05192021 Board of Education Meeting

001all right we are live okay great good evening everybody adequate notice has been given and i apologize for us being a few minutes late we were having some technical difficulties um but we made it through and and we're ready to get going um i think we are going to start by doing the pledge of allegiance so i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands in one nation under god indivisible okay thank you so we're going to start with there has been a requested change to the agenda and um per board policy b ddb the agenda may be modified by motion of a majority of the board members present so with that said i'm going to ask gary to go ahead and read that

002motion i move that the board of education approve modifications to the may 19th agenda to remove recognizing our own add the resignation of a board member and add announcement of board of education vacancy great it has been moved and seconded is there any discussion okay terrific all in favor motion passes and i think gary has another motion with respect to the resignation of dave gulick i move that the board of education accept the resignation of david gulick and declare a vacancy on the board of education second it's been moved and seconded is there any uh discussion okay all in favor aye any opposed motion passes unanimously okay great so we've got those motions taken care of and uh we are going to move forward with discussing the process with respect to the board seat opening

003and i will turn it over to gary to let him him guide us through that process thanks amy um okay since david's announcement um last week there's obviously been a lot of interest in what happens next and what we do when there's a vacancy on the board of education i know all of us have probably received inquiries about it and um i'm trying i've tried to communicate that process i think probably others have too but amy just asked me to kind of walk through what we know about how that works here to kind of summarize it for the public and anyone who might be interested we want people to understand this is a little bit of an unusual situation but we want to get the information out there as well as we can so this

004is going to be a little bit luxury so i'm sorry for that but i'm just going to kind of walk through some of the provisions that are important here first i think it's important to remember that school districts and the boards that govern them are creations of state statute that means there are some rules that exist for us and that we don't make ourselves one of those is the statutory provision that governs board of education vacancies for anyone wanting to look it up at home it's revised missouri revised statute 162.261 and it states that any vacancy occurring in the board shall be filled by the remaining members of the board the statute then goes on to state that the person appointed shall hold office until the next municipal election when a director shall be elected

005for the unexpired term so based on that language in the statute we know a few things there are some things that we know very specifically here and some things that are a little less unknown the six remaining members must fill this vacancy that's the only way it can be filled we have to appoint someone to the position and that appointment will only last until april 2022 and at that time someone possibly the person appointed or possibly someone else will be sworn in for the remainder of the term based on the results of that election that happens on april 5th 2022 we also know that that term will still end in april 2023 regardless of who holds it just as it would have had there not been a resignation so the next step here to acknowledge

006is that we also as boards of education adopt policies to walk us through and really guide us through our responsibilities under state law as laid out in the statutes so our board like most boards in the state of missouri set policies to to do that and only that board that sets those policies can modify those so here we have a couple of policies that the school district of clayton board of education has adopted in the past that are relevant here and i want to walk through a couple of those too and by the way all of these are on the district website all the policies are on the district website you can find links to the statutes too if you're really interested but the policies are right there on the website so the first important

007policy is bbc and that states in part as follows if a board member decides to resign prior to the term of office the board requests that release possible notification of intent to resign so that it may plan to fill the vacancy and then it also states that a board member who resigns shall file a letter of resignation with the board secretary that's happened today we have that letter until we've been able to declare the vacancy so policy bbe also or another policy bbe states a little bit more about the process of how that is done and it first kind of reiterates what's in the statute and talks about the fact that it's the responsibility of the board to fill that vacancy and then it goes on to address some of the specifics of how we

008might do that and there's essentially three things that are laid out in there there's a process of notification where we communicate to the public that there's been a vacancy and addresses some ways that we can do that there's a a review and application process where the board will review applications that are submitted to the public and deliberate about them and lays out a couple of different scenarios how that might happen whether there will be interviews or just a review of the information submitted by applicants and then there's a selection process the most important thing about the selection process is that it happens at a public board meeting we all vote on it that's how this determination is gonna gonna be made it's not gonna be anything other than a public meeting where we all vote

009so those are the most important things about the process and and kind of what's laid out in policy there's some things that we can um we have some latitude to adjust a little bit the details but that's kind of the the framework that we're operating in great thank you gary can i ask you a few questions absolutely okay so what i'm hearing from you is that um the the applications will be submitted to um the board of education and that we will we as the six board members will go ahead and um select who that person will be that will be serving until april of 2022. that's right um and then whoever that person is if they wish to continue on the board of education they will have to run in that election is that

010correct that's right which will in effect be a special election for just one year a one year term at that point okay so could that person um hypothetically if they wanted a three-year term could they is there is there a mechanism so that they would be able to do that well in april 22 there will also be other terms that are expiring and there will be potentially candidates that could sign up for those terms the current board members or other people so yes the person appointed today could sign up to um to run for one of the three year terms that would start in april 20 20 okay great so you mentioned that we had the ability to pursuant to the statutes to make some modifications if we so choose and i would like us

011to consider uh given where we are in the year and uh trying to get the new person selected promptly and not have this go go on through the summer to give the anybody that wants to apply until may the 31st to submit their application to um to the board members so i don't know if anybody has any thoughts about that but if that works for everybody then um i would go ahead and ask gary to read him or stacy to read a motion for that well so just to clarify um if what you're saying so one of the things that the policy sets out is that there's a two-week period for from when we announce the position opening the vacancy to accept applications so but the policy also says that we can deviate from that

012process as timing or other things might suggest um so are you suggesting that um we would shorten that to fit it into the may 31st date rather than a troll yeah the reason i'm suggesting that is so could possibly i'm not saying that this is 100 what will happen but the uh possibility exists that we would be able to select the person at the june second meeting i think that depends on how many applications we have and how much we have to review we want to make sure to give the applicant's time to meet with us if they want to call us and learn more about the position so if we can get it done on june 2nd great if not then we would go ahead and have a meeting by mid-june and and get

013the new person on board yeah that that makes sense i don't know if other people have questions or that would that would only be very slightly shortening the process actually but yeah i think it's just by a few days but there's a holiday weekend i i mean i personally have i think we should give the full two weeks what i don't want is between they submit numbers application on a certain person and then give us time after that and consider the application i think that not just a truncation that's okay so yeah i mean i i think i would like to give the applicants the full two weeks there's a holiday weekend in between so even with those full two weeks if we want applicants to have the ability to meet with current board members

014former board members um and considering that some current and former board members may be traveling that weekend i think that you know that should be taken into consideration i want whoever applies to be fully aware of the commitment and the responsibilities and and you know give them the full period to for due consideration so we're talking i think we're talking about just a couple day variation and um i would suggest that the um the reason why i'm saying is we might have a meeting that is uh you know june 10th or june 15th or whatever that date is is in case uh applicants don't have time to meet with us um so we'll certainly want to make sure that everybody has time to get all their answer questions answered and meet with board members i'm

015just i'm just trying to shorten the time to get your application in by may the 31st and then thereafter if if people are traveling and they can't schedule meetings then we would certainly make that opportunity to meet with people the first few weeks of june and then hold the meeting where we select the person uh you know whenever the board members are all available to to have that meeting it would probably we do want to get it done by june 15th ish so okay i have a question so what happens between let's say that we vote on this and the applications are due may 31st what happens between may 31st and june 2nd so if we ju i mean if we just have one application then you know i think it's a pretty clear cut

016thing or if we have you know we don't have a lot of applications then and those people have had the chance to meet with all of the board members and we have had the chance to review the applications then i think we could go ahead on june 2nd and select the person if that isn't you know if things don't materialize that way or people have scheduling conflicts because of the holiday we have more applications that we can review or like i said board members haven't had time to meet with the applicants or schedule phone calls coffees whatever what up what not yeah i thank you sorry oh i didn't mean to cut you off i was thinking like what is our role so we would be reviewing applications those few days between not at a

017public meeting yeah so the june 2nd is two weeks from today correct so um i was just thinking out loud like do we need those couple days like is there other work that we as a board are doing in between receiving them and then having the meeting where we choose and and appoint someone if not it is two weeks from today so i just didn't know where is there other another part of the process well for us that we need a few days in between yeah so i well i think that the two weeks comes into play having to make that modification because the um we would like we need to have the applications end by may 31st if we are gonna select that person on june the second so we can't have for example

018on june you know we're not gonna post the application until tomorrow and i don't think that two weeks starts running until the application is actually posted is that correct gary okay so so now we're now we're already at june the third um i think what i'm are you asking what is the board doing once is the board gonna have the opportunity to review these applications and what's the process that's gonna happen between may 31st and june 2nd sure so i think we will we the board members certainly have to review all of the applications and then at at the meeting where the person um will be selected we will have a discussion around the applications and i don't have that process all i think that process isn't set in stone yet but there will be

019a meeting we will talk about the applications and we will select the person so i'm just wondering if joe i think joe and amy are the only ones who have actually gone through this process before so i wanted one i wanted i'd like to hear what joe joe thought i also um was was going to say i mean i do think we will have some some some review time in there and well i think by if we set the date that's a date earlier than june 3rd which is the earliest date we could have and follow this policy the way it's specifically set out on the june 2nd meeting if not selecting the process we could at least be talking about what our process going forward is because by then we'll know how many applicants

020there are which i think will really affect could really affect our process but now i will actually like hear from joe since i've said that so i just want to add before joe so what i'm saying is if if we don't if we don't uh make that motion to cut off the application deadline at may 31st there's no way that we're going to be able to have that person selected on june 2nd so i'm just trying to open up that possibility and the only way to open up that possibility is to amend the policy as it as it currently exists that doesn't mean that we absolutely have to pick the person on june 2nd it just means that we are we are making that a possibility um so yes we did go through this process

021once before actually you went through the process too but on the other side right um yeah right um you know i think i would say a couple things so i um we absolutely did review the applications we 100 so before the meeting that we did the selection we absolutely did i mean that's what we did last time right it wasn't like it showed up right and we made it a snap decision at the meeting there was um each board member in essence was given a packet if i remember correctly on on each of the applicants and i believe we had five and i think five but um so we had a number right um and um so i think that's the first thing to note i think the second thing to know is um it

022really does depend how many folks we get right i mean and um you know um it was there was you know spirited discussion and you know and in actually we had each of the we actually narrowed it down so we went from five to three and then had three make presentations to the board i mean that's actually you know just if my memory serves me correctly and yours probably does do um i'm not saying we have to replicate that i'm just sharing what what what happened right in terms of timing and and the process um and again it was um there were definitely it was difficult it was a difficult process and and there there were clearly some hard feelings and um it took uh you know it took lots of both emotional and physical

023energy so um i mean i would just share i'm i'm i think a little bit torn i mean i i uh i think that there's some advantage to getting it going and and but depending upon how many folks we have there you know could be some advantage to i don't know that we're going to be able to make a decision on on june 2nd just based upon the last process i don't know um last process it would have been hard to move that quick but um but maybe we won't have five you know good candidates i don't know so that's what i'd say i would hate to feel that we're rushing it i mean if if listening to what joe is saying that you feel like you know we do want time to review that

024the applications and if we have more than one or two or three i wouldn't feel right rushing it just so that we can get it in for our last meeting and i also um i i kind of agree with both of you but i do want to point out may 31st is actually memorial day so that is kind of tough to have it do on a holiday so i think kim brings up a really good point and i think we want to make sure we're giving ourselves enough time to be really thorough and give each of these applicants the attention that they deserve in the process so if that means that we're going to have to add a meeting later in june i think it's only fair to the applicants to do that so i

025mean that's i can live with that too i i do you guys so so then i just want to make sure everybody understands that if we don't amend the policy then um we will not be able so there's no possibility of us selecting the person on june 2nd and for me it's it's not just selecting it's will we really be able to even decide what our process is going forward on june 2nd which is to me more important than deciding that day is that we can put in a firm process end date then um i mean we could make it june 2nd close the business if we wanted that still requires amending the 14 days but um that that works for me joe yeah i i think so i just want to clarify something gary

026that you said we need the process well ahead of june 2nd just given the last so i mean we we don't want to get to june 2nd and determine the process we need the process like we need to announce this tomorrow right it's just joe's opinion and based upon going through this once before um and then we need to immediately you know i mean um you know yeah you guys should figure out the process i mean like immediately because we want candidates to both know the process right and the board needs to know the process so just i'm just saying i think well ahead of june second waiting to see if we have like in the next few days we need to know what the process yeah that's fair point yeah and i anticipate the

027process will be outlined in the application that gets posted so the application is going to be posted tomorrow correct and so i that would mean that we would have to do that immediately and so here's what here's what i'm hearing and so i just can i just kind of put out into the space what i'm hearing from the board is that the boards really want to make sure that they are giving this the amount of time that it needs to make this to make the best decision for the board and basically for the students of the students of the district so what i'm going to suggest is that i'm hearing that people don't want to you know it sounds like there's some conflicting views on the june 2nd so i think that probably june 2nd

028is not going to be the best time to select it i think that we need to really give ourselves the time to give the applicants time and then we can add a special meeting that's just dedicated to this process and so um i might suggest that as part of the process we even give the the board some guidelines when you're reviewing the documents like here here are the things that we expect from board members and going back to some of the things that we know and kind of helping the board kind of process their their notes so you come prepared to have a conversation and so that's what i'm hearing and so i might suggest that you would keep the application process the same and then by um you know in the next couple days

