01/27/2021 Board of Education Meeting

001thank you okay we're good okay uh welcome everybody it is seven o'clock and uh adequate notice has been given and so we are going to start our meeting as we always do with uh the pledge to the famous flag in sean's office i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation alrighty so um we are going to start with uh recognizing our own as we often do and um today we have a very uh special recognizing our own it's uh recognizing our soon-to-be own um and that's dr nisha patel our new um soon-to-be news well our new superintendent but uh soon to take that role on so i'm gonna hand it over to you sean and then um i will welcome nisha

002welcome dr patel thank you awesome to have here um sean do you want to go first do you want me to go first no i was just gonna i was gonna welcome dr patel and just you know like you said this is an opportunity for recognizing individuals within our community and this is the newest member of our community and we're excited to welcome dr nisha patel to our board meeting and we're excited about her being the new superintendent starting july 1st and i am just thrilled that i get the opportunity to work with her this this spring to help uh with this transition and to support her along the way awesome and i know dr patel would like to share just a few things too so i'll pass it over to you joe um well

003you know what i will um i'll let dr patel share something first if you want or um and then i can then i can um go after you perfect i will do that well i just wanted to first and foremost thank you president miller and the rest of the board for give having the confidence and belief in me and giving me the absolute honor of being the incoming superintendent for the school district of clayton i can express to you how humbling this is to me and i simply want to thank all of you and then also i want to take this opportunity sean to thank you as well you're one of the kindest people i know and you're an outstanding leader and you have a passion for what you do in a love for learning

004and those are qualities i absolutely admire and i thank you for all your support already that you have given me and i look forward to working with you um in the near future as well and then um to the community i cannot wait to get to know our students our wonderful staff our parents and start building those relationships in the upcoming months and i also hope you know during that time that you get to know me a little bit better and my journey you know throughout my lifetime one of i'm a big quotes person so one of my favorite quotes is by a gentleman that i admire a lot and all the work that he's done um and it's nelson mandela's work and we've all heard the quote right that education is the most powerful

005weapon that we can choose to help change the world education is the most powerful weapon we can use to help change the world and the reason that quote is near and dear to me and i've shared this a little bit with you already but because it has a direct correlation to the life of a young girl a young girl who was born 8 000 over 8 000 miles away from here across the atlantic ocean in a country of kenya and who then came to the great united states of america at the age of nine and her world changed and it changed because of the power of education it changed because people believed in her embraced her and gave her a sense of belonging and not because or not despite her identity it was because of

006her identity and so for me as your incoming superintendent i am on a mission and i am on a mission to help change the world and i know that we can do it together and i believe that in my heart of hearts and we can do that together because of having specific focus areas and one of those focus areas a huge part of it is our work around equity and inclusion it is part of the strategic plan that i believe in and not only that it's about personalized learning it's about meeting the social emotional needs of all of our students and we can do it and i believe we will do it so i am so excited to do this i am excited to continue the norm of excellence in the school district of clayton

007and we will get it from excellence to even transformational so i really thank you for letting me be a small part of the upcoming journey i cannot wait so thanks thank you so much dr patel we we really appreciate it and and i just want to say um kind of on behalf of the board um how excited um we are but i also just want to share um even with the board what i think is really awesome about you is that not only have i gotten overwhelmingly positive response from our community but as many of you know i work in education right so i work with other superintendents i work with other principals with other administrators and i've gotten overwhelming support for you from them you know today was a central office administrator in another

008district yesterday it was a person who was a former superintendent who works for deci the department of elementary and secondary education they all keep saying man clayton's so lucky to have nisha so um or dr patel excuse me but um but so i i just want to share that with you and with the community too it's really cool right i didn't it's not like i'm out there advertising it right i mean these are people reaching out to me saying gosh joe i just want you to know you know i know nisha from this and she's great um so i just wanted to share that with you too so thank you thank you i'm the lucky one so um i think uh i think that's that that that is kind of our recognizing our own so

009we can't wait thank you thank you look forward to seeing you guys soon take care thanks so we are then going to move on to the superintendent communication sean okay i'm gonna share my screen okay so well good evening again everyone and happy new year to all of you this is actually our first public meeting of 2021 and although it's our first public meeting the board of education has had many many meetings over this month and i just want to say thank you to all of you for the time and energy you dedicated to the superintendent search not a lot of people know all the work that you've been doing and so i just wanted to public say publicly say thank you to the board for all the time and energy you put into this

010really important process and just by that presentation and just what you saw and it it shows that the fruit of your labor is really paid off and so i just want to say thank you for uh all that you did and and um new you know a new year as offers new beginnings uh but it's still a very difficult time and we're we're still dealing with a lot of different difficult things within the district and one of those is our current learning model um where the learning model is different than our typical time and and and we have learned how to be adaptable over this last year and just wanted to remind everyone that we are currently still in that learning model of full schedules for our pre-k through five and then for six to

011twelve we have a hybrid schedule and we started out in the same model that we had at the beginning uh for the first semester and we were intentional about that so that way we could have a smooth start into the third quarter and and it really did pay off and we saw that we had a good start to the the third quarter and we continue to implement effective risk mitigation measures that have allowed us to keep our staff safe our students safe and um and making sure that well we're doing everything possible to mitigate transmission within our schools and so i again this is again not the most ideal situation but again our district has constantly been not just staying status quo once we make a decision we're thinking about what's the next decision and

012what is next and we know that the instructional model is currently different our secondary level and and still sec really different at our elementary and preschool model as well just because of the the structures we've had to put in place and i and i think it's important to just share that at the secondary level we have really prioritized the standards and those skills that are absolutely necessary for our students to progress progress through our our coursework and so uh we're not trying to fit everything that we normally do into a shorter period of time but what we're doing is making sure that we're prioritizing standards and skills to make sure that with the time that we have they're still learning what is not absolutely necessary for them to progress and uh and we're also being

013cognizant of looking at the number the amount of time that we're using for assessment because assessment does take a lot of time and we're looking at how we can use formative assessments to make sure we know where students are but not taking a substantive amount of time away from instruction and so over the uh before we started this third semester we looked at examining anything that we needed to change for this upcoming semester looking at all those risk mitigation measures we got some community input from both of our from our students our parents and our staff and what we learned from our students is that they are um you know it's interesting there's kind of a dichotomy between what the students had to share with parents at the share students were saying that they were

014feeling really overworked and feeling like they had a lot on their plates and some of them shared that they were you know concerned about you know their well-being and um and they were sharing some positives too about what's been happening within the schools and also giving us some insight about those things that have been working well that could influence some of the things that we change you know moving into the future and our parents have you know have been showing their appreciation by the things that we have done but also see you know that it's also the next step is to see if we can extend that time at the secondary level and have really wanted us and really wanted us to examine potential ways we could do that and then the staff we surveyed

015the staff in the uh fall and we used that data to you have a work group in december which gave us some ideas about ways that we can support our staff better and making some additional changes and so our voice the staff is really wanting us to make sure that we're being very thoughtful about using their voice and decisions moving forward um and then determining our next steps we are looking at what we can do um this semester to extend that time first starting to look at why down at um white island first um and we don't have a timeline or anything like that yet uh but we are having gonna start those conversations and not that we haven't had those start of those conversations but um starting at the administrative level and then getting

016the input from teachers about what are some next steps um the other thing i think it's important is that when we start making these changes we are going to have to make sure that we're communicating with our our community about why we're making these changes and some might say oh what if you're making these changes how is that going to impact our risk mitigation measures and we're going to have to be very clear about why we're making those decisions because as part of this process is happening we're learning more about the science behind risk mitigation measures and we will evolve um but i know that we'll have to be very clear with our communication as we've done in the past to make sure people understand the why behind our decisions and the other thing is

017is that it's important for us not only to look at what uh you know what we're doing just to get by we're looking at by look at what did we learn from this experience and what what can we think about uh how we can evolve for the future and in terms of way schedules lurk look in the way that uh students um you know different opportunities for students have choice and different approaches so we're using this as an opportunity as well to think differently the other thing i know that people have on their minds are the vaccines and when are we going to get vaccinations for our staff because i think some you know the thought is that once we get that we can start planning differently and i just want to remind everyone that

018staff our educational staff falls in what we call category 1b and i share with the board of education and in that category there are three different tiers and staff members from schools are in that tier three tier one and tier two have been activated and those individuals have been able to get vaccinated we are not clear yet when at activation for tier three is going to happen but will i well i will say is that we have a very um incredible leadership uh incredible leadership with our nursing program and our nurses are working diligently to make sure they're not only taking care of our students and staff but also making sure that they're thinking uh advocating for getting the vaccinations for our staff and looking at systems for doing that effectively and so we don't

019have all the answers yet and i also think it's important that people don't think that once vaccinations happen everything goes back to normal that's not going to happen we are still going to be putting risk mitigation measures in place and that there are still going to be some things that are different than what uh that different than was when we were before the pandemic hit so i just don't want people thinking that this is the end-all be-all change to everything but it's it's really it's going to be an important step i also want to just also make sure that i share with you again that we believe in the risk mitigation measures that we've put in place and we're seeing that there's effectiveness with it our transmission you know we're keeping uh the percentage of

020number of students who quarantined and who the cases they're very low um and we and get this data is showing us that um what we're doing is helping and is working within our schools and so i just think it's important for you and the community to see that i believe it's also important that as a community and as a learning community we can't only focus on covet we can't just focus on the pandemic we need to continue our work that we started before this all happened it's important for us to put energy into our strategic plan making sure that we are taking steps to align our looking at our goals making sure that we have common language around those goals one of the things we recently did as a district was created a video that

021i shared with the board and hopefully we share with the public too it's an opera it was a opportunity for us to have a uh it's about the strategic plan and what our strategic plan is about and we use that video as a teaching tool and a common conversation tool with our staff so that way we can develop some common ground about what we mean in our strategic plan we're also looking at our curriculum coordinators are doing work around deep learning and then we also have a group of people who are doing some work around really truly defining what it means to have a personal personalized equitable excuse me personalized individualized and differentiated experience because they are different and then the other thing is that we're looking at those systemic changes that are going to

022impact the way we do things and ultimately impact our students and making sure they're provided an equitable experience and making sure that we're looking at the social emotional well-being of our students as well and so um the strategic plan is integral to our work as dr patel said and it's going to be something that is i believe it's very aspirational it's very visionary and but it's also making sure that we're taking into consideration excellence and and making sure we're holding ourselves accountable to that as part of that strategic plan we are continuing to be a fiscally responsible district and tonight you're going to hear a little bit more about the budget planning process but now that we have a new strategic plan this is an opportunity for us to also think differently about uh what

023we're doing as a district in terms of planning with our budget we have been uh very we have been using a zero-based budgeting model which we will continue but now we're looking at ways to build on that we've been very fiscally responsible and able to uh and after prop um e we were able to uh start building up our fund balance again we're not deficit spending but we also are going to have to think differently about if we're putting in goals and putting goals in place how are we aligning our resources to those goals and then how we're measuring whether or not that investment is having a return and so um it's it's it's building on the processes that we already have in place but it's holding us accountable to say if we're going to

024do this and we're going to invest human capital and funding into these goals then we have to have a mechanism in place to evaluate whether or not they we're getting dividends and um and it's it's a great way of making sure that we're aligning resources and it aligns with that evergreen model that if it's something's not working then we need to evolve and change it next week we are going to be starting our community fiscal our community board fiscal advisory and this is an opportunity for us to have community members to get in take an outside view of our budget planning process and uh our budget as a district and it's it's we do we've done this in the past and it's a way for us to get community investment in our budget but also

025to give us some insight about things that maybe we haven't thought about and so it's a way that the board can engage the community in a different way and then the other thing that i'm really going to be dedicating time to over this next couple months is the new superintendent transition plan and i will tell you that i am dedicated to dr patel's success because i want to make sure that um you know when if she's successful our our district is successful and our students are successful and i and i am committed to making sure that i'm doing everything possible for the next five months to uh support the work of the district and to support dr patel and so i'm gonna be collaborating with her and we already got some meetings set up that

026we're going to be looking at a transition plan and making sure we're investing time over this semester to uh help her in terms of developing relationships and then learning about systems within our district but also being respectful that she's still running a school district uh and another part of st louis so um we're really excited about doing that work together and then the other thing is um i have shared with the board that there are some there you know on top of everything else we also have legislation out there that is important for us to be aware of all of you are elected officials and as the superintendent of a district i need to be aware of legislation that could potentially have impact not only on uh the way that we do school but also

027our funding and so there is uh senate bill 55 that's out there that we have been looking at and um and we really need to make sure that we're staying educated on what legislation's out there and where we need to advocate and maybe talk to our senators and our representatives to tell them how we're feeling about some of this legislation this friday we're going to have our first legislative advocacy meeting in collaboration with other districts within the region and we'll learn more about what that legislation is and what are those things we can do as board as administrators and as elected officials to address some of those and then finally tonight we're going to have an opportunity to learn more about our equity work and our equity work is is very very prevalent in our

028strategic plan and it needs to be it's it's part of uh our culture and it's it's a way that we make sure that every student no matter who they are uh walks who walks through our doors or who is on our screens um is getting an equitable experience and is treated with dignity and has a sense of belonging and feels safe and has every opportunity to grow and excel in in in many many ways and i believe our work that we're doing is bold it's vision driven and it's actionable and so you're going to hear a little bit more about that tonight and um and what i what i appreciated about it is that this work is not just about the few doing it we're developing collective capacity and collective efficacy around this work and

