09/30/3030 Board of Education Meeting

001all right we're good okay um welcome everybody adequate notice has been given and um they we are going to uh start here with the pledge of allegiance as we always do the flag and sean's background oops i pledge to pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic of which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice is brought okay so um just a reminder this meeting is a little bit different than other meetings in that it's really two meetings within one because we we're gonna start out with our tax hearing and uh so we open that and then uh we have our hearing and then we close it and then we start our other meeting so just as a reminder to folks so um really

002the first part is if we had any public comment for the text tax hearing so do we have any public comment for the tax hearing uh we do not have any public comment for the tax rate hearing okay all right so um so then we move on to the next piece which is the actual um the tax hearing itself and um i guess uh mary jo do you just want to give us kind of a a quick explanation of um kind of the tax rate and and what we're doing yep sorry just making sure my internet was plugged in and not wi-fi so all right good evening tonight is the district's public hearing of the tax rate so i apologize to you that are normally expecting to go first and i get the lucky job

003tonight so um i'm gonna share my screen okay you guys see the um yes we can see it okay um the purpose of the public hearing is to have a discussion and receive public comment prior to the approval um as we said there was no public comment uh received either written or oral and also nothing for the public comment for the actual meeting so public notices were posted as required by statute as well as being posted on the district website so the tax rate is calculated on tax forms that are provided by the state auditor um we are also required to submit those forms back to the state auditor for pre-approval so the state auditor has reviewed them and approved them and the rate uh it was calcul it was approved by the state auditor

004sorry the district tax rate is dependent on the st louis county's assessor's determination of the market value of real property which is land and buildings within the district boundaries which includes a portion of richmond heights these properties are revalued or reassessed by the assessor every other year in a number of years so last year was considered a reassessment year we'll see in a few slides how the reassessment fluctuates uh from a reassessment year to a non-reassessment year but when that assessed value increases the tax rate decreases and vice versa so the rate is inversely related to the rate of these assessed values what this means is the district will not receive a windfall of revenues when the assessed values rise with the reassessment because we will roll back our rate but if the assessed value

005drops then we can actually increase our rate this is intended to provide stable funding it also another thing to keep in mind is that none of these rules apply to the debt service fund we're allowed to set that rate to ensure our debt is paid and we have sufficient reserves so that rate can float the district has maintained that rate at the same amount since the 2009 election so we don't anticipate that to change another component of the tax levy is recruitment and when we talk about recommend we need to understand that this is an overall process it starts when a taxpayer protests the assessed value on their property from the county assessor and then they win when this happens the district has to pay back the amount of taxes that we received on the

006assessed value and on that reduced amount of sus value but as i said on the last slide the overall rate is dependent on the assessed value so once that changes for all the properties so does the amount of our tax rate so the process to do that is called a recruitment calculation so since 2005 there's been an exponential number of these uh appeals and wins of these repeals also and so the district typically reimburses taxpayers over a million dollars per year for the settlement of protested taxes there were not as many settlements paid to property owners in 2020 resulting in actually an additional six hundred thousand dollars of operating income to the district for last year the following table uh represents the changes in assessed values for the last since 2012. um we've been summarizing

007them so as you can see there were significant changes in assessed value from 2012 all the way through 2019 resulting in significant amounts of revenue recouped that's uh the numbers on the far right 2020 had minimal months reported changes in assessed valuations because of this um and the rollback of the rate that we will talk about um it's not recommended to add recruitment to the approved rate even though there's a minimal amount we could probably calculate it um but it's not really worth adding it into the rate as you can see there were minimal changes in assessed valuation by class of property this year with the majority being new construction and that we'll see on another slide um mainly because of the completion of the centene development the increase in new construction as i said

008was primarily from centene so that 12 million 237 they actually had the two larger build the parking garage in their main building as well as um the maryland building was all added to the tax rolls this year um there were also reassessments that were reduced in the values of properties at negative seven million dollars so because of that negative seven million dollars that one dollar amount um there's three criteria that the district can use in order to increase taxes every year um you either the change in assessed value is one of them which in this case was negative um that cpi which this year was 2.3 percent or 5 is the highest we could ever get an increase in revenue but you get the lowest of those three so since the change in assessed value

009is negative and that's the lowest there's no other increase in our tax rate from last year that we're allowed to see except for new construction however i do want to comment that with the extreme increase in assessed value we saw in 2009 if you can see there was 134 million dollars of additional self-evaluation last year um i did expect much more protested taxes in in 2020 than we actually had settled um so i there were also quite a few settlements that posted just this month in september we can't calculate the recoupment on those until next year and we did pay back 115 000 this month so my assumption is that the county and the state tax commission are behind and that we will continue to see some settlement since the year progresses we will also

010probably see some protests just because of loss of property value due to covid and potential client or rental properties losing income and stuff which is how they base their assessments so more to learn on this topic is basically the point the reductions in the rate by property class so you can see there's a residential commercial and personal property class represent um basically that overall reduction that change is the amount of recruitment that we added to the rate in 2019 and as i mentioned there's no recruitment in 2020 due to the minimal amount of change in assessed value so that's basically we have flat um income and the change is because we're not collecting [Music] oops sorry uh the proposed rates by fund we do have to set a rate for each fund and as you

011can see the biggest change was a shift into the capital fund and basically um this is due to an increase in capital projects that was recommended during the property campaign so during prop e we basically wanted to build our fund balance which i will show on a later slide that we were successfully doing and um successfully complete capital projects without taking out additional debt why is that switching two slides apologies for that so the change in the projected receipts from the original budget is approximately 3.65 million um that is primarily due to the sentine project so that was an abated project and it was substantially completed as of january 1st in theory when you look at it it looked like it was pretty much done and the county had actually fully assessed both parcels so

012um however in order to receive their abatement centee must file a certificate of substantial completion with the city of clayton before january 1st which was january 1st 2020 in order to receive their evaded taxes so as a result neither parcel received an abatement because the overall from what i was told from the city is the overall project wasn't completed so they're assuming they will apply for it by the end of this year but since they did not get their abatement we get to keep the full taxes on the property for this year um and then in addition in addition uh the budget i did project a 20 rollback um but due to the pa endemic and the additional expenses that we're incurring um it is recommended just to maintain the same 15 cent rollback that

013was approved last year and then we'll look at it in the future to see if there's any other adjustments we can make america how many how many years is the sentient abatement once they do turn in their paperwork is it five no um i think it's she looked at my head i think it's 20 but it could be 10 for some reason oh my god so once they saw the paperwork that 1.4 million that we're getting this year disappears right it's right it's actually a little over 800 and something the other 600 and something is the five cents that we're not rolling back so okay but it's not fully abated though right it did a percentage yes it's a 40 abatement so it'll just drop yep yeah so um these projections do include the needlepoint

014bipolar ionization system the contribution for the center um some potential potential additional staffing that we will bring forward if we see we need to it to add it and that'll also be a budget revision that the board will approve and then additional operating expenses that we're still anticipating that might come forward so and it also includes the potential abatement of sentine as it moves forward as well so any other questions and your projections in future years are based on a 20 cent rollback versus the 15 cent rollback for this year in 2019 no actually the way the projection's worth is based off the current year and the only thing i did pull out was 17 so no it is based on the 15 cent okay so the 15 roll back you include you you left

015flat for the 21 forward okay for the five years yep anybody else actually mary jo we stopped sharing your screen so we can see everybody's face but um any other thank you um any other questions is it i i just want to make maybe a comment slash question but you know mary jo the 15 just i want the public to know that the 15 cents represents about 2 million dollars right i mean we're rolling back taxes about 2 million so i mean that that's important for the public to know and that's to the credit of you and your team and the in the great fiscal management that you have done and also some things that we didn't expect that that are good and also making sure that we don't um get caught uh with some

016covet expenses um that that could happen as we move forward any other questions okay so let's move to the approval gary will you read the uh motion please all right this is a long one you also like buckle in here bear with me a move that the board of education adopt the tax rates by category as presented with the blended tax rate for the school district of clayton for 2020 in the amount of 4.4134 dollars to be distributed with a special revenue fund rate of 2.3530 general fund rate of 1.2499 capital projects rate of 0.1875 and debt service fund rate of 0.6230 dollars all right it's been moved and seconded any other um comments or questions all right all in favor all right any opposed okay it passes unanimously and again thank you mary jo

