Jamie especially your honesty with what is reality, what's really happening here and recognizing where the weaknesses are and and to me the overarching thing is just enforcement. The the practices as they're written I agree with and I think are good if it's enforced and followed. So, I appreciate your honesty and recognizing that that hasn't worked as well as you've hoped yet and even your honesty, Dan, with like specific examples of teachers that have self-reported that they're just not enforcing it. Like, I don't like to hear that, but I appreciate you being vulnerable enough to or humble enough to share that. Um, so I am optimistic with, you know, what what Jason said, the steps you're taking to
155better enforce it and better support and encourage the teachers to enforce it. I think hopefully it comes through that all of us at this table just at the end of the day want a distraction-free learning environment. And so whatever it takes, whatever you need to do to get there is what we're hopeful for and what we want. So thank you very much. And I think for the community um that's listening, I also want to reiterate the fact that we understand and we hear that this is an important topic for the community including parents and staff and students and hence we're spending so much time on it. Um, and I do want to thank you, Dan, Jamie, and Melina for putting in the time and the effort in this topic because I know how much energy
156you have spent on it and it and we want to assure the community that we continue to do that. Um, what gets measured gets done, right? So, we know 36% of our staff at the high school is saying that it's not being enforced. We now know that's the problem that we are going to address. Dan gave specific steps and we'll continue to measure that. I think those um cell phone sweeps or observation noted those are specific examples of that will take it to the next level, right? Um so I just think it's important to know that we we acknowledge it. We know it's an area of growth and we're going to address it. So thank you all three of you for all your work. All right, Dr. Gargano, you're up. And Dan and Jamie, guess
157what? You get to go home. Go watch the Blues game. Thank you. It's what? Tide one. Oh, thank you, Betsy. Okay. Okay, Dr. Garganigo. Yes. Oh, do we want a bio break? Yeah. Okay. Three minutes. back Jeff and Luke. Okay, Dr. Garganigo. Okay. Um, so I'm here to talk and give you an update on the success Ready Student Network. So, if you remember in the fall, I came to you um to talk about this. You all approved a resolution at that time for our participation in the organization. I'm going to give you an update and then ask for another resolution um for some future work with the with the group. So, if you remember, we talked about this before. The Success Ready Student Network is a collaborative of Missouri school districts. So, we're part of
158the third cohort. Um so at this point there's about 50 plus school districts um that are involved in a more intensive part of this work and then there are a lot more districts that are just involved in a professional development opportunity. But the goal of this group is to build districts capacity to understand and use a competency based approach um to learning. So why this initially really resonated with us was this idea of um the competency based learning really falls under these kind of eight um bullet points and they parallel a lot of our work with our strategic plan and our profile of the graduate. So thinking about um the definition of the competency based learning having those breadcrumbs there empowerment um so that's our second goal within within our strategic plan meaningful assessment with
159actionable feedback for all students differentiated support based on learning needs. So that's similar to our multi-tered system of support process that we've um shared at the assessment report. Mastery of learning over seat time. Um, so that's a that's a little different approach um to learning, but I think addresses individual student needs pretty well. Um, varied pace and path, so that's a part of our definition of empowered learning. An equity focus, so students getting what they need, learning is personalized, common expectations for learning, and then this idea around real world learning experiences, which Nisha and I have most recently talked about with um some of our work moving forward. So Clayton's membership within the success ready student network um in 2023 and 2024 you all approved our um participation in what that was called the innovation
160learning design zone and that was a professional development opportunity. So at that time Julie Power our um literacy coordinator and myself were participating in monthly professional learning the main focus around that being competency based education and assessment practices. Um and so they they were bringing in people from around the nation um to share learning with us. Uh and then I came to you in the fall to ask for our participation in the system design zone. So we continue with the professional learning piece but then we also have cohort meetings in Jeff City. Um Robin Hog our director of assessment and professional learning and Julie Power attend those with me. Um so that we have a team going and then dependent on the topic we will pull other people from the team to be a part
161of that. So Angie Crochelloo, our math coordinator, has come to be a part of that, etc. Um, and then the demonstration project is the piece that I really want to spend the time talking about tonight because that's what we're um coming to you to ask for um the the the new resolution to be signed. So, um the demonstration project is a new component of this for us. Um it's an opportunity for the district to request a waiver from state requirements um and to join in a federal waiver from certain assessments and accountability measures. So what that would look like um from the perspective of of the district would be that the waiver includes an alternative annual performance report. So if you remember at the assessment report that we present each year, that's a main focus
