Board of Education Meeting 9/15/22

001she said it will just maybe and then we'll take the picture and then you'll get to sit up there and just stick glitch on the board we'll kind of show you how to use the ipad and kind of talk to you for a minute and then get started and you'll get to see all the excitement so thanks for being pictures too can you here for a photo or just while she's getting out there all right welcome everybody we are going to start our meeting off this evening um with a tax free hearing doctor hawk before this evening i want to share some information with you about a the most unique tax rate presentation i've ever had the opportunity to put together uh so we're going to go ahead and get that started i first want

002to thank cindy rylman cindy was instrumental she's not here tonight but she was instrumental in also helping put this work together so i want to make sure she give credit where credit is due um first some celebrations and some challenges and just a little bit of insight into the discoveries that i made as i learned more about the francis house school district and our tax rate an area of celebration we are one of the like the highest performing school district in st charles county and we have the lowest tax rate so taxpayers should feel that they're getting a really great deal uh for their tax money something that we can celebrate and it's also something that is a bit of a challenge for us um our we operate with anywhere between 12 and 60 cents

003less on our operating levy than our neighboring districts and our operating and capital fund balances are below that of typical school districts that's something i've uh mentioned with the board a little bit previously and something that i see is a real challenge for us just in our day-to-day um operating situation we're proposing a tax rate of 4.4605 which is less than a quarter of a penny of an increase from the current rate it's unusual to have the request to make any kind of an increase during a non-reassessment year and we're going to explore why that is taking place this year this year we would anticipate at this tax rate that we would receive about 140 million dollars at a 97 collection rate i think it's important for our taxpayers to know that our local tax

004revenue makes up 59 of our overall operating budget now in the st louis area that can be very typical or in kansas city area but across the state of missouri that is not normal typically the majority of your tax rate across the state is paid through state revenue but in our area it's more local revenue we anticipate that we will receive approximately 4.8 million dollars in new revenue that's approximately 1.7 more than was budgeted when mr suffel put the budget together last year however i think it's important to note that overall we had a budget increase of 3.1 million more this year in local taxes from the previous years so just kind of looking at it all together of that amount that we're receiving 78 000 is all of the difference that will be made

005up from that 0.0024 so in that revenue is coming in primarily from new construction personal property and we're going to visit a bit about that as we move through this slide gives you some information i thought it was very interesting as we compare ourselves to other st charles county school districts you'll see that there's little to no um increases taking place and so we are still even with the .0024 still the lowest tax levy in st charles county the next slides give you some information about the assessed valuation and how that breaks down taking a look at this real estate makes up 72 percent of our overall assessed valuation and personal property about 15 of that when you look at the percentage change on the far right hand side overall it was just a 4.1

006increase and you see that 22 percent of that is from personal property which is something very different than in a typical year as a non-reassessment year um our total assessed value increased 127 million dollars and that additional revenue is coming from new construction i had a really hard time trying to put this in words that would make sense because when you think about new construction you think about buildings and building a new house building a new business well 19.5 million of that new construction cost is what's called new construction reel building things the other 103 million is from new construction personal what that means and this is the first time i've ever had to dig into this what that means is it costs so much right now by used car the value of your used

007car from last year to this year is higher if you were to go sell your truck or sell your car you would make a lot more selling it this year than you would a year or two years ago so normally the cost of those vehicles kind of just goes down over time but this year it took a total spin in a different direction so much so that it's a 22 increase from the prior year which is an anomaly that normally ever happened never happens i i learned about you know from our assessor that that's the nada values so if you want to look up the value of your used car that's where you should go to find it this slide i think is very important to look at as a district our assessed value has

008increased considerably since 2015. um that's great if you own a home in this community that's an exciting thing it means your home if you owned it in 2015 it's worth a lot more now than it was then the following slide gives a nice little summary of our overall value of the tax rate changes that we've had over the last several years so as we look into this i wanted to try to help explain the hancock amendment which has been in place for years and years and years and was designed by our legislators to make sure that taxpayers were not taken advantage of as assessed valuations go up if taxes remain stable schools and other entities would just have giant pots of money kind of was the theory that people had in mind um so if

009we looked at that for us like the hancock commitment has capped or minimized the increase that we as a school could have since 2014 to the tune of 24.1 million so it has done what the design of the hancock amendment was which was to create a revenue neutral or not neutral maybe maybe a tiny cap no more than a five percent growth that you could have in a year so i put this slide in because as people here while the assessed valuation is going up the school should have more money we have a higher assessed valuation that's not true there are lots of mechanisms in place to cap that um at the bottom you can see some kind of a few of those mechanisms the lowest of the cpi the actual growth or a five

010percent max that's what those are some of the caps that are that are part of that hancock amendment i think it's also important to know just as we think about taxes schools you know no one wants to pay more taxes i don't want to pay more taxes um but tax cut schools are run on taxes they're right on local taxes they're on state taxes they run on money from federal taxes that's how schools and other public entities operate i know this week there's a conversation going on about another 700 million dollars in state level tax cuts as tax cuts take place at the state level that if that money decreases locally we either have to make up the difference or do it you know do without things so it's a very complicated issue and people

011get super passionate about it so i'm just trying to provide some information to help people know kind of what's going on what factors into that the next slide is trying to help people understand what does what does this mean for me um whenever you hear about increased assessed valuation or about how your taxes is figured it's important to know that if you have a home for every 100 000 worth of home that you have you're only being paid taxed on 19 of that home value and so for every thousand dollars of the nineteen percent you're paying eight dollars and forty seven cents in taxes um as you think about what that point zero zero two four increase will mean for us it's a dollar and fourteen cents on a two hundred fifty thousand dollar home

012so [Music] personal property on the other hand is taxed at a value of 33 so if somebody had a car that used to be worth 10 000 and now it's worth 11 000 because of inflation the increase of what that would mean to the two individuals would be a 14.72 increase on that every thousand dollars extra that their car is worth so that kind of gives you a way to think about what does this mean for me personally now this is the um from the perspective of people who don't want to have taxes this is the good news piece of the slide the good news piece of the slide for folks from that perspective uh is that we as a district are taking a voluntary reduction in our taxes of nearly 20 cents um for

013the component what we've talked about so far is the operating part of our levy that's paying for the buses paying people salaries keeping fixing leaky rooms all that's considered the operating side the other part of that is our debt service side of our levy the debt service side is having enough money in the bank in order to pay our commitments to our lenders for our bonds so right now a reasonable reserve with us with the money that we owe through profits is about 23 million a year in payments and in order to have a hunt the maximum or nothing maximum the allowable amount in reserves like at 100 percent allowable amount would be we could have an extra 20 cents in taxpayer contribution and still be within legal limits as a district though we feel

014that having at least 70 reserves is a good safe number and we can have that levied amount at the 67 cents that we've been accustomed to this next slide trying to figure out like what's happened in the district over time because i haven't been here i haven't lived it this slide is just to try to help people see um if there was an opportunity as best i could figure out as best i could figure out from digging through and cindy and i did a lot of research and tried to dig through all of the old tax rate folders of compiled data the red line shows the amount that could have been taxed like the maximum allowable amount that could have been taxed and the blue line the amount that was taxed now it's kind of

015tricky in debt service because you it is dependent on the amount of your debt at that time and so in it and you also have some leeway to determine what an allowable amount is so you can see that separation over time this year that little gap that you see is that 20 cents that we just talked about the 19 almost 20 cents so that's a quick overview i have a whole lot more slides to share with you and probably a lot of you already boarded an audience and would like for you to move on to something else but um i i added a large number of slides for people who are interested in the back of the presentation so coming attractions if you want to know more there's lots and lots and lots and lots

016to read um and that's after we cut them out but it's interesting there's a lot of good data to dig into but i do want to make sure to share this slide in this website if there are senior citizens or individuals with disabilities who the tax is a burden to the state has mechanisms in place to try to provide some support for people and i wanted to make sure that folks were aware of some of the credits available and how to go about finding that um border there can i answer any questions that you might have to try to make a very complicated topic um digestible yeah i'm curious on why you decided to reduce the taxes for the capital scale or debt budget well the decision process in that was really taking a look

017at the bond structure that has been put in place for the district moving forward uh the amount that we've taken out and loans working with our bond underwriters was designed to try to keep that 67 cent amount now as a board as a community should we decide at some point in the future that we want to take a more aggressive approach at um debt refinancing that could be something we could look at in the future other districts do that from time to time um but at this point i didn't feel that i was in a position to bring that to you as a recommendation i need to know a little more before i come up with too many ideas for you what's the plan for that additional revenue uh over the next year well for

018me it began with like thank the board thank goodness we're getting some additional revenue um trying to increase our operating levy and trying to increase our capital project or not operating levy colleges trying to increase our operating balances in our debt service balances is where that money is going to go just being able to have enough money in the bank to continue to pay your bills right now we run at about 19 18 19 that is low low low mid 20's is a nice what we think would be a good healthy safe place to be in our operating levy i don't want us to have to borrow money and pay teachers in at this time of year i want us to be in a place where we don't have to borrow money to make payroll

019like we have had to do the past two years and so putting money in the bank so that we have the money to be able to have the cash flow to be able to take care of our obligations is where that will really go and it's also going to offset like the inflation that everyone else is experiencing schools are experiencing it too the cost of gas for the buses is up the cost of to the cost to pay every employee that we have is up and no matter how much we're paying it's not enough for them to keep up with the cost of inflation on the other side um and the cost of every supply we buy is up so the cost of doing business for the school just like every single person is experiencing

020at home is up and i anticipate that that well it sounds like a lot of money um kind of budget time i think that will probably all just probably be a wash mr cook i'll add to that the last several years people who have watched our board meetings closely you know that at this time of year we've come asking the board to approve tax anticipate tax anticipation notes for the year to borrow the funds to be able to meet those obligations throughout the rest of the fall there's a cost to our lawyers and the banks to borrow that money in the first place to drop the legal work and then the cost of the interest and we are not bringing that recommendation to you this year and we're hoping not to have to do that

021and slowly improving our fund balances over time will contribute to that and avoid us having to borrow money and we're doing that by doing some very tight financing through our cash flow the remainder of this year 12 taxes come in in december january one more question uh drock how does the lobby for that service compared to what was pastor with profess is there i know you mentioned 20 or 19 cents decrease from what we could have is there any change from what it was was for from what was passed with progress pre-process or what we promised the taxpayers would profit no that number the 67 cents is a steady number that's one of the slides on that i believe that number's held steady for a long long time what we've put in our capital uh

