001all right we're live good evening everybody adequate notice has been given and we are going to get this meeting started it's nice to see everybody here around the board table first time in about a year so um i'm gonna turn it over to dr dougherty okay so like we normally do let's go ahead and start with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right well good evening everyone uh we are starting our this is our first board meeting in person and so for those of the peop for those people who are watching the live stream we are not able to have public here because we're not
002able to fit people in this room but we do have all of our board members and our student board representative and so we really appreciate everyone's flexibility because we're a little late um but yeah we're very excited that we're all here together and tonight we're going to start with our recognizing our own and our first recognition is around national school nurses day which is today and so um we want to say thank you to our nurses and so robin uh do you have anything that you want to share about our nurses and want to see if we can chris if you can let in our nurses into the meeting good evening everyone can you hear me okay great well i just want to uh give a very deep heartfelt thank you to our incredible health
003services team who have been covering all of our buildings including the family center for the last gosh over the last um you know eight to 12 months just making sure that our community both our staff and our students have stayed safe and healthy during the pandemic um i mentioned to all of them earlier today that i know their jobs day to day are so much more than handing out band-aids and ice packs and that within a span of 60 minutes they can play the role of being a student's go-to person to helping manage a chronic health condition to starting contact tracing and calling parents and so they have really just gone above and beyond their traditional role here in the school district and we are so thankful for all the hours that they have put
004in to make sure that our community is healthy and just a really brief overview when we started planning for risk mitigation strategies and what the contact tracing was going to have to look like so much time and effort goes into the details behind the scenes to make sure we've done a really thorough exploration of the different situations we've faced and the amount of time that we spend on um you know phone calls and analyzing seating charts and reaching out to families and working with the communications department and keeping track of families who have shared really important information with us and so i just want to thank each and every one of you for all the time and effort the time away from your families you've spent on the weekends and after hours just keeping on
005top of all of the different challenges we have faced and i am so thankful for each one of you so i want to thank jody and corliss and heather and lisa and gail and mary francis great did i get everybody i just did it really fast um and lisa and gail mary susan susan that's it okay sorry i just want to thank all of you for everything you've done and i also want to give a special thanks to heather chrisman for transitioning into our role as nurse coordinator and she has just been a fearless and relentless leader through all of this so to all of you thank you so much for the role that you have played during the coronavirus pandemic and for all the leadership and love and care you have shown to all
006of us um during this last school year please know you are appreciated and we're so glad we get to work with you thank you robin and again on behalf of the board of education and the administration of the district thank you to our nurses we are so appreciative of everything that you have done for us this year and for our students and we know that it goes well beyond the walls of the uh clinics in each of our schools i know some of you have even done home visits of students and so i just it's amazing so thank you you're truly appreciated and so nurses now you can have the rest of the night you can go ahead and log off so it's good to see all of you have one more neck recognition and
007um so this past week we conducted interviews for our new student board representative and so just wanted everyone to know that um all we had we had app students apply uh through an application process and then we had a an interview process that students went through to be selected i want to say thank you to jason wilson he was part of the interview process we had a meet for a couple mornings 7 30 with all of our students and um and it was really great to hear the students all of our candidates were amazing they were incredible all of them could have done an amazing job but we had to narrow it down and so tonight i want to introduce you to our new student board representative for the 21 22 school year and her
008name is atana rosas lennard and um she has been um i actually have known her for a very long time she went to captain and um i have just it was just really exciting to see her through this interview process and so antana i just want to welcome you to the board of education and just wanted you to just say hello to the board so that way they can actually see who you are thank you i'm really excited to be working with everyone in the next year so yeah thank you for this really amazing opportunity so we're having a little hard time hearing you but that's okay we just want to make sure that we are able to see you and so over the next couple weeks we are going to spend i know that
009caitlyn's going to spend some time with you and we also know that uh we'll have an opportunity to meet as well and just want to welcome you to the board of education all right hi tana hi thank you for being here tonight i also want to welcome you on behalf of the board we're so excited to have you and to get to work with you next year and um we we look forward to hearing your input and for you uh being able to sit with us at the board table thank you are you okay with me going for my superintendent communications okay no we're all good all right so again um i'm gonna go ahead and share my screen so one of my mentors told me that um you always should approach may as like
010it's august because during the month of august you are setting up new systems you're having lots of reminders for students you have lots of different events and you have lots of energy and and she said that what you always have to do is think about when you get into may it's at the end of it and you should always have the same amount of energy that you have when you're in when it's august and um and so making sure that you're having making sure all the right systems are in place making sure you keep that high energy it's amazing how far we've come since last may and even it that we're in this room together today says a lot and i am just so appreciative of where we are and i just want to say