029it's not just one voice and it's not just one individual who's leading it it's all of our collective responsibility and appreciate the board's dedication to that as well so um that is just an update about some of the things that we're currently working on in terms of our learning models some other some other things associated with strategic plan and legislation and fiscal responsibility and i'm going to stop there and see if there's any questions or and then turn it over to caitlyn for her student report thanks so much sean so um we just go around the horn and um stacy you're first so do you have any questions no okay uh amy any questions nope okay thank you kim any questions no thanks sean for the um uh comprehensive update um it's maybe a follow-up

030for a future board meeting but it's not something i think that's pressing to the district or and certainly all districts are facing the same thing but um at any point does our district in particular do any type of gap analysis on the impact of the pandemic on um learning compared to previous years so as we start as you start thinking about planning for um third quarter and beyond and integrating nisha into responsibilities for the next school year maybe during the next boarding meeting you can let us know what the thoughts are from the administration and the teachers as far as you know how we're looking at reflectively as we start to plan for the future um this year versus previous years no thank you kim and you we are going to have part of um

031a board meeting to talk about in our assessment report and it's going to be about like where are we where are we now and um we're going to conti we're continuing to do benchmark assessments and so we still need to be responsible for seeing how our students are doing great thanks kim um gary any questions i don't think i have anything that it would be properly called the question but like just two comments sean number one i really appreciate the effort that you're making to help us with the transition um and the time with nisha so thank you for that i don't want to miss the chance to say that publicly um and number two those legislative advocacy group meetings that are coming up the the first one on friday i just would really encourage

032everyone um to if you can to tune into that it's a little more accessible since it's all online and you know we can all do it you know from home or office or wherever um i will say that when i my first year on the board when i first started going to those meetings i probably thought i knew and understood a lot more than i did and it was a really good educational process that i think we can all benefit from so to the extent you can tune into any part of that i just would really encourage that yeah and gary that was a part of the decision that the board subcommittee made is that we used to assign people to go to those legislative advocacy meetings and now we just it's open to everyone

033so all of you should have gotten the link to that i really appreciate that great thank you caitlyn any questions or comments no great thank you jason any questions or comments no thank you david any questions or comments no no thanks all right thanks so again sean i just want to also just say thanks for um thanks for your update and all the work that you continue to do now and with transition and everything else i think we're moving to caitlyn to see if you have a uh update for us yeah so good evening everyone and today i'll be talking a little bit about uh this upcoming semester so as we enter a new semester um something that i'm going to be doing in my student updates is talking about uh one thing that covet

03419 has taught us about uh what we what changes we can make to in-person school so last meeting i touched on the idea of rethinking finals and this meeting i'm going to talk a little bit about this new level of interactiveness that students have gotten even when they're not able to be an in-person school and how maybe we can apply that in future years when students have to take an extended leave of absence or are homesick so some things that students have really been enjoying are the weekly schedules that teachers are putting together in class agendas and just that overall greater level of organization also all the assignments and materials being posted on google classroom for the online students given in person for the in-person students and just having all of that material and then

035also alternatives like recording classes so that students can still be in the class environment even when they're not an in-person school and then my next topic that i'll talk about is conversations in classrooms so in response to the storming of the capital on january 6 then a lot of teachers held discussions in their classrooms to hear about student thoughts on the events so i asked a couple of students about their opinions on this and if they thought that these kind of conversations were helpful for them and students really liked that they enjoyed that they were able to put aside the material for a part of class in order to help process a lot of major events that were going on in our world and heavily weighing on some students and these conversations also tie into

036the profile of what a clayton graduate is supposed to be like self-actualization collaboration intellectual curiosity beyond just the academic and ap material so something going forward might be having greater dialogue throughout all classrooms including in some stem classrooms as like most of these conversations do happen in humanities classes and as for some school updates so third quarter is competition season for a lot of different clubs so here's some highlights uh clayton high school's quiz bowl a team won first place at an invitational last weekend the linguistics club is competing in the north american computational linguistics open competition tomorrow and also the clayton high school science olympiad team is hosting a chs tournament for the very first time next saturday thank you caitlyn we appreciate it um so we are gonna move to uh information items

037and so our first information item is our equity update all right welcome cameron so i'll be leaving that can everybody hear me okay okay perfect i am going to share my very screen all right so pretty much for the update um a lot of the things that you know we normally were going to talk about during this point in time we kind of covered in december um at our last board meeting so i'm going to kind of gloss over that and put it in the report just so just as a reminder of some of the things that we already talked about so a lot of the things that we're going to touch on as a collective group is going to have to do with kind of what we're currently working on and what we're looking

038at uh within the next month or so um in terms of things we're looking to accomplish so you know i'm gonna kind of lead through it and then each member of the central office cabinet is gonna look at um and talk about kind of you know what equity looks like in their own sphere of what they're working on so i kind of wanted to kick it off uh with a small portion from our uh a bar presuppositions that were that were developed by our teachers in the summer um and i what we want to do and where we want to achieve as a district is having equity literacy which is the definition that we use for it on the website and it talks about equity literacy it's defined as having the knowledge and skills to

039disrupt and dismantle inequities um so not only have the knowledge and skills to disrupt them and identify them but what are we going to do in order to get rid of them within our own spheres of influence um with a lot of the just the different trainings and sessions that you know different groups of teachers have went through uh we've really been trying to focus on what our spheres of influence are uh within the educational process and how inequities creep into those based on some of the practices that we've been doing um kind of on a daily basis so kind of that personal accountability piece in that um and then spilling over to the staff and greater community as well and we're committed to becoming an anti-racist district we're raising socioeconomic status and not predictive

040of uh of learning outcomes so kind of in that foundational phase of really building capacity so um you know as we were you know really analyzing you know our strategic plan and what a profile of a graduate is you know i i started thinking and looking at the traits of being self-actualized intellectually curious empathetic culturally competent a creative thinker and a collaborator if this is what we want our graduates to look like then we need to be able to model these behaviors on a daily basis um so you know my challenge you know to all of us as a collective is let's be that profile of the graduate you know in order to model the behaviors um you know that we want our our students to have we need to be able to kind of

041be an embodiment of that in an example of that profile on a daily basis so as we really look at you know the work that we're doing in order to you know grow in cultural competence it really surrounding being mirrored around what that profile was looking like so as we kind of go through what we're looking at today um and taking a a a page out of sean's book when he went through i'm sorry dr daugherty's book what he went through um the strategic plan update last time i kind of want to mirror everything that we do around our art preset positions so we have kind of three tiers and categories that we look at in terms of personal institutional curricular instruction so everything that we're doing is going to fit under one of these

042categories um and kind of making sure that we're fulfilling the presuppositions ourselves um with the work that we're doing structuring so this is just kind of uh you know small recap of our uh pre a bar presuppositions uh there's a qr code and a link um in order to have access to those more in depth but just kind of looking at uh each category having at least two presuppositions in it and how we're using those categories um and those individual presuppositions to kind of look at our work so as we you know start to really tackle a lot of the inequities okay what are we doing from an institutional standpoint you know and how are we you know affirming a student's culture or from a personal standpoint how are we uh recognizing and eliminating inequities

043and from a curricular standpoint how are we cultivating classroom practices that are culturally responsive so um really looking at what we're doing and seeing if what we're doing is matching up with a certain presupposition that we had so kind of those action steps again you know what is the work that we're doing and how are they falling under different categories within our presuppositions so i'm going to kind of scroll really quickly through some of these and then at the end of each uh category um each person within their department is going to kind of go into detail exactly what they've been doing and working on so kind of that personal piece i kind of like i linked the profile of the graduate to you know a different tier within the presupposition so when i think

044about the personal aspects of the presuppositions i automatically thought of you know being empathetic and self-actual lives and how are we being empathetic and self-actualized and fulfilling those presuppositions and how does our work so these again these are kind of a long kind of laundry list of you know a lot of the things that we talked about uh back in december um when we gave an update on our strategic plan and this is what we're gonna focus on socially under that personal uh category um so you know each member is going to just share kind of their bullet point and expand on that um and how that's working into what we want to accomplish uh within our strategic plan so uh dr daugherty is up uh is up first so one of one of the

045things we wanted to share is that we as a district are constantly looking at this as you know examining ourselves but we know that this we are we're one district in a region of many districts and we have been working um with i've been working with a planning group and actually dr patel is in this planning group as well around how could we potentially build the capacity of leaders our superintendents throughout the entire region in order to make sure that they have a deep understanding about what it means when we talk about equity what does it mean when we talk about race what does it talk what does it mean when we say a sense of belonging and so we're going through a nine week learning experience where our superintendents are getting a common learning

046experience and the goal is that we all have a common context and we're getting this as being facilitated by outside uh consultants through ed plus but then what it does is then gives us a basis for conversations about how can we work as a region across borders to make sure that we are doing what we can to reduce inequities within our region and so uh just wanted to share that and that learning is also then can then be applied to each of our districts so that way every superintendent can be a leader of equity thank you um and then we'll move on to dr wings yes so the office of student services is excited to be hosting our first practicum student we have selected a student from the brown school of social work who just

047started this week and she'll be supporting my work and mr poole's work in the area of equity and inclusion she'll have a primary focus on helping us collect more data from our students through focus groups and helping us prepare resources for teachers to use during professional development and in other spaces where we are participating in adult learning also in the last few weeks we launched an affinity group for our asian and hispanic district educators it was a really positive opportunity for our educators of asian and hispanic backgrounds to come together and decide how we were going to continue to come together as a community and we are looking forward to bringing that group together again several times before the end of the school year thank you and then dr arnold so retention is an area

048that we're working on to continually monitor and improve their staff and administrators of color so this year we have begun stay interviews with our teachers and administrators of color and state interviews are really helpful because they help us they provide us with qualitative data and opportunities for us to engage employees and that will help us meet our retention goals and really a stay interview is a structured discussion with individual employees and it helps us learn specific actions that we can take to strengthen employee engagement and retention in the district it's a little bit different than surveys and i personally i think better than surveys because they do three things that surveys do not first one is they bring information that we can be you that can be used today in the present they give us

049insights for engaging and retaining individual employees and they also provide us with what i like to call responsive opportunities for helping develop individual state plans so i think it's one of the best tools for measuring um employee engagement it's a focused effort that we can collect that one-on-one feedback to provide us with ways to better understand why employees stay and then also like what they enjoy about working in the school district of clayton and also what might cause them to leave what are they not enjoying about working in the school district of clayton and that information that we gather can help us really take a deeper look at our systems and or design individual plans to help with the teacher retention so the interview is actually the state interview started back in december we're focusing

050right now initially on our non-tenured teachers of color and all teachers of color in the district will be offered a time to participate in a stay interview one-on-one conversation with me by the end of february of this year awesome awesome thank you and and just to kind of sum up you know in and referencing uh a portion of the presupposition uh that's in the title you know we recognize that eliminating equities begins with each of us you know and looking at you know dr dougherty and kind of the leadership that he's taking with superintendents around the area you know and really putting it out there in the forefront that you know not only is this you know something that is dear to him but something that is there to him in terms of growing within

051the profession and making the district you know in that direction um and then i i really love the humanizing aspect from you know the development of the defense affinity groups and the state interviews um you know one thing that we reference in our presuppositions is that those experiencing said inequities you know need to be listened to and their stories need to be heard another in order for everyone to humanize what people are going through on a daily basis and i think you know uh really building the affinity group you know with all of our teachers of color um as well as establishing those state interviews because retention of teachers of color is a huge issue as well you know we often talk about recruitment recruitment recruitment but when people come are we creating an atmosphere

052that is welcome for them and i think those state interviews give us some great um you know data in order to use to you know put metrics in place within the district to uh continue to you know build on that uh retention level so the next level we'll look at is kind of our institutional work um that we're kind of going through you know we believe each student has a right to an equitable educational opportunity you know so how are we exactly from an institutional level uh giving students that opportunity to have exactly what an equitable education is and again just kind of another bird's eye view of some things that we talked about um at the last board meeting back in december so now these are going to be the important points that that

053we all talk about so you know i'll kind of start um you know one thing that you know is very important you know um and probably one of the bigger priorities you know for us to establish as a district is you know to really you know intertwine our equity work within our professional development framework and make it a staple within what we do um you know on a semester by semester year by year basis uh so one thing that we're kicking off you know um along with you know our uh our equity committee within the district and i'm going to put out a you know kind of a nudge and request that our board takes part in this as well um in february in the next couple of weeks we're going to launch a 14-day

054equity challenge um district-wide and pretty much what that entails is um we're going to kick it off with one of our professional development days to introduce the challenge um then we're going to end it with a professional kind of development day to kind of unpack the challenge and pretty much what it is is we'll have an array of resources you know uh that have to do with either you know reading an article watching a video diving into a book um watching a series tons of educational tools that revolve around equity and kind of that personal journal journey with equity and you're going to do one thing each day for 14 days uh so something may take about you know a couple minutes to watch or maybe it's about a 30 minute article it's a podcast