162of of our state data that we talk through. Um, it would change the way that student achievement is measured and reported. And in the immediate, it would allow us as a district to use what the board already proves through our assessment matrix um as our district approved reading and math assessments to report our data. Um, why that is um appealing to us is it's multiple data points throughout the year um that allow us to look at growth um for students in both literacy and numeracy. um as opposed to the MAP assessment which is and the EOCC's which is one final thing and you know it's happening right now um we get the data late it's difficult for us to respond to um so we believe that this looking at this alternative APR um and in
163the immediate using our district assessments will help us to to better um respond to student need and report that to the public um not just in in the annual assessment report but in in more public ways. Um sorry. Uh the in the long run the work would look like us being a part of the development of new literacy and numeracy assessments initially in grades three through eight and then ultimately in high school also to replace the current map and to replace the end of course exams. Um we are currently in some meetings some initial meetings with those to look at blueprints and prototypes of those. Um and we believe at this point that it's important for us to be involved in that work as opposed to that work happening around us. Um so we we
164believe that our voice is important to be um at the table and we've already started that. So we're excited about these possibilities. Those assessments would measure standards. Um they would allow multiple opportunities for us to measure the the priority standards from the state and allow students opportunity for retesting. So if they have not yet um met that standard then it pro it gives us an opportunity to provide some some time for that. So that matches our belief around assessment. It matches our belief around learning and and proficiency. So in addition to those pieces, the other things that would um be a part of this waiver that we're asking for is what the state is referring to as market value assets. Nisha and I prefer to call it future ready skills. Um and so the the
165future ready skills that we see it's this it's this idea of thinking about um after graduation what are we preparing students for and so what are the skills and dispositions that that we're looking to to help and the opportunities that we're providing within the school before they graduate to help make them um sort of more marketable um when when they leave us. So the state examples of market value assets include things like internships. Client connected projects which would be sort of real world experiences where you're thinking about a client and engaging with that client and then responding to their needs in what you develop for them. Entrepreneurial exp um experiences industry recognized credentials which are similar to our project lead the way courses and the assessments that go with that. And then college credit AP
166and dual enrollment and dual credit for Clayton. um what what we have talked about most recently um of sort of expanding some of that to include things like a global education experience um that would allow us we feel like that parallels our work within our profile of a graduate um the seal of biiteracy which we haven't spent a lot of time talking with you all about but it is an opportunity for seniors that we believe we can expand and we believe there's a connection between the global education piece um with that catalyst is our is our clearest example of entrepreneurial um work project lead the way assessments like I said before the early college program advanced placement and then the client connected projects the things that we have in place already and then I put
167in ellipses on purpose because I think we we have a um a real potential to grow there so our global STEM squads that Steve Beum has come to talk to you about before um our amped on algebra class is the class that's coming online next year so it's a connection between CTE and algebra um and it'll be running the the school store at the school geometry and construction that will come in um online the next year which is about putting geometry in place in um in a in a really practical way. Um so we're excited about um these opportunities. We predict that MVAs will become a graduation requirement in the state um moving forward. And then the other commitment um that we would be making with the waiver is to um have a public facing
168data dashboard on our website which we already have a data dashboard on our website. Um, but what we would be committing to is something that right now would reflect the data from our local assessments. So that's NWA and STAR grades three through eight. And that we would be reporting that from proficiency from growth and then this idea of the the quadrant um piece of academic readiness by growth. um we would be partnering with Marzano Research um in order to build these so that all the school districts that are a part of the of the demonstration project that our websites look the same. Um and so that will require us to have some conversation with them about data sharing um and those kinds of things. So I have already alerted the SRSN that we're going to
169have to have some conversation about that um before we move forward. So there is some work to think about trying to do it through Desi um which actually would be much more comfortable for us um in in those ways. But those are the big pieces that we're asking um those are the big pieces that are a component of the of the waiver and we're asking you all to agree to um let us sign on um to be a part of that part of before coming to you tonight. Um, one of the things that's a requirement of this is engaging um, community groups and and the public and and our staff. Um, and so we we've sort of been on a circuit. Um, so Robin and I have worked with the coordinators. Um, we've worked with
170the professional development committee, we've worked with the teaching and learning um, advisory council and now we're coming to you um, to ask for that support. So our timeline um, would be asking for the resolution to be approved tonight. Um then in the fall we would go to the state board of education for approval of that resolution. We would begin to use these alternative assessments um in in the fall. But I want to be careful that you know that um we because we do we currently don't have a federal waiver. We would still be required to give the map um next year. But we we believe that it's still a good thing for us moving forward because dependent on whether they get a whether we get a federal waiver or not would would make that determination.