011again thank you to the board of education for all of your support over this last 14 months during this pandemic so so may is like august i want to come back and just share again our our data and um we are still tracking data and just because we have a lot of people who are getting the vaccinations it doesn't mean that we are relaxing all of our risk mitigation measures and there is still spread and we are still seeing quarantines we actually saw a little jump in some of our quarantines and so i think it's important to know that we are still being vigilant and even with all the changes that we made for fourth quarter we're not seeing the spread happening within our schools and so we've changed some of those risk mitigation measures
012but they're still working and so i feel confident at the start of next school year we will be in full days at all levels and um we will still have risk mitigation measures in place but we feel very confident that it will feel similar to a typical type of school year and i really appreciate all the work of our teachers and our students i know there's been a lot of flexibility but it's it's exciting to see the progress that we're making you know as a learning community academic achievement is always going to be our main focus and we have continued to have high expectations for our students making sure that we are assessing them and making sure that we know where they are with their their academic achievement we're continuing to look at our standardized
013test data um that's holding us accountable but we also look at other measures of success and we have to go beyond just one standardized test point to determine if we're successful and so tonight as part of our strategic plan update we're also going to be hearing some different ways we are approaching success and how we're measuring success and so that's going to be a part of our update so the other thing is part of our academic success is our robust curriculum and our effective pedagogy and we are a district that focuses on uh educational equity and that is something that is really a critical component of our work that contributes to our excellence as a school district we're focusing on having a curriculum that is a window and a mirror to our world so our
014students are seeing themselves in the curriculum but they're also seeing others we want to teach historically accurate representations where students have a deep understanding of contributions of varied races and cultures while also understanding that our history still has implications today and i know there's lots of conversations happening in in the region but i want to make sure that we are adhering to what what how our history is still impacting our world today and being able to be brave create brave spaces to have those types of conversations it helps our students just be more culturally competent and leaders of change and it also helps us avoid repetition of injustices that we have seen in the past and so we're committed to that in our curriculum we're not perfect with it we're not perfect with having everything
015um just right but we're working on it and we're we want to be able to be leaders of that um do we use resources like the learning for justice standards yes do we use some of those resources that you hear about in the news yes because we know that those are going to help our students gain some more context uh for our history and how it's impacting what's currently happening in our world so i just want to say thank you to our board of education and at the beginning of this year you put forth a resolution around how we are going to create an anti-racist anti-bias community and culture and having that support from the board of education has helped us have bold moves in our schools and bold moves in terms of equity and
016continuing to look at equity as beyond just one race we're looking at multiple ways that we look at diversity and we're very proud of that so just want to say thank you the other thing that we're really taking a lot of energy now is focusing on what is next um as i said before to you is that we're not just going to say all right let's go back to a new normal we have to think about how what we've how we've learned what we learned from this past year can create meaningful change in the future so we are going to be looking at some new schedules at the middle school and the high school we're also going to be looking at how we use our devices all of our students are one-to-one right now and
017we're going to be continuing to look at a model that looks like that so i feel very confident even though i'm not going to be here but i feel very confident about the start of the 21-22 school year and working with dr patel to make sure that we are in we're ready to go and um we wouldn't be here if we didn't learn from from this experience and and implementing some changes that i think are actually going to be really beneficial to our students and when we talk about data too uh earlier when i talked about measuring success we are going to be implementing something new at the end of this year is a profile the graduate survey and we know that we have attributes that are connected to our profile the graduate and we're
018looking at this survey as being a tool to see what do our graduates actually feel have been the things that have impacted them while they were here and uh what are those uh things that we did that contributed to them to um be self-actualized or to be a collaborative uh creative thinker and so those that survey data is going to be another data point that we're going to use as part of our strategic plan and continuing to come back to that because we can't we you know we talk about what it means to be a graduate profile graduate so we have to ask our graduates and so hopefully that will be continue to be a point of informing how we move forward uh the other thing is is that you know we had our nurses
019here tonight and very proud of the work that they have been able to do someone mentioned heather christman who's our coordinator and heather has been working in collaboration with our communications department to be proactive about vaccine clinics we've had clinics for our staff we've had clinics for our students and this week we were proactive and getting uh prepared for our clinic for our uh 12 to 15 year olds that was supposed to happen today it didn't happen because we didn't get that that final approval but it's happening next week and so we're shifting that and feel very proud as a district that we've taken a proactive stance on that and i don't know the exact numbers but i think it's close to 700 people have already signed up for that so um so i feel
