Board of Education Meeting - March 16, 2023 (Louder Audio)

001get started this evening I would like to request a moment of silence for Francis Hall North student who has passed away earlier this month and now we will call this meeting to order with the Pledge of Allegiance forward I would like a motion to improve the agenda for March 16 2023 as presented Mr Lang um distinguish almost in favor say aye aye any opposed say no motion carries Miss Jones it is now your turn Phil thank you Mrs Lange we have three recognitions this evening first up we'd like to recognize one of our elementary schools I'm thrilled to announce that Independence Elementary is among 13 schools in Missouri and only six elementary schools in the state to be named a 2023 State School of character criteria for selection are based on character.org's 11 principle framework

002for schools the framework includes key indicators on creating a caring School Community where everyone feels they belong providing students with opportunities to practice and reflect on their character's strengths and engaging families and communities as partners in the school's character initiative this is actually the third time Independence has earned this honor as the designation expires after five years and must be earned again only 73 schools in the nation earned a state school of character title this year and all are eligible to apply for the national school of character designation I believe principal Pavia and her team have started that process already and will find out in May if Independence is selected for the National Honor please help me recognize miss Emily Pavia and the entire Independence Elementary School community [Applause] congratulations all right next we'd like

003to highlight how the work in one of our Elementary classrooms is making its way to Jefferson City Ariana Walker is a fourth grade student at Fairmount Elementary School who recently learned that her artwork will hang in the Missouri state capitol for a full year her artwork was selected by Saint Charles County Senator Bill eigel to represent District district 23 in the Senate Art Exhibit Ariana and her art teacher Dr sterk who submitted the artwork for consideration will attend a ceremony in the Capitol building's rotunda next week this time I'd like to invite Dr Sherry Oliver Fairmont Elementary School principal to the podium to tell us more about Ariana Ariana is the quintessential perfect student as Dr sterk describes her Mr Burrows says the same thing she scores perfect on her map test perfect attendance a

004little shy but she is a dedicated and persistent student who follows through with the same Integrity from start to finish she sets a good example for other students as a role model in kindness and responsibility her Affinity of horses comes through in many of her art pieces and if you look closely you can always see that little Easter egg of a horseshoe or a horse and all of her work she's not only a talented artist but an amazing friend a stellar student and one of our role models for the entire School we're extremely fortunate that her little sister just joined us for kindergarten so the family I mean they've paved the way she's representing Fairmount not only in Jefferson City but also Francis hell with another project that will be on display at the Lillian

005Yang Art Gallery starting during spring break until mid-april I'd also like to recognize Dr sterk in her art program she's established an amazing program where she has been at Fairmount for several years Ariana is her fourth student that's been honored at Jefferson City her first student was a kindergartner that came in second at the state so Dr Stark and her amazing art program we are very proud to have both the family and Dr Stark as members of our Fairmount Falcon family congratulations Ariana thank you [Applause] thank you all right and for our final recognition this evening we'd like to recognize you our Board of Education the Missouri School Board Association has declared the entire month of March as school board recognition month and so tonight we celebrate you for the time and dedication you give

006to our schools and Community you give so freely of your time and talents in a purely volunteer capacity and I know for many of you your board responsibilities often require the same time and attention as a full-time job we've left some left some small tokens of appreciation at your seats this evening and the color for colorful papers you see here on the front of the diocese were written by Warren elementary students so those are going to go home with you tonight got some nice notes there and then I hope you and our guests tonight also have a moment to check out the artwork hanging in the hallway just outside this room our students at Cosley Elementary wanted to share their own notes of appreciation with you for all you do so let's give our Board

007of Education a round of applause foreign board representative this month is from Francis Howell middle school and here to introduce her as assistant principal Mrs Kelly Longo Arya Pelican is the perfect candidate to represent Francis Howell Middle School at tonight's board meeting when we asked her teachers some for some feedback about her they were the kind words just kept coming Arya is a mature student who takes her academics very seriously she is kind to her classmates an unbelievably hard worker most of all in class she can listen to a variety of opinions even those with whom she disagrees and she still remains kind and polite but steadfast in her own opinions and on top of it all is able to educate others to feel the same way as her that is why she is the

008best candidate for tonight's board meeting thank you welcome Miss Arya feel free to comment at any time Miss Janet over there we'll help you get settled in um the only thing you're not allowed to do is vote so welcome all right now I will turn it over to the district's College and Career specialist Miss Katie Vargas who will present our best practice session and tell you about some amazing opportunities for our high school students good evening thank you for having me and tonight I will be sharing a bit um about the programming called Gateway Global American and youth business Alliance academies and a partnership we've established with them um we are very fortunate to have them in our St Louis area they are unique and one of a kind you'll soon understand why as well

009as I'll give a brief description of a program that our a handful of our students have participated in and what they have gleaned from that experience so what is Gateway Global it is a non-profit stem-based Workforce Development organization it is again literally one of its kind one of the kind it's really the only non-profit Sim based geo-int program that is working with high school age students in the nation not just the state but in the nation I mean it is right here in the backyard of St Louis it focuses on Pathways that are related to critical infrastructure so it reaches the training reaches a variety of Industries including the Department of Defense as well as our AG science Industries and so many more and essentially what the program offers at the base level which is

010what our students have participated in is the science behind identifying areas and objects through satellite satellite imaging so to give you a a quick example of what that might mean in the Department of Defense area for example we have just currently was speaking with my brother-in-law who works for one of the military branches as a civilian in their meteorology department and he was on the ground not too long ago with soldiers in the Ukraine establishing what types of problems they have in the solutions that weather can help them fix and one of them was figuring out soil the the dense give soil so that they can move tanks and when to know to move tanks and our Geo in Specialists do that our students just recently finished the program now have the capability of identifying

011through satellite imaging not only what that land in the Ukraine would look like but then also all of the context that they need to make sure that our military people are safe and doing what they need to do with the tools that they have and so the program itself also um lends itself to additional training so it's it's an industry recognized credentialing program which basically means that uh students that participate in this program have the opportunity to move on to our department of labor recognize apprenticeship program in this space as well as stack credentials on top of it the you'll see on the slide here a list of the programs that this Gateway Global provides or will be providing in the near future our students specifically have participated in the geospatial OR geoent technician program

012so why Gateway Global well it is an industry that is hard hit from two different sides we have a growing demand for geo spatial intelligence capabilities and kit people who are skilled in that area and it is a Workforce that is um is aging we just our partners here in St Louis the National geospatial Intelligence Agency they're knocking on Gateway Global store to hire these technicians because the people in this industry are retiring and we don't have a labor force to replace them so there is a demand it also is another great opportunity that offers post high school training and education that is um that is not a four-year degree so it's just another great training opportunity for students who might want to pursue a more direct Workforce based learning experience we have several sponsors

013in our area and you can see them as well so it is a gateway Global is a heavily supported program in our area specifically and um we again will continue to partner with them in growing the additional programming providing students hopefully creating a pipeline for them for the additional program programming they will be offering so what is the program what does it look like are students currently that have better finished I'll talk to I'll talk to you about them in a minute here um they uh the first cohort last semester completed within um 12 weeks a small group virtual instruction opportunity um and it was two hours every evening Monday through Friday and through a grant provided by the state to Gateway Global they were able to pay them an hourly wage while they were

014learning to get certified in geo-int technician so paid to to to get certified to earn more money I think that's a pretty pretty good gig they were working primarily on data mapping and 21st Workforce skill development so in addition to the actual technical skill the program really focuses heavily on those 21st century Workforce skills and when they complete that um credential they also have the opportunity then to stack that and become a geospatial analyst and then further on down the line they even have the option again to enter right into the Department of Defense um I'm sorry the Department of Labor recognized apprenticeship program and we have four-year universities that also offer an extension if a student wanted to pursue a four-year degree right out the gate if a student graduated in May from our

015from our district with this credential they could get hired the next week by let's say the NGA and earn a minimum of forty five thousand dollars a year so here are some highlights of the students that completed the the program last semester so student one was from Howell Central passed the course with flying colors and the accreditation accreditation exam which I understand is extremely difficult um passed with a 70 percent we have student two from Howell Central as well who did very well and also um was part of the capital campaign so Gateway Global is going literally to Washington DC the CEO to campaign for more funds and to grow the program and he was part of that effort and plans to intern with them this Summer and then student three um Savannah from Howell

016north um actually just finished an internship with them after her conclusion of the program and here are just some brief highlights from the students Connor says in college I'd like to major in computer science so learning about GIS was in line with my interest in technology as a student athlete I had to refine my time management skills by prioritizing my work to ensure I could make time to attend this class get all my homework done and still have time to practice my sports as a senior I use this opportunity to learn something new and validate my future career options being accepted in the program was a true honor and Savannah says the training was very enjoyable uh it did a great job at not only being informative but also interesting it answered a lot of

017questions that people may have but not normally find the answer to such as how do satellites take in data how can you differentiate the wavelength of vegetation versus water I don't know about you but I've always wondered that how do how do pixels work how is this technology created how do you interpret topographic maps the training not only answers the questions I had but also encouraged me to come up with questions I didn't have before and Savannah just again finished an internship with Gateway Global in partnership with lawmire Sculpture Park right here in the area completing a real solving a real world problem Savannah plans on going on to computer science herself and is Uber Smart in that space and hopes to combine her computer science knowledge with her certification a parent I just surveyed

018because I wanted to know what parents thought of this we do currently have two students in this cohort they're both Howell High students they're doing amazing as you can see and one of the parents of one of the students says that she also is very impressed with what she's hearing as she's walking past her kiddo when he's in class so looking ahead we just really want to continue with recruiting efforts we'd love to expand the program including High School Credit articulation that will require some funding we will need ftes to staff those rooms to allow students to not be taking it in the evening and earning the money but actually taking it during the school day if they'd wish and earn high school credit and it also we're hoping um we're just we were wanting

019to connect participating students with the NGA specifically since it is right in our backyard and they have some exciting internship opportunities coming down the pike so we'd really like to take advantage of those if you have any questions report any comments or questions I have one yes ma'am what exactly does this program entail like to participate in it what do you have to do and what is the course yeah that's a great question so they participate um over about three month time span and these kiddos go to school all day and they come home and as you heard from Connor they have to balance their workload and their their part-time jobs or their Sports and they take two hours a night online real time uh instruction with an instructor to learn all about satellites and

020data mapping and how using those skills can solve real world problems I just want to say uh anytime you're paid to learn it's a good thing agreed agreed my only question is you had mentioned that you know if you would get the partnership to have it within the high school and we would need ftes is there any grant money that might be available with NGA through the partnership with them to see if we could make that happen yeah um there are some pretty powerful significant Partnerships that are looking for these technicians so I would say it's never off the table um the only concern I would have is that I wouldn't necessarily as much as I love the NGA I wouldn't want to be um committed if you will to one particular industry and by

021promising our students to go into that industry because I just think ultimately that limits students they can use what they want they can use this technician certificate however they want in a variety of Industries you're welcome anything else born thank you thank you very much okay next up we have Patron comments during Patron comments residents of the district and staff members are invited to address the board of education on issues related to the school district speakers are called forward in 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 permitting the board appreciates that you have taken the time to come this evening and

022we value both your input and perspective I would like to remind everyone that we expect the speakers will remain civil and respectful when giving remarks if anyone fails to comply with board policies regulations and paroles will reserve the right to cut those three minutes short for your convenience our three-minute clock is ready and we welcome Tom Ferry to step forward all right hey good evening board um and everyone in the community who is present and watching online uh before I get into my remarks um I really want to express my heartfelt appreciation to directors Lang Lang and um ziggemeyer for all your dedication and service to the community we really will miss you guys and appreciate it Doug we'll see you next time that's fine um but uh but really appreciate your your dedication to

023our kids to our district and to our community so thank you very much tonight I want to re-emphasize really just how well Francis Howell did on the last map scores are on the map test this was highlighted a couple months ago in our board meeting and uh I think it really uh it needs to be repeated so that folks understand just how well the district is doing overall coming out of covid uh the district performed the best in the county in most of the subjects in most of the grades I mean that's a tremendous tremendous feat and we really can think our teachers and staff for this Monumental Improvement they are really nailing the basics it's not only the basics that they're nailing it's the extras too just in my own family with my wife

024being a teacher here and my kids being at Becky David I've seen teachers subbing on their plan times dedicating their evening to A literacy night to get kids a love of reading making positive phone calls home after a long long week and you know getting getting parents and teachers excited about that about how well their kids are doing in class spending time picking a perfect book to help a struggling reader and hosting an unpaid after school clubs complete with lasagna our teachers are putting in their heart and soul into the district I cannot adequately express my appreciation for them but they're really running on empty our teachers and staff have a deeply personal relationship with the district and the community like with any relationship if there's mutual respect and support the relationship will flourish teachers

025and staff are bearing an emotional burden of this relationship and doing everything they can to keep it intact we as a community and as uh as board members we need to make sure we're matching their efforts and shouldering some of their emotional burden if we don't they will leave the relationship and in fact many already have and many continue to do so if uh Fort Zumwalt Wentzville Pattonville Parkway they are all knocking on our doors and they're all bringing gifts in the form of much higher salary schedules looking to steal away our teachers and staff so how do we rebalance this relationship I can tell you firsthand Harry Harris Amy Sterling and Doug ziegemeyer are ready to and eager to step up and shoulder some of this burden they recognize the emphasis on the basics

026and they need to continue and the need to continue with the extras so this April let's show teachers and staff and students how we are recommitting our support to the district and our teachers and staff we can do this by coming together as a community and electing Harry Amy and Doug thank you [Applause] next up we have Donnie May good evening Francis Al Borden Administration my name is Donnie May unlike most the other speakers tonight I'm coming to you not as a board candidate or PAC but instead as a regular District parent who wants the best for his Children's School District tonight I'd like to talk about a couple of recent conversations I had with two different district teachers while canvassing for the upcoming School Board election I felt these conversations were honest heartfelt and

027very informative I promised both teachers that we silent parents need to do a better job of being more vocal and advocating in support of the district's teachers there was nothing groundbreaking in our conversation and I told both teachers I would forward their concerns to the candidates I hope if either of you are listening tonight you understand how serious I took our conversation in and tonight I'm here to advocate for both of you both teachers expressed they wish they had more support from this board specifically this means actual salary and benefits as opposed to social media shares virtue signaling thanks on Thursday Facebook posts do not pay their mortgages I won't rehash the process overruns but board your last your lack of fiscal oversight and responsibility the past few years has greatly harmed any future school

028board's ability to ask the public for a future tax levy to address these salary concerns I'm a fiscal conservative and also want the district's teachers and staff to be among the best paid in the region this means I expect District board members treat public tax dollars like it's their own money the first step in this process of addressing the teacher's salaries is accountability and I'm doing my part to make sure we'll see this accountability on April the 4th second I ask each and every one of you board members and future board members to visit the schools both teachers stated they desired board members to meet with the teachers on the front lines not just School administrators or teachers union Representatives administrators are further removed from the teaching front lines and these teachers would love the

