09092020 Board of Education Meeting

001tonight take a minute this might take a minute or two as well if i can find it okay we are live we are live streaming okay um so we want to uh start the meeting and again um say that adequate notice has been given i want to say um before we start the pledge just that we're sorry we're starting a little bit late and that there are a number of folks who um are having zoom issues tonight so hopefully if people come in or out we'll just we'll just work with it as we need to um so i see the flag and uh in back of sean so we're gonna start with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america america and to the republic for which

002he stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty liberty and justice wrong okay um thanks everybody um you know typically we would go to uh recognizing our own and this would be if we were meeting in person just a reminder this would be a joint meeting with the city um however we're not um having a joint meeting with the city uh today we are gonna have later a um a presentation by patty deforest but um so we're we're actually moving uh straight to uh superintendent um update so sean okay thank you joe well good evening everyone um and again we start we're we apologize to the community uh since we were delayed a little bit tonight um we are a community that's built on strong relationships and we know that relationships are integral to our

003student success we know that by investing in our students and having good relationships with them we understand their perspectives and we're able to provide personalized learning to them and and pertinently and pertinent differentiation for them one of the things that's unique in the city of clayton is that we have a strong relationship with the city and they and we are connected with them we have a collab we're collaborative in varied ways where we serve on committees with one another we participate in certain projects with one another and our biggest collaboration is the center of clayton the center is an asset to the community and it's also benefit to the students of the district over the last few years we've been able to look at ways that we've been able to invest and improve into the

004improve the center of clayton and make it even stronger and for our clayton students we've been able to increase the hours for them and able to provide passes for our seventh grade students and created a workout space that is completely state-of-the-art for our athletes and our students who participate in other programs we have benefited from this partnership we are now faced with the challenge and impact of cobit 19 and and how and its impact on the center of clayton which has caused us to um which has caused us to think more about how we need to invest in the sustainability of the center which i believe is a very worthy assess investment tonight before we um so tonight we're going to have an opportunity to kind of get the state of the center of clayton

005from paddy to forest and we're very fortunate to have her here and she is going to give us a little bit of update and then the board is going to be asked to approve the budget concerning the center of clayton but before we get into the center i wanted just to take some time to update the board on our remote learning and again i'm continuing to be impressed by our educators who have really made this experience very different than it was in the spring we have continued to make decisions in the best interest of our students and staff making sure that we're using data to inform our decisions and we also know that in order for us to make in order for this to be highly successful we know that our parents also are partnering

006with the district because we also have to recognize this is very difficult for them but we do feel it's the right decision and we feel it's what's best to keep our students and staff safe i will have to say that i'm proud of the borough district that has been thoughtful about differentiating support for our students based on their needs and since the first day of school we have been providing in-person learning for students and i commend our special education teachers who are true heroes to this work we've also started to have uh i started to expand that support to other students who have additional needs and we're building capacity within our buildings and today the county executive made an announcement that he recommends that school districts to consider bringing younger students back to school so

007over the last few weeks even before this announcement we have been preparing for an opportunity to bring our youngest learners back into the schools and we've been working with building leaders to look at different plans that we can enact and put in place if we were feeling that it was safe for our students to be back in school and part of those plans incorporate an orientation and also a timeline that would allow us to bring students back in at certain points and gradually get our students fully back into school um we will also make sure that even though that announcement was made today we're going to make sure that we're providing time and space so that way we can get enough time to prepare for that transition and also make sure that we're absolutely ready

008sam page has also recommended that schools start um so started making had some recommendations around sports we are able to start with competitions for low contact sports which includes golf tennis and cross country but we can only continue to have practices for moderate and high impact sports with cup precautions in place um and to and no timelines have been set for competitions so um those announcements were made today and we will continue to use those recommendations to inform what we do in the district the other thing that's important to remember is our work around equity and and we are going to make sure that we make it a um guaranteed something guaranteed topic that we bring up at every meeting and so i wanted just to let the board know that all of our certified

009staff have participated in anti-bias training before the beginning of the school year and just recently all of our classified staff have participated in that training and that when we talk about classified staff we talk about support staff who still have interactions with our students and parents and and our staff um our director of equity and inclusion has been cameron poole has been meeting with principals and preparing equity audits within the schools and there he's also getting other pertinent information that's going to inform the development of our district equity committee the other thing i had the privilege of doing last friday during our professional development day was to observe uh dr cameron um mr pool he'll be doctor soon at some point um he'll be he did a presentation on the power of humanization and um

010it was a really incredible presentation but he talks about how sometimes within systems we inadvertently are dehumanizing people and he even used such a strong term such as soul murder and and it is a strong term but it does mean that you know thinking about how this has an impact on our students and their identity and how they feel and i loved how he brought it to the broader he put it to the broader perspective in terms of society in terms of um what how things are working in the community and how that brought and brings it and then he brought it back into education and he talked about the importance of looking at discipline data making sure we're getting student voice making sure that we need teacher familiarity and see students seeing themselves in

011our staff uh the importance of looking at academics and relationships and participations and programs and what's great is that so many of those things are connected to our strategic plan that we're going to talk about later the other thing that he emphasizes the importance of collecting data on our social emotional learning which is connected to our work around equity and so you'll also see that connection to um to our strategic plan uh cameron has also been working with um and starting has been working with our staff and and developing he's going to start developing affinity groups which is going to um be for our students and for our parents and for our staff which is going to allow a safe space for them to have conversations about their experiences so um just i just gave

012you a lot of information about covid the pandemic about our equity work and then just kind of setting the stage for we're going to see around the center of clayton tonight um i am going to turn it over to caitlyn to see if she has any updates from the student perspective yes so for some updates from the student perspective i can tell you a little bit about how extracurriculars and sports have been these first two weeks of school so the extracurriculars that are graded classes have started the first week of school for example globe has been meeting twice weekly in the mornings and for globe this month's cover story is profiling the black lives matter movement in st louis and another article that you may find interesting that will be in this month's issue will

013be what students are thinking of the new schedule for virtual learning extracurriculars have found a way to connect with current events in the us which has been helpful to individualized learning for students also other student-run clubs are waiting until after the virtual clubs fair that ms young set up to begin their meetings and the club's fair will be tomorrow from 3 to 4 p.m as for sports tryouts happened last week and students have been excited to get back to sports although unconventionally and i will also share my screen and show you a walkthrough of my biology and my history classes so this is my ap biology classroom and there are two different categories here stream and classwork so stream contains the announcements and most of the teachers based on the feedback that they heard decided

014to keep the stream just announcements and put their assignments in classroom and a lot of things that teachers have been utilizing are like these different emojis to organize the classes so here mr bergeron usually uses a pointer finger for announcements a fire emoji for homework a book emoji for notes a pencil and paper for in-class activities and then also labs and a computer for assessments something else interesting is that in world history also uses the classwork tab and they use weekly hyper slides and these have the agenda and link all of the presentations that were used that day in class in addition to having the homework linked below so everything for the week is on this organizer in addition there's also an objectives tab which helps the students keep in mind the goals that they

015are learning for that week and teachers have also been using interactive methods like for example paradox which is an interactive slides program and then they have been using zoom breakout rooms to help with smaller group discussions thank you caitlyn um and thank you sean so we're gonna actually so just as a um this this meeting is going to we're going to do a study item then an action item then we're going to go back to an information item and study items so the flow is going to be a little bit different because um patty deforest is going to give us a uh an update on the center of clayton and we want to just in res out of respect to her um allow her to give her update we can ask some questions and then

016we're actually going to have an action item that she'll be a part of and then we'll just release her so she doesn't have to be part of the whole meeting so i just wanted to explain that to you all so our next item is uh 4.01 which is the clayton recreation sports and wellness commission or the crswc annual update in the budget for fiscal year 2020 uh slash 2021. so um i don't yep patty your your or mary jo you're going to set it up or patty and mary joe and i think patty is there she is yeah great thank you um so i i'll just go ahead and speak first of all caitlyn if you're still on thank you because my grandchildren will not show me that how how in in school or virtual

017learning works i've asked them to show me in their life they just look at me like you don't need to know nana you're not in school so i appreciate seeing that um so we're going to talk about the crswc i'm going to i'm going to give you a presentation mary jo feel free to jump in at any point i'm going to share my screen and go through uh it's sort of uh as those of you that have been on the board before now we usually give you an update on things that have happened and then we talk about the budget and share that i'm going to do sort of an update on where we are and how we develop the budget and then we'll talk about the budget and then i have some slides at