029we decide and let we'll just make make it aware of what the process will be on our website and send that out as soon as we have it finished um but i that's what i'm hearing from the group and i think that that that as much as we want some expediency to this i really do think even if we did it in the middle of june that's still pretty expedient and and it gives also dr patel the um the time to be able to have a full board during the summer when i know she's going to want to work with all of the full board that's just i'm putting it out into the space that that sounds great to me i was trying to push this as you know just get us moving as quickly

030as we could and um we also had it was announced publicly last week so it's been people it's been on people fine so just trying to like get as much going but i mean i i appreciate that but i i think that um what we're hearing is that people want to make sure that you know they're getting given that time and i think we can come up with a really good price i will say i was part of that process as well that was my first year super official superintendent and so um i think that we can learn from that process and learn how to be better from that process so um i think that there's some opportunities to make it even better so when do you think we will have a process because if

031i am a potential candidate i'm not applying until i know what the process looks like and if you did apply it before you knew what the process looked like i would probably question your sanity or your judgment right i mean you want to know what it is that you're getting into both through the process itself in addition to the obligation as a board member so do we think that we'll have a process ready by the end of this week by the june 2nd meeting because otherwise again i think you post the you post it tomorrow even though the statute says you only need two weeks when is the process within that two-week period going to be available so i would suggest that you know we can i mean i guess with the board giving the

032board guidance you know if the if you want the president the vice president and myself can sit in and create that process and then send it back out to you i think that we can develop some a process in the next couple days that would give that person enough time about at least a week and a half or more to submit their application being informed but i also they could withdraw their application if they saw the process and say you know no it's not for me i'll just say like the only the the policy that outlines the process that we it explicitly says the board can change the process but within the process that's in the policy if that makes sense i'm not sure if i'm following my own train of thought at this point

033really the only variance is whether there's an interview a public interview process or not so we can follow this process without a meeting and a vote to change it like we've been talking about and then just decide whether or not we're going to do a public interview and i think that's where some of the feedback will be important about what happened before so that i think is is there's not a lot of variance in terms of if we just follow this policy which we're as of right now not voting to change there's not very many decisions that have to be made for candidates to know about i i think what i would suggest is that um by the end of this week that you three right narrow down what that process is going to be

034including if there's going to be a public interview i think you know what i mean and you can you know happy to inform you know fox or whatever but um i do think it'd be a good just to your point the process i mean the process is is pretty general and so i just think we ought to you know create a few steps right you submit this is what you submit this is how long you have you know this is how the board is going to review it generally you're going to make a presentation or not and then this is you know the board will make a decision you know etc it doesn't have to be that detailed but at least you know the five or so bullets you know i mean general places i

035think that would be good both for us as a board but also for the candidates the potential candidates i think the only really the only open open item with respect to the process or the big open item will be whether or not there's a uh we're going to actually interview the applicant publicly so i mean as far you know we've already outlined some of the process there's going to be an application a written application and um we'll have a we're going to take some time to review the applications and then the person will be selected at a public board meeting so the only i think real variable in the middle of all of that is whether or not the board will publicly interview the the applicants and i certainly think we can we could come

036to that uh we can make that decision in the next day or two or privately right i mean interviewing isn't right a mandated part of the process at all i mean correct correct i mean anybody that that applies certainly is welcome to reach out to any of the board members um to ask questions um to meet for coffee um and you know that's actually i think that's encouraged and so and to learn more about what it entails to be a board member sure so i think that point is really important though because i have been through similar processes where it's actually prohibited right so so i think it's really important as part of the process to also be very transparent either you can reach out to the board members and you can talk to them

037or you can't right there's a because i've seen it both ways i like the idea of being able to but but that's important too just in terms of the process to be very transparent is that off bounds or out of bounds rather or is it not and how many board members can you reach out to at the same time i mean you know there are some benefits to a public type of interview which we can't have altogether unless we do it publicly in terms of the dynamic of the six of us that are left here and understanding what that might be like once you're number seven so i would just you know you take that into consideration as well yep so i think we can we can flush those details out within the next few

038days i think that some applicants have art have already reached out and had coffees with people so given the fact that that's already happened i'm inclined to to not cut it off now and and to go ahead and allow that to continue to happen because i think it wouldn't be it wouldn't be equitable to other people that want to apply if we didn't continue with with with that process so what i would suggest is that we stick with the policy we do two weeks we'll publish it tomorrow we'll have a process by friday that will be published in the board memo and then also put on our website so people can read it and then know that i think that the three of us can come up if you want to give us charges to

039do that we can do that and i feel like it'll be a fair process yeah and i'll just say too and i actually had this in my notes at the beginning but i didn't say it somehow like we we are sort of adjusting um like day day to day hour by hour i mean the board policy does require written notice of resignation and we got that today so we didn't know where we would be in terms of adjusting so if it seems like we're making this up as we go along i mean we did kind of adjust within the last couple of hours so i think all the feedback is really good and we were just we were just trying to get the process started and i think that's kind of why we what we

040came here today so for all those people watching at home wondering what we're doing we're just we're trying to figure it out this is what we're doing so um but yeah thanks for all the comments and appreciate that great so uh if there are no other comments or questions then i think we will move on to superintendent communications chris can you allow shares share share on the zoom please okay all right well good evening everyone and i appreciate that conversation i feel very confident that we will be able to come up with a really good process for this really really important um aspect of our district and making sure we have a really highly qualified board member um so want to get started tonight by as i've been in each of the meetings by just

041looking at our data and i just i share these stats with you each time and the we're really proud of the stats that we're seeing and showing that our risk mitigations continue to um continue to work but the other factor is that more and more people are being vaccinated and so it's good to see this you can imagine how these numbers have fluctuated over the year and it's really great to see this in the month of may where we are with this i i will say that i try to spend as much time as i can in schools just visiting and when i walk into the schools you can feel an energy there's this really positive energy and i think that that's i feel like there's a lot of things that are coming back alive

042and um and i still want to make sure that even with our schools that are coming back alive and i mean they've been alive since october when we had kids come in but it just there's something feeling different in the last couple months with the vaccinations and it just feels really positive but i also want to make sure that people understand that we are still going to have risk mitigation measures in place and we're going to continue to do that and um and you know that last week we had some changes with face coverings that were put out by you know some guidance that was put out by the cdc and also st louis county and the saint louis city and you know clayton's not up not a district that says you know we're just

043going to be status quo but with this situation we're seeing status quo we're sticking with our face coverings for the rest of the school year and because we have to you know there's a lot of guide there's different guidance for people who have been vaccinated and haven't been vaccinated and we decided just for the safety of everyone we're going to stay stick with our faith coverings and feel that it's it's the best place best way to move forward and um and you know that's probably going to change for the fall i don't know what it's going to look like and we don't know what's going to happen over the next couple months with the virus so i just think that the you know we just have to be as flexible um with what it's going

044to look like in the fall and i know that many other districts in in the st louis county have also stuck with their face covering mandates you know as i said earlier the vaccines are playing such a a positive role in that energy and and today we had two more clinics within our schools and so we had a clinic at wydown and we had a clinic at the high school and we had about 548 students being vaccinated today and so i i think that says a lot for our district and being proactive and i actually brought amy today to see the clinic at wydown and it was so organized and it was great to see that you know our students were there they were waiting there 15 minutes and um and i just really again

045appreciate the the communications department as well as our nursing staff who's done such a great job of making sure all that information is being put out there this week we had a lot of other celebrations for our seniors and so they have been celebrating the seniors in varied ways i know the seniors talked dr kaczowski into being part of the senior prank today which which sparked a lot of text messages and notes for me um but basically the seniors talked dr kaczowski into making an announcement that we had to extend the school year by four days because of some missing hours and so i guess he made that announcement today and so thanks seniors [Laughter] so when we think about our profile we think about how we want to develop individuals who have the belief

046in self and engage in self improvement advocacy and resilience and that's what our seniors have been doing this year they have been faced with disappointments over and over and you know you think about what you think about your senior year is going to be like and um they have been able to demonstrate that ability to cope in the middle of adversity and try to make the most out of the bad situation and again they are they're a model for us and so they um as today i saw some of our seniors in the park who were doing some celebrations it was great to see that they were trying to make the most out of the situation and there are some things that are happening this week such as hopefully you saw the banners of all

047of our students in the front driveway and then on friday we're going to have a parade that's going to happen start starting here at the high school and going up to gay field and uh next week we have our graduation on may 27th so we'll continue to celebrate and recognize our seniors during this difficult time and they are making the most of it tonight as part of our agenda we're going to be bringing forth um the first draft of our equity policy and it's gonna be the first reading for the board of education and so it's i really appreciate the work of the subcommittee of the board and uh robin wiens and cameron poole has been part of that conversation and i and i really appreciate that our board is bringing this forward it sets

048a tone for everyone in the district saying that this is a priority this is part of our policy and um it's it's an expectation even at the board level that we make this a priority so i want to just say thank you and um and i know that tonight we'll might make some changes to it but i feel really confident about what we're bringing forward and so just want to say thank you to the work and it's just it just supports everything else that we have been prioritizing over the last few years with our work around equity the other thing that we're going to be bringing forward tonight is our final presentation of our street strategic plan update and so this is going to be focused around the social emotional learning of our students and

049physical well-being versus of all of our learners and with the heading is in head and heart and so tonight we're going to be able to give a presentation about where we are with this goal and where we're going with this goal and really glad to have robin wiens and kim chronie who are going to be presenting that tonight so we're glad that they're here and then we're also going to be presenting um the budget draft and so i want to make sure that the board understands this as a draft and so we have always brought back brought forth a draft in the month of may so that way the board gets to see the working document before it's finally approved in june and i feel very confident about the budget that is being brought forward

050i one of the things that i appreciate about this budget is that it falls within the parameter that we presented to the board in january it actually falls below the parameter and that's with uh with the inclusion of some additional ft staff that we have brought forth that is aligned with the work that we're doing around our strategic plan and so that shows that we've had enough savings that we still are able to come under our our budget parameter i think that um we have been really working hard to make sure that we are developing a budget that is aligned to needs and our goals and really proud of the model that we're bringing forth around the educational return on investment model that we are going to be bringing forth as part of our budget

051in this upcoming year so that way we are moving towards more of a meritorious budget and um that's really really the thought of making sure that our goals are aligned to our resources and i will say that you know people look at our budget and say well we do spend a month a lot of money on each of our students and i feel that that is um it's a priority for us and that we have the highest we have high highest quality teachers and um we make sure that we are providing an experience and creating memories and stories for our students that are is unlike a lot of places and i think that it's very unique to clayton and so part of this document we have brought forward a breakdown of our per pupil so

052that way you can see how that's broken down but we also are bringing forth a um kind of a the positive impact of proposition e and the work that went behind that so you can see where we were when we made that decision where we are now and where we were where we would be if we didn't pass the property and so um so really appreciate the work of mary jo gruber because she has been very thoughtful about the development of this budget over the years and think that she has been really making sure that she has an understanding of what's happening within our schools so that way our budget can align to that i know that we didn't have recognizing our own at the beginning and we were going to have some additional student

053recognitions at the last one but i do want to take a few moments to recognize our own and i want to recognize david gulick and i want to say thank you for his service and must publicly say that he served on the board during a very difficult time and i want to say thank you to him for his service and hopefully he's listening out there and want to say hopefully that you will continue on in your service to the district in different capacity possibly with long-term financial planning and because i think that you have um definitely have a perspective that'll help us grow so just want to recognize him for his time on the board of education and i do want to also take a moment to recognize our communications department our tech department because

054having these in-person meetings it looks really easy we come and sit down and set up our computers and and there's a lot of behind the scenes things that happens with this and i just want to say thank you for making that happen so i want to say recognize them as well and then the last thing i want to share with you is that we are continuing um nisha and i are continuing to have our transition meetings and um you know it's interesting how we you know we're now approaching june and remember when we started having these meetings months ago and june seems so far away and um so it's it's been exciting to do this transition plan with her last week we part of our transition plan was to meet with the board of aldermen

055for the city of clayton and that went really well and i really appreciate the board members who are able to stop by and and say um hello to our board of aldermen and also tanisha so we'll we'll can we still have a lot of time that nish and i are going to be working together for the next couple weeks so and so i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to caitlyn so she can give her student rep report hello good evening everyone so i'm going to start off by talking about senior celebrations and seniors are in very high spirits because they have their last day of school tomorrow and senior traditions are also happening and are very alive and well with the senior pranks and i heard that there's a couple more of

056those that are coming and then they're playing the assassin game which is basically where you try to tag someone um in the hallways with the marker and there's grad parties happening uh in parks and such so the seniors are really making most of their senior year and i commend them for that like dr dougherty mentioned there's a couple of events happening like the senior parade and graduation a couple of the amendments to graduation are like for example the graduation speakers are taking online recordings one of those speakers is actually the first student representative to the board adam jaffe so congratulations to him and then moving on to sports the sectionals tournament for track is this weekend and also the varsity girls soccer team won districts last night so congratulations to them and also the full

057varsity boys tennis team is all going to state next week as for testing the first administration of ap testing wrapped up this monday so now we're on to the second administration and the second administration is fully online except for language classes so most of the testing will be taking place at home and then as for performing arts there are some recordings of performing arts that are happening right now so performing arts groups have been turning to recordings for their large group events and plays and musicals that they're putting on so white owl middle school has recordings of their play available for sale and it's called mirror of most value a miss marvel play and the clayton high school symphonic band will have their concert recording available around next week online for free through a link