029opportunity to have honest conversations and express concerns directly to the board members to conclude I also have one request to the upcoming new school board I'd like to see the new school board use their position and influence to push School administrators and teachers to open up and get more parents back into the schools this increased involvement lets parents build in-person relationships with their children's teachers and school administrators I've noticed my daughter's school has taken steps to restart parental involvement activities but I'd like to see the district go all in on the idea including better communication and marketing of these events I would like to see schools offer more after school parental activities so we dual income working parents can also attend school activities during the evening hours as most of us do not have the

030luxury or ability to take off time during school hours a valid concern was expressed that teachers are not compensated for these after school activities so that would have to be addressed with any increase in after school activities as always thank you for your time your time is up next up it says and flood but it might be Andrew uh hi guys uh first I'd like to start the Dr rompes for meeting with me this week I had a great time talking about our mental health initiatives I'm trying to push I think we had a really great and positive conversation I feel like both sides of the aisle do a really good job of understanding that we need mental health and the advocacy behind making it a top-down kind of disciplinary system to tie with your

031mental health why I'm standing before you today is because I want to talk to you about a few Solutions and a few proactive strategies to try and generate Revenue within your district and I'd first like to talk to progressives because I really really want to use the 29th to talk about how we can generate revenue for our district and I have been a huge advocate for school choice what it will do will bring kids to our district that will help bring taxpayer money to generate Revenue I want the after school activities I want teachers to get increased pay but we can't pay them with no money and if you attended last month's school board meeting we have no money so we have to find ways to generate that and I'm asking that you guys do

032do your research do a little bit of digging into what school choice is and understand that other states have combined with Progressive candidates and Progressive side to find Middle Ground within school choice to make it work Kansas and Illinois both have school choice and they can use it and they combine to find a middle ground for what's best for schools because at the end of the day that's what we need to do we have to do what's best for our schools our teachers our board and our Administration all of those have to be addressed and I can we all can through school choice on the other side of the room we have to stop attacking the district we cannot fix it with lawsuits we cannot fix it to call for State audits that will cost

033the taxpayer money money and drain more money from our funds when you attack the school district you do not bring it up and we have to do that we we did an internal investigation with our money please listen to it today and don't use your taxpayer money to waste time trying to figure out what they're going to tell you today it's important also to realize as a Republican and any Francis Howe family person listening right now that the reason you are in this situation is because of the old predecessors and the CFO position and the superintendent position they treated it like a business and they made cuts to it without this board's knowledge because they treated it like a business and I need you all to realize if a teacher is in that position a

034teacher wouldn't have made cuts to building security and after school activities I can 100 assure you that realize who you're voting for and do your research your time is up thank you next up we have Grayson Justice do it I just want to give you a cookie for that hi my name is Grayson Justice my pronouns is he and she um I'm also alumni of Francis Howell School District of Princeton Central of 2013. I wonder if it's inappropriate if someone who supports one of the candidates for school board asked that candidate's Pastor about his or her Christian beliefs why is that so important for someone who is running for school board is it because they really care about the community of the district whether they're black white gay trans straight and yet you find their

035Christians beliefs questioning it's because it's none of your business what if someone who is Jewish Muslim Buddhist or heck atheist was running for school board are you going to question their beliefs School Board shouldn't be a one party or one mindset to have that same opinion it should be a group of people with different opinions that that people agree or disagree and it shouldn't be doing a group even though we have two board members here who already joined that quote like group that says they don't tag attack on candidates posts which they do constantly they should listen to all groups this school election should be important for anyone who wants their child to be represented from books games and plays in school musicals instead of being told to set up they should be this or

036that not that or get good grades so we can be number one if Francis Howell wants to be number one in the county we need to ask why are the students are like this so we can care for their well-being physically and mentally that's how we can be number one the fact that is more people that have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason that that my friends that is to perversion Harvey Milk thank you [Applause] next up we have Lee windmiller good evening all uh tonight I would like to start with a quick story about a little girl who was once seven years old and in second grade uh she has Honey brown eyes uh dark brown hair that falls through her shoulders and Olive tone skin uh

037her smile was one where her eyes would light up as well it's like they were trying to smiles too um if it were possible she would spend her entire day in a book as long as it wasn't a math book one day at school this little girl and her classmates were talking about families and Heritage uh she proudly talked about her grandmother who was born and raised in South Korea um those feelings of Pride quickly turn to confusion and doubt when her fellow classmates told her that she was less American due to her Korean heritage um fast forward a few years when a pandemic Rocks Our World and uh this little girl is being uh you know in middle school and she's trying to keep up with everything Middle School you remember those days you

038remember what it was like okay uh her eyes aren't as bright and a lot of days she doesn't smile um there are times at school where she hears racial slurs she has told things like she brought the China virus to Missouri a few months into our eighth grade year uh her bedroom window is egged and her parents cars are keyed and one is has tomato sauce poured all over it uh to say she has suffered emotionally during this time is a large understatement the really sad fact is this her story is not a unique one it happens to many kids okay it's also important to say that her two white siblings have not experienced any of this we look at the world around us and it's no wonder why children are being bullied for their

039identities at school just a quick search on Facebook and you'll see current School Board candidates being harassed and bullied by a group that claimed to represent families of Francis Howell I want to know what families because it's not mine and it's not a lot of the ones that I've met I have shared a glimpse of my oldest daughter's story Lexi is now a freshman in high school with big plans to apply for her driver's permit get a summer job and try out for the girls wrestling team in the fall her smile and the light in her eyes are slowly coming back to us we have so many teachers and staff to thank for that Mrs olfi Miss Williams Miss Harding so many just those are just to name a few thank you from the bottom

040of our hearts I want to end this with a bit of urgency please back Harry Harris Amy easterling an incumbent Doug ziegelmeyer and express their plans for uh to keep politics out of uh education they need to pass a much-needed tax levy and provide us for the rapidly growing district for All Families thank you [Applause] next up next up we have Zoe Abraham hello thank you for letting me speak today my name is Zoe and I'm a straight A student and Senior at Francis Howell High School I am very excited to be graduating in a few months I also hate presenting uh you ask any of my teachers from as far back as elementary school and they say things like she's a good student but she like does not talk at all I was very

041scared to get up and speak today and honestly I still am however there are some things that I feel strongly about that I want to advocate for mainly the inclusion of black history and black literature courses offered at our district I have taken both and have heard that there are many questions regarding what happens in these classes and hopefully I will be able to answer some of them for you I took black history first semester this year and I can honestly say it's one of the most interesting history classes I've ever taken did you know that before Rosa Parks did her famous bus boycott a 15 year old girl named Claudette Colvin did the same thing did you know that Songhai was one of the largest and most powerful African empires in history did you

042know that on most Maps Africa is portrayed three times smaller than it actually is we learned about the protests in Selma Alabama we learned about the Black Wall Street in the Tulsa Race Massacre we learned how African tribe leaders are forced to give up their own people to slavery under threat of being taken as slaves themselves none of this was covered in any of my other history classes there is strength and power in this history there is an importance and a lesson to it that we don't get to cover in our required classes it is heavy and emotional but I feel that it's deserving of just as much respect and admiration as our other history courses right now I'm taking black literature uh it has been one of the most life-changing classes and I really

043it really forces me to reflect on myself the unit we're in right now discusses the concept of Windows and mirrors to clarify mirror books are books that you see yourself in that reflect your own experiences and window books are those that show you something different uh the book I chose for this project is the hate U give I would highly recommend reading it to anyone who hasn't yet it has really made me reconsider what I know and helps me understand the people around me we've also talked about word choice in the history culture and stigma around certain words this class is about inclusivity it gives students a space to come as they are and learn to ask the hard questions and have those difficult discussions that we need to address but don't I will stress

044that I have never felt uncomfortable or criticized in either of these classrooms these are safe spaces for everyone they're for the purpose of learning and understanding I don't feel indoctrinated and I don't feel pressured we go to school to equip ourselves with Knowledge and Skills to form our own opinions in the future and to give us power to understand others to anyone who thinks the students of this District don't understand these complex issues we do to anyone who thinks we aren't watching the behaviors of adults in our community we are I will advocate for black history and black literature courses at Francis Howell and the opportunity to learn if we want to understand and grow as people thank you your time is up foreign [Applause] next up we have Beth Abraham good evening yeah she's

045mine I'm a proud parent and Francis Howell School District knowing that the election for the open board seats is just around the corner I've been reflecting on how much impact the voices of the community at large should have on our school district our tax dollars help fund the schools so we definitely should have some input however should these stakeholders have the biggest influence on school policies and procedures should you as a board rely on the opinions and biases of groups and individuals within the community to make decisions that's a tougher question I thought about it this way if I have a sore tooth I'm a post on social media to find some information perhaps a local dentist people who have had similar conditions Etc but in the end I am not a dentist nor are

046they I need to go to the person who is the expert the actual dentist for clear and accurate information I encourage current and future board members if you aren't already doing so to put a heavier value on the inputs of the experts within Francis Health School District when it comes to making decisions that impact that very group we have an incredibly deep bench of District employees when it comes to expertise be it in curriculum development Behavioral Sciences literary resources you name it again not that as a community member I don't want to have an opinion but in the end that's all it is is an opinion I am not an expert in these areas and even if I was I don't see the ups and downs of students and the struggles and the struggles our

047teachers face every day District employees do let's not leave out that biggest group of stakeholders that has almost no voice the students I have with me tonight a copy of the most recent issue of Spotlight which is the Francis Howell High newspaper with one issue and one issue there are four separate articles addressing some of the very topics we hear covered at these board meetings some of the headlines include Howell continues to support diversity don't say gay and Missouri courts Titan women's dress codes the last article I mentioned contains this quote it says legislators are supposed to enact the will of the people we must decide what is important and What needs to change in order to ensure the safety of the public while maintaining freedom put in our context board members are supposed to

048support the education of students they must decide what is important and what isn't they must ensure the development of the students into strong citizens while maintaining their freedoms in the end I ask you do as any good leader would do don't rely on opinion trust the experience of those who do the job to give you the best insight thank you next up we have Amy easterling good evening board staff and patrons my name is Amy easterling and I am running for a seat on the Francis Howell Board of Education the last few months have been incredibly busy but also incredibly rewarding I've had many great conversations with parents and community members and these interactions have helped me solidify my vision for this school Community First of all we are a community we might not agree

049on everything but I wholeheartedly believe that we all love our children and our grandchildren and that we have their best interest in mind even when we come at that in different ways we do have common ground my vision for this community is that we will come together for the benefit of our students we will set aside partisan agendas and instead focus on what our students teachers and staff here in this District need from us there will be a seat at our table for anyone who is ready to listen to others and work together towards a better future I can commit to you today that is a member of your board of education I will work for the benefit of all I will recognize that we subvert we serve a diverse community of students all of

050whom have value and deserve empathy respect safety in a rich learning environment I will respect and Trust our teachers and staff who are integral to creating successful successful outcomes for our students I will engage the entire community Through transparent communication that seeks to celebrate success and solve problems together I will be humble listening to and respecting the expertise of others and asking questions in the spirit of understanding and finally and this one's probably the most important to me I will lead with kindness and seek to understand the diverse needs of our family our teachers our staff our students and our community I want to work with our community to build up the public schools in this District I truly hope that I will have the opportunity to do all of those things and so I

051humbly ask for your trust and your vote on April 4th thank you [Applause] next up we have Kiri zelokowski hello um welcome and happy School Board appreciation month it's been awesome to be in the Francis House school district for the past 10 years my kids are freshmen at North and we've had a great 10 years in Francis Health thank you for all that you do for our kids um I asked my daughter actually she's a freshman at Hal North to come tonight to the meeting to speak about opportunities that she's had in Francis House schools and she was really excited to come share her experiences um however it turns out that one of her many extracurriculars is keeping her busy tonight she's at Parkway West with the FHN speech and debate team and she's debating

052about whether India should join the Artemis Accords so I'm here instead and I had to originally plan to uh kind of speak on the opportunities that she has but after listening to Zoe a few minutes ago I'm going to let my daughter come back another time and I don't think I could do it justice so um I've spoken at many school board meetings this year and there's not enough time now for me to convey how important it is for our school board and our community to support all students and their opportunities it is unfortunate that politics disinformation and sometimes intolerance have been brought into this Arena Arena gaslighting fear-mongering and the like are not the way to balance the budget or solve problems we can do better and I'm excited that Amy Harry and Doug

053are on the ballot please vote April 4th I wanted to share with you my own personal hopes and thoughts about where Francis Howell should be headed in the form of an acrostic poem that I wrote it is inspired by representative Hakeem Jeffries and his alphabet speech from earlier this year in an acrostic poem the first letter of each line spells out a word or phrase I will be spelling out the words Francis Howell in my phone in my poem so here we go future focused over fear relationships overreactions advocacy over adversaries Nuance over nonsense the five C's over conventions inclusion and integrity over ignorance supporting schools and staff over slashing the budget hope over hostility objectives and opportunities over opinions on social media welcoming everyone over weakening individuals equity and empathy over exclusion Love Is

054Love Is Love over leaving Learners out and Leadership over loud voices thank you [Applause] and our last speaker will be Harry Harris unless you don't take all three minutes my apologies first of all I want to say uh Zoe we are now friends and you didn't know that but we are um good evening board members I wanted to start off first by saying thank you to those of you winding down your your terms tonight I recognize that a lot has gone into the work that you all have done and it's not always easy and it's not always seen or appreciated either but tonight I hope that we all reflect on your service and can give you a thank you before you leave looking ahead as a candidate for the upcoming Board election I wanted to

055reflect on what I've learned in these last few months of campaigning it was reinforced to me what an incredible District we have and I was reminded that our district played a huge role in my in where my family chose to purchase our home I got to hear from our teachers and staff these folks are the backbones of everything we do in this District we literally cannot operate without this resource they're happy to be working with their students they appreciate the families they like working here and they want to stay but they are concerned I've talked with some who are afraid to teach because they have they there have been so many attacks on education teaching basic facts they're looking at peers in other districts who are or will be making more money than them they're

056burned out burned out from not having enough colleagues worrying about the direction of the district worrying about how to be inclusive when some are fighting against that but they're strong and they've been resilient ask them to hold on I've seen students and I have talked to students and I see why Niche ranks us eighth in the state because we have some incredible students I got to meet Gavin or talk with Gavin the Francis Howell North student who interviewed all of us candidates and and put together a great article in the north newspaper they're invested in the future of our district and that I think is wonderful overall I learned that we are on the cusp of District of the district mapping out some important decisions for our future we can't get bogged down in the

057politics or the personal agendas we have real problems that will that we will come up against and we have to come up with real answers to those problems that will take not only strong leadership but our district as a whole becoming laser focused on these real problems coming up with real solutions thank you all thank you and that will round up our comments for the evening fhea Commons Facebook good evening president Lang board members Dr rumpus executive cabinet and Community member I'm saren Henderson and I am the President of Francis Howell education support professional associations also known as fispa we would like to first thank the administration and the Board of Education member hi who worked with us this past month in negotiations we are happy to report a tentative agreed upon closure document for