171But what we would be um publicly pushing out would be our local data and not necessarily our MAP data. Um and then we would have the ongoing work um with the cohorts around the development of the new um state assessments. So what questions do you have for me? Hi. Hi. Um, can you talk about how you're going to measure uh the equivalent of I guess the student group uh how we've seen in traditional you know academic assessment reports? How how are you going to evaluate student groups moving forward? Yeah. So the um the same way that we disagregate data from the state data we do with our local data. What we believe with this process is it it allows us to be more responsive more quickly to those data points because we're giving it three
172times a year. Um so it's similar to what we're already doing with our practices. Um but it'll allow us to respond and because those assessments are more aligned to um to our curriculum, to our practices and our instruction in the classroom, we can be responsive that much more quickly. And so it's similar to what we talked about with the assessment report with the the involvement of edge of climber in our MTSS process that that allows us to to to stay on top of those data and respond to them. So are are we should we still expect when you whenever which is kind of my next question but whatever this report out looks like to the board should we expect to see student group data as part of that report out? Yes. Okay. The same way
173you do now. The same way we do now. Yeah. I don't envision that our our annual assessment report will look much different except that I think we're going to tip the scales to using um NWA and STAR data as sort of a more prominent part of that report than MAP. We're still going to right now we're still going to have both of those data points, but I think the the way the report will be written, it'll be um a bigger proportion to the local assessments. Okay. Well, so I'm I'm comfortable with that. So I appreciate you clarifying that. Thank you. I'll just say just to make to pontificate for seconds, at least once a year, I ask for us to really explain how we view the opportunity gap and how we define that and how
174we plan to attack that. And so, one of these years it's going to get I'm going to make sure it gets on the agenda and we're going to have a real discussion about it unless someone wants to come forward with that information and volunteer it to me ahead of time. So, um you know, I I'm still looking for that answer. So, I'll just say that. But I appreciate what you said about how we're going to report out on that moving forward. And then my last question is like as the board, you know, do you envision the cycle of reporting? I know it's going to be more real-time data, which is going to be great. Like are we going to get something in the fall and the spring in the fall? Have you like even And
175it's okay if you haven't even gotten to that point, but have you thought about that at all? Uh I haven't thought about reporting it to you. Yeah. More times than than we already do, but perhaps I think about that more than you do, naturally. So yeah, but But but I don't I mean I don't see a reason why we couldn't. Okay. Um we we currently give those assessments three times a year, but we only report them to you once. We could report them more. Yeah. I mean I just I was reflecting on after the last academic assessment report which is you know like we only get it once a year and it's about literally like how are our kids learning you know? So you know if if we have to have if we get to
176have two shorter reports that might actually be good you know to consider. But anyway that sounds great to me. It's kind of like M&A though whether it's a $20 million deal or$100 million deal. Well, I'm prep I'm prepared to say second on that agenda item. So, yeah. All right. Thank you. Yeah. I just have a question about there's a professional learning component that I saw in the actual um uh commitment that we'll make if if we approve it tonight. And so, will that professional learning piece be aligned like with the PD here because I would expect that this change has to take place kind of across the schools. So, have you guys thought about how you're doing that and with the PD schedule that's already in place? Yeah, and Robin and I have already started
177to roll out some of this stuff with our coordinators. Um, so the focus this year with the coordinators as so our theory of practice there is like as the um curriculum leaders within the district, we need them on board and and really thinking through this idea first and then how does that then sort of trickle down to to the teachers. So Robin's been leading the charge um with the coordinators and and that learning and then their last piece um at their last meeting is that they are coming with sort of skeleton slides of what that's going to look like for their teams um moving forward. So we feel like it's all going to parallel um what we're doing. We also have um each district is given one seat um in a um sort of a
178larger more in-depth um PD opportunity and we currently have Craig Suker attending um all of that PD to help the high school is going to be the place where this conversation I think is is going to be sort of the biggest lift. Um at the elementary level if you think about it we're already sort of doing a lot of personalized and individualized stuff with like AP alignment and those kinds of things. it's a little bit harder um at the high school and so we felt like it was important to have Craig um be a part of that work um and so I think we feel pretty comfortable with that. We have learned a lot from the professional development opportunities that we've already been a part of um which to me is really encouraging um like
