08262020 Board of Education Meeting

001all right so it's going up now we should be live in about 20 seconds gotcha okay we are live okay all right well welcome everybody um adequate notice has been given and we're gonna start a meeting um as always with the pledge to that flag behind uh sean so we're just going to start with the pledge here from the stand i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all righty well um i do want to say uh this is before we're going to start of course with um recognizing our own but before we start that i just want to say this is really i see this as the first meeting of the

002year i realized that the board and the administration has been working over the summer and there hasn't been a lot of break but this is certainly the first meeting of the school year after the school year has started and i just want to say that as we start the school year you know we're um i'm excited we're going to try some different things we have a packed agenda tonight it's part of the reason why we took the strategic plan off the agenda tonight and moved it to the ninth because we want to make sure we have plenty of time for it we also at the recommendation of some of you and the board committees have moved uh public comment to the end so we're trying different things so you'll see public comment not happen in

003the beginning but towards the end so having said all of that i am going to hand it over to sean to recognizing our own thanks joe can everyone hear me okay all right good well happy new year to all of you and as joe said i kind of see this as being our first ford meeting of the year and and we are going to continue the tradition of having recognizing our own in each of the meetings we will spend time making sure that we're recognizing our students uh we will also work to be in our schools again like we've done in the past but tonight we are going to recognize two individuals and the first individual is our new director of equity and inclusion mr cameron poole and so uh and there he is and

004so we want to recognize him and welcome him to the district we are unbelievably excited about having him in this position um he just really stood out to us and i will tell you he has been in the job for what is it two to three weeks now and his second day of the second day he was thrown into leading a three-hour workshop uh for all of our new teachers and on at our opening day he led a integral part of our work um around race and the intersection of being an educator it it was truly powerful and so i just want to welcome cameron to the team and introduce him to the board welcome man thank you sean um like sean said you know i'm honored to be here um and fill a role

005you know within the district for the first time um especially joining such a prodigious school district like the school district of clayton uh like you said i'm i hit the ground running i'm ready to uh you know really start going and put in some real change we got a lot of work to do uh awesome thing is it seems like everyone's ready to get down to work too as well so um excited to be here um and happy to be on the team thank you cameron and the board will be able to see cameron throughout the year as we give updates about our equity work and uh we'll tell you a little bit more about some of the things that he's starting already a little bit later and so we have another person that we're

006going to recognize and as we um sean uh we we had caitlyn on and we just lost her about 45 seconds ago so i'm texting back and forth with her right now to to get her back in so i don't know if she's having connection issues or okay or what so well she was the second person we were going to recognize and i guess i can just give the audience a little bit of background if we're waiting for caitlyn is that the board of education to your uh over a year ago uh decided to add a student board representative on to the board it's a non voting member but the board also wanted to make sure that we had a student advisory so that way it was more than just the voice of one individual

007at the board table and so last year we had adam jaffe as our student board representative and he is now moving off of that role and then he is still going to serve on the advisory and also serve as a mentor to our new student board representative and um and we do go through a process and some of the board members are actually part of that process to select the the new board representative and so uh we are recognizing uh caitlyn tran who just joined us and so um no it's all right how are you caitlin i'm good i was here earlier and then my wife liked me we know it was a little technical issue so i was just welcoming you to the board and recognizing you and um and i will tell the

008board that i and and some of you may have remembered an email that we had some from some students some months ago about a project that they wanted to do around minimizing the digital divide in st louis and i have had a the privilege caitlyn was one of those students and so um i've had the privilege of working with them for i guess the last five months or so and they have been implementing a project to help minimize the digital divide and so it is it's just been really incredible and so caitlin you're gonna have an opportunity to check in um a little bit later after i do my presentation and then uh you'll get to share your report so we just want to welcome caitlin thank you welcome caitlin welcome so then um sean

009you want to move then to superintendent communications yes and so i am going to start sharing can all of you see that okay good so being that this is the very first meeting of our um of the 2020-21 school year i thought it'd be really important for me to kind of give a state of the district type of presentation to all of you so that way you can kind of uh hear about how we're starting the school year and just some important things that we're going to be focusing on this year and and when we think about the year uh probably all of us have had some type of image about this year it's been a very unusual year um thinking about that we're in the middle of a pandemic thinking about that we've had

010continued injustices and killings of black individuals by the hands of people that were meant to protect them um thinking that we've had to revamp the school year and just thinking about a lot of different things that were in the happening in the world uh an image that came and when i presented i started talking to the uh staff last week as part of my keynote to them i said the image that i had was this like the dumpster fire and so it's hard not to get to this point where you're just thinking about something that's happening that's just out of control and and what i talked to the staff about is that we have to remember that we are a district that's grounded in having a growth mindset and that we have to be intentional

011that even when we're facing adversity we have to have changed that mindset and think about every everything that we're going through is an opportunity for growth it's an opportunity for us to stretch ourselves to better ourselves and to be change makers and that we have the responsibility as a district to lead with optimism and positivity and that our student we need to set that tone constantly for our students and we need to be intentional about that and thinking about how we change those things um that might seem like a dumpster fire into something positive and so um and we definitely have a lot of positives that we're gonna uh have as a result of some of the work that we're doing so tonight as part of our state of the district i want to start

012with our mission and vision and just remind you as the board is that we inspire each student to love learning and embrace challenge with the rich and rigorous academic culture and our vision is to develop leaders who shape the world through independence creativity and critical thinking we have started this year with 2624 individuals that we're responsible for and again this number can fluctuate and um we will know actually the the actual count on our count day and that last day last thursday in september um this is this year we've seen the largest freshman class that we've seen in a very long time with over 256 students so our enrollment is about the same a little bit higher than it was than when we started last year and we're also keeping in mind that since we

013have started the school year with a lot of change we're also going to be monitoring if we've had changes enrollment due to the way we started the school year this is going to be a year of change and we're going to continue to have that mindset of how we contin as an excellent school district become a transformational school district in our work we can't be complete placent in our excellence and the work that we do um we have to look deep into seeing the work that the areas that we need to improve and be transformational and and be leaders so as i shared with you as you a few weeks ago um we we had our return to learn plan that we've been developing since march and we had three different options and we have

014decided to start the year with remote learning and that remote learning um it was a very difficult decision because we wanted we want our students back in school um we felt it was the best phase to be in at the start of the school based off the data that we're seeing in the community and the recommendations by st louis county health um but our plan is to be back by the second quarter and that's what we're working towards that's our goal and so uh as a superintendent i recognize that this is not the most ideal way to start the school year and i know that there are different opinions about that in our community but i have a responsibility to the health and safety of our students and our staff and i felt it was

015the best decision that we needed to make and i assure you that we are going to make good decisions to get us to the point where we can be back in school and there will be opportunities for our students to be in our schools even during this first quarter the other option that we had available to our families was the learning at home and that was a fully virtual model that is going to be for the first semester of school uh beyond the the first quarter i thought it'd be important for the board to know how many students actually are participating across the district with that we had 428 students at the elementary level we had 192 three students purchasing participating in learning at home 96 at the middle school and 139 at the high

016school level so i also want to just make sure that i emphasize the community is that although we are starting remotely it is very different from the spring and we have more synchronous learning experiences and a daily schedule for our students we're continuing to teach new content to our students and we're also holding our students to a high expectation with our grading it's not just about work completion but it's actually about doing the work and understanding the concepts as i said daily schedules for students are required to be in class with their teachers and then we also are using zoom uh as a tool that we are using beyond just google me and again um even this they're sometimes change things that we've had to address when uh looking at zoom and making sure that

017we've had all the right safety precautions in place and we actually had a few issues this week with unfortunate zoom bombings but we have been responsive to what happened and we've been able to put in some additional measures to make sure that we're doing everything possible to keep our students safe uh and then the other thing too is that although we are in remote learning we are looking at opportunities for our students to be in our schools for example we have students we're looking at the needs of students and getting them in for additional supports such as students that might have ieps we also have students that might have some other needs uh that we are bringing using utilizing all of our human capital to um give some additional supports we're also having a plan

018that we're going to be rolling out that is going to get students in to get them trained and oriented to a new way of learning and feeling what it feels like to be in a socially distanced type of classroom um our goal is to get back to school and um and and we're looking at that second quarter and so we are going to um look at how are we going to get back to that uh back to school in a safe way and how will we know we're ready to move back to that next phase we will continue to get recommendations from st louis county health department that is uh we the superintendents across the county are using them as a resource we're also going to be looking at um data from multiple sources uh

019around the region determine whether or not it's safe and then also we're thinking about like making sure that everyone understands what it means to be in this type of environment and making sure people are ready for that i wanted to share this with you is that we are looking at multiple types of data and one of the pieces of data that we look at is the transmission rate of the reproductive rate and basically a simple way of looking at this is how contagious uh covet 19 is right now and so we are looking at at this rate if you look at this area right here we at st louis area um in the st louis area you can see that what we want is a uh it's called an r naught that is below one

020um it and that is that if it's below one um there's less likely for there to be a transmission or a contagion to another person if it's one that means you will probably contin in fact one other person if it's above one it's it's you will be conduct potentially in fact more than one and so it is a uh one piece of data that we use and what i like to see is that we are seeing a decline in that and if we continue to see a decline um that will be an another indicator that we'll be ready to start school i um i'm people have asked what number are you using to make this what i'm looking is for a decline in the numbers um and making sure that we and there's there probably

021will once we get back there will probably be some um still contagion that's out there but we're looking at our risk mitigation measures and our health promotion to help alleviate that the other thing too is we look at our uh the seven day average of new cases per 100 000 and what's also positive about that is that you can see that it's although it's still in the orange we are looking at a decrease in that as well and so um we are continuing to monitor that data across the region um i'm actually going to be meeting with some health experts and doctors in next couple days to help inform that process as well and what i'm hoping is that by october 1st we will be able to make a decision and an announcement that will

022allow us to get people prepared for that whatever we're doing for the second quarter and so my hope is that we will be able to announce that our students can come back to school in some way the other thing that we are focused on is our work around equity and developing an anti-bias anti-racist culture and this isn't about and this was interesting one of my colleagues today said it's not about being but developing because we can never get to the point where we're finished with this work and so uh this is going to be can continue to be uh evident in all of our work and it's coming from the very top the board has put forth their resolution and we are going to adhere to that and then the other thing too is that

023um we as uh we have been working with teacher leaders throughout the summer about developing presuppositions or non-negotiables that we are going to base a lot of our work on this year and fortunately cameron has been able to be a part of those conversations and we're looking about looking at the intersection between the personal the institutional and the curricular instructional responsibility of uh having an anti-racist anti-bias community we have um it was great that on that first opening day we as i said cameron led an activity around the intersection between race and being an educator and then we all we had an assured experience for all of our certified teachers and administrators uh with anti-bias training and we're going to continue to look at what training we're going to provide for anti-racism and this is

024going to be continual and on an annual basis so these presuppositions are going to be the grounding for all of our work that we're going to do around equity anti-bias and anti-racism um ultimately there's going to be this intersection because we're we're we're in the business of developing humans and uh those intersections is that we need to if we are looking at the personal the curricular and institutional it will help develop the full human being so as part of our work um and as joe mentioned we have been working over the last few weeks finalizing just the the final touches for our strategic plan but we also have a plan that's just completely dedicated to this work and we are making sure that we have assured learning for all the board and the staff cameron

025has developed a uh equity audit document and he's going to be starting those with each of the building leaders we were able to hire a director position which is giving us we're dedicating those resources to this work um we're revising our standards of professional practice which is going to hold all of us accountable to it and that's part of the evaluation model we're looking at ways to engage the community in this work there's also going to be work that's going to be connected to our curriculum our connections to different programming such as gifted and ap and honors and then um also making sure that we are giving students experiences pre-k through 12 and talking about race we're also going to have a new board advisory that cameron's going to help lead and then the ongoing