055or something to that level um and what we're going to do is um on that first day we're going to cohort the teams so you kind of have a team that you're going through this challenge with um and you are going to kind of chart your schedule out in order to see what exactly you're going to tackle so each day you kind of go through uh you know in a kind of a log that we're going to give to the staff uh you put in the title of whatever you uh you know whatever you chose for your education that day and kind of write a brief reflection uh so the 14 days straight that's the plan and then on the last day in which we unpack it um building by building uh getting with your

056cohort and kind of reflecting on your experience and right now i'm working with equity committee to kind of build what that structure looks like um so when we get started you know it's well scripted and members of the equity committee are leading uh that development with each individual building so kind of having time to unpack with your cohort as well as with your building as a whole um i'd love for us as a central office team as well as a board of education to get together and kind of embark on this journey um together um and kind of chart our path and choose our teams to kind of see the things that we learn um and kind of start you know the the conversation of what equity looks like you know you know institutionally within

057our district you know from this year moving forward so i'm really looking forward to that um one thing that we're working with as well is uh kind of relaunching the courageous conversations that took place last school year um that was extremely powerful um you know within our faculty that were able to attend in terms of really just humanizing and hearing the stories of you know teachers of color primarily are black teachers within the district and kind of what that experience is on a day-to-day uh not only just in america but just you know within our school system as well um so looking to kind of make that a staple um we've got a professional development day in april that we have open um that we want to make sure that everyone within the district uh

058you know has an opportunity to encounter courageous conversations and then kind of creating kind of a sample menu style of you know different courageous conversations to embark in so that could be including you know uh different different racial groups you know maybe of students and of parents um within the district as well possibly some outside speaking in education or you know some kind of some video clip um you know uh breakdowns and discussions as well so kind of creating an entire day uh that's dedicated to equity and kind of growing equity and trying to make these days and these events you know something that we do that's a big event that we can rally around and we can celebrate and then we can cut together as a district and bond together um so that's kind

059of what we're looking at now um of course really looking at our professional development um structure and what does equity look like within that especially for the 21 22 school year so um looking at you know as our our teachers come in here you know what is the development year one year two year three and as they progress on to your status and things like that so having a set equity curriculum for each cohort year um that you're in within the district as well as developing a common equity focus within our equity committee that each building is focusing on and tailoring toward their own building um so really working on that structure to kind of embed equity with everything we do professionally from a professional development standpoint um and then the implementation of parent affinity

060groups we've kind of got that off the ground uh you know from an employee aspect but what does that look like with our parents um you know one of the things that we you know that i heard a lot in the equity audit from our parents in terms of their experiences are you know kind of a you know again the disconnect between the perceived experience and the actual experience uh communication breakdowns um and changing the expectations for our students uh and one of those main things too was that parent communication piece as well so how can we you know empower our parents uh and build rebuilt that trust you know that has been lost so you know the first step would be real rebuilding trust uh building an infinity group and camaraderie amongst the parents

061so they can use each other as a resource uh and creating avenues you know that you know that they have the confidence to advocate um you know for what's going on and that they know that they have the confidence that their voices will be heard too so um from an institutional standpoint that's what we're kind of working on uh mainly that professional development piece and what you know annual equity events look like in the district year in and year out um and they're really building our capacity with our parents to regain some trust that we might have lost in the past um and to uh into empower and build confidence you know uh for them to have in us you know as a system so that's what i'm on from an institutional standpoint i'm going

062to pass it back to dr wayne's and she's going to talk about some of the work uh that she's doing with our summer academies thank you so i'm really excited about the work that we are doing right now to plan our academic summer programs uh really the theme of some of the changes that we're making going into this summer are to help bring our summer programs more into alignment with our profile of a graduate and to our strategic plan so after the strategic plan was approved it gave me an opportunity to really reflect on what our students needs are and how can we take advantage of the opportunities that kind of this new coveted uh environment has created in order to really reimagine how our students experience and grow during the summer so i've been

063working closely with our elementary school summer program directors and with dr helser over at the high school to really think about how we might make some adjustments to those programs to better serve our students more specifically at the elementary school level we are going to continue to focus on developing those fundamental skills that our students need to have mastered in order to have a successful start to the following grade level but really approaching it with a more potential based and strength-based approach so we're going to be integrating a lot more project-based learning where students are going to have the opportunity to develop their collaboration skills um develop some of their cultural competency through the incorporation of some of the teaching tolerance social justice standards and um just creating a more culturally responsive uh learning environment

064uh for our younger learners also we're gonna be applying this to the why down summer academy as well i'm currently searching for a new director for that particular summer program in addition to incorporating the teaching tolerance social justice standards as well as the fundamental math and literacy skills we know are very critical to the middle school age group we're also going to be incorporating some equity in leadership development for our students um really again thinking about the goals of the strategic plan thinking about the goals of the profile of the graduate and really helping our students um you know start to use their voice to end injustices for others through project-based learning experiences and so we are really looking forward to reimagining this program again still rooted in student data and academic standards that we

065know are very critical to our students academic success but again paying attention to the other parts of our students identities that can be developed um so that way they can grow to be in you know intellectually curious and culturally competent citizens in our community i feel like this approach is a lot more student-centered than maybe some of the previous practices we've put in place and even with my work with dr halsher reimagining what csa can look like really trying to make some choices with the course offerings and then the format and the scheduling to make the program even more student-centered particularly for our students who are looking at credit recovery situations so we continue to innovate in this program um you know while covin lassemer uh created a lot of challenges for us i feel

066like it really opened a lot of doors going into this summer for us to reimagine and create some really memorable and meaningful learning experiences for our students awesome awesome thank you thank you uh dr arnold so this year we were very intentional of posting our positions early our openings that we had and we wouldn't have those to be an alignment to our advertisement efforts of the district diversity recruitment networking fair so we posted the openings early in december and then they closed last week which was after the diversity recruitment and networking fair the timeline that we chose has provided us with an earlier recruitment period and also helped attract top talent to the january diversity recruitment event many of our diverse applicants that we interviewed at the fair have already been invited back to interview

067at the building level this year while it was virtual in a bit of a different format than we had last year we got creative kind of thought outside the box and we had a very successful event so we couldn't be happier with how things went with our virtual fare this year the feedback from administrators on the quality of our candidates and attendance has been very very positive so we're really excited about the possibilities that this recruitment event has provided for us along with that uh with the diversity recruitment fair one of the things that we did this year too is along working with the communications department we created recruitment materials that focus on the district's equity focus so we had a major recruitment social media campaign promoting our equity work we had different pictographs and

068charts and visuals and indicating our work and growth in this area for our hiring for over the last few years showing that growth our teachers of color and administrators of color were highly involved in helping with developing videos being featured there sharing their stories and then also participating in the networking component of the fair as well we were on the radio uh promoting the event and then also um another area that i'm proud of too is where you have developed a clayton recruitment video featuring the equity work and the diversity um the diversity work and we're going to utilize that at the upcoming black educator symposium and then we'll also be able to utilize those videos for future recruitment events as well another thing that we've done this year is develop a diversity hiring statement

069regarding our district's commitment to attracting a diverse teaching force and finding the best candidates for our positions in service of our students um so that's something that we can you know put on our website and put it out there in our materials and show what our what our commitment is to these efforts our another area that we're working on we recently last week at our january district leadership council meeting with our administrators cameron and i facilitated learning around implicit bias we spent some time in an exercise that really helped all of us as administrators identify and explore some of our own biases and have some conversations around that that was really good our administrators were really thoughtful it's part of that process and one of the steps that we did throughout our our time in

070that meeting was to develop some new interview questions that align to our abar presuppositions and i think these questions will be really helpful and the administrators agreed that we would be using these district-wide moving forward additionally we were purposeful in our analysis of our current interviewing and hiring practices so really what we want to do is determine what might be some potential modifications to our processes to help us move forward and some of those that we identified we are implementing immediately for the interviewing and hiring process that's going on right now throughout the spring so due to some of that new thinking at this meeting we created a resource folder for administrators that can assist them with streamlining the interview process some of the new resources include updated interview protocols implicit bias review that they'll

071do with all the participants prior to the interview the a bar interview a question bank that we that the principal's developed and then also how we review the various components of the interview process and not relying on a single data point to make a decision with the candidate so we really walked away from the meeting last week with some great new ideas our administrators have been very appreciative of the time to have some meaningful conversations around this topic awesome awesome thank you dr arnold and dr pools for our technology update thanks thank you very much um so when we think about our abar work especially when it within the institutional category um one area that technology can really impact is on a focus on breaking down barriers that students may encounter when accessing their learning

072so prior to the pandemic the district could move to a one-to-one technology plan at the high school as a step toward removing some of those access barriers both at school and at home for students an office an offshoot of that plan included the distribution of internet hotspots to families that were in need of reliable access for students using their school-issued devices when they're away from campus while the next phase of this phase of that plan would have been to expand that to the middle school this year uh the current health crisis has really challenged us to extend our focus and work to reduce and eliminate access barriers like i discussed really at all levels so our response so far has included a one-to-one rollout for all students k-12 along with the distribution of a much

073larger number of internet hot spots for families in need we've also provided a large number of tools and support for teachers to connect with at-home learners and enhance communication as the public health conditions continue to fluctuate we are continuing to use this opportunity to really look for new and innovative ways to reduce and break down barriers with the use of technology awesome thank you thank you and then it's an awesome thing with institutional work is that you know it it's really looking at things from a systemic level um and seeing what are some different things that we can put in place um within our present systems you know to combat against you know decades of inequities that we've seen um this is the part i really get excited about because these are the things that

074are really going to stand the test of time so when we look at things you know on the other side of our strategic plan we'll be able to look back and say these are some systemic things that we've built you know that are solely you know directed towards combating against inequities um and that can continue to grow in order to really repair a lot of the systems so then we're going to look at things from a curriculum an instructional standpoint um you know where we really look at you know the creative thinker and that intellectual curiosity uh lens as well so again kind of just scrolling through you know a lot of the things that we already kind of talked about um and then you know that brings us um to our uh curricular component

075so i'll step back and give it away here all right thank you so from the curriculum and instructional standpoint some of our departments that have honors courses are currently refining the processes for identification of students to be used this spring so our overall goal being to reduce barriers and disrupt inequities in these processes when we gave the strategic plan update i shared the work at the high school around grading for equity we continue to grow in this area and provide professional learning experiences to teachers to allow for their grades to meet three goals accuracy bias resistance and motivation our humanities departments so social studies library literacy each have an equity goal embedded in their long-range goals that the board approved last spring professional learning in the form of some book studies have broadened teachers pedagogical

076views of culturally responsive classrooms based on feedback from students and consultants social studies has begun rewrites of the curriculum to include non-western history and perspectives of historical events starting with the high school curriculum this includes bringing into the curriculum perspectives from other nations and cultures when studying particular aspects or time frames of history we continue to look at the materials in our library's collections to ensure that the stories and perspectives are diverse we're working to involve student and family voice in this work those voices will guide our work through diversity audits for our collections as well as collection development and title promotion we've identified equity audit tools and begun to critically examine the materials that we're using in classrooms to eliminate things that don't support our a bar work and then professional learning around the

077teaching tolerance standards has started in pockets and will be universal for all elementary classroom teachers at the february professional development day so these teaching tolerance standards that we talked about with the summer programs are teaching tolerance standards for social justice fall into four domains identity diversity justice and action in choosing these standards to help guide our work we can commit to universal shared language and these standards align with our profile of the graduate awesome thank you dr gardner so i will stop sharing my screen you know that's kind of where we're at i think we got a lot of things in place um i feel like we're we're building a foundation of a lot of great things that could you know launch us in the right direction and kind of you know set the tone

078for what you know equity work looks like uh within our educational system awesome thank you so much for that um very comprehensive presentation so just going to go around and see if various board members have um questions so um david i am going to start with you thanks joe cameron and team i really appreciate the update um i think one thing that i'm i'm growing to appreciate here with the work that you're doing is every time you sit down with us it gets it gets better and better you know it's always at a high level here's what i'm learning here's what we're going for and you know it's getting um it's getting more comprehensive which is which is kind of a pleasure to sit through and watch one thing that i i and i don't

079need an answer maybe you know in here but one thing that i was trying to understand and i can't find it on our district web page do we have a core set of kpis or key performance indicators that are driving the work and definition of success um you know if if we were to go back and say okay you know we've been working on this full steam for 12 months let's look at the metrics and have we you know are we hitting our definition of success and i know a lot of the work that you're doing it's really difficult to define kpis but i think it's important that we're able to identify and quantify um success in some regard just from a metrics perspective um you know aside from social and emotional concerns and academic

080performance that's a good question and and that's probably something i need to be more explicit on um like for example you know as dr wings was talking about the changes to you know our summer academies um you know we we have some kind of baseline data that shows you know the level of success or lack of success that kids are trying you know that kids are achieving and you know how often are they are they back at the summer academy the next summer so i think kind of what we're doing now is kind of building the systems and then probably having a lot of more comprehensive data with that after uh somewhere or two to kind of compare what those numbers look like in terms of are we decreasing the number of kids that are

081coming or a number of kids that are qualifying uh to come in and then even with the you know i know you know with the recruitment and the retention efforts you know and keeping track of you know what does our retention look like for the past few years and what will it look like for the next few years and how are we continually uh increasing you know the teachers of color that we're recruiting that are coming into the district and then in terms of professional development systems that are being built um a lot of that comes to you know building capacities with teachers um you know one of the big things that you know we were able to take away from the audit um was really our teachers not understanding you know in our staff

