001time um is public comment and just so you know i want to remind everyone we have 30 minutes for public comment and we are still receiving public comment online and so at this time we i will call our first person up i'd like to remind you please refrain from using names of students or staff and there we go so miss heidenrich you'll set the time so at this time miss mary fitzgerald good evening my name is mary fitzgerald i live in kirkwood i'm a parent here i'm also a disability advocate i'm on several committees in the school district one of the most important to me is the equity committee another important community is the career advisory council so as you may or may not know students in this school district are all served by the
002special school district there's a group of parents that are here to advise administrators in this district about parent concerns we listen to our kids we listen to other parents and we share those with you and we share those with administrators a couple years ago dr bailey had a really wonderful committee where we were able to come and communicate and talk about our concerns what i've noticed is that that hasn't happened in the last couple of years we really need that to come back we really need that to happen again there are students in this school district i know of one student who's a freshman in high school a virtual student who has received zero special adventures in two months it feels like this school district did not plan for students who needed to be virtual
003this semester students with disabilities i really feel like getting more input from us maybe having a survey i've been a parent here for six years i have never ever experienced being surveyed about anything regarding special school district by kirkwood you see kirkwood teachers are just as responsible for following the iep and making sure our students specific unique needs are met as ssb teachers are and i'm asking you to do more to make sure that those teachers are trained and those teachers understand our students needs and i'm asking for you to do more to listen to parents about what our concerns are and what our experiences are i specifically want to talk about math i specifically want to talk about the lack of supports for students in math in this school district there's no system to
004track a student who has math issues a math disability a student can be passed on year to year to year and be behind can be at the fifth percentile in math as a high school freshman and be expected to do algebra and then to fail algebra and nothing is done that's what happens in this district if five percent of students have this calcula on average in a population that means 300 students in this school district have a really serious math learning disability there is no systematic approach in this school district to help those students i can say this i have personal knowledge of this i can thank you your time is up with a math disability it really matters to help our kids thank you and just as a reminder um that the board president
005and superintendent will will follow up so the next um patron is miss um kristen ray right did i say that right ray uh good evening hi um i am a parent of a westchester student i listened to the february school board work session and i was really i want to say i'm really glad to have the opportunity to learn about the kirkwood school district's curriculum and library media selection policies it's really helpful to hear school administration and staff describe these policies in detail i found out that kirkwood teachers are directly responsible for designing the curriculum as compared to other school districts where maybe this is outsourced and i'm very thankful again that that we have this this resource in our teachers who work so hard to do this and it's nice that they're able to
006pour their experience back into the curriculum their knowledge of their students the feedback that they get from parents and students to constantly evolve how they're designing the curriculum and how they're working with our kids and take everything they learn from our community and work it right back in to maximize the learning experience of all kirkwood students i think that's wonderful it's also nice to know that the district has software that can allow parents to look up their kids library checkout history and materials that their kids are reading the class again what a wonderful opportunity that parents can better understand what their kids are learning they can have better informed conversations with their kids about their schoolwork that you know michael a little better than hey what'd you do at school today oh nothing you know
007um i i really think this is a great tool that parents have available to them in the private school district and it again brought home how you know how hard that the teachers administrators are working um to make the curriculum transparent to make it enriching and equitable for all students um i feel i felt really glad to learn all this and i hope that all parents and board members and administrators appreciate also how diligent the librarians not just the teachers but the school librarians are in their words to select books and other media that enriched the education and the lives of all the students who passed through these schools it really came to light how hard they're working and you know what a great job they're doing to try to fill the shelves with engaging
008and enriching media i'd also like to recognize this is a different subject but i really want to thank dr ambrose phillips for all the work that she's done with the educational equity task force so far this year that was a new experience for me as well being involved in that i've learned so much um she's really doing excellent work to help the district meet its strategic plan goals with regards to equity i think she's doing a fantastic job and i just wanted to to say that i'm really happy with all of our work and i'm so excited to be involved in that group i feel like we're doing good thanks thank you next is [Music] oh sorry there you go we do a lot of this in jefferson city my name is scott sifton and
