Board of Education Meeting - May 18, 2023

001you can't see anything [Music] thank you everybody for attending we like if I was meeting your order with the Pledge of Allegiance foreign high school student that we lost last month [Music] foreign thank you Lord I like a motion approve the agenda for May 18th 2023 as presented so moved thank you for sure all those in favor say aye aye what was opposed to say no when she passes now we have recognitions thank you president Bertrand first up tonight we would like to recognize Francis Howell Central for receiving the exemplary School library program designation from the Missouri Department of Missouri Department of Elementary and secondary education otherwise known as Desi the application consists of providing evidence for 21 different indicators across five main categories instruction leadership Library environment Library management and Staffing the applications are

002evaluated and assessed by a team of school librarians from across the State the exemplary School library program was established following the passage of Senate Bill 743 in 2018 which required deci to establish a process for recognizing library programs Francis House Central's library is one of only nine programs in the state to earn the designation this year and the first school in the Francis House School District here to tell you more about the dedicated library media specialist responsible for this honor it's Mr Brian Warner assistant principal at pal Central [Music] good evening at the beginning of the school year Mrs La Martina and Mrs Flores informed me that their goal was to receive this recognition by the end of this year when they set a goal they will do whatever it takes to achieve it there

003is no stopping them Mr lamartina and Miss Flores LED engagement promoted literacy created opportunities celebrated diversity and facilitated learning in the learning Commons and in the classrooms at Francis South Central High School they were both exceptional in their craft and they are always sharing innovative ways to motivate Learners and put fhc in the spotlight last month they were notified that fhc is one of nine high schools in the state of Missouri that received this recognition from the Department of Elementary and secondary education and to be considered for this award the library program at fac had to score a minimum of 38 points out of a possible 42. this is La Martina Miss Flores continue their commitment to their success of our students and staff is demonstrated through this recognition fhc received 39 points and compiled

004them from the 21 indicators of the scoring guide we are extremely grateful for these two young ladies in the Helm of this work they were highly respected among the fhc and most deserving of this distinction at the state level please congratulate Mrs Tanisha Martina in Miss Cassie Flores thank you [Applause] [Music] congratulations next we'd like to recognize students from all three high schools for some pretty incredible academic accomplishments we will be celebrating our National Merit finalist our Missouri Scholars 100 imperfect ACT scores I'll give you a quick summary of each of the awards and then I'll invite our high school principals to come forward to introduce their students uh to become a National Merit finalist students must submit a detailed scholarship application in which they provide information about their academic record participation in school and

005community activities demonstrated leadership abilities employment and honors and awards received a finalists must have an outstanding academic record throughout High School be endorsed and recommended by a high school official write an essay and earn sat or ACT scores that confirm the student's earlier performance on the qualifying test only about one percent of college-bound high school students are chosen as National Merit finalists who then go on to compete for a variety of National Merit Scholarships the Missouri Scholars 100 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 primarily on a formula using the student's grade point average and act or SAT score the student

006must also have excellent attendance being exemplary School Citizen and be involved in school activities and finally the ACT which we're all familiar with is one of the most popular standardized tests used for college admissions the ACT 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 the student must answer every question correctly in all four required areas roughly one quarter of one percent of students who take the ACT receive a top score of 36 so it is a rare fee indeed and with that I'll invite Mr Warner from France's House Central back to the podium to introduce our first group of students good evening again in attendance with us tonight for Francis House Central is Mr Liam noctro he is

007being recognized for the Missouri Scholars 100. not in attendance this evening is Caitlin Vogues Missouri Scholars 100 and National Merit finalists also not in attendance this evening is Anna Moore the National Merit finalists and National Merit Scholarship winner [Applause] [Music] all right board you're going to get your exercise tonight we have a couple more groups so we have a couple more photos next I'd like to invite Mr John Schultz associate principal at Francis Howell High School to come forward to introduce his students [Music] good evening Francis High School is proud to recognize Mr Carter white who is going to qualify as the Missouri Scholars 100. it's Trinity young Missouri College 100 and National Merit finalists and Julia Pfeiffer Missouri Scholars 100 National Merit finalists and National Merit scholarship awardee foreign [Music] thank you Mr Schultz

008and now Mr Fletcher principal of Francis Howell North will introduce the student good evening from Francis Howell North Manisha Mutha karupan is a Missouri's Scholars top 100 and a National Merit finalist not able to attend with us tonight to Sean klecker who was a Missouri Scholar's top 100 honorable mention and Alexander timmerberg who scored a perfect ACT score wow sure [Music] all right we know these students are going to do amazing things and we are so proud of them for our final recognition of the evening we are celebrating an all-girls robotics team who recently crushed the competition at their local qualifier and went on to win a state robotics championship and compete at the international level you'll see tonight that robotics is the theme so when first place the Fruity Loops which is made up

009of eight Francis House students in grades four through eight they had to score the highest across four categories Robot Games robot design core values and an innovation project the renovation project is called the power sleeve it uses an array of thermoelectric generators to produce electricity from body heat this electricity is then used to wirelessly charge batteries of deep brain stimulators that treat movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease amazing in April the Fruity Loops teen traveled to Houston for a stem-focused world championship where they competed against teams for more than 40 countries I'm going to invite one of their coaches Mike larabeeid come forward to tell you more and introduce the team foreign Loops who after nine months of extremely hard work uh culminated in finishing in the top 25 percent of teams uh and the

010world champions will have a championship level um so I'm going to call them up one by one so we have Asher larabee a seventh grader at Sager metal hey claraby a student an eighth grade student at Sager metal Sarah Larrabee a fourth grader at Warren Elementary [Applause] a seventh grader at Brian middle [Applause] Corey Vollmer a seventh grader at Sager middle Olivia Johnson a seventh grader at Brian middle umiza Chaudhary a sixth grader at Sager middle and Vivian Conrad who is an eighth grader at Warren or Sager medal who was not able to be with us tonight [Applause] [Music] all right and our student board representative this evening is from Francis House Central and Mr Brian Warner is going to provide a short introduction it is my honor to introduce Rabia Bari as your student

011representative Francis South Central High School or be a joined the Francis House School District in third grade is a Warren husky she spent her middle school years at Seger middle school before coming to fhc and in the fall Rubio will be attending the University of Missouri Kansas City to study biology she has already been accepted into their six-year medical program in hopes of becoming an obstetrician or emergency medical doctor rubia is fhc's first ever National qualifier and public forum debate she has earned a superior distinction and is a recipient of the national speech and debate academic All-American award Ruby is a Health occupation Student Association International Leadership Conference qualifier and she has placed in the top five in the state all three years she has been involved additionally rubia is a sealed by literacy recipient

012for English and Spanish and is a Heritage speaker or to the national language of Pakistan Urbana Valley's community service she has given her time through tutoring to achieve as well as volunteering at the Hannibal free clinic she completed a service project with the camp kison at Salu and led a supply drive through the fhc's National Honor Society did I mention rubia has only been a Spartan for three years that's right she is graduating in a couple of weeks to pursue her medical pathway at UMKC after only three years in high school Miss rabiyabari foreign [Music] all right and continuing with our robots theme here to tell you about the Raven robotics Club is Mr Ricky Reeves teacher Robotics and Esports sponsor and Industrial arts department chair at Francis Howell High School hi thank you for

013having me um I'm honored to be here to represent Raven robotics we are district-wide robotics club we Encompass all high schools and grades 9 through 12. we are part of the first robotics um competition same as the Fruity Loops but we build bigger robots we started in approximately 2000 2002 before I was in the district and we have continued to grow and expand our knowledge and our group of young people to do this work the whole purpose behind this is for the students to get Hands-On Real World experience that shows them not only how to build but the real aspects of um so we're like I said we're a student-led robotics we focus on the stem from 2000 um we jump around from school to school as space prohibit or uh permits we are currently

014housed at Francis Hill High School in my classrooms using um the metal shop robotics shop and utilize four other classrooms we currently have 35 students in our group um from 9 to 12 we're going to drop to about 25 when everybody graduates hopefully we build back up um I'm sorry the wrong way [Music] that was our team in the past we have been as large as 75 students with 15 to 30 mentors many from Boeing and other industry Professionals in the area it's a positive learning experience for the students they get Hands-On knowledge they don't sit and get they have to solve a problem they use the 21st century skills that everybody needs today research presentations we don't only build a robot we build a runoff business we cash flow between twenty to fifty thousand

015dollars depending on year we have to fundraise and spend that money effectively to do what we need to do each robot you see sitting here costs about five thousand dollars as it sits but there's about ten thousand dollars in r d so the self-efficacy for the students I stand back and students take care of everything themselves we are here for support only um this is our first robotics competition this year with our much smaller team than you saw in the past we get our task the first Saturday of each calendar year and we have approximately six to eight weeks depending on what competition we are chose um to join to produce this robot from scratch we do not know what we need to do until we get that on the first part of the year

016um we have a couple points of Pride here we were World qualifiers had to go to Atlanta Georgia and compete in 2013. I think they made finals that year that was a year before I was in the district we have been uh semi-finalist at the St Louis Regional every time that we have attended and uh We've qualified for the Steamworks World qualifiers when it was here in St Louis in 2017 continued to be semi-finalists up to this year on in 2022 with the robot that is not active right now we won the St Louis Innovation and Engineering award which is no small feat considering our um industry professionals don't help the students Design This they just help them build it as asked so I'm going to let our current president our incoming president and a

017couple other students answer your questions and speak to their experience of how the club has helped them in school and learning through life this is Mason hello everyone my name is Mason I am the current promoted president of Raven robotics I'm currently a sophomore so I've been in this program for two years and even though it seems like a short amount of time I've learned a whole lot from our team it's pretty crazy just coming in just seeing like what this program is all about like wow there's so many things new things I've learned over the years I've seen like a lot of students like get into it just because like of all the engineering that's involved in creativity that's involved and like Mysteries was saying it's student-led so it allows us just to do

018kind of like whatever we want and solve our own problems which is kind of like the real world like trying to solve problems in engineering um we all we always try to help each other and we always um we we always um try to stay organized by um having selected teams to work on the robot and by um just keeping keeping organized having selected roles for everyone the reason why I'm President we also have Vice President we have a lot of roles um involved but me coming in um it was a lot smaller team from what Mr Reeves had shown in the past but this year I think it was pretty cool um here's a roll-up from this year that was our robot from last year it's my freshman year um if you haven't if

019you haven't if you want to drive off the robot and show what we have yeah it's a robot um okay I'm gonna bring the mic over to one of our operators who's going to describe to you what a robot was created to do so you can get an idea of what sort of design constraints we have hi my name is Emmeline I'm one of the operators and our robot task was to pick up cones and cubes and place them on different level blocks throughout a station um there's like a field that set out that we are supposed to set these blocks on and our other task was to get the robot to balance with other robots on a platform called a charging station and when it's balanced it lights up and we score points by