020very proud of our district and how much work they're putting into that um but you know the there and then we did have a clinic today for the students who are getting their second vaccination but it just i think it's really says a lot about how we've been really working to um use our resources in the community to be able to make this happen for our students and it's been really nice to get some feedback from parents too who have said thank you um so appreciate everyone's flexibility with those changes this week uh the other thing is tonight we're gonna have our strategic plan update and this is really focused around goal number two and around our approaches to learning and so melana gardenigo is going to be giving us an update about that and
021um and again just want to remind you that i'm continuing to meet with dr patel on an ongoing basis and we're in this we're in the state right now where it's like is this the decision that i make or is this a decision you make and and let's make it together and and so um so we're working to really be collaborative i've been i feel so confident about um nisha and um how she's going to have such a positive impact on our community and so it's just been a real true joy to work with her and then finally we have our student rep report and so um caitlin is going to give us a report and so caitlyn i just want to again say thank you um because caitlyn was part of this whole process
022and caitlyn you had to be a student rep during the middle of a pandemic and you've had to be flexible and you've give gave the board a lot of amazing reports this year and i just want to say thank you again publicly for who you are and the types of questions you ask and um and i just want to recognize caitlyn too it's because we did some professional development for our staff with educational equity and caitlin was part of a an affinity group that helped with that and so i just wanted to just say thank you for your leadership thank you very much uh so for my student rep update today i will be starting off with ap testing because that's a main thing that students have been focused on so the first administration of
023ap testing was held starting last week and has continued to this week and that first administration is in person and the second and third administrations will be continuing until the first week of june and the second and third administration are online tests versus paper tests and students did have a choice in which administration they wanted to take each examine which allowed for a greater flexibility that students were really appreciative of and i know that with shortened class times the students taking ap tests were worried about covering all the course content in time we're worried about covering all the course content in time however the students i spoke to upon taking their exams felt that their teachers were able to adequately prepare them for the exam albeit with more rapid coverage of material but i really
024want to thank our teachers for being able to go through all of the material in a very quick manner and also hosting additional review sessions outside of class to be able to prepare their students for these exams and following ap tests there will be final so i'll speak briefly about that and about some of the plans that teachers have been having for finals so similar to last semester some classes are hosting finals but most that i've heard of are not having finals or having like a chapter test or a project instead of a final so we can see again that like similar to last semester teachers are starting to move towards different ways and different approaches to taking finals and that's something that we should look toward in future years to see about the necessity
025of finals especially for certain classes in addition moving on to some events that are happening uh the outdoor orchestra concert that i mentioned at the last board meeting has a date now it is happening next tuesday at 7 00 pm in the quad so that's exciting and some community members should come out if they want to hear some nice orchestra music the chs boys varsity tennis team won districts and they'll be competing at state in late may so congratulations to them and the chs okay and the chs girls track got first at conference and both boys and girls track will be going to a district soon and i also just want to say a couple things about our new student representative itana rosas leonard so i was part of the interview process for the next
026student representative and i've also worked with aitana for the past two years because she was a freshman on the district advisory council and is now currently a sophomore in the district advisory council so i just wanted to say that she's shown a lot of commitment over the past few years and i really could not imagine a better person to be taking over my role so that is my update for this evening thank you thank you katelyn that was great so our next item is our study item which is goal two of the strategic plan to grow as learners and so we're going to invite melania garganigo into the room she's so excited about being in the room she said she couldn't wait to talk with her hands all right so to get started again we
027are looking at goal number two and uh this is an opportunity for us to give the board an update about our strategic plan and we again just so that the public can hear is that we divided this up into um three different sessions one uh we just recently did our first goal and tonight we're going to be covering goal two and so i just want to remind everyone that as we look at our strategic plan we are always going to make sure that we are focusing on excellence but we want to make sure that we're looking at how we can be transformational and really truly be transformational in our approaches to learning and our approaches of what it looks like in the classroom and so tonight we're going to hear a little bit more about
028how we are approaching that and and how measures of success will look different as a reminder we have developed a strategic plan that we feel is very learner centered aspirational innovative and equity focused and when we talk about a learner we're saying that it's not just our students but the adults as well and then also comes back to our profile of the graduate tonight our goal is going to be focused on to grow as learners and that goal is to commit we will commit to the educational growth of our learners through an equitable personalized and individualized learning experience and tonight milena is going to be providing us an update about the work that we have been doing there are many objectives that are connected to this goal we won't be able to cover every single