017for all your work here that was um really good so again this is um at this point really what we're gonna do is adjourn this meeting which is the tax rate meeting and um move to um so we have an action to adjourn this meeting and then we'll move to the next go ahead gary if you would read 5.01 all right i moved that the board of education adjourned the tax rate hearing second okay all in favor hi hi hi hi any opposed all right so we've adjourned that meeting and now we're going to call to order the um kind of the regular meaning if you will and adequate notice has been posted for that also so we're calling that to order and we are going to start with recognizing our own which is actually

018clayton high school and the awesome national blue ribbon award and it's sean thank you joe so yes um we wanted to take this opportunity because last week we found out that clayton high school was named national blue ribbon school for 2020 and there's only seven schools in the state that received this honor it is we the honor was named as under the exemplary high performing schools category and so um it is really truly an honor to be nominated for uh to be a blue ribbon school and then you have to go through a pretty comprehensive process um the the honor is based off data but then you also have to talk about what unique qualities the your your institution provides for students and so there is a very very comprehensive application process and it's not

019a given and you have to go ahead and submit a lot of information and so we want to recognize um the students the staff and the administration of the high school for this really great honor we'll have some type of celebration once we're able to do that in person but i want to recognize a few people here who with us tonight and that's our principal dan kaczowski and um and then we have his administrative team who is also here i want to recognize them as well we have regina moore and i'm not sure for gina's on the screen and then we also have janelle danske and i don't think janelle was able to be with us tonight but we also included uh steve hudson who is our athletic director and then uh to sean young

020who is our assistant athletic director and activities director and oh maybe you guys can turn on your screens um but we want to say thank you to the administrative team at the high school for leading um such an incredible school providing our students with incredible experiences one of the the one of the other aspects of our school is the high quality staff that we have and so we wouldn't be getting this honor unless we had such amazing talent in our classrooms and so dan i don't know if you want to say anything about this honor or um just to say anything about the process no thank you sean uh no we're really really excited and i think that this this honor is a testament to the entire school community because without a community so vested

021in education without such an amazing staff students uh family administrative team uh that this certainly wouldn't be possible and i you know clayton is a great place and has been for a long time but i think it's particularly exciting that this is only the second time that clayton has been has won the award and the award's been in existence since 1982 we also won in 1984 but we haven't won since uh and and so you know i i think that um you know it's a real testament to everyone that works really really hard and and that one of the things that i wanted to make sure were that steve and tashong could be here because while uh the the data and test scores and assessment kind of qualify you for the the application or the

022that the application itself is really about all facets of of the school and and it looks at pedagogy it looks at curriculum it looks at academic offerings it looks at athletic offerings and activities and opportunities for kids so it it truly is um you know an all-encompassing uh effort and and the result of the work of so many okay thank you dan and uh thank you so much to sean and steve for also being here and your unbelievable service i well i have you on there you guys have been amazing too through all these issues with athletics and just getting us through all that i'm just really proud of you as well so thank you for your leadership and dan please share with your other administrative team and your administrators and students how proud we

023are of them i certainly will thank you and and i just want to say on behalf of the board dan and to sean and steve and regina and janelle who are not here this is really awesome and and what dan you didn't say that i think is important too is there are very few schools that win it twice and so for clayton high school to have won it twice is actually quite a big deal that's a very select list so that's very impressive too so well very well done to all of you thank you um so we're going to move on to superintendent communications which is 8.01 sean thank you i'm going to go ahead and share my screen for this pre part of the previous part of my communications okay are you able to

024see that okay i'm assuming you are um so tonight what i want to do is first of all good evening everyone and wanna really focus the superintendent communications on the current reality of our return to learn plan and um give you also an update around our work around equity but um i think it's really important for the board to understand all the work that is happening with our return to learn plan and again i'm just so appreciative of working in a district that is so dedicated to our students and their learning and this last couple these last six months have been a real true task of our leadership and i'm just very very appreciative of the team that i work with um so currently we are still in the remote phase of um remote phase

025of our return to learn plan and uh even though we have been in that remote learning phase we have had students in our building since day one i want to commend our special education teachers who have been providing services to our students since day one our administrators have been able to come up with different strategies for having other students in the class in the classrooms to support them uh during this remote learning and so it hasn't been like our buildings have been empty of students and teachers a lot of our teachers have been working in the buildings since since the first day of school and we have been using those guiding principles those guiding principles that we i shared with you at the beginning of the summer to really make the decisions and thinking about

026uh the health and safety of our students and staff and making sure we're still providing high quality uh education making sure we're taking care of the social emotional well-being of our students making sure we're looking at an through an equity lens when making decisions and then also knowing that we have to be adaptable if things change in the public health sector and so we are um i know that we are at this point dealing we're working and moving into that second phase which would allow some of our students back in our schools and we're starting with our youngest learners and i just want to say that i know that bringing students back and bringing student teachers back in a setting on an everyday basis for our youngest learners that is definitely going to bring some

027fears and some worries but i want to assure people that we are taking into consideration every aspect of risk mitigation um i feel it's my personal responsibility to provide an environment that is going to be safe for people because when people feel safe then that's when we're able to learn and so i um just want to make sure that i'm saying that we we're i recognize those fears but we're doing everything we can to quell those um our why behind this move to moving to uh bringing back our elementary students was based off a recommendation that we got from st louis county health department we've also seen that the data for our youngest learners is very positive and it is aligned to the cdc guidelines saying that this is there is minimum risk for bringing

028students back and there is low risk and so we also feel it's very important for our students to have more interactive direct instruction our teachers have been doing an amazing job doing the remote learning but there's nothing like being in person with our students providing them feedback providing differentiation and making sure that we're checking in on those social emotional needs that they have and then also we've been doing everything possible to make our environment safe and so we feel very confident about what that's going to look like i want to just remind everyone that our where we are we are going to start next week with our kindergarten on october 5th we're going to have our orientation for kindergarten and then on october 6th they'll start full days and the way they were able to

029do that is that we did get um an architect to look at all of our spaces and saw that we were able to fit all of our students in to the classrooms those students who are in responsive learning we're still going to have a group of students who are learning at home and that's their choice and um but we are able to fit everyone in and that allows us to have continuity of education and students coming five days a week the following week we'll have first and second grade go through orientation and then they'll start full days and then we'll have a series of orientations for third fourth and fifth grade and having everyone going full days starting october 26th and again i will say that i have to i have to recognize our teachers

030for what they've done during remote learning because this has been very different than what we did in the spring and the synchronous part of our learning has been very successful um and but now we're at that point where we're looking at transitioning our students back into our schools as i said we do have students that are learning at home still and we have given families the opportunity when we made this announcement that we're bringing our youngest learners in to either move from responsive learning to learning at home or to come from learning from home and go back into responsive learning so when we last friday night i worked with the building principals and melana and we were able to look at honoring those requests and it basically was a wash and we're able to honor

031those requests we also know that it's really important for us to be making data informed decisions and so we are on our learn return to learn website we have published a new dashboard that's keeping the community informed of the number of cases of covid that we have in our community number of people who are quarantined and the reality is that's going to happen and we are going to do everything possible to make sure that we're doing effective contact tracing and we have uh we are going to be adding some staff to our nursing program so that way we can do that effectively and have someone that's dedicated to that um we are also looking at cases for um the district in the district region and within st louis county and so we have seen that

032it's very positive in terms of uh students at younger younger ages the the cases and the rate of positivity rates are really low we are still looking at students that are in that age range at the high school and middle school and will be making decision decisions soon about those levels but um they still especially at the high school those numbers still look high and we're taking a close look at that in terms of risk mitigation we have been very thoughtful about providing personal protective equipment we have been looking at different face coverings we have been providing plexiglas some different types of barriers we're also looking as i said our classrooms have been designed with social distancing in mind i we have um class desks that are separated we also have making sure that we