058so thank you thank you caitlyn all right so i think that brings us to the uh we're in section uh five which is the policy and we're gonna do our first reading of policy acb educational equity all right so hey can everybody hear me okay okay so you know just to kind of give some background on us drafting the policy um again kind of like how dr daugherty said you know you know big thanks um to the board for recognizing the the importance of equity and embedding it into our uh policies to kind of stand the test of time with that um so with this with the small committee that came from the board um they came to me and dr wiens and we um you know kind of talked about a process on drafting

059a a policy in terms of you know looking at other districts who have done it and kind of what we wanted to encompass in it so what that led to was uh dr wings and i um looking at a bunch of policies whether they were uh within within the area and we looked nationwide just had different policies to see what exactly they encompassed um what are some things that we liked and some sections that we liked uh from other policies um and how could we kind of take all of those and put them into one and embed it with our language you know in our verbage in terms of you know how we approach our equity work so once we did that we kind of narrowed down uh the policies that we took from the

060outside to five um and then we um you know brought that to our small subcommittee and you know just ask for feedback from each of the policies in terms of what were the pros and cons from each one um and how did they see that uh fitting into the policy that we would soon draft so once we were able to get that feedback uh me and dr wings collectively took the information and kind of you know broke it down um and used that to uh you know to write up a policy um that encompassed our language and the things that we're doing you know with verbiage from our a bar presuppositions and from our current strategic plan um and embedded that within kind of some of the sections and the um you know in the

061setup that we liked from other policies and then uh you know we went through it um kind of looked at some key points you know that we uh wanted to change or that we kind of had for debate just to kind of clean up some of the language and uh and yet here we are today um it was a really clean smooth process um i think everyone was on the same page and you know we all have the same things in mind in terms of you know striving for educational equity um and using that you know using our equity literacy in order to achieve that which is listed in the policy dr wing said you have anything you want to add or anyone from the subcommittee that you want to kind of jump in and

062throw in your two cents i just wanted to reiterate what mr poole mentioned about really synthesizing policies that we review from both our region and across the country and really pull the qualities that we felt best embodied the priorities and values that we had been working toward and that was what got us to the policy in its current state as well as with the feedback from the subcommittee great thank you so does anybody why is gary laughing okay so i guess i'll go around the room and see if anybody has any comments on the draft policy i'll start with stacy thank you thank you cameron and robin and everybody else who worked on this i like sean said i think it's a great idea um to continue to hold us accountable and lead our work

063in this area and i really like the statements starting with we believe i just think that's such a strong powerful way to make these make the statements and i just had only a couple like really tiny questions um so in the very beginning the philosophy this like second question when it's listing all the personal characteristics it uses the word sex but like the first we believe statement uses gender and i'm just not sure which term we should be using but should probably be the same and i um in the first we believe statement i wanted to ask if we could please add religion like we believe that a student's value and potential are not determined by race ethnicity socioeconomic status disability sexual orientation and gender i'd like religion to be in that too and maybe

064even gender identity i know it kind of says other personal characteristics but i was hoping those could be specifically called out um yeah that's it i think it's great thank you for all your work on this i again i love the way the statements are worded and bolded we believe because i think that tells the community how strongly we feel about this so i appreciate it thank you great kim kaitlyn yeah thank you everyone for your work on this i just have one thing that i wanted to add or just like a clarification point um for the fourth we believe statement about affirming students culture etc rather than relying solely on numerical data i know later in the policy on the second page it also says that like the school district of collation strives to

065be data driven in our decision making so i was just wondering if there could be a little bit more clarity in that statement about like what um like affirming a student's culture history and identity more than relying solely on numerical data looks like especially when data is like then pointed out in the second page as being one of the main areas that we would want to look at yeah that's fair um in the we believe statement that emphasis came from you know not only a student's data to you know create their identity you know using who they are affirming their culture affirming them as an individual um and in terms of looking at statistics we were more so looking at it from a you know kind of an institutional from an institutional standpoint in terms

066of you know what is our data telling us you know in terms of you know whether it be learning discipline um panorama survey data to where you know we clearly have something telling us that you know a possible uh change needs to be made or possible when equity exists so pretty much using that data to kind of read things from a systemic and practice standpoint but in the belief statement we were saying that we believe each student individually you know um needs to be affirmed you know from their cultural identity and their history so it was more so you know a personal uh affirmation of identity than the we believe statement and then from the data standpoint um further down it was more so saying that we would look at you know all of our

067data to make sure that everyone um is having a proportionate experience also i just had a clarifying question caitlin are you also envisioning um maybe also the use of qualitative data to help it feel a little bit more textured and not so much driven by the numbers because focus groups are another way that we gather information on how we're doing so incorporating more language that would let a reader know that we also collect qualitative information would that be helpful yeah i think that would be really helpful what i was just envisioning is like having because i know data is also like an important part like as pointed out in being able to like uh evaluate like student performance and such but like just seeing like what kind of balance we can show like in those

068we believe statements that like also show like the qualitative data point that you were saying um and just like how how the school district plans to balance like looking at data and looking at like students individually again like qualitatively okay great jason you know good job on this uh robin and cameron and everyone who's involved that is amy stacy all right um yeah i think i want to make sure we just we get the the pronouns and correct about how we um classify or how we don't classify so gender non-conforming we just need to make sure we're um clear about the language in there um and i i guess my other thing is this is almost only a living document correct and since it is a living document i'm assuming we're going to be able

069to expound on some of these things like there will be like um it won't be this thin it'll be thicker than this over time i'm assuming correct and we'll be able to expound on some of these things to get more detailed because the one thing i'm thinking about is um is this policy to hold people accountable in any way and and so just a question and maybe i'm just not smart to understand this right now but how do you hold like people accountable if they violate one of these um items that's listed in this policy so uh cameron cameron robin do you have a do you have an answer for that guys or kim stacy any of you guys have a thought process behind that oh sorry gary gary sorry you know one thing that

070we did put in there uh you know kind of like you said is just kind of the start um and making sure we put in there um the work and the language used to describe it is rapidly evolving and the policy will will be reviewed at least annually to reflect current practices language and the district strategic plan so when turn the the document like i said it is living in and can change from year to year you know as we look at it annually um in terms of you know the accountability piece that is something that you know as we get going and we put those processes in place that could look to be expounded on a bit more um i know we put in there that each person is charged you know with meeting

071our vision of educational equity um and that it's a collective effort um and we must hold each other accountable for that so you know i think as we get going and you know the policy starts to you know to be tested in ways and we start to interpret it in different ways as situations happen that is something i think a conversation that will happen in the future in terms of what that accountability looks like uh you know if something is set to be violated per policy thanks appreciate it thanks jason joe yeah i'll just um say good job i think that it's um to the team that that worked on it i think it's um it's it's good um i i have three thoughts in the third paragraph we talk about the responsibility for student

072success and i think we ought to call out the board right i mean it doesn't say the board in there so i mean i just feel like you know and i understand we're part of the community we're part of these groups but it just feels like we ought to say the board yeah i mean it's a word policy um the second thing it's on the second page it's under the uh basically the paragraph under that's the second paragraph under focus and accountability when we talk about kind of our um disaggregated data i think it ought to include socioeconomic status just because i mean resource is so important right and i know we mentioned it on the first page but again i just i think that that's very important um and then the third thing i

073would say and and maybe this is a a little tangential to the policy and almost going to what i think jason was talking about in terms of accountability but you know we talk about our social emotional learning and student wellness surveys of course that's you know one of those is panorama you know i think things like panorama they have good diversity equity and inclusion a survey a portion of the survey that's around that and so i would just encourage us to like be doing that survey like go direct like we're going with all the different pieces but i mean there's a there's actually a survey that asks students about how do they feel about inclusion how do they feel about equity i think that's important data in terms of the accountability right because in the

074end our customers are students right our mission is for students so those are my three comments thank you thanks joe yeah and we in uh dr wings and i have met with panorama and and what it would look like to add on that component you know and expand it to uh have that equity piece and you know we've been looking and we also met with other uh you know with other avenues as well to see what would be the best meeting in order to kind of capture that from equity standpoint so that is something that we are you know are looking at in the process doing that's great gary do you have anything else um real quickly um definitely just want to thank uh dr wiens and mr poole for um helping us through this

075and and taking our input but really giving us a lot of really good examples to work with it was really interesting to see the different policies around the country both the things that were in common and things in some cases that weren't the things were really important for me was were having an explicit definition of educational equity i thought that was really important and really good for our process and then in the accountability uh section focusing on this disaggregated data piece which is something that i've just personally like learned a bit about through the process and how important that is so i just appreciated that being included and learning more about that um so yeah thanks for all the comments it's really great yep thanks everybody those are uh oh great comments um again i

076will uh just thank robin and cameron for all of their hard work and getting this together and gary and kim for um for uh all of their comments and serving on the subcommittee with me um i think this policy really reiterates our commitment to educational equity um now but you know also in in the years to come so i'm really excited about that i feel like clayton really is a leader in this area which is um we should all feel really good about the only i just want to circle back to the accountability issue for one second and robin or cameron i'm sorry if this is putting you on the spot but i think we also have some in our strategic plan i believe there's a section is there on on accountability um and don't

077we have a score card somewhere also that i just wanted to remind everybody of that really tracks what we're doing with equity and i just wanted to remind everybody that we that those that those uh measures are also in place the other thing that i think is important to remember is that when we're thinking about policy and accountability it's that um holding people accountable to their behaviors and and and within that's happening within in the schools and so policy can also influence evaluations and and um you know our expectations and so if we're seeing something that's not aligned to what we want then we have the policy to back that up to address it so all right thank you everybody and we will move on to section 6. i'm sorry uh yep 6.01 the strategic

078plan and we're talking about goal three and head and heart so okay are you controlling that robin so tonight we're going to be bringing forward the last installment of our strategic plan and really appreciate that we have um robin and kim here to help facilitate that and so just as a reminder when we're thinking about our strategic plan uh we wanted to be aspirational we wanted to make sure that we're focused on equity uh making sure that we were thinking of um doing things differently and and tonight we're going to be looking at goal number three and that focus of goal number three is going to be centered around the social emotional well-being and physical well-being of our students and so uh going back just to remind people is that we have that that phrase

079our kind of our tagline for our strategic plan is a place for everyone to grow as learners and head in heart and tonight we're really going to focus on the head and heart aspect of the strategic plan and so again there's other aspect we didn't cover every single aspect of the strategy of this of the objectives under this we're really focusing on a few and i'm so glad to have robin get started with that so all right good evening everyone thank you so much for giving kim and i the opportunity to come to the board table with our third update with our work around the strategic plan so the update that i shared with you online related to goal three really states that will be dedicated to the personal growth of our learners and their

080social emotional and physical well-being and while there are several objectives related to this goal listed in the district's strategic plan tonight's update really is going to focus more specifically on how our students demonstrate belief in self and engage in self improvement and advocacy we'll also talk more about students demonstrating kindness compassion and respect of others by engaging in the district design social emotional learning curriculum and then students incorporate habits and practices that foster lifelong wellness so the two main parts to our update this evening are related to the panorama education surveys more specifically in the topic areas of social awareness and self-management and then also the recent program evaluation of the all in clayton coalition and so tonight i have kim shironi with me and kim is the project coordinator for the all in clayton

081coalition and we are very thankful for kim i also want to congratulate kim we have made it past our one year anniversary with her about this time last year she had started and then we went into school closure a few weeks after she started so i think i want to highlight that because what she and the rest of the coalition have been able to accomplish in collaboration with the school district of clayton is really impressive that we launched this level of work during a pandemic so um can we also just to remind the board the kim's positions actually funded through a federal grant that we applied for and and through the all-in coalition and so um so i just think that that's also something to be noted as well which i think is amazing and

082kim has been uh incredible with trying to it launched so much of this work during a very difficult time great thank you so much dr wiens and dr dr dougherty you know i think it'll make a normal year seem a lot less uh challenging given the fact that you know this um i took this position during such a unique year but we've all had challenges and we've all persevered um so like dr daugherty said uh the all in clayton coalition is funded by a federal grant it's called a drug free communities grant that is actually managed by the cdc the cdc took over the grant this year out of all years to add more work to the cdc and our mission is to keep clayton youth safe from the effects of substance misuse and our

083vision is really to be a community that prioritizes drug prevention as another vital part of developing healthy thriving young people so we engage 12 sectors as part of our coalition work we know that often times used substance use has its own sort of features based on the community that it's happening in and we know that local problems require local solutions and so it's really cool to see our various sectors come together with their own diverse experience to try to come up with creative effective solutions on how to address these substance use in our area with that being said it's no surprise to me nor our coalition members that uh our education sector has actually been our most engaged sector this year uh so our evaluator presented this at our bi-annual report at our may coalition

084meeting in terms of sector engagement our education sector again has been the most engaged the most involved and as a coalition we just feel extremely grateful for that there are some coalitions that really struggle with getting that buy-in and getting that face time and that involvement with their local school district and that is not a problem here at clayton which is awesome and we know that the school district of clayton really understands the power of prevention that it's so much easier to prevent a problem from happening than it is having to deal with the problem after it's already taken root and we also see our mission as being directly aligned with the district's strategic plan particularly goal number three when we're discussing the emotional and physical well-being of our students we all know the research