0582023 through 2024 was brought to our members and ratified we look forward to the approval of the Board of Education and look forward to working with all of you in the future thank you foreign we have our prop s update with Mr Jeremy Miller good evening board quick update tonight not too lengthy um you're gonna see a lot of the same things as we've entered the part of the project where stuff keeps happening over and over same thing every month but it's a big building so exterior brick veneer continues to go in um that's the red brick we talk about veneer it is going in on the east and west elevation specifically right now but um the weather outside is kind of good days and bad days into Springtime so we're working when we can

059but um you will if you go out there right now you will see that continue to happen so steel detailing and stair installation continues um again that's a big deal for the workers on the project the more stairs we get in the more we have to don't have to use ladders and stuff like that so we call that steel detailing it's ongoing glass installation continues on the stairwells um you saw some of that in the last update from last month the mefp work in the ceilings continues we have some good pictures of just how far along some of the systems are and some of the cooling towers which is exciting CMU wall installation continues on the new gym you know a lot of CMU we talk about CMU that's concrete masonry units what that stands

060for but it basically means interior block so a lot of the Interior block is getting close to the end but still has a little ways to go you'll see that the painting and the ceiling grid is ongoing so those are the finishes on the project we see those happening and it's exciting to start seeing some of our classrooms take place and then the resonance floor so this is like an epoxy resinous floor system basically that goes throughout the bathrooms throughout the building the lower level is completed and they're starting to work on the main levels so a lot going on we continue to have about 200 workers on site average on daily so a lot of things happening again some pictures so kind of exciting you can start to see some of the track in

061the bottom right you can start to see that actually taking place you can start to see the prep work being done for the stabilization of the soil and dirt underneath what will become the turf field you're also starting to see some of the parking lots take shape here along with just how far along some of the red brick is coming so you know they are getting close here we actually this is the auxiliary gym so again just to remind everyone Francis Howell North has two gyms we deem them the main gym and the auxiliary gym this is the auxiliary gym getting painted uh you know you'll see the ceiling painted probably by next month but they are moving right along with this work this is the cooling towers that have actually been set on the

062job site so these are some of the things that take a long time to get in the construction industry so we're excited to see the some of the big equipment arriving on site here we see some of the chillers set in the main mechanical room um it is interesting to see you know we really do focus on getting some of the systems in place as soon as possible um because that is some of the more complicated work on the job um but you can see just how far along this room is this room is nearly completed um not from a system perspective but from lighting and flooring and painting and everything else so this is one of the emphasis of construction at this point just we want those get those systems up and running as

063fast as possible um it kind of an interesting thing that SM Wilson did it they actually took a picture on the bottom left of what it looks like now and then actually did some of the architectural renderings on the upper right so kind of an interesting perspective I like this this is actually the front entry to the building um there is a canopy that actually will jettison out in the front um you can see just above Jane's head some of the anchor bolts there that are actually for that canopy that are sitting down there but um this will be what the actual the the main entry to the building on the far right that's the big set of doors and then what you see in the other places is doors and windows same thing here

064this is the auxiliary gem looking out side in the upper right you can see the architectural renderings again what it will look like looking the opposite way so it's kind of 180 degrees difference but just an interesting way to show kind of what it looks like in actuality and what it looked like in the renderings so um and then now we have the YouTube video so we're going to walk tonight on the area on the middle level this is actually what I would call journalism Publications department so you'll see some classrooms here you can see they're showing it highlighting it um again a lot of this is going to look similar you can see some of the vapor barrier over the windows to keep the guys warm during the winter some of the window frames

065are actually there that glazing has not been set yet here we're going into one of the studios in the journalism area so they have different Studios for Sound and Lighting and um you know all the stuff that they do I know Francis cell North is famous for their journalism program so um this will be their new home see just how far along some of the painting is getting and some of the ceilings again we saw the lower level last month um you know this level is a little bit behind it because this is next in line but it's getting there a lot of painting this is one of the typical classrooms um you know you see the walls painted the flooring is getting ready those hangers coming down or for all the ceiling tile that'll

066be installed and the windows are very close to being put in interest you know you start to see some of the other the secondary color we call it of the paint here again you have one of the studios all the boxes you see are rough-ins for audio visual rough-ins and and power rough-ins and all the stuff that they need um to make it to make it all work so um kind of interesting I like this idea I hope the board likes it we're trying to give you a perspective of what it looks like in there without having to walk around and slush around in the mud as Patrick and Janet know allowances this is basically the same information I think the escalation allowances increased slightly but we are really out of the woods on this

067for the most part um you know the escalation allowance was really reserved for items that had not been bid out that could go still up in price based on escalation costs but for the most part that has pretty much come to an end so most of this money will roll probably into the contingency or rule to the bottom line of some of the money that goes back to the school district um on the right side you'll see as you usually do billing complete this is a nice it shows how much SM Wilson has built to date for the project but it is a nice dial to show where we are in completion so um they're about at 58 completed and that seems about right so um we're over halfway now we're we're getting closer I

068will um as I put in my board report we are on schedule and and making great progress towards you know turning over to us sometime in the summer of 24 and ready for kids by the fall of 24. so um for the new school and then once the kids move in the demolition will happen of the existing building and we'll build what becomes the practice field areas and that'll be ready in the spring of 25. so I would be happy to answer any questions the board has thank you are the rooftop units set yet yeah so some of them are I don't know if they're all there yet Chad but uh the other day I was there about uh uh two weeks ago and I don't think they were all in but I believe they

069are arriving as we speak the chillers are on site but I'm not sure about the units yeah that's a great question I'll defer that to someone else laughs go ahead and take it yeah please why he makes the big money well we'll talk about this in a moment as part of the district comprehensive facility master plan that was developed back in 2018 they began to look at Francis Hall North where there was a significant amount of renovation that was needed done um that building had multiple additions put on it over the years and there was a series of issues whether it was leaking roofs and other areas of the building that were having issues and so they explored several options of whether or not to remodel the current building or build a new one and

070ultimately decided on building a new building any other questions or comments board uh Janet and I were blessed to get to go on a tour sorry and I wanted to thank you it's really a uh you get a good vision of what's there um and something Ken it was one of those things my children graduated from North why why and another big piece was there was mold growing throughout the building and there was no way to remediate that they tried and tried and tried and was costing a lot of money and it's like putting a lot of money into an old car and still falling apart and so we were fearful that was that's what would happen um Janet I got to see the large staircases mandated by new law the large Auditorium which is

071what would you call it storm shelter a storm shelter it's huge and very expensive but our children will be safe in that building uh the huge hallways uh that was something we talked a lot about what it's a hallway and then we got a good picture of it and our children will not be clustered too tightly other school districts within the area had much narrower hallways and it's really caused some difficulty with passing throughout the hallways I highly suggest Administration and other board members to go and visit because that is wonderful I appreciate that but to get inside the building and actually see what's going on it's remarkable and thank you for the presentation thank you thanks for the presentation I just wanted to have a little bit of follow-up on last meeting you and

072director ziggo Meyer had a little back and forth and sure I was kind of going back with my head you kind of talked about the old number being a placeholder it seemed like you guys kind of agreed agreed on that that was the case and it shouldn't really be used as a as a road road map to where we are now am I getting that right yeah I think you know I think in a minute you'll probably hear more information about that I don't want to I will say I think um if I recall the question was and the answer was was there actual drawings made for the original budget that was created for Francis L North I believe that was the question I could be wrong if I am please say something but and

073I believe the answer at that time was no so there was not a drawing made yet when that original budget was actually created so I don't know if that answers your question or if I remember remembering that answer correctly but that's how I recall yeah no worries is it I mean I guess it's normal at least in the process that we went through the start construction before we have any of the drawings in any cost data really say start construction or shirt design start construction start construction um we didn't start any construction without drawings so um every package that was awarded by the board there was a complete set of documents for that scope of work that was awarded yes correct but so in package one through four were awarded the final documents were not

074said and yes that is very common in school construction so a lot of that has to do with getting started on site work um work that has to be done a lot of that has to do with getting steel ordered you know steel can take up to 24 months to get right now so it is very common um outside of the school district industry but but also within the school experience is that mainly for Speed purpose it's absolutely for Speed purposes Expediting this Expediting the project schedule yeah that is absolutely what it's for so schools are very tricky because if you know they have to open in the in the summer and if you miss by a month you miss by a year if that makes sense because they can't open mid school year so

075a lot of school districts really try to package things in different ways to get a head start on them that's the very common practice is it I guess is it common then to do the CMR process for that speed aspect of it that's one of the advantages of the cmar process is what I would say um you know CM air is relatively new you know it it just passed the house that you could use cmar not too long ago um you know other districts have used it it's been around forever in the private and private sector but um yeah the the main advantage of cmar is the Expediting the schedule yeah yeah I you know I don't think there's without question if we had used the traditional design bit build system at francisl North we

076would be talking about opening a school 26 27 28. I guess maybe speculation but you probably don't want to answer from a bid bid process how do you think that costing would have been is your question do I think cmar is cheaper maybe yeah I don't know I I would say that cmar is a different project delivery system is what we call it um design bid build is the traditional delivery system um cmer has advantages and disadvantages but the advantages are you can award packages as you go and you get the opportunity to choose your contractor based on qualifications not necessarily based on lowest price that is absolutely the advantages of cmar um the disadvantages are design bid build is more simple it's much easier to understand for most people cmar is a partnership between

077the general contractor and the owner design bid build is much more in the line of very simple you draw it you bid it you build it so um it that process can be um simpler at times but it it absolutely it absolutely takes longer to do that than cmar so as it fair to say that on the really the risk for the for the Builder really isn't there until we've gone through basically the design bit until they have the final drawings and package and everything all together they haven't assumed at risk at that point prior to that the school district assumes all that risk yeah I would say that in design bid build the school district has all the risk or the owner has all the risk up into the point of you bid it

078you will never know what something costs until you bid it out I'm going to talk a lot about budgets in a minute they're just budgets once things are Bid out then we know what they cost so the risk then completely shifts to the to the contractor so now the owner has a price of one million dollars they have to build what's according to those drawings now if it's not on those drawings the owner has to pay for change orders okay which is a different process of cmar but is a very clear line in design bit build if it's not on the documents it is a change order to the owner okay cmar does operate a little bit differently than that um that that is how that process works CMR is just more of a partnership

079As you move forward and the risk slowly moves so in the beginning it's on the owner and the contractor because see the contract construction manager begins to take that risk on earlier in the project on behalf of the owner which is why the GMP really means which is guaranteed maximum price so what the contractor is telling you when they issue a GMP is that if the price goes above this they come out of pocket to pay it the price comes under that you as the owner get that money back in a design bit build system that doesn't work so I'll pick on Hoff construction who bit 801 they're great by the way but off construction built this beautiful building for us but had they gotten the job done cheaper they keep that money if SM

080Wilson is more efficient and builds Francis Elm North cheaper that money comes back at a shared savings back to the district so I don't know if that answer I know that's a long version no that's great at the same time we had drawings and everything done when we actually got the GMP right yeah it when you say GMP there was five different packages that were bid so package one was awarded for the site construction or the earthwork that was done during the summer the architectural drawings were not done they were somewhere between 20 to 30 percent completed so it was awarded in packages as the drawings got finished so we saved speed by taking on some risk on what the final cost was yes I think that's accurate yeah that's an accurate statement thank you

081yeah sure I hope that helped uh can you talk a little bit since the discussion here is centered around cmar versus design bid build there's there's kind of one in between which is design build absolutely um and I can you talk a little bit about the differences between CMR and design yeah sure so design bit and you have to be very careful I say this Mr cook design bid build is the traditional way that 801 was done in the security vestibule packages in France I design build is what you're referring to um what design build means is that the the there is one entity that not only designs the job they build it so you would have if if Francis Howell North was a design build project the architects who were in the back those

082guys would not work directly for the school district they would work for SM Wilson so from a contractual perspective you have one contract for the entire project so the designers do not work for you they work for the contractor so design build is even more on the extreme of you see that a lot when um owners want to really go you see that a very lot in Land Development and stuff like that but I'm not even 100 sure that's allowed by Missouri statute it might be I know MoDOT is starting to do some design build work um and I think having some success with it but um yeah that is a completely different process than cmar so it's kind of design bid build cmar is a hybrid and then design bid build the design build

083is on the Other Extreme that answer the question [Music] yes I think so but okay I guess the important important distinction with design build you would the own in this case the contractors usually would it could be the designer yeah you could have a contractor working for the architect in essence you have a single Source contract that is not only responsible for building your project they're also responsible for designing your project sure yeah but yeah some joint venture of it's usually a joint venture company that's created like an LLC that's exactly right and then they all bid on it and then they start and do it all together correct which I haven't seen yet in school construction it might be coming but that that's a that's a that's an extreme you know it's used a

084lot in the private sector but right thank you sure I didn't sorry uh I just have a follow-up question um I'm under the impression that some of the current construction prices uh are not really expected to come down anytime soon if ever and so I didn't know if you could maybe speak to a little bit of that especially of the price per square foot if there's capital projects out there that uh are like ours and where they're falling in line to price per square foot because my impression is that they're right now higher than what we're uh paying and if they're not expected to come down anytime soon uh I'll let you answer that first sure yeah I mean that's I we do track those as contractors everyone keeps an eye on those things um

085I I will say for Simplicity purposes please understand let's just say Francis hell North was just under 400 a square foot 390-ish just very simplistic explanation of a very complicated project but generally speaking I will tell you that and we've shared this information with the board um about a year ago but Orchard Farm um is building a new high school right now cost per square foot is is within 15 of that so that was actually bid out at the same time Francis sell North was um we see projects now definitely exceeding 400 a square foot I I know there were two projects just recently bid in Kansas City Elementary Schools they were about 420 to 430 dollars a square foot so we have seen the cost of construction go up continually each year um I

086would also say the Kansas City Market is usually much more cheaper to build than than the St Louis market so I would tell you the St Louis Market's probably even higher than that um another large project that's under construction right now is a Convention Center we see it a lot in the News St Louis Convention Center um that's a hundred thousand square foot project and their bid was 120 million so in that case you're talking about twelve hundred dollars a square foot so um you know not necessarily in Apples to Apples comparison it's not a school however it still is steel and concrete and drywall and and stuff so um construction has absolutely increased since this project was bid I think what you're really asking me if North was bid today what would it cost

087I don't know but it would be more you must have a crystal ball because that was going to be the next question right in there yeah anything else born on this particular thank you next up we have Dr Ross good evening board tonight I am here I'm following up on our commitment to share our internal process review with you and with our community while the presentation will only provide a high level summary of our review we'll also be posting an accompanying document which will elaborate further on some of the key points that I share tonight we shared at the September 22 2022 board meeting our goal is to provide the Board of Education in public with an analysis of the policy regulation systems processes and decision making utilized up until this point in our process