018the end to talk about things that we still haven't decided that that the three committees at the center will be really working through over the next couple of months so i'm going to share my screen hopefully there it is and get this going all right so so this year during the budget obviously we were just starting to work on the renovation or on the budget at the time of the shutdown so it really reflects the fact that we knew going into the development of the budget that we had problems related to the pandemic we needed to address obviously we were coming out of the renovation i mean the day we shut down is when we had planned to shut down for about 10 days so we were trying to wrap up the renovation so that

019had impacted our budget for this year and last year and then we were forecasting for another year and then really keeping in mind that the economic forecast moving forward is not great and is not going to rebound quickly so we had to keep all of that in mind in developing and putting the budget together i did want to report a little bit on our usage i thought that would be of interest to you this chart is going to it will show you how the how we opened what we started with from a number standpoint and where we are to date i had shared this with sean and david gibson the city manager a few about a month ago and so you can see we've had so steady growth and usage when we first opened the

020first week of july we were averaging 213 members a day um the week of august 10th we were up to 311. this past week we were at 3 32. so each week we really have seen an increase it's not significant it's not back to where we were but at least we're growing and people are not leaving us they're they're they are coming our weekend hours are a little bit shorter so that average is is less than 200 but we were actually 20208 this past weekend so we're really tracking usage and as um i had shared with a commission about a month ago we really feel like the slow steady measured progress is great because that's showing us people are comfortable working out we're able to add things in and get more people back the the

021bad news is we have lost a significant number of members we were about 7 200 members in february this year july 1st which is when we officially reopened we were at 5800 members we are now as of august 1st at 5 000. so we are continuing to lose some of our memberships but that's still pretty strong so we're trying to do everything we can to keep those people comfortable this is that new weight room for the for the district and i'm sorry to say that you haven't all been in to see it already but the schools are athletic teams and coaches are using it i believe that it has been very well received we're continuing to do some some little improvements there but it's exciting to have them in there and have their own space

022um we felt that we really worked closely with the district and and steve hudson's been doing a great job of keeping us informed of the athletics and the activities that are being they're coming back um we've coordinated both his plan which he's really working with a group of people that are advising um the county and then the county is also setting the guidelines so we're all working together but it's great to see them back as caitlin said earlier it's kind of it's nice to see the kids be able to swim and and play tennis and run cross country so we're excited about that as far as programs and rentals and all the other usage of the center we really have gone very slowly into that part and we've really done a measured and very slow

023resumption of services we are doing personal training and private swim lessons those seem to be going okay people are comfortable with the one-on-one type situation and we've done very limited rentals but some of our regular users are back we're starting to see a little increase in people calling about renting in putting the budget together we we varied our reductions in revenue from anywhere from 25 to 50 percent we really looked at the activity of our members in the first six weeks and kind of extrapolated that through the end of the budget some of the membership categories are pretty strong and some are have seen a lot more drop off so we've seen a lot of seniors drop their membership so so there's a variety of um percentage reductions that you'll see on revenue we have

024two full-time positions that we are holding open the one that is a city position will be held open all year it was it was not funded in the city's budget which was um a piece of it and that we're not funding in the center's budget we believe that that's okay to do at least for this year uh the district has an open maintenance position and they're not we're not necessarily not going to fill it but we're not filling it quickly at this point um we have looked for reductions whenever possible you make you probably know that we did have to furlough our part-time staff we did pay them for five weeks and then at that point we furloughed them many of them were able to collect unemployment which was great they were very happy with

025how we handled them and we have about half of our part-time employees back the rest have at this point been technically laid off but are still eligible for unemployment um we've looked at reducing you know shutting down any areas that we can to serve on energy tim wanish and the maintenance staff have been great at really helping us with that so so with all of that we used all of that to put a budget together it was challenging because we knew that that no matter what we did we had significant reductions in revenue um but for in putting it together for fy so that really impacts this year but as you all know full well this pandemic has gone way way longer than anybody anticipated i think well i think some people did but we

026anticipated so we are projecting that it will last at least another six months so the first six months of the the budget year will be very difficult i don't think people are going to rush back indoors at a quick rate but um we do close the gap by being open we lose more money being closed than we do being open so we are continuing to open what really focus on maintaining our current membership and trying to figure out how to get some of the other things going while we can but we have been very vigilant at fire following the st louis county health department and the cdc guidelines so their 25 capacity is still in place um we we have really seen reductions expected in other revenue sources because we have not resumed programming we

027don't have a lot of the programming revenue coming in um we don't anticipate that it will resume until 2021 this budget does not anticipate that we have put a lot of focus on the private instruction and are working on developing some other ways to to bring in some revenue from that type of instruction and maybe some small group early in the year and we have the operating fund includes a contribution from the city and district of 150 000 each as far as expenses the main increases are related in personnel is really related to pay and benefits i don't think either you or or the other board needs to be schooled on that our full-time staff get increases based upon whatever the city and the district do we have as as you may recall from the

028last two years we're working on keeping increasing our minimum wages to stay at least a little bit ahead of the state minimums those are going up annually so we do have an increase all jobs will be paid a minimum of eleven dollars effective october one uh and we'll be at twelve dollars next year so we really were able to reduce expenditures associated with programming we do have a large it expense scheduled this year our software replacement our software program is really not working well we've had some accounting issues with it so we are going to look at some other programs and we may replace this year and um the other i probably the other good thing is tim and and jim have done an excellent job with utilities they've held really steady and some of

029our energy conservation has really helped so all of this stuff that was included in the construction has helped with that so this is just a one-page summary of all the different areas you can see that we had a significant reduction in revenue we had estimated three or we had budgeted 3.27 million we are looking at about 1.87 it will be our end result for this year and proposing 2.5 for next year you can see across the board reductions in all revenue sources except for contributions from parent organizations um and then down at the bot but but really a significant reduction in our revenue of about 700 000 next year and nearly 14 1.4 million this year so we've tried to offset that with reductions in expenditures you can see that this year much more challenging

030because it because that's very hard to move those once once you're that far into the year next year we have identified reductions um most of what where you see it like a 57 percent in sports and 13 in fitness that's because of programming reduction so you're going to see that up above that there the revenue is not there so we're projecting that this will be our our end result for revenue and operating expenses and then our second fund is the equipment replace please stop me if you have any questions but um the equipment replacement fund we do have a a small request replacement money in there for fy 21 36 000 we normally budget between 45 and 50 000 a year we purchase new equipment cardio the treadmills bikes every year on a plan this

031might be something that we could discuss when we start looking at places to hold we will hold this order until after the first of the year because of all the new equipment that we have and then we already talked a little bit about the replacement of the recreation software that that'll be about a 50 to 70 000 expense um and this is where we put 50 000 from each of the parent organizations next year's capital fund is pretty small we didn't put a ton of money in there we have a few things hanging out that we're not able to fit into the construction that we're going to try to do but we really just have money in there for those things that come up that we have uv lights in the pool that cost six

032thousand dollars a year to maintain that goes in the capital budget things like that um tony steering and jim brennell who work with with tim and i if you don't know who they are they're our assistants are beginning to work on a new capital plan tim and i feel that they need to start taking some ownership of that and can do that so we're going to really start working on that in the finance committee so we have some idea of the next five to ten years um any future capital needs and we plan to put a hundred thousand of each contribution in this fund this slide will show you that basically the summary of where we'll end a piece of good news is that the auditors this year they just completed our audit last month

033and they did find a um an ar issue an accounts receivable issue so we have a little extra money at the end of that 222 000 actually is money that we thought was uh was gone and they they identified an issue so that helps us a little bit this year in that we're showing the deficit of a million this year but we will not have to build both parties for all of that since they've already basically paid some of that but we we are showing a one million dollar deficit this year um and then next year we're projecting about 595 000 um as as i said we did not project beyond that we we did not do multiple you know 2022 and 2023 i think there is just so much unknown that would have been

034just an exercise and probably would not have accomplished much i think that that we feel like this fall we need to i'm sure the district is similar to the city and that we need a lot of focus to be on how do we come out of this and we have three committees at the center the finance committee the operations committee and the program committee and all of them really need to start talking about how do we move forward if we do not rebound from a membership standpoint because i think that six hundred thousand dollars makes me nervous makes me uncomfortable quite honestly so um we do talk about cost recovery usually every year and you can see that we've had really good cost recovery model for a long time we've been around between 90 and