085that you know teen substance use can have a profoundly negative impact on academics on mental health on social and emotional development and also on physical well-being and we know that it can pose physical and mental health challenges as students get older move into adulthood and that the risk of addiction can increase and probably most of us in this room know someone who struggles or is struggling with addiction and we don't want that for any of our students so we see our work very much aligned with this strategic goal so a few of our key contributions this year one of which is curriculum so we are currently working with our health and pe department to hopefully implement a drug prevention curriculum at the fifth grade level which we currently don't have research states that the younger

086students get basic drug information that the younger this conversation gets started actually their risk of developing a substance use problem later on is decreased so we're really excited to be working with our health and pe department on that and i've actually gotten the opportunity to collaborate with our health and pe department at chs which is not difficult to do because i share an office with them so basically i have to turn my chair and talk to them um so it's been a great collaboration and we've been able to uh create a an addiction unit for their freshman health class it's called choosing wellness is the name of their freshman health class and this unit really discusses how addiction is a disease the effect that substance use can have on the teen developing brain and also

087exploring those risk and protective factors and we know that that can be very helpful and empowering for students to know what their own personal risk and protective factors are some of those are outside of their control but others of those they do have some control over and so that can be a really empowering discussion we've also had the opportunity to partner with dr wiens and the office of student services on a two-part adult facing series that happened in april it was called caring for head and heart i cannot take credit for that title jack that was all dr wiens but again directly related to strategic goal number three that uh head and heart series was really aimed at providing information to adults and caregivers and teachers on how to support some of the unique social

088and emotional needs of our student learners last but not least if you want to walk into straubs or wine merchant or parker's table you might see some of our stickers i see some of you shaking your head so we were able to get a little creative this year and do a new initiative called a sticker shot campaign where we partner with local alcohol retailers and they agree to display stickers and window clings and signs and shelf tags that has an important public service awareness announcement basically which is to encourage adults not to provide alcohol to minors based on missouri student survey data from 2020 the perception of availability of alcohol amongst kids in our district was relatively high and so we knew that this was an opportunity for us to get the word out and

089it's been a great collaboration with our local businesses as well in terms of next steps for next year we're really excited to continue to partner on curriculum development with our health and pe department with student services provide more education [Music] oh thank you that's okay that was actually my bad there's a sticker there we go and then the caring for head and heart series as well so again steps for for this coming year uh we're excited to continue to collaborate on curriculum development provide more parent education opportunities as well one of the things we're really excited about is our youth involvement so this year we were able to recruit seven student representatives which might not seem like a lot but compared to years past when we only had one or maybe none that was a

090really big deal for us and they've been able to really breathe life and and new energy into the coalition with their wonderful ideas and their insight into what students are dealing with um so we're excited to recruit more student representatives with the hope of having a youth coalition next year so that youth coalition would be entirely student-led they would work on their own substance use prevention initiatives they would have their own action plan and they would be working towards the same goal as the larger adult coalition but doing it in more of a peer-to-peer capacity and then last but not least survey results we really strive to be data driven because as dr daugherty said we are grant funded and we have the opportunity of applying for an additional five years of funding after this

091five years is up and we're in year two and they want to see outcomes they want to see positive contributions that we've had to the community so in 2022 the missouri student survey is going to be administered by the district and that survey monitors risky behaviors not just substance use but other risky behaviors that students might be engaging in so we really do a deep dive into that data take it back to the coalition analyze it and then really adapt our action plan and our our local conditions based on uh that data that we receive so that we can provide even more targeted services and activities so again we are just absolutely thrilled to have the support of the school district and to just help be another resource for the district to work through our

092strategic plan so with that being said i'm going to turn it back over to dr wiens okay thank you very much kim for that update so the next portion of our presentation is to talk a little bit about the panorama education data analysis that we continued from our first strategic plan update so quickly just a little bit of background information about the panorama survey for people who may be tuning in tonight and missed the first update the panorama education surveys are surveys that measure different topics related to social emotional learning they are administered online the vendor aggregates the data to generate an overall percentage of students who responded favorably on each topic that they are asked about and then panorama compares districts results to all the schools in their national data set to determine a

093national percentile in each topic area so we piloted the panorama education surveys in spring 2019 with grades three through five and that fall of 2019 we brought the other grades um 6 through 12 online and then in spring gave it through to grades three through 12. we did have a lower response rate because school closure happened in the middle of that window and then we just gave it again this past march uh grades three through 12 again and we had about a 69 uh response rate district-wide so tonight what i'm going to be focusing on are the two topics of self-management and social awareness so self-management really aligns to the profile of a graduate particularly when we think about students becoming self-actualized so self-management questions explore how well students manage their emotions thoughts and behaviors

094in a variety of situations and so we know that in order for students to be self-actualized they really need to be able to develop their ability to um look at oneself and identify ways that they want to improve and they also need to be able to advocate for themselves and so um some sample questions from self-management uh include during the past 30 days how often did you come to class prepared also in the last 30 days how often did you get your work done right away instead of waiting until the last minute and then also during the past 30 days when you were working independently how often did you stay focused so those are just a few examples of the questions students are asked so at the elementary level 77 of our students responded favorably

095to self-management questions which fell in the 80th percentile which is very similar to where we fell in spring of 2019 and at the secondary level we had 82 percent of participating students who responded favorably to self-management questions which fell in the 90th percentile and again this was very comparable to the spring 2019 results i find it very interesting to dig deeper into really specific questions that the survey asks and so i wanted to highlight something that i think speaks to some of the work that we can do around emotional regulation so um more than 90 percent of our secondary respondents reported frequently are almost always being polite to adults and to other students and similarly more than 90 percent of elementary students reported frequently or almost always being polite to adults and to other students

096however 55 actually less than 55 percent of elementary school students reported frequently or almost always remaining calm when someone was bothering them or saying bad things and then regarding classwork i thought another interesting point was that 90 of secondary students reported coming to class prepared which leads to the next point that might feel a bit unexpected was that only 45 of secondary students reported getting their work done right away instead of waiting until the last minute so while majority of secondary students feel that they're coming to class prepared they might be delaying the completion of their assignments and i think there could be a variety of functions to that behavior moving on to social or excuse me um you'll also notice in the appendix that there were some variances in self-management across different groups while

097some groups some sub-student groups had similar results i think particularly at the elementary level in self-management we did see a significant difference between our free and reduced lunch students and the full pay students we also noticed a variance between students who receive gifted services and students who do not receive gifted services and there was also a spread in the results for students at the elementary level who received special education services and who do not there was also a noticeable difference at the elementary level related to gender and at the secondary level related to self-management there were some noticeable differences between all respondents and the responses among black and african-american students and hispanic or latino students so the second topic i wanted to share with you tonight is social awareness and this really aligns well with

098the profile of a graduate when we talk about our graduates being empathetic to others so social awareness questions explore how well students consider the perspective of others and their ability to empathize with them and so some of the sample questions are during the past 30 days how well did you get along with students who are different from you how clearly were you able to describe your feelings and what extent were you able to disagree with others without starting an argument so results for social awareness at the elementary level fell in the 90th percentile and again that was very similar to where we were in spring 2019 at the secondary level we had 75 of our participants responded fair favorably which like elementary fell in the 90th percentile again when we take a look at some

099more specific questions in this area of social awareness we get a better texture of what the data is telling us so almost 90 percent of elementary and secondary students reported that they got along pretty well or extremely well with students who were different from them and in addition to that more than 80 percent of students at both school levels said they cared quite a bit to a tremendous amount about other people's feelings and then regarding self-advocacy which we know is another important part to this goal 70 of elementary and secondary students reported that they were able to stand up for themselves without putting others down one point i also wanted to highlight and again this has implications for future sel curriculum development is that describing feelings received a lower percentage of favorable responses compared to

100all the other social awareness questions so roughly 50 percent of elementary and secondary students reported being able to describe their feelings quite or extremely clearly in the last 30 days again when you take a look at the chart i've included in the appendix while there are some student subgroups at both age levels that had similar response rates we do see some variances again in student lunch status at both elementary and secondary level there are additional variances around special education services for students who are receiving them and students who are not we also see some variances around student gender and also related to race so in terms of our next steps again i mentioned this in strategic plan update number one i do think it's important that we continue to refine our routines to increase the

101overall response rate particularly at the secondary level our next step that we want to take in collaboration with the office of teaching and learning is to convene an interdisciplinary team for continued district-wide sel curriculum development i'd also like to continue to support the building level administrators in integrating sel goals into their school improvement plans for the coming year i think it's also important for us to identify assured learning experiences related to executive functioning and then also collaborating with ssd in our sel goal alignment and then lastly i think that we can use our current data to inform our current and future community partnerships to make sure that we too are um engaging some of the resources that are in our region to to support the continued growth of our students in their head in their

102heart so again thank you very much for your time this evening and thank you to kim shironi and all the other volunteers who work with all in clayton coalition i feel very positive about the work we've been able to accomplish and i think that the data that we got back from their evaluation and i think the data that we've collected through the panorama survey during this school year really highlight some important pieces for us to pursue in the coming school year thank you robin since this is a study item i will go ahead and i guess go go around the room and see if anybody has any comments um i'm going to start with gary is that okay sure um one thing you may have said this and i'm sorry i finished it with the

103um the grant that we have with the ellen clayton coalition um where are we in the process or where are we in the lifespan of that grant sure so gary we're we're in year two and we have five years of funding and then so uh our year five will be in uh 2024 i believe um and then we can reapply for an additional five years of funding but that reapplication process is competitive so we're not guaranteed to get an additional five years we have to compete with other coalitions and with the um the five years is it sort of um we're sort of budgeted for that like can that be could that be cut at some point like how how firm is that funding or do do we know that yeah that's a good question

104and a question that i think a lot of coalitions had during the pandemic but we've been assured that we are guaranteed that funding for five years and it's through the office of national drug policy and so we've been assured by the cdc by drug-free communities that we will have that that five years of funding okay so we can be fairly confident that we don't have to budget for that and then um my own kind of familiarity is more with the high school level at the secondary level certainly i don't know if you can speak to um specifically with respect to the goals of or this goal of our strategic plan like what's our what's our ability to leverage that at the elementary level if if at all and then again i'm sorry if i'm just

105not familiar with that part of your work so gary are you asking in terms of drug prevention education at the elementary school level or i just want to make sure i understand your question and just i think it's great that we have that that resource and we're able to you know fund the your work through that i'm just not sure how if that's really just limited to secondary or if we're able to yeah leverage that at the elementary as well yes so we can definitely leverage that at the elementary school level um it might look a little bit different in terms of curriculum because we wouldn't go into a kindergarten class necessarily and do the same you know drug education as we would with middle schoolers and high schoolers but that is one of the

106reasons why we're really interested in implementing a drug prevention curriculum at the fifth grade which would be elementary school because research shows data shows that when if teens do start to experiment with substances it usually happens in middle school and so if we can kind of get in front of that and lay that foundation for drug education in fifth grade then they're going to know how to deal with those situations a lot better they're going to be a lot more equipped if that makes sense thank you sure robin would you mind turning off sharing so that way people can see the board when they're thank you joe um i do have a couple questions so uh thank you kim and thank you robin um so first here's a question for you cam um what help

107us understand what the baseline is because i mean actually clayton's a pretty affluent school and there's a lot of substance abuse at clayton at the middle school and the high school there just is so what's the baseline so this is all good activity but i'd like to understand what's the baseline and how we're going to determine i guess via survey absolutely we've lowered substance abuse right that's a great question yeah so really the baseline for us as a coalition would be the data from the missouri student survey of 2020. we could go back and look at the data and we have looked at the data from 2018. the only problem with that data is really at why down 8th graders were the only ones who were surveyed [Music] in the 2020 no i'm sorry in

108the 2018 data um the 2020 data it was sixth through eighth graders but we can't compare those two years but now with the 2022 it will continue to be sixth through eighth graders so really that 2020 is going to be our true baseline and what we'll look at in terms of okay have we lowered the vaping rates have we lowered the alcohol rates okay great thank you um and then robin a couple questions for you so remind us because we've done this over a couple of times remind us which scales for panorama so i mean i know you talked about you know kind of self-awareness and or social awareness rather in in self-management here but then we did sense of belonging we did self-efficacy we did what were the other skills supportive relationships and supportive

109relationships okay um so it it seems to me and so are we only doing um ones that are around kind of the skill the well-being and competency are we doing some kind of around the environment the school climate yes we also have school climate and um uh yeah it's school environment and then school climate is the other one which was also um some of that was part of um strategic plan update one yeah okay yeah i guess the reason why i ask is because each time we go through this right i mean i think it's great data um but i mean it it continues to show there's some real challenges at the secondary right i mean you know before sense of belonging was low and you know relationships were low now kind of some of

110the these are low and it um it just um it feels like we're focused on you know how well is somebody uh prepared to go to school or class that's fine but maybe they're how do they feel about school right i mean how and there's some challenges right it seems like in the data and some challenges around you know as you disaggregate by race um and so i guess i'm just wondering what what our plan specifically is at the secondary level to address that because i mean there's this is great i love that you're sharing this data and it's pretty challenging in some cases at the secondary level yeah uh and i think where a lot of my focus where i'd like to put it in the coming months is to help shape those school

