001meeting for the Francis Howell School District. Uh for everybody in our full uh room, I want to give you a heads-up we're moving towards a moment of silence. So, if we can prepare ourselves for that. Uh before we get started, I'd like to ask that we observe a moment of silence for Latoya Hughes, a Francis Howell Union student who passed away this month in a tragic car accident just weeks before her high school graduation. Let's take a moment to silently honor LaTreece Hughes. We are thankful for the life of LaTreece Hughes, for the way that she blessed this community, family, and friends, and we share with those who knew her the most in grief as we uh collectively seek comfort in one another. Once again, we are thankful for the life of LaTreece Hughes. Thank
002you all for that moment of silence. Our next moment in our agenda is to begin with Pledge of Allegiance. Our pledge leaders for tonight's meeting are from Fairmont Elementary School. We are proud to welcome student council members Juliana, Aubrey, Deacon, Valentina, Sawyer, Maria, Elliot, and Elizabeth who will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States [singing] of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And board, starting with uh Director Owens, um we have a vision of the kind of school district would be to be in 2030. We have a strategic plan and this is part of the vision of who we want to be in the year 2030. Recognized as one of the
003top 5% high-performing districts in the state. The employer of choice for talents and educators, leaders, and staff. Fiscally sound with a track record of smart long-term planning. Known for graduating well-rounded students who are equipped with the skills and experiences they need to be successful in the world. Celebrated for the work we've done on our culture, morale, and ensuring all members of our community feel safe and welcome. And trusted by families and the community to make good decisions and do what's best for students. With this as our goal, we have developed an agenda tonight to bring us closer to what we're hoping to achieve. Board, I have a motion to approve the agenda for May 21st, 2026 as presented. So moved. Vice President Greider followed by Director Dolder. All those in favor, say I. I. Any
004opposed, say nay. Motion passes. Next, we have our strategic plan spotlight and Ms. Joels, Chief Communications Officer, will present. Ms. Joels. Thank you, President Layer. You don't have Can you hear me now? There we go. So, on this slide we're just showing some photos from our strategic planning team, um the larger group uh met on April 21st for its annual check-in meeting and so you can see here a collection of photos. This is a group of parents, students, community members, and staff, many of whom were instrumental in the development of the strategic plan back in '23 and '24. So, during this 2-hour event, the team broke into small groups and traveled around to each of the pillar leaders to hear an update on the work completed in year one and more importantly to provide input
005on where to focus our efforts next. Our pillar leaders are now working with their smaller pillar teams to process that feedback and identify the priorities for year two of our plan. And so, really tonight just want to give a big shout out to all those who participated and provided input and to the pillar leaders over here for facilitating those important conversations. And with your permission, I'll move right into board recognitions. So, tonight we are excited to celebrate another national championship team from Francis Howell High School. The Golden Girls dance team is widely recognized for their consistent and spirited performances at the Universal Dance Academy or UDA Nationals. In February this year, the Golden Girls clinched the Division 1 Hip Hop National Championship. This victory highlights the team's continued success in national competitions showcasing expertise in
006technical Hip Hop routines. And I'll ask Principal Dr. Dave Wedlock to come forward to tell us a bit about the team and introduce the head coach. Dr. Wedlock. So, I'm happy tonight to present the Viking dance team known as the Golden Girls. They're all the way in the back in the white jackets. And recognize their outstanding coaches, head coach Lena Wimmer and varsity assistant Aaron Ruggeri, whose leadership has helped shape this group of young women into exceptional representatives of their team, their families, and of course, their school. In speaking with the team members, it's clear that becoming part of this program is often a lifelong dream, one that begins with elementary camps, continues in Junior Vikings, and culminates in earning a spot in the high school team. Once here, the focus extends far beyond competition.
007The program centers on developing life skills like time management, teamwork, accountability, and the discipline required to work hard toward a shared goal. I can personally attest to the many hours of work that goes into this. I can honestly not tell you how many times I've heard this year's Goo Goo Dolls song wafting through the hallways into my office, but I'm fairly certain at this point that the plays alone qualify me for honorary Spotify premium platinum status. So, off the competition floor, the team continues to exemplify excellence by achieving high goals, maintaining outstanding attendance, and making choices that positively impact their classmates, the hallways, and the community. One of the most powerful strategies that I heard over and over about this team is about their use of vision boards, which identify daily habits and mindsets that
008are required to become a champion. My favorite part of this vision board was centered on how they imagined celebrating what they would achieve if they achieved their goal. The team knew that UDA National Champions at Disney World received white jackets again that they're wearing tonight to connect to commemorate their accomplishment. So, for months leading up to the competition, they pictured themselves riding the Tron roller coaster with those white jackets flying behind them like superhero capes as they raced across the Orlando sky. It was a fun and powerful vision that inspired the team to give their best every single day. This is That's wonderful. So, that commitment paid off in remarkable ways this season. The team won every hip-hop competition they entered, including the high point award at the prestigious Lindbergh Invitational where they scored the
009highest of all the teams there. Most impressively, of course, while we're here tonight, they added another national championship to the program's history, adding to the 2022 national championship already accomplished. So, with that, I will pass it along to coach Lena to share more about this incredible team and their accomplishments. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm actually the assistant. Galena is homesick. Um, so, she just had a few words to say, but just thank you guys for the recognition of these 13 incredible athletes that have made up the 25-26 Golden Girls dance team, and your national champions. Uh, dance is often a sport that gets lost in the shuffle and we have been fortunate enough to not feel that way in our community [clears throat] in this room due to the outstanding support that we feel consistently.
010This program holds deep pride in our school and having the opportunity to be one of the few teams that is being able to represent at the national level, it brings a whole new level to school spirit. These athletes competed, like you said, three incredible long days at ESPN in Orlando. Those days consisted of the earliest of wake-up calls before the sun, hours of practice, competition, and remaining composed and proud. They took on 45 teams in our small varsity Division 1 hip-hop category in three rounds of steep competition and they came out on top. Um, the success of this program year after year would nothing would be nothing without the administration that surrounds us. We give huge thanks to our athletic director Jake Adams and Gina Kearns. And not only their operational support they offer us
011daily, but the personal connections they have formed with us coaches and athletes that allow us to feel like we are part a important part of what makes the H the H. Five years ago, we stood in front of this same board and pleaded to attend nationals in midst of global pandemic. It was in that time that you guys took a chance on our team and have continued to support us since. We feel confident that Howell is the greatest place to be and there's no other school we would rather represent. So, thank you guys for celebrating us today. >> [applause] [applause] [crying] >> So, what we're going to show, this is actually a clip from the winning performance at the from St. Charles, Missouri, Francis Howell High School. >> [music] [music] >> Let's go. >> [music]
012[laughter] [music] >> It's like I just single-handedly annihilated everything. >> [music] >> Annihilated everything. >> [music] [music] [applause] >> That was versus Harold High School. >> [applause] >> Oh, you're okay. Thanks. You might need to switch with somebody cuz you're being blocked. Um Let me scootch down. Like right here would be perfect. Yeah, in between these two, yeah. I know. Sorry, I'm going to be a pain. All right, guys. Go. There you go. On tippy-toes. Good job. Everybody can be seen. Ready? Say tron. Tron! Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Way to way to meet your goal. Thank you so much. Thank you guys so much. >> [laughter] >> Thank you guys so much. Thank you again and congratulations to the Golden Girls. Up next, um again, Miss Chiles. Yeah, we have more
013recognitions tonight. I think we want to see Superintendent Delaney try to do that dance, though. We want to take a >> [laughter] >> short break for that. I think that'd be great. Great entertainment. So, as you can tell, we have packed the board room tonight with high-achieving high school students from across the district who have racked up a number of honors this year. In just a moment, I'll invite each of our high school principals to come forward and introduce their students, but first I want to share just a little bit about each of the achievements that we are going to highlight. We had four Francis Howell students this year who earned a perfect score of 36 on the ACT. As you probably know, the ACT is one of the most popular standardized tests used for
014college admissions. It comprises tests in English, math, reading, and science with scores ranked on a scale of 1 to 36. To achieve a perfect score of 36, a student must answer every question correctly in all four required areas. Roughly 1/4 of 1% of students who take the ACT across the nation receive a top score of 36, so it is indeed a rare feat. And we have four of them in our district tonight. We are also recognizing seven National Merit finalists tonight. To become a National Merit finalist, students must submit a detailed scholarship application in which they provide information information about their academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received. A finalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a
015high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm the student's earlier performance on the qualifying test. Only about 1% of college-bound high school students are chosen each year as National Merit finalists, who then go on to compete for a variety of National Merit scholarships. Four students are being recognized tonight as Missouri Scholars 100. This is a statewide program that honors 100 of Missouri's top academic students in the graduating class. The program is sponsored by the Missouri Association of Secondary School Principals. Schools across the state are invited to nominate candidates, and selection is based on a formula that uses the student's grade point average and ACT or SAT score. The student must also have excellent attendance, be an exemplary school citizen, and be involved in school activities. 70, 70, 70 students
016from our three comprehensive high schools were named AP Scholars with distinction. That is the highest level of honor for the AP program. They had to earn an average score of 3.5 on all AP exams taken and score above a three on five or more AP exams. There's a lot of numbers in there, but super smart kids here. We will also be recognizing three St. Charles County STEM Award winners tonight. Each year, one student from each of the county's public and private high schools who have demonstrated outstanding performance in STEM-related pursuits are brought together for a breakfast and award ceremony organized by the Economic Development Council of St. Charles County. Students enjoy a buffet breakfast and hear from a panel of professionals who work in STEM-related fields. Also tonight, we will recognize seven early college program
017graduates. These are students who will be graduating high school next month and earning an Associate of Arts degree from St. Charles Community College at the same time. Finally, we will honor our senior class presidents from Francis Howell Central, Francis Howell High, and Francis Howell North. These students juggle all the typical demands that come with high school. They keep up with coursework, participate in sports and activities, preparing for college or whatever comes next, and trying to maintain a social life and spend time with family. And on top of that, they dedicate countless hours to representing their peers as senior class president. This is a role that is quickly coming to an end as they prepare to walk across the stage in just a few short weeks. And actually, their last day was, I think, May 15th.
018So, they're they're really ready for graduation. Um due to other commitments, and we know not all students who received these honors could be here with us tonight, but we will recognize those who are in attendance. And I will invite our first principal, Dr. Rob Goff, to the podium to introduce the students here tonight from Francis Howell Central. And students, after you receive your certificate, we want you to just walk to the front of the room and we'll take one big group photo after all names from your school have been called. And parents, at that time, you are welcome to also come forward and take a a group picture if you would like. You're welcome. Good evening. I'm just honored to be here to represent France Central. Our first student, Shane Bercoin, AP Scholar with Distinction,
019perfect ACT, and National Merit Finalist. >> [applause] >> Kennedy Burton, Senior Class President. >> [applause] >> Nolan Dagney, AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] >> Declan Fowler, AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] >> Lucinda Griesenauer, perfect ACT score, National Merit Finalist, and AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] [laughter] >> I'm just reading what I got. Just go with it. Just go with it. >> [laughter] >> Bastian Hart, AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] >> Meredith Krpauska Krpauskovich, Early College Program Graduate. >> [applause] >> Krapohlwitz Annie Law AP Scholar with distinction >> [applause] >> Guinevere Matney, National Merit Finalist and St. Charles County STEM Award >> [applause] >> Emory Mauer, AP Scholar with distinction >> [applause] >> Matthew Miller, AP Scholar with distinction and St. Charles County STEM Award winner >> [applause] >> Gillian Olson, Early
020College Program graduate >> [applause] >> Kenneth Priest, AP Scholar with distinction >> [applause] [applause] >> Kimberlyn Sanders-Fritz, AP Scholar with distinction >> [applause] >> Sean Toma, AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] >> Jaden Whaley, AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] >> So we're going to do two layers, right? So I need the shorter people in the front, taller people in the back. I don't want to Yes, please. I don't want to have to pick and choose. Um have you actually go over here if you don't mind? Everybody make sure that your head is in between someone else's shoulder so we can see your face. Excellent. Thank you guys. You guys are You guys are making life a lot easier for me this week. Everybody's faces are good. Awesome. All right, you guys ready? 1 2
0213. Thank you. 3 2 I'm good. Thank you very much. One more. One more. Say cheese, gentlemen. Congratulations. >> [applause] >> All right. And now I will invite uh Dr. Wedlock with Francis Howell High School to introduce his students. Okay, Emily Albers, AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] >> Neil Chen, AP Scholar WITH DISTINCTION. >> [applause] >> MALIA GARBRINI, AP SCHOLAR with Distinction and Senior CLASS PRESIDENT. >> [applause] >> ALICIA GARBO, AP Scholar with Distinction and St. Charles County STEM Award Winner. >> [applause] >> Sky Hadlock, AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] >> Dalton Lillodal, AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] >> JOEL MOCKINS, AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] >> ADELAIDE MINTON, AP SCHOLAR WITH DISTINCTION. >> [applause] >> CLAIRE OHMS, AP SCHOLAR with Distinction. >> [applause] >> Liam Fenning, AP Scholar with Distinction.