020doing these tasks so we have preset values for our arm to go to the low middle and high stations for dropping off these cubes and cones um our arm functions giving up both cubes and Cones but we do prefer cubes picking them up from the ground yeah I think one of the most fun Parts when designing with robots that we had a lot of challenges this year I for when I'm on the programming team which is designed to actually make take the robot that mechanical makes and turn it into like something that's actually able to move and one of our challenges this year is that we weren't able to use a lot of previous experience for one thing like uh we had to completely change all the code as we decide to change languages like

021programming languages that we programmed it in so our big challenge was we couldn't use we use any code so everything you see on this robot all the code behind it is completely written through scratch in a couple months so I think that was one of the hardest challenges for our team specifically but I think it definitely worked out all right my four years in this club we run as part of three groups we have a Mechanical group that deals with the physical engineering we have an electrical group that does all the wiring and a group that's in programming and sets all of the hard limits and all of the driving for our robot um this is not only a technical Club but it is also an experience in leadership and in cooperation this is a

022six week long group project with as much commitment as a full-time sports team and every student in here needs to be able to communicate their ideas needs to be able to take input from professionals who help Mentor us and from other students and to work together to build a functional robot this is no small task for a bunch of high schoolers who who's only experience with group projects is presentations in class and I believe this is about as close to Industry as almost anyone can come in high school getting real world experience through [Music] it disabling [Music] foreign I didn't know exactly how much time we have so if there's any questions you can go ahead and ask them or we can move on forward any questions [Music] can you give it two or three

023minutes on this one this one from last year I assume you were part of that one as well oh absolutely um okay this one small one okay this was created for a very different project for this one we had to shoot um small phone balls into lower and higher targets so one about the size of a basketball room and another more about that height waste level this had to pick up from the ground so we have a little intake hook that swings out um at the beginning of the match pigs Falls up we have a Plexiglas channel that kind of shoots them up it's very very simple technology just driven by Wheels pushing against a frame and that generates enough kind of propelling Force to shoot the ball out of our robot with a little

024bit of flex in the frame we also had to hang this year so we had it's not on the robot this same piece of technology that allows our arm this year to extend and retract we had it on here and it would go up attached to a bar and pull the whole robot up like it was doing a push-up or a pull-up [Music] since we have a couple of minutes uh can we see the other one actually pick up the cone I'm hoping to bring it to me bring me the comment let's see um we don't have any of the game pieces so I'm not sure how well this will work on them but we can attempt to pick up this traffic I don't know if you like yeah well oh I thought that's why

025you dropped okay higher yeah all right intake okay all right let's do the intake yeah it's a bit too big in the front there goes higher slightly higher yeah I think our cones during competition were a little more flexible and easier to grab with our flywheels okay isn't it so yeah so the game pieces for this this is obviously not a game piece but the game pieces were like um like flexible cubes and flexible cones we'll take it there ready yep [Music] there we go so the game pieces um the way it works is there's Wheels on the intake and because the cone and cubes are flexible it kind of squeezes them which holds it and then it shoots it back out whenever it's like placing it on a platform and that's how we would

026pick up game pieces though we have a lot of fun um just messing about like but one thing is always just safety just you know trying to be safe that's always to make concern but we do our best we always make sure everyone wearing safety glasses you know like and everyone's always organized we also train all of our members on every machine that they'll need to use so this year we're getting a laser cutter a CNC machine we have different Mills and a drill process in our shop and students get an opportunity to have hands-on experience on all of these um industry standard machines if they choose to join any other questions all right thank you for having us I'm next with a patron comments during Patriot cabinets residents of the district and staff members

027are invited to address the board of education on issues related to the schools speakers are called for the order of sign up and each speaker has three minutes to make their remarks please remember that only one speaker is allowed at the podium at a time and combining time or giving your time to someone else is not permitted a board of crochets that you're taking your time to come this evening in perspective I would like to remind everyone that we expect this weekend remain simple and respectful when giving remarks if anyone fails to comply with board policies regulations and rules will be reserve the right to kept those three minutes short so your convenience or a three minute clock is ready and we welcome Justin Jones thank you hello I'm Justin Jones I am the father

028of a student at Seger middle and another student at Howell Central uh the reason for me being here this evening is I'm sure everyone knows there's a threat at the Sager Middle School uh Friday the 12th um actually uh that's when I received the information was Friday the 12th uh I received a text from my son and the only information that I received is there's a potential threat at the school um with that being the only information that I had uh I was terrified I raced to the school as quickly as I possibly could to retrieve him and when I arrived at the school I went through the normal security check-in at the gate and was allowed through Once I arrived at Seger middle I pulled up directly in front of the building and uh

029normal daily operations children were filing in and out of the building um most of them coming back from PE of the day and I was able to enter the school along with the children unabated no one stopped me that was particularly concerning for me under any circumstances let alone the particular situation at hand so when I retrieved my son and started investigating exactly what happened it came to my attention that there was an email sent out a previous night Thursday the 11th at 8 15 pm I think myself like most people probably are not checking their email at 8 15 in the evening to decide if they should send their child to school or not based on a safety concern I certainly did not and um also you know I I feel it's very important

030like as parents we're the ultimate Protectors of our children to have the ability to make that safety decision for ourselves and for our children and I just don't feel we were given that opportunity in this particular situation based on the limited time frame so I really have three key takeaways in my opinion from this experience the first of which it's very concerning that I was able to enter the school and the safety is the Paramount concern the mentioning today the second would be that I don't think communication was handled properly for us to be able to make this consideration so for example I know the district has the ability to send out mass text Mass voicemails a number of different more effective ways to communicate with the parents about what's going on and that did

031not happen in this situation and the other concern that I have because we as parents weren't able to make that safety decision or weren't provided enough information to make an accurate decision I truly feel your time is up thank you [Music] next we have Lori Leary good evening board I'm an alumni and I'm also a public educator in another District I'd like to start out with a quote heckling is an act of power if you want to speak get up in front of the microphone and speak don't sit in the dark hiding it's easy to hide and shout and waste people's time I originally signed up to come and speak about the amazing library after reading the after reading the three pages of questions that were meant to undermine the work of these amazing educators

032you didn't speak these words out loud they were hidden alongside the special recognition since I last viewed the agenda and now items have been pulled six items with extensive evidence and support from content experts six items that were already subjected to your question and answers and now away from the view of the public you pulled the items stop wasting time use your voice to say what you really mean I don't want the amazing efforts and the countless hours in the dedication of the lms's to be overshadowed by your ex I will spend the remainder of my time reading the comments from the actual patrons the comments from the students parents and teachers that have the ability to access that Library these were also available on the deci application I hope you read them in case

033you didn't this is what they say students comments continue to be kind and awesome holding events and having student conversations I think all of the resources and materials are helpful I use the printer often and I eat my lunch in the library every day I love everything about the library I would like to increase the sections like science guide and fantasy keep slaying books it goes on keep what you're doing you're awesome be kind and keep recommending books that are unique to that person a library feels like a very welcoming place every time I go down from teachers you provide support you provide assistance with lesson planning you provide tech support for students and staff keep being your wonderful self we are lucky to have you you asked me about new things that you've discovered

034and if I can Implement them keep providing resources for students and teachers don't let books disappear 100 of the students in the leaders said the library is a welcoming place and the staff is welcoming parents have the same things to say several keep all books do not banned funny how one party talks about overreach and they continue to practice stop Banning books keep all books available to All Families who enjoy books do not restrict as access to families in need make a variety of books available to challenge and speak teens thank you your time is up next we have Vivian got ours amazing board over the last year I know the board has focused on reviewing policies and making sure they are brought in compliance with state law may I suggest you also comply with

035Missouri law regarding the use of bathrooms and locker rooms in the district by trans people I belong to the YMCA I swim there the Gateway region YMCA has on its website its states quote our mission is to bring Christian principles into practice through programs that build Spirit mind and body for all and the state quote to achieve this Mission we strive to be Community centered bring people together nurture potential maintain a local presence and Global reach to bring about meaningful change in individuals and communities we the why must be focused and accountable at the why we measure the success of our cause by how well we engage communities in our three areas of focus Youth Development nurturing the potential of every child and teen Healthy Living improving the nation's health and well-being social responsibility giving

036back and providing support to our neighbors end quote the YMCA serves patrons from Toddlers to people in their 90s every religious background every nationality and a variety of sexual orientations they turn no one away unless they are on a sex offender list they are not racist homophobic or political reactionaries but rather they are the ideal of inclusivity they promote the health and well-being of their many patrons by having male and female locker rooms and by monitoring who uses which consequently the wise policy is to follow Missouri law when it comes to transgender patrons and the use of locker rooms they go by the sex on the patrons driver's license which can be updated by the DMV to reflect one's new gender after gender reassignment surgery is complete the DMV has either a form 5532 that

037one's physician would sign or one can submit a copy of the court order one has gotten from the time that they got a name change or altered a birth certificate I called the state of Missouri Department of Revenue and asked for the applicable Missouri revised Statute it is 193.215-9 which deals with procedures for changing birth certificates and other reports point is if a policy is sufficient for the DMV and for the YMCA to accommodate trans people then the district should also make this their policy please board members don't try to invent a new wheel just follow the Missouri law this kind of policy would eliminate some of the fears that girls have using restrooms respect the privacy of males who typically use urinals instead of stalls and still let truly trans people use the bathrooms

038they want thank you your time is up [Music] good evening everyone I'm Raquel Babb I am the first vice president for the Francis Howell Education Association and also teacher at Bryan Middle School and I'm here in my role as negotiator to let you all know that we're happy to report that our education support counselors voted unanimously on the closure document that the District administration and my team and both director stiglich and Paul plus car sorry um helped us to write and so we are bringing that to you tonight and hope that you will also agree with it we think that it supports our educational support counselors and the students that they serve and our FHA team would also like to come in to all our staff and students for facing the challenges of 22-23 and

039wish you all the best in the next six days hold it together students hold it together and may you all have a restful and rejuvenating summer thank you thank you next we have our prop s update it's good anymore um things in Francis Howell North are progressing very well um so we're going to focus a little bit tonight on the Athletics there's been a lot of exciting things happening not only with the tennis courts but also with some of the stadium construction so we're going to show some videos of that here in a little bit the tennis courts are moving right along the concrete's been poured for the post-tension work for the new tennis courts we have a picture of the canopy some of the canopies are finally going in you can actually start to

040see the front what the entrances are going to look like it is really exciting it's just been Big Lean walls for a long time you're starting to see some of the nice architectural features start to come together windows are going in um brick veneer is ongoing it's been ongoing for uh 16 months and and we're getting close to being done I would say we'll probably wrap up around the end of summer with some of the brick veneer by brick veneer we just mean red bread brown bread and the extreme the roof is also getting close to being completed they should be out of there this month anyone that's taking a tour kind of knows the front area was still a little muddy we're still waiting on the roost to go on on that but the