179we we have room to grow. We've been learning and then we've been bringing it back to the team here. Great. I have a quick question. Yeah. Um from the sky. Um Melina, thank you so much. Robin, I think you're in the background. Thank you so much for this work that you all are doing. Um I just want to make sure I understood the very beginning that the what you will be if we approve this, what you will report moving forward is data from tests or assessments that we already give. Is that correct? We're not bringing in anything new. Correct. It's just that we will report those rather than the annual map. Correct. Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah. Anyone else have a question? So if I follow that, so the basically overall assessment time and
180all that will be reduced because there'll be no longer map as in the immediate it will be the same. Okay. Um if we get the federal waiver then it will be reduced. Sure the students would appreciate. Yeah. And then in the long term the once the new assessments like the new state assessments are written, we would have to have some conversation within the district about what does our what does our assessment matrix look like? Because when those new state assessments are come online, they're um they're called interim assessments. So there's multiple opportunities for children to take assessments that could be relatively redundant to what our district process is right now. And so we're going to have to have a pretty significant conversation about what does that mean because I think we the the value that
181we have on instructional time and like we can measure students and measure students but we need time to respond to the measure. Um, so I anticipate once those state assessments come online and I'm optimistic that they're going to be um really high quality that then we can have some conversation about reducing some of the other places that that we're collecting data now because we'll be able to respond to those data in a similar way. Okay. Thank you, Chris. I just want to say thank you for all of this. I think it's sensational. I'm so glad we're part of it and thank you for you know, leading this because um um yeah, it just feels like exactly what we need to be doing as a district to move forward and continue to improve. So, thank you.
182And I also appreciate Dr. Gargano. This is a lot of time and you already have a very full plate. So, I appreciate you making time for this because I think it's really important and will really positively impact our students. So, thank you for that. Thank you. And if there's no other questions, we can make the motion. I move that the board approve the success ready student network resolution as presented. Second. All those in favor? I I. Any opposed? No. Okay. Motion passes. Thank you. Okay. Um, yes, John. We have a first reading of three policies. Good evening. I'm presenting three policy revisions for first reading. They're fairly simple. Uh the first one is policy FFA that deals with memorials on uh district facilities and grounds. We're going to propose to resend this policy as the
183provisions of it are moving over to a different policy which is the next policy KH. Second policy is policy KH relating to public gifts. It's receiving the provisions. These are all just first readings. Oh yeah. Um the second one is policy KH related to public gifts. It's first off receiving the provisions of policy FF8 FFA that's planned for res reension. It's also establishing policy related to crowdfunding. The third one is policy KK which deals with visitors to district policy and events and it makes it clear with this modification that visitors cannot possess, use, distribute or be under the influence of marijuana even though Missouri law allows adults to possess and use marijuana. These will be presented for a second reading on May 14. I have one question about the the KKK one. Yes, ma'am. Which
184is in line with what we did with the other policies that we're doing a second reading for, which is to use the word cannabis rather than marijuana or use both words as we did in the others. We can certainly adjust that. I have the same suggestion. Thanks. What was that that I had the same I was just saying I had the same suggestion that I was going to make. So, thank you. It has been it has it's been noted and we'll make that change. Thank you. Any other questions or suggestions on these policies? I I just had a quick question on 24B. Um does does CF adopt the same policy? like do like what what responsibility do they have to follow our I mean I know there's anou but like I'm fine with this I
185don't really care but like you know it does occur to me that you care very much that they need that they need to officially also be on Yeah. So I have a similar question not not and it's just in general but as well as with CF how does this crowdfunding also apply to things like yeah um individual sports crowdfunding for like high school teams that happens. So the basketball team has crowdfunding, the girls volleyball team has crowdfunding. Um the soccer team has crowdfunding. Like do they have to does that fall under this? Does that fall under a different umbrella? kind of the same question but across other organizations. So, um all dollars that are going to come into the district's bank accounts will be subject to the policy. But the dollars don't come per se