088work focused specifically on Francis Hall North we also shared that our plan was not to conduct a financial audit but that if any findings indicate that as necessary we would work closely with our auditors these were the goals Dr Hawk and I shared at the September meeting and hopefully we addressed these tonight Our intention is to share the existing processes and policies which were followed and worked well any processes or false policies that may not have been followed or which could be improved upon and to identify any that were not in place which should be for any future work we also understand the frustration and concern that process has caused some members of our community we hope that being open and transparent will continue contribute to rebuilding trust with all of our stakeholders there are

089a lot of acronyms in the construct construction industry several of which you just heard in these previous questions and you'll hear me say a few of them or see them on the slides tonight here's what they stand for cmar construction manager at risk GMP guaranteed maximum price ffne Furniture fixtures and equipment and RFQ requests for qualifications I want to start by highlighting some of the key dates for context as we begin in 2018 a comprehensive facilities master plan was completed as part of that document rough cost estimates were included during the summer of 2019 a group came together to plan for propice outlining which projects would be included benefiting every school in our district on June 2nd 2020 voters approved the 244 million dollar prop s bond issue at that time the largest for any

090school district in the state of Missouri in December of 2021 the board accepted a guaranteed maximum price or GMP of 164.7 million dollars on the FHN project this was after a special board meeting with Patron comments and considering the results of a community survey which were both in response to community concern about the increase in costs to build North a bit later we'll discuss how the board didn't have all of the information they needed prior to that vote in August of this school year we hosted our first citizen Roundtable to engage the community around prop s and look specifically at our next steps as we move forward and in September Administration recommended to the board that we conduct a process process review to learn more about the key decision points and process processes leading up

091to the GMP there were lots of key decisions in between these dates and we'll explore some of them in detail soon I want to share an important message before we move forward as you will see throughout the presentation there are a number of things the district could have done differently in the early stages of the Francis Hall North project is superintendent and Dr Hawkins CFO fully acknowledge and accept full accountability for the missteps that occurred our goal with this review is not to point fingers at individuals or to absolve anyone for the decisions which they may have made I'm also not trying to rationalize any of the decision-making or deflect responsibility we have tried to the best of our ability to factually explain what we believe happened as new leaders in the district and I

092say this for our entire administrative team the responsibility lies with us and ultimately with me I can't change the decisions that were made previously the only thing that we can do now is to do better and to do that by putting structures and systems in place to prevent the same situation from ever happening again I now want to highlight some of our key findings we organize these findings into five categories scope inaccurate cost estimates board and public communication board oversight and board policy and I'll go through each of these in a little bit more depth the first two findings are closely related and help explain the significant increase between the initial cost estimate in 2018 to build a new North that was shared with the community as part of process literature and a guaranteed maximum

093price or GMP presented to the Board of Education in November of 2021. thirty thousand square feet were added to the Francis Hall North construction project without notice to the board until the GMP was presented for approval cost estimates to construct new Francis Hall North were developed in 2018 by owner Associates as part of the comprehensive facilities master plan this estimate was based on the square footage and drawings used to build Francis Hall High a decade earlier the overall construction estimate was based on a total building size of 380 000 square feet after the bond issue was approved by voters in 2020 the prop s design team made the decision to increase the building size from 380 000 to 410 000 square feet to accommodate programmatic offerings this slide shows there were some additional spaces newly

094added and some other areas expanded which increased the FHN building scope after Bond approval some of these are included in the table on the slide the change in scope from 380 000 square feet to four hundred and ten thousand square feet and its overall impact on the cost of instruction construction was not brought to the board of education for discussion or approval by The District administration until the final GMP was presented to the board the scope change was also not communicated with stakeholders including taxpayers prior to the GMP being presented to the board in November of 2021. we're going to talk more about board and Public Communication our second finding is that the district was working from inaccurate cost estimates during the conceptualization initial and initial design of the project the inaccurate starting estimate has

095led to one of the primary points of contention in our community the 90 increase from the 86.35 million estimate used in prop s materials to the GMP of 164.7 million is frequently cited and has raised concerns for many stakeholders let's take a closer look at these numbers and I'll warn you this does get a bit confusing so I'm going to try and walk you through it owner Associates original estimate to construct a new Francis Hall North at 380 000 square feet was 93.5 million this estimate did not include a four million dollar potential third floor classroom Edition that was shown on some of the documents if that number had been included it would have been 97.5 million this estimate was prepared in 2018 based on an average cost per square foot and not site-specific drawings

096owner's estimate did not account for typical year-over-year inflation between 2018 when the estimate was developed and the start of construction nearly four years later the estimate also did not include soft costs including design fees technology or Furniture fixtures and equipment we also know now that there was unprecedented additional inflationary impacts caused by covid-19 following that time what you'll see on the second line of the chart is the cost estimate published in the prop best Bond materials that was communicated to voters and our community of 86 million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars this is a difference of 7.15 million from honer's original estimate and literature did not include the anticipated square footage based on presentations to the facilities committee it is suspected that this lower estimate may have been based on an anticipated square footage

097of approximately 350 000 square feet which is consistent with the cost per square feet using honer's original estimate we also surmise from discussions that there might have been assumptions made that because Francis Hall North's enrollment was lower than Francis Howell High the overall needed square footage may be lower regardless if you move down to the next two lines in the chart you'll see how the estimates continue to change prior to Construction estimates for the cost of Francis Howell North in the propos literature were started stated at 86 million three hundred fifty thousand and the final GMP provided during the November 23 2021 board meeting was 164 million seven hundred and twenty three thousand dollars an approximate ninety percent increase we know that the inaccurate starting estimate has led to one of the primary points as

098I've already pointed out so as part of our review we asked ourselves what would have been the accurate starting estimate owner reports that the estimate for a 410 000 square foot building which is the size of the building that is actually being constructed in 2018 would have been 104 million four hundred and fifty thousand that number is based on square footage and does not include any inflation factoring in typical pre-pandemic inflation of approximately two percent per year through 2021 when construction was set to begin the estimate should have been around 108 million 669 thousand dollars if this cost estimate had been provided to the public as part of the ballot measure the actual increase of 52 percent based on normal inflation and the subsequent pandemic impact would make more sense I will point out that

099the two percent is actually conservative and the original estimate could have been even higher further closing that Gap however we fully acknowledge that this wasn't the number that was used and wasn't the number that was provided to our community that has created a problem for both us and our community as we've worked through prop this I will also acknowledge that the building was not designed on a budget nor has that been historically how his Francis Howell has designed new buildings the team designed spaces that were believed to be best for students staff in the community and the budget was then developed from there finding is that insufficient communication between Administration and the board of education is a theme found throughout this review the board and by extension therefore the public were not accurately informed nor

100consistently engaged by Administration regarding project changes or early pandemic impacts you'll remember this chart from a few slides ago the earlier one ended with February 2021 and an estimate of 105 million we've now added a column to the right that shows information that was not provided to the board and also added rows that show when the bid packages were approved this is probably the most complex part of the review and I know there's a lot of information to absorb so I'm going to walk through it line by line I'll also let you know that following the meeting these slides will be posted to board docs along with the written report and you'll be able to refer back to them insufficient communication was provided by the administration to the Board of Education based on documented Communications

101from various vendors to the administration as early as February 2021 SM Wilson builder of Francis hell North informed the prop s design team that the project cost estimate was closer to 105 million with the additional 30 000 square feet this information was not shared with the Board of Education by District administration on April 15th two months later the board was asked to approve a grading package or bid package one to start the site work and did so without the knowledge that the overall cost for new construction was Rising on May 10th of 2021 SM Wilson provided a schematic design estimate to the prop s design team in the amount of 116 million dollars again this information was not shared with the Board of Education by District administration just over a month later on June 17

1022021 the board approved bid Package 2 for concrete SM Wilson reports that on August 5th 2021 they shared a preliminary GMP budget reflecting bid amounts to date SM Wilson's forecasted overall project estimate at that time was between 135 and 140 million dollars this information was not shared with the Board of Education by District administration on August 19 2021 the board approved bid package 3 for structural Precast precast concrete and on September 2nd 2021 the board approved bid package 4 for structural steel and underground plumbing and electrical work while an informational slide addressing General pandemic impacts was added to the May 2021 construction update and August 2021 prop s presentation more direct and specific information should have been shared publicly with the board and District stakeholders to allow for input and feedback throughout 2021 prior to

103the presentation of bid packages two three four and the GMP when the GMP was finally brought to the board for approval four packages related to site development had already been approved at a total cost of approximately 38 million dollars because of this the board had already approved approximately 23 percent of the total project when the GMP was presented with significant work already underway the board voted to accept the GMP and proceed with construction all of this leads us to key finding number four and that the inconsistent communication to the board from District administration ultimately impacted board oversight as design work on Francis Hall North began in the proposed design team received updates and made design decisions Administration was not providing regular updates to the board ultimately contributing to a breakdown in communication and transparency between

104the team District administration the Board of Education and ultimately our community the prop s design team met on a regular basis to make design decisions discuss value engineering and receive updates from the architect project manager and occasionally the general contractor or construction manager at risk this same model of a dedicated design team was utilized during the implementation of prop Howell which included the construction of a new Francis Hall High School in prop in the prop Hollow process projects came in under budget ultimately allowing additional Capital Improvements to be complete completed at other schools with the additional funds with that in mind the use of a design team to make certain decisions related to a project is not inherently flawed there are significant number of small or minor decisions necessary to keep construction moving that don't

105require broader input and should be made by internal leadership with the guidance of professionals with a technical skill set with regard to prop s however the prop s design team made decisions that had a significant impact on the overall project cost the primary example being the scope change of an additional 30 000 square feet this was done without proper communication or when necessary approval and as you saw on the previous slides the propos design team also had the knowledge of increasing cost estimates and that information was not shared with the board Board of Board of Education oversight was ultimately impacted by a lack of procedure or policy mandating that the administration provided the board with frequent prop s team updates including programmatic changes design changes scope changes and financial impact of all the recommended changes

106District administration serves as the primary conduit between any internal teams or District committees in the Board of Education any breakdown in communication between those internal groups in the board should be attributed to The District administration and that brings us to our final finding around adherence to board policy we know now that prop that the prop s design team added 30 000 square feet to FHN without notice to the board until the GMP was presented for approval due to the cmar delivery method being used the change in the design occurred at a point in time when a change order wasn't necessary due to the GMP not being yet being presented or approved because there were no change orders involved there was not technically a violation of board policy or regulation in this situation specifically regulation 7210

107however given the impact this design change had on the overall cost the spirit of the regulation and we would say prudent practice would call for the board to at least be made aware of such a change board regulation 7210 stipulates that the Chief Operating Officer is authorized to approve individual change orders up to twenty five thousand dollars and the superintendent is authorized to approve up to 50 000 unless the change order significantly Alters the design or extent of facilities provided for in the original contract documents it is our opinion as the current Administration that added in thirty thousand square feet to a 380 000 square foot building meets the standard for significantly altering the design and that this change should have been communicated to the board by Administration and brought forward for approval before the

108project design progressed whether it was required by policy or not we also reviewed additional board policies and regulations that have to do with the construction process some board policies and regulations are applicable to the design bid build construction process and lack Clarity for cmar projects specific revisions to these policies and regulations if warranted will be considered by the policy committee and then the board to ensure proper proper financial controls are in place for future projects another Finding identified in this review involves adherence to existing board regulation 3165 purchasing under general rules number four the regulation stipulates no purchase that may exceed seven thousand five hundred dollars will be made without prior board approval unless in accordance with emergency Provisions or as otherwise indicated in this regulation on more than one occasion purchase orders related to

109process were executed by District administrators prior to board approval that did not meet the standard for emergency Provisions as outlined in regulation 3165. so with a more clear understanding of the available documents watching Board of Education videos for the meetings and reviewing minutes committee documents and qualitative information from those involved in the prop s implementation we turn our Focus to what matters most what is the district going to do to prevent this from happening again how will we change our practices to make sure we are working from accurate estimates from the very beginning What policies and procedures will we put in place to ensure the board of education has the information necessary to provide appropriate oversight and how will we keep the public informed about our progress along the way to ensure the financial transparency

110transparency taxpayers and stakeholders deserve now I want to share a list of recommendations The District administration asks the board to consider for future construction processes we've organized the recommendations into the five categories you see on this slide together these process changes in potential policy or regulation changes if enacted will provide the district and the public with more accurate project estimates more opportunities for Board review and approval and improved Financial controls to ensure taxpayer dollars are managed with the utmost fidelity the first recommendation we are making is to formalize a clear process for future construction projects by requiring additional updates and approvals this process will help ensure appropriate board oversight and allowed both the board and public to have a more accurate understanding of total project cost before starting construction or at a minimum allow for

111additional oversight and potential changes based on the updated costs I'm going to use a visual to help explain the process that we are proposing we're recommending an updated project approval process for large-scale construction projects that are managed either internally or externally the board will ultimately need to decide how to define large scale whether that's by overall cost or if that's by square footage of a project I will highlight that this process provides the board with five opportunities to review the design and opinions of probable construction costs prior to the project going out for bid everywhere you see a red stop sign on there and we'll talk through each step the first step would be the board authorizing the district to begin preliminary work related to a potential project as part of this the board would

112approve a design allowance for architecture design fees if needed Architects are generally paid a percentage of a Project's final cost which is not which is unknown at the time of initial approval if the district decides not to move forward with the projects the architect may or may not be paid an hourly rate for their completed work the administration would Engage The Services of an architect pursuant to policy regulation 7120 The Architects presents the anticipated opinion of probable construction costs to the board and then a contract with the architect for the specific project is established board approval of a contract is then required to move into the initial design development work in design development the architect provides general floor plans and a general idea of the scope of the project and what will work on the

113proposed project site the architect makes a presentation to the board showing design intent soft costs architectural and Engineering costs preliminary opinion of probable construction costs project schedule and phasing board approval would be required for the architect to move on to schematic design it is important to note that at this point in the process any opinion of probable construction costs are only General estimates based on the design requests from the district and current cost per square foot for work in the region related to similar projects many factors will impact the cost opinion and they may continue to change until final construction drawings have gone out forbid and been approved in the schematic design phase rough sketches and drawings are completed to illustrate the general layout of the building overall form size and orientation once complete the

114board is updated on design opinion of probable construction costs and scheduling the board has the opportunity to make adjustments to the design or cost presented in order to fit the needs of the district moving forward at the completion of the schematic design phase the board approves the architect moving forward into the design development phase this may be done informally or via board vote but Administration would recommend a formal vote in the design development phase the schematic designs are further refined to develop more detailed drawings and plans that illustrate the building's structural mechanical and electrical systems 75 to 90 percent of the design is complete at this phase once complete the board is updated again on design opinion or probable construction costs and scheduling this provides the board opportunities to make adjustments to the design or