029one of those tonight but she is going to give an overview of an update and then give the board an opportunity to answer any ask any questions and try to see if there's anything else we need to process thanks sean uh so the three objectives that we're going to focus on is personalized learning individualized learning and then changing the barriers or disparities of access to our programs so when we developed our strategic plan one of the first things that we knew when we used language like personalized learning and individualized learning sean can you flip the slide um one of the things that we knew was that we were going to have to come up with shared language and definitions of that within our system so there's a lot of a pretty big body of literature
030related to these terms and we needed to sort of synthesize them for us as a district so on this slide i've kind of highlighted for you some of the things that are that are most important about these terms our curriculum coordinators and our professional development committee the leaders within the district uh came together to solidify these definitions for us um and then sean and i did some work to to show um sort of the interconnectedness of of these terms so they don't operate individually from one another um they're interconnected go ahead john so what we're looking at is the fact that all of these terms and we added differentiated learning into this also because it's a term that we've been using for a long time and it's a way of a pedagogical structure that we've
031been looking at for a long time and so we were looking at the interconnectedness of the three so all of these are grounded in standards and objectives that's what guides our work um but they have differences and they have similarities with one another so with differentiated learning and personalized learning the idea of student voice and choice is really important in both of those with personalized learning and individualized learning there's varied outcomes things look different uh the the products that students develop look different and then with differentiated learning and individualized learning it's based on learner-centered needs one of the things that i wanted to talk a little bit about was to try to give you sort of some concrete examples of these three terms so when i think about personalized learning one of the things that
032um an example that came to mind is actually something that sean referenced recently which was a third grade class that was focused on a on a project based learning um activity and so project based learning is this idea of students learning by actively engaging in real world and personally meaningful projects so it's not just about doing a project at the end of something it's the project being the the part of the work that you're doing um and that they're meaningful to the students so that the students have ownership and agency in in deciding that so in a third grade classroom recently their students were studying economics as a part of their social studies curriculum and the driving question that they came up with was how can i as a third grader use global trade to
033create my own business so the students created their own businesses thought through it worked with high school students to get feedback so thinking about like supply demand thinking about those kinds of things the high school students helped them to refine that and then they ended up with a shark tank kind of approach that adults came through and heard their pitches and then we decided which companies we would want to um support so that's uh sort of highlighting this idea of learner-driven and varied outcomes so there were 20 different projects that came out of that from the individualized perspective recently you all approved a policy ike which required us to develop a new acceleration plan within the within the district so dr wiens and i developed a new process that we're currently using through throughout the
034district so teams are gathering data looking at this information individual about individual students to make determinations in the best interest of the students and those determinations can be anywhere from some kind of differentiated instruction within the classroom grade level or subject acceleration curriculum compacting so testing up front and then deciding that we only have to teach a certain amount of the content or this idea of telescoping so completing sort of multiple years of content in a shorter amount of time the standard this standardized process has allowed us uh to approach all situations in the district similarly but to be able to address students needs um based on their on their data and then differentiation is a practice that we've been using within our classrooms for a long time it's the so it could look like
035choice boards it could look like open-ended assignments for students or something similar that allows for different kinds of products different kinds of processes to to approach the work so on the slide now one of the things that we have talked a lot about is the profile of the graduate and how to measure um the competencies within the profile of the graduate so some work that has really resonated with us recently is work from michael fullan and joanna mckechen that's called deep learning and so i shared with you a hard copy of of a learning progression from their work and when we've been studying this work the reason first of all the reason why it resonated with us so much was what they call their competencies they call the six c's and we felt like they
036really paralleled our profile of the graduate competencies um so i tried to sort of equate those on this chart uh for you what we like also about their work is that they've developed these learning progressions which is what you have in front of you and so almost like thinking about it is like a rubric or a way to report back on students um within these competencies so all of these are really difficult to sort of like you can't assign a number to them um they're they're kind of difficult to to assign things to but within these progressions it gives you a sense of um like starting from somewhere so our youngest students as they come in starting from somewhere and then progressing along so that by the time they graduate they're falling within that that
