001hello welcome to the carnegie r1 board of education meeting please stand for the pledge of allegiance [Music] is [Music] here mark kelly here performing president entertain a motion to adopt the agenda that the move that the agenda be approved as presented second all those in favor motion carries unanimously next we have public comments we have five speakers tonight and so uh those in the you're watching public comment is just that it's opportunity for the public to speak and address the board of education the board of education will not respond doesn't mean we're not interested in not hearing what you say this is just not the forum for a debate and interaction between them we'll take into consideration everything we hear tonight we have put up on it each speaker has three minutes to speak we
002have posted it so there won't be any doubts about the timing and so you can see the timing coming as it gets to three minutes if you're not finished i'll ask you to sum up take a few moments to do that and we'll go from there and so we have an order i think that all the speakers have seen the order on that but first i would like to hear from chris ruby mr ruby here doesn't appear that mr ruby is here next we have kristen farrell now learned so much ready i'm remark that's it i want to speak into the topic of leadership tonight as a leader in our community a leader in business and a leader in ministry healthy leadership starts from the top signs of healthy leadership are open communication the ability
003to effectively receive and respond to feedback healthy leaders are able to welcome observation and feedback good leaders find constructive ways to stay open and objective about comments from coworkers clients or congregants outside of the announcement regarding dr miller we have not heard from your offices in with just five weeks till our schools your schools fill with kids again we have not been surveyed you don't know if we want masks on our kids if we want required vaccinations or critical race theory in our schools just some of the hot topics that your parents are talking about may i suggest with good leadership in my healthy leadership that these things listen and respond with action i would like to suggest you using a leadership tool called the 360 assessment well-known in the business world this is an
004anonymous way of evaluating your entity in the most honest and insightful way it shows you your strengths and your weaknesses through the eyes of your superiors employees and clients carney families being both your boss and your clients the health and success of this school district starts with you we need some change here in just the last few years we have had multiple leaders in this district with integrity issues we've had multiple issues with racism all of which were covered heavily in the news we've also lost some very good teachers and administrators to other school districts and all of this affects the health of the district carney needs stronger leaders we need leaders with integrity and boldness we need people who will fight to protect this community and its values without that instilled in our education
005system we will just be like some big city district and that's not why we live in kearney we live here because we have small town family values and ideas ideals and we want to keep it that way it's on you to lead better because you hire and hold accountable the most important office in our district the leader of the leaders and if you can't do that then i would challenge you to step down so someone else can in closing when there's a lack in transparency and communication and action it makes it look like you guys don't care or have something to hide right now it feels like it's the district versus the parents and that's never the way it should be we are all here we are all here to contribute to the education and
006the betterment of the future generations and i believe that with some change and transparency and accountability from the top that we can accomplish that together and i look forward to speaking with you more about this next month meeting as i will add this topic to the agenda with five days ahead of time which is apparently the rule but i hope that we can look at how to assess the health of our school district together and that we can unify the people sitting over here with the people sitting over here because we are here together for these babies next we have michelle taylor hello thank you for allowing me to speak today but i noticed we said the pledge of allegiance but we didn't say a prayer that's why i'd like to say your prayer really
007quick i pray that the people in this building listen with an opening clear mind i pray that our community will come together as a unit and stand up for our freedoms our continued freedom of choice thank you so this country is both on the choice lots of choices that's why immigrants come over here because we have freedom of speech freedom of religion freedom of decisions for our family so today i'm here and i'm representing a lot of parents a lot of tax payers a lot of guardians and grandparents we are petitioning you to allow the parents to make the choice to mask their children or vaccinate their children we ask this that that you keep out the segregation of prejudice of unvaccinated children and unmasked children to go along with that and the reason i'm