115cost presented in order to fit the needs of the district moving forward or to stop the process at any point in time at the completion of the device design development phase the board approves the architect moving forward into the construction document phase this may be done informally or formally via a board vote in the construction document phase the architect uses finalized designs to create detailed construction documents including technical specifications building codes and other details necessary for contractors to build the board is updated at minimum at the halfway point of this process regarding the design costs and scheduling the board again has opportunities to make adjustments to the design or cost presented in order to fit the needs of the district moving forward once complete the board would approve the construction drawings and if acceptable approves

116the project being sent out for bid in Step six the administration works with the architect and legal counsel to develop bidding documents and project goes out for bidding and permitting once bids are received and evaluated they are sent to the board for approval which is the same as our current practice the final construction contracts with the selected contractors are then presented to the board for approval only at this point would construction begin from then forward the administration would provide monthly updates to the Board of Education with construction and financial updates I do want to point out that while this process is great for communication and input and we do support this change it does have potential negative impacts one is that it could drastically slow down the design process in the additional steps of having

117to come back to the board multiple times could also have an increased cost however given our past experiences we believe that the pros outweigh the cons in this situation in summary this process provides multiple opportunities for the board to receive design and cost updates allowing for changes in scope or potential cost and ultimately the decision of whether or not to move forward with any project there are several other points for consideration as part of construction projects moving forward in the case of Francis Hall North the district was working off inaccurate cost estimates during the conceptualization initial design while it is nearly impossible to predict the exact cost of a multi-million dollar construction project several years in advance we do believe that more accurate estimates can be developed by doing the following first we recommend the

118board consider The Upfront investment for drawings rather than using estimates based on other prior projects or square footage alone we will factor in average annual inflation based on the build date we'll engage our attorney in additional contract review of all contracts and include all design fees contingencies contingencies owner allowance and soft cost ffe and other costs related to the project the district is committed to dedicating time and resources at the front end of future construction and renovation projects to ensure the Board of Education and the general public have a more accurate understanding of what the project will likely cost as noted in key finding number five to the content of some board policies and regulations or lack thereof was identified as a concern a policy revision or new regulation that would require the board approval

119require board approval to add square footage or significantly alter the design as recommended even if there's no change order involved as is the case in cmar the policy committee would need to be engaged to consider revisions to other construction related board policies and regulations to ensure Clarity for both the design bid build and cmar projects to incorporate these new processes and to ensure proper financial controls are in place for future projects District policy regarding review of contracts should be further researched by the district leadership and a recommendation brought to the Board of Education in addition Administration is committed to working with District employees to ensure adherence to all board policies including those requiring board approval for purchases over seventy five hundred dollars as a public tax supported institution the district is committed to providing full

120transparency to taxpayers about how resources are allocated moving forward the facilities and finance departments will be improving Financial controls and financial reporting to provide clear and accurate information to all stakeholders on a regular basis the written document that we will be sharing provides a longer list but in the near future monthly summary reports will be shared with the board and public providing expenditures and revenue details with appropriate data validation processes they will also include maintaining Bond Bond project budget details in the financial management system while that's currently be done on spreadsheets outside of the system the district is recommending changes to the duties and responsibilities of prop s related committees allowing for more stakeholder input and limiting the authority of one small team to make decisions in isolation without checks and balances the administration recommends

121an updated facilities advisory committee as a board directed committee committee will be led by the director of facilities in collaboration with the CFO the representation would include two Board of Education directors Administration staff representation from fhea and fisa parents and community members we envision a larger committee with more stakeholders involved committee membership agendas and minutes will be publicly posted for board policy and will provide a written report or presentation to the board and general public a minimum of once each year or more often if significant changes are recommended when there are more when there are active construction projects or major renovation projects underway updates would be provided to the board on a monthly basis the facilities advisory committee will assist in prioritizing building needs and developing a multi-year facilities master plan that is reviewed on

122an annual basis specifically a couple of the things they would look at is providing guidance on strategic facility initiatives and related District goals as tied to our strategic plan providing representative board input into the district's facility work providing Community perspective on strategic Direction in District facility planning and reviewing replacement Cycles to develop plans to gain insight into ways to improve the efficient and effective use of resources in the district the responsibilities and scope of work of the prop s design team will be further reviewed by the administration board and Facilities advisory committee as I stated earlier there are many decisions made on building projects and not every decision can or should be reviewed by the facilities advisory committee however there also must be oversight and internal controls reviewing the work of the design team which

123ultimately serves as an extension of the district facilities team through a series of retirements and resignations nearly all of the key leaders involved in the early process planning and implementation are no longer with the school district with myself and Dr Hawk both new to our roles this year and a new director of facilities starting this summer The District is in a position to start fresh moving forward we are committed to making good decisions aligned with board policy engaging our community in tough but transparent conversations and earning the trust of all stakeholders and doing the best we can to maximize the remaining process funds so where do we go from here going forward Administration will work with the board to revise certain policies and regulations that I've touched on related specifically to construction and to implement

124the process recommendations presented in this report we look forward to onboarding and working with our new director of facilities who will provide Hands-On day-to-day leadership for the prop s work moving forward while this review focused heavily on Francis Hall North other prop s projects completed during the same time frame were impacted in similar ways and came in over the initial estimates going forward better cost estimates will be developed prior to beginning construction or renovation for remaining projects updated cost estimates will be developed prior seeking board approval as the ones developed five years ago in 2018 are no longer viable Dr Hawk has worked with her team to analyze all process funds spent to date ensuring proper coding and spending in preparing updated reporting to share with our community moving forward in the coming months Administration

125will make a recommendation to the board on the next priority projects to complete with the remaining prop s funds as part of that recommendation the district will provide an update on projects currently at various stages of exploration including the adaptation of the former admin building on Central School Road as a centralized Transportation facility and renovations to Henderson Elementary in addition soft costs including ffne for Francis Hall North are being finalized and will be brought to the Board of Education in the near future we are committed to staying within the 244 million dollar process budget approved by voters plus any interest or proceeds that were earned on the sale of the bonds this means that the district will not be able to complete the full list of projects that were originally slated for prop s and

126some projects will need to be considered for a future bond issue it is our intent to clearly identify what projects will be completed and which projects will be removed until additional financial resources are identified it is our hope that the results of this internal review provide clarity about the prop s work to this point including Lessons Learned and plans for moving forward in a positive direction we also acknowledge that we are not trained Auditors and there are limits to our expertise in the work that we did we believe that taxpayers do deserve to know how their money is being spent across the district and as I've stated previously we remain open to a state or external Financial audit in closing let us remember just how important this new school is to the Francis Howell North

127Community and the entire district and how amazing it's going to be for students and staff and just right around 18 months we will be welcoming more than 1600 students and 160 staff into a beautiful new Francis Hall North High School it will be a building that everyone can be proud of one that will provide a quality learning environment for generations to come we hope that in the next year and a half we're able to move forward with regaining the trust of our community Through demonstrated fiscal responsibility and more transparent Community allowing for the opening of this building to be a celebration for the Francis Hall School District and I would now be happy to try and answer any questions that you might have [Music] thank you Gordon questions comments thanks Dr rumpus for presenting that

128heck of a first year for you obviously I'm glad you're in the position that you're you are uh just want to kind of uh re-articulate and ask you a bunch of questions surrounding the report and thank you for presenting that to us uh back in 2018 I guess prior to my tenure so I'm going to ask this it was my understanding that the district was well aware that the Frenchtown North High School was in the kind of the state of disrepair there were some issues that were obvious and were going on with it that that it was going to be and needed at least at renovation if not a complete overhaul or new building is that correct prior to 2018 around 2018. my understanding is that's when the comprehensive facilities master plan was developed and

129based on the needs of the building there were several options that included both renovation options as well as new construction so there was a the comprehensive uh facilities master plan was a a district-wide plan uh with a variety of different capital projects correct that is correct toner visited and other teams visited all of our sites um provided information around Capital Improvements that were necessary for long-term functionality of the building as well as looked at every single building if they ever needed an addition based on enrollment changes what that could look like and where they might be and so that particular plan was uh in a several different phases I remember correctly uh there's phases one two three possibly a fourth one but various time frames and some long-term time frames as well correct okay and

130so factoring in inflation on projects that you don't necessarily know when they're going to start it may not necessarily make sense to do that in that particular plan uh or being very clear that that's a snapshot in time based on current values and Market costs and understanding that every year we're further away from the plan was developed the cost estimates might change and then would you say that prior to the prop s uh passing in 2020 that the primary Capital project was francellnorth I would say that the France style North project was yes it was the largest percentage of any Capital Improvements in the in the prop as bond issue and then the comprehensive master plan and then prop s literature also provided options uh for brain cell North whether that was renovation or new

131construction correct okay uh I was not a board member prior to process passing but it's my understanding that the dollar amounts assigned uh and the cfmp is a comprehensive facilities master plan and then ultimately the process literature were General estimates and were presented the public to show intentions of the district uh and where the wants or needs were in the actual district is that true I would say that's correct I would say as we've conducted this review and we've tried to identify the literature that existed and looked at it though I don't know that that was always made clear in every piece of literature that was sent out to our families for our community and then with prop uh asks with Frank Som North being the primary uh Capital project after that proposition passed in

132June of 2020 it would make sense to in literature to probably uh with prop s literature that is to factor in inflation correct our recommendation moving forward is that for any projects that are going to be out a period of time that we should look at including inflationary impacts is is there I know you kind of spoke to it is there any reason why the uh Co or anybody that was putting the information on the uh process literature why they artificially reduce the square footage and I don't know if you could speak to that was that board approved at that time to artificially reduce that do you have any knowledge of that no as I shared we do not we do not see a point in time when it was it was brought to the

133board to reduce the square footage I will also say that as we work through our process review we could not identify a person who made that decision there were conversations with the um the prop s um team that helped pass this in our community that did great work there was conversations internally with the facilities committee that did work the prop s design team um there are multiple presentations we've seen where these options were shared we could not find a situation where a single person made one of those decisions and so that literature and that reduction of square footage happened prior to the passage of prop s uh after the prop was passed would you still agree that Brent South North was the main project so the first statement you just made we also did not

134see in the literature where it shared what the square footage was so we were able to determine based on other factors and documents we reviewed that the square footage was reduced but I don't know that was included there um and yes I would say as a proportion of the overall projects North would continue to remain the the largest percentage of any work that was on the list and then as a result after a profit has passed we were kind of faced with a decision on whether or not to have uh new construction or renovate the existing building and there was a a decision that had to be made and I think it was articulated before it was an older building multiple different editions angled roofs that were going on to existing structures from the new

135edition causing water leakage from rain causing mold there was a lot of repairs that were done and then it kept on persisting the problem kept on persisting so uh that was an issue that was noted there was the HVAC system I believe that was old at the end of its life cycle uh the design of the building wasn't the best as it was added on it was kind of in a hodgepodge style and so the flow or the collection of uh of classrooms wasn't the most efficient is my understanding as well uh the renovations would also have been a lot longer than new construction is my uh memory and that we would start to displace kids for long periods of time because we'd have to shut down actual sections of the school as the renovations

136were happening and then also part of the problems with renovation is sometimes you just don't know what those actual real estimates are because you don't get Behind the Walls until you actually start peeling back the drywall or removing the ceiling so a lot of unknown costs that could be associated with that uh does that sound pretty accurate from what you remember you just said a lot sorry of stuff um I will also acknowledge I'm sorry um I I was not here at that time and so yes I do know that there were a lot of identified concerns with the structure um with repairs that would need to be done that's what led to a discussion of either renovation or replacement um I were aware of a facilities design excuse me a facilities committee meeting in

137July of 2019 where those options were all explored um I'm not aware though of who or when the decision was made then to say no we're not going to renovate and we're going to rebuild we couldn't find it there's not a specific meeting where I I saw or Dr Hawk and I saw that that was vote upon or that was a decision that was made I think was an ongoing conversation of all of those options yeah and then so sticking with the renovation component of that I think we can all acknowledge that Essen Wilson has been doing an amazing job as far as being timely with the new construction uh and the process has been very smoothly with that with that in mind I've heard from various reputable sources that renovation post covid has had

138a lot of complications a lot of delays on material a lot of supply and demand issues so if you peel back a wall you find something that you need that wasn't on the list of what you thought you need and are needed and now you have to go out and try to find it causing a lot of delays uh have you heard anything that uh would seem untrue about that statement is that generally true to your knowledge as a layperson that has nothing with construction that anecdotally sounds correct awesome uh the the board ultimately decided to have that new construction of France sound North like you pointed out uh we uh selected SM Wilson as the manager at risk at 91.3 million in November of 2020 in between that and February 2021 the prop s

139design team made unilateral decisions affecting the scope of the project by 30 000 square foot admittedly some of those were due to code Necessities ordinances uh and some of them were chosen by that team to actually as an option um so in about a three month time frame we went from 91.3 million to 105 million uh and during that time frame is it correct that the superintendent did not talk to the board about the scope changes I'm not privy to conversations the superintendent had with the board we did not see any board meeting where we could find documentation that any of that information was shared with the Board of Education uh in April of 21 you said that there was a vid package on the agenda I had a conversation with the former Superintendent at

140that particular time and asked him specifically no issues uh or if everything was on track or if there were any delays of the budget and he specifically uh responded that there were no issues and everything was on track and running smoothly given the context of that bid package and the information that we know was uh the increase of scope to 105 million in February uh would you qualify that as being a misleading statement as I said previously I'm unaware of what the superintendent did or didn't know our review showed that the prop as design team was made aware of some of those changes in scope and other factors in that they from there it was not shared with the Board of Education and then key findings in board policy uh I'm sorry key findings number

141five you mentioned board policy uh 7210 which articulates the the change orders that you spoke about uh if there's not a particular policy that has a particular situation it doesn't give the superintendent or the the CEO or CFO unlimited discretion on how to spend money correct there's still a board policy 3165 like you mentioned that if there's a purchase to be made it's still limited by 7 500 dollars that is correct back to the decisions made from a prop s team uh is it true that this uh former CEO and superintendent and former director of facilities were the normal or usual District administrators who are part of the team part of the the process team design team the process yes those would have been the District employees that were part of the propos design team

142are any of those administrators currently employed with the district no as we shared many of the administrators that were involved in the early stages of the process are no longer with the district the only other member of the design team that was not administrator or or contracted service provider was a former Board of Education member correct that is correct we to my understanding there's always been a board member and there's currently a board member who sits on the design team does an individual board member have the authority to prove purchases on behalf of the board no does the individual board member have authority to give permission to the architect's construction manager or Atlas Building Group no that would be the Board of Education as a whole would it be fair to say that the former

143CEO or superintendent would have ultimately given permission to Architects construction managers or Atlas Building Group to add the additional square footage can you repeat that question again would it be fair to say that the former CEO or superintendent would have had ultimately given permission to the architect's construction manager or Atlas Building Group to add the additional square footage I would say that moving forward that ultimately that communication would arrest with the superintendent and that would be based on input from after conversation or input from the Board of Education so the uh The Architects and uh the construction manager and Atlas Building Group they had to be given a a direction from uh somebody and it wasn't the Board of Education would you have an expectation of your CEO or currently your CFO to bring significant