033have new procedures and orientations in place and those new procedures are it could be something in terms of the way the hallway directions are work or limited staircase limited use of staircases uh bathroom procedures lunch procedures and then the other thing too is we're adding uh different layers of protection by looking at structural changes such as schedules or we're also looking at adding the needle point we also are incorporating needlepoint uh ionizer which is just another layer of protection uh for our students and staff and then the other thing is having the right cleaning procedures in place and we have been able to examine and look at what what cleaning tools are we using in terms of uh going into the spaces more often making sure we're shift shifting uh staffing to work during the

034day and then also looking at our cleaning products and we have switched some of the cleaning products so that we were meeting clean uh clean standard green standards and also making sure that the products kill kovid i also think it's important to know that we have created a multi-page audit checklist that we are going through each of the buildings and uh we are conducting those audits with the building administrators and making sure that all of those items are in place and holding everyone accountable to those and so um and as we go through this we have found that there are some things that we need to modify or change but we are making sure that we're holding one another accountable through this checklist the other thing i think is the merrimack community i am patrick

035fisher the other thing i think is really great that we've done is that we've created videos for each one of our elementary schools uh so that way people can so families can know how things are going to look what changes are going to be made and so i just want to show a few segments to the board uh so that way you can see what these look like the principal here at merrimack elementary and we are very excited to be welcoming everybody back into our building it's been six long months and we can't wait to start seeing our kids back in our building and learning and growing with us as we get ready to welcome all of our students back we want to make sure that we take some time to go through some of

036the procedures and some of the different things that may look slightly different than when you were here last so we want to make sure that we're all able to do what we're supposed to do to keep each other safe and make sure we're in the best environment possible for all of us to learn and grow so each we have designed traffic patterns during school hours to decrease crowding and enable the flow of students and staff to move in a single direction in addition stairwells will also have designated directions during the school day students should look for markings and signs to aid with traveling safely inside the building by st louis county special recommendations all desks will be spaced apart to maximize social distancing and there will be designated areas to place their belongings teachers will

037have a marked teaching zone in front of the class or near their smart board they will be allowed to move throughout the classroom while maintaining proper precautions including plexiglas dividers when interacting in close proximity if students need breakfast the cafeteria will provide grab-and-go food items to purchase once students get those they must head directly to their classrooms to eat at lunch time if children don't bring their lunch it's always important to make sure we're wearing our mask properly so in order to wear your mask properly we want to make sure it's above the nose not below the nose and under the chin and also behind each of your ears so i just wanted you to have a little bit of a segment of what those are going to feel like and we're trying to do

038everything possible to make sure people feel confident about our transition back to the elementary schools i feel confident about the risk mitigation measures we've put in place we've had medical experts who have given us advice about what are some ideas or some things that we need to think about an example of that would be captain elementary we had one of our a medical expert go through our building because captain is a different type of building in terms of being an open space and felt that it was what we've done in terms of risk mitigation was going to be very highly effective and keep people safe the other thing we've done with medical experts is we've had a a doctor who has come in and done uh i did a question answer session with our staff

039in order for them to ask some questions on you know to address some of their concerns i feel our buildings are ready we've done three we did the all three of those audits over the last um a few days and we also also going to be opening the family center on october 12th and so we will be doing an audit of that building as well and so just want to make sure we're including the family center remember them and then um so the other thing too is we've had some other districts that have started already and some other private schools and we're seeing what others are doing well and making sure we're learning from them and then we're also being thoughtful about our staffing making sure we have the right amount of staff and so

040we've been very appreciative the board of being able to provide some additional funding for those and we will continue to examine that and to see where we could save some money but also making sure that we're not uh we're making sure we're getting what we need and we may have to uh ask for additional funds so that way we can provide the best experience for our students and then the other thing too is that we are getting we do have community support we've had um people who have shared in the community that they are excited about supporting our students getting back to school but that community support means that people have a responsibility to follow all those risk mitigation measures outside of the school day so that way when students are coming back into school

041we know that they're healthy and safe we're also expecting people to do those daily self checks so that way we're not sending students to school who are ill what's next for us is that we are going to have to make some decisions around wydown and clayton high school and so we'll continue to look at the data and we'll be putting out some information to our family soon about the timeline for that and then um but i do feel that we have been preparing to make sure that we know prepared to if we get back to uh the buildings we are not exactly sure if that will be a hybrid schedule or not but we are being prepared for that by making sure we have all the proper equipment ready uh to do that so we'll

042be sending out more information as we as uh soon as soon as we have that solidified um again how will we know again for the high school we'll continue to look at st louis county st louis county recommendations st louis county did put out a recommendation that we should be looking at our middle schools but they said to make sure that we're doing that incrementally and not starting all at once and then the other thing too is that we are going to be looking at data again from the region to make those decisions i'm hoping that by next week we will be able to send out that timeline to our families so that way they can prepare but i want to be realistic is that there could be a we we have said that we

043wanted to start second quarter with our secondary schools um but the reality is is that we may be pushing that back a little bit based off of the data that we're seeing and so we will make that determination and make sure that we communicate it in a timely way and again i just want to emphasize to those people who are watching the meeting and also to the board is that we're all we are going to expect people we have to have collective efficacy around this and responsibility around this work and so it's not just what's happening within uh the schools but it's happening with that what's happening in our community and i and i will assure the board that we have done everything possible to try to make sure that we're having a safe and

044conducive environment that's going to keep our students safe and our staff safe and healthy and and we all i feel very confident about the way we're moving forward so i'm going to stop right there and um we are i am going to ask the last thing i'm asked to do is have um we always want to make sure we're giving an update about our work around equity as well and so i did ask cameron to prepare just a quick uh update about some of the work he's been doing so that way the board's informed about that as well here we go all right thanks sean um yeah i've been getting a lot done um you know i i've led a lot of uh development sessions um the most recent one that i've led was with

045the district leadership committee you know we uh we really centered in on student experience and how each student's experience varies you know just based off race and identification and things like that and you know we had some great discussion and you know one thing that's been awesome is just you know the entire you know district staff you know as a whole has really been buying into you know really developing that equity lens um you know one thing that i push is you know no one was taught how to actually practice empathy and equity in the classroom you know from an anti-bias anti-racist lens so a lot of this kind of training and learning that we're doing is relatively new um you know but the staff has been taking it on you know pretty well and

046you know i've also been jumping into a lot of just different committee meetings from you know curriculum committees and and the different disciplines and things like that and you know really looking at a lot of the opportunity gaps we have and diving into kind of where we're missing the mark and you know where we need to hone in in terms of the efforts in order to get rid of some of the inequities that exist uh today was the last day we um finishing up our uh building equity audit so um you know after meeting individually with each administration and meeting with teachers in each building i put out an audit survey to the whole staff as well as myself through my assessments to kind of uh look at things from a you know staff lens

047a cultural environment lens uh pedagogical lens um as well as curriculum and really giving a an audit to each school and trying to figure out what are the where are the areas in which each school needs to uh you know really concentrate on in terms of equity and kind of leading our equity efforts within each school from the results from the audit um so that went well and we're in the process of um you know breaking down those results and we'll have a you know a more in-depth analysis on that at the next meeting um again i've been reaching out to the community as well the awesome thing is i've gotten a lot of calls and a lot of emails just in terms of people wanting to meet and talk and kind of just discuss

048you know kind of what my equity vision is and you know as well as gaining information from different stories and testimonies that people have around the district so you know i really been able to familiarize myself with everyone um and really get to know the stories within the district that uh you know hopefully we can bring some changes to um and then last but not least as well um next week um i'm looking at uh you know the equity portion of the website and really looking to revamp that um so i've got a lot of new information that's going up on there as well as a bi-weekly blog that i'm gonna keep going on there so that uh you know the community is in tune with you know kind of the equity work that we're

049doing on a regular basis and some of the things that i'm teaching and you know to get some of the information out there in terms of you know how we want to view equity in the district kind of a way to keep everyone in the loop um but that'll be followed with um you know social media presence on the major social media platforms as well to highlight different things that are going on um you know within the district and with work that i'm doing so that everyone kind of has a lens you know into kind of what's going on um i've also started to you know meet with affinity groups within the district in terms of kind of getting the experience in the district from a staff standpoint um as well as starting to uh

050make meetings with students um you know and different parent groups as well so really starting to build up that affinity group and kind of empower you know uh groups of parents and groups of people who might not have been empowered in the past so uh that's kind of where i'm at right now i'm looking forward to starting to work with the board individually next week um with a lot of good work that we have planned as well so yeah things are things are going really well making a lot of progress um you know starting to implement and you know make myself known within the district and you know all of our staff has been you know very awesome and being forthright and requesting you know my assistance and you know um having me work with