008very for this is because my children are in your schools i have flat out asked their doctor what his opinion of masking vaccinations are and he said in my opinion you should remove your kids from school it's not healthy for them mentally it's not healthy for them physically and we have no idea what the future holds for any of us because it's been created so quickly so all over the world we have other choices we can drink we can drive we can have sex we can get married we can ride a boat we can fly we have all these choices and with each one of those choices it comes a consequence it may be a good consequence maybe a reward or a bad consequence drinking and driving for example or drinking and voting uh another
009option another choice is we have a choice that we can it happens all over the world that's a choice that person took so i don't really understand why we don't have a choice to mask or not mask or vaccinate or not vaccinate it should be our right as a parent we've raised these children from the beginning we know all our doctor's appointments all our bumps all their bruises we know what's best for our children and i think if we as a community stand up there are other communities standing up for the same thing that we can become a monarch for other communities to say you don't have to do this we can allow our children to breathe and allow our children to grow and we're constantly telling them do your best you sky's the limit
010but if we keep doing all this stuff we're teaching them that they have no choice thank you you guys like to have my signatures sure no i'm sorry thank you next to me i'm megan lewis hello my name is megan lewis and i'm the mother of three kids in the kearney district i'm coming to you to share my thoughts and concerns on the 21-22 return to school plan i found myself in the same place that i was this time last year with about a month to go before school starts and no idea if my kids will remain in the public schools or if i need to find an alternate schooling for them this is not enough time to prepare and make the best decision for my kids i understand that carnegie school board only follows
011the direction of the clay county public health board and that we are still awaiting guidance from them my worry is you will make an announcement that masks may be optional for kids under 12 or kids over 12 when are vaccinated and then change that either once clay county public health announces their guidance or later this year when the flu season hits and in that you will leave many families that didn't want their kids to be masked another year for mental and physical health reasons with no choice but to keep their kids in school or there might be some families probably myself that choose to pull their kids out of school mid-year and for some kids that can be just as stressful hopefully you get my point that all we want is the choice to make
012the decision that is best for our children if covering our kids face for another year is not a choice then you leave us with the decision on leading the district i think only other options to my knowledge this would be a little under 30 000 loss to carnegie school district for my family alone if we choose not to keep our three kids in the district i cannot imagine the impact this will have if 10 20 30 50 families decide to do the same thing to the members of harney school board i truly believe that you have the best intentions for our kids so please leave this as a choice for our kids to be an astronaut thank you for your time next we have julie ball hello my name is julie bell i currently have
013three well i actually have only two kids in a while i've already pulled one out please realize there is affected kids that have asthma my son last year ended up like getting a call from his teacher that he'd been in the bathroom about five six times a day what's going on i'm just talking fast because you limit me long story short after three doctor's visits and 150 dollar copay not counting a specialist we find out he's hiding in the bathroom so he can breathe after going and getting all of his uh treatments he now has to take a funeral before uh before school starts as well as after not counting the other prescription he has to take which will end up being a total of 536 dollars extra a month that i have to pay
014due to mass he should not be in a mask it's not it should not be mandatory it should be optional if we're saying it's for a virus you do realize virus we can give them eyes so are we going to start wearing goggles now i mean at what point is enough enough it needs to be optional you guys don't pay my bills we don't co-parent together at all it is not your choice what my kid wears to school whether he's wearing pumas or whether he's wearing skechers so it should not be your choice if my kid wearing a mask it is our choice i am the parent you guys are not you guys are to support us i mean i think that's feasible i think we all agree on that one let's also take an
015effect we're going to change masks has there been studies on mass who's going to be in charge of that is it going to be the teacher is it going to be the nurse is it going to be principal has it going to be time stamped how do we know this kid wore his mask all day how do we know he didn't wear it for five days in a row i had my son come in with cheetos one time and i think he had barbecue sauce he didn't change it for four days it is what it is he's 10 years old i can't expect him to let's be honest it didn't stay on his face they were chin straps they were not masked at that point they're not serving a purpose but giving you guys the