144changes like these to seek board approval my expect my expectation would be that I would bring that to the board of education or any one of our team would bring that in concert with me as the administrator is presenting that to the Board of Education a couple final questions if the state auditor were to audit prop s would you expect them to find uh similar violations of policy we do believe that we've identified the policy violations that we believe were potent potentially happened um they are trained specifically on that I believe when an auditor comes in they're always likely to find stuff but we do believe we've identified the key areas where there might be any findings appreciate that and then just want to kind of shift it back to the the students like you

145did at the end of your presentation uh do the issues existing uh at 2018 when we decide had the comprehensive facilities master plan when we were looking at uh whether or not to do a renovation or new construction do those same issues still exist for Francis Hall North I can't speak to that entire list but I would say yes I'm being in that building you know we continue to see leaks um other issues with the roof other areas repairs that we're having to do ongoing cons issues with the HVAC system that ultimately will need to be repaired so basically nothing miraculous change we still need a better learning environment for our students at French style North that is correct one that is similar to Francis House Central and Francis how high I would like for

146all of our students to have an amazing facility to learn in each and every day and then just one final question uh in between the ga uh when we heard about the GMP there was a workshop and then when we voted on the GMP we reached out to the the community and did a survey and there was a lot of feedback from the community at that point to March forward no it was limited options at that time but the the community was in full support of marching forward I did not have that data in front of me but that is my recollection that yes there was General support for moving forward with the project that's all I have thank you I actually have that data right in front of me you can answer that one

147really quick for you so we had 3724 individuals answer that survey that went out Central except for new price and Forge ahead um and then 1260 said to pause construction and rebid then there was an 185 that answered other foreign thank you very much for all the hard work for from you as well as your team um on all this work I know it wasn't easy and you guys dug a whole lot so I really appreciate it really taking a deep dive and looking at it um I also appreciate you kind of saying take responsibility for it even though you aren't necessarily the person in charge then um and then ultimately it's it's the Board of Education that has responsibility to the taxpayers for it um not not you um so I guess just a

148couple of conversations we talked about the the Board of Education having a representative on that design team is there any policies providing that that representative from talking to the rest of the board and letting them know what's going on in that design not at all um I I don't know that that there's policy prohibiting it or encouraging it I think you know we have board members that sit on all of our board directed committees I think in a policy committee earlier this week I don't know that the normal practice is always that board members report directly back to the rest of the board but again there's nothing saying that they couldn't do that is there anything preventing them from reaching out to that member that asked questions about how things are going no um and

149is there anything preventing the board from asking coming up here asking asking the tough questions and sometimes it's messy sometimes it doesn't come out right is there any policy preventing the board from digging down and even if the information isn't fully presented really digging into it and asking the hard questions no thank you I'd like to thank you for your thorough presentation here but I also want to remind everyone that it's not just Francis Howell North that the safety vegetables at most schools were completed we gave our Union High School a brand new facility admin we were able to bring everything here we're able to have that building so we're saving money in all those places so a lot more money hap has happened already than just Francis Howell North so I think that's a

150reminder for all of us a lot of good things did come out of that bond issue already and it continues to happen it's a shame that North cost so much money and I thank you again for the presentation thank you for that presentation uh can you speak a little bit about where the information came from that indicated no inflation was built into the original numbers and before we answer um I was reviewing some old tapes or board meeting videos from this particular one was from the October a workshop where the Architects first presented the draft comprehensive facilities master plan to the board and in there there was a question by a board member whether specifically asking whether or not the the costs that were being presented include or take into consideration that the projects might

151not be built for another 10 or 20 years and the the answer was um was that they don't but then a few minutes later the architect said something along the lines that we built in contingencies for that sort for unknowns and then also for price increases now at that meeting they weren't talking about Francis Howell North specifically they in that meeting they specifically talked about just about every building except North so I have pleased me to believe some of the other costs in the comprehensive facilities master plan might have had some inflation built in um even still five percent for for a project 10 or 20 years isn't quite enough but there is there's a little bit of mismatch there with with that so realize you may not know off the top of your head

152but again my question was is where did that info come from that indicated no escalation was built in and Mr so I can't speak to that specific meeting off top of my head what I can say is a couple of the key data points that we shared tonight that we felt like the significant timeline was based on when we reviewed those materials we didn't see a line item that pointed that out I mean we didn't see an asterisk that said this number has been adjusted for inflation and so when we think about moving forward what we would want to present to you and to the public would be the initial cost estimate then we would show the soft costs we would show the inflation so we'd see those numbers built out and I think what

153that would allow us to do as we move forward is that if it's five years down the road we could say oh well this only included two percent we know that based on this it's probably closer to five or that we could adjust but I'd be happy to go back and look at that you said October 2018 Workshop specifically um we just didn't see it highlighted or delineated in that way on the documents that we had so our review process when it came to that was looking at the publicly available materials that we could find so whether that was board meeting minutes agendas for the Committees where we we could find minutes and Jenna's and look at that information and that's what we based that on okay thank you and then I'll give you a

154little bit of a cheat sheet but it's about the one one hour 50 minute Mark so it'll save you one hour and 50 minutes of watching there thank you although that section isn't that long but uh there's um there was some talk about the board not being made aware of price increases after the after the construction manager at risk was selected and the project started moving forward in design at some point though I if if memory serves and perhaps this was bit packaged too there was a rationale made that the board should approve bit package to because prices are going up and and same with two and three we should start buying concrete and steel now to get in at at these prices before uh before they go up and even more at that point

155did the facilities committee or did you find any any indication that the facilities committee throughout 2021 Revisited rehabilitating Francis Al North since the Delta between the two was was clearly going up I'm not aware that we saw detailed um conversations such as that so again the minutes that we had available as two that we reviewed were not scripted discussions and so maybe that happened maybe it didn't I'm just not aware of that so we based it on what was publicly shared back with the Board of Education what I I'm not gonna make any assumptions but and I think um our student board rep alluded to this a little bit earlier but um safe to assume that the the facilities committee made the decision to build a new high school instead of renovate the old since

156the board didn't directly make that that decision I don't want to make that assumption directly I know that we were able to review slides from a July of 2019 facilities committee meeting where all of those options were still on the table I believe they shared from the facilities master plan they shared the addition options there might have been one or two and then there was new construction options it was clear that discussion you know took place of those various options at that meeting beyond that the only thing we've heard is anecdotal discussions and so I I don't I don't want to say that it was the facilities committee or prop s or that it was one administrator in their office I I can't say who made that ultimate decision because there is a disconnect then

157from that to moving forward with the new building and we couldn't clearly identify who made the decision just thinking about that again is it safe to say that uh really the the administration may make decisions among themselves but ultimately bring a recommendation to the board and that's when the decision is made so in this case the decision the decision to build a new High School was indirectly made when they went out for for uh rfps for the construction manager at risk at that point the board was acknowledging that we aren't going to read rehabilitate we're going to explore services to build a new one that would be correct at that point going out for the RFQ and RFP even those processes it was for a new building I think it would also be fair to

158say that when the prop s literature was provided to the voters at that time it was identified as building a new high school and so it was clearly identified at that point with the literature that we found thank you yes I will try and look at what month but there was a there was a board vote with a recommendation from Administration to build a new North I want to say the difference in um was about 30 there's 35 million with the estimates we were given at that time construction remodeling would have been about 60 million and building the new North at that time was around the estimated 90 million I can find them the um the month that was but I know there was a vote and then lastly there's uh you had mentioned in

159the slides early on that the cost estimate was reduced from I think 93.5 or 91 in that range to 83 point 83 and change and you weren't able to find a an exact reason why that was why that occurred and you it may be because square footage was reduced from 380 thousand presumably down to 350 000. um you think it's a fair assessment to say that the square footage increase wasn't necessarily thirty thousand square feet but sixty thousand square feet from from prop s from when it was passed that is I would say that's true we were basing that assumption when we showed that because we in the facilities Workshop discussion where they talked about um the different options there was a slide deck that showed the 380 000 square foot option and then the

160350 000 square foot option so yes to go from the 350 up to the 410 would have been a 60 000 square foot increase but what we found is when we were trying to look through the prophets literature that went out it never included a square footage amount and so what we don't know is that when when that decision made when it went back in but yes and then lastly um with respect to the pricing for the rent for the for the renovation which was you know plan b or actually was option one I think in cfmp but um did you find any uh pricing discrepancies in that work you mentioned a lot of different changes that have that occurred throughout the pricing of the new building was there any similar changes in that in

161that price that was being compared to I'll be honest that we did not explore that closely around the renovation options we'd be happy to look into that for the information we have available but that wasn't our Focus because we were focused on the cost increase of the new construction thanks again um what are some of the other projects we're working on in process so there's actually a significant number of projects that still remain on the list the larger projects that were next up included a consideration of some renovation or additions possibly at Henderson Elementary the same for Fairmont Elementary the construction of a new transportation department was on there and then there's a longer list of potential additions at Francis Hall High School fields at Francis Hall Central and then you move into more Capital

162Improvement ongoing maintenance projects HVAC systems throughout the district air conditioning and heating systems at a variety of buildings throughout the district and a lot of I say little but not really little for the people that need them but lower cost projects but there were a lot of them on the list that we were exploring and so that's what I shared part of our next step is making a decision we can't do them all the reality is we do not have the funds to do them all and I don't want to ongoing mislead people to think we might do this or this might come up in a few years part of that next process needs to be ultimately making a recommendation and getting approval of the board to say the these are the priorities and the

163projects we'll do moving forward these are projects that need to be removed from the list at this point in time until we can find other funding mechanisms in the future thank you you're welcome foreign if you go back to our August 15 2019 meeting you'll see the facilities Master planning committee recommendations that there's a presentation that was given there and then monthly from there out it discusses the community input the Committees they had Etc to come up with the recommendation to build a new North so that starts August 15 2019. Dr rumpus I just want to say a couple things thank you so much for your looking into this for us I know that that wasn't an easy thank you for acknowledging that um that It ultimately was your responsibility I agree with uh Mr

164Bertrand that it was sometimes the board should have been known but I do run up say we didn't know what we didn't know at the time and I think that comes to every single one of us um we get a lot of information um and I also want to say that I really appreciate the fact that you made note of the administrators that were all part of this are no longer here I think that's really important to note so thank you for your hard work on this thank you Dr Hawk for your hard work on this and I really do appreciate everything you guys are doing I think this pretty much should clear up what went wrong and that uh you know we've all got to work harder to make sure it doesn't happen again

165forward any other questions or comments I would like to thank you and Dr Hawk and every single individual who's put all the time and energy into this for us um and I would like to encourage our public considering it's already 9 pm and this is a lot of information to we will be uploading this within the next this evening this evening so take a look at it I'm emailing in any questions Etc but um go over all of it again it will all be there for you just to check out anything else born presently I just want to take one second two to thank I mean you just mentioned Dr Hawk um spent a lot of time on this Miss Jules our director of communications helped I want to also acknowledge that um people who

166are no longer with the district were willing to talk to us and answer questions a lot of the partners that we've had in doing this work on these projects we're willing to share information with us and be open and you know we asked a lot of questions ongoing and over and over again and that people were at least Cooperative with us and we appreciate that um it really took a team effort to make this happen yes thank you do we need to take a quick five-minute Resource Board are we good to go superintendent needs a tiny break [Laughter] we will be signing a document soon thank you okay it's late all right bored I would like a motion to approve the consent agenda for March 16 2023 as presented second Mr Bertrand all those in

167favor say aye aye any opposed say no motion carries Ford I would like emotion to approve the February monthly Financial reports as presented to Bertrand miss stinklage all those in favor say aye all those opposed say no bored I would like a motion to approve the purchases over 7 500 as presented second Mr lean any discussion board all those in favor say aye any opposed say no berries or whatever like a motion to approve the 2024-2025 calendar as presented Mr Lang and Mrs English Simkins thank you um board I just want to just share a few things we answered a lot of your questions already in writing then and all of those are posted on board docs but we did not have a full committee as this school Year's calendar 24 25 mirrors the calendar

168that the 2019 calendar Committee created just tweaking the dates to make sure that things will work out well we do submit a survey to our staff and our community once the draft is created 86 percent of our staff were very satisfied satisfied or neutral with this calendar and 85 percent of our community responded in the same way and we addressed all of the questions that came through the survey with a few tweaks including the change in the snow day plans I think that is the biggest change that you'll see in the 2425 school year calendar snow days one through four are built into the calendar we have enough hours built into our calendar to meet the state guidelines and so we're able to build in those snow days so they don't have to be made

169up of the end of the year snowdy's five and six will be Ami days or alternative methods of instruction and we'll work with our staff to make sure we understand that fully and communicate that to our community as we get closer to the start of the school year snow day seven and eight if we get there we have an average of about six snow days um the last couple of years if you go all the way back to 2909 it's about 3.9 so we may not get to snow days seven and eight if we do those will be traditional snow days and made up at the end of the year just because we don't have enough hours built into the calendar to use those as Ami or as built into snow days nine and ten

170would be Ami that we're just kind of going back and forth there so happy to answer any other questions that you might have about the 2425 calendar um regarding the survey or the development of it board any questions or comments let's have one quick question hopefully um in the development of the snow day schedule we have like the four built-in days and then we go to Ami what is what's the reasoning for for like the methodology of having the four built-in days first then the Ami and then two days and then am I again we did have a snow day Community come together and have some conversation and we sent a survey out to both community members and staff members and ask for their input and part of that survey we asked um questions related

171to Ami days versus built-in snow days versus traditional snow days kind of what was their preference and how excited would they be about us using each of those and then we also asked them another question where they had to rank nine different criteria as we make our decision about how to order the options what do you think should be our top consideration what should we place the most emphasis on when we're making that decision and so honestly it came from the input of those that took the survey both community and staff members ironically if you if you were to look at like the top I think it was top four I'll stop my head uh responses from community and staff not necessarily in the same order but they both had the top four criteria that

172they wanted us to use and a lot of that centered on ending the school year as close to Memorial Day as possible so that they could plan and start summer vacations kids could be part of Summer Camps things like that so to answer your question the reason that we started with the built-in snow days first was because that was a clear front runner over Ami days from both the community survey results and the staff survey results in their preferences among the three options and then when we looked at the criteria we considered it also is least likely to interfere with summer school which allows us to start summer school on time and give our teachers a couple days to kind of transition between the school year and summer school assuming that we don't have tense

173notice board any other questions or comments just one more I apologize I didn't get this in earlier so I understand if you don't have the data I'm going to guess you don't but um given that uh as of what 2019 or shortly thereafter we have to start school no earlier than uh two weeks before Labor Day is that correct um is that right yeah the legislation was July 11th of 2019 and um it bars districts from setting an opening date for the school year that is more than 14 calendar days before the first Monday in September okay thank you the um it used to be a calendar a big idea I think is what what our paperwork used to say that we would like first semester to end by the end of the year um