009for the last eight years i represented a very good chunk of the kirkwood school district in the missouri state senate it was my honor to do so i was proud to have kirkwood among the nine school districts that i represented before that for nine years i sat where you sit on the board of education in afton including two terms as board president um and from that experience i could tell you serving on a school board and even the best of times can be could be very challenging and we certainly in the nine years i was on the board in afton never faced anything even remotely like this pandemic you all have had to make tough calls trying to do what you think is best for kids and you've been sued for it uh and i
010i'm here tonight to say among other things that i fundamentally disagree with missouri attorney general eric schmidt i think he is wrong on the policy i think he is wrong on the law i believe that masking protocols should be and are a function of local control and not control from jefferson city i think that school districts in school boards across the state have that right and that power but frankly this is about more than masks this is about the rising tide of extremism targeting our schools the kind of extremism that results in the time in tony morrison's first ever novel being pulled off of school library shelves right before the start of black history month in a district i mean within uh like a half hour drive from where we're standing that happened very close
011to here it's about the kind of extremism that has been pushing for don't say gay legislation the kind that has tried to erase important parts of our history and i'm concerned a year ago on january 6 we saw an effort to seize our national capital today those same forces led by steve bannon are working to seize our school buildings and they're working to do it through the elections coming up here in just a little more than a month so if like me you support local control i encourage you to study up and make sure that your voice is heard when you vote on april 5th thank you thank you and at this time you miss hayden live do we have any online comments yes i have two online comments the first one is my misha
012clincy and her topic is what is the amount of funds that were released from the state and how will those dollars be used and then the other one i received is chris kirsten raper i am writing in support of our schools and our librarians our librarians are highly educated with special degrees in library science and fully qualified to determine appropriate books for our libraries i do not think a small group of parents who don't have this training should determine what my child has available to read in our library if there is a book they don't want their child to read they can have a conversation with their child to discuss why and not allow them to read it our children deserve seeing books on our libraries that reflect them and their interest and our librarians
013are beyond qualified to meet this need okay thank you okay at this time um moving on to 4.02 i need a motion in a second to approve the agenda for february 28th second okay at this time raise your right hand all those in in favor please raise your right hand and say hi all right all those opposed motion passes okay next up we have awards and honors miss um steph dietrich is going to borrow mr dr fields mike thank you very much so awards and honors today i want to highlight that we had um our kirkwood high school ap art students worked on an exhibit at the kirkwood performing arts center ap art and design students uh had an exhibit of their artwork uh students in grades 10 through 12 that were involved were jory
014amos ezra berman charlotte blasingame ezekiel bliss jessica sylvia edwards emma frizzle jonathan harris harper heaps molly hoyer isabelle huber clayton mccune liv mcmahon veronica ming nolan rivallo lizzie rupert george upmeyer and jane upmeyer we also had kirkwood high school which celebrated 14 student athletes during a ceremony on thursday february 10th the school recognized these student athletes for having either verbally committed or signed a national letter of intent to participate in intercollegiate athletics after graduating from khs the student athletes their sport and the college or university that they will attend are grace hoop who will play or who will play basketball for webster university jane upmeyer who will be rowing for clemson university alyssa dennis who will be swimming for colgate university elena mccarthy who will be playing lacrosse at wartburg college brooke kittner will be
015playing soccer at coastal carolina university aiden troupe who will be playing baseball for bethany college ryan loudenslager who will be playing lacrosse for drewery university adam gates will be playing football for washington university st louis diego guzman who will be playing soccer at truman state university darius jones will be playing football at missouri baptist university jack shanahan will be playing baseball for jefferson community college cameron paul who'll be playing football for southeast missouri state university finnegan mulvaney will be diving at brewery university and xavier austin who was playing football at missouri baptist university we also had a crookwood high school senior selected for the missouri thespian scholarship senior lizzie sheen was announced as the recipient of a one thousand dollar scholarship from the missouri thespian society lucy was announced as a recipient during the 2022
016international student society conference in january after graduating from phs lucy plans on attending college to pursue a degree in musical theater political science and education seven kirkwood high school students were recently selected as new york times learning network 2021 student narrative contest finalists the contest encourages students to submit short powerful stories about a meaningful life experience in 600 words or fewer over 11 000 entries from around the nation were submitted by students aged 11 to 19 of those entries 200 students were announced as new york times learning network 2021 student narrative contest finalists seven of those were kirkwood high school juniors they are sim kannuja runner up for an angel's eyes lindsay braun round four finalist first layman yours michael mick collier round four finalist for a basement ballad caroline keating round four finalist for