016extra federal funding that you guys are receiving and that's all this is it comes down tonight if you guys are making yourself liable if you're gonna require yeah i see mr mark miller yes or mr mark keller you're seeing the plot okay we got that you can tell time congratulations now give me the respect and look at me no i'm continuing no time we are going to go ahead and conversation you were disrespectful for me for not watching me you're continuing watching the clock instead of me pay me the respect that i'm giving you certainly i will okay let's get that let's go yep her talk this is a private meeting held in public nobody cares liable if you're going to require mass they will have to be changed certain times do you have an
017operational procedure when that's going to be taking place do you have that i don't think so has there been studies of how long these good vasts are good for because let's be honest nurses change their mask more than one time in eight hours they also get breathing time our children are not getting breathing time have we had enough [Applause] your hands yes that's okay next we have information so we have returned guys seriously be respectful of the meeting same to you this you an emotional situation i understand but we're having a meeting here and you guys are continuing to talk just like you did what happened to man superintendent and you can't think quite i could have done 188 [Music] seriously okay you guys don't have to do it you don't have to follow the
018rules all we ask you to do is to not speak while we're discussing we're having a public meet or meeting in public okay we listen to you that's fine i expect you not to speak while we're having a meeting show some respect you have a microphone for your meetings we don't [Music] here we go to school plan jeffy even an update on the school return to school okay so currently a return to school plan um we're looking at uh we're excited to have kids we'll be coming back full in person learning on august 24th this time we don't have a ksd connect option breakfast and lunches per usda waiver will be free for the year please realize that all the card items um if students don't choose that will be for a cost currently our
019clay county health guidance is masking is optional so that's where to start with for students and staff realizing that there is um still not a requirement the recommendation if if i'm vaccinated adults if they're in our schools um to wear a mask um the only thing we have a requirement for federal order because school buses are public transportation adults and students will mess up we don't we do know there are some exceptions whether they be 504 iep related things that if doctors give that to us so we'll try to work with parents on that um decided to have activities in clubs with a return back to full capacity and that would be exciting to see some of our first friday night football games things with our musicals those things good to see mitigation measures one
020change is that after this last school year looking that we're trying to if we can accomplish it we still want to operate school in person and but still try to keep kids safe so if we can distance three feet that's we're gonna try to work with um we have students and staff prior to coming that they self screen themselves if they feel sick then stay home visit with your see your health care provider we're going to practice good hand washing respiratory etiquette contact traits um cleaning and disinfecting of our district facilities realizing with contact tracing this is something that we with our building nurses and our building administrators that if we do have a positive case that person will isolate for 10 days making sure they're symptom-free prior to coming back if we have a
021close contact if they've had covet in last three months or if they're vaccinated and they don't have symptoms they can come to school um if they are if those dono those do not fit and it's a 10 day quarantine a change here is they can go to a seven day quarantine if they get a negative pcr test after day five so um right now with going back to school we'll still kind of have a limit on visitors but we want the essential visitors so parents and teachers need to meet most definitely we want to have them back in student check-in checked out we want our 8-plus mentors that come from the high school to help our kids we want them to be a part of that student internships so we'll continue to monitor what's going
022on we'll continue to work with clay county we'll continue to work with develop department of health and senior services as well as desi going into this school year so we've had a very successful summer school we had four weeks of summer school we had i'm just getting ready to finish up two weeks of readers round up for young kids um i believe that we've had good attendance and we've gotten kids that for learning and able to get uh kids boost and reading to start the school year so and that's been good and as we've kind of seen our local our data we've done a good job and we appreciate the kids and the parents helping us out with that question you mentioned the school lunch is that still like um like you apply for it
023are you requested or what's no it's last year um didn't matter um status of from that anybody can request it that's a request they get their free breakfast and free lunch if they want a second lunch that will be a charge if there's any all the card items that still charge to the student and family okay so because it's still just though our business and pay is normal yeah so thank you for that next we have dei task force update scott um yes just wanted to give a quick update um on the di task force work our last meeting was held on june 3rd we don't generally meet in the summer the goal for that meeting was to establish our mission and vision we did not complete that there was a lot of discussion we