037rightmost column the last part that i wanted to talk about today was access and removing barriers to particular programs and this right now the way that we're looking at this is particular to honors and ap enrollment within our courses so social studies has had an open enrollment process for you can go to the next one yeah social studies has had an open enrollment process for ap courses for the past couple of years that has allowed students to to make the decision uh about registering and and attending an ap course uh this year starting this year the movement into um freshman english has been an open enrollment process so we talked with our eighth grade students about the difference between the two courses between college prep english and honors english one we talked to them about
038the differences talked to had them talk with their families about what they felt like would be the best fit for them we also targeted some some different students to have conversations with to say we feel like this would be a good place for you and having the administration at the school and the teachers having those conversations with the families to help them make those decisions we also had gotten some feedback that our process for placement for math moving into the middle school is not a particularly transparent process and so we did a lot of work this year to make it more transparent so similar to what we did with the college prep english one and honors english one we did the same with math six and and um math six extensions giving families much more
039upfront information about the two courses the differences between the two courses we made a recommendation based on data and then it provided an opportunity for all families to have to engage in conversation with our teachers if they felt like they needed more information about that or they wanted to to ask questions or think differently about the the course that their child was going to be placed into so our goal there was trying to be more transparent um as well as to look at at providing opportunities to families to to share with us information that they knew about their child that maybe we didn't know about their child as as maybe a better placement for them the other thing that we looked at with math is to say that historically kind of coming into the middle
040school where the courses bifurcate there wasn't often opportunity for students to move within within those pieces and so we've designed what we've called summer bridge courses um so between each uh year sixth grade seventh fifth grade sixth grade and and seventh grade allowing an opportunity for students to take a course that would allow them then to move into that um extensions course if that's something that they want to pursue and and with the families and partnership we've decided is there is the right movement to to do so it allows for some different kind of movement that has not historically been a part of our programming so the focus on the strategic plan supports our focus on academic achievement sean you can flip again michael fulin talks about how a more personalized approach appeals to all
041students but most of all attracts students who are typically less connected to traditional schooling it provides them with better purpose for learning and provides them with agency in how they approach their learning so the last thing is just about so how will we know how will we know if we're successful with this we will continue to monitor our achievement data so the same data that i present to you in the assessment report will continue to look at that and study those pieces of data but also by focusing on the development of learning progressions so the things similar to to what you have in front of you we're looking to develop those for ourselves not just adapt fulham's work but by developing those learning progressions we also feel like we will have ways to report on
042the competencies of the profile of the graduate okay so um that is a brief overview of the report that we sent you and so this would be an opportunity and see if we had any questions um there are any clarifications that we could potentially help you with but i think i will just go around the room just starting with gary um is that okay gary okay fair enough david no i don't have any questions thank you jason i don't have any questions thanks caitlin i don't have any questions but can i make a comment yes absolutely yeah so i just wanted to say that i think it's really great that we're allowing open enrollment because i think that students especially at the age when they're going into high school need to have like the ability
043to be able to evaluate their own skill set and know if they're ready for a course or not so i think that that's very important and i really like that the school district has begun doing that especially because i know um in my grades year like the the bridge to get into honors english for ninth grade was pretty like the bar was pretty high so i really like that we're now having students evaluate themselves and having their own conversations with their families and i think that students really know their level of what they can handle and are able to take that in account when deciding for new classes one thing that i would also add is that i know um i'm very vague on like accessibility for immigrant parents and i know that like immigrant
044parents can sometimes have some difficulty when talking to administration especially if they want to advocate for their student on things like taking a higher class for example so i think that just making sure that there is still like communication with immigrant families or like esl families and really i guess prioritizing and making sure that you're communicating mostly with the student in that sense sorry about that i do have some questions joe ask away i will thank you um so melania thank you i think it's awesome what you're doing but i do have um two questions one is when i look at the data disaggregated by race um you know our black students are still pretty significantly behind so can you just talk a little more about what we're trying to do more specifically to address
045that that uh difference sure um so i look at the these data that i provided in this as as our baseline um so it's our it's our sort of initial attempt to start to look at having to rectifying disproportionate numbers um and so as we the some of what i would say specifically that we're looking at is when we look at data profiles of students particularly black students is having those conversations with families and and and engaging in conversations with families to say we think that this would be a a good placement so we think an honors course would be a good placement for your child let's talk about what that means and and us initiating those conversations where i think in the past we were waiting for the families to initiate those with us