111improvement plans um you know i know for example at the middle school level one of the things you know on one hand um the all the different things that the coronavirus did to impact the way we learn and teach and operate also forced our hand in you know trying a lot of different things with the schedule and so one of the things that was very important to the middle school team was how do we incorporate pack time throughout all of this and one of the reasons that became a priority was because of the unique social emotional learning needs that we knew students were going to have at this time of year and so moving forward you know when we think about scheduling when we think about how we use our time with our students you

112know and i'm just using buy down as an example is how do we create really intentional opportunities for students to improve the way they're connecting with others how they're connecting with adults and what are the things teachers are going to need in order to make that work successful um in order to see some of the results change and so and i think also some of it um you know there's huge overlap between the equity work and social emotional learning right you know we know so much of the things that we do with the adults here in the school district to improve relationships with students um with an equity lens are ultimately going to help us build better more productive more successful and supportive relationships with our students and so i think my hope is that

113our collaboration with my collaboration with mr poole will continue to build that but i think from my role i see that as really supporting the principals and their building level teams and thinking about okay we've spent out you know we are coming off a year where we know our students had very um unique um social emotional learning needs because of all the different pieces that were going on and frankly all the things we were experiencing as adults as well so so what so what's the next step now and this is really what the data is telling us so what do we need to do differently going into this next school year um to really leverage those opportunities so our students are getting some assured learning experiences uh both directly and um assured opportunities to really

114cultivate those relationships that we know are going to be really important yeah thank you and just um two other quick questions so have we ever thought just based on that um have we thought about doing skills around growth mindset or grit or emotion regulation because those are all challenges right i mean so what you're saying right what i hear is you know ability to persevere resilience right how do i deal with my feelings right so just this question no i think i'm glad you brought that point up because that makes me think that um this is probably also a really good time to revisit the topics available i mean to your point earlier you know we know that they have the equity surveys but that's a completely different another product but even within the products

115that we currently use from panorama what are some of the other topics that maybe we need to um bring into the fold and maybe we bring them in for you know add those in maybe just for secondary to help us get a better idea of the complexity of how students are connecting to the teaching and learning environment so i should probably revisit those options yeah thanks and then just a final question have we thought and i know panorama doesn't their system doesn't isn't easy to do it within their system but have we thought about trying to do some kind of a cohort analysis and i know because i think actually we do it anonymously don't students do it anonymously so that would be challenging to do a cohort analysis if they're doing it anonymously potentially

116but i guess the question is right when i look at the survey percentages right at 95 no big deal but at 46 and at 69 percent you know it as you said right two to three percentage points um represent significance you know often districts use four or five we use four well it could be that um you know that i'm taking the survey one year and jason's taking it next year and you compare us and it's not it's two different people right no i'm very glad that you brought that up because that was actually one of the last projects i had my practicum student help me with was looking at the results year year by year by year but then looking diagonally across a cohort you know like what did how did they respond in

117third grade and how did they respond the following year as fourth graders and how did they respond the following year as fifth graders um and so yeah so that is data that i'm also starting to look more closely at so that way i can also help prioritize with building teams um what areas might make the most sense um to like really start with in terms of you know adjusting any curriculum writing or if we were to look at additional materials outside of what we author here um what are the major through lines or foundational principles that need to be the basis of those outside materials great thank you thank you joe jason so good job this is really good um you know so i have a middle schooler and i'm just thinking about like what

118this reads and what they go through so i i you know i could have a thousand questions here but i mean i guess i just need to see this kind of play out you know watch how this is implemented and just give us some give us some thought and read the data but you know it's just you know middle school's tough geez i mean i think some of the stuff that these kids are going through i think this may not be in there it's like these things may not be like touching those things you know um so i don't know i i don't know i just yeah i just think it's it's middle school's tough so um it so yeah anyways anyway all right well thank you good job thank you thanks jason caitlin yeah

119um i just wanted to quickly add a comment on like the explaining feelings clearly point uh when i was like talking with the district advisory council when we were going through these documents this morning a lot of students told me about like discussions that they've been having in their classrooms and how like that could contribute to being able to develop the skill of explaining your feelings clearly and then i know some students had like some conflicting experiences with that like for example when we were talking about like difficult topics like the interaction at the capitol back in january some students felt like some students had the opportunity some students didn't some students felt like their conversation was productive and didn't get derailed whereas some students felt like their conversation was unproductive so i think just

120having uh being able to encourage like the facilitation of these conversations by teachers in their classrooms especially when big world events are happening and then also maybe like publicizing some guidelines and like best practices on how these conversations should be held and i also wanted to touch on another topic that i think is irrelevant to this and like maybe in like next steps that we could look at regarding like physical well-being i know like a lot of students right now have specifically been focusing on sex education um and that's something that they're really passionate about have been talking to teachers about uh that one student group i know held a webinar on like sexual consent today so i think like moving forward i just wanted to highlight their work and say that that's something that

121a lot of students are really working on right now and really want to see from the district so maybe like seeing something in the next time that we revisit this strategic goal regarding sex education thanks for bringing that up caitlyn i appreciate you bringing the student perspective to that work i think when we talk about physical well-being and this doesn't speak exactly to that particular topic but just in the spirit of physical well-being is that we did recently just close out a community and student wellness survey and mary jo gruber and i will be talking about that at a future meeting but then even you know kim had mentioned the missouri student survey and she and i are learning a lot about the additional resources available within that survey that we can tap into but

122again get back to those those choices around physical health and physical well-being and i think the those two additional data sources are going to be very very helpful in illuminating what you just brought up plus some other things that i think that could be potential learning experiences for everyone great thank you caitlin kim population like is um thank you so sorry that's an assumption i'm making but i i don't know that if that's true or not until we see the data and then you know you bring up the issue of um a pack time and as an example of something um in middle school that maybe you want to continue and i you know i would say that i think it's important to um consider whether or not pac-time facilitated by adults especially for middle

123schoolers you know one of your survey results i think that you highlighted in the report is that students both at the elementary which was third through eighth so far and then even at the secondary 9th through 12th reported being you know respectful towards teachers and adults at 90 percent but yet but yet then amongst elementary students between third through eighth it was you know less than fifty five percent um we're able to feel positive about interactions with other students or somebody bothering them or saying bad things so i just wonder when an adult is facility knows conversations among students that might otherwise be saying bad things to each other that their respect for that adult outweighs their ability to actually communicate freely how they're actually feeling and so i don't know what the solution to

124that is but um you know one thing that i had thought about is and and it's through some of the interaction that we've had with the student reps of the board both you and your predecessor fabulous but you know consider maybe a freshman or sophomore in high school facilitating this pack time with the middle school students that has lived through that experience of middle school hell um you know to say hey you know we all kind of went through this or i had friends who went through this and i just wonder if there's a different way as you're assessing whether to keep some of the stuff that we believe is positive through the pandemic to even make it better into the next year um but i would really like to see like i said what

125sixth through eighth grade looks like on its own and third through fifth grade for each of the buildings yeah thank you for that feedback and just you know like on for example in the appendix the elementary um is three through five and the secondary is six through twelve um and yes in future reports i can break i can pull out the middle school from the high school um data if that's something that we'd want to take a closer look at yeah i mean having had kids through all school i have one in high school now two in the middle school all of them are at the elementary school at some point i can tell you that their lived experience through each of those stages has been very different thanks kim stacy thank you so much

126for the report and thank you kim for being here too to talk to us more about all in coalition i um i don't think i even was aware the breadth and depth of what the coalition did for our kids so i was really happy to just hear more about it frankly so that was great and i have seen the stickers i actually saw him at schnooks i think schnuck's doing it too maybe i thought i did anyway yeah so stacy schnooks is not um maybe i saw a straw yes anyway i was excited to see it because i knew it was or all in coalition that was doing that so that was great um anyway um i also was going to ask about physical health since that is mentioned in goal 3 of the strategic

127plan so i'm glad kaitlyn brought that up also because um i feel like you know whether kids are in good or poor physical health can definitely directly affect their social emotional well-being and we know that you know physical being in good physical health is actually a great way to manage stress instead of using or misusing substances so i think it's so closely tied together so i would like at some point to maybe hear more about the physical health as part of that goal in the plan and not just the social emotional um let's see i think that's it thank you for all your work and i think kim the fact that you started during the pandemic is actually is actually very timely because we know that throughout this pandemic kids have suffered greatly and there's

128higher probably higher rates of substance use and misuse and stress and their social emotional well-being is suffering and so i'm so happy that you came on at that time and that we can learn from what these kids have gone through and look at that and use the data to help inform us with the coalition moving forward so thank you thanks stacy i'll just make a quick comment and uh thank you guys for the um presentation i think that you know it's it's important to look at this data and uh this is just a very a very high level statement but i i for one am i'm pretty concerned about um the pressure and the anxiety and the depression that are i think a lot of our students feel um so much so that you know

129i'd love to put put this on the agenda for next year and take a pretty deep dive into ways the district can be better partnering with parents on how to alleviate um alleviate some of these stressors and and the causes that are really driving some of the anxiety i don't know you know for some kids it might be homework for some kids it's different for every kid but i suspect there's ways that we could really be doing um some innovative things to partner with parents and kids to really help alleviate some of these factors that might be contributing to the the pressure and the stress and the anxiety that the kids feel and that that's all i have so i thank you again for the presentation and i think we are on to the uh

130budget draft thank you robin thank you ken appreciate it let's let's take let's take uh five to seven minutes and we'll reconvene around uh nine i don't know little after nine how's that sound okay okay so we're back hopefully everybody's refreshed and we are going to dive into the um budget draft with this 6.02 okay i guess everybody can hear me okay i'm my first time down here okay i am going to share my screen um see okay can everyone see the slide alrighty okay so the adoption of the annual budget which is like our most exciting thing right that is part of the board's financial responsibility so that's what we're going to talk about tonight um the conservative and prudent approaches to planning by clayton's board of education is a historical trademark of this

131district and we say that every year the decisions made by the district have made us fiscally stable and has placed the district in a strong financial position that allows us to be responsive to unforeseen circumstances and this past year is a great example of how strong the financial stability of the district has allowed us to pivot during the covid pandemic and support the technology it needs for virtual learning ensuring safe financial environments for our students and staff and support the partnership that we have with the center clayton so in january i presented the framework as a hypothesis and the variables that are used to create the hypotheses and these variables are based on an overall macro fiscal strategy regarding revenue projections and proposed expenditure plans within specific departments such as school buildings and facility maintenance

132and categories such as capital or salaries and benefits so the board used this opportunity to ask questions and gain an understanding and provide input that administration used to finalize the macro or the micro budget document that is presented in draft form to the board tonight so when we look at the overall budget summary proposed 2122 total revenue is projected at 70.7 million and total expenditures are at 68.5 million and this will result in a surplus of 2.2 million and grow the overall fund balance to 37.5 million because many of the revenue and expenditures included in the total budget are restricted for specific purposes the operating budget more clearly reflects the district expected results of operations so there are three expenditures that are excluded from the operating budget the first is that service payment which will

133be 8.5 million in bond payments for the 21 22 school year those do fluctuate every year based on our schedule the second type of expenditures is business type activities and what these are they're activities that are financed primarily by user charges and not taxes so that's why they're excluded we don't need taxes to support them they are not part of our normal operations that require taxes and so we typically budget them within the restr respective revenue streams so their revenues normally match their expenses and then the third type of item is extraordinary items and these vary from year to year and are basically refunding or capital financing such as capital leases or the cops like we issued last year or things that um are occurring uh this year uh so because of covet and the

134pandemic the district is anticipated to receive over one million dollars in over the next two budget years and federal coveted relief funds through the a couple acts uh one is the coronavirus aid relief and economic security act or the cares act the coronavirus response and release supplemental appropriations act that was from december and then the american rescue plan that was from february sorry blocking my camera these funds are meant to help safely reopen and sustain the state of operations of schools and address the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the nation's students so the district ended up using or it will be using these funds on the installation of the natopoint bipolar system which provided pathogen removal remediation that was integrated into our hvac system that we did last summer and then we hired a

135contract tracing investigator which is actually our lead nurse who was added to assist in the compliance of our saint louis county mandates related to the chronovirus pandemic and then we purchased a lot of personal protective equipment including face masks face shields hand sanitizers such as paper towel dispensers spray bottles microfiber towels death partitions dividers and signage that were all purchased to provide a safe environment we provide purchase a lot of technology enhancements in order to improve and assist with online learning and then additional instructional support positions were also added to assist in the monitoring of the students progress all of these expenses are offset by these federal relief funds and our one-time expenses incurred during the pandemic and so they're excluded from the operating we don't anticipate using them moving forward and if we do

136we will incorporate them into the operating budget so the other extraordinary item that's excluded from the operating budget is the contribution from the district for the operating loss only for the senator clayton so as you know we always pay them their capital contributions and but historically the center has been able to support the operations through their membership fees but because of their significant loss and membership from the covid pandemic uh the center is projecting approximately an 800 000 loss for fiscal year 22 and then we are responsible for 50 of that loss along with the city being responsible for the other 50 so although this operating loss is projected to continue for the next several years um which i do have in the projections uh as this extraordinary item which will come out of some