174or presumably for student achievement for grades have you noticed any decline since now students are taking finals two weeks well there's only two weeks after they get back from there their break and again if you haven't analyzed that I wish I would have thought to ask it sooner but uh maybe something to look into nothing stands out to me but I would want to go back and and check that specific thing to see once we change the calendar and look at the student achievement before and after that to tell you for sure we do get a lot of feedback from building leaders some staff members about ending before break some community members that comes up in the survey I will tell you some other staff members who have a semester or quarterly classes they also

175feel like having equal number of days and semesters and quarters is important and so with the late start it's hard to end before Christmas or before winter break without unequal is it a man is it a state requirement to have equal days or is that just something that's a best practice of ours yeah if uh like in the Middle School when we have the wheel if you're in a quarter class our goal would be that when I'm in the art class for this quarter that whether I take it first quarter or second quarter or third quarter or fourth quarter I have the same learning experience and so when our teachers are given curriculum or resources to use they're kind of built for shortening it would eliminate potentially an entire unit for some kids or second

176semester it's a longer stretch of time thank you that makes perfect sense or anything else all those in favor say aye I'm any opposed say no I'm curious bored I would like a motion to approve the revised 2023-24 school year as school year calendar as presented Mr bertrands zika Meyer it's like there is no big change to the 2324 calendar except for implementing the snow day plans that we just talked about for 24.25 and so we'll Implement those plans for this next school year as well board any questions or comments on this one all those in favor say aye I'm any opposed say no curse bored I would like a motion to approve the Staffing changes as presented thanks Miss Lang we presented to you a final Staffing plan for the 2324 school year back

177in January and since then we have looked at our needs for special education Staffing uh what we're asking is to reallocate some ftes from the non-certified side uh to the so to the certified side um we have some pair professional positions that are vacant and they have been tough to fill um so we'll eliminate those vacant paraprofessional positions and add a teaching position so there will be six paraprofessional positions exchanged for two teaching positions in that in that plan board any questions or comments all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say no motion carries board I would like a motion to approve the 2023-24 2024 pay increases and salary schedules as presented Richard and Mr cook Simpkins thank you these are the salary schedules for our non-represented staff they follow closely with what

178is being presented to you this evening for our represented groups but it just breaks down each individual category with some changes that we're recommending to you so if you have any specific questions I would be happy to answer those anything bored okay all those in favor say aye I'm any opposed say no there's we're done like a motion to approve the extra Duty recommendations as presented thing pumpkins thank you just want to say thank you to those that participated on our extra Duty committee this year uh whether electronically by reviewing all of our information or those that attended our meetings in person this committee has not met in several years we have not had resources available to really make significant changes to the extra Duty offerings for our students but we did feel like this

179year it was important for us to gather even just to talk about reallocating some of the resources that we had to meet some of the requirements or needs of our students so throughout the document and memo that you have most of the requests are asking for some flexibility we have some intramural positions at the elementary level that sometimes go unfilled whether that's because of student interest or lack of Staff interest we have four positions at each elementary school and it's sometimes difficult to find for staff members or enough students to fill four positions so we're just asking for some flexibility to be to use those resources differently depending on the school so that we can continue to engage our students in different things that they might be interested in throughout the year we're also just

180looking at changing some of the offerings for our student interest groups at the elementary and middle school that is not a an additional position or a change in cost but just some different offerings kind of updating the the clubs that are available to meet students needs and interests this year and then we do ask for some additional positions at the high school level Esports is becoming such a popular area of interest for our students that we are asking to add an assistant coach at each of our high schools the sport is such now that the coach has to be in the virtual room when students are participating in those games and having just one coach is difficult for scheduling and so forth so the popularity of that sport is grown and we'd like to add

181an assistant coach and then finally with girls wrestling is becoming such a popular sport and we know our students are doing well there just to stay consistent with the offerings that we have for the boys program and the number of girls that are interested in that sport we'd like to add an assistant coach at each of those at each high school as well coaches are required to be on the mat for those matches and we want to be sure that we have enough coaches to support that scheduling and support our students any questions or comments born all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say no motion carries board I'd like a motion to approve the 2023-2024 Facebook closure document and salary schedule as presented that was a tie miss stiglitz Mr ziggemeyer the

182Simpkins I just want to thank all of the Facebook Representatives the board members and and the administration team who participated we really did have a lot of collaborative conversation uh with fispa our administrative team would like our support staff in place to know how much we value the work that they do each and every day to support our students and our teachers we know it is a difficult time as the cost of living has increased significantly and Our intention again here was to be as aggressive as possible but given the financial resources available we felt like we could not increase salaries more than what is being presented at this time but we are very committed to continuing to work with fispa and our community to reflect the value that we feel these individuals bring to

183our district board any questions or comments all those in favor say aye I'm any opposed say no motion carries we will now take a quick five minute recess is everyone ready to go to Houston hi we're back we're back are you guys ready over there we're ready superintendent finally paying attention Dr Buckman whenever you're ready we'll be nope take your time okay welcome back we are now going to um there's a little bit longer than a five minute break I apologize we are going to move on to our next portion of the meeting which is a presentation with our Dr Buckman well it's all good news and it's all happy stuff so we'll start with that tonight we're here to share a little about our annual performance report or the APR for the district in

184January you might remember David Brothers our director of curriculum and assessment and I shared the annual academic update and typically we share APR at the same point in time because the state is switching from msip5 to msip six things have been a little bit different this year we've mentioned we saw the first glimpse of our APR around Valentine's Day and it was embargoed until March 7th so tonight we'll take a look at some of the general information about APR what's included how Francis Howell performed and then um I'll share a little bit about some of the calculations um in its simplest terms APR is really the measure of progress for Missouri students schools and districts towards standards that have been set by the Missouri school board it's the primary factor in the classification for our

185schools um this is if you went to Dusty's website this would be a preview of what the actual annual performance report looks like and so we'll look at each part of this in depth I don't expect you to be able to read this I just wanted you to see it so that if you go to Dusty's website and you pull this up you'll know that this is the document that we're talking about as we go along through the presentation tonight before we get into the agenda or before we get into the details of our score I want to mention that msip6 marks the first time that school districts are measured on standards and indicators that are focused on both performance and continuous Improvement efforts previously the state really only focused on performance measures which are

186the student outcomes the addition of this Improvement efforts The Continuous Improvement score that really lets us highlight our continuous Improvement efforts so we earned points for our comprehensive School Improvement plan or our strategic plan among other items you'll notice that on the slide it mentions 128 points and 52 points next year those will change to 140 and 60 as some additional components are added if we look at our overall score you'll see circled in red there that Francis Howell earned a total of 91.8 percent of the points possible for the 22 school year we earned 89.4 of the points possible for performance and then we earned 98.1 of the points possible for continuous Improvement an amazing score it puts us in the top five percent of school districts in the state of Missouri that's an

187amazing accomplishment when you consider that there are over 500 school districts in the state and we're in the top five percent um it's important to note that there are a couple areas that weren't evaluated as part of the 22 APR we know that they'll be measured in the future years academic growth in science and social studies will be added for the 23 APR and then our response to standards will be reported out in the 24 APR um that's what will cause the increase in points that I mentioned on the previous slide we voluntarily participated in an msip6 pilot and because of that part of the process was to submit a response to standards as part of the pilot we were scored we earned all of our points for that already and they're going to let

188us hold on to that score so we know that when that gets added to the 24 APR we already know we're getting all of our points for that which is a great celebration the response to standards is really just our opportunity to tell our story in a narrative format about the internal systems and structures that we have that are tied to continuous Improvement standards so we'll get started by digging into what you see in the red box that's the academic achievement part of our score you'll notice that there's two components there there's status and growth we'll look at the status portion of Achievement First so status is how students scored on the state assessments during the 21-22 school year so this is kind of your cheat sheet slide this one shows you how districts earn

189points for the status portion of academic achievement there's four ratings that districts could have received in each area you'll see those across the bottom of the slide so floor approaching on track and Target those are the four areas the scores are measured with a metric called the MPI the map Performance index score the maximum number of points the district can earn in ela and math is 12 and then for science and social studies is four you'll see those listed on the the top chart on the top row districts and schools need to earn a score of 400 or above to reach Target status which is what earns you that maximum points possible for each of those each of those categories Dusty calculates an MPI score for each subject area it's basically a measurement that combines

190all the test scores in a subject together using a weighted average student scoring in the advance range count for Five Points students who score in the proficient range earn anywhere between 4 and 4.99 points students who score in the basic range earn 3 to 3.99 points and then students who score below basic we earn one to 2.99 points depending on their actual score and then that weighted average is multiplied by a hundred so an MPI score above 400 indicates that the majority of students are scoring at proficient or Advanced on those assessments so this chart shows you how Francis Howell scored on those measures for academic achievement so you'll see the First Column list the four tested areas for now we're just talking about the all student category we'll talk about student groups in in

191a minute Jesse calculates the MPI for each subject area and as I mentioned that's combining all the test scores into that weighted average so you'll see on the kind of in the middle there the points earned that we are in 12 points for both math and Ela which was the maximum possible and then for science and social studies we earned Four Points which was also the maximum possible which you know if you use that chart down there at the bottom that puts us in the Target designation which is the highest category available for each of those areas and then we'll take a look at the deci cheat sheet for student groups so it's the same for classifications across the chart at the bottom it's still floor it's still approaching it's still on track it's still

192Target you'll notice that the ranges are different it's not if you look at the Target category it's not 400 to 500 anymore it's it's a little bit of a wider range as a reminder when we talk about student groups Dusty looks at black Hispanic students on free reduced lunch students with disabilities and English Learners are the five categories that they include um one other change you'll notice is that if you look up at the top that top row Ela and math the maximum points we can earn would be six and then for science and social studies we can earn two so it's half of what we would earn for the all student group um and so this slide shows you how we performed for our student groups so you'll see we earned all six points

193possible for ELA putting us in the target range and then you'll notice that we earned 4.5 out of six points for math 1.5 out of two points for both science and social studies again this is only looking at the data from students who are included in one of those five student groups that are previously mentioned the far right column shows the designation category where you've got Target for ELA and then on track for the other content areas when it comes to the student group performance the chart at the bottom lets you see how close we are to earning the target designation in each of those categories while they're strong scores we know that we're always working to close that Gap and that continues to be an area of focus for us academic achievement that was

194status so it also looks at growth which is how much a student Grew From one year to the next in a subject area that being tested gross scores are calculated for students in fourth fifth sixth seventh uh and eighth grade who've been with our district for two full academic years and so this chart shows how the state calculates growth it basically looks at comparing a for each Francis Howell student to the average Missouri student and then we receive a rating based on the comparison of that individual student's rate of growth compared to that of the average Missouri students rate of growth so for example if you were to look at the bottom row of the top chart you'll see that for ELA and math we would have received or we would have received an above

195average rating for 9 to 12 growth points so that was the cheat sheet and this is how we actually performed for our student growth this is the clip from our API report you can see that Francis Howell was rated above average which is the highest designation in all areas of growth for all student groups and also for our student groups growth for science and social studies weren't calculated for 2122 and Desi has indicated that that will be part of future years when the APR is calculated I'll also mention that High School growth is hasn't been calculated yet the state's still trying to figure out how they're going to calculate that they're not quite sure we're anxious to hear what they have in mind outside of academic achievement the state also considers a few other performance

196indicators that you'll see on the slide here success ready is a metric that measures the students Readiness for the next phase of their educational experience it holds us as the district accountable for providing students with resources to ensure their success and So within that category you'll see we earned 5 out of 10 points for our College and Career Readiness assessments those CCR assessments that measures the students performance on the CCR assessments like act the ASVAB act workkeys we earn points not only on how students score on the assessment but also on the percentage of students who complete one of those assessments you probably remember in January we spent some time talking about all of our next steps tied to the workaround ACT we've also put some processes in place to make sure that all students

197have a CCR assessment by graduation we believe all of that will have a positive impact on those points earned we also earn 10 out of 10 points on our Advanced Credit measures so that looks at student participation and performance in the AP exams AP classes college credit course enrollment our Project Lead the Way enrollment and then those industry recognized credentials ircs and then at the bottom you'll see our graduation rate and you'll notice that we earned 20 out of 20 points and then our graduation follow-up where we earn four out of four points that grad follow-up is the survey that's completed 180 days after graduation that determines what our graduates are doing once they've left us and you probably remember back to January we looked at all that data a little more in depth um

198and then this slide outlines the last pieces so this is our The Continuous Improvement standards and how Francis hell performed on that side the district earned all of the points possible for our comprehensive School Improvement plan as stated before our response to standards will be included in the APR in 24. we also earned all the points possible by completing our students staff and family climate surveys the next category up there is Success ready students and you'll see four components in there so Kea is the kindergarten entry assessment districts have to assess every kindergartner within the first six weeks of school to earn for Readiness to earn full points for this measure and we earned all four out of four points on that one the next one is icap that's our individualized career and academic plans

199that our students create so we are tasked with making sure that all of our eighth grade students have completed an Ikea an icap to earn full points on this measure and again we earned all four out of four points there the attendance measure is next that takes a look at the percentage of our students who are at school 90 of the time we earned three out of four points for that area we know coming out of covid we still have a little work to do on attendance and we're in the process of meeting with all of our schools for data visits and they are working hard on that we continue to have conversations about what we can do to support families getting our students here it'll continue to be a focus into next year and

200we'll look for ways that we can partner with our families to stress the importance of having kids at school all day every day and then CTE expansion is the last one down there so that gives districts some additional points if they expand their CTE programs Lewis and Clark is who we partner with they added a law enforcement program during the 2122 school year and so we earned our two additional points because of that expansion and then the final component of the APR is making sure that all of the required documentation that Desi requires is turned in in a timely fashion the state takes multiple data submissions into account for this indicator and while the large majority of our submissions are done early or on time there were two that were within a day or two

201after the deadline and so you'll see there that we missed a couple points our data processing team has already had several conversations and put some measures in place to develop new systems to make sure that we're meeting all of those deadlines moving forward so we have confidence that we'll we'll earn all of those points next round um while not technically part of the APR assessment participation rates are reported out on this document and so we wanted to go ahead and take a minute and just explain that Francis Hall is required to have at least 95 percent of our students complete map or EOC testing and of course exams and then 95 of our student group population also has to be has to participate in mapper EOC exams individual schools have to meet this requirement as

202well so a district or a school that doesn't have at least 95 percent of their students assessed will not receive APR points for that subject area and the same is true for our student groups we have a very high participation rate and that really is a tribute to our site Tusk our school test coordinators and all that they do to make sure all of our students are tested at the bottom of the slide you'll see the last four areas that are reported on the report card all of which we meet the requirements for to ensure our accreditation based on what we understand at this point we believe that initially we'll receive the accreditation rating of accredited with the new system by law districts cannot have their accreditation impacted for three years after the introduction of