026accountability for this is going to be through our strategic plan and the strategic plan is grounded in that profile of the the graduate now we have been doing a lot of work around our strategic plan over this last year um we've had community engagements we've had surveys we've had writing sessions and we've had focus groups and our subcommittee of the board has been working really really hard on uh helping us put those final touches on the strategic plan and as joe said on september 9th we're bringing it forward just because we don't have that final document in the wordsmithing finish that doesn't mean the work is not moving forward and i just want to make sure that people understand that our strategic plan we have goals which is our why we have objectives which is

027our what we have our action steps as our how and then we'll have measures of success which are our metrics and when we're talking about our goals we want to be aspirational and be big picture thinkers we want to be bold but yet attainable and when we're thinking about our uh objectives this is what it's uh the objectives are going to be what will be true if we are actually doing the work and this is also going to include that smart goal model where we're going to have measures attached to each of the objectives and in the action steps this is where we're going to have some fluidity in that and that evergreen model is that we will change our action steps based off of um what is happening with our data if we're seeing

028that things aren't working then we have the ability to change it and that's why we're going to be building in times throughout the year for us to keep coming back to the strategic plan and then looking at those measures of success which will include a dashboard and the dashboard is going to be an opportunity for us to hold ourselves accountable and also to see where we're growing our goals as i said are bold and they are going to be like big picture thinking but the where the objectives and when the action steps come into play to support these goals that's where you're going to see the change in the action so we are going to make sure that each learner feels safe and valued we're going to commit to the educational growth of our learners

029through an equitable personalized and individualized learning experience and will be dedicated to the growth of the learners and their social emotional and physical well-being as i said earlier this is just like a little snapshot of what a dashboard is going to look like and so uh the dashboard we're going to try to keep that on just a few pages so that way when we're bringing this back to the board it's going to be easily readable something that you can see and and question and it's going to be an opportunity for us to monitor our growth very closely as we as we get into the school year i think this the message i always tell the staff is that in order for us to grow in order for us to really have um success we cannot

030stay in our comfort zone and we cannot feel um you know this work cannot just feel easy and we also know that it can't be so out of our comfort zone that we're in the danger zone where we're feeling like we can't emotionally handle something so that risk stone is where we have the greatest potential and that's where we're going to work to stay this year i'm a firm believer in collective efficacy and that when we come together as a community and we feel like we are coming having common language common goals then we will feel capable of doing things that we haven't done in the past so again um our ultimate our our tagline is that we educate we inspire and empower and that's what we are ultimately doing each and every day um

031so that was a quick overview of the state of the district and our work around the strategic plan our work around anti-bias anti-racism and then currently where we are with our return to learn plan so thank you thank you sean that was great um so caitlyn i know this your first meeting but is there anything this is typically where we'd have uh the student rep give an update is there anything you want to give us an update on yeah i can give you an update on how school has been going so my name is caitlin tran and i am this year's student representative to the board of education i want to thank you all for providing this opportunity to have a student voice on the board of education as this will be the second year

032of having a student rep i am grateful to have adam's guidance and hope to live up to the big shoes that i have to fill i am also looking forward to working with you all and dr dougherty i am also excited to work with those who are filling the positions that were newly established to more widely represent the student voice these people are nilay hopper the student leader of diversity equity and inclusion and the district advisory council which now extends to represent all schools in the district we are facing an unprecedented school year more than ever we as a community need to come together we must learn to care about the feelings well-being and needs of those around us and to take care of each other it's this clayton community that continues to persevere now

033that the school year has started although we've only had three days of school so far i feel that remote classes have been going well in my experience teachers seem to have a solid structure for approaching asynchronous and synchronous learning for instance the organization system of google classroom features that teachers are using to share work with students has been easy to understand and access and so far from the students that i have discussed this with there seems to be a positive reception to the block schedule and shorter school day especially during these challenging times i think that many students appreciate having the opportunity to interact with their friends daily again under the structure of atypical school day so i am excited to work with you all and i look forward to what this year has in

034store for us thank you thank you that's correct joe um one of the things we forgot to do is we need to swear caitlin in oh yeah of course so if you wouldn't mind i do you want to swear in do you want me to swear in you can sean okay so uh caitlyn i'm gonna go ahead and ask that you know each of our board members has to uh be sworn in at the beginning of their tenure as a board member so we're going to do that for you for this year and so if you wouldn't mind raising your right hand and repeating after me i caitlyn tran do solemnly affirm that i will support and uphold the constitutions of the united states and the state of missouri that i will support and uphold

035the constitutions of the united states and of the state of missouri and that i will easily seek actively seek input from district students and that that i will actively seek input from district students represent their voices at the board of education table represent their voices at the board of education table provide a student voice to the board of education provide a student voice to the board of education and will faithfully conduct my conduct myself as a student representative to the school district of clayton board of education and will faithfully conduct myself as the student representative to the school district of clayton board of education welcome caitlin welcome and thanks sean for i'm sorry about that caitlyn i'm i missed i wasn't supposed to miss that part sorry um so um we are going to move

036on to then uh policy study so we've got two policies and so we have a uh 5.01 which is first reading of policy bbfa which is a board member conflict of interest policy okay so i'm going to give a little bit of an overview and just as a remin uh something else that's different is that in our conversations in our subcommittees when we were talking about the board calendar and talking about board learning one of the things that uh board members had mentioned is that um as a governing body it's integral that the board dedicates time to policy and making sure that we're dedicating it dedicating enough time to it and and also time and consideration because it is definitely important for us to have strong policies and that we're adhering to them so board

037members suggested that sometimes in our previous meetings the policies often seemed as like at the very end or something that was after everything else was done and so we decided as part of our shift of our board meetings is to put policies first and uh even though some policies may take a little longer or a little shorter amount of time it would be important just to have that message that we policies are really important and that we need to uh dedicate enough time to them so this policy is one that you have to approve every other year and this is the year that we need to approve it it's basically a policy that is holding board members responsible for um you know any conflict of interest in terms of donations or gratuities or anything that

038might be financially given to the board and so um this is something that all the board members have to fill out a financial disclosure every year and so this is a policy that we have to keep coming back to um one of the things that we are we have looked at in and you can see some of the changes is that there is a dollar amount that we can't go in excess of and the board has the re you know board has the ability to change what that amount is um sometimes when and and we we were thinking that bring presenting something that is between 100 and 200 and the reason we do that is because sometimes board members are asked to be part of a dinner as part of a um vendor meeting as

039part of a conference or something like that and so we don't want to ever put in put us in a situation that we're going over an amount but we don't want to have an excessive amount and so the board can decide whether or not that um what that amount is but we were the right administration was recommending that would be something between 100 and 200 um and so wanted to see if any board members had any questions or any thoughts about this policy anybody have any questions or comments about the policy i'm not you could raise your hand nobody we need to pick a number though right sean yeah we recommended the number we put 200 if ever if people are fine with that we can keep that or we can keep it as 100

040or we can split the difference whatever what was it what was it before it was a hundred dollars okay and the reason why that it also has to align with the next policy which is about this the teachers conflict of interest right and sometimes um there have been situations where um parents might have you know a gift card for something for teachers and it goes over a certain amount and it puts them in an uncomfortable spot and so we we thought we don't want to have something excessive but um sometimes that over 100 might a little bit it might sometimes go over 100 so and it has to be aligned so anything 150 bucks we'll split the difference yeah i will say i like 150. okay anybody have any comments questions any problems with 150

041sure uh i don't have a problem with 150 but um sean is there a um i might be good to uh just his background do do those kinds of gifts or contributions or whatever you you get whatever you want to call that is there any mechanism where those things are reported or tracked or if i want to find out how many uh gift cards were given to a board member or a teacher is that something that we get we currently don't track that and so if something was over that amount that's in policy then we would have to address that but we don't have something that's a tracking of our gift cards i think that would be really a difficult mechanism to do actually for either staff or or board yeah i don't i i

042think it'd be easier with board if we wanted to put something in there like that but i think with staff it might be very difficult to do yeah no i mean i just think it's important for us to talk about um even even a hundred dollars or you know 150 or 200 like i think we should just talk about the ways that that is um made known or public or how that could how that could be i mean the kinds of things that you're um you're talking about as far as dinners and things like that it's usually a part of a scheduled public event um so it's i think it's easy for people to know what's happening but this is a thought about how we would maintain that disclosure or kind of transparency yeah i

043think for the board it would be very easy to do because there's hardly ever times when i mean it maybe it might be one it might be a dinner at a um msba conference or something like that but there's there has been i i mean i don't know from your perspective i you probably haven't gotten a lot of gift cards or two vendors respond coming out to except for those times and i i think that we go to so few of those i think it would be easy to track that yeah i think that's something that we should you know maybe we could we could think about i can't think of anything other than a sort of a professional setting and a meeting with a meal that's ever ever happened but i don't know maybe

044other people are getting gifts and i'm not i don't know what i'm not getting gifts but it could happen with you know somebody's invited to a baseball game or to golf or i mean those are the other places where things like that happen yeah at least in the business world right right joe i mean do you have a sense of whether is there a useful mechanism for keeping track of this or telling people about it or is it am i looking for a problem where one doesn't exist like what do you what do you think i i i don't see boards i mean i think it's a it's an interesting and potentially good idea but i think as long as you have a threshold and given that most board members are we're in the public

045eye anyway typically it's there's not a need to um to track it and i but i mean we certainly could and gary i just from my experience we almost every company i've worked for has had gift policies and it's uh it's it's it's basically it's an ethical decision to abide by it it's not reported on um so i think it may be a a solution in search of a problem there i mean honestly like i couldn't remember if there was something i wasn't thinking about that we did have to or already did disclose it i mean i'm not we're not making a huge change here in terms of the the policy you know changing the thresholds and policy or anything so i'm i'm satisfied with that and this is just a policy that we have

046to do before a certain period and that unfortunately it's the one that we have to start with tonight it's not right one that's so directly related to our work but it is one that we have to get approved yep on board so i i think i would make the recommend i think that what the the input that i've heard is that if we change it to 150 i think it's just that it's that moral responsibility of keep it adhering to that policy okay any other thoughts on this one this is it's not an action item yet no it's going to be coming back for approval and then the next one is actually really related to it which is actually connected to tony and so tony if you want to just give an overview really quick

047of that and then see if the board has any questions sure all right good evening everyone so the policy uh that i'm presenting tonight for the first read is policy gbca which is staff conflict of interest and really um it's very similar to what sean has just presented so msba has modified the policy to make it clear that the board is responsible for setting the appropriate amount for limiting gifts and gratuities that employees subject to this policy may accept so when you look through this the policy really just states that all employees of the school district should avoid situations where decisions or actions violate the provisions of the policy or conflict with the mission of the district if you look at page five section nine that's the area that's the one that was rewarded it

048was uh rewarded to now include vendors and it's been updated to reflect what we currently have on there is 200 but i'm hearing you say that we will change that to 150 so if you could just make a note that we would put a limit of 150 um as the as the value and then they also listed potential items that would be considered of substantial values listed there too so golf meals personal property different things on there as examples is there any input or any questions about this policy anybody have any additional questions about this one pretty similar to the mirrors in essence or closely mirrors the board one okay all right scene none thank you tony all right thank you um so we're gonna move on to uh 6.01 which is the ready by

0495 legislation and i'm going to hand it over to sean to explain it but i just want to say that we've brought this forward because we've talked about the board's role in terms of advocacy and in terms in particular of advocacy for equity related things and i think this uh kind of fulfills checks both those boxes so maybe sean you want to kind of speak to what ready by five is yes so um hopefully you had an opportunity to read the executive summary that i put in uh the friday memo and ready by five um is a group that is putting forth some legislation are working to get legislation a ballot initiative on the november ballot that would uh provide it'd be a tax that would i think it's a half cent tax that would

050provide funding for early childhood education now and you might be you might have done some reading on this and um there is still some there's still some unknowns about this and so we felt like it was important because some districts are having some conversations around this and it could potentially benefit the district but we don't know there is going to be a uh there would be a mechanism of a committee that would decide how those funds would be used uh throughout the the county and then um there have been questions about whether or not the funds would be used for just public uh institutions or would they also be used for private institutions and i also know that there has been some additional questions amongst uh legislators around this and so and joe i don't