041roots will be completed within the next week or so so that's a good thing um curbs and sidewalks continue on the outside of the building so they're starting to get into that site work you know I mean we will be this time next year we'll starting to be probably turning over pieces of the building to the school district for waxing and getting ready to move into uh so you know site work and stuff like that will be happening this summer the goal would be to get a lot of that done before the winter months come sidewalks and curbs and parking lots and stuff like that door installation is ongoing there are so many doors it's mind-boggling in this building but um if anyone takes a tour it's really an interesting thing on the doors that

042I want to point out um you know in we call these lights on these doors these big panes of glass and one of the neat things that honors have been doing lately is we actually put you know there used to be classroom lights above the handles on every classroom door in the new North building what those lights are actually located in the center to the to the right of every area they're thin so what that represents but that prevents is someone may be able to shoot out glass reaching around and actually opening the classroom door so it's a neat feature it doesn't cost any more money to do it that way um it's just but if anyone takes a tour and you look at the classroom doors you're going to look a little different than

043they usually do traditionally but um it's it's just an example of some of the one of those ways to increase safety and not pay more money for it so um you know it's kind of a neat thing I'm going to have owner come and highlight some of the stuff like that owners are Architects um but just kind of a neat thing as you start to see the doors go up when that's happening caseworks going up display boards marker boards stuff like that the classrooms are starting to take shape and then mefp which is all the mechanical electrical plumbing and Fire Protection is ongoing um most of our systems are getting ready to come online Electric System is getting close there are some lights burning in the building now Plumbing Systems fire protection stuff like that

044so um things are going great uh really I I you know I say this a lot but I can't stress it enough I mean we're we're without question ahead of schedule and under budget on this project continue to be so here you can see uh site overlay um we'll have some more video but um you can see the existing schools in the top right there Henderson's on the upper left is to give you some orientation we can start to see just how close the roof is to getting done keep in mind a lot of these videos and pictures are two to three weeks old doing the report getting it all put together by the time you meet here we can see the tennis court so we have a post-tension concrete system post tension means that

045support concrete and then they tighten it all up it ends up floating if that makes sense so the concrete doesn't move and crack it kind of moves together as one so it's the best way to build the tennis court um it uh it really prevents cracking but these are all post-tension concretes those are the posts for the fences vents that you see going up there here's a cool picture of the canopy this is the main entrance to the school so this kind of faces out towards Henderson or the baseball fields but that's not finished that's just the structural piece but again some of the architectural features of the of the school are starting to take shape on the outside that white Limestone you see that's finished product um you know we have Browns and reds

046and whites all throughout the building but that white Limestone you see is at the front uh this is a picture of the actual uh performance gymnasium again one of my favorite features of the school is you actually walk in on the mezzanine level so it feels like a very Collegiate gym you actually come to an amazing level then you look down into the gymnasium so those big windows will stay like that those it's kind of Has a Field House feel onto the new gymnasium that was actually look out over the football stadium so um it's it's a unique thing a lot of the other gyms within the school district don't actually have natural light coming in and we did studies on you know when the sun will come in and stuff like that and how

047it affects the gym floor so everything's good on that so there was a lot of work done by that by our designers but it's a pretty neat feature and the gymnasium is really like I said one of the special features of the building see some of our toilet partitions going in it's exciting to see the epoxy floors are done sealing right up up a high so just see how just how far along some of these building you know that white is finished Color Finish paint this is the storm shelter or the auditorium so this is looking as if we're sitting in seats looking towards the stage this is uh if you look up you see this big white truss this is actually uh it's a storm shelter so it can withhand withstand Winds of up

048to 200 miles an hour this is where all the kids would go in case of a tornado or a weather event it can hold the entire school and the staff East easily but it's built out of concrete tees you can see the concrete tees above the roofs all structurally sound um we actually couldn't get concrete tees big enough on this chop they only make them about 100 feet wide so we actually had to put this big truss in which actually separates into ease but you won't see that trust that's kind of be the front top of the stage when all setting done but kind of an interesting feature of the of our building this is what we call the crossroads so this is actually looking out towards the neighbors or Henderson to the left is

049where the actual cafeteria will be this is the main student entrance so the buses will pull up this is where all the kids will actually come in during the day so there's kind of a big Crossroads here in the main section of the building uh then here we have a drone flights [Music] again how far along the roofs are some of the canopies that's the old school in the background there still waiting on some of the HVAC is to arrive they're still on schedule but those are what the big white boxes are on top of the roof here we see the tennis courts on the right side we have eight tennis courts all in a line they're not double stacked that access road coming up through there so those are the tennis courts that are

050being built there down the bottom left see the cooling towers that'll actually sit on the ground for the actual School here's another look at the tennis courts now coming the other way again post-tension concrete see the fencing fence posts going in and as we turn here we'll start to look at the stadium so we're basically to the point we're ready to start putting the turf down um everything's prepped um solar mediation is done you can start seeing the footings so the actual will be a home bleacher side so we actually won't build the visitor bleacher side during this phase of construction um it flipped now but bleachers will call the Home bleachers will be in as we speak and then that and then here you see the gymnasium that blue you see is actually the

051front of the gems so a lot of uh a lot of progress a lot of fun stuff so I always do this too so we have allowances built into the job these haven't changed since I think in about six months so we're still holding the same amount of money back for allowances eventually this will just roll it as a contingency or drop to the bottom line of the project because in essence how we would revert it the GMP build so you can see we're building about 65 today um which you know we're getting closer and closer the one thing I will mention is you know as the project is ahead of schedule we're going to have more you know as they get done quicker they send in bills quicker so um you know one of

052the things that I did look into for the administration is we're probably have about 20 million dollars worth of Bill still coming in for the end of the school's fiscal year so we're trying to project that as much as we can for the school district totally understand cash flow nothing bad nothing unexpected just trying to work with them to make sure you know all the money's in the right spots so um the last thing I was saying closing before I you know answer any questions you guys had is you know we didn't have a slider at this time but uh security vestibule so the design is um well not the design a honer the architect has submitted a done some preliminary work they submitted the budgets for that they submitted some of the design work

053for that it just came in just a couple of days ago I think the anticipation right now is to bring that to the next board meeting per the process we laid out um at uh the previous uh meetings during the audit review of coming to the board and saying this is what we're thinking and then asking for the board to approve or not approve moving forward within the design work so um just kind of something that should be happening over the next um I'd be happy to answer any questions I'm Francis Howell North um can you talk a little bit about who who does the quality control and quality assurance to make sure that this thing is being built in accordance with the architect's plans and services so our main front line protector and quality

054control is the architect so you know they they do site visits every week you know they're the bearer of the drawings the bearer of the steel so the number one thing is is them and their team to team do there that's our first line of defense they're mefp Engineers so mechanical electrical they do monthly site visits as things get covered up they write reports they give them a list of things that they see it that are deficient and need to be corrected so we rely on the engineers and the designers as our first as our first thing we also have a testing company which is Sci that goes through and does all what we call construction monitoring so this is testing concrete for compaction or concrete for PSI so you know you pour concrete there's

055no way to know whether it really is going to meet 3000 psi or not so they take cylinders of every truck that comes out to the job they go to a lab they press them until they break and then we make sure that they meet 3000 psi so they test the concrete they look at all the steel connections so every steel connection we double check because every bolt right because every bolt been changed right all the welds get ultrasound tests just to make sure all the moment connections are going to be installed directly so those are really between those three things that's really the QC and then ultimately the QC is up to the contractor you know I mean we we hire company contractors that want to know what the subcontractors are so we can

056ensure that we have good people doing the work but um and that is very standard uh you know Mr cook I mean I I think you know every job I've ever worked on is pretty much the same way um you know so I don't know if that answers your question [Music] with respect to the security festivals did we seek out design fees from any other Architects other than Harner um I would say that from my understanding of how that's working right now is that your professional service agreement with honer was um bid out or sent out for RFQ years ago I don't know the exact date of that I guess it's three to four years ago they had the best been at that time for a big architects work on a percentage basis is basically

057how they work and I think the district has elected to stay with them and continue to use them at that percentage basis but the district has the option at any time to send out an RFQ um for Professional Services to go out and see if that's who The Architects you know they want to do most districts hire Architects you kind of have it it's not like construction where it's one more job by job most districts want to work with one designer and they keep them for years at a time and then sometimes they go back out just because it takes a lot for Architects to acclimate up to your standards so you get all their CAD files of the buildings they get all the floor plans so sometimes it can cost more money to go

058out and start over than just keep the people that are currently there but that would be up to the board how they want to handle that but it's my understanding that's owner is still working under a design fee percentage that was bid out under previous RFQ I'll just add to that because of some of the previous work that owner has done with the district and having drawings done that they've already done of some of our buildings the measurements they had that information readily accessible to do quick walks and to do drawings faster given that we're trying to expedite the potential projects compared to other things so we'll be able to share those with us with the board at the junior one meeting and if we if we do out and get additional bids potential we're

059happy to do that you mentioned that you are ahead of schedule can you kind of tell us how far his schedule are you I know that we're still anticipating that the kids will start yeah not this fall but the following fall are you ready I mean do you feel like it's going to be like more in the spring or it versus like I know last time we had talked we thought it was going to be like early summer are we looking at so like how far had the schedule yeah I think you know I I would say that every day that you know it's about risk management um you know Janet so I would say that as we've got we're far enough along now where everyone kind of is agreed that we're we can start

060publicly saying we're headset so I have to say that's where we are I I you know schools are unique animals because it doesn't do a lot of real good to give it to you in March you know because you're not going to move until the summer but what it does do is create opportunities for the school to start moving into areas so something I'll say about waxy floors so we have 000 square feet of vinyl tile to wax you know and that is on the district to do so that's something that the owner does after the tile is like so those kind of things the fact that now we're turning over in March potentially and it'll it'll be turned over in faces it won't just be here's the school we'll give it we'll give it

061this this wing and then that wing but the district will be able to start waxing those floors getting things prepped bringing in maybe you know Rich Wilson and his team to look at technology and getting stuff up and running so that what that does is then create once the summer starts the summer of 24 and the district's moving into it it's the process it's just quicker and easier for everybody so I think it'll bring a big benefit to the district and just in that standpoint but right now I would tell you that I think February March we're going to start seeing areas turned over it also gives us the opportunity to what we call do punch list which is the Architects coming out and doing a list of everything it needs oh everything needs to

062be corrected you know paint touch up and that base doesn't look right all that can get done before the movie starts which only makes the process just smoother and quicker so yes it does thank you very much and just and just to say this you know we are on schedule so the goal I know we have new board members the the anticipated uh progress is that the school will move over in the summer of 24 and then we will kind of flip we will then go into the old school we will demo the old school and that becomes practice fields so in between the summer of 24 and the spring of 25 we will be finishing that and then the entire campus is completed in the spring December of 25. and that was that's been