035100 percent cost of recovery for the operating fund and all funds somewhere in that range um you those of you that haven't been on the board before you've always heard us talk about the original agreements estimated the cost recovery of between 82 and 86 so i feel like we've done well i unfortunately these next two this year and next year will not be that way but i think that the reality is is that we have to spend the next four to six months figuring out how do we get out of this situation and how do we change it are there ways to change our operations to recoup some of this so i that is what i wanted to talk about i do know that there's probably some questions out there that about things that we

036haven't talked about so i'm just going to go through these slides real quickly and then you can ask whatever questions we there are things we have not resumed at this point the climbing wall has not opened the kids center has not opened the yak and group or recreational swim some of those programs are very difficult because they're in really confined spaces and so i doubt probably the board of education needs me to talk to you about how difficult it is to bring a lot of children back together so we are working on a plan to get those services resumed our members have really not been too upset about it i think they're figuring out what to do with their kids right now and enjoying the outdoors but i do believe we have about another month

037before we really need to get these things going again the student activities as i said earlier we've really been in close contact with steve and his staff and all the coaches they've done a nice job of getting things going back to get you know getting the sports that can go working with us on our requirements at the center as opposed to what most high schools are probably you know they can just do whatever they want in their inside their building so um the teams are are there i know that physical education probably will won't come back until they're in school and we have had discussions about the seventh grade memberships and right now we need to have some further discussion about that there's been some thought that we until the kids are back in school

038we wouldn't necessarily want to do that because they shouldn't be coming during the day but that we may want to delay that and give seventh and eighth graders a membership next year so that will be something that i will discuss with the finance and operating in crswc because and i think you should talk about that no matter what they're not going to get the same experience if they all get a free membership this year so we could do it so that next year it's intended for both groups something to consider and then all our programs and leagues that that is really challenging it's very hard to do those we have we are not planning to run our basketball league certainly if things change with the health conditions and the pandemic we we can do that

039quickly but right now it just would be very difficult to run these types of programs in the current environment um oasis has informed us they will not be back until after the first of the year they're doing everything remotely they occasionally people come in and check things but they are not here the community foundation is really not going to do any big opening of their history area until after the first of the year subway is still waiting for the health department to give them their certificate to be able to open we are hoping to get them open in the next two to four weeks um they're ready and we're ready um so hopefully that will resume soon and then all the variety of other people who want to rent space and do things with lots

040of people we're hoping to get them back in as soon as we can but right now we're not bringing that type of activity into the building so that's that's kind of it for me on my uh presentation and then mary jo did i don't know did should i go through the action item or do you do that yeah we will do that afterwards okay yeah we'll do that after patty so yeah thank you patty so um i am just gonna go and maybe uh yeah maybe stop sharing your screen so we can see okay that's what i was gonna say i was trying to figure out how to do that um but you know what i'm just for the kind of the sake of all voices i'm just going to ask each board member if

041you if you have any questions and i'm just looking across my screen so kim you happen to be the first person so um do you have any questions for patty no i'm just one patty so you mentioned brilliantly that there was a timing on the accounts receivables on the ar so is that just a one-time accounting adjustment or did is there something more significant that needs to happen with process so we don't see that in the future it is related to the problem we're having with our recreation software and it is a it is a one-time fix for this specific problem but is the re is the reason that we're looking to change software got it because we've had some recurring issues so okay thank you um jason how about you do you have any

042questions for patty yeah um i just won you know it cause we're losing five hundred thousand how much how much we're losing again this year i didn't write it down a million a million so does it cost more to operate it or does it cost less or does it cost less than just shut it down so i i it's not a simple answer to that because it depends on if you close it down and lay off all the staff uh you know the the the delta right now when we're open we're losing about three thousand dollars a day when we're closed we're losing about six thousand dollars a day so it is more it's yeah it's it's more effective to be open we are closing the gap and we close the gap a little bit

043more each time we have more people um if we were to shut down and lay off all the full-time staff and and shel shelter the building shutter the building of course that would change but that's not really what we've been talking about yet or at this point you know that's going to make sure i understand yeah yeah so that's that you know and and one of the things and i really appreciate this both sean and david with the city said we need to run it for a while to figure that out you know i think sean may disagree but i i felt like after about two or three weeks i thought oh my god we just need to shut down this isn't worth it and we're just continuing to lose money i don't know what

044i thought that we'd magically open and close the gap and everything be great i i do think that but um i do want that um but after i think sean it might have been three to four weeks in that we met and i and i was like maybe we need to change ours and their focus was let's try to let it run for you know really we've only been open about eight weeks now let's see if we can get more and close that gap and that's what we're looking to is to close that gap of that three thousand dollars so um i think that's our goal at this point but a good way to look at it jason thank you thank you jason amy do you have any questions hi patty hi amy um i

045just want to thank you for the presentation um i i really um i know you guys have had a rough time over there and um you guys have been very you and your team have been very very thoughtful um about how to go about things in a such a difficult time and um i appreciate your efforts especially in trying to mitigate some of the financial impact of what i know you've had to make some really hard decisions um one quick question the tenants are they paying rent yes yes they are um the unfortunately the way subways lease is written they don't pay if they're not bringing in money so they are not but oasis is and uh the community foundation is yeah got it terrific okay yeah thank you you're welcome thanks amy gary do

046you have any questions no i don't thanks patty for um walking us through it and thanks for trying to close the gap and deal with this as best as we can without any questions thanks gary david how about you do you have any questions um yes i do and i'm not sure if mary jo or patty's best to answer i'm just i think we are going to do a budget adjustment if i'm not mistaken for this this plan year um you know for this half million dollar hit but are we is there any way we can start accruing for the anticipated loss in calendar year 21 or is that something we will do as an ad hoc adjustment again next year we'll probably include that in the actual budget document next year moving forward because

047that would be a one known cost i didn't include a lot of this in this year so that it would be more transparent to the board on what was coming forward and not some of it being buried and some of it added afterwards so i was trying to do it more open this year yeah no and i i know we talked about it i agree i agree with the approach i was just curious we can just start accruing for it so david explain for us non-financial people what you mean when you say that i i i guess the easiest way to say it is you know in in our world we take that big uh expense hit uh mary jo what is it july when we write all those checks um and i'm just wondering

048if we start to build up the budget for it in advance so that it's it's on the forecast we know it's there it's not an ad hoc item that's going to whack us you know mid-year next year um i guess i may not be explaining that the best way i think and i think in balance sheet terms but i the long and short is is just that we're budgeting for it as opposed to treating it as a one-off yeah we'd definitely be budgeting for it and also you know in the sense of kind of accruing actually paying it or something you know the center and both entities the city and the district have always had the agreement that we weren't going to have the center hold a lot of our funding um that you know

049they would get what they would need and keep a minimal fund balance and patty i don't remember the exact amount but we didn't want the fund balance at the center of the cswc to build too much where they were holding both of the nt's funds and so it's just something that we know we'll budget for it and then we'll build off of that and so you know i don't remember what the fund balance is normally i think we had said uh two hundred thousand thousand that's what i was thinking but it was it was a long time ago yeah it was minimal ten years ago and it was that was about what we were keeping in there so yeah and i think it was a time it was during the recession when both the district

050and the city were very minimal revenue streams and we were like we can't give you our money to hold we have to hold it ourselves yeah so just a follow-up question based on that so if you're not holding a fund balance with such a shortfall between revenues and expenses are you concerned about the timing of payments this year for employees or anything like that well no because because the way the agreements are written so the city pays all the bills and for a large portion of it the district pays all the maintenance part department bills and then we bill each other okay and so i i think i think we're fine because we're not expected to pay the bills the city and district are paying them got it thank you i think if we were

051an individual organization by that you were supporting and we probably have a whole different conversation so i think mary jo i think that's why we ended up that way there was discussion probably i think it's like 2009 10 of maybe we need to film start building up the fun balance and each this district and city should give the center 250 000 a year and then they'd have this fund balance for capital and then i i think that's when everybody was like wait a minute we're not going to give them our money to hold it's our money so and then i think mary jo you've been putting money aside too so yeah i've had a separate fund for capital expenditures set aside yeah that we did use some this year for the parking lot and for