022has held i think it's about six cents for a long long long time uh the number that takes the hit whenever we have to do that roll back as our assessed valuation goes up for the hancock amendment is the optional operating and i would just ask for all of our constituents to think about you know there's a lot of political excitement about trying to trying to find ways to decrease taxes to schools and uh it's been a long hard road these last few years as a school and we need that we need to be able to offer the quality products to our kids and families and i wish we could do it for free but sadly it costs money but thank you any other questions i can ask any other questions okay thank you dr

023hawk thank you um at this time i'd like to ask if there's any comments from okay in regards to the tax rate okay all right with that i would like to call this meeting to order with the pledge of allegiance to the right of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all talk about our student border off this evening thank you mrs lang we are honored to have an eighth grade student here from barnwell middle school to serve as our student board representative for tonight's meeting and at this time i'd like to introduce assistant principal dr erin thurston she's going to tell you all about this amazing student hi good evening i'm honored to introduce you to kendall jacobs

024she's an 8th grader at barnwell middle school where she's a member of national junior honor society web student council and max max scholars kendall has a strong sense of character and is a student leader in so many ways she was awarded the leader of the pack award as early as sixth grade because she goes out of her way to make everyone feel welcome kendall is one of the student first students to lend a helping hand to students and adults alike her kindness and positivity shines bright wherever she goes beyond her everyday kindness and care for others kendall is organized studious and prides herself on her high standing academic achievement overall kendall is a model citizen in our school community and we are grateful to have her representing barnwell today and always i'll introduce you to

025kendall [Applause] sure okay it's hurting [Applause] all right while they're getting situated i'm going to call up dr lucas lammers director of secondary education to present our best practice on the early college burger before you start mr winglet welcome ms kendall welcome get you all situated over there you feel free to interject ask questions anytime there's discussion the only thing you can't do is vote so welcome okay thank you board of education uh it's my honor tonight to present a best practice session on something that's been very near and dear to my heart over the last few years and that's the francis health school district's partnership with st charles community college to offer the early college program i have a clicker right here so uh a few years ago we became aware of an opportunity

026that the state of missouri has made available to public school districts around the state to offer a partnership to have partnerships with various institutions of higher learning around the state to offer courses where students can in some cases take courses on the campus of the high school or go to the campus of the institution of higher learning to take classes under something called the core 42. it started as an agreement between colleges and universities around the state that these specific courses that have something that's called a missouri transfer number or a motor number um if they are taken and credited and given credit by any institution of higher learning around the state that every other public university or college in the state of missouri would it was it was guaranteed to award credit for that

027class so you started to see students taking these classes you know we've already had things like ap classes international baccalaureate classes dual credit options through other universities but this was a way to give more kids more access to college while they were in high school and we set about a journey to learn as much as we could looking at area districts to see what they did and i worked very closely with dr hoven at the time to build this program so it the the core 42 it started as that and now it's expanded to hundreds of classes that students in our high schools in the state can take while they're in high schools and if the community college awards credit for that it's guaranteed to be accepted by any public college university in the state

028of missouri in addition due to articulation agreements that many private private colleges and universities have in the state of missouri um they will accept credit for those things for those classes um i did it again when i hold it down so in our research we learned that many school districts in the area um have programs like this and have developed them since we have built ours as well and around st louis metro area we find that there's three main institutions that are participating in this program so we have st louis community college serves lindbergh ritter rockwood st louis public and university city saint charles community college who is our partner they serve us orchard farm in windsville and then lindenwood university serves all of those school districts that you see listed up there so there's

029this is definitely an expanding program that's not just benefiting fantasy solid kids but kids all around our region and our state um when students participate in the program there's really three different ways that they can do it and we call them lanes i'm going to go in i'm going to actually start with lane three up there lane three is something that's open to students from all grades so even a ninth grader and we have had ninth grader participate in lane three uh we call this it's the a la carl so in that lane kids take one or two classes at a time and these classes they replace a class that's in the student's home site schedule so if there's a student at francis high school who wants to take one of these classes in lieu

030of one of their periods they can do that when the program began they would do this by going to saint john's community college and then cove it happened a lot of the classes went virtual so we do have a pretty significant number of students who are able to participate in this virtually now but they had like us they've reverted back to mostly in-person classes as well um i'll then take over to lane one so i'll turn on later on and change lanes here um this is the 42 credit hour option so this the goal of this one is to give kids an opportunity to get all of their gen eds done all of their general education requirements done by the time they graduate high school so students who participate in lane 1 end up graduating

031high school with anywhere from 42 to 48 credit hours so that really presents an opportunity for them to accelerate in college and to save a significant amount of money while they're in college this is open to juniors and seniors only typically the way it works they'll take two classes at their francis howell school district home site and they'll take four classes at st charles community college and to help them navigate that we have put together like here's a schedule that we have vetted all of these we know that these courses will perfectly replace english 3 with us or what have you and if they follow that that suggested schedule they're going to be in great shape and they'll graduate from us when they walk across the stage at family arena they'll have their gen eds

032done by the time they start college and then lane two the uh this is the our most ambitious lane that we have available to us these are students that starting their junior year they take almost every class at st charles community college and not on our high school site and they if they do that and take a couple of summer classes if they do that then by the time they graduate high school they can they can have earned a full associate's degree that according to the court 42 and the motor numbers missouri transfer numbers it's guaranteed to be accepted at any uh public college university in the state of missouri and the really cool thing is i'll talk a little bit about it later last year we had two graduates in our district who did

033that by the time they walked across the stage at the family arena they already had associates degree diplomas in their hands from st charles community college so if they go for the associate's degree there's a handful of associates degrees that they can earn the easy easy easily the safest option is for them to go for the associate of arts it's kind of the general associate's degree from st john's community college every class within that associate's degree has a a motor number that is very transferable so it's easily the safest option the courses uh we've crosswalked all of them to our own courses and it's very clean it works very well it is possible for students to get an associate of arts in teaching or associate of fine arts and associate of science it because of

034the very specific courses that are required to earn those associate's degrees and you've got to take this class before this class before this class before this class it's much more difficult for a student to be able to earn that but it is possible some of the results so this started in the fall of 2019 was when we when we started the early college program and since its assumption in its inception we've had 518 total students um participate in the program they have earned 4 705 college credit hours that's just under 1600 classes they've earned just under 800 high school credits and my biggest point of pride on this so when we started this program there were some people who were concerned well wait a second we we really think high school students are going to

035be able to to do this and some are even starting their freshman year and they're going to be successful and the thing that i've learned over and over in every school system i've worked in is when you set the bar high for kids they will meet that bar and once again they did the average gpa for the students who participated in this program is 3.12 that's better than the b average and and on top of that 70 77 of all of the grades earned all of those 1568 grades that have been earned have been an a or a b the students had a 95 pass rate which is slightly better than what we have seen over the last couple of years in our high schools through the covet pandemic so it has been a wildly

036wildly successful program and i mentioned earlier i had the amazing privilege of being on the stage at the family arena last year leading the graduate graduation ceremony for francis howell north to see both brianna griffin reid and maya walker walk across that stage having already earned an associate's degree that's an amazing and amazing accomplishment for that um for the families who participate in this there's a very significant financial impact so um saint charles community college gives our participating students a massive discount it's actually fifty dollars per credit hour to participate in the program if you live in the community and take and you're a resident and you take a class at st charles community college it's going to be 117 per credit hour so it's more than a 50 discount so 50 per credit hour

037to participate in the program and if i take the number of college credits that have been earned and i just look at how much a credit hour costs at the institutions that you see there from st louis university at one thousand seven hundred forty dollars per credit hour um down to st charles community college at 111. that's actually i think it's 117 that might be an error there um there's a significant cost savings and i blacked out the one right in the middle there a little bit lower than the middle there with a university of missouri so uh the credit hour cost cost per credit hour at the university of missouri this year columbia is 335.80 so as our flagship university in the state of missouri if you uh do the math on that subtract

038what what they've already paid for the program the cost savings per family ends up about 2 600 so our families that are participating in this assuming that they would go to the university of missouri have saved just over 1.3 million dollars since the fall of 2019. so this program provides a significant benefit to the families who participate in it and the other thing that i don't have mentioned here but just the research that i've shown that i've done over the past several years students who complete or who participate and complete in at least one college level course while they're still in high school not only do they get through their first year college at a higher rate they complete their four-year degrees at a much higher rate than students who've never had access to those

039courses by the time they get to high school and one of my personal goals one of our our goals as a district is to see more and more students taking college level courses while they're still in high school to try to demystify the the rigor of what they're going to experience when they're in college so this is this program has provided a significant benefit to those students in those campuses i am available to answer any questions board what kind of questions or comments do we have right how are the kids notified as you say it starts they can start at the ninth grade i'm assuming all of our concerts i know so if the student is interested or their parents are interested would you suggest that they contact the school's counselor the specifically the uh

040college and career counselor at each of the high schools so jen lowery at francis hall high school michelle brewer at central and book prestage at north high it's included in the course description guides we have a web page for it i usually do a parent engagement night in the two parent engagement nights in the lead up to registration so parents are aware of that and i know the college counselors at the high schools do their own publication of it as well we continue to see participation in the program which brings me to my next question what what is the current out of our uh for this school year what is your current participation approximately a boy off the top i'm not sure but i can get that to you i want to say right now

041we have about 180 individual students participating in it that's that is don't take that number to the bank thank you i just want to say i think this is a great program i'm glad that we participate in it i have a few students usually every year that i get to instruct as a result of it and i think it's a cheap effective efficient way to get a jump start on to their college career so i love it thank you quick question just curious how this compares to like ac ap classes like how do you have the two so um advanced credit will be very similar um the the difference is that the courses in the early college program they're actually taking them from professors at st charles community college it is possible if our our

042teachers could teach them but we would be agreeing to fully take their syllabus and their textbook and that would become the base curriculum of what the student takes in the classroom here we do have some opportunities for that through the ac program with partnerships through umsl through st louis university we also have students that can earn credits by uh taking assessments through uh mobap um so the ones that are like the advanced credit and some of the credit buy assessment options those are taught by our instructors in our class and usually they have to pay um whatever a discounted tuition rate for that college and then as long as they do that they get the credit this is a significant cost savings over that program um ap classes are also they're they're almost universally accepted