063the schedule from day one where we'll we'll hit those things before their questions important thank you thank you for like a motion to approve the consent agenda for May 18 2023 as presented second glitch all those in favor say aye aye well as opposed to say no surpasses or like a motion approved the April monthly financial report as presented it's time left I appreciate Mary Ponder all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed say no motion passes more like a motion improve the purchases over 7 500 minus items two six 12 13 19 and 25 as presented as we will be discussing those individually so I'm gonna move second oh those in favor say hi hi I'm supposed to say now motion passes or like a motion to approve the purchases over

0647 500 or number seven curriculum Associates as presented so moved exactly Dr Buckman [Music] thanks president Bertrand I thought I would just share a little bit of information with you guys since this is a large resource purchase so um during the 21-22 school year we solicited a curriculum team that ultimately consisted of about 19 teachers and three instructional coaches that represented all of our buildings and all of our grade levels K-5 they had four initial meetings where they reviewed some best practice research they explored standards they identified the priority standards they developed some teacher surveys and then gave those surveys reviewed the survey results they created a vision for our K5 math program and then they took all of that information and identified what is it that we are looking for out of a new

065math resource for the elementary level the team then held three meetings that really focused on the resource itself and so during those meetings they started with materials from 15 different vendors or Publishers they took that list they narrowed that list down to five different vendors or Publishers and they invited all five of those vendors in to do presentations and so during those presentations they look at the materials they hear what the vendor has to say about the resources available for teachers what the students would use the professional learning that teachers would experience the results that we can expect to see from using their resources and at the end of the day the team ultimately identified two of the five that they were most interested in yeah there wasn't a clear winner of the day and

066so they decided that they would feel more comfortable if they kind of did a trial of sorts and used the materials for a while before they made a decision and so that brings us to this school year at the start of the school year we created a team of folks we had 54 classroom teachers and one special education teacher that used each set of materials for a quarter and so first quarter one group used envisions which is the new version of what we currently use and the other half of the group used iready which was the second resource that we tried and then after a quarter of the two groups switched so that each team had a quarter with both resources all grade levels and all buildings were represented as part of that that process

067as well there was parent communication sent home to families about the resources about what was happening in the classroom parents were invited to provide feedback along the way about what they thought from what they were seeing come home and their child's engagement things of that nature teachers received professional learning and support throughout the process from both vendors and then at the end of the semester those who participated were asked to provide some feedback to our team and so 71 percent of the teachers responded that they preferred I ready over enVision Math which was the other option um and then of the 71 percent who preferred I ready 96 of them felt that the diagnostic tool and the my path which is an individual practice tool that those were essential to implementation of everybody that responded

068even those who picked Envision at their first choice 86 percent of the teachers that participated all felt that the magpath and the diagnostic tool were essential if we landed on iready as our recommendation I'll also mention that at the end of the trial those who were using the iready since that was the recommendation we were bringing forward we told them that if they wanted to continue to use that we weren't going to make them switch back since that's what they were using with their students at the time and 50 of the 54 teachers that were part of the trials they all elected to continue using those materials for the rest of the year rather than return back to the Envision material which felt like really was a bold statement that they really did prefer those

069materials so the recommendation before you tonight includes not just a student textbook but it also includes an online diagnostic tool so we currently use a universal screener fast bridge that you hear us talk about and that lets us know that students are at risk but it doesn't really indicate a specific skill that's aligned to the Missouri learning standards where students need help so it wouldn't tell me that Sally needs help with equivalent fractions or that Billy needs help with two digit by one digit multiplication and that's what the diagnostic tool will tell us the other thing to keep in mind is that the diagnostic tool is adaptive and so as students are getting questions right the test gets a little bit harder and as students are not scoring well the test will get a little

070bit easier until we can find a point that they're successful so it's very different that as a teacher when I create a test to assess my students I only have the questions on that test this online adaptive test is a very different resource [Music] um the uh I ready the um the diagnostic tool will be given to students three times throughout the school year and then that really gives our teachers information that they can use to adjust their core instruction to plan some small group instruction really just individualize to meet the students needs in their classroom it also allows our teachers to place students in my path which is the other component that you saw on the recommendation tonight and so my path is an individualized online practice tool with we don't have anything like

071that right now with our Correctional so there is no comparison that I can offer you um the vendor recommends that we use that tool for about 40 minutes a week up to 40 minutes a week for independent practice one thing that we really like about this tool compared to some other tools that other vendors have is that this tool includes features that alert the teacher if students are working too quickly or if students are struggling so if if a student's sitting at their desk and they're just clicking away and they're getting things wrong or they're they're just clicking away not even attempting the teacher would get a little notification and so it's it's intended to be an instructional tool um the vendor was also clear that it should only be 40 minutes a week it

072is not intended to replace teacher instruction it's not something that we would expect you know this year it's 40 minutes and next year at 60 minutes and then soon that's what's going to be our mode of direct instruction um we're confident that that is not the case it really is because we can have all students in the classroom practicing at the level in which they need practice based on that diagnostic tool that's the value of my path it's individualized practice so a teacher all of our students practicing on exactly what they need to be practicing on with just a click of a button I would also mention that a neighboring district is using i-Ready and they in our conversations with them they shared that in their District their analytics have surfaced that they're averaging about

07330 minutes of usage per student and they're seeing some strong results with just 30 minutes so we might find that we really don't even need to recommend up to 40 minutes um our scores when you look at our our achievement scores you know our district is a strong High performing District our scores from students who fall into one of the state designated student groups or about 50 MPI points lower than our all student group when we look at our APR we know that our growth area is in that student group performance and we believe that some of these tools the diagnostic the mypath just having an updated resource all of those tools being recommended today that will help accelerate the growth not just of our student group but of all of our students in addition

074we know that the coveted learning loss at the elementary level in math was much greater than at the secondary level you can see that when you look at our achievement data we think that the diagnostic and the mypath tools will help our teachers be able to Target our student deficiencies in math and then be able to respond to those in just a more targeted Way by filling those gaps with those assessment scores I would also mention that outside of my path and the diagnostic tools something that struck me was the teacher resource provides significant support for our teachers in terms of instructional strategies so the current resource assumes that teachers know where to plug in instructional strategies the new program has those built in to the teacher guide so it prompts them explicitly when to

075use those strategies and in the past we are a district that has provided a heavy amount of professional development to teachers in that area a lot of that through release time and as you've heard we are a little short on release time these days and so when you think about teacher turnover and having lots of newer and younger teachers knowing that we're giving our teachers a resource that has all of that embedded we're not leaving it to Chance is something that is is good the final piece of information I'll share with you is just that as part of our process we talk to lots of other districts so specifically we looked at six districts that we would consider comparable to Francis Howell there were some in-state there were some out of state all of them

076provided very strong positive anecdotal feedback all six of them showed increased State assessment scores while using iready i-Ready also runs a correlation between the i-Ready diagnostic data and the map test data it is from 2018. they do it every three to five years and so when we reached out and said do you have an updated one they said they're in the middle of it right now so of course I don't have it now to show you um but the last one in 18 showed a positive correlation between iready and Matt anything over 0.70 is considered strong the scores for grades three through five range from 0.83 to 0.87 you know just another indication that helped us feel confident in bringing the recommendation to YouTube and then I'll just take this opportunity to give a shout

077out to Dr Lorton she is our content leader who helped lead this out and wrangling that large of a yearbook and her family we just appreciate the time and effort that they've taken over the last couple years to to put into this so I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have or I know a few of you visited some classrooms if there's anything you want to share I just want to mention that I watched all the videos that I've already on their iready website I read numerous emails both far and against adoption of this curriculum I I previewed I ready math in three different classrooms I believe I've done probably more research than I wanted to do that to help me understand the curriculum I've spoken to teachers some you know that are

078that like the program and others Upstream that would see the results um in another District that that have seen kids go through this program the issue that most bothers me is that the proposal doesn't have any validated research to ensure that our children are not being used as guinea pigs I understand that some of our curriculum that we're already using does not have validated research and that's understandable however if it has an acceptable track record then that presents a quantifiable and trackable set of results I would encourage for me and I can only speak for me not the rest of the board but any future proposals for any new curriculum in math or science be accompanied with validated research Quantified validated research where we can totally understand the effects of the kid on the kids

079rather than you know anecdotal and I'm not discounting anecdotal I think that's important I think teachers have to like what tools that they have so I'm not discounting that but I'm saying in order for a successful program I think we need quantifiable results I'll chime in here a little bit um I don't know a whole lot about curriculum at all that's why it's up to you guys I mean you're the professionals here I did do some research and watch the videos I I think it's a good thing that's my opinion I've seen pros and cons the most of the conscious was that it's repetitive and stuff like that but again I'm no expert in any kind of curriculum whatsoever and I did do some research into it seems like you did your research seems like

080a good thing to me again that's my opinion I also like Jane said in the classroom as you know um I saw what I wanted to see for sure I thought what I went in hoping to find is that the the students were engaged they were having fun it's math class after all that they were they were having fun it was easy for the teacher to instruct it was easy the children to understand we had some laughs and some high fives and it was a it was a great A great experience for me but um I I wanted to give the teacher's opinion and and um you know some of the other uh uh board members and staff um and one of the things that that you mentioned that uh uh that could be happening

081or will be happening is the potential for them to spend 40 minutes maximum um and the the facility that I visited did not have the capability for all the students to be on if they would have to basically trade um uh devices um how do you see that playing out if the actual facility the the school does not have the need or the the ability to give every student that device we're not one-to-one and we don't intend to bring a one-to-one recommendation as a result of this purchase but there's there's not a need because they don't need that much time to be on it so um through the process we had some conversations about that and we feel like we have enough devices in the schools for the students to be able to access it

082the amount of time that they need to within the week because it's not a high concern I I asked the teacher purposefully how she felt after the initial quarter and she at first going into it was very apprehensive she was you know she's been with the district for a long time and and a lot of people get set in their ways and and I wanted to hear that I wanted to hear from someone that wasn't all gung-ho about it and it was trying their best to get through it and she did and when she got to the second or to the end of the first quarter she said that she um she had the option to either keep going with it or go back to the old way and she decided to keep going with

083it just to make sure that she was making the right decision and I thought that was great and I didn't get to see a lot of the um uh or any of the screen time I didn't get to see that the diagnostic part of the assessment part of it I wish I had um but one of the things that that does concern me is the amount of money that we're spending on it I want to make sure and then this directly affects me as a parent because the school that I visited is where my kids go and they're going to be using this if it passes and I want to make sure that it's worth it and um I I guess my question is sell it to me how what what what about this makes