051them one-on-one in terms of uh you know creating equity you know within the district so that's all i got thank you cameron so before i turn it over to caitlin for her report i just didn't know if the board had any questions about the return to learn um portion and any clarify i can see your faces now i felt for about 10 minutes i was just staring and just hoping that you're on the other side when i was sharing my screen i was like i hope someone's hearing what i'm saying so it was a little awkward so i just want to see any any questions about that joe i just i'll just say thank you i i think you guys have done a good job um you know getting everything ready i i know there's

052not a good answer and it's you know it's a tough decision so i just want to say thank you to you and your team and your extended team for the work that you've done here i can tell you that my my two elementary boys are pretty fired up um i've been trying to soften expectations and tell them the classrooms are just not quite as cool as they used to be uh but they're they're still very excited to come and uh and and kind of get back to something a little bit more akin to what they're used to so thank you go ahead stacy you you want to say something go ahead um yeah i would like to echo a little bit of what david said sean thank you so much i know this had to

053be a tremendous amount of work and i appreciate all of it i appreciate that your decisions were data driven and in coordination with medical experts and the county health department so thank you for that i did have one question though um you said i guess when you announced this to elementary families that you gave them a choice again if they wanted to remain in virtual learning or go to responsive learning i'm just wondering how did that work with staffing were and were teachers given a choice again or how did you work which ones were we're going to do virtual learning versus responsive learning if those numbers matched up or not so all of our staff is are staying in their same spot so if teachers were in learning at home they're staying at learning at

054home and um and then the staff who was in responsive they're coming back into the classrooms and so um there when we put that out there we told families that if you were going to change that would mean that you would have a different teacher placement and so once we went through it all um we let people know that and our trump building principles have communicated that those changes and so we didn't have to switch staffing the other we have had to add additional interns which i think is a good investment to support students uh in different ways and we might have some additional staffing changes later on but right now the staff stayed in their same spots okay great thanks gary did you have something i think i saw your hand um thanks for

055the update on all this sean i'm sure i'm not the only one who's gotten very specific questions about um elementary middle and high school level uh building questions so i just want to talk a little bit about our ask the question how do you want us to direct those those questions when people ask about what's going to happen in this school building and when what's what's the best way to to to push them to the right source of information on those things because there have been questions including some from within my own family that i haven't known the answers to so i want to make sure i'm giving people accurate information so i would start with the building principle and have them contact the building principal first um but they're they're welcome to also i

056would start with the building principle and the building principle will then if they don't have the answer to something they will definitely reach out to us to get that answer so i think that's the best place to start i feel right now with our elementaries and since we are starting them we have been dedicating a lot of time to our building leaders in our elementary level and so i feel like they will be very capable of answering any question um when we're coming to middle school and high school will we still have some unanswered questions that we still need to work on and um we will support them as well and um but yeah i would start with the building principle okay thank you jason did you have something um question for you sean just

057wanted to want to understand when we when we when we're looking at the information like the statistics from the cdc how much navigating have you had to do knowing that um that at the federal level there's been conversations about suppressing information about statistics and information that comes out about covet um have you had to consider that yeah and so it's interesting and i appreciate the question because it's we've had to become experts in areas that we have not been able to have ever been experts in and and so we have to trust the people that are in our community that are the trusted so community supports like the st louis public health department and so we know that there's also people who question some of the data that comes back is it reliable i think

058that one of the things that's been really helpful is that we've been able to get the support of other medical experts who have been able to create dashboards for us so we have people from mercy hospital um who are helping us develop dashboards for not only just for clayton but for everyone uh in st louis county so like this week we got a new tool that we can use that is giving us some more up-to-date information and that's the thing is we have to trust the data that we're getting and the recommendations from experts but then it's our responsibility to take that data and determine if this is the best thing for us and so after looking at the comparisons with the the new cdc indicators and the thresholds that they have developed for risk

059and looking at the data in our community we felt confident about our elementary and family center um but yeah i hear what you're saying about the reliability of the data but um i feel very confident that we're getting it from multiple sources and trying to look at that integrated reliability with it so josh yeah i just thought that there might be some families out there who might have a question about that same thing but i think uh like you just said the fact that you got a mix of different resources you you can go to locally here that you're not just using one uh particular um data set so yeah appreciate that man and good working also just put out a new dashboard as well so we have that as another resource that just happened

060this week as well good work our return to learn website we're putting all the data on there as well as our dashboard for our us personally because from now now that we're starting a lot of our data is going to be informed by what's happening in our schools so if we're seeing something in terms of cases in a school we're going to ask ourselves why and then what are we going to do about it and then if we have to make a decision about um going into a different phase but um so that's we're really going to be looking at our local data very closely thanks kim or amy or caitlyn any questions no i great work sean with you and your team and uh like i just echo what everybody else has said especially

061david that there's no not easy to make any of these decisions and sounds like you guys are looking at all of the optionalities um have you guys considered um uh like any de-densification strategies in terms of arrivals and dismissal times for students especially with some of the smaller um elementary schools as are all students arriving when all the student i know you're staggering how you're starting up well does everybody arrive at school at the same time and leave school at the same time so that they are cognizant of that and what they've done is um they have designated spots for students to come in certain certain doors and then also certain stairwells that they're going to be using students will be we won't be having the like the normal openings that we've had the students

062will be able to trickle in but using certain um certain built st certain areas the thing that's going to be difficult for us is that our parents are used to coming into the buildings all the time and that we're not gonna be able to do that and so we're gonna have to uh limit that so we don't have as many people in the building um but yeah our building principles and that's part of those orientations and what communication is coming from the principles about what what doors to come in and what time great and how how in general do you feel like the teachers are feeling so i would say that um there's obviously as i said there's there's fears and what we what we have to do is make sure that we're calling those

063fears as much as possible by putting in the risk mitigation measures um and you know i i'm hoping that by time students are back in and we're seeing what how the procedures are are working um they'll feel better about it but i i wouldn't i mean the reality is people are scared and i have to recognize that um and try to make sure we're doing everything possible to do everything to mitigate those risks and have people know the procedures and also recognize that people do have fears and um so i was going to say that when you're talking about thanks what i would say anyone who's watching this or anybody who's anybody on the board writing a thank you card to our teachers our teachers have been the true heroes through this whole thing we

064the administration's been working to do the setups and get instructures in place but it's our teachers who are daily on the daily basis teaching like this every single day and i i i a small note to our teachers goes a long way so i would just put that out there to the public yeah and and i want to reinforce what you said earlier about how the um the distance learning so far since the start of school year i from our perspective has been incredible and night and day from the experience in the spring so thank you to all of my kids teachers and all the teachers in the district amy or caitlin anything caitlin go ahead thank you i know the students are very appreciative of the administration and the teachers work i had a

065question if we're still looking at an eight to three school schedule or a nine to two school schedule so for the high school it will be a um we're still working on the schedule actually and and so it will be more when the students get back i do know that it will be a blocked schedule similar to what you're doing right now so we can um minimize the amount of transitions in the hallways um so and melina i don't know if you're there if we if the schedule i think we went back to uh yeah we'll we will be on a black schedule but we're looking at going back to more traditional start and stop time at the secondary level when we start to transition back in thank you melina thanks and amy did you

066have anything sorry about that no i mean just thank you sean and team for all of your hard work and um i will echo what others have said that it's um for us it's been a really positive experience and my kids are happy and thriving and um they are um the teachers have been wonderful so um it's been tough for the you know all around on a bunch of different levels but we we we certainly appreciate all your efforts and i think we do have to be cognizant of our students because this is going to be very different they haven't been in a classroom environment for over six months and so when we get back to it it's there's going to be some adjustments and we're also going to be mindful of their emotional level

067um during this transition and so we will be cognizant of that at school but also want our parents to be cognizant of that as well sean and i will say um i will add my thanks to to to you and the staff um to a great job i think one of the questions that i continue to hear and i just think it'd be good for you to answer it for the public is the utilization of outdoor spaces we've read articles about what other schools are doing with outdoor spaces so i'm just wondering what's the thinking i know it's getting colder and that gets harder but can you speak a little bit just to that um utilization of outdoor spaces yes so we have um we have encouraged um we've actually for the elementary level built