052that equipment you saw that great picture of that that was great caitlin do you have any questions i know you blipped out and came back so yeah i don't have any questions okay thank you katelyn and stacy do you have any questions i don't thanks patty thanks stacy and and i really don't have any questions either just to uh compliment patty you and and tim and the whole staff it and it continuing to really make it a going concern it's really it's really difficult and i know there are some uh facilities who even to jason's earlier question who just decided that the math was better to shut down yeah um and so to your credit you're you know working the math um to to to not shut down and and make it better so we

053appreciate that thank you thank you thanks so um we are then going to move on to our action item that is kind of associated with this uh and this is a 5.01 it's the clayton recreation sports and wellness committee of the crswc budget approval um and again just so do we have a motion for that gary yes i move that the board of education approved the fiscal year crswc budget and submitted second okay it's been moved and seconded any questions or comments okay um all in favor aye aye aye any opposed okay it passes unanimously thank you and thanks patty we um we really again appreciate it and um understand that you might want to um enjoy the rest of your night thank you who knows what i'll learn i might learn something next you

054could you can thank you thanks everyone thank you so we're moving on to 6.01 which is actually an information item and that's the covid related impact update um which is really around budget so mary jo okay let me see if i can share uh the screen i haven't done this before all right [Music] okay so um i wanted to provide the board with a brief update based on what is currently known as of today so i want i'm stressing that a lot so please keep in mind that things are literally changing daily um so for example just yesterday uh one of the items that i have listed in here we received a notification from the state of missouri that 50 of our unemployment claims would now be refunded and that was one of our substantial

055costs that i included on the slide so now we're estimating forty thousand dollars will now get refunded back to us and so applying this new information to the analysis i just presented it shows that we actually have more organic savings than we had cost so i know this will not be the overall financial result at the end of the year um so but i and that's where i'm saying that things are literally changing daily so as the district progresses with returning students into the classroom um i am anticipating there'll be other necessary expenses perhaps such as like more instructional support such as interns the need for additional long-term substitutes to assist with perhaps supervision of students or coverage of staffs at staff absences due to covid further we know we're going to require additional custodial

056support depending on how we bring the students back we're going to shift some of the support but once we get all the students back in the building or at least in a hybrid model we don't have enough daytime staff in order to clean and disinfect touch points and restrooms the way that we need to um there also might be other supplies or technological supports that are required but we won't know until we're actually in the classroom so um and then you know as petty mentioned you know she's estimating next year's loss of that 595 000 but you know as the year goes on and she gets more information you know we'll continue to monitor that but that amount might even change and so everything as we receive um i'm trying to provide updates to the

057board and we'll determine the best way to move it forward but part of the reason i wanted to do a presentation tonight is because we are asking for budget revisions as i mentioned with david um i'm trying to do these transparent so that everybody knows that's going on and it's not all buried into a document and we're not really positive so i just want to make sure everyone knows what's going on and it's been transparent so the summary i made as i mentioned during the budget presentation in june we were anticipating some savings to be achieved organically and due to these research restrictions and so as you can see there is currently approximately 60 thousand dollars worth of reduced overtime expenses for hourly staff and most of that is due to overtime in the summer

058for maintenance um because of the heavy use of our buildings in the summer for summer programs we end up doing a lot of condensed overtime in order to get summer projects done for all the staffs facility improvements um that we can get done in the two week time frame that we get plus other times on the weekends we end up doing a lot of weekend work and stuff like that so due to that stay-at-home mandate uh and not having the summer programs in all of our buildings um maintenance projects got completed during the normal work day with no overtime um i will say tim and jim were extremely happy with the summer being able to get so much work done the other items and substitutes were through september 30th we're estimating approximately sixty thousand dollars

059of reduced substitute costs due to all this true promoting we're not hiring uh substitutes during this time frame administration also reviewed part-time temporary employment contracts where staff would not be able to perform the necessary duties related to the pttes and then we did inform those impacted staff that ptt would not be paid i am uh thinking that possibly some of them may be reinstated as cert as students returned to the campus but then they would be adjusted to a lesser amount but right now that is a total amount that we have that we've at least put on hold um transportation the district rents a substantial amount of buses to transport students for field trips and athletic events and we do have three of our own buses but just like a grade level trip uh requires

060use of six buses like say at down uh with in an elementary is like five buses and um we have to rent those because we can't have all of our buses out at one time so we do in athletic events we're constantly running buses for athletic events so currently through september 30th uh we're estimating the savings of forty thousand dollars there for the rentals and the um gasoline and maintenance of our current buses as i also mentioned you know we didn't run a full summer program this is not related to some requests at all that's a break even program so we neither had expenses or revenue related to that this is strictly the summer school programs which normally we budget around 250 000 of expenses to that most of our students participate in the springfield

061launch online program and they actually enrolled as students of springfield missouri and therefore we didn't have to pay anything for that um so we only we did run the elementary and some and the why down and then we did have a few teachers at the high school running so we ended up spending around 187 000 on that program instead of the 250. um and then with professional development uh since staff can't travel right now we're restricting all travel we want staff teaching students and focusing on the instruction um we've had about and summer is actually our heaviest time for staff travel we've had forty four thousand dollars of savings this year on that and then finally with utilities as patti mentioned you know we too have seen a lot of energy savings not having you

062know 350 students in the high school for six weeks in the summer has caused a lot of savings and utilities and so that's been estimated through september 30th to be around 73 000 so the other category i have titled as costs but a few of them are actually more due to loss of revenue so as i go through i'll explain those areas so the first one with family center we have not furloughed any family center staff so those staff are still working with students we decided to present a reduced tuition amount to families and we did have many families take that it basically provides them some services and holds their spot in line for when we do come back if you did not pay the 30 reduced fee you lost your spot so it was

063a little enticement um so this 150 000 represents the estimated loss of revenue through september 30th on that program on the kids zone we did furlough all of our part-time kid zone workers and we are also not receiving any revenue for this program um this program does generate revenue for the district and therefore um there is a loss of revenue on it and then there's also um we did maintain the two full-time staff site directors so this so that 33 000 not only represents the loss of the um revenue but then the expenses for those two staff regarding technology costs that's really representing our online and digital learning resources that we needed to purchase in order to be fully remote and teach in a different manner than we did in the spring that's not i

064don't think there's any equipment in that number at all regarding the ppe and cleaning we've been purchasing plexiglas dividers for support staff workstations teachers desks students desks social distancing signage face masks for staff and students because we do plan to have all students for them again just continuing with disinfectants and other cleaning supplies so we had spent about 60 some thousand last year we've already spent another 50 000 this year um and that's just through september um the virtual instruction represents uh the expense related to students who have selected one from home because we're using a different platform from them so that's associated with that learning experience the sixty thousand dollars as i mentioned uh for the the unemployment expenses um if you're familiar with unemployment claims um as i mentioned we've only furloughed one

065set of staff and it's just been recently in the last month um but the way they calculate it the district doesn't pay in insurance we pay actual claims and so the um there's a base period with uh unemployment claims and it's the first four of the last five quarters so they do a look back so even though we might not have been the ones that laid them off if we had salaries for them we're going to pay a portion of that base um period so coaches and subs or any teacher that's worked here in the last year and a half about a year and a half would be eligible for unemployment that we would be paying for so we do dispute any claims that we don't feel is real um there have been a lot

066of fraudulent claims and we've not trained for that um but we typically budget around twenty thousand dollars a year for unemployment we're estimating eighty thousand so that's sixty thousand it's the amount above that but we're hoping based on the letter we got yesterday that we should get back about forty thousand dollars and that's sixty thousand additional costs so and then finally food service this program too has an offsetting revenue to it so like kid zone it represents both the loss of revenue and the expenses of right now we only are maintaining the current director of the program um they hire their own staff and furlough their own staff so that's not running through the district so um so as you can see uh if we apply that forty thousand dollars to you know offset that

067cost it you know reduces the cost down to four hundred and sixty six thousand dollars but yet we've had organic savings of four hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars so administration is going to continue to look for savings whenever possible to offset future costs but i do anticipate by the end of the school year we will have expenses that do outweigh our savings so there are also some current extraordinary items i wanted to discuss um and in regards to revenue we talked about the cares funding from the state of missouri last from that we were notified last year we thought we were going to receive it last year unfortunately it's going to come through this year well unfortunately or unfortunately either way we're going to get it but it'll be in this year's budget um