084it worth that much more money [Music] because I feel like just stop for a second I feel like we I haven't been I haven't gotten that yet I like it I really do but I it just feels like there's no real it's just like hey yeah we like it and the teachers like it and and and it's going to be good for the kids but what what metrics is there what what can you give to me that's gonna push me over the head what is it what we don't we don't have a diagnostic right now we don't have an online practice assessment tool right now our current resource is nine years old it talks about walking to the video store it talks about cassette tapes I mean it's just an outdated resource for our students

085and so you know when you look at the online tools that our teachers have access to it really isn't in the ballpark of what they have access to right now um if I if you were to put them side by side and look at them you know as um art it's hard to articulate um the instructional resources available to teachers through the new tool are just stronger I would I would feel much more confident my daughter will benefit from it and I can tell you that when I found out that she was in a pilot classroom I was thrilled because as a parent I Was A literacy teacher you know that was my thing and when she comes home with math homework that is my husband's job not my job and I was excited to

086see that we would have a new math resource that my child would benefit from it is time for us to have a new math resource our scores are not you know if you're it's not based on our data it's not that we were it's not that we have these horrible math scores and we have to do something different but our ours are when you look at the students in our district that aren't performing where we believe they could be performing the new resource has tools to help us with those students that our current resource does not have if you are a struggling learner our current resource doesn't have much to help you the new resource does it provides many more intervention type options and resources for our teachers that the current resource has none of

087well I'll add to that while the resource is newer and it doesn't have the quantifiable validated research that Mrs Bush card director bushkar was speaking to the initial data from the sixth come to the doctor book and share that we looked at both locally as well as out of the state did show early gains on their state test Benchmark which is something we are all held to when we look at the current resource that we have biodated and old yes it would be cheaper to buy that same product again next year to purchase consumables that again are lying to a resource that's nine years old to buy the same updated version of that program the cost is now so in that sense yes it's more than we're paying right now but it's not out of

088line with other products there's also along with this professional development that comes with the publisher that will support all of our K5 Math teachers across District hopefully a lot of them are better engage students on a daily basis improve instruction overall so when we talk about not only the core resource but the technology resources the diagnostic the student guided pieces all of that collectively people who feel we talked about this earlier you feel that this is obviously there was a bit of a bit of a I don't want to say a delay but there was a a pullback during covet of of the you know the learning process you feel like this is going to possibly get us over that hump and then back to where we should be if covet had never existed [Music]

089they're humans they're they're not widgets so there's a lot of variables in play um and yes I mean that's that's part of what we like about this resource is the tools that are coming with it that we believe are going to help close the gap that the code is introduced more so than the updated version that we would get of the other software or the other or anything yes our teachers 71 of our teachers that participate in prefer this resource over the other and a lot of that was because of the tools that are offered with this resource the other thing I would mentioned is that this resource compared to the other is the way it's paced and so a lesson is stretched over a few days not to say that it's slower but right

090now it's you know each day is something new and so if I don't understand Monday I'm moving on to something new Tuesday and something new Wednesday where this that concept is over a few days and it lets kids have a more solid foundation so if I don't catch on Monday we're still kind of talking about that same topic and the way it's paced I would tell you our teachers have been frustrated about the pacing of our current tool since we adopted it in iready has a it's a just a different type of pacing in the resource and I really do think our students will benefit from it it's something our teachers have been asking for for a while I believe it'll our students will come in with a much more solid foundation for us to

091build on it's not that we're going to cover less content it's just how we cover the content one of the things that we're going to cover when I was in the classroom was that I already during the beginning of the curriculum they put the word problems in the front well that's okay for fourth and fifth graders but this happened in first grade which presented a problem because not all first graders can read starting with a word problem that they can't even look at like you don't even know what they're looking at um and we we talked about that this afternoon I just want to make sure that that would be something that and and we when we talked about it we ensure that that was something that they've switched around um because I thought that

092was pretty concerning yeah so um should the board choose to approve it tonight the next step is uh you know our we're in the process of revising our curriculum we would make sure that it's aligned with the tool meaning if we need to move this a little earlier a little later so that it kind of follows the same pacing of the resource and then a scope and sequence would help with that we need to make sure we do this here that here that that's how we would address those concerns or issues sure is there anything you want to do I don't see I don't see you but I think you're right there is there anything you wanted to add to that sorry because I couldn't tell uh my interaction with um updated version versus piloted

093the 2020 version and closing the 2024 and one of the biggest changes in that was in kindergarten and first grade they moved some things around and they changed the spoken sequence black suggestions directly from teachers um for example I know for sure in kindergarten they are now starting the year with shipping even within our current program that our teachers have always said why don't we start the old shapes kids know that and that's comfortable for them they can start out being successful from the year I have not had the opportunity but as you said through our District curriculum other questions [Music] all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed say no no can you get a roll call I think uh director Harmon no no Mr Lang aye director pushkar no president Bertrand

094yeah vice president cook no director Ponder aye director stiglich aye [Music] or like a motion approved purchase over 7 500 number two accelerate learning stem Scopes as presented so I'll move director Lane second finder boring discussion [Music] some stem Scopes I asked a similar question about the other science resource here uh gizmos I think it was called um is there a um I think the question I asked on gizmos did you survey the other teachers and the answer was yes um I failed to ask if this stem Scopes was was done the same way I don't have the answer for that sitting here but I do need to correct something in your board q a you had asked us if this was used in lieu of textbooks and when we were answering the questions I

095believe the answer that we posted said that teachers have a classroom set of the stemscopes textbooks and then also the online and since then I've learned that that's inaccurate we have three to five textbooks in the classroom it's really an online textbook and we've purchased three to five textbooks so if a student needs to do something at home and they don't have online access access we're able to send a hard copy of the textbook at home but it is an online resource for students so it's not a supplement or a secondary it is an online textbook that our students use and we have some hard copies in the classroom to send home if needed so just just to clarify that we'll we'll pull that down tomorrow and get that corrected so that it's accurate but

096I want to make sure we currented that for you tonight But to answer your other question I did not ask for that information so I can follow up and get that for you okay well that changes textbook for this um so I guess I don't like to think these things threw out on the Fly sorry I apologize but I guess my first question would be you know if we're paying this is 30 some odd thousand dollars right so we're paying this every year how much is a typical textbook purchase for Middle of medicine you do the same yes into Mr Brothers over there uh for a grade level text it would be you know a hundred thousand dollars to do uh your adoption is about me I mean a textbook the last five six years

097it is most times that lasts a little longer okay um well I think that answers questions on this one another question uh those in favor say aye I I was supposed to say no motion passes or like a motion approved purchases over 7 500 number six Capstone couple go as presented Richard cook Richard Ponder discussion as for a couple of these online resources for Elementary School uh this one and there's one later BookFlix by Scholastic um it seems that we have a lot of these every year we approve right every year we approve several and the purchase is over 7 500 but I suspect there's several more that don't reach that threshold that either individual buildings buy or classrooms or maybe district-wide but they just don't reach that 7 500 threshold but I wonder if

098we have a listing somewhere of all of these resources that are throughout the district that we can look at and make it make a decision on which ones are are ideal I mean some of these are seem very repetitive in the mammals we get are very high level uh I'm cognizant of that but you know we have several it seems like to me that are well this helps Elementary reading and this one these books to kids and this one they can look up articles and reason to I guess I'm reluctant to approve many more of these without some sort of an overarching plan on how many we have of these and then ideally I like to prove some plan and then and this is just me happy to have a discussion here but um on

099all of these because each one's 13 to 30 000. some would say it's a drop in the bucket but uh you know that they add up and it's one more thing each month we're approving on all of these and each month I look into the companies and if we can do if we can do that one time I think it would help me a lot and understand what what each one of these does maybe a workshop or something along those lines get more teacher input it's my understanding some classes use these some don't um it's anecdotal but I certainly don't rely on this for my decision making but I do have a first graders so I do inquire with them about the eternities and I get answers like well I use that once in kindergarten

100in the library so it it makes you wonder but again I don't use that for my decisions those kind of things are what I'm concerned about so I'm going to vote no on this for now and you know if we can do something like that in the next few months and we decided this PebbleGo is something that you know we want to move forward with I'm happy to devote it in but um for now there's there's too many unknowns with these there's a lot of them um I've tried to keep track myself and it's um really too much of a cumbersome for me to do that every month every month I kept a good track when I started on the board and I was really on top of it but other things have taken precedent

101that that list has fallen by the wayside [Music] my thoughts on this one Cornell those in favor say aye aye I was supposed to say no no okay I'm gonna do a roll call please director uh pushkar no president Bertrand vice president cook no director Ponder no director stiglage aye director Harmon nope director Lane hi who's have it we're like a motion approved purchases over 7 500 number 12 we use science as presented don't move you're laying looks like Commander discussion [Music] thank you for pulling this one out too um we've we discussed this all right I just made a lot of comments on this in the last August when we brought this up a lot of my concerns then are still valid and they were around the uh the privacy of the data collection

102I don't I'm not going to repeat a bunch of those but um in the August meeting I read a lot of the um the language that's in the contract for this company the agreement between the school district and and use science I think they collect a lot of data a lot of Personality data and I'm not uh it's not something I support the third party company having of our students whether they aggregate it or not um so then there's also a question of whether this is a you know in the Q a documents that are in there I know I ask some questions about whether there's other whole career placement services available and the answers are in there but that the Privacy is still my overarching concern on this policy around privacy and student data

103is something that I think we should explore as a board here in the next several months so Dr Wilson you were able to speak to the Privacy related to this yeah the school district prints how we are part of the Missouri student data privacy Alliance and we do have a student National Data privacy agreement with Youth Science that affirms legally between us and new science that we actually do have a data privacy agreement on them not just safeguarding the data that they collect on their students but not you know marketing or reselling that or providing that to third-party providers [Music] another discussion board so what I'm hearing you saying of Mr Wilson is that there [Music] Mr Cook's concerns are that we do have a legal agreement that's saying this data is not being shared

104correct um part of the agreement says that our that data that they are collecting um that they are a school official um and that the data still is owned by the school district they have Safeguard measures in place to protect that data and backed up and again that they don't sell that data they don't Market that data they don't Market information to our students through that software package okay great thank thank you very much the other discussion board yeah just a quick question make sure in my mind I'm seeing it right so is this basically a 20 question type thing for us that's 20 question this is probably what your interests lie in a little more robust than that it tells kids it's an interest inventory and an aptitude so it's both components when I

105was in high school and took it it was really more just an interest inventory and so now it also is about your aptitudes when students finish they're given a report and Katie I'm going to tell you to make your way up here because I am definitely not going to do this Justice it's Katie's birthday she's so passionate she's here on her birthday to make sure that we talk all about this um when kids finish they get a report and the report is I have a freshman this year and I would tell you looking at this report his uh class selection for a sophomore year drastically changed once we were able to look at this report it talks about careers that you might be interested in careers that you would be good for it gave information