043around the united states if you get a score of three or better on the assessment then that credit goes with you um and it's about what about 97 or 100 to take that assessment that does leave it up to well maybe i won't pass the assessment um so it's it's really there's our our hope is to provide as many different avenues for kids to earn these credits while they're still in high school maybe early college maybe ap maybe it's all of that together this quickly but um great program obviously that we can get college credit for our high school students but um with respect to the gpa that the students are um there were some questions raised and i'm gonna i'm gonna read it because it's it's a little bit complicated the process here but

044if a student takes english comp 101 from saint charles community college via the ala carte option and earns an a grade she earns 4.0 points towards her gpa in other words she doesn't get the honors point that some honors classes get as best i can tell this is because we have a policy that says uh college courses at 200 level or higher will carry on point so that's something that the board has implemented um according to my recent 2019 but we're still looking into that um however a student taking the pre-ap or a ninth or tenth grade english course earns an egg enjoys on his point earning a 5.0 towards his gpa so in other words both students are taking english 101 or the equivalent thereof only one student's receiving the extra honors point for

045this high school gpa of course that is important when you're applying to colleges for gpa so it's something we're looking at uh the reasoning behind that if it's a statute or something with you know the way that the program works through the colleges but there may be a policy revision in the not too distant future about that so really just more of an fyi and for the community too but um something that's being looked at out there has any updates it's a an issue we're researching um excuse me yes um speaking of pricings is there a overall cost rate for this program or is it just on the assessments it's it's well for the um early college program it's so each class that you take is most classes are going to be three college credit

046hours so it's fifty dollars per credit hour so that class should cost 150 dollars and then there's the book that you need to buy i have mentioned that we do have some uh financial assistance available for families who who reach out to us and can demonstrate that need so each class will be 150 plus whatever the books cost okay thank you [Laughter] thank you thank you thank you for supporting the program next up we will have our patreon comments during featuring 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

047a and combining time or giving your time to someone else is not permitted the board appreciates that you have taken the time to come this evening and we both value your input and perspective i would like to remain like to remind everyone that we expect speakers will remain civil and respectful when giving remarks if anyone fails to comply with the board policies regulations and rules we reserve the right to cut those three minutes short and for your convenience our three-minute time clock is ready for good evening my name is grayson jostis i'm an alumni of class of 2013. when i was in high school um i know i was different from most of my classmates and i get bullied from that from middle school to high school and i just want to know why so

048i went to my uh school library at france towel um central and looked up the what what was what i am and i found a book it's called this book is gay it's a non-fictional book to me when people want to ban books based on a community or a social issue you're just erasing history and to those people i want to be in these books i want to say why are you racing me why are you racing our community why are you racing america um last time i was here um there was a pamphlet of banned books for the school library and most of them involved my community and probably some of them are here today another pamphlet or whatever um i'm not a pedophile i'm not a child predator i am a non-binary gay

049man and i am who i am and i'm not going anywhere thank you next up we have jared kilbury good evening board jarrett pillsbury two children in the district member of this community for 17 years a wise person once said despair has so many spokespeople while hope has so few and another said be kind but insist on truth while the sccpa which is the organization responsible for the book banning website an infamous filed police report link and francis howe families pac and their members such as board member cook want you to believe the books in our school libraries are the problem and go so far as we call our teachers and librarians names like groomers and pedophiles adding them to some list and the real problem is lack of pay not just for our teachers

050but for support staff too this impacts staffing it makes for an overall lack of support and the slack of staff and low pay is playing out in all kinds of ways with teachers using their limited spare time to clean bathrooms the staff bathrooms not being cleaned at all as but one example i'll include an email to the board with more information the pay problem is taking its toll on morale and will worsen if neglected while resources and attention is wasted on phantom problems for which we have existing processes i would add teachers admin and librarians i trust you to make good choices on the books offered i trust you to make all kids feel safe and will use common sense in acting in our children's best interests at home and support thank you teachers paris

051and other staff who would show up dutifully day after day and what we all know is a high stress environment to continue doing your important work i wish my words were more for you thank you to the board for the many positives we have in our district which you've supported from the transgender parent support group to the many opportunities you've offered in the district to include a variety of stakeholders and voices the recent citizens forum and support for gun violence support for victims of gun violence by allowing our teens to conduct a walkout and in august 2020 the board at that time issued a signed resolution by all board members in response to racism and discrimination and i look forward to your re-commitment to that resolution to include our newest board members at the earliest

052possible opportunity as we mark over two years since the date of that publication thank you for that and thank you in advance as well i'll close by thanking teachers faculty and staff as i know your buckets can run low and i know seeing support from your community members matters very greatly i hope you saw that from me at the various open houses i attended recently what i saw was a welcoming community of educators and professionals seeking to work together with district stakeholders for the best interests of all students i feel certain anyone who engages with francis hill school district teachers faculty and staff will experience the same and will encourage everyone to do so thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi boyd i'm liz poyster so it's oyster with p um my family as you know

053care very deeply about this district and its future we have celebrated many aspects of the district and yes we've had some concerns about others in celebrations let's talk about teachers my kids have been incredibly blessed to always have the teachers they needed when they needed them most to name a few the teachers at central elementary are cut above melanie smith and cali masaraka turned on a dime in the spring of 2020. megan dahlheimer and kathy allen supported my son academically and emotionally while he learned virtually during the 20 20 21 school year chris campbell taught my daughter in third grade and brought aspects of her personality to the surface we never even knew we're there yikes drew stack at bryan middle school not only taught my fully virtual then sixth grader how to play a

054french horn over zoom but now takes time to teach her how to play trombone because and i quote any kid with an interest in learning music should never be told no mindy resnick and raquel babb helped natalie foster her love of reading and challenged her with solid material and carmen weir has never said no to a request for a letter of recommendation our teachers are precious they've always carried heavy loads and even more so these last few years which brings me to my next point our teachers and especially our parents go above and beyond every day even to the point where yes they're literally cleaning bathrooms due to employment shortages am well aware that there are staffing issues in our community and nation right now a simple cruise at mid rivers mall will reveal that

055many places are hiring for 16 to 20 an hour custodians and our carers are hired in france's house for 13 to 15 per hour it's no surprise to me that there are so many vacancies to my knowledge districts have never needed to compete with commercial businesses for stuff but now we do i wish that hiring staff was as easy as waving a wand and saying akio paraprofessionals but it's not and i hope that the board and administration are looking for ways to increase these salaries people are any organization's most valuable resource and it's hard to feel like we're not squandering it we have to stop expecting teachers and staff to parent our kids and we have to stop villainizing them for just doing our jobs they need to know that each of you is in

056their corner to support them not constantly looking over their shoulders and monitoring our every move board i sincerely respect you for the positions you hold in this district and in our community thank you for allowing the time for these comments and for our voices to be heard especially when you could be at home out of the public eye in your comfy pants with a glass of water and thank you for serving our district our teachers our parents our students and our families thank you [Music] next hello board my name is tammy balck and i have been a paragraph here for 20 years at france last until high school and the parent with this district after 20 years i've been here this is the worst year i've ever seen in the terms of lack of paris

057in the district and the amount of workload that has been put on us due to this shortage i understand for the first two weeks of school can be hectic but has not gotten any better i'm always mentally and physically drained when i get home it came to the point where i want to quit my job as parents we need to help support the students that are on ieps and the teachers with the students in the classrooms of course this cannot be done with the shortest repairs in this district our staff team from france hall central high school has pulled together to help fill in the gaps of pairs that we are short of but we still have a shorter repairs even when the team helps out this is not fair for our staff and students

058our staff has given up their plan time to help which is not ideal for them they need a plan time to deal with parents and put out their week of lessons too also it's not fair for the students because when you have a sub or a different staff member each day is not easy for our students to adjust to new people every day and it's important to have that one-on-one relationship with the same pair within the classroom every day that we are with them when different subs come into the class with our students behaviors start to rise which makes it difficult for other students to learn students need a report with the same parent every day in the classroom this way the student knows what is expected of them as well as how to ask

059a question to that parent the amount of work will be expected from us in addition to being pulled in so many different directions throughout the day to unfill job vacancies is a major stress factor if this keeps up i fear that we will lose more paris in this dirt trick of being a parent for 20 years i've never experienced this much hardship of paris and the students that we serve we must have a resolution to this problem i urge you to work with feaspon and to resolve this issue remember we are all here for the students [Applause] [Music] [Applause] next up we have amy nate carter yep that's me good evening um when i came here tonight i did not realize that i was going to be part of the theme so i'm glad that

060i'm here to support our wonderful fantastic paraprofessionals i'm a special educator here in francis howe special education more than any other department in any school works as an interconnected team our team doesn't function without our fantastic dedicated paraprofessionals the roles that they hold in our building are unique and i don't think most people in the public are aware exactly what their day looks like and all the different things they have to do so i want to talk about that the pairs of the staff members who are meeting their daily needs they are the first people our students see every morning and the last ones they say goodbye to when they get on the bus at the end of the day in addition to helping our students practice their academic skills they help them navigate the

061building safely they help them get their lunches get comfortable in the cafeteria they help monitor their needs in the lunchroom they go with them to general education classes and encourage our students to make friends and to explore their own interests they teach them job skills they teach them how to care for themselves and how to ask for help skill that most of our kids have not mastered and they teach them how to speak up for themselves they're the first ones to notice if a child is sick and they're the first ones to get to celebrate their victories our parents advocate with the teachers for students daily needs they're an essential part of our team and we can't teach without them our team this year however is several members short in my building we have four

062unfilled paraprofessional physicians we consistently have one to two of them out every day for various reasonable reasons one day in early september we were down to just four out of 11 paraprofessionals supporting 27 students across our building we had to pull people out of other positions just to get kids to class on time and safely every day we are scrambling to get positions filled whether it was substitutes from central office with teachers from our own building who then lose out on their plan time or with other untrained school staff like the hall monitors i'm so grateful for the administrators in my building who have been working tirelessly to find permanent solutions and i'm also thankful for the staff who have shown incredible flexibility and grace their schedules are changing every single day but this is