082and our buildings not understanding the experiences that kids are having on an individual basis so i think the big and that leading to you know a disconnect academically that leading to you know uh disproportionate behavior numbers so how can we work from an educational standpoint with our entire staff to humanize kid's um each kid's uh experience and by humanizing these kids experience we're able to you know i feel like most people in our teachers and our staff have you know great empathy but empathy comes with no so it's kind of building that capacity but how can our teachers know you know what that individual experience is because a lot of them just don't know it's hard to combat against what you just don't know and looking forward at what is our disciplined data achievement data

083um and i know one thing you know me and dr garnigon looked at implementing is you know possibly with our students especially as they're matriculating from fifth grade into into middle school or eighth grade in the high school twelfth grade into you know their post-secondary educational experiences you know kind of extending that state interview process with our kids and developing you know a level of qualitative data to say you know this was the experience of our kids that we looked at in 2020 now we're looking at the experiences from 2023 how if they change either for the positive or for the negative so um part of i think building these two systems that we're building are building those metrics to be able to really look at that and i think as time as time continues

084you know we'll be able to have some baseline numbers to really say this is how we're growing uh as a district so yeah definitely you know we have the data dashboard that's connected with our strategic plan too that's measuring our discipline looking at our representation of students with in courses and looking at um you know accessibility to programs and so i will say that there's not the we don't have like the benchmarks that are set on each one of those like how will we know but we know that where our baseline is in a lot of those areas and if we're moving forward um but i do think we probably need to set more targeted benchmarks on that so yeah and i recognize you have to i think cameron you kind of articulated a while

085you you've got to put the work in to figure out where you're at before you can figure out where you're headed so it it it does take time i just don't want us to get six months down the road and then we go oh wow we you know we kind of need to figure out where we're headed so you know even if that standard or that goal post has to be adjusted as we learn new data i think it's important that there's always a target so but uh thank you appreciate it thanks david um jason any questions or comments yeah uh first i want to say you all did an excellent job cameron good job for putting this together all you all did a great job um the whole entire entire administration um team that

086is um you know i can't help but ask myself like david you know the what is like i want to just understand like what is the long-term goal kind of look like for us to be um this district that we're talking about anti-bias anti-racist district um and then i have a follow-up question after that so just you don't have to necessarily know the answer but if you have some kind of idea like what does it look like like what does this look like awesome um so that's a that's a really good question i think the the big thing is you know how we how we see what's working and what's not working based off of again putting together those metrics and you know i think you know the most valuable thing that i've gotten are

087really just the testimonies you know and the experiences from parents and students and teachers themselves in terms of their experiences um and you know the lack of positive experiences that are there that's why you know especially i think the best data we can get is kind of looking at things from kind of a state interview model you know uh that dr arnold talked about with our you know with our staff and that retention and kind of building a stupid component around that um so we can have some metrics and some bars in there to where you know maybe there's a survey component in terms of rating what your experience is and we're able to look and say hey where an experience was a 2.8 in 2020 and 2022. that experience is a 4.0 um and

088i think you know with we want to make sure that you know as we're going along and doing the work that we have metrics that are representing exactly you know what we're trying to you know what we're trying to accomplish i think um you know the the great thing about what we're doing is that you know we're trying to establish and actually do some things that you know quite frankly most districts around the country have not been able to do so uh you know the process of trying to figure that out is what's the best way to quantify it um and i think you know even looking at a lot of the ways in which we've quantified student success in the past has a cultural bias and cultural tip to it so how can we

089create metrics that you know don't have that cultural barrier uh but that also kind of rate the experience and you know the achievements of our students more so of meeting them you know where they are so i i think that metric part is important because again we want to pull down of that you know and create ways to pull data that it's very really reflective each student's experience to where maybe in the past our data is reflected maybe one student's experience so um you know that's going to be that's going to be the tough part and that's going to be something that you know as a collective we're going to continue to you know not only look at our baseline metrics with you know things like discipline which has been sort of weird to share

090just with coving and not being in school in the traditional sense um and test scores as well um because i think once we get on the other side of coving we're we're unearthing more and more inequities that you know weren't there you know to begin with that or they were there that we just didn't see so um it's going to be a constant you know maneuver you know to see exactly what that looks like and that's something that we would have were defined especially you know moving in the next school year after we got a year under our bill you know we're so um it was you know this evening um caitlyn brought up the insurrection that took place in our capital and you know this shows there's a there is support for this type

091of belief system out there um and i guess my question is is how do we know that sentiment isn't within our district within our our teachers and then if it is how do we how do we ensure that we have a um our approach to making sure that abar becomes the the the theme our goal how do we deal with that situation how is that going to be dealt with has anyone thought about that is that has has that discourse happened at all within the amongst the folks in the administrative office yeah definitely at great lengths um elena did you want to kind of share what you know some of the materials and the talks that we have you know with the different coordinators in terms of having those conversations right so with the with

092the insurrection and then with the inauguration our social studies coordinator dr hilsher worked really closely with his department um to produce some so to curate some materials to to put out to teachers to use and to think really carefully about how they have those conversations with students and some of the things that we looked at were presenting teachers with materials to to think about like media bias and and how different media approach um those things so to think about like how you choose the information that you that you use within the classroom to to talk about that i think also we've like from a from a bigger perspective we've talked a lot about our avar presuppositions and what's the role that those play then within our our standards of professional practice um for our teachers

093and i don't know if tony wants to talk about this but like thinking about how do we integrate those within our standards of professional practice so that we're also looking to provide feedback to teachers about that work as they're growing and as we're growing as a system okay all right all right uh and then my last question [Music] um you know we talked about well i mentioned early on about policy uh a bar becoming some type of policy and looking at our current administration they're trying to push for an executive order on diversity and inclusion the whole nine yards is is that something we should be looking into at all right now has anyone thought about policy a bar becoming a policy and trying to find so that we can hold folks accountable if you

094know if they violate these uh these rules or these these things that we're putting in place right now that could harm children's ability to learn we haven't had the conversation about what policy would look like i think melania would speak to what millennia was speaking to is when we're talking about those standards of professional practice that's what we hold people accountable in terms of evaluation and so part of that evaluation model is that um one to get feedback but also if it's not if people aren't adhering to those standards we have to have some serious conversations about that but i will say that we have not we have not had that conversation yet about what policy would look like yet gotcha all right so just just to make this just to have a dialogue with

095you sean i love what you just said because because i understand that and so my thought also is like i think about like why someone who would feel the way they feel wanting to uh storm the capital and and the beliefs that they have right and i thought about it i'm like well there was once policy written there was once an amendment written a rule written and then we voted it out but however people still believe based on it being a written law a written rule that that's we want to go back to something like that and i'm just thinking to really substantiate our position on being equitable um being inclusive and fair and balanced in our processes that there might need to be some kind of policy written because i think people go off

096what was written there's a history of you know restrictive practices uh restricted bees people moving in neighborhoods you you know you name it being three-fifths of a man for example i mean a whole host of um inequitable practices that were written into law so just something i'm just thinking about as we you know as we have this discourse thank you jason um caitlyn any questions or comments yeah thank you for all of your work firstly and my question is i know a lot of this presentation was intentionally directed towards staff i'm just tying that back into students um how can we make sure that the students are also benefiting from these types of practices so like for example the affinity groups um anti-bias anti-racist trainings how can students directly get involved with that you know

097what that's an awesome question that you know i will admit you know due to you know covet being the factor uh you know as well as just really you know get getting our feet wet you know systemically is that you know really picking up that student component you know what that looks like in terms of empowering students to take part in this work as well um and that's something that you know those are discussions that were you know beginning to have you know when we get on especially looking into some of our goals for you know how we finish up the year and turn in terms of going in the next year really kind of making that a staple i think you know a lot of the energy has been dedicated to you know staff

098and a lot of our systems that we have in place um and that student component um is coming and probably would have been more prevalent had we been in person um you know but with covet it kind of uh you know made it more um i guess made more sense to kind of concentrate on the others and then once we get in like what do those systems look like from school to school so as we're meeting and we're having sessions it's all of us taking part with the students um during the during the regular school day um you know immersing them into work as well so that's definitely you know on the radar on the next steps and i'll be the first to admit and say that you know that hasn't been at the forefront

099but it's definitely something that you know as we continue to expand and do this work you know uh really encompassing that factor you know k-12 um and making sure that you know from the students to the staff to the community to all stakeholders that you know we're a part of the work yeah and i just wanted to add on to his response caitlin um that's actually one of the major things that our new practicum students going to be working on is i think that our students have a vast amount of knowledge around a lot of these issues that can help us better situate some learning experiences in this area and so um we plan on conducting quite a few focus groups with various types of students in our school district to help uh help us

100shape what this work can look like and how student feedback can really shape some changes that we can make in our instructional programs um in a variety of places and just in the school environment you know how do we truly make school a place where where everyone um can learn and so that's a piece that we're hoping to gather more information on is really utilizing our students voices and our students perspectives to improve the teaching and learning environment so that's going to be one of the major projects that our practicum students going to be supporting cameron and that in yeah thank you i think i also think that's definitely um like some intersection uh with the work that the practicum student will be doing and also nilay hopper who's our student leader of diversity equity

101inclusion can work on together thanks caitlin gary any comments or questions gary we can't hear you we still can't no we still can't hear you i'm gonna come back to you i'm gonna come back to you so kim any comments or questions yeah so just a few so thank you for the report to start with um and then i know there's already been some discussion about apis i just want to point out that i think you guys are thinking about it in the right way as far as sending a baseline and what i would encourage you to do is not be um shy in setting the baseline even if you only start with a couple kpis and i think you may have them without realizing that you already have them when you talk about some

102of the discipline data when you talk about some of the employment retention and recruitment data and the stay interviews that you already have it's pretty easy to start collecting you know information now to set that baseline for 20 and when you talk about you know as far as the recruitment how many people you met with at the fair how many people that you invite back for a second interview come back and then that sets the baseline for for next year um i'm elena in the um curriculum you talked about there are already equity goals or targets in the humanities space so you can use those as the baseline my question there is you know is there possible is it possible to replicate any of those goals what are those goals and then it's impossible to

103replicate any of those in other academic areas or is there something unique about the humanities which you just chose that first because um you have more participation or more interest in participation i know everything is supposed to be student centered so maybe that's the explanation there um and then the data dashboard sean i know it's on the website this is kind of uh ancillary to the equity discussion itself but our website is pretty hard to navigate so at some point we should probably have a discussion about how to improve navigation to some of these important tools that are on the website we can kick that can down the road but um you know the data dashboard within the website using that tool where you have this stuff linked to the strategic plan and then adding

104some of these things i would i think would be um you know not as difficult as a lift as you might think it would be and then to jason's question about policy i mean i just want to make sure i want to be clear to the community everybody else that you know there's no intention of um trying to everybody's entitled to their own beliefs right that works in the school district attends the school district and there's no intention of trying to to get people to disclose what those beliefs are we have code of conduct policies for students we have code of conduct policies for staff those are the policies that exist and that we hold employees and students accountable to and maybe we need to look at those to make sure that you know if

105there is behavior that's harmful to students from other students or from staff members and that's what we do but you know making sure that we don't have like certain entities or opinions that exist within the school i mean there's no like big brother is watching or any of that stuff that we have any intentions of doing or any intentions of that we don't do that now we have no intention of doing that in the future so um that's it thanks kim um gary you want to try again oh you're still not i'll tell you what gary i'm gonna go on to amy and stacy if you have a question or comment type it in the chat maybe and then we could because we can't hear you um amy comments or questions can you can you

106guys hear me yes i was having the same problem gary earlier today i don't know what's going on with zoom today um so anyway this this was a really great presentation i loved how comprehensive it was and you know it rained from curriculum to hr to technology to student services so it's great that we're thinking about this so broadly and not just um you know picking one small area and trying to put a band-aid on it so i love that it's you know we're really thinking about this um globally and um i thank you for that um as far as my questions are concerned well caitlin you hit the nail on the head for me with what are we doing for the students that was a big question for me are we having affinity these

107courageous conversations and affinity groups with the kids um and thanks so thank you for bringing that up and i have that question answered um cameron i wanted to ask you as i was going through the report you mentioned um developing shared definitions of personalized learning um so i was wondering what what that meant i didn't know if that was a uh i was i just i wanted just a little bit of clarification on that elena do you want to talk a little bit about that because that's really sure sure so when we use the terms personalized and individualized learning and then we we added differentiation into that also um there's a lot of body of work around those terms and there are sort of subtle nuances that um that sort of put people in directions

108of what their mental model of those terms mean and so when we use them in the strategic plan one of the things that we thought was really important was that we come to a like a clayton definition of what those mean to us so our curriculum coordinators and our professional development committee are working together to develop those tools so that then every time we use that term within the district we all know what we're talking about and what's included in that and what we're not including in it okay okay that was that's great that makes sense um and then i also wanted to ask about the so back in the report that we got in september of 2020 we talked about um pers uh perspective and disconnect and then the discipline the perception versus reality

109and i know that we're in covid so it's been a little bit different especially as kids haven't been in the buildings but i was wondering um i guess the affinity groups that we've uh created are kind of the answer to that perspective and disconnect that was the way that i was reading it um and then the discipline the perception versus reality um do we do we know where um i guess where what where we're going with that or um i guess that i mean i was just kind of kind of curious as to an update with where things are with that yeah i can speak to that um so at the earlier in the year um when we started looking at um the equity audit data and then the discipline data one thing that stood