186into like the district's bank accounts. Is that the distinction? Is only if it comes into the district bank accounts because by reading of this policy it looks like use for district per sanctioned activities. But but if that's the distinction, then they don't have to follow it and either do the boosters for the sports clubs. But we have anou with the foundation. Oh, and I assume that they and perhap I I don't know, maybe it's just a matter of just telling Ally like you got to follow this thing and what she you know, she's fine, you know, like I don't really know, but you know, I just it just occurred to me that there's like maybe a logistical step that needs to be taken. It's not about this policy. I just I don't know how that
187it's just the CF needs to know about the policy. Yeah. and follow it, right? And if theou says they have to adopt it, then we need them to adopt the auction at captain, you know, you know, like when the PTO raises money, do they have to follow this? Yeah. It's they're raising money for the district to be used for district facilities or activities. Yeah. But it's not going into a district account that we keep track of. So I it's just a question. It's with respect to the PTO's they do they are a separate entity. Uh they have their own rules and regulations. They have their own bank accounts and generally when they raise funds it goes into their accounts and we don't we try to maintain a separation between the two of us. Um they
188sign their contracts, we sign our contracts. We don't really cross over. Um we do have funds that they have raised that we maintain in an activity account which is a small amount of their money but generally most of their money is over there and when we receive those monies they spend them in accordance with our uh purchasing policies. When they spend their money that's not in our accounts they spend them in accordance with their policies and there's not a crossover between those two. And I would expect the same for the foundation. We don't actually hold any foundation money. Oh, no. No. I thought there was someou that we that we maybe have some banking services for them or do some uh we hold no foundation money. Okay. I mean, I I believe you. Okay. Well,
189so this does reference the foundation though in the in the district foundation and and it's less I don't see anything related to bank accounts specifically in here, John, but what I do see is it says all gifts the district accepts will become district property. Fine. Makes sense. And the board in its discretion may expend or use them in accordance with board policies. And we have to vote to accept gifts of real property and gifts. Like we don't vote to accept like gifts that booster clubs make for district use for sports. We don't district approved crowdfunding. It it is and it says that the district doesn't even need to be named even if the district is not specifically named. District approved crowdfunding. But we agent or volunteer acting on behalf of the district even if the
190district is not specific. I think I think I can add some clarity. So the Clayton Education Foundation is a separate and distinct entity. There are districts that have a captive foundation. We don't have one of those. And this is really referring to that captive foundation. Well, we can't make policy for CF. No, but we I'm sure you're going to end up proving me right after this meeting and so I'm fully prepared for that. I look forward to your email proving me wrong. But I recall as the former board liaison to the CEF. The first meeting I went to, we're going remember we spent like six months talking about the bylaws and one of the things was dealing with theou. Gary Federer talked to us about that was dealing with theou and making sure that was
191okay with something. We have anou uh between us and the foundation uh that deals with how uh we support them in certain ways. So um one way we have supported them is we've put their executive director when they have one on our payroll and they reimburse us for that. Okay. We also grant them a certain number of hours of secretarial help, right, as part of that that we give to them without reimbursement. But there's a couple other things in thatou, but we don't hold any of their funds and we don't dictate their policies. Okay. Okay. Is is all this policy does is just encourage people to give gifts to them, not us. I mean with respect to CDF it doesn't other things but that language just right generally if somebody wants to make a significant
192gift uh we're going to encourage them to go to the foundation to make that gift now there are not all gifts go through the foundation right there was a gift uh that was to support work and we received that particular gift on our side of the equation but and we have them in consent agenda Generally, we direct them the other way. Yeah, we do approve. No, I I Yeah, I get all that. And and like I said, I'm I'm probably off on this. I just I read this policy and I read district foundation to include Clayton Education Foundation. Okay. So, what you do with that, I you know, I'm I'm totally open. I guess I'm just I wonder if we need to clarify in our version of the policy that our foundation is a separate
193entity. I think we should because because it'll just protect us from violations. I'm more worried about the protection part. That's my that's really my concern. This does not include activities of the Clayton Education Foundation and or any separate entity or PTO's. Yeah. Because for like I know in the last couple years the soccer team has raised tens of thousands of dollars and made improvements to the locker room at Gayfield like physical property improvements in the locker room and donated like personal or like uh personal property, right? I don't think we've ever formally accepted that or had to accept that as a board and this policy says well I think we we should we should well I wonder I wonder how they define district approved crowdfunding too because like the soccer team doesn't come to the