063a problem for us every day our students and our staff deserve consistency and without changes we are going to continue to lose staff the pairs we have might need for better pay in districts who honor years of experience they might get burnt out and quit and then they might be followed by the special education teachers who can't do their job without them what is being done to retain paraprofessionals what is being done to recruit new ones how are we going to solve this problem permanently i'm asking for support and guidance from you as our district leaders to continue to find a solution thank you your time is up thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] next up we have carrie zolkowski good evening for those of you who don't know me let me introduce myself my name

064is carrie and i have been a fhsd resident since 2005. like many of you we moved here for the excellent school district even before my children were born i have voted yes on every bond issue and tax levy for the district and i have never missed voting in a school-related election if you've heard any of my speeches over the past couple of months you may have noticed a theme diversity equity and inclusion i strongly believe that most of you on the school board and most of the fhsd community deeply value diversity equity inclusion in the curriculum and in our school communities there are still areas where the district can grow and improve and i hope your decisions always value dei i will continue to advocate for this in every role and capacity that i can

065as both a parent and a community member i am here tonight to speak to those who may be like me those who are wanting to actively listen and who are open to learning and seeing things from different perspectives we are not unicorns in saint charles county there are many progressive minded young people parents and community members who want our schools and community to continue to be safe and welcoming places if you are out there and are like-minded grab an r and let's connect it's time for us to collectively stand up and ensure that all students are being represented our children and schools deserve this as a white middle class person with inherent privilege i know that i will not be able to adequately speak for black and black brown americans for those from indigenous cultures

066for immigrants from other countries for people of different cultures for individuals with disabilities or who may be neurodiverse for letters other than the l in the lgbtq plus community and for many others i have not walked in your shoes and i cannot tell your story however i will always listen and continue to learn i may make some mistakes along the way but i believe when you know better you do better the other night at the emmy awards lizzo accepted award for her show on a prime video her speech reflects the type of representation that is needed for students in fhsd lizzo said and i quote the stories that they shared they're not unique they just don't get told let's just tell more stories when i was a little girl all i wanted was to see

067someone like me in the media someone fat like me black like me beautiful like me if i could go back in time and tell little lizzo something i would be like you're gonna see that person but it's going to have to be you end quote let's make sure stories of representation are readily available to our students i sincerely hope that fhsd students continue to have access to diverse resources and we live in a great district my children are freshmen in high school they have so many opportunities i hope the district continues to have a rich diverse and challenging curriculum [Applause] [Music] [Applause] next up we have dennis bauer i don't know ladies and gentlemen thank you for the opportunity to address those who we have entrusted our children to educate our children it's a daunting

068task however don't take pride in this rather humble yourselves before god the parents and grandparents who pay your wages and hold you accountable for what you do i have several comments of deep concern which i have witnessed and one in particular which i will address in the most pointed terms last board meeting one of our teachers private proclaimed falsehood that many need to be corrected and which are a high level accountability should be held the teacher eric only stated after all these are our children so what i they have not they are not and they will never be your children they belong to us the parents the grandparents the fathers and mothers who brought them into the world and gave them life the parents and grandparents who nurture and care for their well-being who protect

069and direct their sense of identity their moral accomplish their life perspective and their world view we have entrusted you those who present themselves as with a level of knowledge and education uh to aid our children in a journey toward being productive american citizens but with limitations we want to see them educated in the basics of life those things we commonly call reading writing arithmetic we want to see them that they are trained to make wise wise decisions it is not your test task to indoctrinate our children with political philosophies expose their young minds to false teaching to the revisionist ideals that will build hatred for this great country to expose their young minds to sexual and gender thinking before they even equip to think about that for themselves or in any way to invade the

070sanctity of our home by creating doubt and distrust with your with our families instead of the arrogance i see oozing out of very poor many who probably think of themselves as they having a mandate to shape children like themselves we want to see attitudes of humility gratitude partnership with parents to assist these precious children toward maturity and responsibility in their young lives midland rush one of the founders of our country and the founder of public school system in america stated this primary goal for the system is to teach children to love and serve god to love and serve their country to love and serve their family i challenge teachers administrators and members of the board of education to seriously consider your moral and ethical position and responsibility to our children [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] next

071up we have amy easterly good evening my name is amy easterly i have lived in the district for about 20 years i have two children one graduated in 2021 and one is a junior at francis helena works um i just like to talk to you about a term that you may have heard of if you've ever worked in an educational or corporate setting you might have heard this term called growth mindset this was coined in the 1980s by dr carol dweck from stanford university and it is essentially the belief that skills can be improved with effort and persistence people with a growth mindset embrace challenges persist through obstacles obstacles learn from criticism and seek out inspiration in other success the opposite of a growth mindset is referred to as a fixed mindset which is the

072belief that one is born with a certain amount of skill or intelligence that cannot be improved upon those with a fixed mindset often meet change with distrust fear and resistance in my experience in the world of business these are people that struggle i believe that we could expand this meaning of growth mindset to a more general definition of openness and collaboration the idea that we don't know everything and we are capable of listening to and learning from others will naturally lead to dialogue and empathy it seems to me like the most common default response these days is anger and judgment we are all so busy trying to prove our point that we get mired down in that fixed mindset i'd like to offer an alternative stop breathe don't make assumptions ask questions with curiosity and

073without judgment be willing to question yourself on your end goal is it to help teachers and students is it to make our school community a better place or is it more about being right or maintaining your comfortable status quo be willing to look at your own biases and i'm here to tell you that we all have them and be willing to put in the work to get past them be respectful of others even if you don't agree with them let's be curious together we need to model this mindset behavior for our children if we want them to be successful in a world that is rapidly changing they must be continuous learners they need to be empathetic to see value in all people and to learn from their mistakes and do better we will not create

074those kinds of learners by stifling voices that we are uncomfortable with by refusing to see the value and equity by removing books from the library and by seeing conspiracy theories at every turn i would like to challenge us all of us to do the work to respect each other to listen to solve problems together our kids our teachers and our communities deserve it those children they don't belong to you but they don't belong to me either they are gifts that i've been entrusted with to guide to love and accept as the people they are thank [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] chris you i'm going to continue my summer theme this year which is that we are sending far too many of our administrators and staff to training at conferences and to talk with consultants who did

075not have the interests of children or education at heart but are instead intended to promote their ideology in fact guess what we have another one on the agenda tonight so our content social studies leader is asking for two thousand dollars to attend a conference in december i just thought you know this isn't a conspiracy theory because these things are written right out there in the open i thought i agreed to your titles some titles of some of the thoughts this uh content leader could be attending articulating the white supremacist blueprint in middle grade historical fiction the intersection of whiteness anti-racism in the institutionalization of ethnic studies in k-12 education the potential of trade books to teach identity diversity intersectionality and justice to young children addressing the hidden racism and economics anti-racism critical literacy service learning

076and black history in elementary school identifying anti-black racism and u.s history standards anti-blackness effective politics and experiential knowledges rupturing reproductions of anti-blackness in pre-service social studies education developing racial pedagogical content knowledge and social studies teachers this is the best centering indigenous experience to discern and disrupt whiteness in elementary social studies facilitating controversial issues discussion in elementary school using indigenous sports mascots teaching history for justice teaching racial literacy in a classroom interrupting eurocentric histories then we have the action civics determining social and school community supports for youth activism youth organizing and central civic action for police-free schools a continuum of scales and culturally sustaining resistance learning from justice oriented elementary school social studies teacher educators a critical engage in the action civics curriculum this goes on and on right okay a site for teachers political resistance

077and anti-oppressive practice critical literacy in social studies classrooms critical examinations of the american experience critical race theory and social studies futures and uh we don't have time to go to the rest of them right there's a lot more but the point is this this is not about teaching teachers or teaching administrators on how to educate students in history true history faith or whatever it is this is a training school for empowering quote leaders we're teaching the words they're going to use to indoctrinate students into making them activists to keep them dissatisfied with our society do you know why you get to have our tax dollars in missouri the missouri state constitution says that a general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence be essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people that's why

078you get to have our tax dollars to teach our kids because they need to know knowledge they need intelligence and they need to preserve the right deliveries of people not this crap save your money vote no and let's say send a message to these groups that we're not going to stand for this kind of indoctrination next up we have harry harris [Applause] i uh have something down but i also wanted to say that it's been great seeing some things tonight um seeing some really positive speeches uh at the beginning of the year first of all congratulations thank you my son goes to barnwell and i'm gonna have him hook you up [Laughter] and i appreciate that dr lammers the stuff about college that was awesome and stuff that i didn't know and i was taking

079pictures and i'm gonna go back and tell more people about it um really appreciated that i did want to say um thank you to all of the the teachers and administrators and paras and bus folks i like everybody who was open this year because after the last two years like i feel like we have a really good start to the year and i don't think we tell people thank you enough because without those teachers and everything in our classrooms without the folks cleaning the classrooms without the folks who are at the front door with a smile like we don't have a great school district and we do have a great school district because we have those schools excuse me those folks in there uh so i wanted to say congratulations on opening the year we've

080been really blessed uh this year even a move in school i've really appreciated it this is the first meeting i've been able to attend since our roundtable discussion earlier in the summer on dei excuse me vi based topics in the district i'd like to thank adam and patrick and doug as well as the staff and administrators who attended that meeting i feel like we've really begun to make some progress in understanding the concerns of some of those in our community around inclusion equity and diversity i've grabbed an ore and i'm ready to join you by the way okay um from our end of things we'll continue on with that we'll continue to have those discussions um and we're taking the information that we learned from that meeting and better educating the community the diversity is

081about recognizing everyone in our community excuse me in our community and that they all have a place the inclusion is finding what that place is and equity is about making sure the resources are available to them every student is different and every student has different needs our community needs to understand this and that's why i will definitely continue to come here and tell you that we desperately need a dei position to make sure that those things are taken care of thank you board [Music] and that ends our patreon comments for the evening except we have fha nope be spa yes good evening board members cabinet and community members let me start by acknowledging that the climate and attitude this year has changed it has changed positively however our shortages are a huge problem the shortages