110out to us was that um and mr pool jump in here if i don't explain this correctly was basically there was this idea that um based in the equity audit and the survey results that came back was that educators felt that they had created an equitable teaching and learning environment in their classroom but perceived consequences to be um unequal or inequitable right but then when we looked at the discipline data it was actually you know thing that the way that um or the types of discipline referrals that were coming in were coming also in disproportionately so there was a difference between the perception that you know a classroom community was an equitable place and that overall people felt like at the classroom level students were being treated equitably when it came to discipline but the

111types of discipline referrals that we were receiving really didn't reflect that they were already reflecting um a disproportionality across racial subgroups so um after doing a little bit more um work around all of that you know i think um some of the work that can be done is one related to documentation and improving documentation just in terms of its um in terms of its consistency and not necessarily consistently that um in like what's getting reported but it's more just like the methods and how things are getting captured and making sure that data is a little bit more user-friendly so that way buildings can have even more meaningful conversations about how people are navigating classroom management in community building i think the piece that attaches to that is restorative practices and in my audit of restorative

112practices uh what i found was that the good news is that you know our building administrators have a really strong understanding of what restorative justice and restorative practices are um but i think their application is a bit uneven across the district and i think that one of our good next steps starting this summer would be to really build capacity across more of the system in terms of building not just building leaders capacity but also teacher leaders capacity to be able to facilitate restorative conversations when they are needed um the caveat to that is it's really hard to restore something if there's no community to be restored and so i think system-wide we need to um just have an even more intentional and cohesive effort around how we build community and relationships in our classroom so

113that all students feel welcome so that way then restorative practices can actually be effective because again it's hard to restore something that doesn't exist um and then i think lastly similar to what i told katelyn earlier i think our students can be tapped for a lot of information that can help us improve in this area you know for example one thing i noticed in the data at the secondary level is students who are repeat offenders when it comes to vaping at school so really working with our students to find out especially our repeat offenders and really thinking through more innovatively and more in a more student-centered way or what are the things that we can do as a system that aren't always punitive but to really change student behavior so that way our number of

114incidences related to this actually decreases and we have fewer students who are repeating the same mistake and so i think our students can be great resources for us and how we can come up uh with better strategies to change behavior and come up with more individualized and personalized support plans for students who we know who are struggling and continuing to struggle with certain behaviors over a duration of time not even just one school year but even from middle school to high school how do we help them be more successful and not repeat the same types of behaviors that are disruptive to their learning and to the learning of the students around them and and i think the add-on to that you know from a professional learning standpoint you know as we analyze data and numbers

115and things like that um especially in our session to where we're doing professional learning and professional development um that mirroring the story behind the data so you know trying to get our staff as a whole to see data points actually taking place you know and a lot of that has comes down to that learning piece of understanding and humanize each person's experience you know if you've never been the only black male in the classroom you don't know what it feels like to be the only black male in the classroom so how a teacher communicates with me is going to hit a little different than everyone else so it's you know a lot of the learning that we're doing within our sessions really mirrors around kind of the case study model like here's a situation this

116is how this kid responded this is how they were feeling this is how the teacher responded in this situation how can we work and problem solve through that so when we're doing our professional learning it's it's creating a kind of a framework to really view things and uh and pretty much looking at the case study and you know fitting it within the framework and what do we do wrong and how could we you know improve and then if this is the normal you know um interaction between this teacher and this student what does that date look like um and how is that data manifesting itself in those numbers um it's getting the teachers to see it and staff to see how they're contributing to the numbers because everyone looks like well we got this proportion

117of data we're suspending more kids well okay one you know a principal does suspending two a a teacher sends a kid to the office uh three there's a situation where there's a disconnect where it's not being handled in the in the classroom when the kid is benched into the office so how are we looking at the situation from you know the initial impact to hey you're suspender you've got the tension and you've got this so really breaking down unique situations an interesting thing is a lot of the the case studies that we've looked at in our professional learning our stories from students and parents of things that have actually had and i remix them a little bit you know of course for the sake of uh you know confidentiality and things like that but these

118are actual things that are happening in people's classrooms and i think i'm getting to you know the bottom of that a lot i've done a lot of uh kind of just coaching and consulting you know with a lot of teachers and a lot of staff um and principles to where you know one good thing is hey there's a disconnect here i don't know where the disconnect is help me problem solve so actually going through those situations and seeing okay boom this might be the one place that we messed up how could we have done this differently and walking through it so you know really coaching of individuals and you know trying to get to the root of this is a kid's experience let's humanize it on this learning the proper problem solving communication skills um

119that we haven't been using because we don't know exactly what that kid's experience is so thank you it sounds like you you guys have that under control and i i assume that we'll start to see some positive movement and change in that area so i appreciate that thank you thanks amy stacy any comments or questions yes thank you thank you cameron for putting this together i mean that was a really impressive presentation and all of you did such a great job job contributing to it so thank you um i did want to touch on a couple points i thought um were particularly um impressive and important and caitlyn amy slightly did mention this too um i loved the affinity groups that you're forming because you know we so often talk about our students having a

120sense of belonging but i think that's equally it's important for our teachers and our parents in the community and so i was really happy to see that you launched those for the asian and hispanic parents and teachers but i i did wonder have you thought about doing that those affinity groups for students as well caitlin i know brought that up and then i wonder if there are other you know marginalized groups you've thought doing that with um like lgbtq teachers and parents or jewish and muslim teachers parent students so i i think that the idea is great again because it all ties back to that sense of belonging for everyone so thank you for getting that started um and i also wanted to ask or i guess just comment that um i know robin has

121done such a good job revamping the gifted identification process so thank you for that so that we are identifying more students of color that deserve to be a part of that program but i also want to make sure on the other end of the spectrum that the process is also equitable in identifying students that may need a 504 plan or an iep to be successful in school as well and because you know teachers are often the ones who recognize you know even maybe more than parents where students are struggling so i just want to make sure we also on on that end of the spectrum are are identifying kids so that they also can be as successful as possible new i'm glad that you brought that up um that is something that megan margarito the

122gifting coordinator and i have been looking at very closely and have identified it as an area where we do want to continue to monitor that because we do know there there are twice exceptional students in our school district and i can't remember all of the numbers off the top of my head but when even when we are going through the screening process and then those initial individual evaluation steps after the initial screening we are looking we work closely with the building level counselors to ensure that we are applying all the accommodations um that are needed not just for our students with ieps but also our students for who um have five or fours or might even be in the process of um being considered for a 50 504 and who are in the review process

123and really making sure that we're implementing those accommodations with fidelity and then also we have two other kind of stop gaps in the identification process one is the data team meetings where a building team meets with uh with me and with megan to look at all the data um and we make our initial set of um you know recommendations around students who you know have met the criteria but also ensuring that you know the the scores that they are seeing um do they feel like they're reflective of you know a student's talent and is there are there any other learning needs that we feel like may have gotten in the way of it being an accurate snapshot of that student's skill and potential and and so we have that um in place and then the

124other piece that we have in place is teacher advocacy so before we make the final decisions we give teachers in the buildings and the grade levels an opportunity to advocate for students who they have observed to have traits that we often associate with giftedness so just in case you know we did not um get it onto our radar that there's another opportunity for other educators and practitioners who service the child to advocate for them to make sure that they um are getting another look so so those are some other things we've put into the process to ensure that we're really looking at every student in a lot of different ways great thank you thank you stacy all right gary want to try again oh so you went on mute it made it you went on

125mute again gary we started talking and then all of a sudden you went to mute i can see that you're muted try i'm not i'm not really sure why i i can hear you okay i've like tweaked every setting that i can think of here sorry about that um i i won't belabor it great presentation um cameron i just would say um if you would let us know how that 14 day challenge we can participate in and and tie into that i would i would love that so thank you all for everything we'll do thanks gary and um thank you to um the team you guys did a great job i don't know if i have any questions because i think they've been uh we've had a great conversation and a lot probably my questions

126have been answered but i think i have three comments um the first comment is uh it goes back to jason's uh comment on equity policy so you city just uh passed an equity policy as did maplewood richmond heights so if we're looking at an overall equity policy there are other districts kirkwood's looking at it right now um so just something to think about right i mean just not that we don't want to infuse equity in everything that we do but um they did just there are two neighboring or close to neighboring districts that um have done that um second i will wonder out loud you know you know panorama has some great diversity equity and inclusion questions uh modules for students uh you know in a kind of a new module i'm one i mean

127i guess i wonder if we might want to use those some for staff some for community um i've looked at the questions i think they're really good they could give us some great information um on diversity equity inclusion and then finally i hope as we move forward that um we focus both on kind of what's not working but what's also working and we think about the bright spots and what we can scale up right because there are always going to be some things that are working and i think just as human beings um sometimes it's easier if you have a mix of both um you know the things that are working and how you scale them and do better um are more of it as well as what we change to improve so those are

128the just three comments i would have hey joe do you have any uh any background information on those policies like um from your city and maplewood i can i can send them to you if you want jason or send you the one i mean what do you mean background information just like the origin like you know how they were what was the discussion around it like what was the discussion around and we know that what happened last summer helped expedite this process to get the policy right but like what was the discourse around it to put one together i think the discourse was really around just a couple an extra commitment um around kind of um equity and maple richmond heights um theirs was probably six months or a year ago so i mean theirs

129is not you cities was like last month so i mean there's a little you know just noting that there's a little but they're pretty similar i've seen them both as a matter of fact i was at the city board meeting when they passed it last month um so i think it's just a commitment an overall commitment again it's not to say that it's all in one place but it's really to re-emphasize the commitment of the district to um all things equity cameron what do you think about that cameron yeah i was just going to ask if those are available on their website um i'd like to take a look you know and just kind of you know see you know how it matches up you know with what we're doing you know if we're already

130doing something and it's already aligned you know what the next step for that would be so is that on their website um the the use yes for the youth city one i'm not sure about the maplewood wine but i could also send you the ucity one if you want but but it should be on the way yeah yep okay awesome all right awesome discussion awesome presentation thank you all um we really appreciate it so um we are gonna move to uh we have four policies a first reading of four policies i think robin gets the first three and then mary jo gets the fourth so uh the first one is the first reading of policy jcb which is transfers within the district rob and you're up great thank you so yes policy jcb has to

131do with transfers within the district msba released an updated version of this policy to reflect changes that were brought about uh by house bill 604 and so this updated policy focuses on transfers within the school district if the school district were to ever become unaccredited so basically what the new law states is that if a student is going to a school in an unaccredited school district in the school that the child is in uh has an apr that would be consistent with being unaccredited that that child could request to the school district to be transferred to a school within the district with an apr that would be consistent with an accredited school and if that is not an option then the student's family can apply to deci to have deci reassign the student to a

132different school district so again this would only come into play if this new part would only come into play if the whole entire school district of clay were to become unaccredited right all right oh i'm sorry anything else robin uh not on jcb okay um stacy any questions or comments okay any questions or comments kim any questions or comments jason any questions or comments no thank you carrie any questions or comments yeah caitlyn any questions or comments sorry caitlyn do you have any questions or comments oh no okay sorry um and david any questions or comments okay and i don't think i do either so um thank you you can move on to the the next one the policy jcc transfer outside the district all right so policy jcc um it talks about transfers outside

133the district msba updated this policy also to reflect the changes brought about due to house bill 604 and this bill addresses students abilities to transfer out of an unaccredited school district so if there is not a school within an unaccredited district that a student can transfer to then as i said a few seconds ago the student can apply to deci to transfer to a school in an accredited district with an apr that uh score that's consistent with the classification of accreditation and that one uh that school district would have to be located in the same or an adjoining county or an approved charter school located in the same or excuse me adjoining county [Applause] gotcha thank you um david any questions or comments okay caitlyn any questions or comments no thank you jason any questions

134or comments yeah i i got a comment um so on page what is it uh page three first paragraph the introduction paragraph so i was reading it reads so i'll read it out loud the school district of clayton provides an excellent education to students within the boundaries of the district near the students homes and families and therefore does not encourage or support transfer transfers outside the districts except in the following situations and i was reading that and i think it you know i read it a couple times but i think it hit me a different way um so i understand what we're trying to say here you know we're trying to say we have a a great district we provide a great education but it's kind of toned up in a way it's tone deaf

135because i think about kids who are transferring from their district a different district and uh where you know they're coming because the school district isn't great and it's in their neighborhood right and so they're traveling from that community to this community and um [Music] it doesn't take into consideration how clayton was built what the restrictions were on people who are of color to in to be involved by buying houses living in this community so it just kind of hit me a little bit differently and maybe because i'm just hella cognizant right now when it comes to uh you know uh being treated unequally but but that kind of hit me hit me a little differently does anyone have any uh feedback about my interpretation on that other other paragraph is it jason again tell me

136which so yeah referring to the first sentence of the policy is that right jason yeah exactly oh okay what if we if we just struck the middle part of that sentence and said provides an excellent education to students and doesn't encourage or support transfers outside the district yeah exactly does that make sense i feel i think that might capture what you're what you're articulating i think so but i want to make sure everyone else is on board i mean i you know this is just kind of how i my opinion but it's just you know we're trying to be we're we're you know it does take into more by striking the middle part it does kind of take into more account all the different types of enrollment programs we currently run exactly exactly yeah yeah