194district for permission to do that so maybe that but they don't have to under this so that's what I mean yeah I'm not sure that's crowdfunding that it's got a definition definition here the activity of process of raising money through solicit solicitations typically via an online community to your platform. Yeah. When I think of like chip in three bucks for you know if someone's like chip in everyone chip like a gofundme or like a um what's the teacher one? Yeah the teacher one forgot what it's called donorsho donorsho.org agree with what Kim is saying donorshw.org Yes, that that definition is in line with what the sports teams ask of parents like across the almost across the board un I mean it's gone to where like we we do maintain some booster raised funds that come
195to us directly and we put them in booster accounts. There are cases where there are external booster clubs that maintain their own resources and sometimes contribute. That's not a big is so much of a deal here although that soccer one was. It's a big deal. It was a big deal. It's a big deal and like the basketball team even there are districts worth numerous external uh booster clubs. I'd like to ask Emma I'd like to ask for some clarification on this. Like this also says the superintendent has to give approval in writing after it's been requested. Like the problem is that people use our name with their fundraising efforts and they aren't really entitled to do that unless we give them permission. Okay. But they do it for the benefit of they do specifically in
196this will and the requesting party hosting the solicitation is the agent of the school district or financial whether we so the situation is we have a good policy but the enforcement is a little loose well it's a new policy it's a new policy Leo um I think John if you could work on some language that would clarify this for us and protect us from violating it that would be good I agree I think we need some more language in here. Um, we're not there to I'm not even sure how they define crowdfunding the PTO or the the foundation. Stop accepting the goodwill of the community that is right, you know, do hosting these fundraisers independent of the school district in their independent accounts for the benefit of the school district or its programs. But if
197we're gonna say yes to a policy like this, then we might have to say, "And when you do that, please come so we can thank you and formally accept the gifts, which is what it says here." And but before you do it, get her approval in writing. But the other thing we don't want, which is what this policy was written to prevent, is people using our name and to do things that are not sanctioned, right? And so shouldn't use the district's name. No. No. It means that they should come and say, "Hey, we're Yeah. Right. Yeah. The polic they exist and their bylaws exist only because we exist and they raise funds to support the district. I mean, whatever. I mean, I could take this down even a deeper rabbit hole if you really wanted,
198but I think we get the gist and let's just Well, look, let's let John come up with some suggestions to clarify this. I will work on this. It's a first reading. It's a first reading, but um it is that's when you make the comments. So, you don't make comments in the second reading. I hear everyone's comments. I'll work on this for a better outcome. I bet this wasn't on your bingo card for you didn't think we'd have anybody. It is now. It is. It is now. You bring up some good points. Thank you for your critical eye on this. Okay. Chris has some other questions too about these. Not about this policy. Oh, we're done with that one. Is that Is that okay? Yeah. John's still here. or Crystal has I have a I have
199one about um what is it? KK and um under district property right here. Yeah. The top of the page, right? Yes. District, you with me? Okay. Um, you know, it said it says it's talking about the doors nearest the let's get all visitors during business hours, including board members, must sign or check in at the building office prior to proceeding elsewhere in the building. The building principal or designate. Okay. So, when it says building office, I'm just curious if we should talk about whether or not that has a vestibule. Should it say something about should should go to the designated to a entrance with the vest with the security vestible bule I understand it's trying to get at that by saying office. Do you understand what I'm saying John? Yes I understand. I mean but
200the designated main entries are well I'm just thinking about the fact that we're going to have two vestibules too. So that would be confusing, but yeah, designated main ent. That's a little more clear because I do want them to go in through the vestibial entrance. We might we'll have two maybe, but yeah, the main designated main entrance or something like that. Yeah. Okay, that's it. Okay. Yeah. It just seems like this wording is old from before the days where we had vestibules. Yeah. And Yes. You know, you can't get into the buildings without going through the vestibial anymore, right? [Applause] Okay. Okay. Anything else for the first readings? Lucia's leaving. Hi, Lucia. Um, can you see me now? No. Okay. Um, okay. Thanks, John. Okay. So now we have some second readings uh with Dr.