082of paris custodians and other support staff around the district are pulling support staff and teachers in every direction having over 35 vacancies with paris over 50 in the custodial department is burning everyone in every building facebook believes if we put our minds together we can start to ease the burdens within all of our buildings there are many support staff members out there that are feeling forgotten will be doing everything we can to change that and as always offer support to you in any way we can just reach out thank you [Applause] okay next up we will have a prop s update by mr jeremy good evening so just some highlights of prop best work that's happened 801 is basically done we call it substantially complete administration has moved into the building um little things we're

083working through every day the list gets smaller but again a monumental task getting all those people over there and um they are there they are working it looks great there is uh one area still we call it the breakout room slash boardroom area uh still slated to be completed sometime in the fall probably october-ish um and then there's still some technology and stuff that we need to get to get it all up and running but construction work should be done within the next four weeks in that area so 801 i think was very very successful project and for all intents and purposes completed so you probably won't be hearing much more about it of course um i want to draw attention that you know we we do have chain drawers in every project and something

084i know we have some new board members here but i actually not only have a slide deck included with my board meetings i also include a board report so um within that board report there's a change order log that's uh given to you guys every month and within that log it shows all the individual little things that have been approved they're not approved and cost the district doesn't hurt so i would i would uh just highlight that and make sure if you guys have any questions on that you can either email us or i can happy to address them during a board meeting but um there are some allowance logs and changeover logs within those that document that you know just you might want to take a look at every while just in the goals

085transparency so it's there it's a thing of the board report um i believe it's just in a recorded meeting it's an attachment so um hof who's our contractor in 801 continues to work with the facilities department on building turnover you can imagine that you know you have a 15 20 year old building there so not everything works when you go and the toilets haven't been flushed in five years so um you know as we will work into the building we're trying to be very strategic on what facilities takes and what hah finishes so a lot of good work happening there i'm doing everything we can to save money in that area and then i want to talk a little bit about francis hell north on the cost side so if you if the board remembers

086when essa and wilson bid out the major components of the project uh there was packages that didn't receive pits mainly these were smaller packages uh caulking toilet partitions things like that but at some point those had to be bit out again so what sm wilson did was they put a budget budget amounts or alliance amounts within the gmp and those have since been bid out so we're actually calling that package six it's actually a document that got issued to the board i'm happy to report it's a zero dollar cost change order um it actually was four thousand dollars but the contingency just offset that four thousand dollars so essen wilson had cost within the gmp to cover that they fitted out their costs were for all intents and purposes exactly what the bids came in

087to be so great news the only package remaining is fencing and the only reason that remains is we've received zero bids on fencing uh which isn't surprising it's you know busy economy companies are swamped especially with fencing companies so we'll be going out um in probably the next couple months and bidding that last package out but that's the one item that still remains out but everything else we have subcontractors locked in ready to go and finish the job so good news uh on that front here are some of the package six re-bid scopes just to kind of highlight a couple of these joint ceilings signage wall protection fire extinguishers awning canopies these are kind of the things that we receive and within my border packet um again it's attached to the board documents there's a

088list of what all those costs were who all those subcontractors were anything you want to know we can get you and if you have further questions sn wilson would be happy to give you more information so uh monthly update i'm afraid to sell laura so things i feel like i come up here and i get the same update every month but it's just such a large project that things move quickly but also slowly from a global level so um brick veneer continues uh it actually started last month with the brick veneer i got some pictures of it the red brick as we call it going up on the storm shelter it's exciting mason masonry is ongoing it will be ongoing for years on that project so roof installation has started which which is good we're

089getting into the colder time of the year so um we're going to start putting drywall up do some painting getting the roofs on the building getting some of the temporary heat turned on is a positive thing so steel erection is ongoing they're getting close to finishing all the steel erections they're about 85 percent completed i'll have some pictures of that and efp and fire protection is ongoing throughout the classroom building they're just a tremendous amount of people working up in the ceilings right now and then we talk a little more about black and black filler on the last point there that's actually paint but they're beginning to actually paint the block put the block filler on and start getting some walls actually looking like they're supposed to look so a lot of stuff happening on

090the project here's the overall site view again we'll do a drone video in a minute but just to refresh everyone's memory we have the parking lot the gyms you can see we continue to build the building this way this is exciting this is the first time we're starting to see what the actual facade is going to look like um this is the storm shelter i know it looks odd they built the top and not the bottom first i don't know why they did it that way but there's a brick ledge here so there's a break so they're actually going down not up this all ends up being brick um but i think the architects did a really nice job if you actually ever go out there and look at this this brick is a very

091kind of a uh it's a very similar match to what's on the building now it's kind of an updated version of what's there so you know the architects are always trying to pull in design elements of the old school into the new school so there's some black flecks in this it kind of has a nice north field so if you ever get if you come out and look at this or you drive by you can actually see this it really it's starting to come along and this is a just a shadow line of cast film that we actually put in there or a fake stone but that's that's intended to look that way so a little accent here we have the classroom areas i get asked a lot what this blue is um it's a

092fluid applied barrier so um in today's construction world we actually put this yellow stuff up which is dense glass uh exterior drywall would be a better way to describe it but we actually apply a fluid system now so this is completely waterproof it's like almost a rubber coating the entire building is applied in that and that completely seals it from water so it's you know brick is intended the water goes behind the brick and then weeps out this completely sears our building from water infiltration so good practice something that's relatively new you didn't see this much 5 10 years ago here we can look down the hallway we can start seeing black filler go on this white paint you see is actually called black filler but we can start seeing the areas where the lockers

093are going to be door frames we start to see the duct work going in the long duct runs we see up here we see our mechanical piping completed with insulation um and you know we start to see this is all temporary lighting obviously for right now but a lot of work going on in these ceilings um you know just ongoing stuff here we actually should be in the courtyard of the u looking at henderson again we see denzel glass we see the fluid applied barrier this is actually where the shop will go kind of similar to how and some of the clasher wings and science again this is actually looking the other way this is actually the small gym um looking up at that you can you can see how much the building progresses from

094left to right so we have the fluid barrier on one side of the site and here we're just starting to put dense glass on so the the building is at a lot different phases of construction depending on where as we move towards henderson this is actually a picture of the large gymnasium i get asked a lot about this is this what the roof will look like this is actually a perforated roof deck it's done like that for acoustic reasons to help the sound in the gym this will be covered with the roof you'll never even notice it but it kind of looks cool right now as the light comes through here's the mezzanine area that will go all the way around the gym um so you know jim's the gym is a nice design feature

095of the building again just some steel and then jane video it was a nice scottish day when they took this drum video it's very very muggy um so again here we see the gymnasium this is a big awning cover uh have an architectural feature that will that will sit here large gym we have the practice gym here around we see the classroom view of the classroom wings again the football field will sit down in this area eventually uh this will be parking back in here we actually can start seeing the roofs be put on you actually you'll see black rubber over here on top of this wing going on this is still concrete they're just starting to put a roofing on but here you can actually see the black roof that's been put on the

096building again these areas are way at a different point than these areas up here eventually this all will be filled in the steel could actually actually get closer to that i'll show it to you but this eventually just becomes basically a big square here's our storm shelter where we're putting in our red brick again this area right over here is where the buses were going to line up again here you can see the roofer is actually installing these big areas here within big hvac units will sit concrete on the roof we talked about that before for potential future expansion trying to be smart about that classroom corridors steel erection is moving this way so eventually all the steel will fill in all in here this will all be completed the eventual building goes will look

097like this but you can see actually the steel's sitting right here as we're getting ready to set it and then the storm shelter actually has a four inch concrete roof on it and then rubber on top of that so you can start to see some of that stuff as we go so um exciting things uh going on i think jane there's one more slide so the typical uh dial slide we give so we're building for a build that uh 35 complete right now um escalation allowance none of these dials have changed they're still the same and then the gmp allowance um but actually the funds the five thousand dollars of credit back to the uh actually to the contingency on the project so um the other thing i wanted to mention is i think mr

098lang asked last time about job site um workforce um we are peaking right at about 195 guys now so i told you i'd look into that for you after last meeting so anywhere from 170 to 190 a day we think we'll hit 200 probably within the next couple of months so again if you'd like to take a tour just let me know it's exciting it's going to be cold soon so if you want to get out there i did look at the construction report at the back uh it was pretty remarkable they had 684 thousand dollars of rebid and yeah 4 000. correct which it was also [Music] no i you know fencing is a unique animal um anywhere a lot of the fencing contractors are residential defense contractors they don't have a lot of

099interest in projects like this this is a big project for them they couldn't do this you have to you know the bonding capacity stuff like that so there's only about three or four fencing companies that actually have the ability to do it collins and herman would be one something you know um and they're just busy so we're gonna we'll bid it again thankfully the fencing is at the very end of the job we don't need it right now but um it is oh it has always been a struggle to get large projects to get fencing bits and i i don't there's just not enough companies to say to us honestly on it looks like their concrete interior slab on grade is running behind yeah i think in some areas that's correct i think yes and

100no i would say randy i think they've resequenced some of those things just to jump the steel guys around a little bit i think the end dates are going to be the same but yes i believe the the sweat and grade work has gotten a little bit behind in some areas correct so it's nothing to be concerned about nothing not just just a repositioning of the work sequence yeah that's i'm glad you look at those um is there any uh i know we talked about this when i was out there a month or two ago but um you mentioned there was still some permanent things out there but does any of that isn't that still a problem or no the city given the city saint peter's yeah yeah the city's been great uh you know

101we've you know it's such a big job that there's different sequencing of of permitting and the detention base and went through some different iterations over um by henderson but i think we're good we have everything done all the permits have have been um approved and the city i mean we basically have a city out there every two or three days doing an inspection in essence so um no a lot of that i wouldn't describe this problem just typical you know work on a project of this size but yes all of that has been resolved and smooth right now thank you sure board any other questions or comments okay thank you thank you board next up i would like a motion to approve the consent agenda for september 15 2022 as presented mr bertrand all those

102in favor aye any opposed notion cares reported like a motion to approve the travel request vane warm as presented mr lane and then and a discussion board so i appreciate you pulling this uh i really wanna vote yes on this i know i sent some notes to you guys earlier today about um some of the reasons i just can't vote yes and then one of the patrons spoke to this um the more i scrolled through this through this conference sessions i noticed the same sort of thing that the patron mentioned um the conference is just catering to the critical theory trends and things in academia that that i think are causing a lot of problems um remarkably i have a whole bullet list of conference titles that i sent on the board earlier today and