137awesome and and this this talked about homeless students also right homeless and foster care right didn't say yeah all right all right so one last another question i had was um you know it talks about homelessness homeless students and foster care students it talks about um their their school of origin sending them back there essentially who determines their school of urgent origin if you are a foster kid child or um a homeless student like what determination yeah so there's a process in place it's called a bid meeting it's best interest determination and so if it if a student is in children in the custody of children's division we have a joint meeting between their caseworker any of the other kind of third party providers that might be supporting that child including sometimes their foster parent

138is also involved or pre-adoptive parents might also be involved and then there's representation from both school districts um and so there's actually a protocol that the team goes through for a student who is in the foster care system that talks about kind of what the student's goals personal goals are what the programs look like in the two different school districts they take into consideration how long a student has been going to a particular school they also look at what the students learning needs are like if they have an iep or some other social emotional needs and looking at the two programs to see which one they think will be a better fit and then the team decides um which one will be the best placement and if the placement ends up being the not the

139school or sorry um depending on which direction it goes ultimately what often happens is that um the cost for transportation is usually split across the entities that are involved it's a similar process for students who are qualified for mckinney-vento and this is one of our clayton policies right this is a clean policy correct um the whole thing or just this one paragraph this one paragraph this one paragraph actually is in alignment with mckinney vento okay okay which is the federal protection act for students who um qualify for homelessness gotcha okay so because the way i read this also it kind of it's almost like we we we don't want to deal with you you know so we're gonna send you back to somewhere where based on how many years you've spent in school there like

140we're gonna let them deal with with you yeah so there's a very formalized process in place actually i have a bid meeting tomorrow um to help determine with the team the best placement for a child so um in in my experience prior to coming to clayton i've seen it go in both directions there's not really a hard and fast kind of pattern it really just depends on what the individual students need is and they take into a lot of consideration you know how long they've been in the current placement how fr you know how long they've been at that current school what are the imminent needs of that student and what their hopes and dreams and goals are uh for their k-12 experience and then figuring out which which building or which district is going

141to best serve those needs yeah and one last question about that so do we have have we have this been a part of our audit process to see if there is a disparity in a certain ethnic group that gets the displacement or is the one involved in this most often um for mckinney-vento or for foster care i think both just both in general um well in the time that i've been in the school district i believe we've only had i think one student in care each school year um yes and one um one of the students ultimately was placed in the district that the uh foster family was living in and then tomorrow is another determination that i'm not sure what the outcome will be i have not run the racial demographics on our families

142who are mckinney-vento but i will say that they the transitional housing piece certainly makes their situations very volatile in the sense of our social workers are you know in constant communication with them to make sure that transportation and other services are as seamless as possible gotcha for me it's not just race by the way it's also social economics you know um you know people get uh get caught up in the mix decisions are made based on you know whatever biases they may have sometimes although i'm sure we all try to be our beyond our best when we come to making decisions but uh yeah i'm always concerned about folks in these programs because you know they they often get shipped out and um you know bounced around so i want to make sure that they're

143being handled yeah no i hear what you're saying and that's exactly why we have the bid process in place is to make sure that they are um getting a a very equitable consideration in terms of what is going to be in the best interest of their students all right thanks appreciate it thanks jason um gary any comments or questions okay thank you kim any comments or questions thank you any comments or questions thank you stacey any comments or questions um i don't have any comments or questions but i do want to say jason i appreciate your um comment about the uh the first sentence i think that was good to strike that middle part i i i saw that too so i i think that's good um okay so then robin you get one more

1446.03 policy jeca eligibility to enroll all right so jeca there were two major changes to this the first change that msba made was to update it so that it was in compliance with senate bill and that basically allowed for remote registration for families who are moving to missouri due to military orders so it makes the enrollment process for those students a little bit easier and then the second part that was updated was basically it took out the piece that was about setting tuition and has put that piece into a different policy a new one that mary jo is going to talk about policy dfi awesome thank you all right uh stacy any comments or questions yes i actually have two um on the bottom of page nine um what's highlighted about when it's we're talking

145about the removal and it says um the district may exclude students from programs for failure to pay tuition after they're notified and given a reasonable amount of time to pay the district when it says reasonable amount of time is that something that you know is a fixed amount of time like do we have something like within 30 days or is that subjective that just seemed very vague to me so families have families who pay tuition have options on how they pay um and so oftentimes families can opt for a month to month um piece and then mary jo do you want to speak to some of the historical things that have been put into place when families were not on pace to be meeting their tuition payments on time yeah typically we work with them

146if they get behind in their payments um and then we'll uh try to come up with a new payment structure so we've had a few instances where it's gone into the next school year but typically we can uh figure out a plan to make it work uh throughout the current school year so okay thanks and then also um [Music] at the top of that same page at the top of page nine um number eight referring to the students in the vic program that that whole section was about um the district's options for enrollment and a couple of them like employees children it said which i think was number two that those students are considered resident students and another one i think number three are are vic students not considered resident students as well i thought

147they were no students are considered resident for a collection of state aid that's the reason they're called residents so if we're if you're a vic student we're receiving funding from vic if you're a student we're receiving funding from the state so okay so in terms of state aid they're not okay right thank you thanks stacy um amy any comments or questions thank you can any comments or questions thank you gary any comments or questions i mean just to follow up on that uh mary jo is there there's no other distinction in terms of resident or other other than that state aid purpose right is that that we were saying right it's just to classify um so that we're not in a sense you would be double dipping we would be getting money from the state

148the state would also be paying the city and then the city would be paying us so um we and then we have internal classifications for students you know when we do the enrollment reports so even though students of employees of children are considered resident we still classify them as employees children um on our reports that we give to you so that's truly just a state aid kind of definition okay thanks thanks gary uh jason any comments or questions i think you're on mute jason i don't have any okay thank you um caitlin any comments or questions thank you david any comments or questions thank you i don't i don't have any comments or questions so i actually have one sorry oh go ahead kim yeah so i just and excuse my ignorance but i know

149it says that if there are military um students of military transfers we give them 10 days to prove residency i just want to make sure that's an adequate enough time and there's they might be in temporary housing for 30 days unless they're i mean is that is 10 days really enough time for somebody to show proof of residency that's getting transferred from out of state by the u.s government i didn't think they moved that quickly that is an excellent question i am not sure we don't have a ton of military families transferring in or we haven't had any recently okay um but my guess is that given how small we are and how close the proximity we have to the enrollment process that you know if a family you know we're in constant contact with

150our families as they enroll that if they were running into any issues that we could probably work out a plan if it needed to extend beyond 10 days okay great thank you so thanks robin so i think we're moving mary jo onto you 6.04 policy dfi setting the tuition rate all right as robin said um this is a policy that was added because we removed the um setting of the tuition from jeca so this policy covers how we set the tuition on an annual basis for non-resident and resident students who are not otherwise entitled to free education to attend the district and or our district programs and so there are some sections of this policy that were added that were not in jeca before um and so those sections um that i have read uh

151like you know um changes to where words in red those are actually my recommendat recommended changes that we did have our attorney review because we do not set tuition rates based on what the msba assumed we would do which is a cost of uh educating the student so we typically set tuition in those areas at a market rate um so we look at other districts in the area private schools or other competing markets that we have for that specific student and then we set our rate based on that and so the attorney approved the changes and said they were fine um so those were actually the reason there's no other changes in here is because this is a new policy and so the red changes are actually our changes great thanks mary jo um david

152any comments or questions on this one uh i just a question mary jo when i read this it looks to be that i don't see that it would produce a material difference from what we've done in the past is that a fair assessment yep it's aligning exactly to what we're currently doing okay yeah no i'm good thank you thanks david caitlin any comments or questions no thank you chasing any comments or questions no thank you carry any comments or questions thank you any comments or questions thank you amy any comments or questions so my only comment and i'm sure some people don't agree with me but i've said this before i said what what bothers me about this is that we charge a lot of money for the um tuition the i guess the st

153the tuition kids that come and it a lot of times it doesn't so in a private school a lot of times they will give out scholarships for kids that can't afford to um to come into the private school there's scholarship opportunities but we don't i guess it's pro the amount that we charge and it i know that it is what it is but it's prohibitive for families that you know that might want to come to clayton but they just can't afford it um and i guess what bothers me about it is that there it we have no mechanism in place right now for a type of scholarship possibly and i know it wouldn't be through us that we can't do it but i don't know if that's something that we could maybe talk to um

154the clayton education foundation yeah the clayton education foundation or um you know or there's other opportunity i guess for us to discuss that to see if we could somehow sponsor you know sponsor or facilitate that at some at some level help coordinate it yeah i mean we can definitely see what our potential options around there we have actually explored some other outside entities looking at doing scholarship programs and so um yeah that's definitely something we can explore you see me um stacy any comments or questions uh yeah i have a couple um i'm just curious why of all the tuitions here summer school was the only one that specified the price and so i'm just wondering why and do we want to be locked into that in writing in a policy when we weren't for

155the others that's my first question yeah um if you do that summer school as as a cost per people um it is a very expensive like credit amount basically if you look at it that way and what we were finding was students who really needed to be in the summer program who were a tuition student it was cost prohibitive for them so the families were already upset that they had paid you know the costs for the tuition through the year and then we were asking for about 5000 more dollars for a summer program and so years ago when we started um having students that needed to be in the summer program um we basically set it at the 500. i'm not quite sure how whiteoun got 50 difference that i'm not positive but basically we

156just wanted to set a minimal rate to encourage the students who really needed to be in the program to come and so we've just kept it at that flat rate the entire time so it's not there really isn't any intent to change it um these families are already paying a significant tuition amount during the school year and we just want to encourage them to come but there needed to be a tuition charge for the summer and so we set it minimally let me ask you a question around the summer school summer school at one time was was about there's been an evolution at summer school if i'm not if i'm not mistaken i you know kids used to go to summer school because they were not doing as well during the school year in a

157particular class for whatever reason so before when kids used to go to summer school and they were kids that didn't they were paying tuition did they have to pay that high amount 5 and and it was recommended for like them to graduate or move on to the next level or get their gpa out did they have to pay that at one time i vaguely remember when we find i don't know if we've always had tuition students attending summer school but i do know it was it was about 12 years ago or so that uh this topic came up and when we presented what the cost was going to be the student declined enrollment and they really wanted the student to enroll and so we decided to set a flat rate i don't think we've ever

158charged anyone when we needed to it was cost prohibitive so you know are the rules of saying though if you're failing in class or if you didn't do going to class and you want to go to summer school and take that class is that still is that still a thing sean do kids do that still that's still a pair of summer programs there is remediation as part of our summer programs and so students some students are recommended for our summer program so that way they get additional supports to shore up some of the skills that they might need and so um i would say that we always try to do whatever is possible to make sure the kids are getting what they need and we're not going to make anything prohibitive for students if they

159need it so um so i i guess i was not aware of that situation in 12 years ago but um we will do anything possible to make sure what any student that's in our classrooms are getting what they need got all right cool thanks did you have other questions um i did and i'm going to apologize in advance if i'm opening up a can of worms here but when we started the tuition program for non-resident students um i know there was a financial reason to do so was the intent to continue this program for as long as we have and do we see still see the benefit of continuing it i mean we are the only public school that does this and i know um there are pros and cons but i'm just i don't

160i'm just wondering if it's still fulfilling the need that it was originally intended for um i would say no the original intent it was started when the vts vest program was um starting to phase out right so we were going to be losing money right we were going to be in the so that it was intended to grow the number of students to offset the loss in big revenue and so we have i mean at one point we did have around 70 tuition students that was probably the highest that we ever enrolled we're down you know i don't i have it in my notes i think it's like 30 you know under 30 students now so the revenue is not as substantial as it was in the past um but i mean it was done

161for purely you know revenue generating purpose and so i don't you know at this point we had to stop back in 2008 9 we had to stop enrollment because of the statutory tuition students and that our resident students started growing so that's how we gradually started to decline in the two in the um in the um tuition students we have space now we're starting to try to accept more we haven't been advertising like we used to do and we had that many but it you know it's kind of at the board's discretion as to how they want to operate that program okay i guess i mean not right now but i guess at some point we should maybe discuss um the future of the program and why we're still doing it and if if we

162need to be in if we want to be yeah we need to set the rate as well so i mean that's typically when that question will come up okay so maybe i'll take note of that stacy and i think that that would be another conversation beyond this policy and then we can you can facilitate a conversation with the board around that thank you and just just so everybody knows because it's in mary jo's thing tuition revenue is projected at four hundred and fifty six thousand nine hundred dollars so it's down but it's still four hundred and almost fifty seven thousand dollars in the budget yeah it used to be over a million when we used to be a lot younger yeah you should be over a million i think the thing to be i think

163the thing we have to be cognizant of is there's a certain fixed cost for operating the classroom right and so you know let's say it's 15 kids and you're sitting at 13 there's no cost there's no real cost to clayton for filling those two seats we have it's purely upside to our budget i think you know letting those seats go empty would be i think um i think would be a missed opportunity so um you know i agree this probably isn't the place to debate it but you know i'll be suited up because i chase the dollars and i i like the revenue for the district all righty um stacy any other comments or questions and i don't have any comments or questions so thanks mary jo but you're still up because now we're moving