022>> [applause] >> JOSEPH RACHMILL, AP Scholar with Distinction and national merit finalists. >> [applause] >> Grant Russo, AP Scholar with distinction. >> [applause] >> Nina Savio, AP Scholar with distinction. >> [applause] >> Kira Smith, AP Scholar with distinction. >> [applause] >> And Leah Ernakus, AP Scholar with distinction. >> [applause] [laughter] >> Tall people in the back, short people in the front. We might need to make another row. Let's see here. I'm going to get you guys up. You guys stay here in the front. You guys that are in the middle row, come up just a hair. I'm going to have you go on the other side, please. Right here next to Mr. Delaney. He's very nice, I promise. >> [laughter] >> All right, ready? 1 2 3 Thank you. And thank you. >> [applause] >>
023And finally, I'll invite Dr. Shelly Parks with Francis Howell North to come forward to introduce the Knights. >> [applause] >> Good evening. We have a number of our students who can't be here tonight because they're participating in school-related activities and competitions and all that. We're super proud of our kids. So, the ones who are here tonight, we'll start with Gilo Bustos, who is an AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] >> Next is Esther Lin, an AP Scholar with Distinction, a National Merit Finalist, and a Missouri Scholars 100. >> [applause] >> NEXT, WE HAVE KIERA WILLIAMS, an AP Scholar with Distinction. >> [applause] >> And finally, Madison Zangraft, an Early College Program graduate. >> [applause] [snorts] >> Can you guys step back closer to the little thing? Yeah? I'll give them about a foot and a
024half of breathing room there. Yeah. Let's do Let's do Let's do the hands. Good. Good. Okay. Good. Excellent. Might help find the camera on. Ready? 1 2 3. Thank you, guys. Parents, do the parents finish it? Congratulations, ladies. >> [applause] >> Great. Next we will introduce our student board representative for tonight's meeting. As you know, the purpose of the student board rep program is to honor and recognize talented students, elevate student voice, and provide growth opportunities in the areas of public speaking, leadership, and governance. Students are selected for this honor by their principal with input from the student body. They have an opportunity to prepare and deliver a short speech to the board and public that's focused on their school or the district. And with that, I'll invite Dr. Amy Bempky to the podium to
025introduce our student board rep from Saeger Middle School. I'll lower that a little bit. I know, I need a box. [clears throat] >> [laughter] >> All right. Good evening. My name is Amy Bempky, um and I am the principal at Saeger Middle School. I'm very honored here to introduce our student board rep, Jasmine Zhao. Jasmine is currently an eighth-grader at Saeger Middle School. She has spent her entire middle school career as a junior Spartan. I am proud to share that Jasmine is a dedicated, welcoming, and driven student that cares deeply about her community. Jasmine has been involved in the art club, spirit club, math club, junior Spartan ambassadors, drama club, student council, principal's advisory council, and is a member of our National Junior Honor Society. Not only has Jasmine been involved in extracurricular activities, she
026has maintained a 4.0986 GPA, and is currently ranked first in the eighth-grade class of 271 students. Jasmine has taken multiple courses at FHC, and she excels in advocating for herself and her educational pathway. While I'm ecstatic to share Jasmine's academic and extracurricular successes, I'm most proud to share that Jasmine is a genuine human being that is positive, engaged, and understands the importance of being a good friend. She has an overall commitment to creating and maintaining a positive outlook on truly everything. I would like to introduce Jasmine Zell. >> [applause] >> FIRST OF ALL, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK DR. Bivens key and the board for this opportunity to serve as the student representative for Saeger Middle School. I am so honored to be here today. I would also like to congratulate the Golden Girls dance
027team for their win on in Nationals and all of the high achieving students being recognized today. Their achievements are a testament to the hard work and dedication of not only the amazing students, but also the coaches, teachers, mentors, and extensive support system from the Francis Howell community. Having been a member of FHSD my entire life from preschool at Meadows Parkway to John Weldon Elementary and from the amazing Saeger program at Costly to where I am now at Saeger Middle School. I have experienced the commitment that staff and administrators pour into making every school an environment that fosters growth and exploration. Because of that support, I've always felt encouraged to try new things, challenge myself, and become more confident. As Dr. Bivens key mentioned, I've had the privilege of joining many different clubs and activities Saeger
028has to offer. Clubs like Junior Spartan Ambassadors, sponsored by our school counselors, give me the chance to give back and I wholeheartedly enjoy welcoming new students and helping during transition day with incoming sixth graders. As part of the Principal Advisory Council, I have seen firsthand how the administrators value student input and how giving students a voice can create positive change in a school community. Because of Saeger's Saeger program, I had the opportunity to take challenging courses and travel to the high school. Experiences and exposure truly change students' lives. That is why I am so appreciative of this board for valuing education, supporting our teachers and staff, and fostering an inclusive community for all. Thank you again for giving students a voice and giving me this opportunity to participate in today's board meeting. >> [applause] >>
029And then uh Director Owens will get you situated, okay? I actually have you scoot this way just a little bit. There we go. Thank you. Welcome, Jasmine. And then Director Owens, I'm going to welcome our guest. Okay. I want to welcome Jasmine. Um I was a middle school music teacher for 24 years, and I just wondered uh what you did not participate in. Did you win choir? You Well, next year it's always a possibility. [laughter] Okay. Anyway, I'm just very impressed with your speech. Um so you can't vote up here tonight, but you can ask questions, and you can definitely give us some opinions because I think she's got some very good ideas. But you can run for president someday. I think she's ready, almost. Yeah. So thank you so much, and uh like I
030said, you can do everything but vote. And thank you so much for everything you're doing On the eve of the last day of school, good job. Thank you again. Um we have another moment for Ms. Jewels. Sorry, really stealing the show tonight. I'm sorry. It's my last time at the microphone. And I get the honor of introducing our spotlight presentation this evening and we are going to shine a light on the therapy dog program at Fairmont Elementary. So, Principal Carrie Tharp is here to tell us more and she'll introduce some of the other staff members and hopefully the puppies too, so we can get to meet them. All right, good evening. And thank you to the members of the Board of Education, executive cabinet, and patrons for your continued support of our schools and students.
031It is my honor to present to you the Fairmont therapy dog program, now in its [clears throat] second year at Fairmont Elementary. This program was organized by Mrs. Tanya Cato, occupational therapist, and Mrs. Marie Tray, educational support counselor at Fairmont. And joining us this evening are two of our therapy dog teams, Ms. Linda Rao with Jupiter, and Paula Kay with Tucker. Yeah. They're so flexible and patient. They're like this all the time. Ms. Cato and Ms. Tray have worked tirelessly to introduce and grow this program within our school community. The therapy dog program has become a successful component of our tier two behavior intervention system, providing students with opportunities to interact with therapy dogs while learning strategies to regulate their bodies and emotions during these interactions. It is a complete joy to watch our students
032interact with the therapy dogs and their handlers who patiently guide students and answer all of their questions during the therapy sessions. At this time, I am pleased to introduce Mrs. Cato and Ms. Trey to share more about this program and the positive impact it is making on our Falcon community. Thank you. And we thank you for this opportunity to share with you a little about our therapy dog program and the impact it's had on our students and staff at Fairmont. Our program began Oh. Our program started to support this emotion the social emotional well-being of our students and staff at Fairmont. Uh supporting mental health allows kids to fully engage and participate in their school day and this aligns with our multi-tiered system of support. Therapy dogs are trained friendly pets that volunteer with their
033owners in hospital, schools, and nursing homes to provide support and comfort. They are trained in obedience and then evaluated and certified or registered with a therapy dog program. Therapy dogs provide comfort to others, but they don't have public access rights. There are differences in service dogs and emotional support animals um or service animals. Service dogs are trained to do specific tasks for their owners and have public access rights. Where emotional support dogs provide comfort for their owners, but are not trained for public interaction. Fairmont uses only dogs dog teams that are certified through AKC recognized organizations And we have had teams through Champ Assistance Dogs, and then our current teams are through Pet Partners. Interacting with a therapy dog has many benefits, which is supported by research, such as reducing stress and anxiety as measured
034by a reduction in salivary cortisol levels. This is a physiological response to stress. Research shows that salivary cortisol levels continue to lower the longer we pet a dog. Research with students across a 6-week school term showed interacting with therapy dogs twice a week for 20 minutes lowered salivary cortisol levels from the beginning to the end of the school term and had a greater and more lasting impact than other relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation, or mindfulness, which only lowered cortisol levels immediately following the relaxation session, not from beginning to end of the school term. Research also shows that it improves emotional and behavioral regulation, such as an increase in positive behavior and reduction in maladaptive behavior, an increase in attention and focus, emotional regulation, and having a positive attitude to learning. Research shows interacting with
035therapy dogs improves social aspects such as improved social skills, improved teacher peer relationships, improved sense of belonging, and improved school function. A study involving regular education students and students receiving special education services showed a social benefit for the children who received those special education services when they interacted with therapy dogs in a group setting versus individually. We took all of this research into consideration when we developed our program. These are our therapy dogs and this is our research in action represented in these pictures. Our program started in September of 2024. It began with a school-wide assembly put on by CHAMP Assistance Dogs. They taught students what a therapy dog is and what they do, the difference between therapy dogs and other working dogs, and proper etiquette when interacting with a dog or meeting a working
036dog out in the community. They also demonstrated the skills of their service dogs. Fairmont received a grant in the form of two different books about therapy dogs to support our program from the Charlotte Helen Bacon Foundation. This foundation was founded to honor the memory of Charlotte, a child lost in the Sandy Hook shootings, to support schools wanting to start a continuous therapy dog program because of the benefit that their community, their family, and their school saw through the use of therapy dogs. Our program consists of weekly visits from our therapy dog teams that last 1 hour per child in a group of students. Our students come in groups of three to six at a time to visit the dogs. During these groups, our students have learned how to interact with a dog and how to
037recognize the emotions in the dogs as well as themselves and self-regulation skills. And the following pictures are examples of real-life the real life impact that our program has for our students and staff. And Marie's going to share a little bit about that impact. Hi, I'm Marie. I'm going to have to tell the dog, too. Um you know, we have the honor of really getting to work directly with these students. And so I just even going and reviewing this, you know, for today's presentation, I just look at this and it's amazing to see these students. Um these students were selected because they have a variety of different social emotional needs. Many of these students in these photos, they had difficulty staying regulated throughout the day. Um they were often disengaged and disconnected um in class. And
038this was one intervention that we put in place for them. And as you can see, like smiles on their faces, they're so joyful. Um some of these students had a significant loss in their life, and they were really going through that grieving process and were becoming more disengaged and seeing them being engaged here with not just the dogs, but with one another, with the staff, um and the handlers who came, it's it's really amazing. Like if you guys knew these kids personally, like it's it's really cool to see all of this. Um and then some more pictures. Like I said, these are students who were struggling, and there's a reason that they were selected for this. Um and so you know, we try not to show their faces too much to respect their privacy, but
039there's joy on their faces. They really They really were getting a lot from from this program. Um we see their bodies are regulated, they're joyful, they're participating, they're connected. And during during our our Um we went through and we talked a lot about the Zones of Regulation, which is something that is a school-wide program that we use at Fair Mound. And so not only were they getting that um experiential learning, but then also we were teaching and talking about our emotions, identifying them. We talked a lot about how we need to have calm bodies in order for the dogs to have calm bodies, right? And so having that mirror um effect of the dogs the dogs kind of mirror what we are what we're putting off, and so that helped the students calm down and
040learn that they need to calm down and how it impacts not only the dogs, but each other as well. And so we did all of that in the so Yeah. I think the next one is We were listening, I promise. No, no, that's okay. I know I know the dogs can be a little distracting, I get it. >> [laughter] >> And they're the They should experience They're the sweetest dogs, so please. Oh, and that's the other thing, well, I don't There's extra staff, like it it was like a Yes, we had selected students who came and visited each week, but like there were certain staff members that knew Friday afternoons they'd always be popping by and they'd get their little dog fix and come in. And so we really it really just brought a lot
041of positivity and community to Fairmont. Kind of like how you all are feeling, right? Like you can't help it, you got to go pet the dogs. Um so then here is some of the We're going to go over some of the data collection that we got. This is from last year. We were still in the process of figuring out the data from this year. But we did a Oh, we have this thing. So we did a pre and post You got to get pictures, too, right? They're so cute. Um we did a pre and post test with the teachers of the students who were selected, and we asked um questions about emotional regulation, on task work >> [clears throat] >> social skills, just the students' overall mood during the school day um and positive social
042interactions. So the students' interactions with peers and with adults. And I'm just going to highlight We're just going to highlight the two questions that ask specifically about emotional regulation and self-regulation since that was really the focus of this program. So, this is the question that was um on that that we put out. The student demonstrates emotional regulation. For example, they can express feelings without escalation or emotional meltdown. And then as you can see in the light blue, that's where a lot of our students that's where our students were at the beginning of starting therapy groups. And then as you can see in the dark blue, the navy blue, it kind of shifts over. Oh, and I don't know if you guys can read the bottom, but it goes from from on the left side never
043and then a scale from one to five never to always. So, as we can see majority of the students never or almost never really show that emotional regulation while at school. And then towards the end, there was a there was a lot of improvement there. And then this is about self- self-regulation skills. The student demonstrates self-regulation skills, asks to take a break, takes deep breaths. So, that's really utilizing those strategies that we were talking about and teaching throughout the program. And it's similar to the other. You can see that you know, at the beginning these students were almost never or never really demonstrating self-regulation skills, not really accessing taking those deep breaths, trying to calm down, and actively working on that. But then throughout this experience and this intervention, we had we had some growth.
044So, as you can see the dark blue kind of shifts over where it's more always. And really, I mean, it's amazing if we get an always because >> [laughter] >> you know, I think four is really where the majority is is that we're almost always, right? Wanting them to use that. And so then we also did just a post survey with the students who participated. So we asked um a variety of questions to them just asking about their experience in the group. And as you can see, 25 out of 26 the students rated their experience in the group as a thumbs-up smiley face. And you can see the little uh picture in the bottom, that's what they used to determine. So they circled one of them. Or I was going to say one or two,
045sometimes they were in between. Um so 25 out of 26 rated their their experience a thumbs-up. And I think the other one was both the sideways and up one. Um 26 out of 26 would recommend to other students of giving this group a try. And 20 out of 26 enjoyed working with the other students in the group. And then like I mentioned, we're still collecting um data for this year and figuring out how that looks. Oh, here. Um and then so the last question on the post survey for the students was um anything additional you want to share? And so we just we just open that asked that open-ended question, anything additional you want to share? And these were some of the responses that we got. I like how happy, energetic, and nice the dogs
046are. It's amazing. I want a dog. My feeling. And that one I want to explain a little bit. Um like I said, we talked a lot about feelings and emotions throughout their time in the group. And so when we asked what additional um anything additional that you want to share, that student was wanting to share how they felt. And I think that shows that they were becoming more open and more comfortable with sharing their emotions and feelings and talking about it and recognizing that in themselves. Um I love meeting new dogs, they're my favorite species. Every group loves the dogs. I am being so calm. My dog died. Her name was Ace. And again, I think that just shows that that student wanted to share something personal, something, you know, personal about them, trying to
047connect with us and with with one another. And so, I think that's where that comment came from. And then the group was good. So, a lot of positive feedback from the students. And then our future plans, we would love to continue our program. This year, we have kind of transitioned our program into including children from our essential skills classrooms to have that focus on emotional regulation as well as that social interaction. And then we'd like to incorporate our dog teams into large school events such as open house, back to school, and conferences. And then our long-range goal is to possibly look at having a a full-time facility dog at Fairmount. Thank you so much for letting us share a little bit about our therapy dog program and meet our dogs. It's It's really been an
048honor to be able to do this. Thank you. >> [applause] >> THANK YOU. WE KNOW IT WORKS TO PUT A SMILE ON ALL THE board's face and everybody up here in the executive cabin. Oop, before you guys go, did you already go? It was great having my Oh. Excuse me. Hi, sorry. I just wanted to thank you for the presentation and to commend you and the female team for recognizing that not all students are the same and that they need some students respond to individualized care and this was a great demonstration that schools are not just to receive where you receive education, it's so much more. So, thank you so much for doing what you're doing. Thank you very much. Thank you. One thing I forgot to mention and then I passed through real quick.
049But Tanya Brickley talked about we we made a shift this year. So, last year it was all the students do have social emotional needs that we were focusing on, but last year it was really more of those counseling groups and we pulled we talked to the counselors, we surveyed them and really um looked at the different different data to pull those students there, but this year we had to switch locations of where we met and we found that the essential skills the new Falcon Suite have been a good space for them, but we also talked about that would be a good space because the essential skills students they don't receive they don't some of them do, but often times they're not on the forefront of receiving those additional you know counseling groups or social emotional
050interventions or whatnot, but they still do need that and benefit from it and so we shifted and that's really where the focus landed on this year and it's it's been amazing to see and then one thing too is they we talked about she was talking about the research talked about social skills and how social skills can be improved through these interactions and so this year it was really focused on yes emotional regulation, but then also we've seen social skills improvement in those students and that has been really amazing to see yeah huge growth. Thank you very much. >> [applause] >> The next item on our agenda refers to patron comments. Tonight there are no patron comments. If you have comments you want to share with the board, please feel free to use the website and
051share by email and you can share at the next board meeting as well. From there we have representation from FHEA. Invite FHEA to come forward. Is the personal walk time? Good evening. My name is Francine Hill and I'm the FHEA president. Tomorrow is the last day in the 2025-2026 school year and FHEA hopes that students and staff have a great summer of fun and rest. Everyone deserves it. As I'm sure most everyone knows, the last few years here at Francis Howell have been filled with crazy. Crazy is a lot like an avalanche. Once it starts rolling, it's impossible to stop. It destroys everything in its path and buries all the good along the way. Please don't let the long-standing commitment of the way our district administers insurance be one more thing to get buried. As
052the FHEA representative on the insurance committee, I cannot support these changes. They have attracted [clears throat] and retained many staff over the years. We realize the weight of being buried under the avalanche of craziness from our legislature has been scaring everyone. But we need to do all we can to keep the [clears throat] great employees we have. FHEA has our shovels ready to help dig our way out. We know many of you here do too. We can't do it without our staff, board of education, and community. Please join us in digging our way out and shining a light on all the good things that our district has done and can do. One of the good things accomplished recently is working collaboratively with administration to create a new agreement for our ESEs here in the district.