051know if the current status is if they were able to move forward to get this on the on the ballot are they still within the timeline i think it's officially off the ballot for the county now is it not it it is as yeah as of yesterday they're still moving forward but not on um it does not look like it will be on the november ballot so yeah and maybe just to add um yesterday yeah this will um this will raise about 80 million dollars a year so it's a significant amount 80 million dollars in st louis county a little over 80 million dollars that would go for uh education of zero to five year olds thinking that it would go to kind of um those that need it the most and that's the premise

052go ahead stacy i just have a question um even though we're a public school district because the family center is tuition based is that considered public or private our our family center it's considered public yeah okay it's considered public and so as an example if you take the family center right so th this this initiative is really about both access and quality of care for zero to five so we don't i mean you know in fairness our family center has very high quality however we've talked about that we might want greater access right we might want to give access to other folks so for us it might provide access to um other people to be able to access the quality care of the family center in other places in the county it might you know

053both improve quality and improve access right so so what are folks thoughts right we bring this forward just to say is this something that we would want to support i mean it's not um again it was moving a little quicker they were hoping to put it on the ballot for november it doesn't um again it doesn't appear that that's going to happen but they're still moving forward trying to put it at some point uh maybe april of next year at some point and are asking various school districts would they be supportive of such an initiative i think if it's going to provide more access to early childhood education that's obviously a great thing i guess i'm still would like more information about how it could benefit us or possibly do the opposite i mean in

054general in theory this sounds great but and i also wonder about this other group the coalition um i don't know how you feel joe or sean about the pros and cons between the two initiatives yeah i mean i think that um it's interesting the initiative the other initiative um the coalition actually came out of some of the work that we did with the board plc was a group of people that met through the board plc and they've met and formed and uh started moving forward i think it's it's an intriguing idea as well um i think that no matter what if there's any kind of mechanism that could provide more high quality and accessible early childhood education because we know that research shows that how important that is um we need to explore it and

055knowing that this one uh is maybe it's not as pressing with the being off the november ballot what we could do is think about you know even how we've been doing subcommittees we could assign a few board members to get some additional information and i work with me and we could actually become experts and learn learning about both um but i do think this is one that we do need there's a lot of push behind the ready by five and a lot of support already by it around it and so i think that's where i put our priority right now in terms of getting to know more about that knowing more how that money is going to be distributed to different entities knowing um you know what are the criteria and so i just think

056that it would be worth getting some um some additional information and i think that um you know i can help gather that but i also think it'd be important for board members to be in the know about that as well do we know how it works how how does it how does it exactly work like how does ready by 5 work so if i mean just like tell me so let's just say it passes and 78 million dollars available for kids to go to school and which kids and where are they coming from that's i think that's the additional information that we need to unless joe you have some addition know more about that but i think it's that's would be good additional information that we would need to know what i do know is

057that there would be a uh committee and i think that there could be um ultimately they're appointed by the board the county executive who would then um make those decisions but um i don't know what the criteria is and i haven't seen exactly what that criteria is for this election but their website is pretty comprehensive but i haven't seen that yeah i think just a little bit real quick which is so yes the cut so the county exec would appoint a commission so those of you that are familiar with the children's services fund it would be a that's the way that works that's 40 million dollars that go to you serving organizations it's a quarter cent um sales tax and the organizations that are working on it um so some of you may be um

058familiar with we power right with charlie cooksy and we power they're kind of behind it um so the idea really is for the money to go um you know in in st louis there's economic challenges and there's race challenges in particular in terms of who gets early childhood right so jason to your your question i mean i think they're still working out the mechanics but the idea is that uh most of the money is going to go to those that are underserved which tends to be black and brown kids and who are um from lower income backgrounds so so these kids then are able to go from their communities to like assuming suburb schools or or this is any because this isn't for the city this is for the county right yeah it's just for

059the county so so um jason it could be that you could go to uh urban sprouts which is the name of a private day care center in you city or it could be that you go to the university city children's center in new city which is also private or it could be that you could go to the clayton family center which is public or julia goldstein in you city which is public it depends where you live and kind of you would you would again it would be um those uh spots if you will would be subsidized would be paid for you get you know and and the idea and again this is still new but the idea is that there would even be some expansion right because there are going to be obviously some facilities

060that don't have the capacity but they met part of this money might go to you know expand facilities or high quality facilities so that they could have more capacity yeah so i i guess my i guess i'm not sure if you all discuss these types of things at all um subsidies but like to me if we're constantly subsidizing um black and brown people then we're not focusing on what needs to be fixed to make it so that we're not having to subsidize like it just it kind of to me and this is just a conversation i want to make sure we have this conversation it kind of perpetuates um the imbalance that we have in in our communities like so i i in theory i like the idea that we're trying to provide services and

061um quality education to everybody however this doesn't this does not and maybe i maybe i just got it all wrong but this does not fix the issue that we have in our black and brown communities now of course this isn't what cloud what makes this kind of cloudy and kind of weird is that it's this isn't just for black and brown kids these are kids that are poor anywhere right who are under resource anywhere and that's what makes it complicated that's very complicated so my question is is like because it's all bundled up with all kids because poor kids are or underserved kids or disparaged kids everywhere like it doesn't really fix the issues that are important to black and brown folks also like it's kind of two separate issues well so jason i don't

062know if you've read the legislation but um i spent some time uh reviewing it yesterday and i think that it at least that and there the group is my understanding is the group is now pulling back and um trying to decide what the next steps are forward because the bill that they wrote was so broadly written that um i think that there was concern there could be abuse of funding and of power if the bill passed and it was to be put on the ballot and passed in its current form but the bill as it was written had at least 25 20 of the money which should be used for long-term economic development projects and so that does address some address some of the systemic issues that you're talking about so that's everything from hang

063on i'm just pulling it up here that's everything from like wastewater treatment plants for like lead and water um to um roads and street development projects and improving neighborhoods um and so i think that they have spent some time thinking about some of the issues that you're bringing up and um there's a there's a group of uh african-american women that are leading the charge as far as making sure that that stuff is is incorporated into the bill so it's not just 100 focused on um childhood education so but back to back to sean's question about you know how as our school district should we be involved and to what extent should we be involved i think one of the main concerns that i had reading the bill is that public schools were not specifically called

064out in the bill and i think that we would want public schools to be able to participate when this does come uh on the ballot if it ever does get back on the ballot so what they talked about was a mixed delivery system which is um which includes everything that joe already talked about so that's in home child care even so that's somebody that's just running to daycare out of their house that's child care centers um and i think that we all can recognize that the quality of the the um of the early education that could be delivered if it's not consistent throughout and doesn't include public schools um could be could very very well could be very you know it could vary there'd be a big spectrum of um what those children actually receive

065um and so if the intent is to try to increase the bar so that when kids start kindergarten ready by five that public schools definitely need to be included and i think that's where we have an advocacy role to play maybe as far as as far as the legislation is concerned that's just my two cents so kim so i you know i did read the legislation and i do know there was a stickling point for a governing body to have to administer the funds and that was a big problem for a lot of folks but i think the the conversation that i'm trying to um start here is is how does this fix the issue like it doesn't necessarily fix the issue it doesn't go like and i want to understand like what is non

066so what is quality tell me what because someone can identify or um explain what quality education is versus non-quality do we have do we is anyone having um a uh definition or examples of non-quality early childhood education so i think if you're sitting in somebody's house and you're plopped in front of the television for four hours a day and you're two years old that would be the definition of non-quality education well they have to get accredited there's an accreditation system for early childhood programs as far as i know also isn't is that right yes so i think that's one part of it and i think jason to your issue uh and question i think you're absolutely right it doesn't it will not overall address some of the systemic issues and so i think the question

067for us is but sometimes the band-aid is better than no band-aid right so i mean i think you're you're that's a fair statement but i mean that's that's the question and due to sean's point do we want to form a kind of an ad hoc group that you know talks about there might be an opportunity to influence it right i don't you know i don't know but i mean we might be able to um have some influence whether it's inclusive more of public schools or inclusive more of addressing systemic issues not what i call more band-aids but i will just say that i think sometimes the band-aids are worth it right 80 million dollars of band-aids is still more access and quality care even if it doesn't address the systemic issues that's the joke joe

068can i say something sure go ahead i just i just want to throw in there that i mean i i really like what the legislation says or what it's trying to do it might not be perfect right now and obviously that's why they're they're they're they're uh working on revising it but i like what it stands for and what it's trying to do um as for for children of that age um i would love to know how as a school district whether um it's it's this the ready by five legislation or some other type of thing that's important for us how like what that looks like when we when we do advocate um and what you what people had in mind um because that that that's really what i didn't understand like we're gonna we're

069having a discussion about about it but i don't really i don't have a good understanding of yeah okay so we support it so what then what does that look like how do we advocate for something um and as a board and help something get passed because i don't know that we've really we've really ever done i mean we've passed resolutions and we we've talked amongst ourselves a little bit about things but i don't know how when you know when something is really something is important we decide as a as a group that yes we do want to advocate what does that really look like to people yeah i think that's a really good question amy and we're i think that um all the questions that i'm hearing is we put this purposely on the table

070not knowing knowing that we wouldn't have all the answers like we still have a lot to learn from it but this would be an opportunity for the board to see what questions still need to be answered and seeing what your curiosities are so that way we can figure that out now that we looks like we have more time to be able to do that we can get some additional information and and i think it would be good for us to you know as some of you said that we could potentially influence this and i think as we have we we have to you know the board has the opportunity as an elect as elected officials we can influence legislation and um i think that it'd be important for our voices to be part of this

071and if there's something that's going to have a systemic impact then we should be actively involved well and and again i think that's the point where even to your point jason where we can determine like what how much you know what what what's the level of uh systemic impact that that you know what's our threshold where we say well if it doesn't have that we don't support it or you know we it's not perfect we do support it we try to influence it i mean those are all things that we can consider yeah again trying to bring forward something or some you know an example of something i mean i think we could probably all agree that early childhood is important quality and access it's just a matter of if this is the right thing

072if this does enough if this is you know etc etc right i think it's going to come down to you know us having to do more research on just education in general right like even talking about i i i constantly mention this and it always like goes past people i think but brown versus board having those kind of conversations about the impact about band-aids versus actually going to the root of systemic issues i think that's i i think right now the the popular term nowadays is inflection point we're at an inflection point right uh right now in our society uh during covid with a second shooting for example that's been called on tape where in in a neighborhood that's in neighborhoods that are that are struggling and these issues are popping up and we got

073to deal with these systemic issues and all i'm saying is that we need to have a conversation about what you know what our philosophy is going to be is it going to be an individual you know me joe amy running out and you all backing your your certain um uh policies that will be put on bills or do we actually have these kind of real conversations about if we want to be a unified body and have true impact as a group right um have a conversation about what this means what the what our philosophy is and uh and and and what what education looks like for everybody um so i i so this conversation is good but i want to make sure that we if we're going to decide to do this go this route

074we just need to make sure we have these kind of conversations that are that take longer in 10 15 minutes so jason do you think they're mutually exclusive do you think it's you know let me be more pointed do you feel like it's detrimental to support a program that addresses a short-term gap you know compared to a bigger systemic problem as opposed to taking a fundamental stand against that program and driving only for the systemic fix do they have to be mutually exclusive or can it be driven in parallel yeah i know i think based on so historically uh historically speaking i think if you look at brown versus board for example i think that it's been a detriment because we have a whole entire community north st louis city that has been written off

075that is totally underserved uh totally disinvested in and of uh people that have you know a legacy that has come through that and has lived through that and it's been hard for them to get their feet stable in our community economically in jobs the whole nine yards so i think we need to discuss the impact of that yeah i think that you know as of right this very moment i would say yes it's a i think some you know it's one of the other can one of the other it may not be the answer here but if i had to choose i'm not i want to make sure we address the systemic issues and stop doing band-aids to everything because systemic issues are where we're going to see actual change so i think i don't