017the blue bear grace johnson round four finalist for floor duty charlotte sport round four finalist for friday night piers and live temp round four finalists for how not to get your car stolen these students wrote their essays as part of the kirkwood high school ap language and composition class and finally we want to recognize that dr liz grana director of instruction and professional learning earned her doctorate doctorate in educational leadership from lindenwood university the title of her dissertation was culturally responsive teaching practices and the preparation of pre-service teachers so congratulations to dr rana thank you miss dietrich and there's a lot to to celebrate and be proud of that's exciting stuff um at this time now um 6.01 it is superintendent reports um financial transparency dashboard as you are as the board is well aware
018as part of our strategic plan one of our guiding principles was transparency and part of our annual strategic plan goals was to be more transparent in the reporting out of the district's finances and one of the ways that we're doing that is a financial dashboard that that we have put together and we'll go live as the link will be live as soon as this evening uh and so mr may and uh miss dietrich i know you guys have both put a lot of work into this uh mr obey i believe you're going to kind of walk us through the dashboard and what the board and what our public can expect yes thank you good evening um first i'd like to thank miss dietrich and her team for putting this together she did all the work
019um i just supplied the numbers so thank you it looks great um as dr ulrich said the the purpose of it is to increase financial transparency and really just to make it easier for our community to to find this financial information so what this information is is financial information that we thought was most relevant it's consistent with what we see that other districts put on their website and we did talk to our budget and finance committee about this and they agreed that this we included everything that should be included the one thing that they said they'd like to see is fund balance projections and so we are going to try to incorporate that um it's we just have to figure out how to kind of fit it in there but it is something that we
020plan to do so really i'll start at the top and go across um first is our enrollment and you see our current enrollment 5860 students and the reason why this is on a financial dashboard is because it affects our state funding it affects our expenditure budget and it also affects our impacts our facilities so it's important that we track our enrollments for future planning next is the per pupil expenditures this is how much we spend on an annual basis per pupil it says of 2021 so that's the most recent period that we can track this information and you see that we're at about twelve thousand three hundred dollars per student and below that is the county average and this comes from jesse the department of elementary and secondary education and the county average we're really
021close to the county average just a little bit above it next is our residential property tax rate again this is the residential property tax rate three dollars and 58 cents and below that you see what that cost is for an average home in kirkwood average home being 350 000 the property taxes is 2 381 next is our bond rating we have a very high bond rating double a plus from moody's and this is what's used when our bonds are rated it affects our interest rates and below that you see our outstanding general obligation bond act 58.6 million dollars that does include prop bar bonds that we just recently passed that middle section is expenditures and and we will update this monthly uh that first chart on the left-hand side is the operating expenditures and if
022on the on the website if you hover over these bar graphs you can see the exact amount that these represent and so we show the the year expenditures date compared to budget and then next to that you have all the other funds that we have so maintenance technology debt service and so forth and then that pie graph all the way to the right in the middle that just shows kind of how our expenditure budget is divided up and so you see that most of it 46. 46.2 million that red section that's our teaching staff so most of our budget goes to teaching then we have support staff admin staff and then and then everything else supplies services equipment which is about 18 of our budget at the bottom is revenue so again on the left
023you have operating revenue revenue year-to-date compared to budget next to that you have all the other funds that we have in in the school district and again the the other funds they have a dedicated purpose for those funds there's a there's they come with a dedicated revenue source and a purpose for how those funds have to be spent um and then next to that you see that kind of donut shape graph shows the breakdown of our revenue with most of it being property taxes that's the red section at about 79 well mr romain thank you so much and miss dietrich i you know it's always nice to see two departments kind of work together um to to make a great great product at this time board bumpers um do do you have any questions for
024mr real may or miss dietrich miss um bernardi no thank you ms andrews thank you mr oh my ms dietrich i really appreciate your interaction with the budget and finance committee i'm lucky enough to attend the meetings and i think they offer a very good perspective i think you did a very excellent job here as well and i also just want to reiterate about the operating fund balance that they mentioned maybe even just as a percentage since we have a board policy to be at a certain percentage so that might also be nice to look at for months and months how the operating fund balance percentage changes from the beginning of the year to the end so just a suggestion but thanks again for this work mr frost thank you madam president i just want
025to thank you guys this it's amazing this this is a definition of financial transparency it's exactly what our what we can show our community right there they don't have to hunt for anything it's right there that they can click on and find is perfect for what we need to be sure on our community so thank you guys so much for working so hard okay any any other questions okay again um just want to thank you um and this is this is good for our community so okay moving on now to the approval of the consent agenda items for february 28th um i need a motion in a second so all those in favor of approving um the consent agenda please raise your right hand and say i okay all those opposed motion passes okay now