106about the salaries that you can expect it gave information about the amount of college or training that you might need for those career Fields I'm just going to let you talk to it so it's it's 42. it's it's uh 42 questions no it's 42 years old so it's really not a big deal it's not a big birthday uh I am happy to be here so here's here's what um what I will say it's it's a multi-tiered approach so you know I know that Mr cook you were here the other day for Project Lead the Way um showcase as you were to miss and the whole intention behind the assessment is to allow our students to take some time and space and really do some self analysis with the help of their parents and their families

107dig deep into what they're good at that's the aptitude piece what they love to do that's the interest piece and what um how they interact with other people and with the world around them that's the online codes interpersonal piece and the results um as Dr Buckman indicates take all of that data produce it for the student and their families on a dashboard as well as two in-depth printable reports and then students with their families can determine um sort that data by aptitude by interest or by overall fit and then they can dig deeper into the dashboard by careers and store careers by level of training so if a student knows that they for sure have a desire to they learn best tactically and they want to tactilely and they want to go to a tech

108school for example they can take their information just unique to them and sort the careers that match who they are their core by the two-year training or certificate program or a four-year program or a postgraduate program and so again all the data and research out there would support the fact that aptitudes um generally level off around age 14 which is kind of depressing when you're 42. um but that's the reality um they certainly are solidified by 18. so we know that students developmentally I just this is my high school counselor hat on right now we know students develop mentally have they wherewithal an ability as young as the age of 12. to start really identifying their strengths and their interests and this assessment puts all of that in a age-appropriate gamified version for them to

109really start investigating and the first five brain games of the Youth Science assessment so it's it is definitely way more than 20 questions are administered ideally with should this be approved would be would be administered by our counseling staff at seventh grade level they would have a checkpoint again at ninth grade and add an additional four brain games and then junior year there's four additional amplifiers so I know I I posted all those in the Q a section by by age appropriateness and at what level scope and sequence wise they would take those um and you know there's I'd be happy to share with you reports or show you the dashboard to show you that it really is truly meant for kids um to understand because they have the power and the capability to do

110that and I've had I think sometimes we undermine right with our capable of especially with support at home to determine okay this is who I am at my core and now I know what classes to take I know to take biomedical Sciences I know to take engineering I know I really want to do tech school um I know that I I didn't know this at the time I've been told my whole life I'm not great at math but goodness gracious look at this I haven't I actually have an aptitude and maybe I want to try those that hat on in high school and change my four-year plan to to align with those results um and then I will just conclude with uh students at any point have the ability to reset their interpersonal style inventory

111because that does that is not stagnant it doesn't level off it you know from 13 to 18 years of age and they also always have the opportunity to reset their interest inventory because our interests as humans evolve and change over time as we age and and as things as we're exposed to different opportunities so um that also if they wanted to retake it they could and it might adjust their results and increase the accuracy of them depending on where they are developmentally at that point any questions happy birthday go over your family thank you I do have questions um like Randy I'm fairly concerned I have been doing a little bit of digging into some of the cyber security issues that this district and all districts face all of us in our daily life space

112um you mentioned that they have a measures in place that prevent the information that they're given out of the district are from the District of our kids and whatnot um what do you know what those measures are do you have they been forthcoming with that I'll be honest with you I think you know I I it doesn't get into specifics you know they have a framework in place that does talk about you know that they have firewalls in place that they do have you know uh secured passwords they've secured accounts uh they only give access to individuals employees within that company that need access to that a lot of that is metadata so they may not have access to the raw data but it might have uh disaggregated data on the on our students so

113it's not all in one place so they have a wide variety but as far as use signs I can't say specifically outside of that in general that's what the student data privacy agreement says that they have to have in place um you know specifically you know what type of firewalls that they use what type of network operating system you know I can't speak to that or backup system if that helps though yeah they didn't give you any specifics on it no no and the agreement doesn't ask that um so and we didn't ask that of the vendor you know we did ask that they have these these base uh the basic you know secured measures in place to protect our art student and in some cases our staff data as well depending on thank you

114so um out of curiosity what exactly makes this like different from any other like attitude test I've ever actually begin because throughout High School I've taken so many but is it is this one I don't know much about the other ones you've taken so it's hard for me to answer I think that uh the fact that this one has the interest and the aptitude is something that makes it a little unusual from some that I've seen and then the reports that it produces that it connects it to the way that it connects it to the careers um it doesn't just say you would be a great doctor you should think about marketing but it connects it to here are some specific jobs here's how much training it would take here's how much um how much

115you could expect to make in the region that you live in in that position you can filter it different ways so if you are interested in going on to higher education you can filter it that way if you really are not interested in going into higher education you can filter it that way you can combine your interest in inventory and look at your aptitude and interest and look at your results that way you can filter it out and say I just want to see options for what I'm good what I'm interested in or you could look at I just want to see what I have an aptitude for so it really lets you kind of customize how you look at your results thank you if this doesn't pass this evening do we have an alternative

116plan what we would do for our kids that would need to be taking this in next school year sitting here today I I don't this is what we currently use so no I don't sit in here today what did we use prior to last August when we first brought this into the district yeah correctly if I'm running I believe in the past we use Missouri connections is that what it was called correct so in front of August we had been we were using new science at no cost because of a partnership we had they had which is a College and Career Readiness planning tool that our counselors use transcripts students you can get online and check the um for dashboard or college searches between virtual tours there's a whole there's a whole more College focused

117less career focused been to that Suite view science and four separate their partnership and so we had grown accustomed to giving this assessment to our ninth graders and saw the value in it so that's why it was brought to purchase you know it's proposed last in August prior to that the only tool we have that's Jesse free of charge is no connections and that is only the omnet interest inventory which is more of that it's more than 20 questions it's more like 80 but it's like you know building birdhouses strongly like maybe strongly disliked and it's it's all based on transcripts only it doesn't impact her in the Halloween of those interpersonal nor does it factor in the aptitude middle school and uh I know she really thought it was really good good for her

118just from the fact that it helped kind of solidify some of the thoughts that she had anyways also gave her another Outlet then Mom and Dad telling her we thought she'd be interested in did it validate you Dad um but but I do do share the concerns concerns for with Randy and Mark around around the data data piece is that any an agreement you can share with us share with the board absolutely and if we table this now to get that and ask more questions would that be a detriment if we push it off till next meeting we can we can bring it back on June 1st we have a meeting June 1st we can just put it back on the agenda June 1st I'll just ask if the board is comfortable with it we

119can just put it back in purchase this over 7 500 for the June 1st meeting so I would then suggest that we make a motion the table items number 12 and 13 until the June 1st meeting to be re-reviewed 41 seconds added one other comment uh um personally I would be uh I would this would be more palatable to me if it were an opt-in type of a program as opposed to opt out um we all get a lot of emails and send things sent home sometimes parents just miss it so I think if it was something that someone would have to actively sign up for it like it would be more palatable to me that way that way for what it's worth do you mind if I share just one thing to consider between

120now and then I will tell you that at the secondary level it is an extreme Challenge anytime we ask kids to return a permission form for anything even if it's something they really want to do and so while we certainly could do an opt-in it would dramatically reduce the number of students who engage with the opportunity and often the kids that need it the most are the ones that are least likely to return something or so just something to consider that it would it would definitely present a barrier for a large amount of students so if our goal is that every student engages in the activity that would be a bit of a challenge for us just something to consider another question and I'm sorry I'd have to be Mrs vargas's third time but um

121the uh you sometimes you mentioned it has just kind of it's in here on the front Forefront of my brain um she mentioned that counselors administer this test to every well seventh grade or ninth grader and all the different levels but that seems like a lot of time for the esc's every year school counselors school counselors it's the school counselors and they go through currently the ninth grade health department um and it's part of the high school ninth grade our College of career counselors actually go over and Beyond um to pull students that take help over the summer or do not take Health in the fall semester of their freshman year I believe rather take it in the spring to to ensure that they complete business so it is housed in the college room career

122counseling department guidance counseling department it is an online assessment it's not a one-to-one so they're able to do it so so yes It's All Digital it's gamified um provide you gummy copies if you'd like to take a simple student copy if you'd like to take the assessment the career changing you get results instantaneously [Music] all right board the motion in front of you is to amend the current motion to table items number 12 and 13 until the June 1st meeting in a few seconds all right Lauren all in favor say no order like a motion approve the purchases over purchase over 7 500 number 19 msba as presented so moved under discussion thanks for pulling this out as well um gone a little bit of a roller coaster with mspa and my support for it

123um the concern I have which is is laid out in the questions that were asked was some of the lobbying they do um at the state level and whether or not a a public school district really all public school districts should be paying for that um that said the Missouri the state statute specifically allow school boards to join msba knowing that they do that so that the legislature has recognized that Missouri does that yeah they they give school boards the authority to join that um nonetheless it's still concerning for me I did learn some things in the question and answers that I asked though it seems that our membership affords as many Financial benefits the one I'm thinking of or replace the one that was assigned assigned costs was the ability to buy natural gas

124at a at a discounted rate and it seems to me that the price we pay for membership is all been paid for by our savings in that program alone which to me makes it somewhat of a financial wash in addition to the other benefits such as access to certain trainings and whatnot albeit we still pay for some trainings and conferences but I'm told others are at no cost to members so is that a fair assessment that we we have a a large amount of cost savings as a result of our membership here that is correct um the mspa provides a variety of services some which we fully participate in some we use sporadically so we don't need it at all so while you mentioned the advocacy being part of their work and we have Representatives

125that participate in that body as part of msba and have a voting role in that I would say that is minimal for us they offer a policy service that we don't utilize at all within them we take a lot of advantage of the professional development training they offer that includes training for both new board members Advanced certification for board members on board leadership positions so whether that's our president vice president our secretary when we think about sunshine records retention that type of work and yes we do still pay for some of those trainings or for the conference but for many of them we get it afraid cost or some of it's free the you just mentioned director cook is that they do have the MSB natural gas Consortium we were able to participate in since

126O3 our participation has saved over 850 000 by participating in that I'm looking at just the five-year period from 2016 through 2020 the average annual savings to the district was a little bit over 55 000 per year compared to the cost of buying that through our regular regular ly So based on that significant savings which more than pays for the membership in the organization each year combined with the professional development opportunities that we utilize we do believe at this time we will continue our participation I would like to add a little bit to that I think that for the current members of the board that have not had the opportunity to be use msba as a member of that Organization for the past six years six years I have found it extremely helpful uh what

127people don't realize is that we as a district have been offered many many many times to present at these forums to tell them how we do things here because we do it right and we have been asked to do our things over and over and over while sometimes it may seem like lobbying is just a small part of it I agree with Dr rumpus that there is so much more and if if this was not passed I would be extremely disappointed be does a lot for this District [Music] all right all those in favor say aye aye I was supposed to say no I said or like a motion to approve the purchase over 7 500 number 25 is Scholastic BookFlix as presented second good director [Music] discussion thank you for pulling this one as