068we also received title four funding that covered the cost of hot spots that we purchased for students in need so all of those costs were covered by a grant and we're also set to receive additional hotspots from the county uh we just completed all that necessary paperwork to secure those devices and we are applying for any type of funding that we can to offset expenses we've applied for some grants through the county for kid zone losses and we've also as i mentioned in my summary for one of the expenses on that needlepoint bipolar ionization system there is funding for potential capital projects that improve air quality so in regards to expenses um as patty's presented the district will need our pay we'll need to pay our portion of the operating deficit um so i do

069have a budget request for tonight that i'm asking that you guys approve so that we can increase the budget and we don't normally ever do this so that's why i'm trying to do these presentations last year was the first time in the 11 years that i've been basically in this position that we asked for a budget increase and that was for ethic field so this is only the second one so this is very rare and the reason we do this is because if we exceed the budget um that's a state finding it'll be written up in the audit so we have to ensure that our budget is always in excess of what we spend and um 500 000 is a large amount for one fund and so we want to make sure that we don't

070exceed our our budget request so and then the second expense is called a needlepoint bipolar ionization system and as that executive summary that i wrote for that request it will provide pathogen removal remediation which is integrated into each building's hvac system this total project cost is estimated at approximately five hundred thousand dollars because we have um most of our buildings have been expanded on throughout the years and each time we add on to the building that's another air conditioning unit so because we have so many like captain actually has the same number of air conditioning units as y-down but since white ends new they have less even though it's the building's probably you know a third of the size larger than captain so um once all these final bids are received we'll put in a

071official budget request for that and ask for the approval i did not ask for that budget request right now because we're only working off of an estimate but i did want to be able to provide all of this in a presentation so as those things move forward you at least have some background on it and as we get any other requests we'll move forward as with those as well um so um i'm presenting the fund balance projections with all these estimated costs and savings included um and i will also update this once we get information to set the tax levy at the end of the month so this might look a little different at the end of the month once we get all of the assessed value information and all the necessary information to set

072the tax levy i do anticipate that we will still be able to roll back the levy and because of the successful passing of prop e we're just in a much better secure financial position to cover all these extraordinary expenses and i'm just asking for the board's support as you know these requests are brought forward for approval so um as you know will administration will just continue to ensure learning environment that's as safe as possible both physically and emotionally for our students and staff you know we'll look for every uh potential area of savings that we can find and we'll consider to pursue any federal state or county funding opportunities that we can i just want to give the board some assurance that we will continue to work on all those things so does anyone have

073any questions thank you mary jo um let's uh yeah so i'm just going to go through again and uh maybe i'll go in reverse order so stacy do you have any questions um just a quick one and i'm sorry if i missed this the ionization system is that something that we're getting bids on is that you said right right so it was presented because it wasn't budgeted right so the the policy states that if it's over fifty thousand dollars and was not budgeted we have to ask for approval just to go out for bill right okay thanks caitlin do you have any questions no questions for me thank you david how about you do you have any questions no i'm good thank you joe thank you gary do you have any questions so just clarifying

074um where i think we are um you're describing giving us a background for both of these extraordinary expenses and then we are going to come back and do action items specifically approving the center the revision of the center of the budget for the center and and then also just approve getting bids but we'll come back to approve any contracts on the ionization system right and the budget revision at the same time so that the budget matches the request so we'll do it we'll do another budget revision then for that but okay okay i don't have any other questions thank you amy do you have any questions i do um it's just um a kind of a clarifying question building on stacy's question i think so that ionization you mentioned pathogen so is that for is

075that one of those uh like air filtration systems for cobit yeah it's not necessarily a filtration system but yeah it's kind of the same it actually adjusts the amount of molecules in the air it changes them it's got it okay that's what i thought but i just wanted to make sure it does improve it improves the filtration because it it can actually kill some of the molecules before it even gets to the filters but yes so are we working with any consultant to figure out which is the best the best system for that i have no idea i just know there's all different types of systems and yeah and that and that summary we did put in there why we felt this one was the best um because it has like the least amount of

076side effects and it's not just a like uv lighting is more of just a surface cleaner surface cleaner and this is more of a like a total air cleaner so it's better than just filters so perfect okay thank you thanks uh jason any questions thank you i'm sorry kim do you have any questions okay all right great thank you um and i don't um have any questions mary jo thanks for putting it together i think it's very helpful for us to i understand it's a snapshot but it's helpful for us to see um kind of you know cost savings and additional costs so thank you okay so we are going to move to the next item which is 7.01 which is the strategic plan slash data dashboard and sean i'm going to hand it over

077to you sorry i apologize i am trying to get this set up i apologize right there i am so i am it's shut down on me i'm trying to get it back up i apologize for that let's see sean would it be helpful if we take a two or three minute bio break i am i think i'm almost there let's see if this works okay can you see that all right let's see if it's loading all right so thanks for your patience on that and so as joe said we are going to spend some time working on our strategic plan and this is really an exciting time for us because there's a lot of there's an influence of a lot of work coming together for what we're going to be doing tonight and presenting to

078the board and i want us to remember that when we're thinking about who we are as a district our district a hallmark of our district has been our excellence and as i've said to you in the past is that we have to make sure that we're looking deeper than some of those things that we use to measure our success we have to really start defining how do we want to measure success and thinking about how we approach teaching and learning in a transformational way so instead of it just saying being complacent and saying you know what we're already doing great things we have to push ourselves to think differently about what we do for our students so that students no matter who they are no matter their race no matter their zip code no matter

079their ability they are going to be successful in our district when we think about our strategic plan oftentimes when you think about what a traditional strategic plan looks like you'll see that there will be measures within that that are measuring academic performance and you'll see that we'll have measures connected to uh quality of teachers and also fiscal responsibility and when we approach the strategic plan we we thought about it like what are those givens that are going to be the absolute essentials that we are going to be measuring no matter what we're doing and then what are the goals what are those ways we can be different or what are those ways that we can be aspirational or bold or transformational in our approach so when you look at the plan that we presented we

080are going to have our dashboard is going to have some different measures that might be different than what we've measured in the past but i want to assure the board that we will continue to make sure that our academic performance is still being measured we'll make sure that we still have high quality teachers and we'll make sure that we are have you know dedicating fiscal dedicating time to make sure that we are being fiscally responsive so at this point in this in in history in clayton we're at this pivotal point where we're launching a new strategic plan we have a dedicated focus to equity and anti-bias and anti-racism work and then we also have even though that mary jo just shared with you some of those things that are challenges for us our community has

081come together to support us and and helped us be fiscally healthy by the property the by the passing of prop e and the confluence of all those coming together really helps us do uh decide what we want to do for the future of our students and when we're thinking about our strategic plan is we are asking ourselves that question what future are we trying to create for our students and when we started this whole process two years ago we started with the end in mind and developing the profile of the graduate and that profile was developed through an engagement of stakeholders through community members also we had parents students we actually had our former uh student board representative helped facilitate some of those meetings and we came up with our profile the graduate and i

082will say that probably more than any of the work that we've done it has been incredible to see how the profile has already influenced some of the work within our classrooms our curriculum development and really trying to make sure that we are looking beyond just what you know what we would you know the typical of measuring the academic performances we're trying to measure what is going to be good for creating human putting in place good human beings and um and i would say that some people might look at the skills that are on this profile to graduate and say use the term soft skills and i would say that we need to stop using that term because these are the term these are the skills that are going to be absolutely essential for our students

083to be successful in school and when they leave leave the district so they're absolutely essential and they are uh the grounding for all of our work in the strategic plan now our strategic plan is going to be the road map that we use to guide of our work so this is this is the these this strategic plan is put in place for us to say what are we going to be doing for the next three years it's also going to be important that we know what we're going to measure so what measures what we're measuring matters and so we know that it's going to be important for us to keep coming back to the strategic plan and what we're measuring to determine whether or not we need to adjust and that adjustment is that evergreen

084model b just because we present something to you today doesn't mean that some things might not that might not change later based off the data that we're looking at and then we're also making sure that we're being learner centered and when we talk about learners it's not just about the students it's about the educators it's also about the parents and the administrators and the community members now when we talk about our story our story did start two years ago when we started the profile and we collected a lot of data we collected a lot of input we looked we researched what other school districts were doing and then we also engaged the community in in this past year when we started working on the development of the strategic plan we engaged the community in a