053I'm pleased to say the FHEA ESEs ratified their tentative agreement. The ESEs work so hard to keep our students feeling safe and protected. They are a vital part of our family. Many of us will continue to work hard over the summer learning and planning for next year. Let's make it the best year ever. Help us stop the avalanche with your vote tonight. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Thank you. Up next is FESPA. Thank you, President Blair. My name is Jennifer Vineyard and I serve as president of FESPA. I'm here tonight to speak about concerns that are significantly impacting morale and employee sense of value within Francis Howell. Support staff are essential to this district. We support students, keep schools running, and ensure daily operations run smoothly behind the scenes. Staff have consistently shown that our
054dedication to Francis Howell, including during the recent prop RT effort. Unfortunately, many employees no longer feel that same commitment is being shown to them in return. Each year support staff are told they are receiving a raise, yet rising health care costs continue to offset those increases. Higher premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expensive leave many employees feeling as though they are standing still or falling further behind. Some are even questioning whether they can afford to remain in the district. These concerns were reflected in the recent FESPA salary agreement vote. We had one of the highest voter turnouts in recent years, yet the agreement passed with only a 52% approval, the lowest support we have seen in years. Let me repeat that. This was the largest FEA voter turnout for negotiated items and passed with the smallest percentage
055we have ever had at 52%. If that isn't sending a message, we don't know what would. That result reflects growing frustration among employees who no longer feel that compensation increases are truly benefiting them. Support staff are asking for raises that function as actual raises, not just on paper, but in real life. Employees want to feel valued, respected, and supported. In addition, FEA also cannot support the proposed insurance recommendations. We respectfully ask the district to consider a sixth option that means the current current important in current insurance plan for 1 more year. A few weeks is simply not enough time for families to prepare for health care increases of this magnitude. We believe the district can prioritize employees by re-considering the proposed transfer of $5 million into capital funds. Furthermore, we ask that HSA contributions be
056provided in two or three installments during the year rather than than divided across each paycheck. This would give employees better access to funds when major medical expenses occur. Only then will the proposed salary increase for support staff truly function as a meaningful raise. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next we have a submitted agenda item under policy 0412, which allows residents staff the district to submit an agenda item, which is related to governance or operation of the district. Prior to submission of the agenda, the submitting resident must meet with the superintendent or designee in an effort to resolve the concern related to the agenda item. For policy, those that have made the request include Anita Keener, uh Hill, and Caitlin Carlton. You'll be given the designated amount of time, a total of 15 minutes, or
057up to 5 minutes each to speak to the board. Uh I'll wait for the first speaker to come forward. Good evening, Board of Education and Cabinet. My name's Anita Keener. I am here tonight to ask the board to consider the FHEA Sunshine request for the roll call call vote for the grievance that FHEA presented to the board on March 6th. When we met with the superintendent to attempt to resolve this issue coming to you, he asked us why is um knowing the vote important? It is important to FHEA for several reasons. We have a procedure for recommending candidates for the school board. We support those that have the same beliefs and wants as we do. We understand that at times we will agree to disagree, but with that it is our hope and that a
058conversation can occur. We want individuals that believe that this can again be the best the district in the state of Missouri. We want folks that care and want the best for our students. We want individuals that want the best staff they can hire that will stay until they retire. We want to have the highest test scores so our students can be successful and accomplish anything they chose to do when they leave us. We want individuals that can make the tough decisions that are right for our students and staff. We want individuals that will allow staff to have a voice in the decision-making as a partner and not as just an employee. We understand that there will be times that we will agree to disagree, but we want those that can acknowledge their decisions and say
059so. Not giving us the roll call vote is hiding behind the request. If that is what you believe, stand up for it. If you can't openly admit how you voted, then what else are you not telling us? This was a request from an employee that the grievance was about. She wanted to know who supported her. We are also here to ask this new Board of Education to reconsider the vote on the grievance. This would take one of the four veteran BOE members um who voted against the request of FHEA on Caitlin's behalf to ask that it be reconsidered. As the previous president of FHEA, I am here to tell you that what the administration stated that was agreed to as far as the new hires and salary placement was not completely true. Yes, FHEA did
060agree to a chart for those new hires that had less than 9 years of experience. A chart that Dr. Griggs and former chief uh HR developed. This chart was for the new hires and where to place them on the salary schedule. The district and FHEA developed this chart to address the frozen years and the times that we negotiated by reducing our days by three and then another year giving percentages of 6%, no step, and 5.5% with a second year of no step. I explain this to you because I do want you to understand that there was a chart. However, it has not been found and another one was developed by someone, I'm not sure. Um due to those years that I just explained, there were years that new hires were on the same step as
061those that had been in the district for 5 years. That is why we agreed that new hires couldn't [clears throat] be placed on another step even if they had 5 years experience. But FHEA never agreed to anything um for those new hires that brought 10 years or more experience. Let me repeat that. FHEA never agreed to anything for those new hires that brought in more than 10 years of experience as Caitlin did. It should have been noted that when Caitlin came to our district, she should have been placed received 9 years experience and placed on step 10. When she did this grievance when she did this grievance at all three levels, we researched the topic by collecting 78 teachers contracts from one year from the first year that they came to the district to current.
062We checked as many with as many of the central metro St. Louis area school districts to find out how they placed new hires on their salary schedule who had more than what the district offered. In Wentzville and Fort Zumwalt, a new hire can bring in 10 years experience and is placed on step 11. The practice in Wentzville and Fort Zumwalt was the practice that Francis Howell used before the current chief of HR took over. We gave new hires who came in with more than 9 years all of those years plus one step because everyone starts on step one. And if a new hire has more than 9 years, they get the 9 years plus one step. >> up. Thank you. As the current acting FHEA president, I can say without any doubt that FHEA has
063not agreed to calculating the experience pay for placement the way the district has been doing. It never crossed our minds that was the way the district was placing folks with more than 9 years of experience. As Anita stated, all of Charles County districts give a maximum level of experience and the extra step. Districts in St. Louis County also use the same practice as Wentzville, Fort Zumwalt, St. Charles, and Orchard Farms, and as we used to do. St. Louis County, Affton gives full credit for all years plus one step. Brentwood, they have unlimited, so you are placed on the number of years taught and then one step added. Bayless doesn't have an official policy, uh but last year the teachers were given all their years and their local leaders think they'll continue to do that practice
064as long as necessary, plus they get the step. Hazelwood teachers first employed by the district are given credit for all years of approved previous uh teacher or administrative experience and are placed on the corresponding step plus one. Lindbergh has no limit and can bring all their years and then add one step. Maplewood bring in up to 15 years, placed on step 16. Mehlville up to 10 years, placed on step 11. Pattonville have unlimited and then add a step. Parkway honors up to 10 years of service on a salary schedule as long as the years have been within the past 10 years. If a staff member comes to us or comes to them with 14 years of service prior to coming to Parkway, uh they were um and all the years were in the last 14
065years, they would be placed on step 11. If someone were to come to them with 14 years of experience, but only six of them were in the last 10 years, they would be placed on step seven. Rockwood, 15 years of experience and you start on step 16. Valley Park, you bring up to 15 years and you're placed on step 16. Webster, up to seven years and you're placed on step eight. Special School District, you can bring in six years and be placed on step seven. However, at the district's discretion, they can give up to 12 years, placing them on the next step. Northwest gives 10 years, placed on step 11. Fox gives 10 and starts on year 11. Festus Festus gives all years plus one step. Last year when FEA the Senate Bill 727 with
066the district CFO and the chief human resource officer, we did so with the intent of giving back a step that was not given during the 2017 to 2024. Caitlin came to FEA this year and asked about the language that we negotiated for Senate Bill 727 because she had been told during the time the district offered her the position in 2022 that once FEA negotiated another step, that she would receive one. She stated when she contacted the chief of HR this year, she was told that she did not qualify, which made no sense because she was hired in 2022. The timeline for this step was 2017 to 2024. So, we were not sure why she did not receive the step. We then asked for the informational meeting with HR to discuss this. We were told that
067she did not receive all of her years according to the Board of Education policy in the closure document. It was then when we found out the district was not giving new hires more than nine steps. The additional step placing them on step 10. Um So, it was then that we filed the grievance um and took it all the way to the board in the March of that year. We were notified that the board did not agree with FEA and cited with administration. It was then we requested the roll call vote and that too was denied. We were then told that we needed to meet with superintendent to try to resolve the our request. E2 asked us questions about why we would want it and our answer was um we actively participate with Board of Education
068elections and we recommended those that support us and if someone is not supporting us, we'd like to know and have a conversation. So, we understand because there are times when we will have to agree to disagree. Um but we were told a flat out no, which brings us to all of you now. We are requesting the roll call vote for the grievance that FEA filed on behalf of Caitlin Charlton. We also asked the board the new board to reconsider the previous vote from the last board. We are more than happy to discuss this again anytime, anywhere. Good evening. In case any of us spoke too fast, you have received a copy of this speech. So, please go over the details. To give those new board members that have no information about my grievance that I
069filed, I'd like to give you some of the background. I came to Francis Howell in 2022 from Hazelwood School District with 13 years of experience, taking a pay cut to come here. When I spoke to the chief of HR who offered me the position, I was told that due to previous freezes, I would be placed on step nine, not step [clears throat] 10, until the union renegotiate contracts to give me back the extra step that I didn't receive. This step was negotiated through SB 727 MOU. When the step was given to those this school year, I did not receive it. I called the chief of HR and received the answer that I didn't qualify under the MOU language that was negotiated with FEA. This language from SB 727 states, if the 1% funds are appropriated,
070the additional funding will be used to provide as an additional step to all educators who were hired during the 2017-2018 through the 2023-2024 school years who did not receive steps equal to their years of experience when placed on the salary schedule, up to the maximum of nine steps per policy. To help understand this even further, let me ask you a question. If a student completes grades one through nine, do you then send them back to ninth grade, or do they proceed to 10th grade because they have successfully completed those nine years? That is the way a teacher salary schedule works. On October 2nd, 2025, FHEA filed a grievance on my behalf due to the placement of where the district put me on the salary schedule. We started at the informal level with the chief of
071HR and proceeded to the next level. We met with the chief of HR at level one. After that meeting on October 27th, we were told that our grievance was denied. If you look over the response from level one, you will also notice that someone who started teaching the same year that I did in this district is two steps ahead of me. This doesn't align with the process of making sure that someone new coming into the district isn't ahead of someone who's been in the district the entire time, even with that teacher going through freezes. We then proceeded to level two with the superintendent. We met on December 8th with the superintendent. He asked for an extension, which FHEA agreed to because he wanted more time to complete his investigation into this multi-layered grievance. We then
072received his response stating that he denied our grievance believing that policy 4505 had been properly implemented. We then presented level three to the Board of Education. The grievance about Board Policy 4505 CR states, "Teachers shall be allowed to bring in nine years of previous teaching experience on the salary schedule. Former district teachers who are re-employed shall be allowed to bring in all previous district experience and up to nine years of other previous teaching experience on the salary schedule as long as the date of application is within two years of leaving the district and provided they accept the first position for which they're qualified." I tell you all of this because even at the board, my level three grievance was denied. After it was stated that our grievance was denied, FHEA asked for the roll call
073vote. That too was denied. So, I personally, since this was my grievance, asked for the roll call vote believing that FHEA was denied because it was a personnel issue. But, I too was denied and was told I could appeal according to Board of Ed Policy 0412, which states that we need to meet with the superintendent to try and resolve the issue. And then if it doesn't happen, then I would be able to take my issue to you now. So, that's why we're here tonight. I'm not only asking for the roll call vote of my grievance that FH fell down on behalf of myself, but I'm also asking for reconsideration of my grievance. In order to do that, a board member on the prevailing side of the vote needs to bring it back for reconsideration. That
074means that either President Blair, Vice President Greider, Director Owens, or Director Olkie can bring back the grievance. Those that voted against my grievance have the ability to bring it back because they were on the prevailing side. I'm also asking that I still receive the roll call vote for my grievance. Thank you. >> [applause] >> And thank you all for your time and for sharing to share. Thank you for the email that allows us to look further into it as well. Appreciate it. And I apologize the name Charles and not Carlton. Thank you for that. So. Uh Board, I have a motion to approve the consent agenda for May 21st, 2026 as presented. Greider. Second. Adams is the second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. >> [snorts] >> Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Um
075next Board, I have a motion um that's a unique motion. It is a motion to uh excuse Director Olkie from the May uh excuse me, April 16th, 2026 and May 21st, 2026 Board meeting for reasons that are satisfactory to the Board. Have a first? Second. Okay. Director Owens followed by Vice President Greider. Uh statute 162.303 says any member of the school board of a seven director district, including urban districts, failing to attend the meetings of the board for three consecutive regular meetings, unless excused by the board for reasons satisfactory to the board, shall be deemed to have vacated the seat. Um, I am voting in favor of this knowing the situation that Director Okey is experiencing and I believe that is a valid reason for missing board meetings um and so I'll be voting uh
076in favor of this motion. Any other comments support? Okay. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Board have a motion to approve the 2026 through 2028 FHEA ESEs closure document as presented. Vice President Greider. Second. Treasurer Maguire. Uh board have any questions? Okay. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Uh board have a motion to approve the Feasterville Saudi schedules as presented. So moved. Director Adams. Second. Director Gilliard. Questions any uh anybody on the board? Okay. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Board have a motion to approve the 2026 through 2029 Teamster closure document as presented. So moved. Director uh see Treasurer Maguire followed by Vice President Greider. Uh board have any questions? All those in
077favor say I. I. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. So we're going to take a a short uh 2-minute break to sign the approved documents so nobody go too far. Um we're going to take a moment just to sign documents. >> Mhm. >> Board, uh let us All right, board, we're going to move back to the agenda. Uh board, I have a motion to approve the 2026-2027 pay increases and the salary schedules as presented. Vice President Greider, Director Adams for the second. Uh questions, board? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. The motion passes. Uh board, I have a motion to approve the employee insurance renewal recommendations as presented. Vice President Greider. I have a second. Second. Treasurer Maguire. Dr. Amy Sejdaj will review and discuss the additional changes, updates to
078the employee insurance recommendations that we initially heard at the May 7th work session. Yes, thank you so much for having me back this evening. Um I will not go through the entire presentation tonight as it is the same format that we had before with the additions that um the work session had provided some feedback and some additional emails that had been received for some uh additional things to look at. So, I will just be covering some of the highlights, but if there's anything you'd like me to stop and talk further about, please let me know. First couple of slides. This is the first new slide that was added at the direction of um Dr. uh or Director Adams. And Dr. There you go. >> [laughter] >> This is a full census by employee group for
079each of our um base individual, uh children, um family, and then the same for the high deductible. I do have a footnote there. If it has a BBE at the end of it, that's specific for both benefits eligible. So, that's an employee uh team of uh both of the individuals work here in the district. So, uh that's why they're called out a little bit different. And with this, I just wanted to kind of um draw your eyes to the bottom in in the different categories. I know it can look a little bit busy here, but at the the first number there of 126, that's the base individual children. And to give you context as we start to go through that, um that particular group would have an increase with the um option 2.5 that is
080being recommended by the administration tonight. They would have an increased cost of $59.57 for the employee children group. Um you will see a difference if you move to the employee family. So, the number 29 there, that group there, would have an increase of a $628.52 because that is the group that would have their spouse also in there. So, you can see that that's going to have an additional cost as uh we were talking about that last time in terms of um the largest expenses right now are coming from the spouse group. And so, we were really um kind of looking for ways to mitigate those costs. And then the group of 22, that's the employee spouse, it would be the same thing. It would be an increase of $401. And it's really just asking that
081spouse to pay for um their their part of the insurance. The The number 375, that is a group of people that are in the high deductible individual children. And that is an increase of 248 42. And I know that that's been a concern to some people because that's the area that they might be um currently participating in. But as I mentioned, if they went back to um the base plan, um that might be an option for them because it would be a much uh lower um cost to the family. And then the employee family in this area is uh 140 people. And that would be an increase of 884 34 based upon option 2.5. The next page that was updated after a couple of more options were added. So, there was a 2.5 added. Um
082we had the two and the three. And this is really um intended to be a happy medium in between. And with that particular one, um this particular slide and and any of them that would show all of them at the same time, they were also updated. So, in the bottom left-hand corner, you can see the 2.5. And then on the right-hand side, the option five was added. And I'll uh talk a little bit more about that here in just a second. So, if you look at the bottom left-hand um option 2.5, you can see that that comes into the range of um either five or six dollars being added um toward the um cost of benefits for that employee group. So, I forgot to bring my water here. Thank you. Excuse me. On the next
083slide, what you can see in this particular slide, the purpose of it is really just to um show your eye how much the district currently has been spending on insurance. So, that's the black um bar and that's 27 million um 494. And then each of the options compared to that, and if the red if they are red, they are going to be spending more than what we're currently spending. And if they're green, they would be spending less than what we're currently spending. Um President Blair had asked for us to add like a threshold line just so that it could be noted that at the $23 million mark, anything above that is really going to deficit spend regardless of which option is picked. So, I just want to make sure that that was clear to everybody.