203new standards and indicators and so districts in Missouri won't receive their accreditations until the 2024 APR to allow for that three-year window we don't have all the information yet but based on some initial discussions and and work that we're part of we really believe that we have a strong chance at earning the accredited with distinction honor in 2024 with some continued work in that area of continuous Improvement so we are we are optimistic about that um and then I'll just wrap up by saying you know we always think about what's going well and where we have opportunities for growth there are I just can't stress it enough there are so many areas to celebrate as we analyze our APR and obviously that is a direct tribute to the hard work happening every day in our

204schools with our staff and our administrators um supporting kids every day we are a district that's always been known for high achievement and continuous Improvement and those scores show that that continues to be true in our district as I mentioned earlier out of 553 schools that score of 91.8 puts us in the top five percent of all districts in the state and that really is just an incredible achievement for our entire School community and that's our staff our leaders our parents our students it really is everyone that should take part of that Pride when looking at these celebrations something else I would point out is that the state's been working through those msip six requirements for the past few years and when our kids were assessed last spring and honestly even when we started this

205school year we had no idea how we were going to be held accountable a lot of the measures and metrics hadn't been finalized yet and so our strong scores are really a tribute to the dedicated staff we have across the district doing the good work day in and day out and the fact that we scored so strong out the gate without really knowing how we were going to be held accountable shows that we really do have strong processes in place and and now that we know how we'll be scored and have some feedback on those we'll be able to continue to improve and grow to capture some of those additional points when we think about some of those growth opportunities on the other side you know we're always looking at where we can do better

206for our students one area we continue to focus on is our student group population every time assessment data is generated we're desegregating the data we're looking for Trends in student groups where can we make some instructional decisions that would lead to improved Student Success where can we provide some additional supports to schools who's seeing success what are they doing all of those things that you conversations you would expect uh we also have a plan to focus our efforts towards increasing those ACT scores as we talked about in January in addition as I mentioned we're monitoring the completion of at least one of those CCR assessments and we're confident that we'll earn more points in that area next year and then the final area I'll highlight tonight as I mentioned a minute ago is just attendance

207it's something that every district is struggling with post covid we continue to monitor the data we continue to have conversations about what's working and what what needs there are it'll continue to be a focus in the coming year as as we partner with our families to just keep moving the needle a little bit in that area button so I'm a little afraid to ask if there's any questions I think some of you may have filled your quota for the night but I'm happy to answer any questions and I'll also say I should have given them a shout out in the beginning but David Brothers our director of curriculum and assessment there was no eye contact uh he really helped put so many of the slides together tonight and he's the one that crunches the numbers

208and really helps figure out the calculations and the he tries to explain those complex growth formulas to all of us so that we understand what's happening I'll also mention that every time that that handbook comes out they let us know that it's been updated and they never tell us what has been updated so we just have to read the entire thing and figure out what's been changed and David really takes a lot of time to do that to make sure that we understand what's been changed each time those updates come out so just a little shout out to him he's here to answer any questions as well Warren any comments questions one quick question I am curious what what's the target distance rate that they're looking for for uh no on the spot yeah I

209don't know David do you know that off the top of your head I don't think I had it on the slide I was trying to go back real quick to check but I can get that for you Mr burchan and follow up I'm just curious yeah I'd have to have to check in is that a number that just since covid has been down or would we have been been there prior to covet and maybe because of people being more attuned to being sick and vice versa maybe missing a few more days than they normally would oh foreign that David's done a great job of reaching out to other districts you know when we look at our attendance rates and we get a little anxious often when we reach out to other districts comparable districts to

210find out what theirs are uh often we really are doing better comparable but often better than they are so uh it would lead us to believe that some of the efforts that we're putting in place it's really the work the principals are doing in the buildings following up having conversations I talked to a principal today and she said I I have a hard time just if they miss the bus there's no one to bring into school like I need to get on a van and go pick some kids up and that would help my attendance rate so it's just a lot of little things that we don't always have the resources and the staff to do so the data was embargoed for a little while right and is it all on Dusty's website now for

211all the districts so have we created a comparison shirt with Benchmark District to see kind of where we are yeah we haven't and we've actually been asked not to do that by the department of Elementary and secondary education given that this is the first year of rolling out msip six um they're really encouraging us not to use it as a comparison metric right now it's only one year of available data out of three years that will be coming we do that naturally internally because we do but we chose not to um share those charts and graphs in the way we traditionally have we're happy to provide that to you as board members right yeah there's a quick comment again I want to pre thank others and Connie for meeting with me back in January we

212talked we didn't have the numbers yet but we talked about him so six I had a lot of questions um I'll just reiterate that uh David really knows the craft he knows the assessment side of this very well and I think that probably the math background probably has something to do with it but he's working the numbers before or way early in the process to make sure we get it so I think that's a something to acknowledge here so appreciate it I'm not going to ask any questions apparently I reached my quota so I just wanted to uh kind of uh acknowledge and and point out that on the 11th slide that you have there with the academic achievement the growth component of that uh and just say how good of a job that you

213guys have done because in order to achieve those possible points and the growth area when we're already a high achieving District that's uh extremely difficult and the designation is above average so who knows to all the students teachers and staff ORD any other comments and questions I just have a quick one Dr Buckman you said this was last year's data from the stuff from mtet six it was what was 22. so that was the first year after Cove I mean after the schools had shut down when the year after that the test uh because no uh no we would have yes it would have been the first full year after that we had the shutdown and then we had we came back full with everybody and we didn't test that year right we tested that

214year and that the only part of that data that was used was as part of the growth data so it was the following school year last school year was when all of the data that we were held accountable for that word right so the achievement data that we looked at the status points that was the test the kids just took in last spring last spring okay thank you just even makes this even more impressive Arielle you got any questions or comments on uh data not really though I do remember taking a long time to fill out that icap like we spent like a day or so talking about it and then I remember waking up one day and the packet full of the stuff for the icap was across my like across my bed because

215I must have fallen asleep looking at it because I do that when I try and memorize stuff because when you're trying to go to sleep your brain remembers information better and so I must have been looking at that but I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore anything else bored thank you Dr Buckman okay next up are we at superintendent Commons we are it's you on top of things um several things first um on Saturday March 4th the district held its annual meet fhsc recruitment event for the first time coming out of covid and it was a huge success we had over a hundred prospective job candidates here looking at teaching opportunities in the district and we're excited to bring more great teachers and certified staff to work in the district we are always

216proud of our students academic achievements and this year we had five students representing all three high schools who were named National Merit Scholarship finalists and we will be recognizing them at an upcoming board meeting Tuesday evening this week I was delighted to join our district senior Pals group at their second event this year I want to thank everyone who attended and thank them for getting involved in their schools a lot of them shared some of the work that they're doing to volunteer at a lot of our different schools and that's fantastic it's open to any fhsd Resident age 55 and older and if you're interested in joining just make sure you're on the district's email list and we'll be communicating about our last event of this year at the Cupcake Wars coming up in may

217we were also grateful that we got to partner that night and attend the Spartan community band concert which was an amazing event with current and former Sager Francis Hall Central banned students alums parents staff members community members who all come together there are over 120 musicians that performed that night and our senior Pals got to attend that concert I'm back at the end of February we were we're grateful that we had Sergeant fagans with the Saint Charles County Police cyber crime task force who did a presentation for parents as part of our family learning series talking about social media and popular apps and helping us know what danger signs to look for when our children were online those really are great events and we're open to how we can better communicate them and get more

218people there because the information that's shared is really outstanding and we want to expand the group who's attending them um our leadership team had the um honor last week of getting to surprise both our support staff and teacher of the year we got to recognize Olivia Howard the choir director at Francis Howell middle who is our district teacher of the year and Darlene cruzey the bis at Brian middle who was celebrated as the sports staff member of the year that's it's a special moment to get to do that they represent the um teacher and sports staff member of all of the winners at all of our buildings throughout the district and we'll get to recognize them again at our Hall of Fame celebration coming up in May I'm really excited to share publicly that the

219Saint Charles County council has announced that they are going to continue to fully fund the sros at our elementary schools within the county next year in where we don't have other jurisdictions involved using the arpa funds really we need to thank the county executive for that as he was committed to making it happen as I visit our elementary schools and meet the individuals who are serving in those SRO SRO rules we really lucked out it's an amazing group of men and women who love being in the schools they're building relationships with the students and the community they're in classrooms presenting lessons and just to watch them interact with our students it really um it's been great this year and we're thrilled that the county is helping us out next year we still need to look

220at how we will fund that the following year but that will continue for next year I want to reiterate Dr Buckman's celebration of our APR you know one of the points of Pride for me when I think about it is when you look at those student scores of the student group as well as those growth scores because it shows that um in a high achieving District we really are working to meet the needs of all of our students wherever they are at and where they come to school we always have opportunities for improvement but it's a great reminder that there really is a lot to celebrate in this District I also want to thank Dr Buckman and her team the chief academic officer position in this district has a legacy of great leadership and Dr

221Buckman you know is in year three of this coming in during covet has really stepped up and is doing an incredible job leading that department and working with her team they really drive the csip and all the school Improvement efforts when it comes to academics throughout the district and support all of our principals and our buildings in that process and I'm really honored to work with such a great team as they do that the scores you know yes they reflect great kids and families and the hard work of all of the teachers administrators and support staff in the district that allow us to be able to do this work each and every day last board I really would like to thank you in this special month um you know your service and commitment to this

222District really is unmatched you know we hear somewhat frequently a misconception that people believe you are paid for this work and we know that nothing could be farther from the truth but we continue to hear that um you as a group of individuals spend hundreds of hours each year preparing for these meetings attending these meetings responding to our needs and concerns Patron needs and concerns our staff and it takes a lot of time it shows a true commitment to being committed to making Francis Howell the best District it can possibly be and I thank all seven of you for that commitment and also for the trust you put in me in this role and appreciate the support that you give our team and you challenge us to do better and make sure that we're always

223thinking how we can improve the district and we do appreciate that so thank you for everything that you do tomorrow is our last day of school before spring break and I really hope that many or most of our 2300 employees are able to find time to rest next week at least part of it they work incredibly hard to support our students and Community every day and this is a well-deserved break I also hope that our students and families are able to enjoy some quality time together and have a safe spring break when we come back that following week we have two events that will be open to the public we hope people attend on Wednesday the 29th our Francis Howell Central students will be hosting the board candidate Forum at Francis House Central at 7

224pm we encourage everyone to come out and then the following evening we'll be back here in the boardroom to host a work session at 6 30 to talk with the board about potential recommendations for transportation next year so we hope that as many of our community members as possible will attend both of those events board any comments or question comments I just have a couple um I was at the senior Pals event on Tuesday night and just want to reiterate what Dr rampa said to say it was a great event got a chance to meet some really great people and who voiced some of their concerns about our district and I think afterwards we all had a better understanding of where the district was going so I really do appreciate that and you know I

225want to keep those events going if we can um also I had the opportunity to visit Becky David under literacy night I know that was mentioned during Patron comments and they had 250 finger light flashlights that were gone within five minutes so the attendance there was absolutely amazing I want to thank Becky David staff and teachers for putting that together I it was truly eye-opening for me so shout out to Becky David and what a great job they did that night any other items born just say thanks to the schools and the kids who wrote these uh things here and the ones out in the hallways I know that's a lot of uh a lot of fun for the teachers and students but uh certainly appreciate it and I have a long statement sorry it's

226a late night I like to address the citizens comments on bringing us back to the basics and for better understanding of why we have continuous training on the science of reading and for the academic concerns listed on social media uh social media about the poor performance of The District the best Back to Basics movements calls for teaching of Reading Writing and arithmetic Francis has a focus on the basics already if you look at our kindergarten we have 150 minutes of English language arts and 50th math grades one two and three we have 150 minutes of reading English language arts sorry at 60 Minutes of math and in grades four and five we have 130 minutes of ela and 70 minutes of math I looked up the nation's literacy rate and in 1970 it was 34

227percent now today our literacy rate is 79 but as I dug deeper I was appalled to see that about 50 percent of our population reads at the sixth grade level or below so I said what does Francis Howell look like I saw some information from the fast Bridge assessment at the end of sixth grade 83 percent of our students are on level scoring 40 percent of higher on that test 82 percent in math we are preparing our children for the future they're already above the national Norm in Reading why do we have the science of reading reading has changed so much when I began teaching in 1980 we received a teaching tool basically what's called a basil old people like me and that's how you taught you got a math book you did chapter 1

228chapter 2 chapter 3 I was called the office because I went to chapter five and skipped chapter four and we've come a long way now our teachers are involved in data teams which they look at assessments and the results of those assessments interventions have changed we only had one interventionist through the 80s and 90s now our buildings have two to three in the elementary schools and we have interventionists in our middle schools um we now do summative informative assessments you hear that all the time it is so valuable formative is basically for learning we're continually assessing children to see what we need to do to help them achieve their goals and the summative assessments are the summation of the unit have they learned all those skills to move forward and then lately the last 10

229years we have RTI or response to intervention where we make a pyramid of interventions for our children and we're always changing that pyramid it used to be a set pyramid you were a guppy you were always a guppy when I went to school now it's where are your strains mine might need a word attack skills or some other child might need comprehension and we attack that then we worry about the performance of our district and I'm like hey let's look this up 95 of our children graduate within the fifth year 97 and you talk about the student subgroups and we have 80 percent of our children that's our free and reduced lunch our typical everyday kids whatever you want to call them our English language Learners are going on to college or at a two-year

230College a four-year College a technical school 13 are in the workforce one and a half percent join the military I look at school ratings there's always more than one measure and one measure showed us or we're told is not as well so I look these up nisha's has in the top 10 schools in the state you look up the state uh Desi we're at the top five percent in the state you look at the Post-Dispatch top five percent in the state you look at the show me Institute so I was referred to and we're still in the top 10 percent but the show me institute's claim that Francis Howell is number 52 a 516 districts in the district does not align with the data from the Department of uh Elementary and secondary education or Desi

231as you hear it Desi has implemented a new scoring system this year which you have heard about and has caused our scores to drop across the state to the rigor that's expected the state of Missouri's testing is in the top five in the nation when we first started giving it was called the map test um that was late 90s one state had a hundred percent proficiency that tells you what their test rigor was like and so we have come a long way this ranking being in the top five percent demonstrates that Francis House one of Missouri's highest performing districts and I'd like to congratulate the Francis House School District administrators teachers staffs and families for the Devotion to our students in the progress they're making thank you well said Mr lean anything else born I

232would um like to thank my principal Mrs longgrove for allowing me to come all of the teachers at my middle school who voted for me to come I would like to thank Mrs Adams for a wonderful drama Department I would like to thank our librarians and just everyone who's made everyone's day wonderful and I would like to thank you for joining us this evening for a long evening okay board if there's nothing else I would like a motion to adjourn I don't know who was even first everybody okay all in favor say I'm aye any opposed say no motion carries