076i don't disagree sorry joe i don't disagree with you but it's not our legislation that we're drafting here right so it's if we're gonna you know what you're talking about is and i'm putting words in your mouth it's almost like hey we're gonna come to the table we're gonna propose our own legislation that addresses a systemic issue versus putting our weight behind or our weight i mean we're a small district relative to these other places so i say that kind of with air quotes but i think there's a difference between saying yeah we support education for you know zero through five um i think it's i i'm of the mind that that they're not mutually exclusive you know because i think you can push for systemic change i think everybody has to push for systemic

077change but i think you're cutting your nose off despite your face if you turn your back on an initiative that we're not driving that we didn't write that would help kids in the meantime because we've got a problem that we could put real value and see measurable change and impact over the next say 10 years whereas a systemic change can take a generation you know so i think i think that's a good point you're making but to just to switch the needle a little bit to make sure that i i highlight some of the things that you're saying is that it could take a generation right it's been a gen it's been several generations thus far and we've gotten we're still in a bad bad place we're still in we're still in subsidy phase we're

078still in um high unemployment phases um high high um you know jail rates i mean imprisonment all these things are happening in these communities for a reason uh and covet has really exploited a lot of the uh health risks that are happening uh in these communities so we can't continue to use the uh to me the philosophy that cutting the nose off to fight your face because it it hasn't proven to be beneficial for black and brown communities or people that are poor in general but black and brown in particular so i think what i i mean this great discussion i think that um i doubt we're going to solve it tonight but um i think it is a good discussion and i i mean what i would recommend is that you know we form

079a i think we've done pretty well with kind of having some ad hoc deeper conversations right kind of an ad hoc committee that looks into this and then brings it back right and i mean i i mean i think that's what i would suggest right there's not a huge rush if it was on the november ballot it's it's pretty important right to move pretty quickly because nobody november is coming quick but if it's not till april or after we do have some time this is going to be one last thing i don't want to sound yes don't push this issue but you know there is this you know this is one issue this is one topic that we have that we're discussing it for but there are several topics on the table right now that

080that will um that we're dealing with right now that this discussion will give us a strong foundation and understanding so when we sit down and have these conversations we're coming at it with um you know strong perspectives you know really strong understandings of the issues that we're talking about so can i just add one thing i i think that having this time would allow us to get additional information um but the other thing too i think is important is that you know how can we look systemically how can we also look locally i mean we could also look at what we're currently doing in our district around our early childhood in terms of access do we um right now it's it's um sometimes difficult for students to have access to that so i mean as

081part of that conversation um in in terms of uh what next steps i think it would be interesting for us also to put that um what can we do locally and systemically so i just wanted to throw that out there yeah and and i might just say in maybe closing this conversation out that what i will say is or what i i'll just note something that i've noticed about our board i actually think we do better um in smaller groups i don't i think sometimes when we try to have a big healthy um you know kind of um deeper conversation is a group of seven plus one eight right plus sean nine um it's harder and so i think sometimes it is i think what we what we're learning is that um we can be

082sometimes more effective and efficient if we break it out and then come back so i will say that too um okay i think we're um gonna move on from this one to uh reports so speaking of smaller groups right we had three ad-hoc groups um one of which was a um well well three had hot groups and one one of the things that um one of the groups talked about was um the board meeting calendar um and i guess board committees right so really in a way the next two so the i guess 7.01 is really the the board meeting calendar so i guess maybe sean do you want to set that up yes so we had um a smaller subcommittee that looked at our year-long calendar and um appreciate david and kim and amy

083being part of that we also as part of that conversation looked at committees uh for the district as for the boards as well and hopefully you had an opportunity to look at the draft calendar that we presented and in designing this calendar and in the conversation we talked about what are some ways that we can make sure that the board has more input in terms of the items that are on the agenda we also looked at what are some ways that we are making sure that we're not um using certain um certain items that have been on the calendar uh for past years that have a tendency to take a lot of the board time so for example we talked about the the curriculum review process it's really important for the board to have an

084understanding of what is happening with the curriculum but does our process is there some changes that we can do with that process that we do more reporting to the board and then build in some time for them to have a annual report um so in looking at this year-long calendar what we did was we put in items that we knew were going to um be connected to the um the work that we had to do around anti-racism anti-bias building in uh updates on that also having updates around the strategic plan using our dashboard we also tried to look at the year-long in terms of uh grouping policies that were similar so that way we could come back uh to those throughout the year the other thing is we've built in times where there could be

085working sessions or uh times that we maybe didn't have two meetings a month but the other time during the month would be used for subcommittees or the board financial advisory meeting to meet instead so um i hope what our hope is that you had an opportunity to look at this now and the other thing i want to say is that not all of this is complete there's still room for the board to add agenda items to this as we go through the year um but and also we have to add the recognizing our owns but um that was the thought of the the committees and wanted to see if there was anything from the other people who served on the committee to add to that conversation oh david or amy you guys what was on

086the calendar who was on that community this was david kim and amy so just before we jump into the discussion does either david uh kim or amy wanna add anything to that no i'm good yeah me too you did a nice job summarizing thanks sean the only thing that i'll add is that one of the things we talked about was or maybe it was maybe it was joe and i and sean talked about it when we were in our planning meeting was um adding some additional topics that um might relate to social issues that we're experiencing um that are going on kind of around our country today um for ex for hey you guys i'm in a meeting for example um like trans transgender bath sorry guys my son is doesn't know how to be

087quiet um transgender bathrooms or um you know just other issues that our community might be interested in you're hearing what we think about or how how we're how we plan to address so um those are just some topics that we can think about adding to the calendar and i and amy i don't know if i did add some of those that you talked about so we do have those in our on our calendar because that was something that was brought forth last year from our student board representative we had some discussion as part of our safety um and then we brought it it's back on the calendar for uh as in the year in october but yeah so there are some of those have run in there but the board has the opportunity to uh

088vote on um potential adding to the the calendar and we don't have to do that tonight but we wanted to make sure that people saw how the meanings were structured this year if you had any input about the way that they're structured anything that you feel is missing um this would be just kind of the opportunity to have that discussion well i i guess i guess we should probably hear like what what you all thought like what was the criteria and what were the things you thought about when you put the site put this thing together and what like how like what you know what i'm saying like what were we thinking about when we put it together so i mean we were thinking about all the requirements in terms of what's up for curriculum

089review we were thinking about um the strategic planning process we were thinking about the focus on diversity and equity and inclusion and the frequency with which we wanted to have updates on some of our top priority items and then we were also thinking about um how to make sure that the time that we spend together is the most efficient possible regardless of what the um subject matter is so i think i mean i think that's kind of the basis for all the discussion that we had sean to go back to what u.s i mean it seemed it seems obvious although we don't have it on the calendar um we didn't add it to the calendar that as long as we're in this um remote uh learning phase that during every board meeting throughout this year

090we should probably have that as an um ongoing update for both our you know for ourselves and also for the public so we get an update we can we can communicate you know what is the status of remote learning have there been any issues are there any new updates about when kids can start coming back into school et cetera et cetera so yeah and and i will definitely include that as part of my superintendent communications i also on september 30th um put the transition back to school as part of the focus because that's gonna be a time when we're gonna have to make an announcement and and i will say it's important to know that um right you know this is the kind of the committee's best uh best thinking and best guess right as

091time moves on we're going to need to add a topic here there right i mean that that's going to happen so i don't think we should be under the assumption that this is not at all locked in stone this is um you know great thinking and a great job but we'll need to adapt um some as we move forward so so does this coincide with like um with our committees suggestions uh that we put forward like does that coincide with any of that i was gonna say that jason we talked a lot about this in our group too say it again i was gonna say that too in our group we talked a lot about this in the meeting structure as well and the frequency so i know we're going to get to that next

092but yeah i would say that we took into consideration um the conversation that we had at the the professional learning aspect of the the board um there will be some additional meetings that we will have to add on as we do our professional development for the board uh so for example when we put when the board goes through their anti-racism training and um that is something that's going to have to be added to the calendar um we have the other thing was is the the switch of the agendas and making sure that we were looking at uh policy and making sure we were being focused on that and then the other thing too is you'll see in the committee uh of the outline that we provided for you that we have tried to build in

093times where the like the financial committee is is built into here um we still are going to have to schedule uh where cameron's gonna be working to schedule the equity committees uh with the advisory for the that work and so that still needs to be added so there are still some things that's there this isn't just the only times that the boards are going to meet the board's going to meet there or individual boards are going to be some of you might be meeting other times this doesn't mean this is for sure all the times when all seven of you are meeting so joe can i go ahead go ahead just kind of follow up a little bit on that and and not to get ahead to um the the work that that our committee

094did too although it does cross over a lot um so when when jason and stacey and i met with sean and talked about the professional learning and and particularly focused on board effectiveness and meeting effectiveness we actually spent a fair amount of time talking about the way our meetings were structured as well and how many of them there would be of what type and some of you have heard me say this before so i apologize for repeating myself but i feel like it's really important to emphasize in terms of the structural format of our meetings the difference between business items and everything else and if we do business meetings in a more structured way that doesn't because there's more structure there's less flexibility for how long things can be talked about and how how how

095long those things can go on and the ways that they can be discussed if it was a more formal process in my view it would leave us more time at other times hopefully in my opinion to do things like study items where we have more conversational things so in my opinion i think the work of scheduling out topically when meetings happen or what happens at different meetings is really important i think it's actually more important to think about the structure of different types of meetings we can be more effective and more efficient if we have business meetings that are of one structure and other meetings whether that be a meeting of the whole or of a subcommittee or a committee that includes other people from the community um as those are those are all appropriate

096so i i think if we can kind of bring some some of these ideas from the two groups together to move in that direction um that would be a really positive step for us um but again i mean uh this is a this is an issue that some of you've heard me talk about before so i mean i just don't i don't want to be a broken record about it but that structure can help us be more efficient in a lot of ways if we were to think about that good point well and i would just add like i know sean just said these dates are all the dates that the seven of us will be meeting but we did talk about in our group gary jason and i um with sean about you know

097i know we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit it ties into this um about the twice a month meetings and that um kind of to gary's point um are we more effective if one time a month instead we are in our ad hoc groups really working on things and get getting more done as opposed to all seven of us twice a month so i know that messes with the schedule you guys were working with but um that was one of the things we discussed in our group was the effectiveness of meeting as a group twice a month or did we break that up and make one of those look a little different so i know we'll get to that next but while we're on the topic of the calendar that's okay i mean i

098think it's it's okay to begin to blend them because they're they're um relevant so other other thoughts yeah i have i have a point um so two things one we all we uh the three of us amy gary and i talked about um aligning the policies uh with um with with curriculum uh when we discuss curriculum or whatever whatever issues that we're having so that the policies actually whenever we're doing a kind of audit reading the policies going through them and making sure that whatever policy we're dealing with kind of aligns with whatever um agenda item that we're dealing with so it um because i think correct me if i'm wrong gary and stacey we kind of agreed that or kind of talked about we can do a better job of managing um through policy

099versus you know this is where i call it diving into the weeds of a curriculum of things that we don't know about right so we don't really know curriculum i don't know education you know what a history teacher puts together when it comes to curriculum for example i don't know math curriculum very well but what we do know policy if we're studying the policies and understanding the policies we can really um influence outcome and making sure that when they create these curriculums or whatever issues that arise on the agenda that we're discussing that um the policy uh helped govern the process so does this did you all have that in mind number one gary stacy am i wrong my reconciliation but yeah you're right all right one of the big things that i left that

100meeting with was that we were all focused on and i think i feel like you were kind of voicing it well is like we should be thinking about policy more and like that that was like a way that to me that structure made a lot more sense is the way you were kind of distinguishing between the policy versus the the the example of curriculum is like what class is being taught at what time or what is being taught in what class is not policy it's it's procedures or whatever the next level down is right so i mean that's the that's the perfect example but the the the share of time we've historically spent at meetings on curriculum is way more than the share of time on policy so i think that was kind of how