201P. All right. Good evening. Our uh first policy for second reading is policy JC uh school admissions. Um do you want to read the motion first? I don't have any questions about this one. Let's read the motion first and then we'll get to questions. Um hold on. It's 7.4. I move that the board of education adopt policy JDE school admissions with the proposed changes. Second. Okay. I actually do have a question and I apologize that I maybe didn't catch this in the first reading. In this policy under entrance ages number two, when it says St. Louis City School District, is that the formal name of St. Louis Public Schools? Is that what that means? And if not, it should say St. Louis public schools, right? SLPS. I just didn't know if there was a actual
202name that were not. It's very weird that MSBA wouldn't know what that was called. So, I think we can still, somebody correct me on this if I'm wrong. We can vote, we can make a motion to approve the policy with that change, but Daniel, he can make it afterwards. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, does anyone else have any other questions on this by chance? Okay. So, Chris, would you Oh, we have to res we resend that motion or anything because it's been seconded. Does anyone know? Okay. I move that we move to amend the motion to adopt this policy with changing St. Louis City School District to St. Louis public schools. Second. Okay. All in favor? Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes. Okay. Thank you, Cameron, for making that little change. For sure. Okay, we'll go
203on to the next one. Next policy is JCA eligibility to enroll. Okay. Well, you want to read the motion of this one and then we'll 7.5. I move that the board of education adopt policy eligibility. Second. Okay. Any questions on this one? I do. Okay. pants. There were edits that we made in the last reading and none of them are in here. There's no blue edits in this one. Oh, wait. J. So, I want us to go back to those notes. Okay. So, for example, on page two, number nine, it says our children whose parent and we had said to change that to parent. Yeah, I didn't know. Um, on page four, number eight, what is it? Oh, transferring is still misspelled. I'm sure that there are other things that we also discussed, but what's
204posted here is not Yes, you're right. This doesn't have any of our changes. Is is there not a ver another version of this that Felicia where there was changes and we just didn't get that? Maybe like Cameron, do you think we those changes? We did, Felicia. We did. I wonder if she just shared the wrong version. That's what I'm learning, too. It was the day that Felicia was sick and so she wasn't here. Yeah, but we met and went over it. I know we made those grammatical changes. That's what I mean. Yeah. Can we just pull this? Um, let's just approve this at the next meeting. Yeah. So, Even though we we've seconded it already. I move to cancel the vote to approve this policy. Second, John. What? John looks like he knows what to
205do. What? Just withdraw the motion. Okay. Oh, do we have to vote on that? No. Okay. I'm withdrawing the motion. Chris or Chris withdraw the motion because you read it. I'm withdrawing the motion. Thank you, Chris. Great job. Okay. Well, let's make sure like we'll get that at the next meeting. Okay, Felicia and Cameron. Okay, thanks. Okay, now 7.6. Read that motion. I move that the board of education adopt policy JO student records with the proposed changes. Second. Okay. Any questions or comments on this one? No. Okay. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay. Motion passes. Next one. I move that the board of education adopt policy JFC, student alcohol and drug use with the proposed changes. Second. Any questions or comments? All those in favor? I I Any opposed? Oh, sorry. I was
206too fast. Did you have a question or comment? I think she said I. Oh, sorry. I thought she said wait. Okay, motion passes. 7.8. I move that the board of education adopt policy JHCD, administration of medications to students with the proposed changes. Second. Any questions or comments? I do. Okay. Go ahead, Leo. I just noticed that this policy is moving all the rules for student self administration medication to the administrative side and out of the policy. Obviously, takes some out of the public posting and it makes it potentially opaque for parents to know what those rules are. So I just wanted to ask you whether you would give me some assurance that there would be consistent rules for that parents could follow and it would be available to them. Yes. So when um at the
207beginning of the school year where parents go to input, you know, their updated information into powers school um uh the menu pops up for medical related documents and then and what pops up and it's also on the website as well is a checklist um of all of the things from a medical from a medical standpoint that they would need to turn in in terms of physicals, annual student health information forms, current immuniz ization records, medication administration form, authorization to self-care prescription medication form, asthma action plan, food allergy action plan, and Caesar action plan. So those documents pop up as students as uh parents are putting in that information at the beginning of the year. Um and then a link takes them to the website to uh get those documents and then have those turned into
208uh their schools. Thank you, Pam. You can go. Thanks. Um, on bottom of page two, kind of the bottom third of it, there's a part redacted the nurses and other staff administering medication. I had asked at the last meeting why this part was removed. Um, so I'm wondering if there has been an explanation learned from MSBA because that seems like an appropriate from a medical standpoint that is an appropriate statement to have. Under uh which heading on page two? where just above on bottom of page two it says over the counter medications two paragraphs above that it's marked out in red nurses and other staff administering I didn't find that written somewhere else or moved somewhere else and so I'm from a medical standpoint that is an important statement and so I had asked if