164to the budget planning and i'll have one comment on david's uh comment there is obviously a demand so for the tuition seat so alrighty i'm gonna share my screen okay so the adoption of the annual budget is part of the board's fiduciary responsibility the conservative and prudent approach to planning by clayton's boards of education has a historic trademark of the district these decisions have made the district fiscally stable and has placed the district in a strong financial position that allows us to be responsive to unforeseen circumstances the past year is a great example of how strong the financial stability of the district has allowed us to pivot during this coveted pandemic and support the technology needs for virtual learning ensure safe learning environments for our students and staff and support our partnership we've had with

165the center of clayton so the formal budget development process for the next school year begins tonight with the framework this framework maps out the district's overall strategy for the creation of the budget tonight i will present the budget framework as a hypothesis and the variables that are used to create the hypothesis these variables are based on an overall macro fiscal strategy regarding revenue projections and proposed expenditure plans within specific departments such as school buildings facility maintenance and categories such as salaries and benefits tonight is also an opportunity for the board to ask questions gain understanding and provide input that will be used to finalize the more micro budget document that is presented to the board in a draft form and final form in the spring so i apologize i did update my presentation because i

166left off the most important thing which is the actual graph that represents the hypothesis the projections so the five-year projection model is used to test the variables within the hypothesis so the variables are continually updated as information is received so the hypothesis or the graph is projecting a 3.4 million dollar surplus and a 52 fund balance for that for the 2021 school year um this is due to revenue variables that increase 2 percent and expense variables that project the district are increased approximately 2.75 it also projects the district to continue to build the fund balance over the next five years which is depicted by the light blue line and then with us reaching the balance budget in 25-26 school year as depicted by the meeting of the blue and orange lines at the top right

167hand corner of the graph so when we look at the revenue variables that support the hypothesis we know that changes in enrollment drive staffing so as a result enrollment projections are updated as a budget is developed today is actually the official count day and so we use the enrollment from today to project forward and so we will present the enrollment projections to the board at the march 10th meeting so statistical calculations in that document take into consideration significant increases in resident enrollment through the 2017-2018 school year resulting in projections that show enrollment growth however actual enrollment over the past three years has remained flat and has indicated that we're an enrollment bubble so administration is currently reviewing staffing needs for 2021 school year and will finalize after the enrollment projections are completed voluntary student transfer

168program will continue to enroll siblings for the 21 22 school year and we anticipate five new students based on the terms of the extension agreement however 24 students will graduate this represents approximately 170 total vst students and a decrease in tuition from this program of approximately 97 000 as a as resident enrollment bubble at the elementary level declines opportunity for additional tuition students can be considered so currently uh we know there are four tuition students who will graduate and we have two pending students for the next school year they're waiting for us to set the tuition rate so please keep in mind we are very conservative in placing the students to ensure we review the normal projected grade grade grade level progression because growth often results in in later grade levels that can then exceed

169class sizes at those levels revenues from students enrolled in the district as statutory tuition students is actually projected to end due to the terms outlined in the memorandum of understanding the students are still enrolled in the district however there is no more revenue that will be billed to the uh receipt the sending districts so this represents a reduction of ninety five thousand dollars in revenue we are not anticipating any significant changes in state funding at this time since the district is hold harmless however federal funding does have some unknowns for the 2021 school year the district received substantial federal funding for coveted relief through the cares act which is a the federal act currently this funding totals 382 thousand dollars and that has been used towards technology ppe supplies staffing and a portion of our

170bipolar ionization system we are anticipating another 156 000 but we have not received final details on that yet and we do not anticipate any other future payments beyond this but we don't know uh you know what will happen over the next six months or so further school districts across the st louis region are working to lobby the missouri commissioner the commissioner of education to work with the federal government to ensure a hold harmless model of funding to title funds that is one of our most significant portions of federal funding the title funds support some of our most struggling students due to the pandemic the ability for all families to receive free meal free meals was automatic and that has resulted in fewer families completing their free and reduced meal applications so this application is a

171data source to collect census poverty data and this challenge of reduced census poverty data is a stark contrast to the reality some of our families currently face as a pandemic has reduced many families incomes so if a hold harmless funding model is not adopted the district could lose a significant portion of our title funds for next year the first half of this fiscal year saw interest rates above two percent it was really nice however due to the pandemic and the federal reserve reducing the fed fund rates back down to levels from 2008 we are earning about .04 percent on our long-term investments so we just received around 30 million dollars in the past month so we continue to research investment options to maximize these earnings you know for payments throughout the year as best we

172can so new developments are continuously monitored because they are our primary increase in tax revenue the clarendo of clayton which is on the corner of hanley and clayton road although not completed shouldn't be included in the tax rolls as being under roof that is uh the point that we can include them on the tax rolls for commercial property and this will add approximately four hundred thousand dollars in new tax revenue to the district for 2021. uh the new bank of america on the corner of forsyth the pearl condominiums which are across from the high school and forsyth point are also included as revenue in future years as they are projected to be completed several other developments including the boulevard south resident inn ac hotel at the old police station and being some place are all

173in the conceptual phases and are awaiting approval and therefore we are conservative and we do not include those in projections we did receive word that the new sentient tower has filed their certificate of substantial completion for the final for the first phase of their construction and they will receive their 40 abatement for the 21 tax year this resent represents approximately seven hundred thousand dollars from the district in abated revenue so please i want everyone to remember that um their abatement for the second phase was contingent on beginning construction by december 31st which did not occur so in addition to that their abatement on both phase one and phase two is contingent on the completion of the construction of the auditorium which was actually in phase four and that was announced in december that it would

174also be put on hold so the auditorium must be completed by the end of 2024 or sente will lose the property tax abatement even for the new tower in the first phase that they are getting this year that's already constructed there's no what they call a clawback provision however that will recoup any of the abatement from 21-24 that it once they have that that is gone but i am anticipating that the city will most likely revise the development agreement once sentience determines our next step and i don't know if the city will be forthcoming on that but if there's anything we might want in that negotiations it might be something to speak to the mayor about protested attack test value assessed values continued to remain a challenge for all of st louis county resulting in

175fluctuations in assessed value data and tax payments that caused significant fluctuations in our revenue trends so 2019 the district was able to recoup 1.2 million in protested taxes and if you go back to that graph we had a nice spike that year beyond the tax levy however um trends normally have us paying back a million dollars in tax settlements throughout the year oddly enough in that year we did not pay back anything so there was no recoupment collected in the current school year so this resulted in a reduction for this year unlike last year though this year we are also paying back taxes and there's about 600 000 we've already paid back this year but i don't have enough information at this time to determine whether or not we'll be able to recoup those because

176of how the formula works there has been instances where we were unable to do so so since i don't have enough information to determine that we are being conservative and we're not including any recruitment in the projections but i should have more information in april and be able to update the board at that point in time regarding legislative changes as dr daugherty mentioned the senate education committee did hold a hearing last week on tuesday on senate bills 23 25 and 55 regarding voucher tax credits charter school expansions virtual instructions school board recall elections and home school participation in sports these bills were voted out of committee and combined into senate bill 55 which basically is an omnimos bill and basically can be brought to the senate to full floor at any time for debate so

177all of our this new bill will impact um you know can definitely impact revenue for the district and we will continue to monitor and work with our legislators and our lobbyists so that is the revenue variables i don't know joe if you want me to stop and ask questions at this time or just go ahead through the whole thing it's up to you just go ahead through the whole thing please okay thank you so we'll look at the expenditure variables are pretty straightforward so with salary increases that represent 60 of the operating budget or 35.6 million 2021 is the final year of a two-year salary agreement so administration will begin salary discussions with teacher representatives in february a 2 salary increase is estimated for the budget purposes but the actual budget when we present it

178will be determined through salary discussions with teacher representatives and the final budget is expected to include salaries based on the final approved salary schedule changes and savings from attritions which i'm expecting to be similar to the last two years of probably one to one and a half percent somewhere in there uh classified staff are projected separately since they don't have significant savings from attrition and so they are budgeted at a two percent increase retirement and benefits represent 19 of the operating budget or 11.2 million and 2020 did end the year with growth in the medical self-insurance fund but because of covid and uncertainties and and bills because people couldn't have procedures done and the need to continue to build the fund balance we did increase the health premiums five percent and we budget five percent

179moving forward so there are increases in benefits as we move forward of eight percent school and department budget represent eight percent or five million of the operating budget and will be established through the zero based approach district leaders will ensure their our resources are allocated to programs that support our vision and goals technology and capital improvement plans represent about three percent or 1.6 million of the operating budget the tip funds will increase two percent for cpi or consumer price index for a budget of 649 000 along with an additional 10 000 contingency reserve for technology expenditures and because that was the fourth year of the three-year technology plan we do need to bring that back to the board for review and and then uh you know we can make determinations if there's any changes in

180that the cip funds will be increased two percent for cpi for a budget of 905 000 along with an additional 35 000 budget for classroom furniture and a 50 000 contingency other expenses which i provide some detail on the slide represent 10 of the operating budget or six million and they're fairly fixed and so we do just increase those at two percent for cpi moving forward so to recap the variables revenue is projected to increase at about two percent primarily due to the new construction of the clarendell expenses are projected to increase approximately 2.75 mainly due to increase in cpi and salaries and benefits and because of the successful passing of proposition e and administration being intentional to align our finances with our strategic goals these variables support the hypotheses that the district is projected

181to have approximately 3.4 million surplus and a 52 fund balance in the 21-22 school year so the next steps will include a budget check in april where as i mentioned i pri provide more information on the revenue streams and then we'll present the draft in may and the final budget in june so after hearing the hypotheses and the revenue and expense variables that were used to create the hypotheses uh what are your reactions questions and input that you may have thank you mary jo appreciate it um so uh stacy any comments or questions um no just thank you that was very thorough and um really pretty easy to follow and understand so i appreciate all the work you put into it thank you mary jo stacy and my screen has changed orders so i'm calling

182people in different orders now david any comments or questions no no worries joe um mary jo on on taxes how do we i i know we cut we we track and trend you know uh protesting of tax values and such but how do we handle people that don't pay their taxes you know if if so you know there's we're going to have people that you know we have businesses that don't pay taxes um despite you know their obligation to but then we also have a challenge with you know there's a lot of families um you know clayton's not immune to the to the financial impacts of covet you know i know there's a lot of families that have taken pay cuts or furloughs and i'm just anticipating that you know we could see um a

183difference of income as a result of that is that something that we've kind of built in there that you're building into the budget or is it a wait and see what happens kind of thing i'm just not sure what how you look at it our collection rate is actually um anywhere between 97 and 98 percent and so we do have that built into the budget right now um we are project we are projecting about 13 and a half million dollars of protested taxes so what happens with the protested taxes is they put them in an escrow account and then they release them to us in may after we file a friendly lawsuit um but we do get a report on that in february so once i receive that report i can tell whether or not

184there's a larger amount of delinquent taxes so as long as they're paid and put in protests you know so right now the way it looks we're really in line with budget we're right in line with last year if we get everything that we collected last year we will just be right at budget and last year we had three and a half million dollars in protested taxes so it seems like we're in line with last year but in february when i get the protested tax report i will know more so i'll be able to update the board at that april meeting but to answer specifically your question we do project about three percent uncollected that's just residential property tax though that you do the projections on right not business taxes it's residential and commercial it is

185commercial mm-hmm it's just commercial real estate i'm talking about like commercial sales tax and is it all it's just real estate just real estate we don't receive any sales taxes from the city thank you um jason any comments or questions yeah good job that was an excellent presentation um my my concerns are always right now how the the impacts of kobe um uh the cost to us you know do we have an actual cost and then we have even like you know kind of a more alarming projected cost expense that that we're kind of afraid of and and how we factored that in um also um my concern is the uh the the fitness center you know um that's gonna continue to be down for a while um i'm you know always afraid of that

186that cost and you know are we behind the scenes discussing a contingency plan just a thought and then third do we take into account the cost of the strategic plan and a bar in particular cameron's role on the expense to get this job done because it might to me this is a pretty ambitious goal um and it just seems like it's going to take more boots on the ground to get this done that's just this kind of my based on my read here that's what i gather um regarding the coven so i am not projecting any covet and i mentioned about the federal revenue um we i feel like the covet is the current school year not next school year um with the exception one thing and i'll mention that in a second so we

187have looked at covid revenue and expenditures and with the exception of the two items we've brought forward for budget revisions already which is the um um the bipolar ionization system and the uh expenditures for the center clayton which was about a million dollars i think between the savings and expenditures and the offsets of revenues and stuff it's kind of netting right now and and the federal revenue that we've received which is around a half a million dollars so i think we should be pretty even on the covet expenses for this school year so moving forward um you know depending if we need any additional staffing in the fall that could be something potentially that might come into play in the fall uh and um the only other thing i am concerned about is the assessed

188value in the commercial real estate so assessed value of commercial real estate is assessed based on resident or i'm sorry rental income and i'm not i'm not i know rental uh you know a lot of commercial real estate outside of clayton has been getting vacated i don't have a good number for clayton but if it does start to decline then those assessed values decline um most people if you know the tax rate you know we can just roll that back up um but we are getting close to our ceiling our maximum authorized levy which we which what what happened then my assumption we had never hit it so i'm i'm not quite sure how the formula will work until we get there but i think it'll roll into residential which will increase the residential rate