068in more times for students to get outside and so it's not necessarily recess but we're calling it like outside inquiry and so we're building it into the schedule so that way it can be used for recess or it could be used for class time and then our schools are also designating spaces that are in in their areas that they can sign up so um so that way we're trying to maintain our social distancing and staying with our class pods but um but there's time like for example at merrimack they have they designated spots throughout the campus and even closed off a back part of the back um back of the school like where the street circle is to and and those spots are designated where teachers can go onto a google doc and be able

069to sign up for going outside and so um so we are looking at look at outdoor spaces um we've tried to look at whether or not tents would be necessarily some of our places some of the schools have overhangs um but we have also trying to protect our space too by you know for recess as well because we have we still want to have recess we want to take up all the recessed space for uh with tenth so i feel like what we'll do is start the way we're starting and and then if we need to add additional type of like those kinds of things like tents we might consider that later on down the road thank you um and again thank you for your report so i think we are going to move on

070caitlyn to you to the student board rep update yeah hello everyone thank you for having me today so i will start off with talking about how tests and quizzes are currently being taken at the high school so increasingly teachers are turning more toward project-based assessments to evaluate students like for example in my math class we were given some questions and we had some creative freedom to be able to decide what we wanted to do with the questions uh such as video format presentation format or like writing and answering the questions in our own test format also teachers are turning towards open note checks that are either taken asynchronously or synchronously and this is usually through google forms or math has also been using a program called edulastic for specific equations to be input online and

071for the tests that are not open note these are usually taken on zoom during the class period with cameras on and microphones on mute with the cameras sometimes facing a little bit downward so that the teachers can see the students desks and in addition if the tests are closed note then some of the classes will require that chromebooks have a lockdown browser and moving on to music department classes the music department has had an especially unique time trying to move online it's very unconventional so the way that music teachers have been doing it is that for assignments and assessments these are usually in playing test form when recordings are sent through google classroom this is usually done through audio recordings or a program called screencastify so that the teachers can also like see students fingerings

072on the instrument and group band and orchestra music is being played on mute but it's followed by the teacher having a metronome in the room and an assigned player so that the students can follow along and there are also breakout rooms with individual practice time where the students can either choose their music or the teacher will assign music and then pop into the different breakout rooms have the student play for them and then give feedback and on the side of the district advisory council we have established the high school district advisory council we've been meeting once a week two once every two weeks and we have also reached out to the seventh and eighth graders who were recommended by teachers to be part of the middle school or why downs district advisory council thank you

073appreciate it so we are going to move on to we have two study items and information items some action items we've got a little bit of everything in this meeting and so our first study item is 10.01 and it's a first reading of policy aca which is around sexual harassment so um robin and tony you guys are up thank you joe good evening everyone um as joe just mentioned tonight is the first reading for policy aca and policy aca is related to sexual harassment under title ix so while title ix is more popular popularly known for expanding athletic opportunities for female students the u.s supreme court has found that public school districts violate title ix if they are deliberately indifferent to known acts of sexual harassment in the district's programs and activities also alleged victims

074of sexual harassment also referred to as the complainants can sue school districts under title ix for damages if the harassment occurs while the district exercises significant control over the alleged harasser and the context in which the alleged sexual harassment occurs based on some growing concern regarding sexual harassment in education particularly higher education the us department of education issued some new regulations in 2020 that prohibits school districts from disciplining an employee or a student accused of sexual harassment prior to the completion of a detailed grievance process so policy aca provides the required grievance process outlined in the u.s department of education regulations to help answer some of the questions that you might have this evening we've invited michelle basie from two with keaney to help support the answering of some of those questions as this new

075policy is quite complex and it requires us to change some of the procedures that we have previously had in place as it relates to sexual harassment investigations great thank you um i think i'm just going to call on folks so we can just go down you know just to be more efficient so i'm going to call on people as i see them on him or her on my screen which means kim you're at the top left so do you have any questions no i actually um talked with amy a little bit about this before the meeting so i'm going to defer my questions to the counselor on the board thank you gotcha thanks david how about you do you have any questions no no i'm in the same boat okay all right counselor ruben do

076you have any questions um so um i mean i i guess the first thing is that you know obviously this policy is a pretty it's a different interpretation of of sexual harassment and that they're it's a very narrow they're changing it so that um it's the standard is or it's just so severe pervasive and objectively offensive so um that is uh you know for for me i would rather there be a lesser standard than that that to me seems to indicate that you know if it's just one instance then that doesn't qualify as a violation under title nine so i guess um you know i i i understand that we we need to adopt this in order to retain our federal funding but i guess most importantly i mean we still have that policy ac

077and how are we interpreting ac in connection with this policy aca and so so i guess like if we have more stringent requirements in policy ac um does that somehow affect our federal funding um so that's my first question so the title ix regulations um contain the specific definition of sexual harassment that appears in this policy um and it does reference the severe uh pervasive it there are it's kind of a continuum right so there are there there may be an instance where conduct is so severe that it is that one incident could could be enough to fall under this policy but more more broadly i think what you point out about policy ac is correct so policy ac remains um is still in effect and so what would happen is if when you get

078a complaint of sexual harassment um the first step would be determining does it allege something that falls under this policy and if so this specific set of procedures applies if it does not then your policy ac if it's if it's lesser and policy ac has always prohibited conduct that may be less than what constitutes illegal harassment right um you would still follow your procedures under policy ac so lester would still be prohibited it's just this specific set of regulations is specific under the right you know to what they have defined as sexual harassment in the in the regulations but any time a sexual harassment plan is brought don't we sort of have to assume that uh it would be oh it could rise to the level of a title ix claim and investigate it in

079that way and then therefore do you know what i'm saying how do you especially with this new compliant you know we i don't know compliance officer got that's i mean that's a lot of burden on him and how do you how does somebody make a claim in us as a district do we just say you know what we're going to assume that this isn't a title 9 claim and we're just going to proceed under policy ac i think it's going to depend on lot on what this specific allegation is and and a determination is going to have to be made at the beginning and yes if it possibly falls under this policy then it would likely need to be investigated under this policy you may get a complaint that that just clearly does not fall

080within the definition or where clearly it just we may still want to address the conduct as a district but it clearly is not under this um this specific procedure i don't know i mean there's a lot of lawsuits that have that have been filed that are challenging it so it's i think it's something that we want to follow those lawsuits and stay abreast of it for sure amy other questions um this policy does pretty it does pretty closely track the language of the regulations okay did you have other questions amy or no no keep going okay caitlin did you have any questions no questions thank you jason any questions um i mean yeah i mean just you know reading the policy kind of you know it was kind of odd that it was kind of

081repealing some things that uh that were actually helpful for victims um it gives a lot of power to the schools um there are a few questions i have i can't i wrote them down in my car so um i don't have any questions at the moment thanks stacey any questions um no my my notes kind of um mirrored amy's that that phrase about it being severe or pervasive just seemed so subjective to me and i just i wasn't comfortable with how you determined that but you kind of answered that with when you talked to amy and referenced policy ac so thanks thank you stacy and councillor pearson not to be uh you know um our other counselor questions thanks joe i i guess um michelle i guess if this is um maybe a way that

082we could focus the the question i mean it seemed like from the summary which i'm sure you helped us with um the the reason for this change is um and tell me if i'm wrong about this but the way i read this kind of summary was that the reason for needing to change this policy was because of new guidance issued by the u.s department of education that is prohibiting us from disciplining employees accused of this without this grievance process like if unless i miss something that's the whole reason this is on our agenda tonight is that right the department of education issued new regulations um in may that went into it that became effective in august that set forth new procedures for the investigation and determinations related to sexual harassment under title ix as they

083relate both to student on student sexual harassment and employee on student sexual harassment as well as employee on employee sexual harassment so and and this policy um which is drafted by the missouri school boards association is in response to those regulations and the procedures in this policy track the requirements of of those regulations so previously most of the title ix guidance from the department of education was issued pursuant to just dear colleague letters so guidance right um and it changed over the years um this these actually went through the uh you know rule making procedures and our formal regulations okay so i inadvertently used the the term guidance instead of regulations it sounds like i actually hit on something there but that's actually it's actually a significant change in title ix and how title ix