046we're initiating those with families thank you and then uh one other question which is so i think so this is great as we think about kind of the axis and the curriculum but i also want to hearken back to the strategic priority number one right our goal number one um and think about some of the panorama data and the fact that we have as much as 50 of students right which you know when they talked about relationships with a trusted adult there was you know some challenge there especially at the secondary level and so to me those are linked right the curriculum can be as great can be perfect and the opportunities can be great but we know that if you don't have a an adult that's working with you that you can trust and
047so um i just hope we're continuing to integrate those two because i do think that that this is great work but without that um relationship you know i mean the biggest success factor for a student is the quality of the teacher and the relationships that the students have with their teachers and so i just i guess i just want to kind of bring that part up too i agree yeah thank you um i think that's it thank you stacey thank you i actually had the same first question joe did about our black students so thank you melina um and then just one other quick question um you mentioned that for y down with the math courses that you're creating these like big bridge courses over the summer so that kids could go from regular math
048to extensions have you thought about something similar in the high school to move to an honors class if you hadn't been in honors before because as it stands if you didn't start in on honors math you really can't get into honors math yeah so part of the um the math is currently in review um and part of what they're looking at is their progression like their course progression and looking at um so i i anticipate that when we come back to the table with the goals for them next year that that's going to be a part of our work is that we're looking at at making some changes to the progression okay great i will um just say briefly that i think for the report i love that um i love our focus on the
049individualized and personalized learning because um it you know they all all of our kids learn differently and they all need something different um so it's it's great that we're we're taking a deep dive and really considering that i think it's super important as far as questions are concerned i was wondering if i noticed in your report that you said that the gifted identification process i guess that's more at the elementary level that we're still we don't have a report on that um is there i mean is there discussion that that would become um like an open enrollment type of a situation similar to how english is how the honors english is or is there is there any discussion like that or i wonder i'm just if you could um i would say we haven't had
050discussion about it in that way we have changed the identification process to to remove some of the the academic components in in thinking about like standardized testing and those types of things and thinking about it more from a creativity lens um but i i we haven't necessarily had a conversation about it being an open enrollment um kind of process the one thing can i add something to that i i think it's also important to remember when we're thinking about the gifted program there are aspects that happen within the program that um i think that we are looking at how can we apply that to the classroom but we also have to look at it as an intervention for students as well and so we have to make sure that it's not you know that we
051have to look at it as that is actually a support for our student we are learning um about ways that we can incorporate some of the things that might happen in that program into like a a classroom and i think that the example that melania gave was a really perfect example about giving students some choice and the other thing is i got to be in that classroom but if you think about you know she said that was a social studies unit it's also writing it's also creativity it's also like the uh reading and research and so it's like there's a lot of integration but i also just think it's important we're talking about gifted that we also know that that's a it's a support it's like an intervention for students too yeah perfect i will
052thank you melina for the report and um i think with that said we can go ahead and move on to the action items thank you melina our first action item is the second reading of policy kk and it is visitors to district property and at the last meeting you gave us some feedback and some input around some changes that we want you wanted us to implement and so robin's bringing those back for a second reading and also for approval good evening everyone it's good to see all of you in person i just wanted to highlight some of the changes that were made since the last time we brought policy kk to the table for your review under student visitation we did shorten that paragraph related to the superintendent or designee prohibiting a visit now that
053i'm revisiting this we did strike perhaps more than what was discussed but i so i welcome any feedback related to that section um but before we go there i just wanted to also highlight some of the other changes that were made based on the feedback you provided under classroom observations and service providers we replaced disruptions with distractions or interference with school operations and then lastly under prohibited items we added some more specific language related to the prohibition of certain substances on campus which were listed through from one of our other policies related to substances on district property so i just wanted to highlight those changes in addition um i wanted to just revisit that msba released this set of suggested changes to this policy based on requests that they had gotten from districts across the
054state not specifically from the school district of clayton but obviously they work with many districts across the state that are many different sizes and um many of them have reached out to msba about refinements to policy kk and so a lot of that feedback is reflected in this policy as well okay that sounds great thanks for making those changes um stacy should we if you want to go ahead and read the motion and then we'll see if there's any discussion sorry i move that we approve policy kk visitors to district property and events with the proposed changes as outlined attached second okay great so it's been moved and seconded are there any uh comments or discussion yep go ahead stacy thank you robin for the changes i think you really captured what we all of