084This is not for us to not deficit spend, it's really for us to mitigate cost. And so, just um drawing your eye to that $23 million area is what that does intend to do. Any questions about that particular slide? So, then again I mentioned um each of the slides that showed all of the areas I updated and I drew a box around the middle because that's the three that really mitigate the cost and bring that dollar figure down. This slide is intended to show as a heat map. We had um the research of our area school districts spend an average of 8 to $12,000 for health insurance benefits for their employees. And this green it represents that they are at or below that 12,000 and the red is above that 12,000. And so, you can
085see the options two, 2.5, and three, um it's more green than it is red trying to again bring that cost into the average that we see in our area school districts. When you look at this slide, I have updated it to include a green column so that you can easily understand what the cost increase is per the options and per the package that the employee would choose. So, if you were looking at that 2.5, which is in the center there, you can see that the increased cost, as I mentioned on the slide before, would be that 401 64 for the employee spouse, and the employee children is an increased cost of only 59.57, and then employee family does go up a little bit more at 6 25 or 628.25. And again, that's really because that
086spouse is still part of that family program, and so just requesting that that spouse pay that additional portion there. This is the same kind of information, but using the high deductible plan approach. And so, this would again, that middle column is that 2.5, and with that, one of the things that we had talked about, too, is again taking the people groups that maybe have traditionally looked at using the high deductible plan as their option is maybe looking at the base plan. And the good news is that the Business Solver, which is the platform that they will enroll through, is a new platform, and it actually has the ability for it to look back if they've been an employee for a while, they can look back for several years, and it will produce what is the
087best plan for them based upon the types of claims that they've had in that history. So, we're excited for that to be an option. With that group that I mentioned before that might consider moving over to the base plan, if they're currently in the high deductible employee family, and that's currently that 590 78, and they move to the employee children in the base plan, that overall change for their family would only be 3116 per month. So, I just want to make sure that the board understands that there are options for families that would not necessarily be just the number you see there, but if they were to understand kind of what's best in terms of the plan that works for their family. This is just an update of the review overall indicating what 2.5 did
088bring to the to the new plan option. So, it's a plan design change of a slight increase to the deductibles and to the out-of-pocket. And then it really standardizes the cost share of what the district proportion is at 47% for spouse, 65% is still being paid for the employee children and then for just down to 45% for the employee family. And again, this is moving closer to our benchmark districts of Fort Zumwalt and Wentzville who as a reminder only pay for the employee regardless of which plan that they pick. They have a standard number that is applied to that regardless of the plan. So, moving closer to that direction. Option five, Director Adams had asked that we maybe look at really bringing in something that had really high deductible out-of-pocket just to see kind of
089how low we could get the premium. So, I do present that tonight, but I think it would be very difficult for any family to really be able to manage those type of out-of-pocket expenses. So, now I'll just move to the plan of 2.5 and then just kind of talk you through on that left side. You can see that those are slight changes in red. So, it would go from the 1500 deductible to the 2000 and then the 4000 was previously I should have read that math. So, it was 1500 to 3000 and then it's now 2000 and 4000 and 4500 9000 to the 6000 12000 and then some slight increases to the prescription and then on the high deductible moving it to 4,500 and 9,000 as opposed to 3,600 and 7,200. This is what the
090plan five look like that you had requested and it really increases those out of pocket and those deductibles like I mentioned a moment ago just to an unmanageable number. It does lower the premium though. As expected. President Blair had asked that we look at these top three areas and we look to see what does it do to the overall fund balance us making that assumption. For that amount. So you can see in the bottom right hand corner the assumptions I have are really just the kind of what we're looking at these right now. We have a 2% increase for local expected for next year. This is using the SAT at 6,700 so it would be a decrease to our state funds. This is including the salaries that you actually just approved. They're all the things
091that we've just completed at 3% overall to that number and then this would be a decrease of 13.1% to the overall number. This leaves the deficit spend of 1.6 million in that particular column for 2026-2027. It gives us a fund balance of 2447 in that year and you do see that it goes down slightly than the following two years. If we look at option 2.5, the overall spend on that would bring us to deficit spend of 3.1 million dollars and it then has the same assumptions as I just mentioned before and the fund balance would be at 2373 and again a slight decrease to the following years after that in the projection. And then option three is um really bringing us in at just the 23.13% fund balance, but the overall deficit spending at this
092point would be $4.4 million going into next school year if that choice was made. As part of tonight's um approvals, I will need you to um have the as part of this presentation, you'll be renewing the dental um uh insurance that we have and that's just to remain with Delta Dental. And then there's a flexible spending recommendation for us to remain with ASI Flex. And then the final side is really um the recommendations for those things as well as administration is recommending option 2.5 which includes a maximum 8% increase to that base uh that employee only premium. So, the number that the employee only premium costs today in both of the plans go up 8%. That is not that the others don't go up higher because again the um amount that is um being supplemented
093by the district varies. Um so, that's a little bit different. I am also making recommendation um as administration to um normalize the HSA funds for evenly distributed per site per pay cycle. Again, that's a benchmark um norm that we found when we looked at other school districts. Um we currently deposit $1,000 for family or for individual and $2,000 for family on the very first day of the plan year. And um what we had found in our research is that we actually lost about $101,000 by doing that because if people were to leave, um they were taking they have to take the money with them. It's not something that you can get back. And so, this would just put it even. We would always know exactly who's employed and active and it would go on their
094paycheck. And then finally, I would um ask that we have currently added this year an additional $1 million to the health fund as it um still struggles um with high claims and just really needing to monitor it. It's a dip down to about $5 million and it needs a reserve about 7 and 1/2 million dollars. So, we'll continue to monitor that throughout June 30 and then this recommendation much like last year would just give us the ability to move money from our operating to cover those expenses if we need to. And with that, I will see if you have Questions from the board? I present ready you were on the employee insurance committee. Do you want to share anything? From your experience of the conversation you were like you guys started in what month? November.
095I mean, I don't have anything else additional to what we talked about last month. Um >> [clears throat] >> We're in a terrible situation. So, um I appreciate all the work that's gone in to all of this. I also think that it's important for everyone to understand also that there is zero cost to our teachers. Individual employees. >> Individual employees. >> [clears throat] >> Just not Yeah, not just teachers. Yeah, everyone is self-insured, correct? We pay 100% of every employee individual plan. Correct. The increases that we're looking at are primarily around when a spouse is involved because that is where our extreme medical claims are coming from and we pay we have to pay all of our medical claims because that's how self-insured works, right? Correct. So, >> [snorts] >> for me as we've gone
096through these discussions all of our money, we talked about that last year, what, 83% of all revenue that comes into the district goes into Salaries and benefits. Salaries and benefits. So, we can pretend that these are two different pools of money, but they're not. And when we have to pull money over to cover our medical claims, which we pulled over what, 6 million? 11 million last year. >> 11 million, sorry. 11 million dollars. >> this year so far. Which was a what, 67% increase >> Right. for the district >> contribution to cover the medical claims primarily from the spouse piece, right? Like again, that just it's just a really tough situation. And we had a We talked about last week, um, you know, where else can we pull money from? So, we talked about, you
097know, pulling some over for operations. We will talk facility master plan. Also, we also know the risks of that because, to be honest, as we've looked at this, you know, you know, we've We used the phrase like kicking the can, but we've been The district has been kicking the can for how many years now? Five, six? Like it's Multiple. It It's been year after year that we're like, well, we'll just cover. Well, we'll just cover. Well, we'll just cover. Were those the best decisions? They felt easy and good at the time, but now we find ourselves in a place where we just are I don't know that there's a way around and really putting some of our employees who have who carry the insurance for their families and or their spouses in a really hard
098spot. I also know that we uncovered and you're You and your team broke down every possible possibility. I mean, we met for an hour and a half nine times looking at all of the comparatives around the districts because we don't want to have people leave us. And so that was a lot of work to figure out, well, what if they went to Zumwalt? What if they went to Wentzville? What if they went to, you know, I don't feel like we left any stone unturned. And so we're left with a really tough decision. On top of that, Missouri just coming out and not fully funding Right. is devastating. Not just for us, but for all public education across this state. We also haven't been able to pass a tax levy in for This district, I will
099tell you, does more with less for longer than anything I ever have seen. We looked at our staff to admin ratios. We have the highest I mean, I don't know what else we can start to cut that will make a significant difference. What we talked about, because again, 83% of all the revenue we pull in goes to our employees by means of insurance, our contributions to their insurance, or their salaries or in their salaries, right? So we're already like that's everything. That's everything we've got. We we can't just pull money out of anywhere. You're correct. And so at some point, I think And it's a crass term, I guess, but you hear about FIFO, right? I think we are all as a state about to find out if we really care about public education, if
100we really care about our teachers. I can tell you everyone up here and everyone in in this room cares about the teachers. We care about all of our staff. We're what, the second largest employer in the Like I mean, we we we raised this community. It's not just, you know, So anyway, I'm This is a long comment, but um I say all of that to say like if the community as a whole doesn't start paying attention to what our legislators are doing and everybody doesn't stop nitpicking about every little thing that hits the news that seems salacious and crazy and judgmental and then we get diverted it's hurting everybody and everybody's property values because this this community is going to suffer as a whole. It's just we have to we have to plug in and
101we have to care and so we are going to have a really impossible vote today. But I don't know that it's avoidable. Thank you. Are there other comments? Could I get just one I know we've gone over this a lot. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't raise my hand. Oh, that's right. Um so the main the deficit spending for two 2.5 and three could you say that again what each one is what the deficit is? Yes, this is the option two and the deficit spending would only be 1.6 million with these assumptions that I have. Okay. And then at the 2.5 option would be 3.1 million. And then option three would be 4.4 million. Yeah. What I thought. And again to put it that in perspective if if we had another year with the catastrophe um
102high claims that we had over the last year and and we needed to put 11 million dollars more in, we wouldn't have it to pull from. We've already exhausted that 11 million and an additional million this year. So we would really have nothing further to be able to supplement that um health insurance fund without making drastic changes. Could Could I ask one more thing while I'm on this? Um so I'm I'm cu- about how the health savings account works. Okay. Is that a [clears throat] great option for people uh trying to limit what they're paying per month? Um, it it can be viewed in different ways. So, sometimes the health um the high deductible plan will have a um seemingly lower um cost to the family, but they have to pay that out of pocket
103all up front and first. And so, that in many cases what you'll see is the district will have a base plan and then whatever that um additional cost is, that's what the um HSA will will equal. So, it will not be the same 1,000. It might be $782, we'll say. Um we didn't find any other district that gave um the money to the family. So, we are literally the only district that does um provide that $2,000 to a family plan. And what you can see in other districts too that you get it monthly in your paycheck um versus lump sum. And so, again that lump sum challenge is because if a person um takes the $1,000, then if they leave, um that money goes with them. It's part of um the way that the federal
104government just works, so. That help? A little. I'm just I'm just confused on how it actually plays out against a regular insurance, you know, health insurance policy. >> You'll have like a copay versus no no copay. So, in your high deductible, you're just going to pay and pay and pay until you hit that number and then everything else is paid by this bucket of money. So, even in some cases I was looking at which of the people groups hit their full deductible and their full out of pocket. And again, it's that spouse group. That spouse group is the one that's hitting both of those categories. Um and then everything else on top of that is going to come out of the self-insurance fund that we're all contributing to. Yeah. Thank you. Um obviously this is
105a very serious thing for us to be deciding. I know that all of our staff are either watching or will be talking about this tomorrow. So, I in order to make sure that I capture my thoughts coherently, I've written down a a short statement so I make sure that I um get through everything with um what I wanted to say. So, please bear with me. Um I want to start by thanking the insurance company for the time and work they put into reviewing these options. I'm well aware that there was no good options or present uh to present or recommend, and this isn't yours or anyone else's fault in the district. This is the result of rising health care costs while our revenue stays the same and other operating costs continue to increase. I also
106want to thank Dr. St. John for being willing to listen to our ideas, suggestions, and questions over the last few weeks. I know a lot of work went into analyzing the data, let alone presenting it in the multiple ways. Since the first draft was presented in the in following recent workshop, I've agonized over the numbers and tried to come up with ideas or different approaches to make the increase more palatable. Option five was my suggestion I made in the workshop, and clearly it would would not work for us. I know we sadly have to make changes to our benefits as what we are paying isn't sustainable and we can't ignore the rising cost of health care. With that said, I can't support the recommendation being being presented. My concern is not that employee contributions have
107to increase. My concern, as I've mentioned, is the size of the increase and the amount of time employees have to digest it. We have offered this type of coverage for dependents for decades. When staff signed their contracts this spring, I think it was reasonable for them to expect some increase in health insurance costs, but I do not think it was reasonable for them to expect an increase this significant. We are also at the end of the school year. That is not enough time to communicate these changes to our staff before they leave for the summer, and I don't think it gives employees enough time to budget before the new plans take effect in October. I agree with the committee's recommendation that children should be prioritized when considering premium increases for dependents. I also understand the
108argument that spouses may have other options and that covering someone who doesn't work here may prevent us from moving forward with other requests. But the rate of increase is too steep to implement this quickly, especially for employees who may not have a lot of flexibility in their budget. This will not affect everyone equally, and I'm especially concerned about the impact on our lower-paid staff, as well as the high risk of living losing support staff over the summer with limited time to fill positions before the start of the school year. I'm not against making changes to our dependent coverage, but for the reasons I mentioned, these changes need to be made to be more manageable and phased in more responsibly. As I said previously, I would like to see an off-ramp with more manageable increases for
109the '26-'27 school year while we wait for the results of the dependent eligibility audit. If we feel at that time that we are still in the same position, we should communicate with our staff as early as possible about what changes they can expect in 2027. Finally, a phrase that I learned during a servant leadership class that has stuck with me is, "Train your staff so they can leave, but treat them in a way so they don't want to." Giving our staff a year with lower increases and enough time to um get to get familiar with what to expect in '27 demonstrates that we are treating our staff fairly and respectfully. Thank you. Glenn. I've gone through these numbers repeatedly. I just want to make sure I'm clear. So, all staff can be insured individually for
110free. Correct. And that does not change. Correct. We're here to be >> It's a board policy. How we're going to impact, based on the numbers presented, 35% of our employees. Figure out how much we're going to go into our remaining money. I also agree there's no good option and I'm not really sure what to recommend, either. I'm just sharing thoughts out there that this is a pain about is there's no legislation that I'm aware of that is tackling healthcare in the state of Missouri. I mean, not that I'm aware of. And these numbers assume we basically have a smaller increase than we saw this year and we saw the big jump in how much we had to re-insure. This year, the increase was 16.8%. >> And we assume it will not These numbers assume it