084has been um treated throughout throughout the years so there's been a lot of back and forth in prior years depending on you know the administered you know governmental administration at the time with respect to title ix in um guidance and then now this is actually these are actually regulations um and then it is you know a lot of the preamble information in the regulations does address um it certainly addresses you know ensuring that victims rights are protected but it also addresses this idea of due process for those who are accused of sexual harassment and so it these regulations according to the department of education are meant to balance those um those two issues okay so i'm sure you can probably i'll take a crack at it but you'll probably do a much better job of

085cleaning up my explanation of it as to why that's important in terms of when a government agency a federal government agency issues regulations the ability to change or modify that and the timing that that takes is very different from informal guidance or your colleague letters or those kinds of things so this has a this has a more lasting impact in terms of how districts like ours have to address this um like kind of on the ground is that my summarizing that well that is correct you know barring um you know as mentioned there have been lawsuits challenging the regulation so barring some type of court order um you know about the enforceability of of the regulations then yes this has gone through a much more the regulations are um are binding and um much harder

086to change than just issuing a new dear colleague letter um and like i said and this this policy is it really the regulations are pretty um pretty detailed um and elaborate with respect to the definitions of sexual harassment uh the different roles that um institutions have to have um who can play those roles and the investigation procedures um appeal processes and this policy basically just tracks the language of those regulations thank you appreciate your explanation and expertise on this of course so can i just say one more thing go ahead follow-up question sorry um so is cameron he's going to be our designated individual that's going to do the investigations he would be cameron would be the title 9 coordinator so he would certainly be the one doing investigations he would be the one that

087would uh receive the title nine complaint and then help determine if that was indeed um title ix or if we maybe need to pursue under ac and then are we going to um who's going to be the decision maker then that's referenced in the policy i think i mean i it would be great it seems to me like it should be an attorney right now what we were thinking and what was recommended to us is that robin would be the decision maker typically for anything that was student related and i would be the decision maker typically for something that was staff related and then we also have a couple different options available to us as to who serves as the investigator um you know the investigator whoever is the investigator could also possibly be the

088coordinator but we are looking at up the other options which would be to have an outside person be the investigator so that could include looking at a law firm to conduct an investigation we could look at using a retired administrator to play that role or train people internally like other school building based administrators to play that role i mean okay so michelle what do you think about having an attorney acting as the decision maker as opposed to exposing robin or or uh our own people to well certainly i think i think that all the whole process can be done in consultation with and with an attorney um i i i do think that there might be situations in which um the um you might out you might have an external investigation um where that might

089be appropriate depending on the the nature of the allegations but generally that would be the fact-finding um sort of sort of process and then um you know it is typically we've not when when doing obviously we we assist with all sorts of investigations and sometimes do investigations for school districts um but typically ultimately it is the institution that makes the decision um about you know whether a violation has occurred we can certainly look at whether it would be appropriate for um you know an outside attorney to um do that i think ultimately the district would want to still though be comfortable with that decision i'm not sure you want to give up that that control either it seems like when going back to so this is great so the institution can now make a decision

090this is very subjective i mean someone can literally argue whether or not it was real or true or not um which is exactly what um the current administration and betsy devos wanted so it's very complicated for for for for someone who is um you know a victim here to say that say something happened to him and then we have to we have to make that decision we need to put the onuses on us to make the decision or or better administration that is uh in particular rob cameron and uh tony to make it to make a ruling on whether or not it is deemed a certain level i think that's tough i think this is a bad situation and then the downside is michelle is that we got to accept it right like we got

091to accept it i mean there's no other way around it right the regulations do require um the adoption of a policy that is consistent with the regulations which which includes the language that is that is being proposed um it's certainly um it i do there is you know there there is a requirement um that right off right away right when there is a complaint um of sexual harassment whether or not the um complainant or the alleged victim wants to file a formal complaint or not um and proceed with an investigation or not um supportive measures the district can and and is required to implement what what they call supportive measures um for both the alleged victim and the alleged respondent to make sure that that both parties continue to receive equal access to to the

092education so there are certainly um the district can certainly take steps to make sure that that as as you mentioned the concern for the victims that that um victims you know feel supported feel feel safe can can continue to access the educational environment but but the procedure is certainly going to be um different going forward way different very different just say the least i'm just thinking about like if if um i'm just saying like this is a this is a this is a tough situation to be in if if you're a woman and you make a claim and of course now men harassment happens to them as well so i'm not saying this is excluding men or others right people who uh identify something different but i'm saying women if women make a claim it's

093easily i can argue the fact that i was like someone that one of the things that one of the uh items read that um like the perpetrator the alleged perpetrator can reach out through a note i think it is and you can find out who that person is who made the claim i mean it puts the per it puts the victim in a messed up situation um it's like why would i want to come forward and say anything anyways it is what it is yeah so any other um questions or comments i mean i i will say i agree this this uh does not seem like a very uh victim-friendly uh procedure uh that has been handed to us but i'm not sure we have um unfortunately i don't think we have much choice one

094one more thing just going back to cameron so cameron now has a full plate i mean fate was our plate was already full but now it's going to be even more full was this was this by design also that when we hired him and he would be taking this over sean taking this uh this responsibility on no so basically when um we were looking at what would be the best process to use when we're thinking about um the decision maker so it's like we were trying to think about who else could then make that decision about whether or not this is going to be investigated by a student end or the teacher end and and um so it's the work is really going to be done by tony and robin but cameron is going to

095be the first person who's going to be able to be the um and i forgot the term title coordinator the coordinator and so um so it was a way for us to make sure that we were covering all of the roles that were necessary as part of this um i'm hoping that this is not going to be something that's going to take up a ton of his time because we're hoping that we're not going to be having claims like this i mean i'm hoping that this is far and few between that we'd have to deal with these investigations um but yeah i that that was our best thinking in terms of having cameron be that coordinator who then could uh then delegate that to robin and tony as the investigators okay thank you robin thank

096you tony thank you michelle um we are going to move on to our next study item which is 10.02 the first reading of policy gbad which is telework and i guess tony that's you yes all right so good evening so policy being reviewed tonight is the first rate of policy gbad telework and this is a new policy for consideration telework became the expectation suddenly during coven 19 pandemic in anticipation of more virtual classes and with new technology more employees may be able to work remotely in the future this policy outlines the expectations that teleworking employees will be held to the same expectations as other employees and are expected to follow all the district policies procedures and supervisor directives this policy is not required but is recommended thank you tony so i'm actually going to go

097in reverse order which means gary you're first you caught me off guard a little bit but i don't think i have any uh any questions even with more time to stall on this one great thank you stacey any questions i did but i can't find my notes right now i'm sorry can you come back to me hold on jason any questions no not at the moment okay thanks caitlyn any questions no okay thank you amy any questions no thank you david any questions no thank you thank you kim any questions no questions but i can already see the end of snow days in our future yep um stacy want to come back coming back to you for questions that's so funny kim that was what i wrote in my notes um were will this affect

098um days off like that and and and then how moving forward does that then in turn affect um you know our instructional minutes and things that were required to go for the for the state yeah it's a great question stacey and i think this type of policy could allow us to look at snow days differently but it doesn't necessarily mean that would drive the decision for um snow days to be all teleworking or that sort of model i think that'd be a different conversation gotcha um stacy any other questions no thanks okay and jason just coming back to you you said you'd no questions for them but still no questions no no not yet no okay all right thank you tony we appreciate it um so we are going to move on to uh our

099information item which is 11.01 it's the 2020 2021 curriculum review cycle and i might just note that this is really meant to be an information item so melania's going to share with us kind of um her thinking about the process this is not the curriculum itself it's thinking about the process so melina thank you joe good evening so we are starting a new curriculum review cycle and the groups that are up within the the to yourself study are math science and then engineering and because we share a coordinator engineering has a coordinator who's uh he's in charge of engineering as well as all of career and technical ed um he's often times in a in a cycle with the board that's sort of never ending um so we decided to put him to put all