024were divided into smaller groups and that meeting each group created their ideas for this and then we're going to pull ideas together um the common words that are used in everybody's suggestions were respect dignity consistency empathy and empowerment we plan on finishing the creation of the mission and the vision at our next meeting which will most likely be late august as a reminder the initiative of dei was started years ago um and then several years ago i was asked by dr nicely to take on um the task force the dei task force um in that from the time it started until now we've had over 40 people that have served on this task force um we have you know parents we've had students lots of staff and we have board members and right now darlene
025bailey and susan mormon both serve on that and most recently brian hamm has asked to also join that committee um certainly we open this to anybody who is interested in serving on this task force if you're interested anybody in the community anybody else on the board anybody on staff they're welcome to be a part of this all you need to do is send me an email um we've come a long way in our work but these efforts do need to continue um as a reminder the purpose of this initiative has been and always will be about creating unity our efforts have focused on making sure students and staff feel respected regardless of any differences they may have we feel that all students have the right to come to school without fear of being bullied tormented
026or ridiculed for any reason last week i was on a family vacation and while i was gone i know that there was a town hall meeting that took place that centered around the top eight of critical race theory i know a number of people in this room attended a number of board meetings board members attended um i've talked with mr morrison he gave me an update of what went on at the meeting um as well as ms warman she has she's given me some of her thoughts about what went on in the meeting and from the perspective of she is also a task force member so i would like for her to share some of her thoughts for them so i wanted all of you to know kind of my thoughts from this meeting that
027was held at providence baptist church it was last tuesday um because i'm on this dei task force and have been for a number of years i know john attended and where you attended other administrators i know attended as well and i my point of going and i got an invitation my point and going was to definitely listen to find out what i'm not understanding about some of the issues to take notes you know and be able to share with you because i know you guys are getting questions too and i guess what i realized is i think there's a big misconception about what our task force does i don't know how it works in other communities but having been on this committee literally for years even before i was on school board um i think
028what this committee has always been about is anti-bullying making sure that all staff all students or people feel they don't feel feel any fear in attending school they don't feel like they'll be tormented or ridiculed and that's really the purpose of the committee um i'll be honest i did not know what crt was like two months ago maybe i wasn't familiar with it it's not a term we've ever talked about during any of our meetings so i didn't really know what it was and that's part of the reason for me going um excuse me so in any in any case um when they were talking about curriculum and things um that's where i really want to listen and understand since there's really no connection with that for our committee uh the curriculum things that we
029have been discussing i think i've told you guys is uh professional development helping a teacher understand if they have a situation where one kid is being tormented by another kid how they can handle that situation so that's if you call that particular maybe it's not that's curriculum for teachers to help them understand how to address the situation or for kids it's helping them understand how to respect one another regardless of their differences so in terms of anything and i've gone to most meetings on curriculum those are the points so um i encourage you to i know all of you support our initiative to make sure every child is free from fear in attending class and then learning so with that support i wanted to give you a little bit of my um thoughts surrounding that
030meeting that we attended last week i don't know if john or bree have any other thoughts on it too but that's i i didn't know some of the things that i had heard and i know what we've been doing so i think there is a disconnect between those those concepts and and as far as as our curriculum because i know that that has been brought up um and something that all of our board members need to understand um as you are responding to people out in the public is that um there are no crt concepts as part of our current curriculum [Music] there is no crt concepts planned to be any part of our curriculum and if any time there is a new initiative it is brought to the board when we had our new
031math curriculum we we brought that to the board for approval it's an action item when we started our guided reading new initiative that is brought to the board and approved by the board um as an action item so any curriculum that we were going to initiate would be um there it would be on the agenda for the public to see and for the board to vote on but i mean it is just not happening in kearney and there's no plans of that happening some things that we have thought about in light of some of the events going on around we had the the name dei task force um long before all of the critical race theory stuff was brought out um now that it is being used somewhat synonymously with crt we have said although