055our feedback um the only thing i would say is in the student visitation the new paragraph just to keep the language consistent like in classroom observations and service providers we called it um school operations i didn't know if you'd rather say that instead of education program or or did you mean something different i don't know no i did not so you're right those are synonyms uh and used interchangeably in this but yes that can be replaced um in terms of um the to bring it into alignment with the other two sections but otherwise i love how concise you made that i think you really captured everything we wanted out of the original and into that so thank you so much gary yeah i had kind of the same reaction i was trying to remember what
056exactly we had talked about shortening but i think a lot of the other stuff that was taken out it's almost like commentary or like in general we think kind of language that i think this is much more to directing what our actual practices are which is what the policy is supposed to do so i think this language really um does capture that conversation in the spirit of what we were trying to do there so it looks great okay anyone else okay great all in favor all right any opposed motion passes unanimously okay robin thank you thank you robin i move that the board of education approved the part-time temporary employment as submitted second grade promotion has been moved and seconded are there any comments all in favor aye opposed motion passes i think we'll be
057on to the consent agenda is that under consent okay um i move that we approve all consent agenda items 7.02 through 7.04 second okay any comments oh all in favor all right and i'd like to thank um in that consent agenda i'd like to thank uh robert chris for his generous donation to the white owned middle school theater program we really appreciate it thank you terrific okay and we are on to the financials i move that the board of education approved payment of current expenditures and investments for march 2021 as presented second okay it's been moved and seconded are there any comments okay all in favor aye aye any opposed motion passes unanimously public comment we do have a few public comment and we have chris tunnell are you able to read those please yeah
058absolutely um we have we have three comments tonight and first comment is from patrick burke he writes dear board of education i'm writing to express my dismay about house bill 1141 the bill currently under consideration in the missouri house that will ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools i'm the dad of a ninth grader at chs and i'm also a university professor whose work directly involves critical race theory i find i find the false picture of critical race theory that its critics are painting to be both laughable and insulting and the article i've linked below my signature for example someone identifying herself as a clayton parent denigrates critical race theory as a form of child abuse it's important to me that clayton's students and teachers be empowered to have challenging and historically
059informed conversations about race and racism in the classroom which is all that critical race theory really means it's such conversations that house bill 1141 supporters cynically seek to cancel i recognize that the board has no direct influence over state legislation but if you agree with me that is wrong for state lawmakers to suppress clayton teacher's speech the statement to that effect would be encouraging i'd also like to know if you have developed any strategies for how to continue teaching clayton students to think critically and compassionately about racial issues if the bill passes which i sadly fear it will thank you very much for your consideration for all the work you do on behalf of our kids sincerely patrick burke our second comment is from jennifer williams jennifer writes clayton school district made the news via
060the rockwood school district forum when a clayton parent voiced her concerns about critical race theory being rampant in light of this and as a new parent in the district i wanted to voice my thankfulness for the district's commitments to enacting the standards that we outlined in avar in fact we chose this district because of the curriculum in particular the intentionality to choose to teach historic history accurately and in a way that is reflective of what actually happened regardless of political ideals i am not sure if anyone has reached out to this parent to address her concerns but i would like to suggest the district consider ways to address the clayton community and re-share its stance on anti-racism perhaps linking anti-racism resources to help parents as they guide their children through what may be new material
061to them in times like these it's important to remember that silence speaks and can be interpreted in many ways the school district of clay should continue to distinguish itself within the st louis community our final comment tonight is from julie schaeffling julie writes i am the parent of the first grader i believe it is one of the fundamental mission of public schools to teach students how to be good citizens part of being a good citizen is being to honestly view the world learn how to function in it and do what you can to make it better learning to speak and talk about differences is part of how schools can prepare all kids including white kids for the real world where real differences do exist i want my student to learn how to talk respectfully and
062honestly about this differences racism so that she is prepared to do so when she is older it seems that this is okay i know some parents have knee-jerk reactions maybe because they feel guilty or pigeon-holed but that shouldn't stop the school from doing what is right in honest that's all of our comments for you okay thank you chris for reading the comments and thank you to the folks that made the comments we appreciate your input um and i think we are on to board communications so i don't know if anybody has had any committing meetings or other communications um over the past yep joe yeah i just want to remind the board that we have the um the st louis county board plc tomorrow night it's via zoom it's from 7 to 8 15 and
063the topic is really legislative advocacy so which of course is a hot topic right now because the legislature is doing lots of interesting stuff so again sandy sent out the zoom link but just a reminder it's from 7 8 15 tomorrow night tomorrow evening via zoom and sandy did send another reminder out and um looked like we had over 50 participants already and we had student accounts or um pto council met this week i i had to bow out because of a conflict so i'll defer that to sean before we do i do want to have the floor for a minute so tonight i'm giving notice that i'm resigning my position on the board of education at the end of this month i've really valued the opportunity to serve the community and the school and