111won't be as much next year. I I know I can't tell you what insurance will go up. It's 12 and 1/2% this year. So, if it goes up that much, these aren't even, right? No, this is the 12 and 1/2% that we're going to have for the next plan year. I can't tell you what's going to happen year after year. >> So, it could be even worse next year. Correct. Correct. No questions. Other board comments, any? Yeah, me. No. Thank you for doing all this. I know that you put a lot of work into it. I know that the committee has put a lot of time on this. It's been lots in the making, so I appreciate everybody's time and work on this. Um and just to speak plainly, I mean, it sucks, guys. Like,
112no matter what we decide, it's not going to feel good. Is that better? Okay, yay. Okay. So, sorry. Thank you so much, everybody, for putting all the time in. Um cuz I know a lot of hours went into this. Um and like I like I just it it sucks. Like it sucks having to do it. Like it's just it doesn't feel good. Um health care increases have been off the charts this year. My own out-of-pocket max for my family is almost $15,000. So, um I don't love it. I really don't. But, at the same time, all of our employees have access to health care at the base plan. Um and if by any feel free to contact me if you're upset with what I'm about to say, but if by putting the cost of the
113spouse onto the employees means that we get to put another body in a classroom, how can I deny that? I mean, I'm always going to support smaller class sizes over everything. So, that's where I stand. Thank you. Um So, a couple things. One, uh you presented 2.5 tonight. Uh most of the reason behind 2.5 we talked about in the work session is it was two and three. >> Mhm. It was a compromise um to sort of stair-step along the lines of actually what Director Adams was just mentioning, and I think you had you had mentioned that as well at the last meeting. Um it's a it's a gradual step, but preserved employee children. So, employee children again, remember the base is only about $60 different um going into next year. It is a little bit
114more in the high deductible as I mentioned, but again, families have the option to move to the base and have a very small um change if that is the case. In both of those um in 2.5 both the base and the high deductible um will see increases for that employee spouse and for that employee family. And again, it's really to um try to uh see if if the spouse has another option, whether that be on the open market or um potentially um, that they already have available. Also, there's two other uh, attachments onto this agenda item. If you want to look at it, it's option 2.5, both base plan and high deductible plan. And uh, want to call out that uh, option 2.5, uh, if passed, the district would pay 100% of the employee only
115uh, costs. 47.8% of the employee plus plus spouse cost, 63.69% of the employee plus child cost. That's because the employee insurance committee wanted to prioritize, especially employees who who may be uh, carrying the burden of insuring their their kids. Um, and the employee plus family, the district would be paying 44.24%. Um, and what you have shared is that those numbers are uh, much higher than our comparative districts in St. Charles County. We definitely still have a premium plan as compared to Fort Zumwalt and Wentzville, where they pay only the employee cost throughout each plan regardless of what the person chooses. Uh, when you're looking at those that particular chart, we've seen that chart for a little while. Uh, so keep right there. Uh, what month is that referring to? As I state there at the
116bottom, this is always with the June 30th um, fund balance percentage would be. So, this is what is reported on what's called the ASBR and this is what um, you calculate all of the revenue that's budgeted and all of the expenditures that are budgeted, and then you were able to calculate what that fund balance is, how much of your um, revenue do you have left over, your um, balance left over in order to pay for your expenses. Uh, what part of the year is the low water mark for uh, a school budget? It's going to be in the fall um before you start to receive your local taxes. So, just like a person's individual budget, you know, their individual checking account, you may have the high water mark you get paid, um but it's important
117not to function as if that's how much money you have because you don't have 30 days worth of costs that have to, you know, be paid out of that number. So, what what we're seeing is a number that we're trying to keep above that particular line. Um in a previous presentation, you shared that historically, there were times when this school district had to freeze raises and skip steps. Right. Um uh those marks were listed about 20% um 20% and below. 20% is scary. 20% and below. And And to get a loan for payroll. >> Right. And so, what is on my mind is both the the care and support of teachers and staff now and care and support of teachers and staff in the future. Right. Um those are some of the values that I'm
118bringing into this conversation. Uh I've shared this before. I'm a competitive guy. It's nice to be able to say that we have uh better employee insurance than we um than our uh neighboring districts that are in St. Charles County. Um St. Louis County has different rules, different funding mechanisms. Um so, it's not quite apples to apples there. Um other pieces, just for people who are watching, because we're self-insurance, if we guess wrong in terms of how much money all of the insurance needs, benefit needs are going to be, we pay it, right? We we have to supplement, we have to pay anything that is beyond what we are preparing >> Right. We have stop-loss insurance at $250,000, but anything up to that $250,000 past the $4,000 out of pocket max or whichever plan it would
119be on. Everything in that area, that's what the that's what this bucket of money is going to pay for. Can you pull pull up the slide that had all the different bar graphs? Mhm. So, I want to point this out. You might have to wait a second. I know it's right here at the beginning of the video. Um and this is just calling out to those of you who are watching online as well. Um because of the public support of public education in defeating Proposition RT, we have $4 million in our budget that we would not have had otherwise. Um and so, I want to thank the public for their hard work um to make sure that happens. Uh next year, it would have been a $7 million loss and then beyond. Um you have
120shared that there's a funding change happening in Jefferson City where the amount of money that we are expecting to get based upon what was communicated months ago, um has not been fulfilled. The state did not fulfill the promise for that funding. And the difference between what was promised and fulfilled is about how much? Uh over 2 years, it's going to be $9.3 million lost over this year and and next year what is expected. And I'll cover that a little bit more in the next presentation, but yes. And so, I want to share that. Um the board is responsible to make the wisest decision with the information we have available. We have certain levers that we can pull to improve our financial situation. We're going to have a conversation later on about two of those levers
121that we potentially pursue and what that might do for the district. There are things upstream from the board that are damaging our ability to care for our staff and teachers. And if you're angry about it, I just want you to know that I'm angry about it, too. And I'm spending my time to make sure that your teachers and those staff have as many things available to them as possible. It's it's horrible. And on top of that, Senate Bill 1002 was passed that confines our ability to pull levers to support teachers and staff and the kids who benefit when teachers or staff are supported. But we're confined to even year Novembers. That means the Jefferson City legislators, doesn't matter if there's a D or R by the name, I don't care. I care about the green
122involved with it. They can make a horrible decision in a odd number year, but we still have to wait till an even number November just to respond to it. So, they did not confine their ability to defund schools to certain moments. And it's just our county. It was just our county. So, I am upset. Use my feeling words. I am upset at the fact that multiple things are in line. I'm upset because it's going to hurt people that we all care about. Um and we have to make wise decisions with the numbers that are in front of us. Pull the levers that we can. Um and I appreciate you presenting the numbers as clearly as you have. I just have one other question too. Um I know next month we're finalizing budget and everything like
123that, but at this point with option 2.5, we will still be likely operating in a deficit. >> $3.1 million. In my next presentation, I'll break that down a little bit more for you. >> And I think that's important to note >> There's not a good answer. >> for this conversation, too, that we are already going to be operating in a deficit. Yeah. Even with the most extreme plan which would mirror what Fort Zumwalt and Wentzville have, we would still deficit spend. So, to your point, there's not a good answer. None of these are good answers. It's just the that the lowest in the green option one is just to show you what it would look like if we were Fort Zumwalt or Wentzville and follow that same thinking. And so, it would drastically drop us
124down in how much um savings there would be, but that's still not low enough for us to recover from what the state funding is doing to us. And that doesn't Does that 3.1 million deficit also include >> [snorts] >> keeping our uh >> [clears throat] >> keeping the the 5 and 1/2 million instead of the 7 million or is that >> I'll break it down in the next um presentation. Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah. Can you go to slide 25, please? Mhm. So, option 2.5 we're really asking that's what's recommended. An employee and spouse is going to spend $400 more a month. Mhm. And then we go down. Employee with child only spends $60 more a month. Correct. And it's not nothing. But then we're asking families not to have to spend $628 more Right. Cuz again,
125it's adding that spouse back in there. Yeah, I understand. I just make sure that the board is looking at the recommendation that that's what we're looking at. And again, that's based on data. Those spouse um the spouse that are in the plan currently are 51% of the claims. And then option three is the same for the first two, but it reduces the family to only an extra $100 more. Mhm. The 2.5 was created to I understand. move us closer to option two, which would align us. I'm trying to relate it back to an individual person. What is an employee actually going to pay a month? I don't understand. What am I going to impact? It's the $40, $60, $600. On the base and then the next slide shows you what it would be on the
126high deductible, which I mentioned is a little higher, but again maybe maybe review what plan works best for your family and the base plan would be cheaper potentially. What other comments? Um I have forgotten what number of spouses are were involved this year in taking insurance. >> 235 Okay. Out of what number total? There's 4,000 people belly buttons that we talk about. >> Right. >> Mhm. One more piece of information just want to name out there is that over the last is it three or four years that staff have been asked to increase their contribution towards premiums for about 2.9% and in that same timeframe the district has increased its support towards increasing health insurance costs at 67%. Correct. >> Okay. So um Absorbing the overall cost that were being incurred, correct? So it's not
127as if the staff hasn't I'm sorry, the district hasn't listened to the needs and responded generously in the past. The question is do we have the money to respond generously now? Um and the information looks different because we spent $11 million backfilling. >> [snorts] >> And losing What was that number again? How much million 9.3 million over the next 2 years. From that we would have been receiving from the state that we will not receive. And anything that we basically pull I can't remember who said that to like this Sarah. I mean the the lever the the main lever that we have is people. Right. That would be the next expense that you would start to talk about if um if we need to >> letting people go or definitely not adding the roles that
128Mrs. asking us to do. No. So we can't hire the new people that we know we need and possibly have to eliminate roles and start looking down that path. Like that's the lever that we have. I just want to make sure that that's correct. I board any additional comments or questions? For clarity's sake is the motion before us to approve the option 2.5 and the subsequent um dental insurance listed? Dean, I think last time it was just accept the the recommendation. Yeah. Yeah, and so It it'll take care of that whole Actually that's So we don't need to add additional language. We just need to be aware of what we're voting on. What we're voting on is Yeah. Yes. Mhm. Any other comments board? Okay. Um All those in favor say I. I. I. Any
129opposed say nay. Nay. Motion passes. Thank you for your time. Mr. Blair. Yes. I just want to check on our student who has a school day tomorrow, her final day of the school year and um I want you to feel free to just kind of tell us when you're ready and and if it's now great, we'll take a little pause and or if you want to stay a little while longer and forget about the state time. You want to go? She want to say Anything about else? Would you like to stay or go? No, if we have to suffer, you have to suffer. >> [laughter] >> Maybe ask her mother. Jasmine, Jasmine, would you would you like to stay or go? Um, maybe I'll go now. Thank you so much. >> Thank you so much,
130JASMINE. THANK [applause] YOU. WE ARE REALLY PROUD OF YOU AND the fact that in the beginning of your talk that honors you, you spent the first 30 seconds honoring the other students who are here. Um, I think that says an awful lot about you, your family, teachers, um, especially you. So, thank you, Jasmine, for being an example. Have a great last day of school, as well. Thank you, Jasmine. Exciting. Board, I have a motion to approve the finance and operations report as presented. I'll move. Second. Dillard, followed by Adams. Uh, Deputy Superintendent Finance uh, and Operations Officer, Dr. Amy St. John, will present. Yes, thank you. This is just the monthly, um, finance and operations update with a few, um, additives as the legislation has changed in the state formula. So, I'm going to give
131you a little bit more information about that. But, as always, I just thank you for the opportunity to provide an update for the 25-26 school year. Um, under strategic plan pillar three, um, transparency is important in making sure that the community and the board remain informed in timely manner each month as we share these updates about the operating budget, any amendments are that are necessary, the bond financials, and the self-insurance revenue and expenditures, as well as the legislative update. This month, this is the budget amendment transfer page. There are no amendments for this month, so there is an unchanged fund balance at the bottom of 27.18%. So, I'll just kind of move through that. The next series of slides I would like to explain to you in a little bit more depth about the student,
132or excuse me, the state adequacy target, or what is we call as the SAT. So, we'll begin here with about a year ago now what we believed were the expectations coming out of um, the the DESI financial memos. They were telling us that the calculated SAT was going to move to $7,145. However, most seasoned veterans know that not you don't really always believe DESI. And so Carol Embry had conservatively budgeted at 6942 per student, and that would have the $7,145 would have given us 600 or excuse me, 6.4 million dollars. However, with that conservative approach, we were right. And so the actual payment was coming in each month and only paying at $6,900, so not at the $7,145. And so our conservative budget using the brought us in that 3.2 million dollars that we expected,
133but we did not receive the 3.2 million dollars that wasn't paid to us. So in this current year, we're not having to show you a budget amendment because we were conservatively budgeted, but we are receiving less money this year than we were told a year ago. So a year ago we would thought that we would have 6.4 million, instead today we have 3.2. So we're in the same predicament, however, it's worse. Now they've come out and they have said the calculated SAT is $7,145, but there's no way there's enough money to pay that. And so the projection is coming out at saying that the beginning would be paying or the next school year will only be paying 6900, and what we know is at the beginning of a school year, the fund will actually pay
134less and work its way up to that number. So what we know to be conservative is to come in at 6700, and it will be monitored each month as it is today, but we wanted to make sure that you understand why we choose that number and how it worked in our favor this year and not having to make large amendment during this year. However, with that projected 3.2 million that I have been telling you each and every month that we thought was going to be coming because they were going to fully fund that formula, I had to then bring it down that 3.2 and again bring it down further another 2.9 million, which is an overall 6.1 million dollar loss. If you add those two together, and this is what you were over the two
135years we've had a 3.2 million dollar loss, the one that we're the next year it will be a 6.1 million dollar loss to what we were told a year ago we would be receiving as a school district, which is a grand total of 9.3 million dollars if we do get 6,700. So again, there are some that are saying it may come in a little lower than that. Um, the latest um, they talk about it includes funny money um, is the way that they talk about it because it's lottery, gaming, cigarette tax, and that is trending down and has been trending down for a while, and so if that doesn't come to fruition, then you get to the end of the year and they just don't pay you what they've told you that they would pay
136you. So that is the predicament that we are in. I wanted to just lay that out for you and understand the history, where we are right now, and what we're projecting for for next year. Can I ask you a quick question, too? So that's what's coming in, but also like it's probably going to feel like more than that, also I would guess with just the cost of Cost of everything went up, right? So which leads to this page, right? Which leads to this page. So this page um, you I showed to you each month as well, but that top box is starting to go flat or go negative. So what we did see is our new construction is up, and so we do expect to have 2% more in local taxes, which will generate 2.5
137million dollars. However, with this information I just shared with you from the state and we go backwards, the 2.9, that that doesn't even cover that what we just said is going to come in. So then we're behind the game already in revenue. However, we've already agreed to the 3% increase in salaries, which is $4.7 million. And then by choosing option 2.5, since that was my recommendation, I did include that in here. That does save us $2.1 million, but that's not enough. That's that's why we still end with a deficit. And this keeps our purchased services and our supplies at a 0% change. And we know that's not possible. We know that software goes up. We know that curriculum goes up. We know that just the school supplies that classroom gets outfitted with will go up.