026mister oh my this is where i've gotten tired and forgotten to okay so i need a motion and a second to approve the the financial statements as presented for january 2022. okay now at this time mr roman please present this thank you our revenues in january were 18.4 million dollars with most of it being current taxes 15.7 million dollars in current taxes and that's pretty typical we received most of our property tax revenues in december and january and through january the collection rate was 86.5 compared to 84.4 percent last year that's important because even just a slight decrease in the percentage can have a significant impact on our revenues operating expenditures in january were 5.5 million dollars most of it was salaries and benefits it wasn't anything large or unusual that we spent money on
027during the month in our construction fund we paid a total of 241 000 in professional services that includes architect engineering and construction management we paid 107 000 toward the westchester phase one classroom edition 122 thousand dollars toward the north glendale ada ramp 17 000 toward the robinson ada ramp and finally 37 800 toward the essex security office okay thank you mr remain at this time board members are there any questions mr boycott would it be right for me to interpret that since we're about two percentage points above on the collection rate compared to what uh january of last year that it's more likely we'll end up with a collection rate that's above the 97 percent probably not um it can vary greatly and last year i think was last year there's one year either last
028year the year before we were well under um but generally we we come very close to 97 percent the county with those one and a half percent for their assessment and collection so kind of the best we can do is is 98.5 is really the best we can do and there's always property owners that pay that are delinquent and we do eventually collect that money we just get at the year you know one year late two years late sometimes as much as three or four years late um so we may do better than but it probably won't be any higher than you also reported at the budget and finance committee meeting um you always keep us up to date on the spending of our grant funding and different ways we spend it for the district
029and i know we can't do it every month but i just would say maybe we could share some of that information in an upcoming meeting okay yes thank you you've got that written down mister okay um and miss bernardi do you mind to follow up with on an email just so that we oh sure yes mr omega's already done it i'm sure he's got it all very nice i saw it at the budget finance committee meeting so thank you but i will send you an email as well thank you okay um so seeing no further questions we'll call to a vote um all those in favor approving the financial statement as presented please raise your right hand and say aye all right all those opposed motion passes okay up next is um policy hh for
030a second reading and so i just real quick want to kind of go over going forward the policy review and approval process will be as follows the policy committee will review and present for our first reading at this time the board will have the opportunity to submit questions and comments related to the policy presented um if questions are asked administration will provide answers to all board members in the public will also be made aware in board docs i'm sorry i'm so distracted i know um if changes are suggested those changes may be made and the policy will be brought forward again for them a first reading once the board has had a first reading of the policy it will be brought under the consent agenda as a second reading and approval unless a board member
031requests that the item be removed from consent agenda for further discussion so i would just ask board members that if you request if you are requesting the item to be removed from the consent agenda that you notify board president and miss heidenreich no later than friday prior to the monday board meeting so i just kind of wanted to to put that timeline that out for us [Music] and at this time dr alright do you have any or miss bernardi do you have any comments on hh i think we reviewed it last time so in the future then if there are no questions it will just be on the consent agenda but i haven't received any questions at all okay perfect thanks miss bernardi so at this time we will the board members have no further
032questions we will move to a vote so please raise your right hand if um he almost made it through the whole meeting like um i need a motion in this second to approve the policy emotions to approve the policy thanks mr party okay okay so all of a sudden i knew it sounded funny all those in favor please raise your right hand and say i i'm all those opposed motion passes okay i think this was our fastest meeting ever [Music] hey um so future events um we have the league of women voters board candidate forum on march 3rd at 7 00 at keating theater and then march 11th is the end of the third quarter march 14th we have a board of education meeting the march 21st through the 25th is spring recess the district
033will be closed march 28th is a staff development day no no school for students and then school resumes on march 29th and then april 5th we have a school board election and then april 11th we will have a board reorganization meeting and then april 25th we will have a board of education meeting so i call this meeting adjourned but as we did not complete closed sessions earlier board i need a motion to return to closed session for the purpose of personnel um six ten points subsection 3 and 13 and negotiations 610.021 subsection 9 by mr cavanaugh yes mr frost yes and miss painborn yes and myself yes so this meeting is adjourned public thank you so much for for attending um so are you guys the call students wow welcome you have two more hours
034yeah yeah so normally it doesn't end this quick but um welcome and