032our purpose would be the same and that is to provide every child a safe and welcoming environment we feel like maybe we should consider a name change so if anybody has any suggestions um for something like that we we would welcome that um we will be publishing the meeting date for the next meeting on the district website again if anybody would like to attend we welcome you to come to this so you can see what our meetings are it is truly a place just we are just trying to create a self and welcoming a safe and welcoming environment for all kids i would ask that if you plan on attending we've had as few as 15 at the task force meetings and as many as 37 so in order to plan for space we would
033like to know approximately how many people are coming so um if people can email me and let me know i would appreciate that any questions i have two questions so two months ago when we did the update maybe it was through three two or three so there was a couple slides to talk about curriculum k through 12 and then we sent out a parent survey or excuse me done there a teacher survey about curriculum indeed i would like at some point to have a discussion if that's today if you need to prepare i'm not opposed to having a discussion about it i just want to know what those what that intention was what was the goal what was the end goal of putting those two things one on the slides from the update and then
034one to the teachers because i think that there's can be a disconnect with that and i think that's the hot button that i'm putting maybe you on the spot and i don't want to do that what i'd like to do is let you have time to think about it but i just think that that's something that would help everybody understand what we're trying to do okay well which one do you want me to answer however you want to answer yes ma'am okay ask the question don't just ask me a question i promise you i am transparent on an open book i will what's the goal what was the goal of sending out that survey to teachers on dei i mean and i can get the questions but what was the purpose of asking them how
035to put being creative okay and it's not like um a written curriculum what the intention was often what happens in a classroom is a topic will come up that is uncomfortable um in the classroom for whatever reason because there are because our children in the classroom there are differences and sometimes it um some things that are brought up might embarrass a child a teacher never wants a child to be embarrassed so when we said how teachers handle this in a classroom it is truly to give teachers the professional development um so that they have the tools to be able to facilitate those um difficult conversations in a classroom without any child being offended or embarrassed so then the k through 12 in the update when we did the board packet where we're talking k-12 some
036of those things you know again with the way the world's gone jennifer obviously dei can be synonymous with crt and so when we see that on an update it can be perceived differently so i would like to know when you're talking about that k-12 you're talking teachers you weren't talking about kids and curriculum when we were talking about kids we're talking more that that character education piece it's truly treating each other with respect and dignity and just basic kindness um because i mean things have happened in the district where kids weren't treated with kindness and and um and that's not okay so the example that and and i'm kind of leading you because of our meeting with the parent um but when we had a conversation about a biracial student that got called a name
037and the concept of how to handle that issue is that kind of what where you're trying to go with the it's not an education piece it's a how to deal with anti-bullying is that yeah it's showing respect and dignity for so our issue is the name of the group if that is if that is an issue then by all means change the name but you know i mean again that was the name of it prior to so five years ago it started five years ago i'm very familiar when it started i mean it's very longer than that the diversity it was diversity group was what it was before that but five years ago it was named the dei yeah and there's other initiatives that sometimes people i think get confused with the time to committing
038the spirit committee we have you know all those things but what i'm saying is i i think it's been called different things or referred to different things because we haven't been clear hence the reason mission values what the committee name is i think all that stuff is why we don't need to get all that done it's foreign that's fine but i think that at the core right to is that the quicker we get the mission statement out there the more transparent it feels because if we've been doing something for five years or however many years without a mission i mean that's we need we need to get on the ball maybe that's a shame on on me for not asking for that sooner but i think that that's something that is a board i think
039we need to work towards and have that quicker so that we can we can share that with the community and i think that that will help us join the committee john go go go go the purpose is the same anti-bullying treat each other with kindness okay honestly well then we really need to work on that because that will tell us i think that maybe the word that that concerns me more not from being with the committee because i'm very familiar with what the committee's been doing as well but perhaps a better explanation of what we're doing and how it relates to the term curriculum and you know curriculum is you know i think people think of that as that's what's being taught to our children but in a school district you've got employees that you