138What that means is you get the same amount of money, you just won't get the same amount of stuff. And so each budget leader, as we have worked with them, we've asked them is if you do have an increase in this area, is there anything that you can cut back on in that particular budget group so that we can have a net zero. And so that's what we plan to deliver when we come in 2 weeks with the full budget information. But at this point, you are at the $3.1 million deficit. I would like to address the $5 million transfer to capital since that gets talked about quite a bit. That is an option that we can change. We this is a a directive each time. You can see that the number has been varied
139throughout the years. It's sometimes called the 7% transfer because DESE calculates how much you actually can move from your operating into your capital to take care of your buildings. Or you can have a flat number. So in projections, often times you'll see a flat number of $5 million in our case. That $5 million, if we pulled back on that and we kept it in our operating, it would affect the the bottom line. It would the fund balance would improve because we wouldn't be taking that money and moving it into capital. However, the buildings have already told us all the things that they need to have done. You approved many things tonight and a few more coming that we we have roofs that need to be fixed. We have curbs that need to be fixed. We
140have um software that needs to be purchased. We have things that have to be done. And if we take that money away, it's at that decision you just asked about, Amy. Like it's it's not like it was just sitting there doing nothing. It's already earmarked, if you will, to do the projects that we know our buildings need. So, you can do it for 1 year, but it would never be recommended to do it for more than 1 year. And frankly, we already have a pretty long list of things that need to be taken care of. I just wanted to make sure everybody understood how that $5 million part worked. Okay. This is the same information, just in a graphical form. These are the bond financials. Um not much has changed. Uh we're getting ready to
141go into that phase two final um of Prop S. And so, the bond funds will be spent out and closed out probably um early next fall. This is the self-insurance financials that I mentioned. In the top box middle, you can see where we're $5.1 million. So, we're really $2 million behind what we need to have in a reserve. And so, that's why in that last motion, we'll be able to move money from operating if we need to. Um just depending, we'll watch this as we um go into the final months of our final weeks of this year. That's just a reminder of what we had talked about with the insurance. This is the legislative update. And I have provided one full page for Senate Bill 1002. Cuz I wanted to make sure that both our
142public and our board were very aware of the change that um is taking effect on August the 28th, 2026, um should the governor sign this into law. The key changes that we will see for St. Charles County only will be the school board elections will move to our traditional um from the election day to November general elections. The school board terms will change from 3 years to 4 years. Candidates may choose to list their political affiliation on the ballot. And any future ballot issues involving new taxes, levy increases, levy renewals, or bonded indebtedness must also appear on a November general election. Which brings me to the um area that I've called out for you here. We brought to you a facility master plan um earlier in the school year, and with that we had done
143projections with both um um Hollis and Miller when they had prepared it as well as with um Piper Sandler and just explaining how the debt service works. And we had planned on an April 2027 ballot. However, that's not an option for us any longer. So, I'm drawing that to your attention to make you understand that we will need to move to a November general election of an even numbered year in order for us to be able to put that on a ballot, which happens to be November 2026. So, it's moving forward. And you wouldn't want to move it backwards because that's only going to create a higher cost for anything that we've already identified as an urgent need. As in the facility master plan, we call out the areas of need that are for 1
144to 3 years. So, that is an urgent need that we'd need to take care of in the schools. I'll pause there in case you have questions particular to that cuz I know we were just talking about it in the last um conversation. Good? Additional um 2026 wrap-up. Um oddly, um I did um speak to you many times about the things that were really kind of um coming along with the property tax reform. Not one single one passed. In terms of the budget, it is being underfunded $362.7 million over the school years of '26 and '27. And Governor Kehoe has the authority to continue to restrict funds or use executive actions to affect school districts if he so chooses. School choice did not pass. We are not um concerned about open enrollment or charter school expansion
145at this point. The A to F report card did not pass. However, the State Education Board and DESE retain administrative authority. It is now a question of how it will be structured and related to the Missouri MSIP. The literacy bills did not pass. And the income tax um drawn out there, there's a link to that um particular um piece of legislation is where you're waiting to hear if it will be on the August 2026 or the November 2026 ballot. And this is uh this entire uh session, not one educational omnibus bill was passed. Talking about the school funding modernization task force, there are some things that are starting to um be shared and timelines and that, which I had covered with you before in terms of December 1 is when um they will deliver to
146the governor what that will look like. And so that SAT thing that I just explained to you, that's all going to go away and change. We will limp along with that until probably year 29-30, and then this will get implemented in that year. This will reset how it is looked at, how much local effort is being paid by a school district. It's most likely going to be tied to um significant shifts in terms of um student measures, which our current one is not tied to student measures. [clears throat] It's about enrollment and membership of students and their attendance. Um so looking at things like early literacy, middle school and math, ELA growth, college and career readiness, measurable um student outcomes. So you're also starting to see the A to F report card and the funding
147formula being tied to those student measures, which will be new. We don't currently have. In other news, good things are happening, work in progress. Um that benefit analysis, um certainly that team has done amazing work um leading up to this um and then of course carrying out with the new um platform that they're on. Um we'll be bringing you the budget recommendation on June the 4th, um considering to monitor any legislation, and I say that because remember um Senate Bill 3 actually occurred over the summer last year, and so that wasn't something that many of us were paying attention to, so our eyes are definitely wide open for that. And then phase two of the HVAC system will occur over the summer. And our food service and nutrition, with the help of Scott Gallon, will
148be getting a new point of sales system, and all um food um lunch balances will be paid through Infinite Campus. I think our families will be very happy cuz RevTrak has been difficult. So, that'll happen next school year. With that, do you have any questions? So, you're going to bring this budget on June 4th. We understand so, last year the state said they're going to give us so much money. We didn't believe them. We went under that. And they failed to meet that. They had a chance to fund it, and they still didn't do that. So, now we're short money. This upcoming budget, they're saying we're going to give you even less this year. >> Mhm. And our budget's going to be under that number. Correct. It's not wise to believe them. How do you
149understand that? How do you pick how far underneath their inability to fund public schools do you go? A rule of thumb is whatever the difference is, split that, um and then call 10 other people and say, "What are you going to use?" So, it's really kind of a we're guessing >> game, yes. what the state might actually give us. Correct. But we know every single month when we receive our payment, um the 20th of the month, you can very easily see if it's on track or not on track. So, you're monitoring it constantly, um and and informing the um the Board of Education in terms of if we need to make a change. >> want to make sure that people listening understand that we're not bad at budgeting. No, we were good at budgeting, thankfully.
150The state's bad at giving us what they said they would promise. They are severely underfunded, almost to the tune of $400 million underfunding public schools. That's it? Or $100 million. Yes, they want Thank you. And can I just share underfunding public schools while increasing Missouri scholars by an additional $10 million for next year, taking that from 50 million to 60 million. So we're using public funds to increase the opportunities to enroll in private schools while decreasing public school funds. >> And do those private schools have any public oversight from voters on how they spend money? They do not. >> No. No accountability either. And no, they don't take everyone. And they don't have special services. And almost 90% of the students in this state go to public schools. I I want sometimes I just want
151to give like clearly like 60 seconds on the clock. >> [laughter] >> I got more if you want it. I appreciate it. No, I appreciate it. Are there any other questions? We go over here. In your experience, have you heard what the money that was supposed to come to public education has been given to instead or is it just a mystery as to how it's allocated? Uh part of it went to Missouri scholars. Um that's one portion of it and the other piece of it just didn't arrive. So they overestimated their revenues at the state level to calculate that SAT and then people didn't gamble enough, smoke enough or um you know, didn't spend those monies. Sports gambling wasn't high enough, um lottery wasn't high enough and it's trending the wrong direction. So if anybody
152wants to go out smoke and drink, I'm just kidding. Okay. Okay. I'm just to help public schools. [laughter] For the record, you were not advocating for smoking. >> a joke, sorry. Probably a bad joke. Well, I think we still have the lowest tax on cigarettes and tobacco in in this state. So there's a whole different collection of all the different reasons [laughter] because we're going to keep focus on the the direct impact on social on public schools. Any other questions regarding um, this presentation? >> One final question and maybe Superintendent Delany knows it. Um, I'm asking just because of the the time that you've been spending in Jefferson City. Um, Dr. St. John mentioned either the workshop or the meeting before that we personally are underfunded because so much of our percentage of revenue comes
153from the local level. Do the legislators care that while that may be true percentage-wise, we're not getting anything more from the local level than we were since 2004? Does has that factored into their decision? Have they commented in any way that they're aware that we're not getting money from the local level that we are hoping to? Yeah, I think the I think the hard part is the state has declining revenues as well. So, uh, you know, the economy is trending down, and so the state is taking in less money, which impacts how much they're going to distribute to schools. Uh, Dr. St. John did a great job of explaining funny money, and I learned something new about funny [clears throat] money this year that, you know, part of those projections, uh, and I'll make up
154a number. The state might say, "We're going to get $140 million in lottery money this year and tack in that cigarette tax." And we haven't gotten $140 million in the last 7 years. So, it would be like you saying, "My salary this year is 60,000, but I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that my employer might just throw in 30 extra thousand dollars, and I'm going to spend like I'm going to get that extra 30,000 dollars." Which none of us would do. And so, that's the complication, and that's why people like, uh, Dr. St. John have to be conservative in their approach to trying to figure out what is that SAT money going to be because there are so many moving targets, uh, in what she has to predict. Uh, I don't envy the shoes
155that that she uh, is is in and and what she's had to go through this year and and trying to project what this going to look like. So, she knows how much I appreciate the work that she does for sure. Any other questions or comments? I just wanted one more time to say thank you. We understand that numbers change a lot. Especially in Missouri right now, numbers are changing a lot. It's hard for us to make decisions based upon uncertain data and the possibility of future defunding efforts, which you identified a few that tried. So, I want to thank not only you, but the rest of your team for giving us the best information you can given the situation. So, >> Shout out to Julie Walsh. Shout out to Julie Walsh. Okay. All right, all
156those in favor say I. I. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Board, I have a motion to approve the purchases as presented. So moved. Second. Director Dillard, Vice President Greider. Any questions, Board? All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed say nay. Nay. Motion carried. Motion passes. I don't No. No. Just [laughter] No. All right. Board, I have a motion to approve Commerce Bank as a lease option for the technology purpose purchases. So moved. Second. Vice President Greider, second by Director Adams. Questions, Board? All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Again, on general items like that, if you're listening, if the Board isn't asking questions, it's because the Board has looked at this throughout the last week and they've already had an opportunity to ask questions as well.
157And some of those questions are listed in the agenda items. I Board, I have a motion to approve the purchase of furniture as part of the district's life cycle replacement as presented. Vice President Greider. Second. Second by Director Dillard. Uh any questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. Motion passes. Board, I have a motion to approve CCR Roofing to provide labor and material for roof section replacement at Daniel Boone Elementary as presented. So moved. Director Adams. Second. Vice President Ryder. Questions, board? Are you presenting on this topic or the next one? Both. Got you. Right. Uh the floor is yours. Thank you. Good evening, board. Uh during the March 2026 board meeting, the administration recommended a budget placeholder of $845,000 and the board approved the letting of bids for
158roof improvements at Daniel Boone Elementary. Two bids were received on May 5th. Uh Frederick Roofing was uh the lower uh was the low bid. However, they qualified working hours as well as the substantial completion date. CCR Roofing submitted the lowest qualified bid, resulting in the administration recommending the board award a contract to CCR Roofing for a total hard cost of $536,287 plus a 5% contingency, which would bring the total hard cost to $563,101. For your awareness, the full project cost, including soft costs, is $594,561, which is roughly $250,000 under the budget placeholder amount recommended to the board in March. Um before you vote, I do want to turn it over to Mr. Justin Durham uh with Allison Miller, who will share some basic information regarding the bid process, the qualifying of the bids, and the
159construction schedule. Thank you, Mr. Stutzer. There's a few things that I wanted to go over this evening, really three points. Um and I won't belabor those. I'll move pretty quickly through this. So, um as Mr. Stutzer said, in March we did approve a budget of 845,000. You'll notice that he also said that we came in almost 250,000 below that. So, I wanted to offer you guys a reason for that uh outcome. So, when we do things like roof improvements, we do walk-throughs like we did in the facility master plan. We can't necessarily see what the condition is under that roof membrane. So, during the design process, what we do is we do what we call take cores and we do scans of the roof. There are some codes that tell us that if there's two
160layers of roofing, we have to remove the entire thing down to deck and then start fresh with new insulation and everything. And and then what does qualify us for what we call an overlay, so that's just where we lay a new brain a membrane over the top of the existing, is that if there's only one layer and the roof is predominantly dry. So, during the design process, we did those investigations um that we don't typically do as a typical walk-through like a long-range or a master plan. And we did find that several of the roof areas were dry and they all had one layer of roof. So, that decreases that cost. So, that's the reason for those savings. Um the second thing I wanted to talk to you guys about, as Dr. St. John mentioned,
161um as phase two of the HVAC replacement, a good portion of that is happening here at Daniel Boone. So, during the design process, we also met with the HVAC company that's doing that work, made sure that we were coordinated with what they were doing and what we were doing. And so, as Mr. Stutzer said, to talk about the timeline, those two things are going to start concurrently. They're going to take most of the summer to do the HVAC. So, we have worked through with the uh documents that we put out for bid and then also confirmed a few things with our bidders that the HVAC and a few of the roofing areas will happen immediately. And then HVAC work will continue throughout the summer. And our roofing contractors will follow. Now, what that means is
162we're going to start now, but we have also allowed the roofers a little bit of additional time up to October 23rd to finish that process. So, that brings me to the third point that I wanted to discuss with you guys tonight. Mr. Sasso also said that we are not moving forward with the low bid because they qualified their bid. And what we mean by a qualified bid is we set forth in the contract documents that we put out to bidders some stipulations. And on this one, we wanted to have those contractors, those roofers, work a second shift. So, they're not above our students and our staff during the day while they're having class. It may not be a big deal, but we do we want to be as as um less disruptive as we can
163possibly be. And then the second thing was we allowed them till October 23rd to finish the project. So, the two qualifications that were made by Frederick Roofing, and it's totally fine that they did this, but this is why we did not move forward with them. They wanted to work during normal working hours throughout the day. So, they would be above our students and staff throughout the day. And they also wanted until November 15th to finish the project. What we cannot tell you is if they bid that project apples to apples as CCR did as they followed the documents, what difference in price that may bring. So, when we bring forward the recommendations tonight to move forward with CCR Roofing, it's because they set forth and they bid based on what we asked them to do
164in the contract documents. So, with that, um I'll open it up to you guys for questions if you have any. Do you know why they wouldn't bid a second shift work? I do not. A lot of times it's it's a labor differential of of some companies may not ask their gentlemen to work or their workers to work, you know, outside of normal hours. So, it could just be a company preference. Yeah. Um just the the the roofers that you're recommending, um, do they employ union workers? We bid prevailing wage. So, we don't ask if they're union or non-union. What we do make sure though is when we get pay applications that they have stated, um, all of their hours as prevailing wage. Okay. And are they a local company? Like, would they originate from the
165county? I don't know if CCR is local or not. They are not. And just as a reminder to the board, uh, when we put out specifications we can't specify a union, uh, it's against state statute to do that. Um, the other piece is this, uh, specific roofer bid last year's work and the board awarded them a contract. They're not local, but, uh, they are in the state of Missouri. I believe they're in the Blue Springs, uh, Yeah, I just found that. Thank you. Yeah. Any additional questions that, uh, we can provide clarity on before the board takes a vote? So, this is, uh, a vote uh, again to approve CCR Roofing to provide labor material for roof section replacement at Daniel Boone Elementary. Is there first and second? Any other comments, board? All those in
166favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Board, I have a motion to approve Ford Asphalt to provide labor material for pavement improvements at Independence Elementary, Westwood Trail Academy, and the track surface at Barnwell Middle School as presented. Vice President Ryder. Second. Treasurer McGuire. Mr. Stotler. Yeah. Thank you again, board. So, again, during the March 26th board meeting, uh, the administration recommended a budget placeholder of $1,250 uh, dollars and the board approved the letting of bids for pavement improvements at Independence Elementary, Westford Trail Academy, and track resurfacing at Barnwell Middle. Six bids were received on May 5th, and the administration recommends Ford Asphalt for a base bid of 800,000, plus selected alternates totaling 814,000 in hard cost, and then including a 5% contingency for a total project cost of 891,450 dollars. Um
167the total project cost when you factor in soft costs, those are Hollis and Miller fees and other engineering fees, is 954,276 dollars, which is 296,000 under the recommended budget placeholder that was shared with you in March. So again, before you vote, I do want to give Mr. Durham an opportunity to share some basic information about this bid, including completion dates. Thank you, Mr. Stahls. So this one's a little bit easier for me to explain. So with roofing you can't necessarily see what's there, but asphalt we can. We can look at the parking lot. We took measurements, and if you guys did take a chance to look at our our bid estimates along with some of the bid results, you'll notice that we were right in line with the majority of the bidders with our estimates.