101yeah that's how i remembered you saying it yeah yeah and we there and we can definitely try to connect whatever study items that we have to the policies there are sometimes we will be limited by that by timelines or statutes that mean like that we have to adhere to that we have to put something on an agenda or it may not necessarily connect to an item that we have on the on the um on you know like that's connected to the policy so i will um we can do our very best in terms of trying to align those because we can move the policies around to the study items um i think by putting more of a focus of the policies at the very beginning of our meetings that's one of the wise that's why

102we switched that as as part of that conversation um it then gives us kind of that influence of this is what our policies are and this is how it might influence some of those other study items they're not always going to be that connection though but we'll we'll try to do our best with that but sometimes we're just we have timelines we'd have to adhere to as well gotcha and uh the second thing i wanted to say was um just my concern about so i like i do like the uh i i think there's pros and cons to the ad hoc group i just want to make sure that we're not putting ourselves in a predicament where um i guess we can't so this is just me talking out loud but like that um we're

103not like creating our factions within our within our own with within the seven of us and we're all me you know with one group's meeting one one groups another group is meeting and we're not really you know you know sitting down having a group discussion but making uh decisions in these ad hoc groups can also be a little bit cumbersome so i just want to make sure we're we're we're we're regulating ourselves and aware of those types of issues yeah and i think it's really important to remember that no ad hoc group can make a decision without a collective vote of the board so they can make recommendations to the board but it's actually the board collectively that has to make those decisions well i mean i think to your point jason it does it

104does take a little bit more trust to work in some some broken out groups and a little bit of a different dynamic but i think i mean i think that's that's it's may not be perfect every time but i think that's a it's good to keep that in mind but like i think that's a good thing to aspire to to be able to say oh that that group looked at this like i should at least take seriously what their recommendations i might vote against it but i'm going to listen to what they've said because they've studied it and you know and then i'm gonna decide what i'm gonna do you know well and if you think about it we just from an efficiency point of view we can't take on everything as a committee of

105a whole right i mean that's why organizations have committees right you you you um and so um we will actually get a lot more done if we have committees and then we bring recommendations and then we have discussions as a whole right so i mean that's if we try to do everything as a whole that we will limit our effectiveness and efficiency so i guess my question would be for this calendar group is when creating the calendar and the topics was that considered like are there certain topics that we should push out to ad hoc groups instead of as our whole board meeting agenda you know at our public meeting agendas no i i mean so it's a little bit of a chicken on the egg thing here right so we have a conversation around

106you know changing the composition of how we hold our meetings at the same time that we're talking about building a schedule for the calendar so yeah so now i think you're actually making today yeah so to sean's point you know this is you know it takes a working session to pull the subgroups together and make sure we cross-pollinate the ideas and the calendar will probably have to tweak a little bit i think the dates i think the dates probably are fine um you know the agenda and the the outcome of each of the meetings are gonna have to be tweaked and again i wanna say that i think you know we're also trying to um quite honestly spread out the um decision making because if we think about historically what you know what happened last

107year right i mean we just went and uh you know kind of the the board president superintendent and um you know with some input of vice president created you know calendar and topics in a way we went right so we're trying to get away from that and think you know think holistically like how how can we get everybody's thinking in topics in agendas in structure etc right that's what we're trying to do so what what other thoughts do folks have and i understand these are blending into one another but what other i think now i think now that we have um a better understanding and some context around how this um this agenda was created this calendar was created makes it easy for me to understand i think next time when we get back together

108because now i have a different lens on how i'm going to look at this you know what i'm saying just like when we discuss you know our our committee yeah our thoughts that we had you'll have a good understanding yeah and and to that point again we're not this isn't a action item to to vote on right um this evening right we're bringing this forward as um and we call it a report but it's really kind of for information and discussion right now um let's see hold on you don't have to wait for me i'm just i'm okay so anything else on the calendar maybe i should just again and by the way not the only time we're gonna remember every single board meeting at the end of the board meeting you could add something

109onto the calendar right so it's not this is not the only discussion of uh topics so i mean to that point are we are we at the point where we would approve this i mean or like would this just sort of be the working plan for the calendar until it's changed through the year is that the idea or i mean i i think that's the idea right i mean without kind of uh without other um significant input right um i think the idea is this is our working graph that we're working from right in terms of dates and topics but again knowing that we can literally change those at any give we have a mechanism to change at least topics not dates but topics at any given meeting i think that flexibility uh helps because

110we can move we can decide to move some of these topics to ad hoc groups if we want instead the dates are the dates so whether we're meeting you know however we're meeting but um i think to your point joe hearing that we can be flexible with a lot of it um i think you know i'm okay with that then but not too critical right because we got to get some stuff things have to be done right i would say that if you look at the if you look closely at it we have we have make sure that there are stop checks for our equity work step for strategic planning we made sure that was all built in coming back to some of the topics that we weren't able to finish last year like the

111safety study and the the gender neutral bathrooms those are in here so we tried to capture those things that we knew that we needed to come back to but there is flexibility in terms of being responsive to things that we want to add on to this um i have a feeling that we're probably going to be adding on something around early childhood again and so knowing that after this conversation bringing that back to the table so um i hope that you can see that we did try to capture those things that we knew that were essential for us to discuss no november uh that date on the count i know we talked about i'm not sure if we all agreed upon this i thought maybe we did but we didn't but we were going to

112discuss like equity at like every meeting right is that right or am i wrong ass am i wrong about that so on so on that day i don't see anything about equity on that day so we we built in times to give reports throughout the equity is not put in every single agenda it's put we built in times throughout the year that we're going to keep coming back to it and to give reports um but it wasn't you know it wasn't going to be something that was going to be a topic that was discussed every time but it is going to be embedded in and you know a through line in all of the topics that we bring to the table so it may not be uh its own separate topic but it is going

113to be part of every conversation um but it's not going to be it's a separate agenda we do have times that are built in where we're giving updates around our work uh and so okay gotcha so so on november 11th do i see that am i able to am i able to see that in here on that date based on what you have on this calendar so jason the first equity update is october 14th because we didn't want to push it we thought we moved it up from november because we thought that waiting till november is too long to actually have a robust discussion about it even though as sean said it's embedded as a through line for everything we do so we thought it would be important to move it up in the calendar

114it's on october 14th and um cameron will give us an update on what his first 60 days in the district has been like and and there'll be other things associated with that topic but we didn't want to wait until november to to have that discussion so it's on the calendar it's just moved up it's on october 14th now i i'm going to say this but it makes me a little nervous because last time last year same kind of thing we had a plan and then kobe hit and then a couple other things a couple other issues took place and then you know our our our our ability to get back to that that agenda item about equity and updates about what was happening with testing we kind of missed that and i think it threw

115us through a loop and then kind of took our eyes off the ball so my question is is though i thought we discussed this in previous meetings over the summer that we were going to um have it on every at uh least small conversation about it every meeting i i mean i believe that i'll i'll see if the other board members i what i we talked about was building in reports yeah that was what i heard i mean i heard that we were you know i i thought that we were going to put it on the agenda to do um some in-depth updates i think uh three or four times during the year which i i'm looking right now and i see it on april i see it april 21st and january 27th and october

11614th but then in addition to that what i i mean this is i mean maybe there was a misunderstanding or not everybody was on the same page but what i heard was that kind of what um sean said that it was going to be a through line in all of our work but then in addition to that we were going to get updates on our progress and updates to to what we're doing um what's working what isn't working um you know several times a year too so that that was my understanding but i could be wrong and it's also important to know that the strategic plan has it's connected to all the work as well so those reports will also have be an update around the work around our anti-racism anti-bias work too i wonder

117too if we're talking about the difference between sean updating us as part of his update about that he makes every every meeting versus it being on the agenda as a as a topic that the board discusses what we want to do in the area like those seem different to me like i think it's more important to have it like okay here's what's happened that impacts this as you telling us you know more more frequently and i think that you do that a lot um but that might be a little bit of where the difference is to me but and you're not you're not gonna see that if you're just looking at the calendar here so my i would i would one other like feedback on that on the calendar i mean i think it's not

118to repeat myself i think it's important to clarify here when something is um you know when we have study items versus things that we have to take action on i mean policies are on our on our agenda twice because we have to have a first reading before they're approved the second reading so in a way that's an action item because we have to do it in order to eventually pass um you know make a motion and pass that motion to adopt the policy so those things group together as action to me um but then we also have things here where like on the same meeting we have study item of the cs crswc budget and then an action item of approving the budget so those in the way that we have historically done our meetings

119that's going to become one item that eventually we're finally going to vote on something you know as opposed to have a time when someone studies and asks questions and gets more information about the budget and then also have a time when the budget is approved you know in a different format so just as an example um i think it's important to kind of think about what we need to be doing in those meetings not just what we're talking about you know so well and i think to that and gary too i mean if we if we really want to be um kind of improve our both of efficiency and effectiveness we also have to pay you know quite honestly we don't really pay attention to information items right we we still treat information items we're

120getting better but we still treat information items as study items right so an information item is really a report it's truly it's a heads up that's what that information item is it's a heads up from the staff to us and if you have a burning essential question so be it but we often ask more curiosity questions on information items and so you know we just have i mean if that's what we want to continue to do so be it but we just have to own that if we're really trying to move towards a different place then we have to also own things like that right it matters what we call them and right now it only kind of matters what we call them we talked about that in our group too really distinguishing between those

121items on the agenda and sticking to what they are supposed to be so what what what else on the calendar anything else on the calendar again we're not we're not this is not a speaking of things we're not voting on this but what else yeah so i i guess once again man dealing with equity so so so do i have a wrong um the seven of you all six of you all do i have it wrong was that not the topic of conversation that not um proposed that we have on the uh calendar on the agenda at least small topic of conversation about equity no i jason i think you proposed it but i don't think we agreed to it so i mean that's that's how i remember it i mean you certainly said this

122here you broke up i didn't know do we agree do we agree that what we have here uh i'm not sure did we did we agree to what we have on the calendar now i i think that's what we're talking about i know i'm not i'm no i that's not what we're talking about i'm trying i'm trying to find out what we're talking about you just said we didn't agree with what i proposed i'm saying and so we don't have it on here but did we agree to not having it on here is what i'm saying why did you guys talk about it in the small group i mean i don't know i mean i don't think i mean i wasn't i wasn't i wasn't on the i wasn't on the calendar uh ad hoc

123committee we didn't specifically address individual report items across the full calendar remember we have the fiduciary responsibility from an agenda perspective is that we give dude notice which is roughly 24 business hours so to joe's point earlier the calendar can be created and set our goal was to go out and identify the key topics that we have hard deadlines around and make sure that those are covered in there and then and joe and and you more senior people correct me if i'm wrong but historically the agenda kind of gets filled out as the course of the year progresses and we tweak it as the business needs required jason if i understand your question correctly in our past meetings i don't recall ever having a discussion around saying we need to have a specific study or

124discussion topic on every meeting around equity what i recall is we can't screw up this year and not have periodic touch points on progress against the plan and that we need to make sure that we're having those touch points and we had identified three or four i think we said quarterly uh but curiously when we got into the the discussion at the um at our subcommittee discussion we realized that quarterly on a calendar doesn't really correlate to quarterly with the school session because we have an entire quarter of summer so i think we um we kind of had to had to tweak that interpretation a little bit whether it was three versus four so um but we we didn't we didn't discuss having something that was line itemed out on every meeting specifically targeting a

125uh equity update okay so so then maybe i'm wrong then so i do think i do want to propose this then so it with our focus on social emotional um and with what's with what's happening right now in the world more more so than ever before it would be kind of um narrow of us not to have that item on the agenda or at least on the calendar for a topic of conversation uh every time we meet now i'm sure no one agrees with me exactly i will say i mean i i think in an ideal world i mean it would be it would be great i also feel like there are so many other kids and and issues that we also need to make sure that we're addressing whether it be you know kids

126with iep and and gifted and kids in the middle and um bullying and struggling learners are such a i don't i don't know how we you know i think it's so important to equity um and that's why i i think that we need to make sure to commit time to it and commit a lot of time to it but i don't know how we possibly and i'm nervous about getting to all these other things i mean i don't see any of these other things on the agenda and so it makes me nervous that you know how where where do these other things fit in that thing well things that i just talked things that i just mentioned that you know affect you know black kids but also might affect you know other students that go