137balances we're not using it when we compare operations it'll just cause these significant fluctuations but we do include that annual contribution because that's something we expect to do every year so when we look at operating revenues there are two significant fluctuations in revenue sources other local taxes or i'm sorry local taxes and other revenue so state federal and county revenue they're basically expected to remain consistent with what was uh what is presented as a revised budget for 21 22. or i'm sorry 2021. i get these years mixed up i'm like in three years right now so local real estate taxes are expected to increase 1.4 percent due to the allowable increase in cpi um preliminary assessed values for clayton are anticipated to increase six percent for residential this is actually one of the lowest in

138st louis county the medium for the county was 9.1 percent 11 percent is what is expected for commercial even though we are expecting to get a lot of protest on that 11 percent and then there's also a decrease in personal property estimated at 9 so since these percentages are greater than the allowable five percent um we are only allowed the lowest of the three which is cpi which is 1.4 so this represents approximately seven hundred thousand dollars in new operating revenue so please keep in mind since we rolled back the levy the 15 cents last year and this is a reassessment year we must keep that 15 cents roll back for a second year unless the board holds the special board meeting in order to let the community have a conversation on that so i've

139kept that in there this rollback is reflected in the budget as presented so i'm also in january um i presented that i thought the clarendon would be on his new construction uh i was i guess confused about that um since i thought it was under roof and i guess i assumed since it was an assisted living facility that it was considered a commercial property but it's not as residential so someone has to be physically living in it until they can put it on the tax rolls so we're pushing that out a little bit um so in january i presented more revenue than what we're presenting now so that was one change from january to what we have now and then i also want to discuss delinquent and protested taxes although i'm not expecting any significant

140fluctuations in delinquent taxes like we saw last year since we have had delinquent taxes and this year the current calculations though from the information i received from the county are not working out that we'll be able to recoup any of the delinquent taxes so we have paid back six hundred thousand dollars in protested taxes that were paid in favor of the taxpayer this current school year um but and two years ago we were able to recoup 1.2 million um last year we actually received 600 000 so we had this like one and a half million dollar swing the problem is i think the year is that we're going back two is a year the tax levy and we can't reset that ceiling so i think because of our starting point it's not running through in

141the calculation so it's just it's just one of those things until you run the calculations you don't know so once i get all the final numbers for the year i will run the calculation and make sure the state auditor reviews it that i did it properly but right now the calculations are showing that we won't be able to recoup anything so other revenue is the other category that is projected to increase and this category is largest fluctuations are you are you supposed to be moving that no i'm still on this thing okay so this fluctuations include family center and student activities that's the last part on the side so family centers revenue and and these are primarily due to covid so i'll talk about those but family center's revenue for the 2021 school year last

142this current school year is down due to a portion of the year being virtual and in-person learning was limited in capacity so even though this is a fee-based program it does not collect enough fees to support it that's why it's not a business type activity the district still supports this um and so uh our projections include though an additional uh one full day class that we're adding to them and then we're also in increasing capacity for next year and we'll have a full year of operations we didn't have a full year this last year so we're expecting approximately 270 000 additional in family center revenue and then the student activity revenue um the way the state makes us record that that is also part of operations even though it's kind of an in and out

143so the revenue was down in 2021 due to the pandemic because we cancelled field trips uh including like sixth grade camp prom athletics golf the athletics golf tournament all club and activity boosters all of that runs through there so that actually if we return to prepa academic levels and have operations for next year it will result in an additional 600 000 in revenue one other thing i want to talk about is legislative changes so the first regular session ended on may 14 and one major education reform passed which was house bill 349 establishing the missouri empowerment scholarship accounts program this bill creates a type of voucher known as a scholarship tax credit it would initially reduce state general revenue funds that would be used for k-12 public education up to 50 million per year which

144can grow up to 75 million per year over time by allowing a tax credit on individuals tax returns to pay for home school private school or charter schools the program is limited to students in charter counties such as saint louis county and cities with populations greater than 30 000 it also provides five years of student state aid payments to districts for students who lead the district so for us that's only about five hundred dollars a student the bill becomes effective in the fiscal year that the appropriations for pupil transportation equals or exceeds 40 percent of the projected amount necessary to fully fund the public transportation state aid any year that transportation funding falls below this threshold no new scholarships shall be awarded transportation has never been fully funded so we have no idea when this

145will start because right now they're not projecting to even fully fund that so it was an interesting thing to put in there to trigger it so we really don't know when this will go into effect so we'll just continue to monitor the impact of that bill there you go uh fluctuation expenditures are primarily related to salaries since salaries represent 61 percent of the operating budget so 2021 is the final year of a two-year salary agreement administration began salary discussions with teacher representatives in february of 2021 and the board approved the salary schedules for the 21 22 and 22-23 school year on april 14th for the 21-22 budget a 0.92 overall budget impact has been included in the current projections and per the salary agreement and the average salary increase for a teacher is three percent

146due to staff turnover all other salary budgets including administrative and supports app budgets were increased at a two percent uh budget with an average salary increase of three percent due to staff turnover so the board also approved an additional 3.2 certified fte for the 21-22 school year at the april 14 board meeting as well this additional 286 thousand dollar budget impact was absorbed through staff turnover as well as well as other budgetary reductions and like supplies and purchase services so retirement benefits represent approximately 19 of the operating budget or 11 million dollars and 2020 uh end of the year with growth in the medical self-insurance fund however because we still need to build that fund balance before we can find more savings and premiums they were budgeted at an eight percent increase and school and

147department budgets represent eight percent or four and a half million we did have savings in these areas uh due to the district leaders which they are always intentional at looking at our needs to ensure the district resources are allocated to programs that support our vision and goals our various capital plans represent 4 or 2.4 million of the operating budget so the board received an update to the technology plan on march 31st 2021 and this update included that the district has developed a technology forecasting model to help ensure stewardship and sustainability while also being flexible enough to respond to incremental changes in thinking the district has taken great care to make responsible decisions react to unexpected needs and support progressive thinking while all staying within the budget so the tip funds are budgeted at 636 000

148along with an additional 10 000 contingency reserve for their technology emergency expenditures and then the facility capital um oh did that go oh okay and then the facility capital improvement plan um sorry about that i forgot that other slide will be increased two percent for cpi uh for a budget of 905 250 along with an additional 35 000 for classroom furniture and a 50 000 contingency so the capital plan um includes the annual payment of the certificates of participation that were issued to finance the improvements of the center clayton as well as other capital needs so in summary operating revenue is projected to increase 2.94 percent primarily due to the taxes increase of 1.4 and then other revenue which includes the family center and student activities returning to pre-pandemic levels operating expenditures are projected to

149increase approximately 2.6 percent due to the increase in staffing and benefits and our stamping salary and benefits and then extraordinary expenses or one-time fluctuations such as covid's fiscal recovery expenses and operational support of the central clinicians senator clayton are all excluded from these amounts so because of the successful passing of proposition e and administration being intentional to align our finances with our strategic goals operating revenues will exceed operating expenses which will increase the operating fund balance by two and a half million so in 2021 the year-end operating fund balances are projected at approximately 32 million or 53 percent however 3.7 million of that has been formally committed by the board for future capital expenditures this represents 3.3 million from the proceeds from the sale of maryland and 420 000 for future capital improvement needs at

150the center of clayton this leaves a net operating fund balance of approximately 28 million or 47 percent of budgeted operating expenditures which exceeds that 18 gold so this graph represents how the operations of the district impacts the cost we spend per pupil so you can see 49 percent of our costs are directly related to the certified teaching staff and 84 of our costs are overall related to salaries and benefits so while the district does have a higher per pupil expenditure than many of our surrounding districts in st louis county our cost for people is driven by the experience our community expects from a clayton education so this includes small class sizes high quality experienced teachers specialized interventionists and programming that offers a diverse selection of options i've also included a graph on this slide with

151the historical cost per pupil and the related student membership that is the the denominator in the cost per pupil calculation so as membership fluctuates so does the cost per pupil as you can see from this chart membership has declined 167 students over the past five years if the 2122 school year had the same enrollment as the 17-18 school year our projected 2122 cost per pupil would be approximately 1 350 less than what we're projecting so we also have to consider that a decrease of 167 students over the k-12 population is approximately 13 students per grade level this would not result in a reduction of staff at a particular grade level since their average class size is about 18 to 20 students so further in looking at the district's historical annual expenditure increase over the past

152five years this average is approximately 2.25 percent per year this is lower than what was projected during property this spreadsheet shows that property projections had expenses increase in an average of 2.75 so we presented over the last five years lower than what we projected and then as you can see from this graph that was presented during the prep campaign unless if significant reduction in expenses was made that was estimated at 4.8 million the only way to achieve a balanced budget and maintain the fund balance aboard above the the board's eighty percent goal what's the passive tax levy so as we look at this side um this is the projected fund balances reflected on the 2122 budget that i presented tonight so there was a significant infusion of cash beyond the projections of the levy past

153and and that was in this uh 20 this where this uh peak is right here in the 21 uh 20 21 the 1920 school year actually sorry about that um so in that year we were able to recoup as i mentioned earlier the 1.2 million in protested taxes that was a one-time infusion on that year along with the levy and then we received an additional one million dollars in financial institution taxes which is a revenue stream that had significant fluctuations every year we're only projecting 400 000 in that stream for next year and there was also no payback of protested taxes which is approximately a one and a half million dollar swing so revenue decreased the next year because of these significant one-time fluctuations so this slide shows that the dot it shows through the

154dotted lines what the projected fund balances and related revenue and expenses streams would be if property did not pass so as you can see from the blue dotted line we would still have received the one-time infusion of the three revenue sources that i just mentioned however we would be back down to the previous revenue levels after that one year bump the orange dotted lines assume the reduction of approximately 55 to 60 full-time fte and approximately 250 000 in supplies and purchase services that would have to have been eliminated as well as maintaining a flat budget moving forward with no more than a one percent increase in expenses instead of the projected 2.75 this one percent would be absorbed in benefit utility and cost of living increases and therefore salaries would have to be frozen under

155these assumptions so as i said at the beginning of the presentation the conservative and prudent approaches to planning by the clayton board of education has been a historical trademark of this district and these decisions have made the district fiscally stable and has placed us in a strong financial position as depicted by the solid green lines in this graph and then as sean mentioned during his superintendent communications we're always intentional at looking at our needs as we build our budget as reflected in how we presented it less and what was projected but we want to continue to implement best practices in our budget preparation and the communication of our budget so in preparing our budget this includes ensuring we are closely examining substantive expenditures to make sure they are learner-centered aligned to the strategic plan and

156have positive impact impact on our community and which is imperative so we have created a resource evaluation worksheet that will hold us accountable to evaluating our financial investment into programming and initiatives or human capital through this process the district can determine if we are seeing a return on our investment in order to make any needed adjustments or to determine if the investment is no longer viable so we'll use this information to review with our financial advisory committee who will hold us accountable to our work as we begin to use this worksheet it will help with the district's ability to to earn a meritorious budget award as sean mentioned which will help with the communication of our budget only seven missouri school districts have been awarded the meritorious budget award from the international association of school

157business officials and this award consists of four parts that include an executive summary organizational financial and information sections the district can also submit for a pathway to the meritorious budget award this is a smaller award that can only be done one time because it only consists of two of the four parts and the district actually earned that award in the 2016-2017 school year but in order to read see the next step of the meritorious budget award we need to improve our analysis of our goals and their impact on our financial finances which we will be able to do through this resource evaluation worksheet and with our work with the financial advisory committee so as in my re as a result it's my hope that in the next year we'll be able to submit for that

158meritorious budget award and i also think that we can work with a financial advisory committee to help the community better understand how our staffing models and curricular offerings impact our cost per people so i would recommend that the board provide that advisory committee with a list of specific charges that would help the board with feedback from that process so now i'm finished with my presentation so what questions can i answer for you okay thank you mary jo um that was i know that's a lot to digest so i don't necessarily want to put put anybody on the spot right now with um going first but does anybody have any questions i'm just going to open the floor i mean good job by the way putting this together it was well written it was really easy

159to follow i guess my only my biggest question is always going to be the um the center and just the cost of that and and i i failed to do the research on this part but did we assume that we would lose 800 000 in 2022 last year was that the assumption i think patty presented that to tell you i'm not positive what she presented last year i don't know if she had projections at that at that point in time i don't think she should turn off her yeah she didn't really finalize the projections until this um fall when they started bringing everybody back in and she's been really watching membership and seeing growth in membership so i think my projections align to what she's projecting for them and so she is showing she's showing

160quicker than what i initially assumed to get recovered back to normal okay so she's going faster yeah she's only got about two years of around a four hundred thousand dollar loss for each entity which is eight hundred thousand and then she's dropping it um so left after five years i think it's only around two two hundred thousand in the fifth year for each entity so about cutting it in half after a few years so i think she's being conservative in that presentation um but we didn't have this information last year yeah that's really my only question i mean otherwise it was i mean you know there's a few other things but you did a good job i think put that formula in the tax form you know that was excellent for the folks to see