168We just got really lucky. So we had six bidders, and anytime that we can bring more than two or three bidders to the table, it's usually to the owner's benefit. Drives the cost down. When we did debrief with Ford Asphalt, they told us very quickly that they were looking to do additional summer work. They kind of count on the Francis Howell School District work. It sounds like that they have done work for us every year since 2021. So they've come to look for those projects. They left spots in their schedule for us, and that shows on bid day. So that's that's really, you know, estimates were very accurate on this one. We just got a very hungry, good contractor that's worked with us for years. He bid it that way again, and we get to
169reap the rewards of that. So, um this job will be done in August. So, they plan to start as soon as school gets out. So, here maybe in the next week or two, we'll see them on site doing some of the work at the different sites, and then we will be done in that first week of August or so. So, we're waiting on a full schedule uh from the contractor site by site, and we'll know those dates um at each individual location very, very soon. And then we did have the alternates that Mr. Stutzer talked about. So, alternate one was um for us to go to with some concrete as- or uh sidewalks versus uh asphalt sidewalks in front of Independence. So, um it was an even wash to go with the alternate of 22,000
170for that additional sidewalk because they also said $22,000 for asphalt. So, anytime we can get concrete at the same price as asphalt, that's a win for us. It's going to last us longer. So, that was that one. Um alternate three and four, those are all at um the track at Barnwell. And so, that is to pay There's a an asphalt area just adjacent to the east of the track that's between the school and the track, and we're going to overlay that with brand new asphalt. And then on the northeast corner, there is a small drive that kind of comes down but doesn't quite lead all the way to the track. Um alternate four is to connect the current drive all the way to the track so that if we're moving things on or off of
171the track, we don't have to go from asphalt to grass back to asphalt. So, those are the Those are the alternates that we did accept. There were good, competitive prices, and they fit within our budget. Just a couple things to note. Uh alternate number two, the sidewalks. So, for those of you that are familiar with Independence, you've got the neighborhood um kind of behind. There right now, the city portion ends right at the property line of where the district is. So, with our own students who walk, um they're forced to walk into the road. And so, we're going to connect the sidewalk that brings them that connects the side- the sidewalk will connect to where the city ends and picks up on district property directing students uh all the way to the entry point of
172the building, which will increase safety for that um that campus. So, again, uh before you for consideration is a recommendation for for the asphalt as presented. And we'd happy to take any additional questions board may have. Questions, board? When they're uh when you come underneath budget, does the money roll into future uh capital uh projects? Is that what it is? Like, so when you have a considerable uh beneath budget on two different points tonight, right? Uh where did does that money And that's the next one on the list. What is that? Goes to the next thing on the list. Addresses the next thing on the list and It does. And what we our our strategy has always been to not try to spend those dollars right away. Uh what will end up happening throughout the
173course of the school year is so I'll just use after um winter season, um asphalt, while we're just on the topic of asphalt, just due to the salt uh that's put down, um you know, to create traction for uh vehicles as well as salt that's put on the sidewalks to create safe passage for our [clears throat] staff and students and community in general. Um salt obviously is corrosive and so you end up developing uh potholes and you know, sections of sidewalk that need to be replaced. So, some of that uh some of those dollars uh end up being reinvested in some of those larger cost repairs uh through the capital program as opposed to uh as as a reminder and that type of work any work around 5,000 has to be coded to capital expenditure.
174Thank you. Any other sport? But anything that is left would typically we try to go address another need on the list and if we can't do that it'll roll over into the back into the capital fund balance and I appreciate you just being that comment. We've heard other presentations where sometimes for reasons that we can't predict the final cost is above what was you know budgeted. So it all it all sets and it balances out and it's under agreed. I want people to know that whatever was saved there's another purpose that's already for because we have I think 2.9 million square feet of building to take care of. Also the 3.2 was some of the work uh you know that I'll share with you on the bond program. Some of those buildings and additions that
175are coming online puts us closer to 3.2 3.3 million square feet. And you're absolutely right. I think if you look in your purchase for prior approval there was one recommendation that came in over budget on intercoms. We had a last minute add I believe for Brian middle to replace their intercom system because we just can't keep it up and running. And so what we had brought to you in March as a budget placeholder for that actually ended up coming in above because we added a site. Just one question from Ronald. The vinyl track are they also going to repaint the lines afterwards? Yes. That's part of the scope. Board all those in favor say I. I. Any oppose say nay. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next board we have a discussion [clears
176throat] about the district's long-range planning options. This includes Uh, no tax increase debt service levy transfer, and a no tax rate increase bond. Uh, Mr. Lincoln. Thank you, President Blair. >> [clears throat] >> I'm going to have a statement I'd like to share with the board and with the public. Uh, Missouri Senate Bill 1002 moves St. Charles County uh, school board elections to the November general election and extends board member terms to 4 years. Any local tax levies or bond initiatives in St. Charles County only must be voted on during the November general election. The bill passed and is expected to be signed into law by Governor Mike Kehoe. Senate Bill 1002 changes the previously planned work and discussion regarding a debt service levy transfer as well as the recommendation to seek approval on a
177no tax rate increase bond issue for continued capital projects within our school district. As you will remember, back in October of 2025, the board met uh, and had a meeting with Brent Blevins from Piper Sandler and he presented to the Board of Education options for a debt service levy transfer as well as options for a no tax rate increase bond issue. In November, we then held a work session presenting an overall demographic study and a long-range facility master plan in partnership with Hollis Miller to the board and the public. At the January 15th board meeting, the board voted to approve the facility master plan. An April 2027 election was thought to be the targeted date for both items to come to the voters within the Francis Howell School District. With this change in law, the
178district is faced with reevaluating that timeline. Our current options are move the ballot initiatives to August 2026, place the ballot initiatives on the November 2026 ballot, or move the initiatives back to the November 2028 ballot. Administration will be formally recommending to the board of at a future meeting to take these two initiatives, a debt service levy transfer. This is a no tax increase measure and a no tax increase bond issue to the voters in November of 2026. Waiting until November of 2028 potentially increases the cost for the same projects as there will undoubtedly be inflationary measures that take place during those two years. Additionally, administration considered the August 2026 election as an option. Senate Bill 1002 is set to take effect on August 28th. The August election is set for August 4th, making it the
179last election cycle prior to the new law taking effect. While August is a fully valid option for us and would allow the district to capture funds a full year earlier if the measure was successful, administration is not recommending this option and here is why. Within the house, a legislator indicated that in the past, bond issues were placed on the ballot and districts would not inform the public of these measures in St. Charles County. It was stated that our people, I'm not sure who our people are, were then sent to the polls to pass it under the nose of the other of the general public people in St. Charles County. Our district has and will continue to respect the will of the voters. Having discussions at the October, November, January, April, and May board meetings, as
180well as a 3-hour long work session on May 7th, demonstrates transparency to the community about our needs and our future initiatives. With that being said, we certainly want to respect the spirit of the newly created law and we'll use the additional time between now and November to further educate our community about our needs and our intentions while maintaining transparency with our community and our legislature. With that, I'll turn it back over to you, Mr. Blair, for conversation. Thank you for sharing that. Um board, any comments or questions about what Superintendent Blevins just shared? Well, I share it. If we were operating like any other school in the state, we would probably wait till April. But, that choice was taken away from us. That is correct. So, from the very beginning when uh Brent Blevins first
181came to the district, that was the the thought of the district was April 2027 would be the appropriate next step to apply both of those measures. And the two levies that you want to do do not increase taxes in any way. It's just we need permission to spend the money that way. Move the pennies. That is correct. So, the debt service levy transfer allows us to move a few pennies from one fund to another fund. Um and it allows it to move it into operations, so we can use that uh for teacher salaries, other things along those lines. And the no tax increase bond issue is exactly that, a no tax increase bond issue that was tied to our long-range facility master plan um that we worked in conjunction with Hollis Miller to develop. So,
182we can't we can't do what Rockwood, Parkway, or even Wright City We we can't do what uh I believe 116 other counties are allowed to do. >> 114. 114, thank you. >> So, we're we're it's 113 and us. >> Just confirming. Cuz we're special. Other questions? Yeah, just for clarification, how much of a tax increase will these two measures be? They are no tax increase measures, both of them. >> So, both of them are no tax increase. >> Yes. That is correct. >> Okay, I just want to make sure I was 100% clear. Yes, I appreciate the transparency, Director Adams. You're [clears throat] welcome, Superintendent Talley. I just wanted to clarify. You said no tax increase. >> [laughter] >> I believe that's correct. Other questions? So, for the public, just let you know, um you
183know, we're we can pull the levers that we can pull to make sure we provide the best public education for all students. And these are two of the levers that we have. And St. Charles County alone is confined to only certain days to [clears throat] pull these levers to respond to the needs of the district. And so, we will have a conversation, potentially the next board meeting, maybe the one after that. And we will discuss the formality to formalize the possibility of doing this, unless something else changes. There's a possibility that the governor could veto Senate Bill 1002, which would open up April 2027 as an option. But the important thing is today, by not making an an action, we are deciding to not put this on the August 2026 ballot. So, we're all in
184a awareness and agreement today. Yes. Any other questions? Thank you very much, Mr. Talley. All right. Um So, agenda item 13A is a first reading on policies and regulations. These policies and regulations will be brought back to the June 4th meeting in a second reading and vote. Many of these changes are um just operational changes, uh changes in the name from one person to another. Uh But, please everybody take a chance to to read it. Um, everything's in front of the public for your visibility uh and for your uh awareness. Uh board, have a motion to approve uh regulation uh 1450 as presented. So moved. Vice President Ryder. Second. Director Adams. Uh this regulation is being brought forward for a first and second reading and vote uh due to the addition of number 17 and
185renumbering of closed session agenda items. Uh number changes are being made in response to changes to the statute made by the Attorney General's office. And numbering has been verified through the Attorney General's office. Uh any questions, board? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. That motion passes. Uh board, this is agenda item 15. I have a motion to approve the policies and regulations as presented. Vice President Ryder. Second. Director Adams. Uh these policies and regulations are being brought back for a second reading and vote. They were brought forward at the April 16th, 2026 meeting for a first reading. Any comments, board? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Uh any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Uh board, I have a motion to approve the curriculum documents as presented. So moved. Director
186Adams. Second. Vice President Ryder. 13 curriculum documents were presented for a first reading at the April 16th, 2026 board meeting. They're being brought back to this meeting for a second reading and vote. Any comments? Just a full awareness, there's a full curriculum committee that goes through this and uh puts a lot of energy and effort into it. So, thank you for those on that committee to present this for the board approval. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Next, board, we have a presentation on fiscal year 27 budget development in general and special funds. Deputy Superintendent of Finance and Operations, Dr. Amy Siqveland, will present. Yes, thank you for having me back again. I just would like to share with you this is an ongoing series that really began
187in November of 2025 when I brought the first of the capital planning process to the board and then sequentially you go through each of the pieces that become the very large budget that's going to come to you on June 4th. And so I would encourage you to just to kind of go back over that maybe between now and June 4th if you want to refresh or I'll be bringing all those parts and pieces together all in one when I come back once again. This particular night I'll be talking about the general fund and the sub funds as well as the special revenue and it's also known as the teacher fund. So this is just a reminder that the four funds that exist in Missouri statute for school finance here in Missouri and we have to
188place the funds as they are through that levy and then this is how we have to code them as we go through. And again you can see that debt service is over to the side has to always be separate has to always have its own bank account and the last thing that we just talked about that debt service levy meaning that some of the money that would go in there would actually go into operating which would be funds one and two just to have a visual for what we just talked about. As I mentioned today we're talking about the general fund and the teacher fund so that's going to be funds one and two. And it's really for you to have a good understanding of where we sit today in the budget that we're in
189and so when I come back and I start to say this is where we're budgeting for so when we I show you the trajectory chart each month it really gives you an a rolled up view of all of this information and this is more of a seen it and a broke down a broken down view. And so this is the revenue by object and we've talked about the local is the largest so that's that 68 and a half percent and then our state funds are coming in at about 26.8% and then our fewest really are federal and county funds at 3.7 and 1%. The state and local as we mentioned before is 95% of the revenue so that's why we talk about it the most because it is the largest amount of revenue that we
190receive. Then when we look at the expenditure side as we've talked about most of the night tonight our salaries and our benefits are the two largest expenditures and so when I talked to you about supplies and purchased services as I'm holding those at 0% change for next year that's a help to the process but you can see it's a very small part of the pie and so you only get so much of the pie and you have to decide where you're going to utilize those dollars and this gives you a nice visual representation of what that looks like. Then we'll go into each of the breakdown of the salary by object code so when we talk about salaries teachers have to come out of a certain code and classified folks have to come out of
191a certain code and so this is just a breakdown of how of that information goes together and in some total you can see that the teachers make up the regular salaries make up the largest or the certified staff I should say make up the largest portion of this where classified staff or a smaller percentage of this pie. This also includes supplemental pay which would be things like stipends substitutes for the classroom and then a breakdown of our administrators as well as our instructional aid salaries. Then looking at benefits broken down over the last several weeks I months I've explained to you how that it's about $58 million that's set in what we call benefits however only half of that is anything that you kind of have jurisdiction over cuz the other half is taxation so
192you can see that now broken down by teachers retirement FICA Medicare there's nothing that we can do that you have to pay those pieces but that employee insurance which is that I mean it's about $28 million that's the number that we affected tonight. So, that's the one that will be lower next year because of those decisions and that's bringing those costs down for us. And when we look at purchased services, um this is everything that you might think of in terms of if you hire a person to do a service like a consultant, but it's really more than that. It actually outlines um audit services, legal services, election costs, um other professional services, um all the way down to trash removal, um uh working at if anybody travels, our own property insurance, liability insurance and
193that. And so, you can see this broken down and again, this is the number that we're trying to hold constant to for next year. And so, um that's going to come in close to that 28 million um on the next budget that we have. And then supplies are broken down over in the right-hand corner there. So, that's general supplies, what you would think of of paper, pencil, and that type of a thing. It's also going to be where instructional um technology's going to be, textbooks, library books, the electric bills, um gas, natural, um diesel, and um other supplies that come out of that are also broken down into the supply category. And with that, I conclude your budget update for the month. Appreciate you. Yes. Any questions? Okay. Thank you so much. >> Thank you
194so much. Uh up next we have our executive director of facilities, Glenn Stetzer, who will present the quarterly construction update. All right. Thank you again, board. I'm going to breeze right through this. I just uh appreciate the opportunity to provide an update regarding bond and capital projects. So, we'll jump right into it. Uh same cadence, I won't cover the timeline slide. That's there for your review in terms of what tells the story Uh uh the story that needs to be told to get us to the point where we're talking about the project. So, over at Fairmont, uh this is the exterior of the building. Uh it it is done from a masonry standpoint. The roof system's all on, windows are in, the building's uh what we call weather tight. Uh you can see the image
195on the left there. There's still some seeding and straw and needs to be done around the building. Um and then on the right, uh the paving uh the actually the paving is done. You'll see it here in the next slide. Uh but overall, the exterior of the building is really starting to take shape. All the sidewalks are poured and uh looks good. Um this is the interior. Again, there's a total of uh what I'll call 10 spaces. Uh three music, three art, um three sped, but two of those uh classrooms are actually going to be utilized for the full-day pre uh pre-K program that uh the board has supported at three sites going into next year. And then we have a vacation station um area for uh before and after school program. So, on the