103of the two or three minutes that the patron listed names i think i only have one on my list so that speaks to you know i pulled out a list of 15 or 20. and there's certainly a lot more over [Music] it's uh you know these sort of things are what you know what our community has grappled with the last two years so i just can't uh and i'm sure there are good talks at this conference too you know there are at least based on the titles i think there was a 500 somehow talks um but just giving our money to support this national organization that that is putting so much importance behind these these topics i just can't see you know approving sending our one of our administrators to one of these conferences and

104giving them a roadmap on how to implement that here in france's house so for those reasons i'm going to be voting yeah and how many uh i don't know the schedule off the top of my head i know that it's multiple days um i can tell you a little about it it's a national conference the it's the 102nd year so it's not a new organization this specific conference caters to educators from elementary all the way up through the university level and so the sessions that you would see there some would be for elementary educators and some would be for university level educators and so that would be something to keep in mind um there are 500 over 500 different sessions when i talked to our content leader who's going um i'd ask you know talk

105to you a little bit about what what about this conference interests you or can you tell me about what you're hoping to learn when you go or what were some of the sessions um our content leader has a secondary background that was what he taught when he was in the classroom and so he talked to me a little bit about some of the just elementary early childhood sessions that are of interest to him since that isn't what his teaching background is and so as he gets ready to support elementary and early childhood teachers just learning more about what teaching social studies in an elementary classroom looks like we continue to work on our eoc and ap classes and so there's some strands um there's a theme with some court some sessions related to ap um

106and so that was something that was of interest to him there's also a theme around engagement and connection and so incorporating stem into courses finding some creative and engaging ways to teach so you know i remember some of my social studies classes being a lot of lecture and direct instruction and so just finding different ways to engage kids in social studies to keep them excited about it um and then just content literacy was something else that he was really interested in so how are we using those primary and secondary sources um to teach history in our classes um so those were the ones that he was looking at as he was looking through the different sessions that he was kind of seeking out and if that helps and then i just say you know we

107always encourage when our leaders are leading the learning in our district we want to make sure that they're keeping abreast of of their own learning um and so we do encourage our leaders to go out and learn and and we want them to get outside of just the local st louis learning opportunities um when they can and so you know this is opportunity to do that one follow-up question to that did i hear you mentioned that this conference is for um college-level entrepreneurs as well yeah university and college level uh professors are part of their target audience great thank you so just kind of piggybacking off that some of the interests that they expressed that he expressed to you wasn't necessarily the uh the topics that were mentioned in the patreon comments uh of the

108500 it sounds like there are a lot a large chunk that might be related to some controversial topics but i would assume that that means then there's a large chunk that's not related to controversial topics i guess equal proportion i guess my question is even if uh we have a teacher that went to some kind of training that may incorporate some something controversial does that necessarily mean that they bring it back and we automatically implement it in the francis house school district no so the content leaders role is they're in classrooms coaching teachers their primary role is writing supporting teams who are writing curriculum and so you know we know in our district that goes through many checks and balances we have teams of teachers that come together the board has to approve it as

109kind of the final stop so someone couldn't come back and unilaterally write a course or a curriculum and then implement it without lots of people having eyes on it and knowing and improving so there are various layers of processes that would have to take place in order to implement something uh and then just kind of anecdotally i know from my experience of getting through many different types of training maybe it's different on educational world i don't know but if you go to the training and you go to any kind of seminar conference and they teach something does that mean that you automatically believe and bring back everything that you hear i know i would say you know we've all been to something and you think it's one thing you get in there and you realize

110that's not quite what i thought that description was going to be about and so you're in an educational world okay all those in favor say aye aye any opposed she carries boarded like a motion to approve the august 2020 2022 monthly financial report as presented second stiglitch mr lang doctor do you have anything to add no all right here all right board any questions comments discussion okay all those in favor say aye aye and you post motion cares four dollars in motion to approve the purchases over 7 500 as presented any opposed emotion cares mr cook and then mr which is what this item is about is the vendor that sells destiny discover which uh most of you know is our library book catalog our library management database library management system um earlier this year

111folat was considering adding some functionality to their destiny discover product that would inform parents of what their student had checked out would provide parents some functionality that would allow them to restrict certain books on behalf of their students um this was at the request of some of their customers in states that had recently passed legislation regarding libraries so this was a reaction to to help their customers and ultimately the parents um after a few weeks or a few months i don't know how long but twitter got a hold of this message and then followed to use some crew lines just caved in and said well we just won't do that a lot of librarians with wrestling that if they took away any or you know took away student privacy from their parents that would not

112be a good thing of course i believe that the parents have the right to direct their their students choices so that's uh something i was sad to see folded to and as a result just seeing this on the agenda tonight it's very hard to approve giving false more of our tax money when they seem to just not have enough respect for the parents of these kids to implement that in their software the option could be as far as i'm concerned this controls could be optional students a school district didn't want to implement it you know perhaps they wouldn't have to but on a student in a district like ours it might be a good idea so i was sad to see that they didn't work on that um that said our current subscription ends at

113the end of the month and that it is unreasonable to expect our librarians to find a new system tested and all the things transfer all of our our database over to a new system within two weeks can't happen so i will approve this this month or vote to approve it but i would urge our librarians to reach out to folate and provide some voices on the other end that say you know our district is interested in this functionality that gives parents more control um or look out for another product so this product was selected in 2006 there are other library management systems available and uh over the next year i hope that either can implement that functionality which gives parents some more control or we find a new one so those are my comments on

114this doctor did you mention in one of our questions that destiny is working on an option for families to opt in on some sort of email could you give a little explanation on that to everybody you think we found a work around and so we're working on our end um our lms is off in the center and so we weren't able to work with them over the summer and then we've been a little busy with uh senate bill um work late this first month back and so um our hope is that by the end of september we'll have kind of worked through the logistics we want to partner with our librarians to our lms to do that and so we don't have all the details figured out yet but our hope is that we would

115be able to offer an opportunity for parents to sign up and you could get an email with what your child has checked out we just don't have the functionality piece of it figured out yet um to provide all the details but we're fairly confident that we can be able to offer that option to families um and get the information out by the end of the month so um and then i just also mentioned that we did check with other districts um so we have seven benchmark districts that we usually compare ourselves to when we look at different data points and when we reached out to them to ask what lms tool do they use what library management system do they use um six of the seven do you use destiny we were just curious if

116somebody else has found a tool that was better or had different functionalities um so we can certainly look into other options but um it is the common one that most districts are using right now so just as a point of information in case you're curious six of the seven are using it as we are i just want to make sure too that people understand that you know the concern aside which is legitimate that this is not a curriculum this is not an instructional resource it really just is an online library management tool so it's the system that we use to maintain our inventory and utilize to check books out so like dr buckman said we do believe we have a workaround to get it to work in a way that would actually meet some of

117the needs that our community has expressed they would like but it's not something that we're using to teach students with it's not sharing information it really is just the management tool for the books within our school district and some other resources [Music] discussion so uh i'm gonna have to vote against this one as well um this software makes some bold claims about what it can do and i've not been able to obtain any hard evidence to suggest that what it claims to do will be successful so this is a software that uh before the public doesn't read this it sort of gives personality tests basically online or through their program and it runs it through their proprietary algorithm to match students abilities with career fields i think that's is that about right sure yes so

118you science we give it to our ninth grade students so freshmen take it it is a um it's an aptitude and an interest inventory so it measures what students are interested in and then it also looks at kind of their natural abilities and it's it's in the assessment handbook as a grade level assessment and as it collects that information it houses it in new science for all four years and the reason it does that is so that kids can reference it when they're working on their annual plans we students revisit that as they update their icaps so their icap is kind of their four-year plan that kids put together that lists out the classes that they're taking it's kind of their high school slash post-secondary plan it's where our students keep track of the classes

119that they're taking and their extracurricular activities the scholarships they might be interested in their their co-curricular activities um and so that is actually a requirement that students complete it in eighth grade it's part of our m66 requirements that all students complete and i kept in eighth grade and that they revisit that every year in high school and so um our goal is that students use that information from you science as they're picking out their classes and thinking about how they want to get involved that they're using that information to help them and so and then in their junior and senior year they can go back into the assessment and they can retake the interest portion of it because we know that your interests change over the time your natural abilities may not but your interests

120would change over time and then this year our intention is to use the data from that across the building and then also across the district as we look at our programming and the courses that we offer and our after school activities and those experiential learning opportunities if you were here last month katie vargas was here and talked about our college and career opportunities um and so our goal is that we're aligning the offerings that we have with the interests and abilities of our students and so using that information and making sure that what we're offering is really kind of driven by the interest and the desires of our students we give a senior survey to our students um it's kind of like our internal report card how do we do what can you tell us

121about how we did during your experience in our district and one of the questions we asked students is i don't know the exact wording but something about how did we support you um what was the support you received in your post-secondary planning and that's always a question that we have some room for growth on and so this tool is one of those tools that will help give us some of that information that'll better customize the supports that we provide students it'll allow us to individualize that support a little more while we have them with us during those four years it's very much aligned with the strategic plan you know that was probably the strongest theme that came out of that strategic plan work it continues to be one of the strongest things we hear from

122our community that our community really wants us to work on that career side of the house while maintaining the college side so finding that balance between college and career work and this assessment exposes um additional careers so we're not just talking to kids about being a doctor or being a lawyer or going into a trade but it surfaces additional careers that maybe someone talking to a student wouldn't have thought about or a student wouldn't have thought about this request is actually about uh eighth grade a trial that we'd like to do at bryan middle school so currently we use the missouri connections as an interest inventory that we give to 8th graders and that inventory is really only the interest part it doesn't build in the aptitude part it's clunky it's a little outdated it's

123not connected to score which is a different tool that we use to send transcripts back and forth to college and use science is connected to that which is probably a different conversation we always have login issues with missouri connections it's it's time to evolve um and so we would like to give this trial of brian that we would like to do we would like to give the eighth graders that brian you science assessment so that they can take that interest in aptitude assessment so that when they build their four-year plan in eighth grade when they work on that icap the counselor can sit down with them and look at that inventory as they're starting to take starting to build that high school schedule and think about what kind of classes would i want to take