161so good job thank you very much great kim yeah so i have a couple of questions on um the hundred thousand dollar annual reserve is for future capital improvements i think your might come home again sorry every time i apologize to the community um so but should we should we should there be a reserve for that loss or should that be the operating loss if it's well i think right now the way i felt like we didn't have enough information so we're we are seeing growth in the membership so the reason the capital uh set aside was is it was a few years ago we had some major repairs that were needed for some of the um window they're called cow wall windows and so we repaired the second set that we needed during this

162last construction they're very expensive and so that as well as there was also a roofing issue so they both ended up being over three hundred thousand dollars so just to be safe we went with the 500 000 um threshold so that's what that's for it's not for operating losses um the goal is that it will be shorter i mean they are charged with balancing that budget and so i do feel like it'll be a short term we're being conservative in these projections if that changes then we will absorb it into operations but um historically it has not been a long term support on operations so right but what operating loss do we have baked into the next year um for i think it's i think it goes 400 and then 350 and then 200. okay

163so we do have it even though we're still considering it a non-recurring expense okay that's the i think that's the distinction that i wasn't clear on because if we're continuing to budget it then it's really recurring we're continuing to budget as the decline too after five years it'll be gone okay and then i understand that we have a decrease in student enrollment and it's marginal and it doesn't affect the overall student teacher ratio and the way that we are allocating resources whether it's teachers or administration per building but the one thing that i also didn't notice is we have a seven percent increase in board grant students so you know like how does that affect the or does it you know the amount of revenue that we would otherwise get or i know it's a

164it's a benefit that we give to teachers but i think we've seen now an increase in board grant students year over year and so i think that would just be i just flag it as something for the long-term financial planning committee to look and assess when we're looking at the overall package of um uh salaries and and holistically you know for um for for everybody that we have here because um i think we have now seen at least two or three years in a row where that number's increased and i i think it's a good thing that we have the you know that that the board grants that to um to the children of folks that work here i think it could also be one of the distinguishing things which makes our cost per student

165higher than other school districts so it's something you know to be kind of put into that full consideration package is not just the return on investment by um as the cost of educating a student in clayton versus ladue or kirkwood or somewhere else but also just a reality and you know the benefits that we're giving to our teachers so i also think that it's great that you guys are working towards that meritorious budget award so um for the rest of the board members and community i spent significant time yesterday with both mary jo and sean talking about the return on investment per student our comparison to other districts and then what it takes to get to that meritorious budget and although i've been impressed with the way that the district has approached zero-based budgeting i

166think that next taking it to that next level will really help to not just reinforce the graph that you just showed on where we would be had the community not supported us through proppy and i do want to thank everybody who did support proppy because otherwise you know that graph would look very different but i also think that you know we'll just have a much better grasp on what the real return on our investment is and where those investments are going so i think that it's great that that will be a focus of the long-term financial planning committee next year and that you guys are working towards that meritorious budget award and so it might be good to have a few more details just for the uninformed that weren't in the room with the three

167of us yesterday the next time you come back maybe for the budget approval to talk about what it takes to get from where we are to to to the approval for that meritorious budget um and we'll include some additional information like i can give an example of what that worksheet might look like in a friday memo so that way the board can see how that's going to be incorporated in next year's budget perfect perfect um and then i know you mary jo you and i have talked about the difficulty of collecting or predicting financial institution taxes you know it's a million dollars one year it's 100 000 the next year we get a check out of nowhere we don't know when it comes in um i know that there isn't a solution to this but

168you know that's one of the things that we'll talk about tomorrow as well uh when as well as how we can better work with the county assessors office to make sure that for both existing projects and new commercial projects the residential properties we're getting all the revenue that we think we should be getting because i think there's been some slippage there potentially um and you and i have talked about this and external members of the community have approached me about this so i'm bringing actually a former board member in tomorrow to meet with mary jo so we can figure out you know should we should the district engage somebody that can lobby us or work with the assessor's office on our behalf and um so so i think those are just things for consideration the

169budget is big so that's what i'd address to like the community now is that you know if anybody who's listening to this if you want a copy of the budget come get it like you can cut you know ask the district for it you can get a copy of it if you have questions on it you can ask me or any of the other board members and we'll try our best to explain what's in there but thank you for the work that you've done and you know i will spend more time with it i know i got about a ream of paper is what the budget is delivered to the house middle of last week so i'm still working my way through all the different sections of it and we'll probably come to you with

170questions before the final vote okay great any but stacy um thank you mary jo so much i know so much work went into this and i really really appreciate it um look it's all good i mean exceeding our goal and having revenues exceed expenses is obviously a really good thing and good news for the community i just had a couple small questions um you may have mentioned this when you're talking about as an extraordinary islam item the covid release relief funds we've gotten i don't remember though if you mentioned are we counting on have you heard is there any indication that there will be more of that next year like we talk about that we will still have risk mitigation measures in place next school year we don't know what that will be but or

171are we supposed to try to use what we've gotten this year i didn't necessarily speak about it here but it is in the document and so in the document under the expenditures actually i have a listing of all the different grants all the different things yeah i saw that i just didn't know if that applied to ned yeah and so the only the one i i kind of showed in there what has been um appropriated in that and what hasn't and so the last set of funding that was just done in february um through the um biden administration we don't have that dollar so we know that we think it's around eight hundred thousand dollars but we're not positive um and so we we've only budgeted a portion of what we think we're going to

172get because it is a i think it's a two-year time frame so we can that's the one that helps with reopening of school yeah and there's actually 20 of that funding has to be attributed to student achievement and stuff like that so you know direct loss of instruction do the pandemic so we know we don't need to spend that all in one year so we budgeted a portion of it for this year and then whatever the balance is well you know so we were kind of conservative on what we were estimating and then we'll but it gives us some time to plan we don't know what is how much it is right okay okay thank you so much um my other question is and i may have missed this too since that draft is huge

173um i don't remember seeing in there budgeted um what we need for like the security audit we went through and all of that work there is that a capital fund i guess because they're building improvements that's a capital item and it was actually expended it's that those odd things like that the construction ones that we've been doing um the way we end up doing it is it gets it got budgeted this year and so um we might have some carryover in it and so that so the board approved the budget revision when we presented the um contractor and then if we need to carry over funds we'll present it with a carryover so that is how we'll do it okay thanks and lastly i just want to thank you for adding into this the details

174about the per pupil expenditures um and also especially prop e we haven't really talked about our prop e funds and budgets you know for a while since it passed so i appreciate being reminded about um what would have happened had it not passed and in a district our size a reduction of 55 to 60 full-time employees is a huge negative impact on our on our kids so i do think it's good for all of us to be reminded where we would be had that not passed and we haven't talked about in a while so thank you for including that in your report thanks stacy joe so thanks mary jo good um great job as always i think i just have really one question which is um you know every year we you know are usually

175500 to 1000 to a million better we best our budget and i know kova's made it difficult so what's your confidence level in this budget uh in terms of meeting it um you know are there any is there any i mean you know anything outstanding either expense or revenue that that you're just so unsure of or that are you feel pretty good about it yeah i mean the only thing is um like and i don't think they're significant would be those family center and and some of the business type activities you know kids own because of capacity and stuff like that i mean luckily they sent out the initial kid zone registration and we have a wait list so you know i mean we're hoping but it's still less capacity than we had in the

176past and unfortunately because of the same number of students we're not really reducing the staffing as much and same thing with family center i mean it's still a room full of students and so it's not like we can get rid of one of the teachers so we still have the expenses and not necessarily the same level of revenue so just like the center we still have an issue of trying to build up some of these revenue sources that we had and just those other little things facility rentals when we will start that back up i mean facilitator realized it's about 125 000 a year for us so we did not receive anything this past year and basically we don't want people in the buildings and so we do have a lot of rentals over the

177summer like the athletic fields everything outside is getting rented we have a few things in the theater but we still are restricted by distance and so a lot of people if they can't have enough people then they can't make their revenue and so we've had a couple people back out but so just those different various revenue sources other than that i'm not i'm not concerned about the other expenditure areas um our capital plans you know we feel comfortable with those because of those additional property allowed us one of the most important things with property was capital um that was really the significance of that it allowed us to do the center of clayton it allowed us to increase um the technology and the other funds and we're getting a lot of very important capital projects

178completed that we haven't been able to do we've delayed a long time and it's also allowed us to do extra things we were able to do ethic field where you know we're going to look at the libraries and and some other things and so um that's where i would hope that the board if we see the phone balance get higher we can always relax the tax levy some more but we still have capital projects that we need to look at and so that would be my goal and what we would need to do moving forward so then the only other thing is what happens with the assessed values and protested taxes um but we still can you know up until we hit our ceiling and we're not at the ceiling yet and so that that's

179all dependent on what happens with those assessed values and that's very hard to protect at this point so we'll just keep monitoring that and i'm not concerned with it for next year so thank you gary thank you um so i have one uh kind of specific question and then a bigger picture question comment i guess as well too so going back to the covid relief fund summary question um and correct me if i'm wrong about this but i think what you have on it's on page 25 of the summary document um the the the sr2 the elementary and secondary school emergency relief 2 that still hasn't been appropriated for us right so we know we're getting that money so that's from the december 2020. and then it's the american rescue plan which you don't have

180listed in the fund just because we don't know what that is yeah that's actually part of the after three which is the last one that's another one and we've only estimated 267 000 of that because we don't really know what basically what we did is we earmarked some things that we could spend the money on knowing that that's what next we could do that next year and then the following year if if the money comes in higher we think the money is going to come in higher we think this is a conservative number and then it gives us multiple years to send it over okay so but we we know some money that's been approved the amount's been determined but it hasn't been appropriated to us and then there's some that hasn't been the amount

181hasn't been determined it will be something so i know that's not really the budget so it's kind of an odd thing for us to ask so much about but it's also important in getting through these years so i guess the big picture question for you or or thought to process we are in a really good position budget wise i have a high degree of confidence in the detailed information that is in your presentation and all the documentation that we have in the budget i know you understand that you've explained so many things to me so many times and to all of us and i really appreciate that i think the um the constant challenge and this does relate back to proppy and everything that we've been through is making our finances more accessible to everyone

182who is a stakeholder in them and i think the um the the meritorious budget um as a standard and as a process to go to i think is really good i think that speaks more to your professional management of the budget probably than anything else and that it's i don't want us to not do that but i want us to also be constantly focusing on how does the person who whoever they are whatever level of engagement they have with the district understand their finances what can we do to make that better because the better it's understood we have a really good thing to talk about we have a really good story right now but more people understand that the better so that's i'm not really putting in more of a comment than a question but

183that's kind of what we need a good elevator speech i mean you know something that's sustained and gets the point across but but thank you for the detailed level stuff that you can handle i have so much confidence in that i just want i want everyone to be able to understand it as well as they can yeah and i do think about how you know when we're talking about communication sometimes those infographics are some things that people really appreciate seeing and so maybe thinking about how we can create some of those that are simple to understand that really explained our story and i like how you frame that it's like here's our story and here's how it's it's portrayed in this infographic great thank you caitlyn do you have anything i have no questions thank

184you for your very thorough work and i'm with caitlin oh yeah kim go ahead sorry um so it sounds like what's um captured in the budget is maintenance capital so but based on your comments just a little earlier i think before gary or joe started talking it sounds like there's a capital expenditure kind of wish list or request that's off to the side somewhere um then the kind of the beginning fund balance so it's already kind of accounted for so that includes some of these projects that you talked about right the library project no that's projected projects nothing that hasn't been working for the before we get a list of those that's what i'm interested in is that list of projected projects that have been um you know we presented those maybe before i was

185on the board probably it was it was at the beginning of a school year i remember yeah so we can get that back i think it was the beginning of last school year and then we started we tabled it because yeah it was the beginning of last school year because we asked for authorization to get architects and we started some architect things and then pandemic hit and we actually did we put a stop to a lot of the capital improvement but we can come back to that and i will say that we are starting to have conversations again around library like our high school library is something that i think that we need to look at and um out that was one of the things we were going to have on the june 2nd agenda

186is it is that approval to get an architect to do that design yes okay and are there other things then on that list too in terms of reimagining instruction or what we're doing to maintain some of the good stuff that we saw making the lemonade out of the lemons from covid um well you know is is this budget a reflection i mean how have we incorporated any of that innovation and teaching and learning into this budget and that stuff i think that you know to gary's point makes it easier in a digestible format for the community to understand so is there we get kind of a list of that stuff that's that's here yeah that's a zero-based budgeting approach so i know when you guys look at it you look at well we implemented this

187program and we didn't do that do we still really need that or do we need this is there a list of here are the things that we want to continue yeah i think yeah environment you know what can we see what that looks like yeah and right now we are still looking at you know starting kind of with some systems and structures like our struc our schedules and so those are some changes that are we definitely are going to have an impact but i i do think that um like when we're talking about devices like we're going to be changing the way we do devices fortunately we've been very proactive about our budgeting we were able to provide a device for every student and they're going to be able to keep those devices and so

188um the thought about what classroom spaces i will say that we don't have exactly what that's going to look like but definitely this experience can influence what that looks like and i think that even before kovid we were questioning do our learning environments match what we want for our students and i would say no not always and so that's why like even the library at the high school like we have asked that question is like is does this library represent who we are in terms of our strategic plan and that's that that is something that we definitely need to do but that's something we can come up with as well yeah and something as simple as just furniture for space is sometimes all you need is to help change the learning environment as the furniture