128well I won't go into too much detail this really falls in the same category of concerns I had about PebbleGo and all of the online resources in this case I think this is an elementary resource so just going back to wanting kind of an overarching plan of everything that we we will subscribe to going forward and then resources provides so for now I'll be voting now if later turns out to be a worthwhile and certainly supported in the comments yeah I would like to say one thing I think while I understand director if vice president cook where you're coming from I think right now by doing all this stuff by taking this stuff away we are handcuffing our teachers and the resources that we have built I am not an expert on what resources these

129kids should be using I all I know is that this team out there that does amazing things is letting us know that this is what our kids need so I have absolutely no problem voting for it do I think down the road we can get something where everything is listed absolutely I think that's something we can direct this Administration to do but I can't sit here and not these are the supports for our kids and for our teachers [Music] just a quick question that Dr Blackman maybe um this this would potentially affect next year not this year so there will be time over the summer to collect that information and then present it to the board yes I'm not going to lie one of the challenges is that our content leaders are on a teacher

130contract so they don't work over the summer and they would be closely tied to a lot of this and teachers aren't here over the summer and so many of the folks that we would bring together to provide a lot of the input are quote here for the next few months so we can certainly do some things it might not be the quality that we would be able to do if it were during the school year [Music] the questions important all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed say no eyes have it board motion to approve the 2022-2023 budget revision recommendation as presented someone very good reminder or you'll remember that last month we brought to you a budget amendment recommendation that was pretty significant we normally do one of those also a little

131bit earlier in the year it's not uncommon to do them as often as monthly as we better understand our budget throughout the school year we start with our best projection we have when we ask you to approve it in June of each year and they're really we better understand our webinar expenditures we sometimes this month we what we're bringing you really is procedural and it's just a recommendation to add 20 million dollars into the bond Capital fund for this year as Mr spoke to earlier the invoices are coming in a little bit earlier based on how quickly the work is progressing on Francis Howell North this is not at all an increase to the overall cost of the project it's simply moving the 20 million into this year's budget to pay those invoices before June

13230th and it will result in a reduction of 20 million dollars budgeted in in the bond account next year for the work that will be completed on brand selling worth discussion all right all those in favor say aye aye I was supposed to say no nice have it or like a motion to approve the sale of 28 school buses as presented so moved second the glitch director Lang [Music] a trumpets thank you president Bertrand we've been talking a lot about Transportation this year when we brought Transportation in-house as a district four years ago we purchased a or at least to buy a fleet that mirrored what we were doing under our prior agreement with the outside vendor that we were utilizing so we purchased 191 school buses at that time as we've shared throughout the

133year director Simpson and her team have really worked to be more efficient and I'm streamlined routes and where possible lesson them and based on some of the changes for next year we now have more buses in our Fleet than we currently need and so Miss Simpson worked with her team to go out for bid and are making a recommendation for the sale 28 buses it will actually leave us still a hundred and just over 160 buses in our Fleet the plan next year right now is to run approximately 123 routes and so we will still have additional buses should we have some that have mechanical failure or accidents we'll have other buses in the fleet to utilize or if we had to have an increase in routes for whatever reason we would still have buses

134available um the determination to sell these 28 buses was based on um one the age of some of them and then the cost of some of these buses are a little bit more expensive to maintain than some of our others and so you'll see and hear the recommendation is to sell the 28 buses to Masters Transportation which is the highest bid for one million three hundred and seventy four thousand dollars that will allow us to pay off the remaining leases on that group of buses I'm netting and just over a million dollar profit or revenue for the district right now based on the sale of those buses discussion board question [Music] all those in favor say aye aye I was supposed to say no eyes have it more like a motion to approve the 23

13524 school year Grant funded Staffing as presented I'd like to make a motion to have this move to the next meeting so that we can get it resubmitted with Telehealth as a solution the way the grant was written there were three ways that this these These funds could be spent one number one was higher year-round one year Personnel second was contract in a package to an outside agency which I understand is cost prohibitive and the third is utilization of Telehealth which after being anal Medical Healthcare field many times it's a cost-effective way of handling Mental Health so what Telehealth also serves the purpose of not being limited to one person one building meaning you hire someone someone and if they're going to split their half time here and half time there Telehealth sales then more

136than one depending on the cost you could actually equip two or more buildings for the same cost that you could hire somebody for 100 I mean the grant was for 157 000 it might be more cost effective to put it in a Telehealth service a second the motion detail discussion board is that going to cause a problem the problem would only be that if we were to move forward with posting a position we're losing another month at a time in the year when it's a competitive market for hiring staff um Lord Telehealth is an opportunity to provide mental health supports to our students and we believe that there is potentially a time and a place to do that we were not utilizing these Grant funds though to provide um an emotional support counselor or actual

137licensed Mental Health Services we were utilizing the funds to provide a school counselor which is a bit different and so in this case we were utilizing the funds to provide a rule um Dance One counselor and has an enrollment of just over 400 students and so looking at providing them an additional school counselor that while they do do some one-on-one individual work with students that could be mental health related they also do a lot of whole classroom lessons they sit on the care team within the school um work directly with parents and with a variety of students in a way that the Telehealth um option we didn't feel was the appropriate option in this specific one of the concerns that was raised in some of the questions that were asked was that this is a

138grant funded position and so to bring in a school counselor for one year what happens the following year and we were clear when we wrote the grants and working with Daniel Boone Elementary and with you that it is a one-year position and so if the direction of the board is that next year we have a status quo Staffing plan meaning we're not adding additional staff then we would have to determine is there another position we could remove from our staffing plan in order to maintain this counseling position or would we eliminate the counseling position that that's why they didn't choose to go with Telehealth here it was specifically because it was a counseling position emotional support counselor when the grant was written was it written with the under the specifics that we were asking for

139a counselor and an additional counselor because I know sometimes you can write a grant that'll give you more what you're using it for but is with it specifically for getting additional resources in people versus a Telehealth yes director stinklage the the grant was written by Dr Patterson who saw the need for us to have that guidance counselor at Daniel Boone so as Dr Rupp has mentioned the department of Elementary and secondary education is suggesting a ratio of one counselor to every 250 students Daniel Boone is a small school but it has 404 students that is projected for their enrollment and we have one counselor there and that one counselor does all the preventative curriculum work in our classrooms they meet with small groups so you can imagine five kindergartners coming off from recess and having

140some sort of a problem together they sit down with that counselor they work through that problem and one counselor for 404 students is difficult we have not had the resources in our staffing plan to meet the needs of our counseling staff it would take approximately seven additional counselors in our district to meet the msip6 requirements that are coming and so Dr Patterson looked for alternative resources and worked really hard to find some additional funding that might be available to provide that counselor to Daniel Boone since our staffing plan wasn't able to do that so that was really the specific need we also are hopeful to add an ESC to Hollenbeck or Francis Howell North depending on the fund so we know that the district resources can't provide for those positions but if the grant can

141that's why we're stair stepping the postings making sure that we don't overspend with that grant money each of those positions would be one year only positions so this is just for our guidance counselor a counselor at Daniel Daniel for now and then if there's money then you could you bring it back to us then and say we have some additional monies left we would like to go with in the ESC I mean I with that maybe the recommendation is written for potentially using esc's at the to the Middle School in the high school and I think for those positions based on the funding that's available exploring Telehealth or other options could be something you would consider it's all it's also in my opinion when we think about serving kindergarten through fifth grade students versus some

142of our secondary centers what's confusing to me is it mentions uh built a few buildings where needs are high it doesn't State what those needs are it then goes on to explain the American Academy of Pediatrics American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children's Hospital Association of joined together to declare a national state of emergency and Children's Mental Health so I'm confused now because it seems to me we're we're looking to address mental health issues because of the very next paragraph it says to address student mental health challenges allocated more than 19 million I'll ask Dr Patterson who who wrote the grants to answer some of the questions that you so Telehealth there is a time and place for that I don't believe and we don't believe that this is the way to

143accomplish meeting kids needs young children don't form relationships through a screen as easily as they do when they're working directly with someone it may work for many people and in other areas it's given as an option in Missouri and they put that in there because in places where they don't have access to licensed counselors Telehealth is the only option and that's why I am it was in there as an option for much smaller areas we're trying to do that preventative work and then we have the two schools that we know the data um represents a need and so if there is money left we want to try to support those two schools with this grant money can you mention building a relation one-year position I mean what happens the next year if we don't have

144the money to continue this employment then possibly we're moving to the point where we may have to utilize Telehealth as a cost effective way of helping these kids I mean I don't know tell me I don't believe again that that is how we were looking at this funding we have esc's in every school and they are working very hard to support students with um social and emotional needs the school counselor position was to really do tier one because that school ratio is way too high and so that school counselor will allow much of the tier one work to be balanced between two counselors as Mrs Simpson said next year if there isn't money the grant money isn't going to be there then we would have to look and see if another position had to be

145removed to support that but I can tell you that Daniel Boone is willing to take support for one year to meet the needs of the students there even though they knew maybe it doesn't stay next year but we need a reprieve because one counselor is not able to effectively serve an entire School each year when we provide the Staffing plan to the Board of Education we asked for direction whether that's a status quo Staffing plan or if there is some resource to add Staffing or maybe we have to make Staffing reductions that is that has been different every year in a status quo Staffing plan the last couple of years enrollment shifts enrollment changes sometimes we're able to find a classroom teacher without significantly increasing the class sizes of that grade level and still be

146able to remove a teaching position from that grade level because of just how the enrollment shifts between buildings or classes and that's how we've been able to continue other positions like this from year to year this will allow us to provide that support for this year it gives us the opportunity to give extra help and support to a staff that needs it and to students that need it and one year of support and help is better than none they have been working very very hard to meet the needs of their kiddos and this will definitely provide them with that opportunity to for future proposals or requests like this it needs to be much more clear about what it is that you're after because to me was not clear at all it seemed to be more

147of a mental health issue than it did uh our school counselors do support mental health well of course they do but so their their title says something different and so this to me when I see American Academy of Pediatrics and child analysts and Psychiatry we're going after mental health issues and it's right here in the proposal that you need to address mental health challenges so if the request is for a support counselor an education support counselor then fine but if it's for an education support counselor that's going to deal only with mental health issues as as it was alluded to maybe not clearly in this proposal then I think we should table it Our intention is a guidance counselor that will do some of the tier one support will support the entire building we'll work

148with families and students and staff that is Our intention to post a guidance counselor position at Daniel Boone first we don't know uh what candidate we might find and and what salary that individual would have and so we can we can do that first if if we can if you want to amend the motion to allow us to fill that one position first and then we can work to do that and bring back the additional plans later if that would make you more comfortable that might be an opportunity to at least allow us to get that counselor position posted and and work to fill that for Daniel Boone during this during the Spring I'd like to amend the original Amendment and take off the table okay the first one we need a motion and for