085different way using a facilitator called filament that helped us get some additional input and data that helped us create our goal statements and those goal statements became our priority so we have worked to engage develop and prioritize these goal statements through this whole process of collecting data we also wanted to make sure that we wanted to do everything right and so um we were our hope was that we would be able to present this in august and we are um we wanted to make sure we're presenting something that was right and so we still feel uh we're doing this in a timely manner which is important because we just didn't want to rush something and make sure we wanted to make sure presenting something that we felt very confident about to the board when you

086look at the strategic plan and the document that we provided you we focused on two things for the board and the two things that we focused on were the strategic goals and the objectives and when we think about our objectives we we know that our objective when we start about when we think about our goals our goals are what are bold and aspirational this is you know what we want uh down the road for our students the objectives are what is what would be true if we were going to be reaching those goals so i would say that they're more specific this is where you're going to see the measures and this is where the board is going to be holding us accountable to the work so the goals and the objectives the other aspect

087of the strategic plan are the action steps and the strategies and so tonight we are really and and that is really the responsibility of the administration and also the responsibility of our different uh teachers and um curriculum coordinators and other positions that are within our district to help put those action steps into place and to actually follow through with those once our action steps are moving forward then we're going to see progress with our objectives and that's ultimately going to help us reach our goals i would say that so one of the things you'll see in the document tonight is part of our conversation is about just those strategic goals and those objectives but the other aspect is the measures of success and so we have provided with you a dashboard that would allow us

088to make sure that we're coming back and constantly looking at what is our progress and how do we know that and how how do we know whether or not we're making progress and whether or not we need to make some adjustments so based off all the work that we've done over the last two years our district strategic goals are the following we'll ensure learners of all identities feel safe and valued we will commit to the educational growth of our learners through an equitable personalized individual learning experience and will be dedicated to the personal growth of learners and their social emotional and physical well-being now you would see like okay that those are pretty big lofty goals but that's what they're meant to be they're supposed to be bold and thinking about being aspirational when we

089come down to the objectives as i said earlier this is what would be true this is what we're working towards um they're clear they're measurable and then following those would be the action steps these are the ways that we're going to reach our objectives and our resources are connected to those action steps so uh similar to what you know when we're thinking about we can't just say that we're going to enact an action step but not also think about what is the capital that we're going to be using to make this happen what money do we need to dedicate to this um what adjustments do we need to make to our budget to make sure that they are being supported and then the other thing too is that these action steps would be fluid so

090if we're not seeing that there's progress towards our objectives this is where we as the board or the administration can make recommendations to say this isn't working and we haven't seen the progress and we have to make some adjustments the one aspect that you'll see that you won't see in the document that we shared with you but we'll share at the end of the week is that we have already started developing all the action steps that are connected to the objectives and the goals and i wanted just to show you an example that we are uh developing action steps that are measurable um and excuse me that that we can monitor their progress and then we're also assigning oversight leaders who are going to be responsible and the what i'm going to do is connect

091the goals of our central office administrators to the aspects of the strategic plan and and similar to what you will do for me in terms of holding me accountable to these goals i will also be doing that with our central office staff the other thing that's important to know is that we have um we have developed a dashboard that is going to be a way for us to measure our progress over a period of time and we've looked at three years for the strategic plan and we definitely are going to go beyond that but we want to make sure that we're making progress in each one of those areas that we have designated and these measures of success are going to they might change along the way so the dashboard we provided for you doesn't

092have all the data in it yet one because some of it we don't have the baseline data and two we are actually creating the measures and looking at ways that we are going to measure our success so that's going to be part of the process i wanted you to get an idea about what this would look like and so we have um we are going to this top part is going to be an interactive part of our website that people can go to to be able to see the data very transparently but then we also have something that's a little bit more looking like a spreadsheet that the board will be able to monitor as we keep coming back to the board meetings and you'll see that we will monitor progress as we go along

093throughout the year there will be benchmarks that will be in between here so that way we can constantly say whether or not we are we're moving towards those goals so i wanted you to see that this is going to be graphically on our website but it's also going to be something that's very pragmatic and easy to see through a spreadsheet the board of education just recently passed the anti-bias anti-racism board resolution and as you can see through the document we've wanted to make sure that we're holding ourselves accountable to the information that was in that resolution and so we not only looked at every action step and every uh objective but we wanted to make sure that we crosswalked it with the resolution so we weren't missing anything and it was also going to be

094a way for us to hold ourselves accountable to that work which is so integral to being successful district so tonight what we're going to do is this is going to be a collaboration between the central office administrators and the board members and what you're going to do is have some time to process and so we have provided the two documents which are the strategic planning document and the dashboard and those are in board docs and what we would like you to do is take about five to ten minutes just to look at the documents and just to be able to process through them look through them to see you know so that way you're familiar with them and then what you're going to do is spend about 15 to 20 minutes working with central office

095administrators and one another in four different groups and then you're going to be asking we're going to be asking you some probing questions that the central office administrators are going to take notes on and we want to make sure that the board and the central office administrators have time to look at these documents with one another and that first probing question is does this plan represent the direction we want to go and what we've been talking about over the last three two years and what makes you say that what are those specifics in the plan um you may say say something like you know i'm not seeing this and the reason i say that is because i'm i'm not uh i'm not seeing we've talked about this but i'm not noticing it we also want

096to take note on that the other thing that we want uh is that this pro this plan is going to be brought back to the board for approval and so the question we also want you to consider is what questions need to be answered before the board votes to approve and so our central office administrators are going to be taking notes and they're going to be participating in this conversation and try to answer questions as much as possible but what we want to gather is those questions that we still think that need to be addressed before the board approves and we're not and then what i'm going to ask you to do is not go into the document and start wordsmithing and looking at changing things we want to look at it at the 10

097000 foot level and really ask ourselves it's like okay does this represent where we need to go as a district and then what still needs to be answered in order for us to move forward with a vote and so we're going to break you into smaller groups and allow you to have about 15 to 20 minutes to focus on that and then what we're going to do is ask our central office administrators when we come back to give a or you can bring someone who our board member you can choose to provide a tweet for maybe something that represents the conversation that you had and when we say a tweet it's like a succinct statement that's uh that has a lot of information but not a lot of words so um so i want to

098stop there and see if you had any questions before we break into our small groups anybody have any questions about what we're going to do next okay so the next step is that chris is going to and i'm going to chris tinnell is going to help us with this and i'm gonna stop sharing i had i sent the questions to the central office administrator so they can repeat those questions to you and then the central office administrators will be um taking notes as you're talking for those of you in public who are viewing this we are going to have a little block of time when the board is going to be working and we will be coming back in about we'll say about 15-20 minutes and i will send out a notice at 15 minutes

099and check to see how much time you need okay chris would you be able to then break us into smaller groups yeah i just sent everybody their breakout group invitations all right so we should have everybody in their breakout rooms right now you okay it looks like everyone is back hopefully you had a uh productive time in your breakout groups so what we're gonna do now is just take a few uh take some time takes a few minutes to go around each group and i asked you to think about like what would be if you had to write a tweet to represent um maybe something that's out of your conversation um that you think would be good for the whole group to hear would be this would be the opportunity to do that and so

100i was going to see if we could start with gary kim and molina uh to see if you could do your tweet and see if we have any questions that go along with that sure so our tweet was that we haven't stopped focusing on what makes us who we are and what already makes us great i don't know if you want me to explain a little bit about i'm not sure it stands on its own um but what we were talking about was that from a standpoint of maybe what um what you were talking about with the givens and the goals that howard what's a way for us to be able to capture the givens within the document um so that that's not lost and so we came up with some ideas of ways to

101capture that on the front end of the document to then be able to focus big picture on the on the goals okay that's helpful and that could be something that we could easily incorporate thank you um how about amy david cameron and chris um so we had some good discussion i guess um you know a good tweet would be you know great potential on the road to success but great potential on the road to success but being a but we need to be able to account for bumps in the road and detours that may that we may encounter so pretty much explaining that you know there there were strong confidence in all of our goals you know um you know from a broad standpoint i think once we got into the objectives you know we

102had some questions on exactly you know not only if our measurements were going to um give us the data that we need but kind of what is the individualized plan and what does the practice look like um i guess on a global basis and from a yearly plan standpoint from each goal so there were some objectives that had some of those questions but you know in terms of capturing everything that we needed to capture you know the goals objectives did a good job of that but really just once we get into the nitty gritty details what does that look like in terms of um you know everyday implementation hey thank you appreciate that how about stacy jason tony and mary jo so our tweet was uh clayton's fluid strategic plan aligns with the attributes of