100cte together with engineering as opposed to to breaking engineering out so there have not been any real substantive changes to the process in more than seven years um and so because this new group is starting through the process we thought this might be a good time to look at making some changes we wanted to make sure to honor the board's role and acknowledge that we were devoting a lot of meeting time to curriculum and so the new process would still allow the board to stay informed with the trends in curriculum and our work to constantly study and make change while not taking up too much meeting time so some of the highlighted changes that we're looking at in refining our process is a more intensive study phase so really thinking about the documents that guide

101our work within the district so the principles of teaching and learning the strategic plan the profile of the graduate your anti-bias anti-racism resolution as well as the presuppositions that we're working on doing crosswalks with those to cast a critical eye on where we meet up with district philosophies and where we need to improve within the different content areas looking to add a stronger voice from stakeholders so parents students and staff so looking at ways to what are the kinds of questions that we want to ask the kinds of information that we want to gather to help influence our study then identifying our driving questions and informing ourselves through literature practices and successes of others so studying what others are doing to be able to know how that informs us so all of that information would

102then help us to develop our goals plan our professional development plan and then make change within each of our content areas so in order to do all of this most of our work would take place within our curriculum committee so using our staff to study and then looking to to get voices within that what had typically looked like two instances where each coordinator would come to the board table would look like one written report to the board early in the process as a memo and then a final report as an informational item in the spring of the second year before we adopt our our um our long-range goals um other than that uh i feel like the things that i outlined for you in the in the executive summary sort of give you a pretty

103good idea of the the steps that we're looking to take within the process awesome thank you melania so i mean again this is an information item and we thought that uh because we have historically spent so much time or at least in the last few years on curriculum and melania's kind of coming up with another process we wanted to give um you know the board a heads up and i i will say thank you melana i think it's um i think it looks good it's um and i think it will give us both the opportunity to engage as you say but also give us some space for some other things all right um on our agendas too which is um is good so um does anybody have any burning questions um because really again this

104is really just a heads up this is you know more to come here any burning questions from elena or can we move to the next thing okay thank you melania appreciate it thank you um so we have three action items tonight i said we've got a smorgasbord of a little everything um in this meeting so our first action item is 12.01 it's the 2021 employee benefit plan renewal so gary can i um say something before you go into that um mary jo um noticed something on the write-up before we go into this it was a rounding mistake and i wanted her to just to point that out before the we go for an approval i just want to i don't think it's going to be a significant change but mary jo if i wanted you

105to explain it before uh the motion went forward okay yep we were updating the benefit website where employees actually enroll because we get to start working on it once this gets approved and we notice it's actually set up through a formula and there was still an override in it from last year that we didn't take out and so the narrow network option so there's two different plans the narrow network option had an eight dollar basically rounding here that ran through every calculation um because the starting point was off and so um we fixed it and it only changes it slightly because there's only like 30 people enrolled in that plan and so it's less than like fifteen hundred dollars for the entire year or difference so but we just wanted the correct rates approved because

106if they're not approved we can't move forward so do you do so the correct rates are but they're not in the action item but so you um how are you it approves it approves the attachment and so it's in the attachment correctly so but it doesn't change any of the percentages because it was so minimal so you know it's a two less than two thousand dollar change on a four million dollar budget item so it's extremely immaterial [Music] okay thank you awesome so gary do you want to uh read the go ahead and read the uh action item motion please sure 12.01 i move that the board of education approve the carrier recommendations and respective rates representing an overall increase of 3.8 percent for the 2021 calendar year as presented and authorized administration to negotiate

107and execute contracts for the same second okay it's been moved and seconded any comments or questions all right all in favor any opposed okay passes unanimously thank you um 12.02 is the 2020 2021 budget revision 12.02 i moved that the board of education approved the 2020 2021 budget revision requesting a 555 300 500 555 300 000 increase to the 2020 2021 capital fund operating spen expense for the installation of a needlepoint bipolar ionization system and a seven 43 dollar increase to the 2020 2021 capital fund operating revenue for the reimbursement of the center of clayton's portion second okay it's been moved and seconded any comments or questions on this one go ahead gary yep um so uh just uh i guess maybe an opportunity for uh staff input on this we have had some some

108questions about um this kind of equipment and things that are being done all over indoor spaces to address indoor air quality and um i don't know if there's this would be a good time for addressing some of those questions that have come up on this particular technology and thing that we're we're buying here to address that but i just want to at least acknowledge that that's been something that we've gotten some questions about mary jo you want to speak to that or sean you want to speak to that one or two yeah i was gonna ask mary jo to speak to it in terms of um having a little bit more knowledge about it but basically it is another layer of protection that we're looking to improve air indoor air quality um i'm not i'm

109not exactly sure about all the ins and outs about how it works but i i'll defer to mary jo to talk a little bit more about that um so there's been a couple questions um a lot of it has to do with either air filters or opening up the the windows and so you know what and then versus using this system and so we we're looking at the district as a whole and not all the windows can be open replacing an air filter in an hoac system is not as simple as just saying we want a hepa filter within a system so any system has to be designed when you think of it as a commercial grade system like the ones that we have and then we also have so many extensions in our buildings

110that like captain alone has seven different units in it and y down as a whole only has seven because white on was built at one time where captain can continue to have additions on it so um you can't just change a filter into a different filter the filter has to be designed for the system and so we do have very high quality um uh filters in our systems and the systems are designed to maximize outdoor intake as well as managing the temperature and humidity because if you bring in too much outdoor air you will get too much humidity which will cause mold and will do and make the building and its occupants uncomfortable so the needlepoint bipolar ionization system that will be attached to the existing hvac system converts every the charged at or converts

111um the air into charged atoms and then they send it back out to cluster around microparticles and um basically it deactivates harmful substances like airborne mold bacteria allergens viruses um so they're charged atoms and they also attach to expel breath droplets and dust particles that can transport viruses um it can also enlarge them a large different substances so that they're more easily caught in the filtration system then so it it also actually increases the efficiency of the air filter so there's lots of positives with it um one of the negatives that people have gotten some comments about is related to ozone levels and so there's two different types of bipolar ionization systems there's a corona discharge system and then a bipolar the needlepoint bipolar ionization and that's we only bid the needlepoint bipolar ionization system

112because this system does not create uh harmful levels of ozone or off-gassing which is another issue so this system actually reduces off-gassing and off-gassing is basically the smell if you think of a new car smell so any type of manufactured items a foam mattress or anything like that it helps they're called volatile organic compounds and it helps reduce those scents um and other smells that might come into it it won't eliminate them that'll help reduce them um but it also the newer needlepoint um it uh their modules are they've been upgraded and in 2017 there's been ozone testing and that it's a know it's a ul 867 whatever that means i'm not the expert on that i just know which one it is but basically it minimizes it to 0.05 parts per million of volume

113which is an acceptable uh level of ozone that is naturally in the air to begin with so this system does not create any ozone and it also helps eliminate off-gassing which was the concern with some of the comments that we had received i mean just to follow up mary jo if that's okay um i guess in the overall context of um the topic of how are we addressing the quality of our air inside our buildings i heard you mention a number of things that may have been suggested in different contexts that we we may or may not be able to do but just in the focus of the action item that's in front of us like this actual purchase this system um it seems like the concerns are does it actually do something that's beneficial

114and does it create some kind of not beneficial byproduct like the the off-gassing or or whatever whatever else it might be um i so i just want to make sure that we're thinking about those things in the context of this purchase it's obviously very large purchase and it's off our budget so are you i mean just just to focus it that way i don't want to at all pretend that i understand anything about how this technology works but i do want everybody who ultimately has to help pay for this to understand that we've gone through the process of evaluating what this product is that we're purchasing and why it's going to do something that's good for us does that make sense can i add on to that girl that's a good question i think last

115time when you brought it up we talked about i was like does this stuff really work it reminds me of a time when um these guys were selling these cigar filter things that i would put in my this shop that i had come to find out it didn't really work there was no exhaust i paid 5 000 for that for me that was a lot so i guess my question is though is you know is there any proof that this stuff works yeah and and you know you can probably always find one study that'll um you know contradict a different study but there hasn't been any studies that said um they haven't worked the studies basically shows that there's an increased level of ozone in the air and those are on the older models not