149the initial motion get a first and second president yeah the original the Russian okay as presented promotion got it first and second so Brandy congratulations who was the second I'm sorry all right we have a motion I'm in the motion table the 2000 no find out or post the position and if there's money left over they can spend that money as it was presented you you would like to rescind your motion yes start to cook you can get her all right so we were sending the motion to amend the motion back to the main motion all right okay question on the main motion before we go any further um easy question I think uh yes sir the grant is for about 157 000 and it change right correct um hypothetically if a counselor is higher

150than a salary of say fifty thousand dollars because the grant just pay the fifty thousand or does it pay all the benefits and taxes above that it will pay all of that it will pay it will yes so that's why we're gonna post just one position first make sure we know where that individual will come on to the teacher salary schedule will work with the payroll department to really understand what the cost of retirement Medicare benefits all that great stuff are once we know what's left over we'll make a plan moving forward any other questions all right so we are voting on the motion to approve the 23-24 school year Grant funded Staffing as presented all those in favor say aye aye all those supposed to say no eyes haven't or like a motion to

151approve the 2023-24 fhea ESC closure document as presented a second delaying records some kids thank you president Bertrand just wanted to say a quick thank you to the teams who participated in the negotiations with our eses so much of the language work was done electronically and our very quick meeting was to verify the language it was very positive it was very collaborative and we just want to say that the administrative team here appreciates very much the work that our escs do every single day to support our students and our families who are in crisis we are very happy that we could collaborate on this agreement and improve the working conditions of our escs and make them very positive we utilize the teacher salary schedule as compensation for this employee group so that schedule was already

152a previously approved by the Board of Education and so what you're seeing here today is the rest of the closure agreement which is the language so Administration recommends approval of the document questions or comments for all those in favor say aye aye aye I was supposed to say no eyes have it now take a break short break to sign our license well anyways um [Music] thank you environment [Music] foreign attention all right we'll call the meeting back to order we're almost done next up we have superintendent comments [Music] fresh the stare board I do want to take a moment and thank Dr Buckman and her team and especially Dr Lorton for their hard work on that math recommendation I think Dr Buckman shared this but you know almost two years of hard work went in

153with a lot of staff and teachers working through that entire process people who live and work breed that work each and every day and contributed to that recommendation and while the vote didn't go as we had hoped curriculum adoption and the purchase of materials that allow us to then provide high quality instruction to meet those curriculum objectives is a significant part of our work and we need to have your support in making those recommendations so we do look forward to this being an opportunity to help you understand our processes and what we do to make those recommendations and to hear your concerns and suggestions for how we can improve that because ultimately we do need your support is moved forward with all of that but again the team did a lot of hard work and

154like I said even though it's it's not where we're we hoped I want to acknowledge that a network some celebrations earlier this month we hosted our third senior Pals event which several of you came and joined and got to hear from citizens with us I want to thank Sodexo who is our district food service provider they donated all the supplies and things for that evening it was the second year for the Middle School Cupcake Wars where four of our middle schools came and competed in a competition um a bake off of sorts with cupcakes and hollandbeck's team took home the trophy a little bit different about this Pals event was that rather than just us sharing information with the people who were there we did a small Roundtable version where we had a couple questions

155and wanted to hear from those participants what do they feel that we're doing well in the district what opportunities do we have for an improvement and it was great that nearly half of the people who attended were first-time participants and also several residents who do not have children have not had children in our just Community residents that wanted to better understand more about the district and that really is our goal our Communications Department has done a great job this year planning those and our excited to expand them next year including a senior prom which we announced so more information to come whether you were a parent of a student in the district a taxpayer with school-aged children or a member of our staff we know that you have a vested interest in the district and

156its success to get some of that feedback we did send out last week our annual stakeholder survey that is active and will be available through next Friday the 26th it's an opportunity for stakeholders to provide Anonymous feedback to the district that we will utilize at a board meeting later this summer I will share the feedback from that survey as well as some of the action steps that we are taking taking directly aligned to that it's hard to believe that we are just about ready for summer our seniors have only three days of school left and three days after that we will say goodbye to the rest of our students for the summer our five high schools are preparing for graduation ceremonies then that following week um parents because we're already getting the questions you can't

157anticipate getting school supply lists mid-summer and we will be excited to welcome all of our students back on August 21st I want to take an opportunity to once again congratulate our 2023 howl of Fame award winners this year we received almost 100 nominations for that prestigious award and we recognize 10 outstanding individuals and organizations on Monday night of this week at that event we also recognize our district teacher of the year support staff member of the year as well as the building winners for each of those awards from all 23 of our sites and we will celebrate our retirees next Monday evening at moment for the art lovers in our district right now we are holding our virtual art show this is the second year in the road that it has been done virtually we

158have artwork from elementary students at Becky David Central Fairmont Harvest Ridge Henderson Independence John Weldon and Warren if you'd like to see some of that artwork you can go to our district website or to any of our social media channels and there's a link that will take you to the online gallery and the last thing was mentioned a couple times tonight but we hosted in our annual Project Lead the Way senior showcase here on Tuesday of this week it was a huge success and there were a lot of volunteers and staff who planned it and then there were also several of you and others who served as judges and provided feedback to some of the student work at that event and again it highlights and like you saw a little bit earlier this evening during

159recognition the amazing work and talent of our students and how well prepared they are those choosing to enter college or go to college and those choosing to enter the workforce directly here from this hour last while we'll say goodbye to our students and teachers a week from now you know I want to take this time also again we have over 2 000 employees who support our students our teachers in the classrooms our support staff members bus drivers monitors administrators who support not only our students every single day but our entire community in many regards this has been a very successful year and we look forward to next year and so this is our last board meeting while we have students in sessions I want to wish our student our students and families a safe and

160happy summer and we'll see everybody on June 1st right it's me thank you Lord accounts oh yeah you know me I've got always got a couple so here we go first of all I would like to um I don't know if any of you guys had a chance to go to the build St Louis Workshop Out In The Family Arena I was so impressed with Katie Vargas and her team again what she does for our kids over and over and over again needs to be commended um and I think the best part of that evening was at the next day when I went she told me that they had finally opened it up to parents the night before and she said well they only had a hundred parents there that came in to look at

161it or you know community members half of them were kids who brought their kids back so that they could show them what they were interested in and if that doesn't say that that was a success I don't know what was so thank you Katie thank you for everything that you do [Applause] again over and over and over again for our kids I would also like to thank and build on Dr rampas and thank our hard-working teachers our hard-working support staff everybody wishing them a very very healthy healthy healthy summer and you know that's the nurse in me but then go ahead and do what you need to do to get relaxed so that's that's the The Devil in Me Okay so with that being said um I would like to let everybody know that I

162appreciate the conversation we had tonight um I do agree that as a board here we're not always going to agree on everything so I really hope that we can continue these discussions over and over and over again and the bottom line is we're doing what we need to do for kids Art District because I'm gonna start to cry but I'm gonna say it anyway um Francis Howell is a great place to be and we are so lucky to be a part of it so let's not ever ever forget that and last but not least thank you Robbie for joining us tonight I always have a pleasure talking to the kids and now it's your turn I was much more energetic when I wrote this so if I sound dead that's why so it is pre-written

163um knowing that most of us probably want to go home soon I'm going to try to keep this as brief as possible I'd like to first thank the boy for having me as their student represented this month I firmly believe that listening to students is the best way to make decisions that benefit not just the staff in the community but the students themselves I wish I'd been able to input a little bit more but honestly I had no clue we were talking about most of the time it was all money related I don't do money um each and every board member here has dedicated not only their effort and their resources but most importantly their time namely two and a half hours uh to ensure that the students we have everything we need to succeed

164with this I want to thank all of you so as I mentioned in the beginning my path throughout high school has been a little bit atypical and I think it's only fair that I name a few of the things and people that have you know made me the person I am today firstly I would have to thank my high school First Health Central for my three years here central has offered me nothing but warmth in the opportunity to grow as a student and a human being this school has supported me in every Endeavor and for that I am forever grateful this was this whole story with Dr o'now and now I have you know Dr Lee Dr downs and Dr Romero Central truly has some of the finest administrators you will ever meet it has

165become crystal clear in my time that when a high school cares about what happens to their students the students care about what happened to themselves if there's truly one thing I hope you walk away with tonight it's this if you're looking for a high school Done Right Francis House Central is your high school however the one thing that's impacted me even more in my school would be a staff and it'd be impossible to name every single person but I want to highlight three very important people to me folks would be missed base my speech and debate coach when I start crying soon adds up um thank you for showing me that the only limits I have are the ones that I put on myself and that hope is the only thing I need to shatter

166my own limits thank you you came prepared Debbie my beloved math teacher and my biggest cheerleader thank you for thank you for always having my back and for going above and beyond for every single one of your students I will thank you for showing me that I will never have it thank you for showing me that although I will never be prepared for everything that life throws at me I will always have the tools necessary to find my way out and thank you for loving your students loving what you do and loving everything about life most importantly thank you for showing me that hard does not equal impossible because calculus is very hard and finally Mr read my admin teacher thank you for laughing at my dumb little jokes and letting me hang out in

167your room while I was waiting to go home thank you for listening to not just my song recommendations but for listening to my story as well thank you for showing me that I will change the world just as the world will change me thank you for always offering me a home inside of your classroom in a place that's always free of judgment thank you for teaching me that my home can be anywhere I want to be and the only person who's going to live my life is me most importantly thank you for teaching me that thank you for always being on thank you for being always on my side and for showing me that no matter where the world takes me these next few years as long as you're still here I'm never alone on

168the list night is about to end in this chapter of my life will soon close I know that this is truly just the beginning this district has watched me grow up and has offered me a immeasurable lots of love and for this reason the Francis Hall School District will always hold a really special place in my heart thank you [Applause] I'd like to name this Miss Katie Vargas night because my head is off to her I not only went to the build my future I went to the Project Lead the Way presentation here a couple days ago I was totally in awe of what these kids have done with the projects uh the many projects biomedical and also engineering Feats just it's it's amazing if I I told I think I told Katie that if

169I had had myself that together at that age Heaven only knows where I would have ended up but because I see such a big bright future for those kids so my head's off to Katie for the all of the work and and helping to be helping these kids figure out what it is that they want to do with the rest of their lives good job [Applause] all right before we adjourn and just like to take all of our teachers um just like many people here for all your hard work all year and wrapping up in the next six days and hopefully the students don't drive you nuts too bad as they look forward to Summer and then all of our teachers and administrators that are moving on to summer school to spend some of their

170summer with more students really appreciate all your hard work I'm bored I would like emotion the meeting all those in favor say aye aye thank you very much