189and we that was one of the things that we could do with prop e and i presented it that there's this extra 35 000 furniture budget in the past each building only had about three thousand dollars which was normally for table you know desks a classroom set of desks or something but if you're trying to do alternative seating you know like what jason's using or or some different learning environment um which we normally see at white honor high school that space is normally around thirty thousand dollars to do so that's why we created that budget to do some innovative learning spaces as well yeah but even beyond the space so you know we have technology investments in classrooms now that allow students to learn remotely even if they did not choose remote learning as an

190option because of family reasons because of short-term illnesses unrelated to covid will we maintain those types of options going into the next school year my hope is that we would i know we've we haven't talked a lot about that maybe that's something an agenda item before the school year ends but you know i i would hope that we can and that there's been discussions at the administration level about maintaining some of those things going forward yeah and so we have put out surveys to our families about who would want to have some type of virtual option and so um our numbers came back very low in terms of those people who would want to have that type of option and so we're looking at some of the mo-cap options that we have such as launch

191but we're also looking at the elementary level like some ways that we can collaborate with another school district and elaine is actually putting a memo together that's going to be shared with the board uh at the end this week about ways that we're looking at providing those types of options it's not going to be at the degree of what this looks like right now like we we we won't we won't be doing the level of streaming that is happening right now because there's really not the need because the majority of our families are wanting us to come back and those students that want to be virtual we're going to provide an option for that for them to have that virtual but it's not going to look the same yeah and i i think that this

192survey addressed just that virtual versus in person but what i'm talking about is the flexibility for an in-person learner for short periods of time to have a virtual option into the classroom which i think is different than than what was requested on the survey so i'll just use and i know we're not supposed to bring personal examples to the boardroom but one of my son suffers from bad spring allergies because of the concerns about sending a child to school with a runny nose and sneezing and itchy throat and he was able to actually remote into the classroom with the permission of the middle school principal and his teachers for a week during the spring i mean that type of flexibility is the type of flexibility that i'm talking about which is different than do i

193want remote learning for my channel or do i want um you know full time in school yeah and i love other families too yeah you know maybe dad has to be away traveling for six months somewhere mom and the kids want to go visit or vice versa for a couple weeks they can remote in from the classroom so they're not in remote the whole time but some of that flexibility i think for families is what i've heard feedback from the community would be valuable to maintain if it's feasible to maintain it from a resource and cost perspective so to the extent we've already invested in resources and we can maintain that flexibility i'd like to see us consider some of that yeah and i think that the the feasibility is what we really have to

194really think about for that and um and some of the devices that we used for the um streaming were actually student devices that we delayed getting students the new devices and so some of the students didn't get that we used some of the devices that we purchased delayed the students getting the new devices and used those as part of the streaming so there would be a different investment that we need to put in place to make that happen um and then also we have to look at what is um you know that it's almost like that a la carte type of experience for education and so um i will say that there's some real challenges to to it as well um but i think that what we've said is that we look at every situation

195individually and so um so i i don't have a defined answer for you but i i appreciate that and but i will say that right now we're looking at making sure that if there's someone who needs a virtual model that's been our priority to make that make sure that happens but for those students that may be temporary that that would probably make it be a decision on on an individual basis and so um because it is challenging for teachers to be teaching virtually like that and if we had students coming in and out they've been very flexible this year but that a la carte model sometimes gets to be a challenge and we have to look at what's going to be feasible for our teachers instructionally and for our resources so but i appreciate you

196bringing that up forward and we'll talk about that okay great so i think that's everybody and um i want to uh make sure we're honoring everybody's time tonight and uh we try and get through uh we're still we still have the district calendar next all right and chris is actually gonna because he's doing the live stream he's gonna stay where he is and then just present from here so we don't have to change computers gotcha um thanks sean so the the calendar that we brought for you tonight is an information item is the 2022 2023 calendar um if you remember correctly back in january we approved the 2021-2022 calendar um so bringing bringing this forward to be approved which would happen at the june 2nd board of education meeting gets us back to our historical

197practice of having two years worth of calendars um approved this calendar is essentially um you know a a mirrored version of the calendar that was approved back in january so it takes uh which is essentially a mirrored calendar of this year's calendar so it takes this calendar and just moves it forward to the 22-23 school year maintaining the same number of teacher work days student instructional days and student instructional hours we would just bring bringing this forward on june 2nd with the caveat that you know when we return to more normal times next year and actually have a chance to to evaluate what this calendar is like because if you remember correctly this year's calendar was actually a change with the way that we have professional learning structured in it but since we really haven't

198been able to to see what that calendar actually feels like um within the context of a normal school year um we would just you know say that you know if if there's something that we learn about this calendar as we move through it and and live it next year you know that there may be that we may come back with some data and explanation and a reason to to make some adjustments to the 2223 calendar okay but it's just a just an informational item i mean the plan would be to bring it back to the board as a consent item on june 2nd okay great thanks chris um does anybody have any questions or comments about the 20 22 23 um calendar yes they see um just a basic question i didn't see on here

199chris how and i know it's a mirror calendar but i don't remember from this year either how um close are the semester total days to each other um i i don't know here i have that back in my notes but i mean we do we do work to balance them um as as closely as we can um right i was just asking because we you know we've now we're starting the week later and i mean the year a week later yeah i mean like you said it's a hard year to judge but i want to make sure those semester courses i guess we'll have to wait till next year to see if that's really working so so in theory um it i'm doing this without without pulling out my notes and and messing up my

200screens here but in theory it's two days better than um it was this year in terms of being more closely balanced um so the the 20 night this current school year the 2020 2021 school year um we started in as late in august as we possibly could have based on the the new uh state statute that we had to had to comply with in terms of starting uh 14 days before the labor day so next year we next year with the way the calendar adjusts we actually get one more day of school attendance in august for the fall of 2021 fall of 2022 will give us compared to this year two additional days of attendance um in august so i mean what i would say without having the exact number in front of me is

201that the gap is you know two days two days better than it is actually this year okay yeah i would just be curious how close because of course like when i think of classes especially those semester courses that you know are either ap classes or ones that have the mandatory state testing that the semester the kids in those classes first versus second semester have equal amount of opportunities you know to access the curriculum yeah and i'm sure our teachers work that out but i just care it's a challenge to balance semesters when the state has mandated a start date in august right right okay thanks yes joe so just two quick questions um one we have seven uh early release days i see um and i just want to know and this is as much

202maybe a question for sean and we've had some challenges with um feedback that those are uh tough learning days for students the early release days kind of become a blow-off day so i'm maybe just as a refresher for everybody what are we doing you know to make sure they're not blow off days um and you don't even have to answer that now if you can answer it later if you want and then i'll just give you the second question which is relative to other districts so we have 192 teacher contract days i think that's more than most districts is that correct or not yes more than almost all is that not the highest i think it's the highest just again a reminder not not just more comment right yeah and in terms of the we

203never want any day to be a blow off day and so um i would say that um we really want to make sure that we are trying to maximize our time and so um i'll take that feedback in and pass it along but we want to make sure that we're never blowing off any of our time kim so not to add inside to injury but the um two days after memorial day are also kind of known widely as blow off days in the beginning of june maybe not when you have final exams in high school but you know again how can if we're gonna require the students to come back after that make that a little bit more meaningful and then the follow-up question i have to joe's is is there any way to combine

204those half days into full teacher work days for professional learning so that it addresses that concern on the um you know the utility value for students required to go for that half a day so uh what what what i would say that and this just comes from all my years of actually being the the administrator lucky enough to shepherd the calendar through this development process is that uh one of the things that that we we feedback we hear about professional learning um is that it needs to be ongoing and sustained so in addition to having um there you know there are several full days of professional learning in this process but that the early release days spaced the way they are out the calendar um provide more opportunity for uh that ongoing sustained professional learning

205in terms of planning and actually delivery to our staff i mean i guess i'd like to see some of the objective data and what why that is i mean i i hear that anecdotally but when i see that you know in august you've got one two three four five days before the school year starts of professional learning and teacher work days and then the first full week of school the friday is a half day for more professional learning what's the rationale there so we develop a an a year professional development plan and we can get that from we'll be presenting that information to you but with chris is right in that when we look at our district professional development committee looking at how do we have more sustained learning and so a lot of those

206days at the very beginning are not necessarily all professional development some of those are um teacher work days and prep days those are days that the teachers are actually doing open houses with the with the um community and so they're not all professional development day um but i we we have reduced the number of release days that we have put into calendars because there were more and we have reduced those over the years but we'll definitely take the input that the board is providing and take that into consideration yeah just to address the the day on the friday and the first week of school placing that day there is is i mean one is an opportunity to provide professional learning time for our staff but two that's also a response um to feedback we get

207from principals and parents about not having a full five day week uh the first week of school so that's there to to break that up uh you know we get a lot of that feedback from our elementary principals and our elementary teachers so that's that's why the that first week from the single parent that has a full-time job that can't come to pick up their kid for early release or people with different socioeconomic status that find early release days particularly challenging yeah i mean it's it it's it's you know we have a small district compared to many others around the st louis area it's a challenge to build a calendar that works for um every parent and and every staff member in the district but we take the feedback that we have and put forth

208what we think is is the best option okay anybody else questions comments okay thank you chris and um we are going to move on to [Music] the consent agenda so i will have stacy go ahead and read the motion i move that the board approve all consent agenda items 8.02 through 8.03 it's been moved and seconded is there any uh discussion okay all in favor aye any opposed motion passes unanimously and uh stacy will you go ahead we're on number nine now the financials will you go ahead and read that motion please yeah i move that the board of education approved payment of current expenditures and investments for april 2021 as presented great it's been moved and seconded are there any uh comments all in favor aye aye any opposed motion passes on to public

209comment please so we have one public comment i think chris are you prepared to read that yes we do we have one public comment it's from marlene kovach and she writes while fully supporting the removal of barriers that might otherwise deny equal access to educational opportunities for all students i believe the district should reconsider relying on critical race theory particularly the district's emphasis on systemic racism as a framework for equity initiatives tonight's educational equity policy describes racism and bias as institutional barriers similarly the director of equity inclusion writes about recognizing and disrupting white supremacy i reject racism but the district is engaging in something more than anti-racism it is engaging in systemic devaluing systematic devaluing of white students in white culture if the district endorses critical race theory as it currently does does it also

210believe all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism are white children viewed as white supremacist by virtue of their skin color and the accident of their birth do equity initiatives seek to stereotype demean and marginalize the living lived experiences of white children because they are members of a racial group that is believed to be collectively guilty of evil or because they have somehow benefited from their skin color critical race theory embraces these suppositions and creates a hostile if not discriminatory environment yet the civil rights act of 1964 is supposed to prevent discrimination including the creation of a hostile environment at public institutions receiving federal funding instead of continued efforts to disenfranchise one group based on race i would like to suggest that the district identify more positive interventions to help improve academic success

211of all students for instance can the district identify attributes of successful learners and try to create school opportunities to develop these attributes especially for underperforming students asian american students consistently achieve higher grades and scores on standardized tests than their white hispanic and african-american peers does this disparity and outcome reflect racism no studies show that asian americans study more than their counterparts 13 hours per week for asian americans versus 5.5 hours for others and are part of a culture that emphasizes a strong connection between effort and achievement could the district create after-school group study sessions with an instructor to increase study time and fluency in a particular subject this is just one example there must be other best practices in the educational literature that don't rely on critical race theory blaming all educational disparities on racism

212is too easy inauthentic and doesn't take into account the myriad of other factors that can account for school performance that's all okay thank you for the comment um and we are going to move on to board communications i will um the only thing that i have is i'd like to uh congratulate the girls soccer team on their when of districts it's very exciting and i know that the boys baseball uh the varsity baseball team had a had a good win tonight too so we're excited about that congratulations to both those teams and i don't know if anybody else has anything go ahead stacy hi um i attended the pack ed steering committee meeting last friday and as i mentioned once before there's been some restructuring with special school district where we used to share our

213director d'andrea player with other districts and now each district is getting their own designated director which is great for everyone um unfortunately we're losing deandrea i think to normandy um and i just want to thank her for all she's done she's great and she will be really great for normandy too but we are lucky to have melissa logan who we already have here take on an additional role as director as well as the area coordinator and kate pavlison who we already have here will become an instructional coach at all of our schools not just the secondary schools melissa and kate are a great team and i'm really looking forward to having them designated as directors in our district for our kids and with that restructuring too like we'll have the directorate part of our board

214meetings and be a part of how you see our other administrators joe go ahead yeah just uh um you know thanks for those of you that could come to the st louis board plc it was um it was actually a really great event on legislative advocacy we had 45 people from at least 18 18 different districts that i noted but i'm i suspect it was more like 20 something so it was a great i i think it was a really strong event and a great great way to connect with not just us but folks from around the region so and we'll do another one probably maybe in the summer but certainly in the fall and maybe even the next one will be in person we'll see yep and thank you joe for for keeping that

215going and i know it's a lot of work on it takes a lot of your time so we appreciate you you're doing it aunt sean sean was here part of it sorry sorry sorry dr doherty okay uh anybody else okay then uh we will uh stacey yeah and i get a motion to adjourn i move that the board of education adjourn all in favor i any opposed we're done