124as a high schooler we're not plugging them into a wheel anymore there's a lot of options and a lot more freedom when they're building that high school schedule and a lot of kids really haven't started thinking about as a parent who just registered someone for high school it was one of the first times we had that conversation about okay well what do you think you want to do and what classes do we need to start thinking about to get you ready for that so really our goal is looking to see if using this tool in eighth grade will help to enhance those conversations um to help students as they're working to develop those plans just to make it a richer more individualized experience it's probably a much longer answer to your question that is helpful

125and i guess my objection isn't really over necessarily what we would use it for um it's it's really how they market it and just a general concern that i have which is exacerbated this week by the data breach or the hack of seesaw for our i think it's just our element early childhood maybe but uh you know this is going to house substantial data personality data you know likes you know not just name and phone number but um psychological data about our students so of course you go right to the person right to the company's privacy policy and i have some um on one hand it really doesn't matter because if you know if they have a hack like seesaw all that's out there and you know do parents consent to that do we consent

126to that you know you try to read through these privacy policies but i'm looking at this and it says in one of the first lines you know we uh how we may use your data without consent so there's some other languages you know they'll only use it in accordance with their privacy policy we all know these privacy policies change over time you go through and click a new one every time apple updates or any of them i do it um there's another one in certain circumstances school administrators are permitted to act instead of parents and guardians for the purpose of granting consent to the collection of personal data from children when we have contracted with the school to provide our services that's what we're doing so you know yes there are useful products but there's

127also a cost we pay by using them and i think the cost on this one is too high in my view or risk so that that's really the crux of my my issue with this one so i'll let it go board any other questions i'm sorry um going back to clarify what process are you using now to track the data that you want to try with aka say warmer temporary what process are we using to track um what you need with the new like the thing that you're using for the trial what are you using now what the uh right now in eighth grade you'll use the missouri connections which is an interesting inventory is that what you're talking about yes um right now you'll take missouri connections when you hit 8th grade and it'll

128ask you some questions about the interests that you have and then your counselors will have conversations with you about that information and you'll use that to build your kind of your four-year plan you'll use that when you fill out your account okay thank you i just had a question now if we have the answer to it maybe he does uh oftentimes with any any kind of company that takes any kind of collection of information they tend to use that themselves that's usually a part of any kind of agreement that's done pretty consistent everybody does it with their cell phones they agree to different things that they're maybe they know maybe they don't know i don't disagree with you about uh having some parental rights and permission and what and whatnot but uh oftentimes companies that

129collect that kind of information will segregate their information uh accordingly from maybe names and that particular information may scrub the names they may keep it separate and there may be firewall protections within their databases in order if there is a hack for that any kind of correlation between the two if there is any kind of breach to where they know child a has this psychological profile do we have any indication that that's not happening with this program no they don't indicate well i don't know i don't remember anything about exactly how they segregate data um you know what if of course it's for legitimate business purposes that's a common statement uh the thing with this one is one of their legitimate business purposes is dr buckman pointed out is or whoever consents to give that

130data to someone so once you give it to someone else you have not agreed to their privacy policy necessarily i could be wrong but once it's out there in in you know in digital format it's gone you know it's just out there we made you know in the past we may have collected this counselor she may have collected this date on paper forms and it sits in a file cabinet and still collected but it's not so easily obtained by nefarious parties [Music] because these things change and the company needs to entertain their shareholders requests for more money so well we'll share it you know in a few years you just never know what's going to happen in the future with this kind of stuff yeah with something like see-saw where you might just carry on

131maybe a photo with a name an age or a school this has a this has a substantial amount of info about our application students [Music] than those over 13. um they also talked about having an online forum and 1300 don't have access to the forum but those above them do we know what that forum's for we're going to use access or have any interaction with that with [Music] on background here is that we don't use that portion of this the online forms for those under 13 being able to let parents delete the data somehow it doesn't really spell out how can we if we move forward with this can we figure that out and let parents know okay we're going to be using this if you want the data removed at the end here's how

132you go about doing that like at the end of the four years how i don't know how to use it at the age of ultra high school i don't know if this only implies that you're around 13 you can get [Music] do you ever go back on things like this and negotiate with the company on their terms and conditions to get stricter terms rather than just accepting whatever they that hasn't been say experience thank but anything else i thought one more question all right um how's the current system set up is that an online system that we currently use or is it like paper copies how does that system work compared to this one the missouri connections is only do that they have used with our 8th grade okay so it's through the state anything

133else adam all right all those in favor all right any opposed to approve the tax rate as shown in the estimate of required local taxes 2022 as presented mr lang and mr bertrand any discussion questions okay no just something i think adam already pointed out earlier but worth mentioning again with the uh the debt uh service levy is just keeping the same and keeping to the promise the district made with the prop s funds to keep it a tax neutral bond and so i do appreciate the efforts in keeping those promises anyone else okay all those in favor say aye aye any opposed emotion cares all right next up we will do a crap-ass preface review so board i would like a motion to approve the prop s process review as presented mr cook okay

134dr robis good evening board dr hawk and i would like to talk with you a bit this evening about formalizing a review of the prop s work to date and ask for your support of our recommended review process moving forward as we began our new roles this summer we knew that there was ongoing concern related to profess and we shared as part of our entry plans that we were committed to reviewing the process and sharing with you and the community how we would proceed differently moving forward the first step in that process was the community roundtable that we had in august that many of you participated in our hope at that time was to get community feedback share that information with our internal committees and then work with you on recommendations for prioritizing our projects

135that remain under prop best for moving forward as we've held those events as we've had conversations with you as board members and met individually and with small groups of stakeholders throughout the community profess continues to be a common theme and there are concerns about what got us to the current situation we're in specifically around francis howell north there are two reasons for us doing this and making this recommendation one is as people knew our roles we need to understand what took place and transpired so that we can do better and do differently as we move forward we also recognize that there are many stakeholders in our community who need us to take this step in order to feel confident in our work as we move forward as a district ultimately our goal is to provide

136the board of education and the public with a formal analysis of the policies regulations processes and decision making that were utilized up until this point in our process work like i said specifically focusing on france the new francis island north our intention is and will be to share the existing processes and policies that we have in place that were followed and worked well up until now determine if there were any that were not followed or which can be approved upon and ultimately identify if there were any that were not in place that should be for any future work that we do within the district this will culminate in a report to the board and then allow the board to determine if there are any specific policy changes that need to be made or policies that

137need to be implemented and then district leadership will also update our internal processes as necessary to be aligned with board of education policy we see this really as an opportunity to look back to inform our work moving forward we need the support of this community and we see this review process is imperative to rebuilding the trust of the community and also being transparent as we move forward this next section we're going to talk a little bit about the components that we believe will be a part of the process we've started that internally by working closely with our different committees that we have in place our finance and audit committee our facilities committee trying to get input from the stakeholders who were here and through the process of process regarding what they feel would be most

138beneficial we worked with honor our architects essa wilson our general contractor and agi might be helpful sorry about that and with jeremy from um atlas to help us with uh trying to capture the timeline that took place from 2018 when we begin having these conversations and doing some in-depth analysis of the needs within the within the district for future uh facilities and and bond potential work in the future and we've compiled a list that we keep adding to about kind of a timeline of what has taken place since 2018 uh from then to now and so during that time there are certainly some processes systems policies and regulations that just as an outsider looking in you can see like well if we would have done this probably maybe things would have been better for us

139so there's some things that are very obvious that that we could see looking back as you know what do they call a monday morning quarterback or whatever somebody looking back who wasn't there wasn't in the game that you can see some some opportunities and also knowing that we weren't looking at we're not looking at things right now through the lens of being in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and trying to build a building at the same time um but we know that our internal evaluation will not be adequate for our community and we want to be able to take that timeline analysis and our internal thoughts and then get some external input we've reached out to several state-level organizations the missouri school board association they've agreed to help us with a policy review they

140have an attorney on staff who will take our process and review that for recommendations for policy implementation policy and regulation and process if we're following what we currently have in place and if they have suggestions of changes that we could make to our policies and regulations that might help us moving forward uh that our uh that attorney has expertise in the construction area prior to coming to msb and msba and working in school law so we're very fortunate that we're going to have that there's a cost to that of about 150 an hour but i do feel like it must be able to work with us to try to do that in the most economical way mo asbo which is our financial missouri association of school business officials they're going to help us look at

141that from the from a finance perspective uh also from a public relations perspective at this time i think they're going to do that for us for free so we appreciate that they are going to be able to help us out with that the missouri plant managers association made up of facility directors from around the state of missouri uh they are willing and i believe also for free to help us do some cost analysis of the inflationary experience that we had compared to what's happening throughout the state so that we can know if the numbers that we're hearing match up with what others are hearing so that we can have some comparative data not just in the st louis area but statewide we the missouri association of school administrators they're willing to help they're just not

142sure 100 exactly what we need from that leadership perspective from trying to find out what we could do different from an administrative perspective they're willing to try to offer some help for us help for us but there that would be a more open-ended area trying to figure out how to best assist the missouri architects association they are taking that currently to their board of directors to find out what they could do to be most supportive they've already sent a very large document for our review addressing some of the inflation that's taking place across the area that they're seeing statewide the missouri general contractors association they do not feel like they can support us in that direct analysis themselves but they have recommended that we reach out to independent construction manager to help with the review

143of the process that we followed with our construction manager at risk to see how we've done that the way that we should are we following what we need to so we have a lot of options we have a lot of people willing to help we have a lot of expertise that we can reach out to to try to get some additional input um some of it is going to come at a cost we're trying to keep that as low as we possibly can we want to spend the money to help kids and teach but we also want to make sure that our believes we've done our due diligence and that we are taking very seriously the need to make sure that we never have an experience like this again and so initially we're asking for

144approval for up to fifteen thousand dollars we hope it doesn't cost that much it may cost more uh when i reached when i was reaching out trying to research this and talk to an auditing firm you know if an auditor if we were to have an auditor come in what would we bid that out they said you're going to just have to do an hourly rate because no one's going to bid this they don't know what they're getting into and if they bit if they bid it for you they're going to bid it so high you're probably not going to take that bid you're going to be better off to work with someone that you trust to be fair with you and pay on an hourly basis um any time you start going down you