127to um clayton schools what like i said whether it be you know kids with dyslexia or kids or gifted kids or um bullying or or alcohol or all of these other issues that that kind of might fall into the social emotional stuff a little bit and i'm worried about how we're gonna fit that in and how we're gonna how we're gonna make sure that we address those needs too um because i don't see some of those those items on the agenda yet and so and i'm sure that they'll get there and i know it's a work in progress but um that's and i think that's what sean is saying when it's a through line that you know we are going to have equity will be part of the conversation every week but then quarterly we're

128going to have those you know dedicated times i don't know even though like that he would have as far as like our progress is concerned i don't think that he there would even be anything to say at every single meeting i think it's it's good to you know let a few months pass and then we get an update so he could give us a broader more comprehensive picture of of what's happening i don't know that like the needle moves that much from week to week i think it takes some time for for things to move does that make sense okay i have a proposal that might so since it is going to be such a and today's going to be such an integral part of all of our work this year and we have superintendent

129communications that are on the meeting every time i can definitely incorporate an update about some of the things that we are doing as part of the work and connected to my and make sure that it's part of my communications and to amy's point about then we do have those more built-in points that are like where we are tracking the data so you so it may not be that we're coming back and looking at the data every single meeting because we may not see a change from meeting the meeting but that could be part of an update as part of my superintendent's update that i'm incorporating that is like here's some things that happened over the last two weeks um that would then be keep us informed um but i don't know how that sounds to

130the group i mean i also you know i do want to go well i just want to say i do want to make sure that you know the resolution that um you know we're making sure that whatever that the items that are in the resolution are getting done and but i don't know that we can you know every other week there's going to be a whole lot to say you know i think we'll get a better idea of how things are going if we if we look at it every you know eight weeks or every you know nine weeks or or whatever and then like sean said we get some some interim updates on you know and it might be more specific things or but that was kind of what the way that i was

131understanding that that it was going to happen it is kind of so it's kind of interesting that if we have a pot a student population or a customer base that weren't that's not me not getting with their needs met then you would think that we would be trying to address that on a consistent basis like we can't say well i take it back we can say we can say what we want to say we've been saying it for a long time but i was going to say um you know how do we say we're the best when we have a whole section of folk that are underperforming so so to me this is tone depth and then the the response aiming that you keep giving me is what i'm i'm this is a very i'm

132used to hearing this you know how do we do that we have other stuff we have to focus on you know we have other things we need to focus on like how to get there i said we need to do both i did not say that i said we need to we need to make sure to do both i didn't say i didn't say other i said we need to make sure to do both and so we it's it's important to make sure that we talk about both so i'd like to i'd like to propose we we look at this differently so jason i i would like you and i'm going to put you on the spot intentionally here because i think it's a good it's a good discussion point can you list out for

133me right now five things that we need to hit every two weeks that will have material changes every two weeks that will be updated yeah i mean let's let's put them down on paper so we can go back and see what the feasibility is of tracking this because it's i think you raise a good question but i'm i'm of the same mindset of of amy and that if it's not making material if it's not making a material change every two weeks reporting on it doesn't solve a purpose and we end up spending time building a report to talk about something that doesn't evolve so what i'd like to understand is you want this agenda item i think we i think we owe it to you to have a discussion around whether or not that makes

134sense but it would be a more productive dialogue if you can say here are the five things that i think will change every two weeks let's monitor these five data points week over week and see what the progress changes well we've actually done that we actually had this discussion in the springtime i think it may have been before you got on the board we talked about monitoring things on on a bi-weekly basis so with what can you give me five of those things so i can jot them down and look at them how one is how are how how are kids performing in classrooms how are um you know how do we how is that but how is that one measured is that i mean so obviously we only do the map once a year

135so once again our if you don't this is where we get in the weeds right so i can get into the weeds but i don't have an answer for you right now so that would be crazy for me to have an answer as if to say i've been studying this all along this is my profession this is my job to actually talk about and how and then explain to you how we're going to measure each of these five items right so your question isn't even really relevant and what i'm asking is is that race does change weekly and we are underperforming in that area period now you all may not agree with this and obviously you know it seems like we don't agree with this but african-american children are performing poorly but jason i'd like

136to agree with you but i need the help department i'd like to agree with you but i need to help i need to understand because i'm a data guy right so help me understand a handful of data points that we can look at every two weeks consistently and we can trend those that progression whether it goes down or up and if it's something we need to take offline we can do that ask the expert let's ask melania let's ask some let's ask melania elaine is marilyna available so is atlanta available she is in the call but we are going to have data points that are attached to our strategic plan that are connected to student performance we are going to have connected to um monitoring our programs such as gifted ap honors we're going to

137have disciplined data we're going to have um data that's all going to be connected to the strategic plan that we are going to be updating throughout um again i don't know you know what type of data that we would be able to provide every two weeks um but i mean that's something that i i don't i know for sure we could give an update about what we've been doing over the next last two does it have to be does it have to be data driven well it does not have to be data-driven but if it's not data-driven are you satisfied with sean giving an update on what the district has been up to outside of the three times that it's formalized in the calendar under um equity and then the additional three times that we'll

138talk about it ex extensively with the strategic plan so that's six times in addition to every meeting if sean talks about it you tell me is if it's not if it's not important to us if it's not in front of our eyes how is it nobody's saying it's not important to us first of all listen listen listen guys listen man you know if something's a problem we gotta we gotta deal with it right we have to discuss it and talking about an issue that affects anti-bias anti-racism and all the things that are encompassed in that and those in in that um in a bar is very important if we nobody's disagreeing with that here right nobody so discussing it four times a year is like discussing it's not four times a year we just talked

139about discussing it every single meeting through sean's update and talking about it at least six additional times in depth by virtue of our discussion around the strategic plan and equity in and of itself so it's every meeting now is what's being proposed and then it's in depth at least an additional six times and just like we talked about we talked when we discussed the calendars flexibility to add things or subtract things from the calendar throughout the year wait a minute so so now it's it is every time every time we meet that's what sean said 20 minutes ago that hasn't changed i think we're actually all saying the same thing which is the the data doesn't change most of the data doesn't change enough to have every two weeks a data-driven conversation around at least

140some data right you get panorama a couple times a year you give a map test once a year you do so that so we're going to do that three times for around equity specifically race equity three times around the strategic plan however qualitatively right qualitatively not quantitatively sean in his update what he suggested is um and i think it's good right to your point jason we should be talking about the wellness of all of our students and so if any of our students are not well or not performing we should hear about it right whether it's our black students and if it's our black students that are you know that are the ones who are uh mostly not doing well then we should absolutely hear about it and so that's part of what shawn will

141talk about or update right but it'll be qualitatively because it's not just about data it's so let's let's run it back a little bit let's talk about um ready by five like does anyone have a basis of understanding what that really what it's about i mean how often do people talk about how often do you all talk about in your homes and you're in your daily routines in life about people who are underserved how often do you all talk about race in your life daily at all often but we're totally getting off track here jason no no no no no no no no no no no yes we are well no you mentioned data and i'm telling you it's not always about data it's something you just no you're not listening because what joe just

142said is that there would be both qualitative and quantitative updates yeah so it's it's not limited to data we're not saying it's limited so you see how this you see how this you see how we had how i had to freaking fight to get that to get to this point no no you just weren't listening the issue was that you were not listening before you would have you would have realized that we were already at this point first it was four times kim and then it turned into well we're gonna do it a couple more times and then it will turn into jason one of the benefits of these meetings is that they're recorded so you can listen to them later and then maybe the second time that you're listening to it you'll get it

143no i don't think that's i don't think that's the case i think maybe you all should have a better understanding about what race is about how about how messed up we are right now about how our black kids are failing in our school district and how we don't give a let's just start there let's just start there it's totally nice why don't you start with the just in your language you can say all day long about what's not fair but the the data can back us up i i'm personally done with this discussion i actually think we're all saying the same thing um i mean now we are of course well i mean yeah i'm looking forward to i had to drag my feet just to get the resistance just to get there jason that's

144actually not true and not fair and so that that actually isn't true it was always six times three for the strategic plan which includes equity three for equity that's what's in there right if you look at it and sean said actually i think gary said it first could sean put in his updates something about equity and then sean also equally said could i put in my updates that's what we're all saying right and so it's not i don't think that that is uh i think that's an important piece we all agree that's an important piece and i mean i actually i do think we need to move on because i don't think our i think our conversation is left the the realm of productivity so i'm going to move us on actually so i'm going

145to take this on to the board committees does anybody have any comments on board committees i would just say um our group talked about um and this was mentioned in the email the legislative one that instead of having one designated representative that that's something that all of us or you know however many that we should all be engaged in that work so um i guess i'm curious if everybody agrees with that and if so if we can as a group kind of be committed to staying engaged and you know going to those meetings so that it's not just one person all the time because i did think that was a good move to not just have one of us do that one yeah i think the key there stacy is um uh and i think

146i hate to say this i think the onus falls down on sean to keep us surprised of it so we know that to engage because i think that's where you know i i don't i'm not sure how to keep on top of what's coming down the pipe but we can go to i guess what i'm saying is any of us as all seven of us could attend these meetings so we should um make sure that maybe sean or you know or sandy's sending us the dates so that provides some context for the new members we have a collaborative legislative advocacy group that meets with six other school districts and we try to bring elected officials in to give us updates about legislation that could be impacting education and so we have assigned previously one or

147two people to go to those meetings but we've realized that more people are interested in that and more other districts are allowing more of their board members to come so we we just are saying those meetings are open to everyone versus just two people going we will host one of those meetings as well but to your point david we will also provide in the friday memo those things that you need to pay attention to as an elected official that we think that would be important to um you know potentially advocate for or advocate against so there will be times sometimes throughout the year where i'll say this is some legislation that we need to pay attention to here's a form letter that you might want to tweak and look at or hear the numbers to

148the legislators we need to call and i do that on a periodic basis i i will send letters or make phone calls to jeff city to advocate again you know advocate for against potential legislation so we will do we'll make sure that everyone's in the know about that but you all are it's all open to anyone to come to those meetings and and i will just say having gone to them just not necessarily been the rap but gone to a lot of them they're good i mean they're valuable they're good meetings i mean they historically are at 7 30 and so some people don't like to be to a 7 30 meeting but um if if you if you're okay with that i do think the content is good and gary used to be on

149it so he could maybe speak to it more but it was actually his idea i believe to say all of us should be attending not just him and i think we lost gary for the night so i'll just say that oh he's gone yep um all right anything um anything else on committees any other comments on committees okay so how about the um professional learning group which was gary and stacy and jason um stacey or jason you want to give kind of some any additional flavor to that beyond what you've already spoken to i think we kind of covered it um and sean i know took pictures or more detailed notes about what we talked about um we talked a lot about structure of meetings which i guess we kind of just covered so i

150don't know if jason you remember more or that or you know we talk about efficiencies uh structure and um but but we kind of we kind of concluded on the idea of you know what our um what are what our job is as board members right our job is to to uh govern for policy and so we were we were talking about this is what so this is where a lot of questioning comes from uh when we're dealing with the calendar about how we structured the calendar and we were talking about we need to focus more on policy if we want to stay out of the weeds and let the policy um be the way in which we can guide the work um and so that's why that's where a lot of questioning came from

151when we said when we asked how did you structure the calendar and were these policies that we have on the calendar in any way connect it to the agenda items that were that were that we're talking about in in the in the calendar or that meeting night so what we did from that meeting and the posters are all over there that we used for and i did snap those and put them in the shared drive um what we talked about is that we when we looked at the policies and again that's why we did the shift with our our meeting when we looked at the policies we all we will try to connect those to any study items um we did have a few policies that we needed to put on here that just were

152there were certain timelines on so we had to put those on there um the other thing that we talked about is how we continue focusing on board effectiveness and governance and um also making sure that we are getting the training that we need for anti-bias anti-racism and everyone going through that training that assured training and um working with cameron to talk a little bit about what our next steps for that and then the other thing too is that as part of our strategic plan how we are providing personalized learning experiences for students and so uh when the board when that comes to the table it'll be really important for the board to understand what personalized learning means so what types of professional development can you go to or um can the board attend some of