196left [clears throat] here is the music classroom, on the right is an art classroom. Furniture was just installed uh early this week, actually. Actually late uh late last week. So, everything's in. We're still working on a few miscellaneous things with the building staff. Uh as I referenced earlier, uh the parking lot is now paved. Uh if you recall, there used to be a parking lot on this side of the building, but we took over that parking lot to be able to build the addition. So, we had to replace that uh uh that parking that was lost due to the building addition. And so, I think there's a total of about 45 uh parking spots. We were able to grow that a little bit uh which will help Fairmont as it's uh from an enrollment standpoint
197and a staffing standpoint, uh our largest elementary. Then to the right there is the generator that will serve the building in the event of a power loss during It is a tornado shelter. Just want to remind the board that the addition is a tornado shelter and part of that requirement is you have to have backup power in the event that you lose power. These are the boys and girls restrooms. So, as you can see all the partitions are done, all the fixtures plumbing fixtures are in and we've got some the cardboard's actually up right now. We had that down just to help protect the floor while we were finishing up some odds and ends in there. Moving over to transportation fuel island and bus maintenance facility. Again, this is just the front for the forward
198slide. Here's the exterior of that building. Courtesy to Hollison Miller, they had some These photos are courtesy of Hollison Miller. They had a professional team come out and take some professional photos and were kind enough to share those with the district for our use. And so, this is the exterior of the building. We're very pleased with how that's turned out. I know in visiting with our director of transportation, Mr. Brian Broom, who's here this evening, they actually got to do state inspections in the new facility. I was teasing him that we'll take credit for another 100% passing because of the facility, but no, his team does a a wonderful job with maintaining our fleet and we're just pleased to be able to provide this facility for his team to be able to do that work
199inside. Historically, all of those inspections have been done in the elements outside. So, it's really a tremendous facility for our transportation team. Again, [clears throat] this is actually about a week or so prior to the inspections. As you can see, these are pre-inspections that the team was able to pull six buses in at a time and do their pre-inspection checks. And so this these two photos here representative of that work. This is the fuel island. I wish I would have shared the before pictures of what the fuel island was. It's a it's not even a comparison. So it was we basically had one pump and didn't have an overhang. So a canopy I should say. And so our staff was consistently out the elements trying to fuel buses. And so this is just a much
200nicer setup for them. It's all automated. So there's fobs that they use to be able to fuel. Gives Brian all the data that he needs from how many gallons, which bus. Again, that was also one of the recommendations in terms of just um how we handle fuel from a security standpoint as part of the third-party consultant. WSP made a recommendation in terms of we need to do a better job of tracking how we utilize that. And all of the infrastructure here provides that. This is where the old building sat. So the image on the left here is about two weeks ago. The building's down. And then the image on the right is about a week ago after we had some heavy rains. And so I'm highlighting that as you see in my typed out report
201from a program standpoint. There are there is some soil there that we need to remediate before we can pave over that. It's it's it's too saturated. So what happens is crews have to come in and they have to cut that soil out, turn it over, dry it out, put it back down, and compact it. That way we can put the final surface, which is asphalt, on top of that. Failure [clears throat] to do that will just result in a poor subbase. And then it'll just sink and we'll have to tear it all back out, so been working with Superintendent Delaney and in terms of our alignment of what that change order would look like. I just actually approved that today and it'll get captured and next time we report out on bond. So, that work
202scheduled to take place. Obviously, it's been a really wet week this week as well. So, that work will take place next week and we hope paving will take place the week after that. Uh phase two HVAC improvements, I know Dr. St. John has mentioned this multiple times just in in her work. Obviously, a majority of that work is going to kick off next Tuesday. We basically have roughly about $19 million worth of work. The full contract was I think about $23 million, but we just actually paid for the equipment which was around around $4.5 million. And so, we've actually been working behind the scenes or been crews working after hours coming in and doing the things that we can't do in terms of running, you know, communication wire for all the thermostats in the various
203places. And then, the image there on the right, you can see we've got two new boilers [clears throat] and two old boilers. We kept those old boilers running here just because we've had changes in the weather and we needed to be able to provide heat in certain times, but here probably in the next week we'll decommission the old ones and we've already installed the new ones and we'll begin bringing those online. So, a lot of work's been taking place with phase two HVAC improvements behind the scenes, but we'll really get after it after school concludes. Tomorrow, crews are off on Memorial Day next Monday and they'll get after it on Tuesday. Again, just a reminder on phase two, our goal, Um, I know we've been working with building leaders and you know that the questions
204have been you know when is the project going to be completed and my August 1st is substantial completion for the six bond sites and then previously the board had approved a smaller capital project to do HVAC improvements at Meadows Parkway. Regular capital projects really just one highlight here. It was the bleacher replacement at Sager and Hollandbeck. If you recall both sites their really their bleachers were wooden. All of the frames and electrical components were original. We couldn't source parts to replace those. Think on average between the two sites their systems were in service for about 28 29 years. So I know Dr. Yankee was here earlier and historically [clears throat] what's happened at those two sites is you just wouldn't be able to hold a lot of events in there because it took an entire
205army including students to pull those out. So now this can be done with one person. All the motors and frames have been replaced. You plug in basically a controller. They hit a forward button. They hit a back button and um bleachers are out and then bleachers are recessed for the the laughter instruction to take place. So again this was Sager and then this was Hollandbeck. They I just took these pictures right after an assembly that they had. So what to look forward to these are all pending projects. Some have been approved by the board and some we still have to bring forward as we work through behind the scenes and bring individual recommendations. But a lot of positive things happening from a capital standpoint and that concludes my presentation. I'll be happy to answer any
206questions the board may have. Are there any questions? Thanks for the update. I apologize I probably should know the the answer to this but the transportation maintenance and fuel island, is that at the Hal location? It's the same location it's been at. So, if you recall, probably uh I'd say 2 years ago, we consolidated uh transportation. It did operate out of two locations, but when uh district leadership moved into this building along with the uh union staff and district learning center staff, that freed up space that uh what we call 45 45. And so, prior [clears throat] to that, transportation team operated out of two mobile trailers on that campus. So, we brought them inside into the vacated space from an administration standpoint, and at the same time we consolidated any any staff that was
207out at the what we call the five building on Hal Hal's camp on Hal Hal's camp Hal Hal's campus. And so, when we did that, um they're all in one one location now. Got you. So, all the all the transportation stuff is now gone from the Hal campus? That is correct. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. I just had one question. I couldn't tell uh when I was looking at the music rooms, um were there [clears throat] acoustic panels on the walls or Yes. Uh not on the walls. The this the application here is in the ceilings. Um so, I'll go back to see if we can highlight that real quick. Uh you should be able to see some cones um out of the ceiling here. So, >> [clears throat] >> these How many inches are
208they? Those are those serve as the acoustical value and provide the acoustical value uh for those spaces. So, it's in it's a ceiling application instead of the wall application, and sometimes that's depending on the size of the space. Very nice. They won't get the teacher won't get a headache. Yeah, they won't get a headache. Not from that anyway. Those recorders, let me tell you. Anything else? Any other questions I can answer for the board? Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Up next is Mr. Delaney with superintendent comments. Thank you, President Blair. Board, as you're aware, we've had a pretty busy couple of weeks and full end-of-year celebrations and award nights. While our schools have been busy recognizing students, we've had the honor and privilege of celebrating 10 Hall of Fame inductees earlier this
209month along with all of our Teacher of the Year and Support Staff of the Year winners. Just this past Monday, we recognized 88 retirees from across the district at the annual Ringing of the Bell ceremony. Collectively, this group's year this year's group of retirees had a dedicated and whopping 13 1,347 hours of service to Francis Howell. They've years of service. Did I say hours? Yeah, sorry. Years. It's been a long week. They have made such an impact on our students, our families, colleagues, and on the district, and we wish them all well in their retirement. I want to specifically recognize one of those retirees for an award we just recently learned about. Ann McPartland was selected by the Foreign Language Association of Missouri to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. This is one of the organization's
210highest honors reserved for an educator who has devoted their entire career to the improvement of world language learning and student success. Ms. McPartland has served as a German teacher at Francis Howell North for 25 years, teaching all five levels of German each year. She has also taught German at middle schools that feed into North, both Barnwell and Hollembeak. We're proud of Ann and and grateful for her many years of dedicated service. Keeping with the celebrations, I want to congratulate Francis Howell Central's library team of Cassie Flores, Robin Heinberger, and Carrie Smith, which was recently honored with the 2026 Exemplary Library Program Recognition from DESE. FHC has now received this statewide recognition for four straight years, highlighting its ongoing commitment to supporting students, teachers, the entire school community. Great work, Spartans. I'll end with just a
211few reminders. The annual stakeholder survey is open for 3 more days. We would love to have your feedback on what the district is doing well, how we can continue to improve. Check your email for a link to the survey. A reminder was sent yesterday morning. I'll also remind the community that we are accepting applications for the next cohort of our popular Citizens in Our Schools program. It's a great opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at district operations. Participants journey through the program together over 9 months. This year, some of the sessions will be during the day, but most will be in the evening, and therefore should be accessible for working parents who want to participate in the program. You can find the application on the district website. Our last day of school is tomorrow, and
212it is an early release day for all students. Many of our summer school and summer camps begin June 1st, and that's a good reminder for our community at large. The district does not shut down over the summer. In fact, for many departments, summer is one of the busiest seasons as crews work to ready our schools and grounds for the next school year. I want to acknowledge and thank all the staff who will be working hard over the summer months to make sure we're in good shape for 2026-2027, which begins on Monday, August 24th. And finally, I want to thank all of our staff that have worked hard this year to help our students continue to learn and grow. Our teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, and all support staff, members of our transportation department play a vital role
213in assuring that all students are here safely and learning. It truly takes everyone. I want to thank you all. I hope you all have the time away this summer that have an opportunity to relax and spend quality time with your families. Those that support the organization in the summer, I'm hopeful that you will also find the time to take care of yourselves as well. Thank you, President Blair. Thank you. Board, do you have any comments? It's all good. Sure. Um I know it's late and we have an after party, so I'll be quick. Um I just wanted to say that I have had a fantastic um opportunity to attend multiple concerts and shows and um things that are being done at the middle and the high school level since being elected. Um I'm a huge
214proponent of the arts and I love the community that um it provides those students. So, please keep the invites coming. I'd love to attend as many as I can. Um with that said, I know that in the um when school starts in the fall, it's fall season and I'm looking forward to attending some sports at the different campuses. And also very excited to um celebrate with our graduates at our five high schools. So, looking forward to those days coming up. And finally, just to echo what Mr. the lady said, thank you to our teachers and staff for everything that you've done this school year. Um please have a fantastic summer and the same to our students as well. Thank you. Great. Happy summer. Definitely. Um Sorry, me. Um I one, after tomorrow become a parent
215of a high schooler, which is crazy to me. So, I will become uh once again part of the Hall North community, not that I'm not already. So, um and the parent of a fifth grader, which is insane. So, thank you to all of our teachers um for everything you've done this year. Everybody have a good summer. Students have a good summer. And I thoroughly enjoy looking through the list of books that we have purchased. Uh it was a long list and I love it. I loved seeing all the suggestions. My daughter and my son loved seeing all the suggestions. So, we're looking forward to the summer reading for our little library. That's all. I just want to say again thank you to all of the teachers and staff who show up every day and do
216everything that you do in this district. I am in absolute awe of the enormity of everything that goes on in this district. It is mind-boggling. I just it's a lot, but it's amazing. So, thank you. Um and congratulations to our seniors who are graduating this year. I'm so excited to celebrate with you at all of your ceremonies again. So, Uh I just want to say thank you Mr. Melaney and the entire staff for working through some very difficult financial situation affecting our district. I know that votes and decisions rely on us, but thank you for our supporting information. And if you like me and you really like school, take heart that tomorrow's the last day, but it's it's only 95 days until the first day of school. >> [laughter] >> Um just one quick thing.
217I went to the start program over at um uh Central Elementary where I attended school for 3 years as a child. By the way, it's a different building. Um and I was a I mean it just hit me the beauty of the diversity of all the students. And they were so well-behaved. I was like, "What is happening here?" And then I thought, "Is it because of Officer Mack that was up there? And does he command that, you know, that kind of respect?" and they loved him and he's retiring and they were all sad, but it was beautiful and they all turned around singing a song to us. So, I was thrilled. It was beautiful and I really appreciate what the work they're doing there to keep kids away from things that hurt them. The essays,
218I mean, I could have cried because they told personal stories of their lives and it was not pretty. But, this program is helping them to come out of that and I hope it stays with them. It was wonderful. Thank you, board. Uh tonight my board comment is going to be different than in past board comments. Uh uh tonight I want to share a board comment uh that is on behalf of the board and administration. On behalf of the board and administration, I want to publicly address a situation that's been playing out on social media for months. As some of you know, a middle school English teacher, Alyssa Tomlinson, has been the subject of negative and critical comments by a parent who objects to the teacher's classroom library materials and class assignments. While the district does
219not have control over social media posts made by parents or community members on their own platforms, we do have the ability to clarify misinformation. With that in mind, we think it is important for you to know that the district has found no indication that Ms. Tomlinson engaged in any misconduct or violation of board policy with respect to her classroom library, class assignments, or other matters. Additionally, a recent post stated that Ms. Tomlinson resigned. This is not accurate. She remains employed by the district. Sadly, this is not the only instance of members of our community being targeted on social media. Multiple teachers and staff have been publicly criticized this school year. In addition, children of staff have been publicly identified and targeted on social media. This behavior is not okay. It does not reflect who we
220are as a community. And as we conclude this year look forward to the next, I invite us all to thoughtfully consider the examples that we as adults are setting for our children. Issues will come up. We are a large organization and that is to be expected. It is important to know how to respond when they do. Our job as the board is to hear your concerns as patrons as parents and patrons. We ask that you address issues first with the appropriate building administrator, then the superintendent, and finally with the board if the issue is not resolved. Of course, if your concern involves the classroom instruction or dynamics of your child in a particular room, we ask you to raise such issues with the classroom teacher first. We ask that you do not attack our teachers
221and staff, particularly in a public forum. We ask that you recognize the impact that such actions have on their mental health and on their ability to show up with their best selves for our students. Teaching is a difficult job. It's often thankless. And the compensation is not nearly enough. But teachers teach because they know they can make a difference. It is a calling not just a profession. We need more caring and dedicated teachers in the world. And not less. Let's not drive them away. As a parent, I I hold high expectations for my children. And I'm confident you do as well. Let's hold ourselves as adults and parents to the same high standards. Our kids are watching and the board is united in saying that what has happened is not okay. Thank you ALL FOR
222LISTENING. >> [applause] >> I APPRECIATE YOUR ATTENTION. I APPRECIATE YOU BEING involved in the work of the school district. I appreciate the three non-staff members here cheering us on from I appreciate I appreciate you all being there. Appreciate you all watching. Um the very best days of the Francis Howell School District are ahead of us. We are stacking hands. We are making hard decisions. We are involved in financial stewardship. We are involved in supporting teachers and staff and setting a vision on what we're going to be in the year 2030. I am glad to be able to work on that with the rest of you board members and admin and teachers and staff together and the public. Uh Francis Howell is a wonderful place to raise a family, have kids attend schools, to teach, to
223be a staff member, a para, and you're all the reasons why. I hope you all have a fantastic summer, uh however that might look for you based upon your job, and may you know that you are supported. May you know that you are supported by the people who's in front of you. Board, I have a motion to adjourn open session and return to closed. Second. Vice President Greiner. Second. Director Owens. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Thank you all for being here tonight.