040are also educating or helping them with professional development there's a curriculum for that so i always call that but perhaps a better clarification of what curriculum means when we're talking about this in any issue thank you next we have action items it means the set tax rate here at our next [Music] is that that long one that i have to leave the next month yeah yeah some of those things i think uh you might be here also to talk about that there are some legal changes about how text rates are set that will also be part of the discussion uh along with that we can get some updates i can tell you i read the case you know kind of expected cases when we talk about taxes and what changes can be made it's not
041the easiest to follow you need to have an accountant a legislator but it's some of the issues and having talked to ginger the concern is in case how we alter our tax rate to reflect keeping our taxes even okay so the question changed right so the question becomes can we pay off more more debt i mean is that part of that or that that lawsuit where we did that the franklin it was about and part of it it was about how you set your tax rate based on the appraised value based on what the county appraises is that right when it comes in and what changes you can make in conjunction with that to and districts obviously have to maintain a steady revenue stream so we can keep the doors all of those things and
042how that changes as the assessed valuation changes is you know we've always taken into consideration new construction which is different than a re-assessment process and so all of those that's what we have we're going to hear from todd as he's done the analysis and what changes we made to keep our revenue consistent with antibiotics that was the next question will the hancock commitment how's that going to play out and i mean so it's going to be a it's going to be a very interesting speaker [Music] so the hancock amendment is basically how much you can go up every year um i didn't hear your question yeah so my question was is are we going to have to have a discussion about that as well with the accounting firm next month and that that will be
043and that that's what our rate hearing is about every time okay and that's what what are we going to set up tax rate then are we going to maintain it at the same level increase or decrease as we have periodically right and so this assessment year as i recall we're still waiting for the county counties both clay and clinton to give us uh the new assessed valuation and so before we can do anything we have to have what the new valuations are from them and then we take the next step where we a tax rate hearing in conjunction with the regular board meeting on august 18 2021. all those in paper motion carries your name actually have 40 comments i have one and it's a request really with um all the people in the room
044and all the um people speaking all at once in the room coupled with my current age it is hot in here so i'm requesting megatron to please they don't let us control them somebody or else we all gotta stop talking at once because this is bad that's my request [Music] i do appreciate whether you guys believe it or not we appreciate you coming here and hearing your thoughts it may not be exactly what we do we take into consideration a lot of factors in every decision we make you guys say it's we're not being transparent we are i mean personnel matters just as if they were yours they have to be behind doors people have a right to to privacy and so you're not going to hear everything we have to do things that are
045not in public we try to make everything that should be a public in public and we try to keep the bilateral community that's right by law we have to keep it private we try to inform our constituency our community as we go along whether you agree with that whether you agree with our decisions that's your right to make that decision i would hope as you come here though we'll be respectful to you i would ask you to be respectful to us to watch listen and allow us to communicate so we can hear it's difficult up here the this is not a room that's made for acoustics to enable us to do that i'm not asking you to not talk because i don't want to hear what you have to say it is so we can
046have a board meeting and so we can communicate with you and with each other and so again i i do appreciate you being here i know the board appreciates you being here it's good to see that people are interested in what we're doing again whether we agree whether we don't agree i like to see that somebody's interested i mean guys we have meetings in july where there might be two people out there again believe it or not it's good to see people in our audience so thank you all for coming that's good okay next we have important dates new teacher in service on august 2nd and 3rd august 16th it's convocation with teachers returning our next board meeting is on august 18th we have an open house with school on august 19th and the first
047day of school on august 24th and 12th and 13th right now for those new teachers entertainment session to immediately proceed the regular meeting in august including any record or vote to discuss items and issues allowable under section 610-021 of the missouri sunshine loft darlene bailey yes brian hamm dan holloway john kern yes bruce weitzer yes susan warren yes mark keller yes meeting is a journey you