153the speakers that we're bringing in around this this year so making that available and then the other thing we talked about is that board uh board learning just doesn't need to be around what you need to attend so if there are articles our books are any kind of materials that we're learning as a district how do we make sure that's provided to you so it could be videos that we're providing to the board creating a library of books and making sure that you have access to those so you have contacts with the conversations we're having i think we talked about two conferences like the nsba conferences and some of the superintendent workshops and things like that as well so any other any other questions or comments about this one so our priority right now is

154to get the date on the calendar for the board to get their training um from anti-bias anti-racism and the other thing too is that um we will continue to look at ways that we could utilize msba um i forgot i'm the the the consultant that came in last time janet tilly thinking about ways that we can uh utilize her again in the future that's great and i think we mentioned to like possibly engaging former former oh right members um just if we ever need a historical perspective on certain issues that this young tenured board maybe doesn't have that's right and if you look at the um if you look at the executive summary that we wrote up for this one it does outline the essential questions that we put under each of those and then

155also um some other things that were follow-ups that were uh suggested by the committee so now and you know the the former board member thing is kind of important to me because i i've learned a lot from um a couple of key folks that offered to help me put a committee together with former board members um obviously our current covid situation doesn't really make that ideal but um i was i was happy to see that in there so because i want to make sure we bring that to fruition this year yeah i was and sorry david and they want to be engaged with us i talked i've talked to a lot of them about that too so it's a good way to use their experience i'll be honest probably one of the best you know

156couple hours of of uh you know my process of getting on the board last year was sitting around with in a room with three or four listening to uh war stories so it was not only was it educational but it was fascinating so i think we've got a wealth of a wealth of knowledge just right here in our backyards that that we need to pull in on the regular well that's right they're willing they're very able and they have yeah there's a tremendous amount of knowledge from um former board members so i agree the suggestion that i might i make is that in looking at that calendar again and if you're if after you review it again there might be opportunities that we can build in collapse some meetings or build in uh time for

157those types of experiences that we can um schedule this this year so yeah i actually made that note and then our calendar committee our calendar discussion went off the rails but i do think that um we should put that in our calendar times that we want to engage with former board members and if we if we have it on the calendar then we'll be sure to make it happen how about i will i will look at our calendar and try to put in some times in there great great um anything else on this one okay we're gonna move on we do still have a couple action items oh sorry i did have one on that side it's kind of maybe related to the calendar as well but um we talked about um engaging the i

158feel like we talked about um engaging the community or with the community learning with the community as part and um the reason this might play into the calendar is um one thought about that is i know we do have meetings around at our different schools but if we maybe also met sometimes at the county library or the center of clayton it might bring in more of our community members to learn with us and might be a more neutral space for those folks that don't have kids in school and maybe are intimidated by coming into our school so that might be a way to for some of these learning opportunities to happen with the greater community to use spaces like that that's a great point because there are you know actually the majority of our voting

159population uh actually don't have children in schools they might have at one time but they they don't so yeah so another revenue for that that would be the clayton condominium association and they have regular meetings so we could try to align some of our stuff with theirs right yeah yeah okay um okay so anything else on this one okay um so we're gonna move on to action items we do have a couple action items and the first one is 8.01 it's the memorandum of understanding between the clean education foundation and the school district of clayton and since gary's not on the call maybe amy will you read the the action item would you be wanting to read the action item yep thank you um i moved that the board of education approved the memorandum of

160understanding between the clayton education foundation and the school district of clayton okay it's been moved is there a second second okay it's been moved and seconded any questions or comments about this uh mou you know um i think i may have forgotten like the relationship understanding the relationship of why we're sharing um resources like that again with the clayton foundation sean you think give me with brevity man explain it to me so the clayton education foundation is basically a separate 50c 3 501c3 that supports uh initiatives within the district that it goes beyond what we can currently budget within our district within the um our budget so they'll support projects such as teacher grants within our classrooms those support experiences for students those they have been uh their mechanism for providing um like charitable type

161of experiences we use them this past spring for food collection um it's it's another mechanism for it's basically like the development office for uh the district and so having a person who is going to be in charge of raising funds that are beyond just what comes in with our taxes and so the clayton education foundation also connected to our alumni and helped organize the alumni events and keeping them engaged and making them feel like they have an investment in their community um and and their alma mater and and it gives them gives potentially an opportunity for them to donate to uh programs and initiatives within our district so i will say in my experience in the district i've seen that the the foundation has been able to provide experiences for students and resources and materials

162that we wouldn't normally be able to build into our own budget um chris i don't know if you want to add any more to that um no i think he did i think there's a great way great job of summary summarizing all that up i mean the foundation has been um working for a number of years to support um our teachers and our students i mean to to kind of give us summary you know just in the 2019-2020 school year i mean they ordered 95 or 65 000 worth of teachers grants teacher grants in just fourth quarter alone they did their fill the food pantry drive which provided resources to fill the food pantry as well as direct contributions to district families that were in need and that was you know north of 31 000

163that were put together so that's just kind of a quick one-year snapshot of the work that they're able to do sean am i right when i say that another benefit we've got there is it provides a mechanism for funding things that that would otherwise not be possible because of the constraints and how we have to manage school finance with the prescribed buckets is that right yeah yes that that might be probably one of the other key things because you know jason it's funny you mentioned this i had a conversation with a couple of people to today actually over this because my i uh so just uh just in transparency for the folks that didn't read it you know the cost to us is about a as about half of an fte uh and then an

164allowance of around 15 grand and expenses so we're looking at all in probably somewhere between 50 and 65 000 bucks a year so logically the question would be do we derive 65 000 of value from a 65 investment you know and if the if the you know if the indicator is not going in the right way we need to have a discussion around this but i think um i know i've met with alex berger i know kim's met with alex a couple of times and um i i think there's a lot of promise here i think we have a lot of room to grow and i think there's a lot of work to be done um but i i think we could turn this in you know move this from a 65 000 a year

165benefit to a you know 200 a year benefit we really need to see this turn into a program that's funding an entire you know um or i should say this this should become something that funds an entire program um it's just going to take some time to get there and it's getting better every year but that's just my probably more like five cents that's good that's a good point david i think that's that's what i was getting at man based on the numbers i was thinking like what what's the return on investment uh from that 65 grand and and then how much control do we have how or how much safety do we have if we need money for a particular you know situation so i know in the past you know there was there's

166a committee we have to go through and we have to get approved on things that we have to ask them for uh money to fund something that we want funded um so so what's our limitations on that uh chris in order for the foundation to maintain its its status as a 501c3 non-profit it has to operate at arm's length from the district so it has to operate as its own independent organization so they they they have their own functioning board that makes those decisions and works with sani strecker their executive director to set their priorities that said both sean and sean is is an ad hoc member of their board of directors as well as there is a rotating board member school board member that sits on that uh that provides input as well and

167i know that can that be me this year yeah kim is going to be taking that position this year so i mean their their focus is always to have the projects that they support align with the district strategic plan and supporting and impacting learning uh within the community um that said when covet hit last spring and we needed to get really creative to find a mechanism to support um our families the foundation was able to step up and step in uh to the tune of thirty one thousand dollars and help with that so there's flexibility there but we you know we need to be careful that we don't get in a position of trying to give them directives or or tell them what the district wants them to do as that could be something that

168could impact their their standing as a 501c3 nonprofit and and once again just real fast what was what was the reason why we have a shared resource again like while we're sharing that person because i think it's the district is the direct beneficiary of the majority of their programs right that's correct and i mean when in in talking to a lobbying the foundation has a a an executive director that actually only had that new position since february of this year um but in talking to a lot of people who work in development and fundraising and are a lot more in tune to that you know basically it comes down to the person that's in charge of of moving the foundation's work forward and going out and asking for money can't be the person that's updating

169the database or doing the mailings or doing that sort of thing so that is a resource that the district is providing to help support that effort and and to the point that was just made our students and our teachers are the direct benefit of the foundation's work and i think it's important to know the context of this as well is that the foundation in not just i don't know chris about five or six years ago the the amount of grants that they were able to provide was just a fraction of what they're able to do now so they are building capacity and now this past year that we have actually them paying for the staff member the director it's showing the progress of building capacity with the foundation that was not there before and i

170think that that that's really you know thinking about when i first started district they were giving seven thousand dollars worth of grants and now they're giving 65 000 worth of grants i mean it's it's grown tremendously um but i think that what david said is also right is that this is a tap you know we need to really think about building the capacity with this and thinking about how it could have its its impact and i know we have a great board who's willing to do whatever it takes to to do that um so i feel like it's been a good partnership and we have seen the progress over the years and and moving in that direction and we would honestly we wouldn't be where we were with adzic field if we didn't have that

171group of people that worked to raise 1.2 million dollars for a capital improvement project so i mean it's it's had a major impact i was just gonna add since i was the board representative this past year um you just touched on it sean the clayton education foundation board is like a very diverse amazing group of mostly alumni so they have a real connection to our district like a genuine connection to wanting to help the district and i found all their meetings very productive and they all um care very deeply about helping us um any other questions or comments about this one okay all in favor aye aye any opposed okay passes unanimously six zero um so we're moving on to uh the uh next memorandum of understanding which is between the school district and the

172glenridge children's center or gcc okay i move that the uh board of education approved the memo of understanding between the school district of clayton and glen red children's center inc their second second okay it's been moved and seconded any questions or comments about this one so joe i feel like i need some time to work on this it's um pretty confusing and it's like a half of a termination and half of a mou but it doesn't really terminate and i think we need to work on it a little bit before we approve it i mean i guess we could approve it conceptually but i think we need to work on the agreement before we approve the actual document it probably needs to be split into two documents okay and just from a timing point of

173view sean or even mary jo is this something that we need to approve from a timing point of view at least in concept tonight or no not necessarily but i will say um but that was a negotiating point with them we originally wanted it in two documents and they were trying to keep it simplified so um but it just doesn't make sense the way that it is i mean we that was the original intent to have it as two and so we can kind of go back to that they they just really wanted it all in one document and so i mean we might be able to do it but it's like it's it's like called least it's it's called lease termination but then it says we're gonna i can't even find it i have

174so many things open but but then i think it says that we're going to enter into a separate agreement to terminate the lease it's real it's really it just doesn't make sense a lot of it so other thoughts so amy are you suggesting we uh approve it in concept with the revised contract i mean i think yeah i mean i think that we could approve that we're going to terminate the lease and we're going to enter into a temporary um i think we're gonna we can approve that we're gonna we all agree that we're terminating the lease and that we're gonna move forward with kidzone and that we're gonna enter into a temporary one-year agreement with um gcc to um you know to i guess it'll be that let me pull it up here be

175as simple as just removing that um item a on both of the duties the first item or i think it's the first one no it's um well i think that this should probably this document should probably terminate terminate the lease this is yeah it says like we're going to enter into elites with gcc that immediately terminates the terms of the of the lease agreement um there's just a lot thrown into here and then it talks about how can can we bring it back so so again just from a timing point of view i mean maybe so we don't wordsmith it now can you you can bring it back on the ninth if that's okay we do that and maybe just work on it to um to um we have a little bit we just need

176to clean it up either i can do it or one of our other lawyers can do it uh amy it's i mean i can have it revise and then shoot it over to you if that's okay okay thank you so if that were the case we did there is a motion and a second on the table so we need to vote it down with the thought that we will bring it back to the next meeting uh and and approve it does everybody understand that mechanism so you wanna if you want if you want that to happen you to vote no i guess is what i'm saying if you want to proceed with it as is you want to vote yes um all right any other discussion before we go to a vote all right all