103profile for graduate and abar focused on action results and accountability hashtag outcomes we we thought that kind of represented the work because we thought um what came out was that we really felt that the plan aligns well with the attributive profile of a graduate and um the aid of our work is clearly lined out throughout the document so it was very purposeful and really just seeing how everything sort of comes together in this one document the questions that we had that came up in the group were just around accountability and measurement how are how are all these things going to be measurable and with that being said really complementing the idea of the dashboard and having that great visual tool for the public to see these progress to see the progress at any given time

104would be great but some of the things being a little complicated especially as they apply to a bar and sel as they are based on a lot of these are based on assumptions and being subjective so how do we go about measuring some of those and then the other big question that we had that came up in the group was how do we go about approving a plan without seeing what the action steps are for implementation okay thank you and we will make sure that the board gets to see the entire plan too uh with the action steps um as well and then the last one would be joe robin and jeff and caitlin so i can share so our tweet was still areas for growth and focus on mental health and empowering students of

105color through a diverse curriculum but the strongest plan we've ever had helping prepare students for a diverse world that might be more characters than we were allowed but we also started our own hashtag which was sdcsp2023 if you want to follow that the reason that uh that we we focused on that for our tweet was that we had some good conversations about the over and a lot of good support i think overall for the goals and objectives uh that are that are part of this but also some areas that we could maybe be more specific about um and so some areas specifically about mental health and about about addressing racism and through empowerment and communities of color instead of in a deficit viewpoint more of a more of a uh empowerment point of view so

106we talked quite a bit about that and then we also really spent some time thinking about the measures and so i think that was one of the pieces that would have been a question that came up about the the measures just making sure that we're providing context for uh for our community when they are reviewing those um the the numbers and the metrics that we're providing that that we're not just throwing numbers we're actually providing context for what they might mean that was something that was that came up for the group as being important but again really overall support for the goals objectives and the conceptual framework of providing data points and really being careful too about the kind of looking at the right kind of data points for this so that we're not just

107putting a number out there that we're giving it context and that there's there's quality over quantity thank you so all the central office administrators should have collected those questions and that information and what we're going to do is take that information back and synthesize it and think about how we need to make some refinements before we bring the plan back for improvement i will say that just from my perspective is that the plan is one that i feel like people can really be invested in and it's not just that typical type of strategic plan where we have um it's focused solely on just a um you know academics and solely just on um maybe those types of measures it's really looking at the human aspect of our of our students and i think it's really

108grounded in our profile to graduate so um hopefully you will take some additional time and we will add some additional information to the friday memo so you can see some more of the the action steps but just this this part right here helps us think about what refinements and we want to just make sure that we're going in the right direction and what i'm hearing is it feeling like we are moving there might be some refinements in terms of measurements providing context to our community and also just for those community members listening is that we will be providing this as a transparent document on our website with those measures and the dashboard so so at this point we'll take that information and bring it back to the board and um appreciate your time working groups

109thank you sean and thank you everybody so again this isn't the last time we're gonna we're not approving it tonight this is just to give kind of some preliminary input and then joe can i just say one other thing is that i also just want to make sure that we are emphasizing that this work has already started so i mean i know that there might be some refinements but we're already moving on all the work that's in this plan and so it's not like we're waiting for this improvement and we will get approved by the board but we're not holding back and we're moving forward with it awesome so um we're going to speak of action we're going to move on to our action items we have a number of them so we're going to

110start with 8.01 which is the glenridge children's center or gcc inc termination of the lease agreement and memorandum of understanding so gary do we have a motion yes so 8.01 i move that the board of education approved the termination of lease agreement by and between the school district of clayton and the glenridge children's center inc effective september 9 2020 and the separate memorandum of understanding buying between the school district of clayton and the glenridge children's center inc for a one-year term ending june 30 2021 second okay it's been moved in seconded are there any questions or comments about this i actually have a question about it joe i don't know if you want to go ahead what order you want to take um and is it is mary jo still with us on this or

111she is so to risk being a little bit probably slightly annoying about this i was hoping that you could walk us through a little bit how this is still seems necessary to have both an agreement that terminates our lease with them and also a continuing memorandum of understanding that goes forward i'm just not following why we need both of those and what the relationship is going to be going forward once we've terminated the lease and we've implemented kidzone it's just not and again i'm i'm sorry to be a pest about this but i'm just not following the process of why we're doing it that way and basically the gcc they're bored um i would say i um i don't think they're they're not dissolving the entity and so they wanted to move forward in a

112manner where i guess they feel um they're a partner with the district and how we're moving forward and um the memorandum of understanding defines their role and our role um and if you know as as you read it you can see you know there's not it does outline you know that we're not you know required to hire their staff you know they have to go through district procedures and stuff like that you know we'll cooperate with communications but in reality you know we're gonna operate that program just like we do our other programs um and so uh it just seemed to make their board feel better that we had an agreement together moving forward and that we will have a discussion about how it moves forward at the end of the one year and then

113gary just so you know so i looked at it last week and and asked them to split it out into two separate agreements um and i think some of it was a byproduct of of their council um so um i just wanted you to yeah yeah and that was why last time why we we ended up not we didn't vote on it yeah i mean i think it certainly does make it i mean the termination agreement makes more sense um i mean again i don't want to critique other people's work or whatever i just it's not clear to me why the district would enter into this memorandum of understanding to be born like i don't see why we would obligate ourselves to an outside entity to do things like provide care and yeah for an

114aftercare student first students and families of glandness community we haven't done that with the other anybody else for the other schools that just doesn't and and sean you i think i don't know were you at their meeting where they had their conversation or not some of it was just individual conversations but they had separate board meetings all right some they haven't dissolved and so i don't think they're ready to just dissolve the entity and i think this makes them feel like you know as you can see from the miranda gary they really have no voice or anything if if you read it there's not a whole lot they don't have a whole lot in there right right and i mean just historically like sean like this just goes back a bunch of years and historically

115you know gcc is a very beloved um yeah you know it was something very unique to glenridge and of it was i know that the other schools didn't had it they had the kids own structure but it was a very beloved you know organization at within glenridge and there's a lot of history there so i i don't know if that sheds any light on it but um i would frame it is that and similar to what amy said that this has been like an institution within our district that we have um we have supported in a lot of ways if you think about it in terms of providing space for them and we um and i think that with this agreement it is very hard to think about this dissolving something that's been in place

116i i think for multiple decades and i think that's important and so when they were thinking about this it was it was almost like they were feeling a little bit better about moving forward with this plan because it is a big change for the glenridge community that after a year being able to evaluate how things have gone and seeing whether or not they would continue with having kid zone at at glenridge and that's how i'm kind of taking it but i think that for the most part they're feeling very confident about the kids own program and feel that this is a really good move and and i personally feel like as the leader of the district having oversight over the programs and knowing that we have um we have more oversight over the the um

117the after school programs is a it's a good thing for us and i and i feel like there allows for there can be some consistency and then our schools can work between one another once we get back that you know having programs where they're sharing so i think it was just kind of a almost like a gradual release and and so that's my untechnical way of describing it but i feel like it's a good step moving forward that we're moving in having kidzone as part of glenn ridge yeah and they they did actually want it to be a two-year memorandum of understanding which i was a little uncomfortable with and i felt like doing it one year with the opportunity to have both entities come together and discuss it and then it would be the

118district's decision whether or not we extend this for another year but um so that was another you know negotiation back and forth with them that they did agree to so and i think it's important to note that these are parent volunteers who are on this board and they have been they have been very amenable to any of these conversations and they have been extremely supportive and i actually have to commend them for running such an amazing program for so long any other questions or i don't want to monopolize it joe but like if just one i guess one follow-up to that sean and mary jo well it's kind of two-part i mean i assume we did have our own attorneys look at this as well is that is that right yes and i mean i

119guess i mean i i don't want to at all take away from like the spirit of the with where this is coming it was just as i was i was having a hard time understanding what the what the goal for having that memorandum of understanding was and i didn't want it to be you know there to be expectations that they can they can decide next year that we don't get their kids on there again because i don't think that's really a fair expectation if that's what it is yeah and that's why we tried to make it clear in there that you know the the district is making all the decisions in that memorandum and so they really didn't have a whole lot of rights in it so thank you i'm sorry for some i'm summoning