116on the newer ones and this technology is being used in hospitals and airports in order to um improve the air quality and so they're tested at night like 99 percent to kill the sars virus and the code virus and various viruses where the hepa filters systems or any type of air filtration systems they have to be in an enclosed environment so if you start inviting in outside air by opening a window or if the door gets opened and it's no longer those systems have to be set for the spaces that they're in so if the size of the space changes by a door opening or a window opening then it's no longer as effective as what it states so if those hepa filters state that they would be 99 effective and you change the flow

117of the air in the room it actually lessens the effectiveness of that so every system that you can look at you can find positives and negatives in um however this system the only negative that they're talking about is the ozone and it is not associated with this system hey look mary jo i'd like to comment too as well i i think there is there is one by-product on the needlepoint side which it just comes into your hvac management that you have a tendency to have an increased carbon dioxide output and carbon dioxide's interesting because it's not actually something that's measured as a as an air quality metric by the the governing body that that does you know in inside air quality testing um you know and and i think mary jo touched on it but

118you know about three years ago we retrofitted all of our systems to have a you know essentially a sensor computerized control that pulls in outside air to strike a balance between fresh air and recycled air to cut down on co2 mitigate manage mold mildew type challenges so um when these things started going into place and by the way these have been around for about 18 years and this in this method right the the corona version is very old this has been around for a long time it's in medical facilities so there's actually a pretty healthy amount of data behind it but one of the byproducts is is it increa it improves air quality to the point where you naturally might be inclined to adjust to that system to bring in less outside air because bringing

119in outside air costs money because we have to bring it in and condition it to match the temperature and then introduce it so the less outside air you bring in the cheaper it is to run this gives you a desire to decrease that outside air input but you have to kind of fight that urge because you want to make sure that you maintain your co2 levels just so that we don't have you know any kind of a question around the co2 level so i only bring it up because there are some there are some data points floating around on um you know reputable i i say reputable i'd say engineering blogs as opposed to trade you know or or you know other weirdo websites um that that talk about this because you know when i

120when i dug into this what i wanted to avoid is a situation where we jump into a green cleaner that doesn't kill flu you know i'm i'm a you know i'm gonna bring back the bleach guy and you know when i looked at this i wanted to make sure that it actually works to jason's point that it's not a non-exhausting cigar filter um but the company that makes this is gps and they've actually got an independent study finally that that shows that they knock out 99.4 percent of coronavirus in the air now like anything the longer it runs the more it kills the idea here is that it populates the air in in over time it brings it down so it's not as bug zapper it doesn't happen overnight but if we have the air

121conditioning systems running 30 or 45 minutes before kids show up and we have them running throughout the day we're going to see the efficacy start to go up on a system like this and by a nice healthy byproduct of that is it also knocks down flu it knocks down all pathogens so um and it actually even reduces maintenance cost on the equipment over the long run so i know this is probably more than you cared about gary but i i've got i've got eyeballs deep into this and um it's actually it's a pretty fascinating technology and i um you know i think it's probably the best we could do short of like a full rip and replace and that's just you know i don't think that's a value-driven activity i guess is the best way

122i can say that keep in mind we did replace both hvac systems at glenridge and merrimack this summer great um awesome information any other questions or comments okay we got a motion on the floor so um all in favor aye aye any opposed all right it passes unanimously and um i need to recuse myself from the next one so i'm gonna leave the meeting and amy it's yours for a second here and you can tell me when i need to come back okay all right this is we are on 12.03 the part-time temporary employment for sarah miller gary can i get a motion please 12.03 i move that the board of education approved the part-time temporary employment report as submitted second promotion are there any comments all in favor aye aye aye motion passes unanimously

123i texted joe he should be back in a few seconds okay um so we are now moving on to the uh consent agenda so um gary do we have a motion for that we do 13.01 i move that the board of education approved the consent agenda items 13.02 through 13.10 second it's been moved and seconded any comments or questions all right all in favor aye aye any opposed okay it passes unanimously great thank you um so we are then moving on to i'm going to um the uh our board communication right oh yeah well nope sorry i missed one our public comment so do we have any public comment tonight uh yes we have one public comment and that comment is from becky patel and she writes can you address why public comment was moved

124to the end of the meeting our board members sent comments in advance of the meeting i request that the boe modify the comment policy under covid to allow for the public to actually speak in their own voices during the public comment portion of the meetings this capability is available on zoom webinar and other platforms i've used as both a panelist and attendee i'd like to hear open board discussion about the influence of recent petitions from our community student-led teacher-led and parent-led since passing the resolution against racism in our district what have board members done to personally learn more about how to be anti-racist that's the end of her comment all right thanks chris so um so now we are moving on to uh board communications does um anybody have any board communications stacy i do

125um so for one thing i attended my first um special school district meeting as our district our board representative and um it was kind of an orientation for all the new ones so um not major news there but um they did want all the board members to communicate to the community that um before school started they held town hall meetings with all the parents of kids that are services serviced by special school district different for each school and that they will be voting on a strategic plan soon and the goals will revolve around student performance workforce excellence engagement with the community and equity so that's one and secondly i um i attended the msba conference last weekend and i went to a handful of sessions but i just wanted to mention like a couple of

126the um big ones was i went to here and i don't know if any of you went also but i went to hear dr robert redfield speak he's the head of the cdc which i thought was first of all really cool that they got him there but um his his main message is to school districts that i were takeaways for me and most of most of what he's suggesting we are doing but um was to not overreact when we have positive cases as a school district an administration and as a board to not overreact because fear can be very contagious and create a lot of uncertainty he also suggested that school districts develop ahead of time a proper response when that happens and and how we're going to inform our school communities um and he

127reiterated of course as the head of the cdc that you know cdc is data driven so that is how they make their decisions and another um session i went to was about hiring a superintendent and it was led by the um rockwood school district school board and their superintendent dr miles sat on the panel as well i would say some highlights for me in that session were that it was interesting to hear actually from the superintendent's point of view how the process went um he said first of all he appreciated that their board had a unanimous vote a 7-0 vote in hiring him that it not only showed the community that um the board was aligned but as a candidate he felt um very supportive knowing that the board was aligned and wanting him and

128rockwood had also just completed a strategic plan when they hired him and dr miles um really actually appreciated that which um i know we've talked about a little but he felt like as a new superintendent that new strategic plan informed his growth plan and his initial goals that he has for himself so he welcomed coming into the job with a new strategic plan so there was a lot more said there but those were a couple highlights that i took away from it that i wanted to share great thank you any other um commit to any other board committee reports yeah sean and i both attended the clayton education foundation meeting on when was that shawn september 15th i believe um and they are doing a lot of great things this year i think they've received

129their third installment of the fifty two hundred fifty thousand dollars and grant which is 50 000 a year so they're well capitalized and funded for their programming for the year um they are also looking at some innovative things um as far as uh using varsity tutors and um and developing some new programs which will be which could result in some pretty exciting partnerships for the school district um what else shawn am i missing um their next meetings in november um their hall of fame ceremony i believe is scheduled for early may but there'll be plenty of updates between now and then sean anything else yeah and they also were going to postpone the um with the teacher grants and and move those um to later in the year so that way we can better um

130get those and then also evaluate them and and so they they but they're not going to not do them this year they're still going to have them but they're just pushing them off um not having them normally they normally do it during this time of the year and so we're moving to spring yeah and they're also partnering very closely i'm working on a project outside the board with them and the um clayton pto council for to fund an annual food drive so they are um they're getting involved in a lot of different areas and uh like i said i believe they're a really good partner for our school district and continue to be a good partner going forward yeah and we are um and caitlyn is she and another student at clayton high school are

131leading a digital divide initiative in our district and um we you know the the clayton education foundation can be a conduit for helping look at some of the um some of the plans that they have and so they've been open to that conversation as well so um it's really it's amazing when we're at those meetings how many people are to attend those meetings and are invested in doing such amazing things for the district it's it's pretty incredible and you know the other thing i thought was really nice is that they had thank you cards from students who were able to attend camps this past summer and how they that experience impacted them so i just think that the foundation does some things that are really innovative and also gives students opportunities they wouldn't normally have

132yep agreed that's awesome any other board reports okay do we have a motion to adjourn i move that the board of education adjourn second all in favor aye aye any opposed all right we're adjourned thank you all have a good night yeah