145know auditing something this big doing a review of something of this size you may go down wrap holes and and it may open something up so you don't know sometimes until you get started um but i do want to say that i appreciate how onerous and wilson uh and atlas they [Music] have no reservation about having this done and feel very confident that what they've done is exactly what they should be doing so um they welcome this scrutiny and external evaluation they have definitely been partners with us as we've gotten this far in the process so i had previously shared with the board that following the feedback from the round table and then the consideration of our committees our hope was direct to make a recommendation to the board of education at the october business

146meeting for next steps with the prioritization of progress projects as we move forward given that we are formally engaging in a review process we do believe that it's important to have that information prior to making any decisions on how we will ultimately move forward we will continue to engage in conversations with stakeholders on that prioritization but we do feel that we will pause a formal recommendation to you for a couple of months until we get all of that feedback and we're able to take that into consideration and work with you so you see a tentative timeline up here as the school year started last month and this month we've been working through the stakeholder input through the roundtable and our committees and doing our internal analysis we do plan to hold next month a work

147session with board of education last year you commissioned a demographer study looking at enrollment trends in the francis hall school district within saint charles county based on all of the available data we had that report and so we want to spend time with you next month going through that and understanding how our enrollment trends will impact enrollment in specific buildings and then ultimately how those trends will impact what sorts of additions that were listed on the initial profess list still need to take place what could possibly be modified based on our current enrollment we will work through the process review over the next couple of months we hope that we're able to accomplish this throughout october and november with that external feedback understanding though that as they begin the work if they need more information

148need to meet with different people redo other documents that that could go faster or slower just depending on what they're finding we're continuing to look internally at the work as well like dr hawk said we have some initial findings we believe that we could share with everyone but we want that outside evaluation to help both our public and the board of education feel comfortable as we move forward once we have all that information we would do another work session with the board where you would have an opportunity to take all of that information into consideration um and then to make some recommendations and have conversation around policy change process change and that's when we would talk about what we would do different internally moving forward we'll continue to work throughout that time with our committees

149and with stakeholders to talk about the prioritization of the remaining work ultimately then tentatively we would hope that by the end of this calendar year we can come back to the board we would have all that information we'd feel good about how we will move forward and then be able to make a formal recommendation on the next steps of work from the remaining prop s projects answer any other questions you might have about the process board any questions comments i think that it speaks volumes to uh the integrity of atlas uh honor and associates and sm wilson to participate it to such a high degree that they already have and to welcome the scrutiny i guess they probably assume being a part of a uh in business with a public entity it might come with

150that uh sometime so but i i do appreciate that openness and their efforts to uh helping us discover some maybe process issues because i really do feel uh that's probably where it lies i have little doubt that it has anything else to do with uh any other issues besides just review or processes that were failed by past administrators in the district i think we took a black eye as a district and and it's kind of given them a black eye too and a chance to be able to clear your name and help people realize like we did what we were supposed to do i think that they will welcome that board any other questions and comments uh i do want to touch base october 6th is when we'll do the work session correct we're going

151to use our whole date october 6th correct october 6th that works for the board of education that network session uh not for prop s though for demographer study that's correct that would be an opportunity to talk through the report and talk through the implications both on enrollment boundary issues within the district as well as how that impacts potential progress work it's not a night to necessarily make any decisions or recommendations the idea of a work session for the public is an opportunity for the board to engage in dialogue and conversation and a little bit less formal of a setting to share the questions they have for us and information they want us to continue to pursue as we move forward in the process when you take a look at that demographer's study it's a pretty

152chunky document and it's going to be a lot of uh digging and conversation work through that just to clarify it is an open meeting for the public so if anybody wants to come and see and sit in here at the conversation absolutely it's a public meeting we welcome people to come it'll be stream whatever we're doing right now live available um and the difference will just be instead of the board sitting up the diocese we'll be sitting down here kind of a rectangle table engaging in conversation but it'll be open to the public and posted with the information ahead of time for your review this is the right place to ask this but uh that demographer study as you noted when you sent it to us is quite large um it's like as you said

153it's at least 100 pages um i wonder if we could just make that available to the public more than like three days or five days before whatever we typically do sure i can work with the board president determine when you'd like that posted for the public and we can get it on the website okay and then can we also get this presentation okay next up we will have um superintendent uh presently there was a motion attached to that station okay so all in favor thank you i have multiple things to share and celebrate and i received a little bit of feedback last month that maybe it was too long but i also don't think we do enough celebrating of the good things that are happening so until i'm told otherwise by the board president i

154will continue to share and celebrate good things um the first thing i want to thank central county fire and rescue who for their kindness and generosity at the start of the school year a couple weeks ago they delivered backpacks filled with school supplies to our administration building and those backpacks will be utilized to our student services office to be gifted to students at our 23 schools who need them throughout the year filled with supplies to support them and that's just one example of the amazing relationship we have with a lot of our first responders and they support they give our schools throughout the year several weeks ago students from france high school france south central and france's hall north all wowed a large crowd of attendees at the district marching band preview it was a

155beautiful night we had a lot of parents and patrons on to watch the performances and just want to recognize the students the band directors and the parent volunteers who work together to make that possible and if you didn't get to be there tonight you can see that at all of our home games throughout the year at the three different schools sticking with the music celebrations we were just notified at the end of last week that jennifer doherty who is the director of bands at holland beck middle school has been selected to participate in the extra credit on stage event at powwow symphony hall this will provide her with the opportunity to rehearse and perform at a concert alongside st louis symphony orchestra musicians the concert will take place on friday october 7th it's free and

156it's an open to the public you can get those tickets on their site the event is to celebrate music education in our schools and it's an honor for both miss doherty as well as the francelle district that she was selected to participate i want to thank we had about 40 stakeholders who attended our first safety task force meeting earlier this week the group included a large number of our first responders from the county and our local municipalities we have parents staff teachers administrators and board of education members there that evening safety of our students and staff is a top priority and earlier this year the board gave a directive to reconvene the task force we know that we talk a lot about focusing on instruction and teaching and relationships and we can't do any of

157that if we don't have safe and secure environments so the group came together the initial meeting was really to review the safety procedures and security protocols that we currently have in place in the district and the goal will be to make recommendations to the board around next steps for any safety or security updates or upgrades we need to have many of the initiatives and the tools that we would look at next to put in place have significant costs attached to them which have budgetary implications so we want to do that work this fall and early in the um next year because that might have implications when we do the budget being developed for the 23-24 school year we will be sending out a survey at the end of september beginning of october that will go

158to all of our parents to all of our staff as well as to some of our students to get your input on current safety and security within the district as well as generate ideas the task force will meet again in november to review that and for more information and begin exploring some different options and then again in january and february as necessary so that we're prepared to make a recommendation to the board of education this spring we have school administrators at the start of this month joey sm wilson at the francis holland north school construction site they attended the suicide prevention stand down event that was held in honor of national suicide prevention month construction workers actually have one of the highest rates of suicide of any industry in the united states the group talked

159about the new 988 suicide and crisis lifeline is available for everyone workers learned about recognizing warning signs and mental health struggles in themselves as well as in others and how to report that and not let stigma stop people from starting conversation or asking for help and we were really pleased to be invited to be a part of that meeting i just want to say that we are thrilled to welcome back visitors to our building this is the first time since before covet started that we have been allowed to have parents grandparents and guardians attend lunches in our buildings it's a welcome thing to have people back and adding energy and excitement to our building and we want to continue that our family learning series our senior pals group and our great by eight reader programs

160that were also paused during covid are starting again this fall and some are already in place we encourage you to look for more information over the next few weeks and opportunities that were posted in the district digest and e-news as well as on the website to hear about them and the last thing i mentioned this last month as well and it came up a little bit tonight but i really we want to ask for the community's help as we look for additional paraprofessionals to support our buildings custodians and substitute teachers as well as bus drivers to fill some critical shortage areas within the district we do hire high school students actually to work as substitute custodians it's a great opportunity for high school students who may be involved in activities or sports that can't work

161a job outside of school but a connection to the district that they can work the number of hours they're available so if you know of students who might be interested and want a part-time job with flexible hours as well as community members that's our biggest opportunity um if you know people who are looking for work here within the francis house school district you know we have 23 schools you can find an opportunity close to home we can be flexible when it comes to hours and times you want to work that need is real and we've had an outstanding first month of school there's an overwhelming level of positivity that i hear from teachers that i'm hearing from staff i'm hearing from students and from community members but i also recognize that this shortage of these

162positions which are key positions in our district are impacting the day-to-day work and operation of the district and unfortunately that detracts from the focus on our students and on teaching and learning and so it's not going to be an easy fix we're working against market and job conditions nationwide and with limited financial resources but as one of our speakers tonight said it really is an opportunity to work together to try and find solutions there's going to be no quick fix but we we feel the frustration and the concern we recognize it um and we all work together to solve that so we know that that will have an impact on the morale as we move throughout the year so thank you and that concludes my comments [Music] the teachers administrators staff as the school year

163started and all the schools as well for having all their community engagement events and stuff in the early part of the year i know i was able to attend a few of them and everybody seemed really excited and things are kind of back to normal compared to where we were the last couple years and it's just really appreciated there i do want to thank teachers obviously there's a lot of hard work that's going into it with a shortage of pairs and shortage of substitutes and a shortage of of different uh custodians that there's a lot of burden that's being put on teachers and staff so there's a lot of extra work and even students are stepping up and helping across the district so i want to recognize that and then also acknowledge that there's hard

164work that's being done to try to fill those vacancies the unfortunate reality is it may seem like we're over covered but we kind of still have lingering side effects from all the things that have happened because of covid inflation is one of them a nationwide job shortage across almost all industries all those things are kind of plaguing everybody and we're not unique so it's plaguing us too so hard hard work is being done to try to fill that i know they're having conversations uh with various stakeholders on how to fill those so i know that there's work that's being done there is no easy answer there's no magic wand like one of the patriots said but there's hard work that's being done and i want to recognize it thanks i also want to add i

165echo everything you said dr rompus i also want to add um i know the frustrations are real this week with our technology issues so i want to thank everyone for hanging in there with that and all the hard work that our technology crews are putting in and trying to problem solve those so hang in there everybody anyone else kendall do we have anything to add um yes i would like to thank dr thurston for giving me this opportunity and especially to borrow middle school for giving its diversity and inclusivity to all students including myself that way people like me can have opportunities like this [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay anyone else all right well board since we did not finish our closed session i would like a notion to return back to close any opposed you