189until we hit the ceiling on that one too so um i don't think it's like it's not a end of the world kind of thing but um it could just cause some concern when we get there and and and and cameron did you did you enroll yeah so with related to that and shock and talk about that we do have an extra i think 140 000 in the budget for strategic planning needs um and then you also had one other question um well i think it was the uh the center oh the senator clayton so the senator clayton i actually have projecting out five years with it kind of doing about a hundred thousand a year going down so 500 400 000 300 000 and net operating losses in addition to our contribution that we

190already have projected moving forward gosh all right cool thank you very much appreciate it thanks jason amy any comments or questions thank you amy caitlin any comments or questions no thank you katelyn kim any comments or questions yeah just a couple so since we're still on the subject of uh assessed values um what about for new construction properties um despite you know covid and the pandemic a lot of new construction was underassessed that upon reassessment they go back and they increase the assessment so you know after they publish for example in the st louis business journal that x property you know is valued at x and then the assessment comes out at 10 of that value like is the county assessor's office now a little bit better organized to go back and chase those reassessed

191values what's your take on that because i know it was kind of a mess up until i mean maybe now still i know on clayton new construction they've been pretty aggressive at assessing it high so i don't know if that's more isolated outside of clayton um but i mean the last assessment cycle clayton's commercial was their average was like 16 increase and so um i know the assessor sees the value of the properties in clayton and is definitely making sure he's getting those adjusted i ha and actually the new construction everything that we have projected um based on the information that this we get our numbers from the city from the permits and everything that's issued they're coming right in line with what we were projecting so i don't think they're getting assessed as new

192construction low not in clayton at least well i know they were a few years ago um because there's uh there's a host of professionals that work on the side protesting those um the increases after they catch the mistakes but um maybe i'll i'll find yeah i'll see if that still exists and send you the ex the addresses and examples of the properties no that though that situation definitely still exists however it was kind of a glitch in the law that the county actually the last couple years have finally succeeded in winning the lawsuits and they're kind of brought through in batches and since they finally were successful they they they hired outside council a few years ago which they have never done and they've been inside council and so that that's what we're starting to

193see a turn on that because what was happening that was just blanket assessed values getting changed and they finally been denying that and that has definitely changed that's been there has been like positive progress made there because it was starting to look you know like a bad like political movie of black slush fund in that area okay so then um you know you talked at the very beginning of your presentation about an enrollment bubble so when i hear from a financial or economic term bubble does that mean we expect the bubble to pop at some point and if so are we expecting a decrease in enrollment versus the increase that was projected in the plan and then right after that you said that you'll be doing an internal assessment um likely with sean and the

194other administrators about what that means for staffing so can you give us a little more color of what that means does that mean hiring freezes or contraction and staffing or what how how do you what do you do in that case mary jo you want to talk about the bubble part and i can talk about the staffing yeah i wasn't sure where you who was going first so the bubble actually when we had the demographer come in and they looked at it they they called it a bubble so i kind of used the same terminology and i kind of see it more just like a hill so yeah not that something's gonna pop so it's we rose to a high enrollment and now we're on the way back down and so we just we were

195having kindergarten classes in the 60s and we're back down to about 45 so the last few years you know it's just been and so if you're you know if if you're looking at all three buildings it's about 45 less students a year every year and so it's just giving us some space um so we still have some bubbles within the grade levels like we still have a fourth grade that's really large our freshman year grade at the high school is really big but like why down back down to all 200 you know student class sizes versus 260 and one of their grade levels and stuff so and so really and sean can talk about the staffing but a lot of that staffing has just shifted with the classes so he can talk about that yeah

196so what we do is we try to at every year we look at having intentional meetings with the buildings especially at the high school in wyoming we look at the number of enrollments we look at shifting numbers in terms of if we need to add additional staffing or sometimes it's actually reducing staffing and it's looking at uh the total number of you know a needs that we have for class uh class assignments um and like as mary jo said if we look at our class assignments and some of our grade levels at the elementary there have been instances where we've said we need to add an additional teacher here so that way that's more than maybe three sections we might have to do four sections but it's not something that just continues to carry on

197we re-evaluate it every single year and there are going to be times when we might want to have connected to our our strategic plan an innovation or something that we want to try in terms of staffing and one of the things we're putting in place is that if we're going to add additional staffing then we're going to then add the evaluation of like how are we knowing how do we know that we're getting the dividends out of this position how do we know that this is something that we want to continue investing in in the future so it's a natural process every single year when we go through um to see what are the enrollments in all of our schools what are the the the class sizes in all of our classes we look at

198the number of uh enrollments at the high school with different classes and sometimes we have to add staffing and sometimes we have to take away um but it's just it's a natural process but there are times we might want to think of doing something different but we are going to put a a measure in place to make sure that it's paying dividends for us thanks kim um gary any comments or questions no thanks appreciate the um the report and all the questions i won't believe or anything from here thank you thanks gary and mary jo good job i don't have any comments or questions so we are going to move on to our action items so the first one is 8.01 which is the district academic calendar for the 2021-22 school year could you will

199you read the motion gary please hopefully you guys can hear me i move that the board of education approved the 2021-2022 district academic calendar as recommended second all right it's been moved and seconded um chris did you want to add any comments before i ask the board if they have any comments or questions uh i i don't really have a whole lot to say beyond what we've kind of included there in the proposal which is just this is a a calendar that we're using to our calendar that we're moving forward to to mirror the current calendar since i don't collect that don't let that number enter sandy i didn't know that i don't recognize that number i'm just saying that um so the the calendar for this year the 2020 2021 school year was a

200um you know reflected some changes however we felt like since we've had such a an extraordinary school year i guess would be a great way to put it that we really haven't had a chance to to experience and evaluate the the impact of some of these changes so we felt like it made sense just to move those forward keep our fingers crossed and hope that we get a chance to evaluate what this calendar feels like in what we would call consider more ordinary times thank you so any comments or questions from the board yeah chris um i know it says um that we exceed the minimum number of instructional hours by how much um it it varies by school um so i can i can pull that up or provide that information but i mean

201it's we're exceeding it in terms of of equivalent days as opposed to right to just hours and the same like it's it's the same amount of days we always kind of exceed it correct so this this calendar um is is it has the exact number of hours that um the calendar that the board approved for the 2020 2021 school year correct got it okay thanks any other comments or questions all right all in favor aye all right any opposed okay pass the 7-0 thank you um okay 8.02 safety and security items solicitation of bids uh gary will you read the motion please 8.02 i move that the board of education authorized the solicitation of bids for the first phase safety and building improvements that will take place during the summer of 2021 and authorize the

202release of the committed funds for payment second okay it's been moved and seconded um mary jo did you want to add anything here before i ask the board if they have any comments or questions yeah i this was kind of hard to write in the document but i just want kind of everyone to understand the finances associated with this so this is a phase one and then there's a phase two um the majority of the funding is coming from the sale of the maryland building which um on our monthly financials shows around two or i'm sorry 3.2 million dollars however the total of both phases with the gender neutral restrooms is over that amount so when we added the gender neutral restrooms it exceeded the 3.2 million so it's about another 750 000 over that

203so we will have to ask if we want all of it done we will have to ask the board for additional funding above the maryland funding of about 750 000 which would be over a two-year time frame so as we get the bids back i'll be able to explain it more but i just want everyone to understand the total scope of the project thank you mary jo um okay so any uh comments or questions on this one uh just one mary jo whenever you get that data can you also kind of do a burn down schedule over that to your window so we can see what the cash flow looks like yeah um yeah because we're only going to get bids on the first phase right now and then we'll just project out on the

204second phase so we can do that thank you any other comments or questions okay all in favor aye any opposed okay let's pass the 7-0 thank you so we're moving on actually to a couple second readings of policies so this is 8.03 the second reading and approval of policy dc taxing and borrowing gary will you read this one please 8.03 i move that the board of education approved the second reading of policy dc taxing and borrowing as presented second okay it's been moved in second any comments or questions all right all in favor aye aye any opposed all right it passes 7-0 so we're moving on to 8.04 which is the second reading and approval of policy ef which is food service management 8.04 i move that the board of education approved the second reading

205of policy ef food service management as presented a second second okay it's been moved and seconded any comments or questions all righty all in favor aye aye aye any opposed okay thank you it also passes seven zero so we are moving on to the consent agenda 9.01 i move that the board of education approved the consent agenda for agenda items 9.02 through 9.04 second okay it has been moved and seconded any comments or questions about the consent agenda all righty all in favor aye aye aye any post okay it passes unanimously 7-0 thank you okay we're moving on to the financials 10.01 10.01 i move that the board of education approved the payment of current expenditures and investments for december 2020 as presented and attached second it's been moved and seconded any comments or questions

206i have to recuse myself from this vote okay so i'll leave and you'll tell me when to come back uh yes she doesn't have to actually leave she just okay well okay it's fine i'll just abstain okay okay i will yeah that's fine yeah just don't vote um all right um any comments or questions all right all in favor aye aye aye any opposed all right and i'm noting that stacy's not voting she's recusing herself so this passes 6-0 thank you okay we're moving on to public comment and uh sean and chris do we have any public comment uh yes we have three public comments this evening uh the first public comment is from betsy meelan smith and she writes welcome dr patel i very much look forward to getting to know you better and

207offer my to support support to you as you begin to navigate our district as a parent and community member deeply invested in the work of equity and anti-racism in our district and community i'm interested in learning more about dr patel's background and experience in anti-racism and equity work her thoughts on the work already being done here and her vision for anti-racism in our district as she takes the helm i was surprised and concerned based on the district's and boe's express commitment to racial equity and anti-racism that there was no mention of dr patel's previous work or plans to continue or build upon the work being done in our district in either the public announcement of her hiring or the letter to the community second comment looks like my screen is not refreshing here one second

208guys will have to bear with me i just lost the comments here sorry i apologize my uh all my google suites just not logged me out coming back up now christian let me see if i can pull it up no i've got it right now it's i'm back i apologize for that um the second comment we have this evening is from adrian piston she writes our family moved to st louis from nashville tennessee five years ago we moved to a city rocked by the horror of michael brown a horde that reverberated throughout the nation it has taken me years to learn about and wrap my head around systemic racism and the travesty it is wrought on this nation within the district my children have told me about several instances where they witness witnessed undue punishment

209of their black and brown peers something they found confusing and sad a report of these instances and and the principles to my knowledge have done a fine job dealing with it the death of george floyd this summer was a turning point for me to become more active as a white parent to start the long journey to end systemic racism i am thrilled that the district has hired cameron poole i find his work to be both inspirational and motivational the district's move toward equity has inspired me to get more involved with the school system and get to work thank you and our last comment is from suzanne whitman she writes i first want to thank thank sean cameron robin and the administrative team for continuing to move forward on issues of equity i was really happy

210to see that the latest equity report included not only programs that occurred once but also systemic changes like how we grade and alignment of job postings with the diversity hiring event great job and my gratitude because this work makes my children's world more healthy and whole i also have a question that arose from my reading of the forward through ferguson report still separate still unequal the report states that in 2017-18 clayton took advantage of a missouri foundation formula loophole a backdoor provision to the formula that is supposed to make funding more equal across districts that benefits majority white communities the loophole called a whole harmless provision allowed us to use property values from instead of 1718 in order to artificially inflate the amount of state funding we received per aada student it's legal but i'm

211dismayed that although we are the highest spending majority white district and spend eight thousand four hundred and twelve dollars more per student than the highest spending majority black district and an astonishing 18 000 more per student than the lowest spending districts we still resorted to a loophole that upholds disparities based on race are we still using this loophole currently in our budget and if shows if so should we consider rejecting this avenue which although legal upholds the systems of white supremacy and terrible race-based disparities in our region thank you for your attention and consideration and that's all the public comments for this evening great thank you for reading those chris so um we are moving on to board communications does anybody have a um board communication go ahead stacy um yeah i attended the pac

212ed executive committee meeting on friday robin and cameron were there as well and um i continue to be impressed with this how they've kind of reorganized and re-imagined this group it's very well organized they have they function you know like a very very efficiently with different executive positions and it just kind of reminded me tonight as we talked about those affinity groups that this is a great example of a parent affinity group um that that ties into all of our you know the work that cameron was talking to earlier um a couple of things that they we discussed at the meeting were that they're working on ways to recognize teachers that work with students with disabilities and recognize students they also are continually looking for ways to educate the community about kids with learning differences

213and they loved that robin's idea at the last meeting when it was inclusive schools week that we engaged their students to talk and explain it so i think they're looking into other ways that their students can be involved in our schools involved in decision making and and included as leaders as you know some thinking groups in our schools so you know one of the ideas was even about our board advisory group that um we don't have a student or i don't know they didn't think that we have a student included in that group um that has learning differences so they're they're continually looking for and advocating for their kids to be you know leaders in schools and part of decisions and parts of groups that can talk about how to better their experience at school

214too so um that was it thank you stacy anybody else have any other um board communications i just have one real quick which is just uh as much for the public um so congratulations to amy and jason you will serve another term because you're the only two people who signed up um so we will not have an election um that that it basically means that um amy and um jason will be elected so just a note anybody have anything else all righty can i have a motion to adjourn write a move with the board of education adjourn second all in favor