064i really appreciate the support that i've received from the citizens of clayton i realize this is one year into a three-year term so this will disappoint some and it's going to irritate a few and maybe even relieve a couple of others but those that know me best know that i value integrity and doing the right thing no matter what the optics or what challenges that may bring in the previous four months we've had two pivotal items come up that i cannot in good conscience support and the way we've handled it leaves me feeling complicit which is exactly the opposite of what i promised the community i would do whenever i ran for this position i've come to realize that i can better support the community as an activist shareholder if you will rather than sitting
065on a board where i have concerns over how issues are handled so with this i do want to say thank you for everybody here and i really have appreciated serving with you guys and i do want to say to the community i fully fully support and absolutely believe that dr patel is going to be a great transition despite the huge shoes she's got to fill and so sean how about that pto council meeting well david thank you i don't know what to say i i again thank you for your service this past year um and i i respect your decision and i will say that you probably served as a board member during one of the most difficult times in our history and um thank you for that and i i respect your decision and
066we will um i think we'll talk to the board about what next steps are so um thank you i in terms of the pto meeting i would have to say that i would just the only thing i would ask to add to that is the pto um was basically a kick a kick start for next year and they were training all of the new uh members of the pto and i just have to say that our pto is extremely generous in terms of their time their resources and financial support of the our schools and so i um it was really incredible to see that they were building capacity of the new leadership of the ptos in each of our schools so um so i gave them a report and um they did an awesome job
067so again thank you david and appreciate your time you have an update okay um i had the opportunity to do a couple walk throughs with sean through our buildings on two separate days we managed to get through all of the elementary schools and wydown and the high school and the family center that's on the high school campus and if you haven't done that yet with sean i encourage you to do so if he has time in the last few weeks um anyway as you know we haven't been in the buildings really you know this year at all so i really appreciated the opportunity to see how our schools are functioning during covid and i have to say i was so pleasantly surprised our elementary schools are basically as if nothing really had changed i mean
068there are kids in masks and they are eating at their desks but they are learning and they were laughing and they were working with their classmates and having a good time and i and the teachers were so upbeat and positive so the overall mood i felt in all three of our elementary schools was very positive from the students and the teachers so that was really great really great to see um i guess it was not much different at why down in the high school the physical spaces there look more different than they used to compared to the elementary schools i mean the commons at the high school is now a huge study hall with filled with desks because they don't need it for lunch time and certainly there are you know some classrooms in both
069buildings where there used to be couches and more comfortable groups seating like that that they've moved to individual desks but i would say also at white on the high school it was so great to see the quote-unquote you know normal learning that was occurring despite seeing kids in masks and the white on kids eating lunch outside in the park place cafe i think they call it in the garage which is such an innovative and great idea and the kids are loving too so um thanks john for your time and walking me around it really put me at ease and made me feel good to see how everyone has adapted and our teachers and our kids have been so flexible and these kids are so resilient and you know they're just so used to wearing masks
070and um the little kids probably don't remember any different but but really everything was going on as has in years past and it was great to see so thanks thank you so much stacy for going on those walkthroughs and i would encourage you if you want to go on a walk through with me just contact sandy and she will schedule it i think that oftentimes when i'm walking through the school a lot of kids will say hello dr daugherty or you know the but stacy sea wax is definitely a celebrity as she walks to our schools and a lot of kids knew who she was and was like hey and so um it was i felt like i was with the celebrity that that's great well thanks stacy for doing that and thanks dr daugherty
071for for taking her through the schools um david i wasn't i didn't know that this was all going to happen but i do want to um i want to thank you for your time on the board we appreciate it we appreciate you um it's been such a pleasure getting to know you and um and um i you know you will be missed and um like i said i wasn't prepared to say anything but um we're you know obviously you will be missed and we're sad to see you go okay so i guess we are going to could i just say one more thing um tomorrow morning uh just to make everyone as a reminder to the board of education we have invited the the board of aldermen to our space out here in the patio
072for a brisk breakfast outside and so it's an opportunity for them to meet dr nisha patel and so all the board members are invited to stop in sometime maybe between 7 30 and 9 if you're able to come by but it's just an opportunity to reinforce that connection between the city and the district i moved um the district or the legislative advocacy committee uh group of the interdistrict group i'm actually not sure why but that's normally scheduled for this friday that was actually canceled i don't know if everybody was just exhausted after the session or what so i was just going to mention that because i know we've had more people attending via zoom and stuff and i'm not sure who all that email list goes out to so that is not happening this friday
073as previously scheduled um but we have tomorrow night so same same topic so okay i move that the board of education adjourn all in favor aye motion passes and we are adjourned