177in favor no all opposed nay aye aye oh did i do that wrong no you're good [Music] um jason weird yes or no vote i'm sorry i didn't hear you yes you you vote yes to approve it or no to because we were saying we needed to change it i'm going to vote yes to change it okay okay it feels like she's uh there's a discrepancy so i'm someone to support that okay all right thank you all right thank you i just wanted to make sure all right so it's unanimously fails actually um and we'll bring it back all right thank you um all right for this next one i actually need to recuse myself so i'm gonna log out here for a second um and somebody texts me when you're done amy do you

178mind reading that yeah sorry guys so i yeah this is um i'm on 8.03 i move that the board approved the part-time temporary employment for sarah miller second okay motion has been moved and seconded any discussion okay all in favor aye motion passes hey um we need to get joe back i think i texted him okay okay thanks um so we're moving actually on to the consent agenda which is um amy if you want to read the motion for that um yes i move that the board of education approved the consent agenda i seconded it okay so it's been moved in second any questions or comments about the consent agenda um no just the um donations the generous donations that were made um by um the from patricia centeno and um mr dupont and mr

179dupont awesome yep absolutely yes both for a thousand dollars each yeah okay um all in favor aye aye aye any opposed okay passes unanimously 6-0 so um we are then moving on to and again remember we rearranged public comment a little bit uh to put it at the end of the meeting and it was really again part of one of the ad hoc committees kind of thinking about doing meetings differently so i i know um i don't know sean or chris who's reading the public comment but we want to go to public comment yeah i'll be reading the public comment so we have we have seven comments that were submitted this evening um several of them are or the first two are actually two halves of uh of a whole comment so i'll read those

180as closely together as i possibly can so the first comment is from laura horwitz laura writes i am submitting this comment on behalf of the 706 community members that signed the petition calling for the board to share an anti-bias anti-racist implementation plan we appreciate the conversations with the board in small groups and via email about this petition and its demands to ensure that the petition itself and the voices of the 706 community members are part of the public record i am sharing it with its words here we the undersigned parents students and community members are disheartened by persistent instances of racism in the school district of clayton committees have been formed like the equity and excellence committee yet their recommendations were not put into practice members of our community have worked on committees spoken to

181school spoken at school board meetings helped to develop specific recommendations met individually with district leaders shared stories of harm and pleaded for anti-racist change in every instance district engagement has ended at listening and earnestly professing good intentions many of the recommendations in this petition are in fact mirrored right now on the district's own website they simply have not been implemented this is the power of conditioning a system of preserving itself through an interlocking web of habits and fears that prevent change we're at a crossroads and the time for talk good intentions and small changes has long passed therefore knowing that the district has already gathered the data has already analyzed and listened has already requested and been granted our patients and has enhanced clear and specific suggestions for action we insist that concrete change begin

182immediately we plan to support these efforts in ongoing and ongoing commitment to anti-racist practice in our homes and community specifically we request immediate action be taken towards implementation of a clayton anti-biased anti-racism abar plan a plan that uses anti-bias anti-racism best practice and then explicitly outlines smart specific measurable attainable relevant and time-bound changes in curriculum culture and communication with the goal of creating an intentionally anti-racist school district to be effective the proposed clayton abar plan must be developed by september 1st 2020 for implementation during the 2020-2021 school year be included in the district's strategic plan and include year-end goals along with five-year goals in for the stated areas of curriculum culture and communication dedicate financial resources toward implementation include an update of the district's equity and excellence website further recommendations of the equity and excellence

183committee in 2017. now the rest of this petition continues on in the next comment from andrea denney curriculum the abar plan must specify a cycle of reviews of bias to ensure that curriculum and cortex include history and perspectives of black people as well as the creation of whiteness abar learning for all students from pre-k through 12 goals for enhanced access of black students to gifted and advanced courses alternatives to gatekeeping and tracking in math literacy and gifted classes culture the district must define the culture but find the culture clayton wishes to have including anti-racism anti-bias in the definition own and work to dismantle the systems of white privilege and white supremacy that set up barriers for black students and staff believe students and families who bring stories of harm consolidate existing data and address each

184school's particular issues with racism implement steps towards reconciliation including administrators teachers and staff taking responsibility for harm to black students opportunities for students and families to have who that have been harmed to speak be heard and have their stories recorded and restorative practices to heal the students and families that have been hard harmed embed abar values and yearly expectations professional development and evaluation of all staff members including repercussions for those who fail to meet expectations create rules and practices that shield district employees who speak about racism in school support the right and need for staff of color to meet in affinity groups and to share experiences in a safe environment apply recognized hiring practices that help reduce bias in the hiring process and preference candidates of color when all other qualifications are equal update district

185rules and processes to reduce or eliminate bias create mechanisms to both receive and document feedback from anyone in the district on race related issues and grievances publicly report only the aggregate data define the process by which the district will respond when racist incidents occur communication the district must report at least quarterly to the board of education and directly to the full community about progress on the clayton abar plan using accurate and specific data about all areas of the of the plan radical transformation will require that parents and community members be part of the process however we expect that the district staff will do the work which includes seeking out existing best practices and implementing required changes so the steps outlined above failed to occur by 1 july 2021 we demand that the board of education

186begin the process of conducting a search for new administrative leadership that is adept in the implementation of an abar culture we must not only hold anti-racist anti-bias values we must act in accordance with those values for the good of our students and our community respectfully submitted lori angelotti andrea denney laura horowitz laurie markson betsy neal and smith becky patel pam washington and suzanne whitman our next comment is from becky patel she first lists i requested the doe modify the comment policy under covid to allow for the public to actually speak in their own voices during the public comment portion of the meetings this capability is available on zoom webinar and other platforms i've used it as a both a panelist and an attendee two i request the district more actively share information on board of

187education meetings you should be able to provide a mechanism for people to request notifications when meeting schedules are updated or agendas are posted also creating a facebook event is very easy and helps people share the details to their personal calendars and with friends and neighbors three what can common commenters expect regarding a response to public comments i didn't receive response to the comment i made in a previous meeting four i'd like to hear the boe and superintendent talk openly about the influence of recent petitions from within our community student-led teacher-led and parent-led we must acknowledge the harm students families and teachers have experienced in our schools as a step towards repairing that harm the next comment is from pam washington she writes given blu meetings are on zoom now it would be very helpful to

188communicate the notice of boe meetings by sending an email within 48 hours and also embedding the boe meeting link front and center on the district's home page the day of the meeting so people don't have to search for it thank you next comment is from laurie anzalotti lori writes i ask you please publicize the date that the board of education will attend equity training and which training they will use crossroads adl etc if the board has not selected a date and training group please publicize why there is a delay and when the citizens of clayton can expect their elected leaders to take this training the board's having a shared experience the board's having a shared training experience is a critical move is critical to move anti-bias anti-racism resolution forward thank you lori anzalotti the next

189comment is from suzanne whitman good evening the district has been making strides on the issues of anti-bias and anti-racism the district has welcomed cameron poole as the new director of equity inclusion and we'd like to extend our own welcome to him on behalf of the more than 700 community members who signed the clayton anti-racism collectivist petition we're pleased that the school board unanimously approved a board resolution that included nearly all the provisions in the petition and that more than 260 staff participated in trainings led by fellow clayton staff of color in which personal stories and experience underline the teaching this evening we're eager to see the inclusion of these anti-bias anti-racism values in the strategic plan the board and the administration have repeatedly emphasized that the strategic plan is the vehicle for turning resolutions into

190action unfortunately this evening's agenda does not seem to include the strategic plan this will make it tougher for the district to meet the petitions demand that a plan for abar be developed by 1 september 2020 for implementation during the 2020-2021 school year it's tempting to move at the pace of white privilege for these initiatives our children need these initiatives implemented now we turn the petition into a checklist and here are just a few of the items we'll be looking for in the strategic plan one anti-biasim anti-racism learning for all students pre-k through 12. two enhanced access of black students to gifted and advanced courses and alternatives to gatekeeping and tracking and three the date by which the district will have re-examined and refined their professional standards of practice and shared this with the community we

191invite all members of this clayton school district community to find ways that their own voice and actions can further anti-anti-bias and anti-racism in our schools focus on issues like anti-bias anti-racism so easily slip off white agendas we ask that the board of education and district administration share their inclusion of anti-bias anti-racism in the strategic plan as soon as possible final comment is from betsy neal and smith she writes i wanted to make the board aware clayton i wanted to make the board administration aware clayton anti-racism collective has been formed in the name of the over 700 signers of the abar petition also mentioned in the public comments the goals of the collective are advocacy to monitor and share out the district's progress towards the goals outlined in the petition community to build relationship and strong

192community in support of anti-bias and anti-racism and growth to offer learning opportunities and share knowledge among the collective which will contribute to our personal anti-racism efforts we hope to have a collaborative relationship with the boe and admin as we work together to becoming an abar district and that is all the comments for this evening thank you chris um again uh we're trying something different in terms of moving that public comment toward to the end of the meeting so um i realized that probably not a lot of committees have met and we certainly talked about some of the ad hoc committees but does anybody have any board committee updates i don't know amy if you'd want to just give a quick update on the center of clayton committee because that's one that met yeah i might

193need your help on this um uh it's because i was i was a little late to that meeting okay um but we we did meet and talked about how um the the center has um you know they're struggling we are struggling financially right now and the memberships are down they have a lot of um they have really done a a nice job of trying of reopening um and the land of covet and taking precautions and um exercising caution and and doing their best to protect everybody um we talked about um maybe so right now i don't know if everybody remembers but the seventh graders have the opportunity to get a free membership with the center of clayton so we talked about maybe moving that to next year to a time where the kids can actually

194um have a better opportunity to enjoy the benefits of that free membership since um it seems like many kids might not be using the center this year um school is closed and some families might not want their their kids going over to the center until um things have calmed down a bit more with kobed and then um we talked also about i mean everybody knows that where it's um you know the district is going to have to contribute some money um in order to um help out the center of clayton and um they will be calling upon the partnership to to make that happen so i don't know did i cover every i missed about the first 20 minutes so i i don't know if i'm missing anything nope amy you hit all the highlights

195the only thing i would say is that specifically um the prediction right now is that it's there's going to be a million dollar shortfall and per our agreement with the city of clayton obviously that's 500 000 from the district and 500 thousand dollars from the city and obviously they've they've cut expense and i think done a uh a really good job but um you know gyms are hit pretty hard in the age of covid and so uh membership is just way down and so it's you know it's a it's a membership based or revenue based uh facility so there is going to be and by the way i haven't personally seen it because i haven't been in there because of coed but i've seen pictures of the renovation and it looks beautiful i can't wait

196to go but um but there is going to be a shortfall so we should just know that any other committee reports just real quick man how is that shortfall going to affect us directly on our our budget this year so we we knew that this was coming jason so we've um predicted it um but but i mean you know it is it's certainly going to be a you know the center of clayton prides itself on being um covering its costs right and so if you look at its first i don't know 19 years of operation it was pretty close to covering costs with membership fees um obviously when we there was a year in the renovation when it didn't quite cover and then this year is going to be not even close but we i

197mean that was something we knew this is not a surprise so any other committee reports i might just give a quick one just to say obviously we didn't talk about the uh ad hoc strategic planning committee but we did meet um you know obviously we've had a packed meeting agenda as we can tell by the time here um and so we pulled off this talking about the strategic plan until next meeting september 9th but stacy and gary and i had a good discussion along with sean and we'll actually have another discussion um next week uh in terms of the strategic plan so i think we've made a lot of headway um and there's lots of uh yeah i'm excited to be able to share with the board kind of the objectives and the dashboard and

198all that good stuff so i just wanted to add this i just wanted to throw this in before we hang up for the night and i just i wanted to thank sean and his team for um i mean these guys have just been working tirelessly all summer to um get us up and running virtually and i've put so much time and energy and people have i know that they've canceled vacations and miss time with family and um you know i just hope they know how much we appreciate them and um you know i i just i i can't thank you guys enough i know you guys have really put your heart and soul into into um doing what's best for the kids thank you amy and on behalf of the team we we appreciate that

199gratitude it's it's a lot and i do appreciate our team so anything else um in terms of committee reports all right do we have a motion to adjourn i move that we adjourn second all right all in favor aye aye all right in the opposed all right we are adjourned thank you all