120so many comments about just wrong questions real quick gary that's a good point so so then just real fast make sure it's clear and simple so what's the point of it again what's the point of the memorandum like if they don't have any rights we control the dice what's the point of it again that we would be moving forward at least in a partnership to help the community you know transition together so that the district and the gcc community were transitioning together moving forward any other that's why you know the lease is terminated they have no you know they have no rights to occupy the premises there's no you know anything moving forward is strictly the decision of the board and so is is there like a way for them to say i know i

121know i know this was just asked but if they wanted to say we don't want you all running kid zone out of there we actually want to do it ourselves we have a petition we have whatever could is that could that be an obstacle for us that would be um at the end of the program during the evaluation we are going to do a survey you know to make sure that that we're working with the community the glenbridge community you know and then everything would be brought forward to the board you know for any extension of that mou or any request to initiate a second lease so it would be for the the board at the time at the end of this agreement to make that decision any other questions or comments and i guess

122i will make one question just as sean said you know the district values the opportunity to take over that program and i think you know administration from family center to kidzone from sean and myself you know we all think this is the best way to move forward any other questions all in favor all right any opposed okay passage unanimously thank you um so we're moving on to 8.02 which is the approval of purchases that may exceed 50 000 and we're not budgeted 8.02 i move that the board of education authorized the solicitation of bids for pathogen removal remediation using a needlepoint bipolar ionization system second it's been moving seconded any comments or questions all in favor any opposed passage unanimously thank you so we're moving on to 8.03 which is the 2020 2021 budget revision

123to the general fund 8.03 i moved that the board of education approved the 2020 2021 budget revision requesting a 500 000 increase in general fund operating expenses to cover the district's portion of the crswc fy20 operating loss second it's been moved in seconded any questions or comments in favor aye aye aye any opposed it also passes unanimously so 8.04 which is the second reading and adoption of policy bbfa which is the board member conflict of interest and financial disclosure policy 8.04 i move that the board of education approved policy befa board member conflict of interest and financial disclosure policy with the recommended changes second it's been moved and seconded any comments or questions all in favor aye aye any opposed okay it passes unanimously so we're on to 8.05 which is the second reading and

124adoption of policy gbca which is the staff conflict of interest 8.05 i move that the board of education approved policy gbca staff conflict of interest policy with the recommended changes second we moved in seconded any comments or questions all in favor aye all right any opposed it passes unanimously so uh 8.06 which is the approval of meeting minutes for the august 26 2020. meeting 8.06 i moved at the board of education oh hold on i'm on uh no one was just written i'm sorry i moved that the board of education approved the meeting minutes from the august 26 board meeting second it's been moved and seconded any comments or questions i oh sorry no there you go all in favor aye aye any opposed okay it passes unanimously so we're moving on to the financials

1259.01 the financials for june 2020 9.01 i move that the board of education approved the payment of current expenditures and investments for june second removed and seconded any comments or questions all in favor aye aye aye any opposed okay passage unanimously so we're moving on to 9.02 which is the financials for july of 2020. 9.02 i move that the board of education approved the payment of current expenditures and investments for july second it's been moved and seconded any comments or questions all in favor aye aye aye any opposed okay it also passes unanimously so um we're now moving on to 10.01 which is public participation at board meetings just a reminder right we've moved uh public comment to the end towards the end of the meeting um so sean chris do we have any public

126comment uh we do there were well actually four comments submitted but one of them was actually a duplicate so we have three comments to read this evening first comment this evening is from laura horowitz she writes i recently begun watching board meetings with more frequency and have a number of questions and concerns first i applaud you for addressing issues of board functioning it's clear that board members invest a huge amount of time and energy into their roles and deeply care about our schools as the board considered setting a standard length of meetings such as one and a half hours the unpredictable length of meetings and the fact that most are over two hour limits over two hours limits their accessibility to the public would the board consider moving parent comments back to the beginning half

127of the meeting i understand and support the greater focus on policy discussion nevertheless parents already have a very limited voice in the boards process i would like my comments to have a chance to be heard while board members and community listeners are fresh why do some board members leave when they wish instead of participating fully in the meetings in the last several meetings i viewed i've seen board members come and go in ways that have been difficult to interpret this is also out of step with other public bodies of which i am a member or observer especially as all of us adapt to virtual meetings more transparency about what's happening off camera will help viewers like myself understand what is going on each of the above points speaks to ways the board can deepen its

128commitment to transparency and effectiveness one second please um each of the above points speak to the way the board can deepen its commitment to transparency and effectiveness the meetings i have watched have also included what seemed what seemed like both confused and contentious conversations about racial equity i would like to implore board members to follow stephen covey's advice to first seek to understand than to be understood specifically in each meeting i've observed jason wilson not being listened to by his colleagues this concerns me not only for immediate issues of board functioning but also because it seems to reinforce a negative racial dynamic our district has struggled with whether board members intend this results or not mr wilson is our district's first ever african-american board member which is shocking in and of itself i think that

129context suggests that even if board members have different styles or opinions there is much to learn here i know the board is leaning into these topics and as they do i hope they will attend to naming and rectifying the current group dynamic that puts one voice against the others i saw this tension summarized recently as follows diversity asks who's in the room inclusion asks has everyone's ideas been heard equity responds who's trying to get in the room but can't justice responds whose ideas won't be taken seriously because they aren't in the majority finally what what happened to presenting the strategic plan in august those of us involved in the recent petition effort were told via email the strategic plan was where we could expect to see our ideas incorporated and that august was the time

130that it would happen and that's the end of her comment next comment is from angela flotkin she writes members of the clayton school board thank you for your time today i have been a parent in the district for 12 years i am an environmental health advocate and like you care deeply about the health of our students and staff science and safety protocols surrounding the copen19 outbreak continue to evolve as additional studies are published and facts turn to fiction we know by now that coven 19 is primarily spread from person to person mainly through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs sneezes or talks as plans continue to be refined to bring math students back into our classrooms we need to focus on slowing the spread by addressing our indoor air quality a strategy that

131is wise and health protective even in the absence of a pandemic a recent study from mit supported by evidence published in a march article in the journal of american medical association suggests that small coven 19 aerosols as small as 3 microns or less can linger for hours in the air an unventilated unpurified classroom can be a petri dish for the virus a recent wall street journal article suggests four tools that should be used in schools to reduce spread one upgrade hvac upgrade hvac filters that can remove a large portion of airborne particles such as merv 13 start hva systems earlier to allow more time for airflow and filtering before the school day begins three add standalone air purification and change hepa filters regularly four increase outdoor air either by opening windows or through the hvac

132bleed system additionally it is important that we select epa approved disinfectants that simultaneously produce health to protect health while killing covid the return to learn plan on the district website highlights the use of a disinfected product that contains one of the meaning one of the many ingredients we should be avoiding it contains an ammonium quaternary compound or quat plots have serious health concerns for anyone who use them teachers children janitors including skin irritation lung irritation leading to breathing problems reproductive harm potentially affecting fertility and leading to birth defects antimicrobial resistance occupational asthma and other serious consequences additionally the plan cites that the product will be sprayed via an electrostatic sprayer the risk of aerosolizing many of the disinfectants on list n hasn't been studied and there are very few that are approved for aerosolizing misting

133or fogging currently the epa is still researching whether these strategies will create a healthier environment for our children to not only return to school but to stay in school successfully by minimizing risk and the spread and spread to the extent possible let's please not use our children as the test dummies when safer alternatives exist i have consulted with a childhood medical expert in the community and in providing several resources that can help the district identify safer alternatives for cleaning i am available for research to help with any of these issues thank you for your time angela flocken and she included a number of resources along with for her comment final comment this evening is from becky patel she writes i thank the district in the boe for creating a facebook event for this meeting that

134includes the link to the agenda as well as the live stream can you address why public comment was moved to the end of the meeting our board members sent the comments in advance of the meeting i request that the board modify the comment policy under coven 19 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 and i've used it as both a panelist and attendee i'd like to hear open board discussion about the influence of recent petitions from within 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 and that's the end of our public

135comments thanks chris so um we are moving on to uh board communication so does anybody i mean i know that committees aren't meeting very much but um does anybody have any reports on board communication okay um then i think uh we just does anybody want to make a motion to adjourn move that the board of education adjourn second all right all in favor all right hi the opposed all right we're adjourned thank you guys everybody appreciate it good night bye