209we could find out why that was removed from MSBA. Did you get a chance to check on that camera? Yeah. What? Um, would we table this one along with that other one till we get that answer? If we Yeah. If you if we don't have if we need that back. Yeah. Okay. What did I say last time? You withdraw the motion. Withdraw. I withdraw the motion. Okay, great. So, let's we'll bring this one back to Okay, so we'll move Thank you, Dr. P. We'll move to consent agenda. I move that the board of education approve the consent agenda items 8.01 through 9.5. Second. Okay. Any questions or comments on consent? I have a question on finances. Me, Kim. Um, John, I'm sure you have the answers. So, um, everybody knows John on the dispersement reports
210kind of puts the unusual expenditures on the top. So, that's appreciated. So, you don't have to go through the next like 50 pages. Yes. But John, there's just one other that um stood out to me. A public school retirement agency check. It's on page 91. Um, it looks like maybe it's just a catch-up payment because it was twice the amount. I just want to make sure it's not a double pay for $400,000. Okay. And then what's Missouri HOSA? That was the other one that was like a $600 bud budget line item which was like 60,000. Okay, that's fine. Yeah. And I know I'm not new to the treasure role, but I'll just start scheduling like once a month with you like we used to do back in the old good old days. Okay. And oh,
211Chris, I just noticed that in that dispersement report when you you call out those um more expensive ones in the beginning, the Paragon architecture one says 85.0000 instead of a comma. That's supposed to be a comma. Yep. in Europe it would be correct. Okay. Anything else? It's right in the actual report. It's 65 and 25 or 65 and 20. All good. Okay. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay. Consent agenda passes. So, we're moving to board communications. Who had any committee meetings? Leo. It's been a little while, but I think it's the first meeting since my legislative advisory. Um, and so we got a good update from Dr. Hawkman on the goings on in Jeff City. And, um, and I do have a request that for our next meeting, we consider these legislative principles
212that this group has developed. And um I'd like to have a vote ratifying those principles as the legislative principles of our board and our district. Um I you know is the process I think it just requires a request and then kind of an affirmance. Um I don't know if we need a motion but um that's the request. We don't need a motion. I don't think I think it's just a formal request from you. Yeah. Well I think it's a Yeah. Thank you. I think it's a good idea and especially to do it before the school year's over so that we can start next school year with these understood and communicated to the community too, right? And the committee then, you know, we spent some time this year developing these principles. The committee could then act
213and have some guidance on what's um yeah, appropriate board supported uh action. Yeah. And thank you for working on that. any other committees or anything else to communicate? I had a um PTO council meeting which was actually their last of the year. They just meet quarterly. Um so they reviewed, you know, their slates of officers for next year. Talked about recruiting, you know, succession planning and PTO's. They talked about the back to school bash, which they're going to do again. Um, Gina Tart, our new chief communications officer, was there and shared her ideas for improving the website and the app and um, she got a lot of feedback from PTO council about better integrating calendars and, you know, school calendars and um, Gina has a lot of great ideas for how to improve all of
214that. Um I shared a lot of you know where we are with our facilities planning and got some good feedback from them on that as well. Um also um I wanted to say we have begun our the process of choosing the next student representative to the board. Um Chris is helping Dr. Patel and I with with that process. Um so we will keep you updated there. And also um Pam and Chris and I along with Dr. Sberger were at the Glenidge Agents of Change which Lucia mentioned earlier um which is the fifth graders at Glenidge advocating for for um improvements they want to see in their school. And I just have to say like you know some of them are you know longer recess and um longer lunch and but there were also topics like
215why you know using biodegradable software uh silverware at lunch um or composting at lunch and um things about being kind and stopping bullying and let's work at tables instead of desks and anyway I was so impressed with these kids. They um did surveys. They used data. They quoted like research and experts that they found in the subject. And I just found just the practice of public speaking in front of your peers and adults and the collaboration the groups had. I and just even the lesson in advocacy was so impressive and great. And what came out of that a couple years ago was the Glenidge playground. It was the kids who really pushed us for that. And so, you know, you never know where these changes will lead. not just a practice in advocacy and collaboration
216and public speaking, but it really leads to change. So anyway, I was really impressed with that. It was it was fun to watch. And I am one neat thing about that. Yeah. Um I only went to one of the classrooms that my son was presenting at, but my sister noted that none of all of the groups and their um ideas for what they could do to change. None of them asked for anything to be bought or given to them. They all spoke about ways that they could change their behavior to make their school environment better and I thought that was a great um thing she noticed. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. Um okay. Would you like to adjourn us, Chris? Board of Education. Second. All those in favor? I I Okay. Any opposed? No.
217Board is adjourned. Thank you. I'm a lot of nicotics. Bye everybody. legislator stood up to block usually. All right. [Music] What do you think? How about I'll give it to you. Closer.